Olympic Joy

a look forward

The Olympics….A testament to the uniting power of athletic competition, a fond look back to the traditions of our majestic past, the second most popular sports type thing that happens every four years. If you’re anything like me, which I assume 90% of people on earth are, you’ve been counting down the days to the the 2024 summer olympics. The Summer Olympics are one of only two times when the whole world can come together and collectively pretend that they are interested in things like rowing and gymnastics. I adore the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics are decent too but its like I tell my children “I like you both but lets not pretend that you are equals”, the Olympics were originally held by the ancient Greeks as a way to honour Zeus, the “captain” of the gods to put it in athletic terms, and they continued to honour Zeus until 1976 when the honouring rights to the Games were sold to the Chocolate Joy Sun Food and Beverage company, subsidiary of the  Wilkrus-Tenfenser Group. From 1976 on the Games were played in the honour of the ChocoJoy Bear, a large friendly chocolate bear that promotes the delicious taste and reasonable prices of Chocolate Joy food and beverage products. 

There are an endless amount of notable moments from the Olympic’s storied history both good and bad. Triumphs like Bjørn Hårkkenon winning a still record 73 medals spread over 19 events in 1900, Ethel Wright and Eddie Dungan dancing for 78 consecutive hours then dropping dead on the podium, it was said you could see their souls dancing up into heaven. The entire world lit up at the majesty of the the 1924 zeppelin races, watching those formidable flying machines reach speeds of almost 3 knots per hour. In 1928 Klaus Müller threw a discus so hard that it is still embedded in the ground, it is said that whoever pulls it from the ground will become the next emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The awe of seeing figure skater Kristina Hagelis spin so fast that she levitated off the ice for a full 5 seconds. Watching Jesse Owens raise his fist in power in front of a tearful Hitler or when John Manek outboxed the evil Helmut Schmidt who’s arms had been outfitted with robotic Nazi technology. The spirit of humanity soared alongside Ivana Kranj when she jumped so high off the trampoline that she never came back  down, some say she is still up in the lower atmosphere representing her country to this day. Our hearts swelled with joy when the ChocoJoy Bear introduced a new line of Chocolate Joy diet sodas at the 1984 games, these are the moments that epitomize the Olympics, these are the moments that bring us together. 

The Olympics have seen their fair share of controversy as well, moments of bloodshed like the 1918 Sino-Brazilian Javelin Massacre, The 1972 hostage snafu or when the pool at the 1984 games was accidentally set to “boil” during the butterfly event leaving none alive. Many tears were shed when Rufus, the labrador retriever who medaled in the 1200 metre tennis ball pursuit got into some chocolate in the garbage and was taken from us at the height of his greatness.  While we don’t hope for moments like this it is understood that underneath the togetherness of the games is the savage spirit of human competition and I wouldn’t have it any other way. While this is interesting for historical perspective we are not here to look back on the past we are here to leer into the bedroom windows of the future like a dusty pervert hidden atop the tree branches.

Before the games themselves begin, before the banners are raised and the great stadiums erected and the local homeless population shooed away into the sewers and surrounding woodlands a different kind of event takes place, one that is performed with all the grace and precision and power of the most demanding physical challenge, I am speaking of course about the Olympic committee bribery stage. By all accounts the series of bribes, kickbacks and payoffs that landed the Games in Paris were some of the most energetic and cleanly executed transactions that we’ve witnessed in years and with some of the names in play its no surprise, we are talking about the titans of the bribe giving and taking community, Mr. Will “The Thrill” Frederick Blick, Dr. Gerardo “More Trouble Than It’s Werth” Werthein, Mr. Luis Alberto “Less is” Morena, Mr. Jean-Cristophe “I’m on a” Rolland”,  Anne Hidalgo, Courtney Seabiscuit, His Royal Highness Prince Ahmad Al-Bundy, Bernard “Woah-oh Black Betty” Amsalem and Dr. Lucre Moneyman just to name a few. 

The French bribery practices were praised for their tidiness and personal touch as one unnamed committee member explained “ A wire transaction, so cold , so unfeeling, do you even know me? Have you taken the time to look into my interests, do you care about me as a human or are you simply interested in the Olympics, its the little things, the keys to a villa stocked with my favourite foods and wines, fast tracking my daughter into an elite prep school, the kind of things that make you feel wanted”. The dark ages of receiving a burlap sack with a big green dollar sign on it are in the past, these days committee members don’t expect to find an expensive watch with 8 hands at the bottom of their soup, they expect a short film detailing their ancestry at the Cannes Film Festival and that’s to be expected, we live in an enlightened age.

  France credits its exemplary performance in the pre-games bribery arena to a well oiled bureaucracy run through Commission Française De La Corruption Sportive, the government agency that oversees these matters. While spirits were generally high there were complaints that popped up from certain Olympic committee members “In Saudi Arabia they gave me a golden sword, can I receive a golden sword from France? I would like a golden sword”. While it doesn’t seem like their are any golden swords to be had from the French there are more than enough underaged prostitutes to go around, when questioned about this practice a member of the French delegation commented “We are French that kind of stuff is fine to us, no problem at all”. Give these Olympic Selection Members their flowers, hand them that beautiful bouquet.

Once the dust settles and the cash and goods have been dolled out and a minor mixup in which the entire olympic stadium had been filled with water under the impression that was required for the swimming events is cleared up its on to the competition! As the world of athletics evolves new sports are introduced and old ones are updated the Olympics must reflect these changes, let’s take a quick look at the events that are being added. The uphill luge, javelin duel ,subzero temperature swimming events, blind karate, beach golf, doubles chess, cross-country mountaineering, freestyle guitar soloing, jousting, the competitive zip-line,  marathon SEAL crawl, horseback triathlon, 7x7 basketball, slow skating, pogo-stick slalom, contact rock paper scissors, septiathlon, the fredsleigh. The addition of new events represents progress but it is also necessary to replaces events that have been phased out such as tug-of-war, running deer shooting, motor boating (boat racing), motor boating (sexual technique), 4000km track race, around the world balloon race, freestyle ballroom dancing, ballroom dancing marathon, 6pack beer shotgun, duel wield fencing, weighted chess, high knees, 100m amble and the Macarena. 

Including a wide variety of events is essential in order to capture the total scope of human athletic endeavour as well as to add advertising time to what is already an interminable and confusing broadcast schedule.

So who’s favoured to win it all? It’s not such an easy question because on one hand the goal of the Olympics goes beyond a simple accumulation of medals and aims to unify the human spirit but on the other more realistic hand the country with the most medals is the winner and it will be either  The United States or China. Olympic athletes are held in great regard in both the U.S and China, In China they will forever be remembered as national heroes who went above and beyond while representing China on the world stage, in the U.S they will get to be on the Shreddies box for a little bit and then forgotten about completely, two worthy and valid approaches. Both the States and China boast giant populations of talented athletes, large amounts of money to pour into the Olympic programs and most importantly have the international influence to keep their athletes from getting hit with drug tests for the extensive amounts of human growth hormones that their bodies are filled with, you won’t see any “The Athlete from Russia” type situations with these two, no sir, these two know how to play the game and they know how to play it well. 

Speaking of the Russian Olympic Committee or the Loose Affiliation of Unconnected Athletes Based in Russia, they will be in the hunt for a top 5 medal count like they are every year although it is likely that because of the Ukraine conflict every athlete from the Unassociated Team of Russia Based Competitors will have to start and finish every event with an apology about Russia, which they do not represent. What the Russian Delegation of Coincidentally Matching Individuals lacks in drug testing suppression influence they make up for for patriotism towards an unnamed country that if they were to represent that country, which they do not, they would do so with every ounce of their being.

When its the Summer Olympics you can bet that Australia is going to be in the mix, rowing, boating, sailing, doubles kayaking, canoeing you name it , its right up their alley , these are people who love boats and it shows, especially in the Olympic events that centre around boats. In a lot of ways it is not surprising that a country with a warm climate does well in the Summer Olympics, after all it’s summer there all the time even when it’s not. Some time ago I wrote a letter to the Olympic Committee suggesting the possibility of weighing the athletes on a sliding scale based on the average temperatures of the countries they come from, unfortunately like most of my attempts at communication both professional and personal it went unanswered.

Japan hosted the last Summer Olympics and had an impressive showing, there is no doubt that they are going to come out strong in Judo and Baseball again but they won’t be helped by the home field advantage, not just the cheering crowds but the tricks, the misdirection, the deception. It’s a time honoured tradition that the host country engages in every available method up to and sometimes including murdering (hasn’t happened since 2002 though) the competition. It is all too common for an athlete to think that they are entering a sauna only realize upon entering that it is a broom closet and that a chair has been place against the doorknob on the other side making escape quite impossible. Perhaps a sympathetic local prostitute replaces multivitamins with sleeping pills, or a taxi driver becomes “confused” and ends up 300 miles away from the stadium, this kind of gamesmanship is as much a part of the Olympics as the ChocoBear, everything is fair game and I’m going to be excited to see what France has up their sleeves.

Beautiful sunny(?) Paris is a fantastic location for Olympics, a city steeped in history and a cultural and artistic centre of the world, it would be a wonderful trip for these athletes if their simple minds were able to comprehend anything outside of straightforward competition. I know that I would love to make the trip if I had the money or wasn’t under house arrest. Not long from now the Olympic village will be hastily built with a lack of care that would make Jimmy Carter collapse dead in a pile of his own puke. The world’s greatest athletes outside of the actual ones who do real sports will be settled down in the village fucking each other to create the next generation of super athletes with confusing multi-hyphenated names. With every second that we draw nearer to the opening ceremony the excitement grows, these athletes will be returning home as conquering gods or if they are dishonourable enough to return home at all after a poor showing, societal pariahs, you come home with a medal or you don’t come home at all, thats what the parents of these Olympians are no doubt saying to them and they probably hear it a lot because they live with their parents because they don’t have real jobs they think life is some kind of fucking game where the government pays you to practice running around all day like a giant toddler. 

Despite the fact that these people come from all different countries and cultures and beliefs and creeds they are joined together by the immortal spirit of competition. They are also joined together by  fact that nothing they ever do after this will come close to equaling the thrill, the fact that their lives are devoid of meaning now, that they have to remain on this earth for 5 more decades after their purpose is gone and they are forced to settle into mind number day jobs and that is what the Olympics are all about