As we get closer and closer to the opening ceremony in Rio I can’t help but think we should renounce the Olympic Games as a global sporting festival that has seriously lost its way.
There’s the banning of Russian athletes and the whole question of which participant is clean and who is not.
Then there are the billions of dollar spent by the Brazilian Government on the games when there are so many other more important things that country needs.
There’s the awful pollution in the bay off Rio, the traffic mess, the daily protests.
So yes we probably ought to renounce them as a sporting contest gone mad.
But then we see the faces of our own Olympians every night on the TV news and our feelings change.
Biased we may be, but it is true that the Aussies taking part every four years are among the last true believers in the Olympic ideals.
And that is sporting competition to see who in the entire planet is faster, stronger or can jump higher – without the aid of performance enhancing drugs.
Australians fell in love with the Olympics when the modern Games returned in Athens in 1896, and we have been there every four years since then.
In Rio, 120 years after Athens in 1896, the Australian Olympians see the gathering of the world’s elite athletes in the Games village as one of the best part of the Olympics.
We want to win if we can, but our boys and girls think it’s just as important to get to know their counterparts from Finland and Estonia, Ethiopia and Cuba.
Unfortunately our athletes are in the minority these days so unless the International Olympic Committee gets its act together the Games in their present format are doomed.
As for now, let’s wish the Aussie Olympians in Rio the best of luck – we know you will make us proud no matter where you finish.
♦ A special mention goes out to shooter Warren Potent (Curran’s Hill), triathlete Erin Densham (Ruse), Matilda Alana Kennedy (Rosemeadow) and hockey umpire Kylie Seymour, the Macarthur region’s representatives at the Rio Games.
