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SPORTSWATCH
Golden
Games
Sydney
gave back the Olympics its soul but also reflected the blemishes of modern
sport
By
Rohit Brijnath
Sydney
was a disaster. A travesty. Why else would Murphy leave town on the second
day itself. His law states clearly that Everything That Can Go Wrong,
Will. What, the Aussies can't read? Out here, for 17 days, chaos fled
and harmony reigned. Everything That Could Go Right, Did.
 Indeed,
trying to find a flaw in Sydney's organisation is harder than digging
up dirt on Mother T. The only unpleasantness I witnessed in the entire
fortnight came after the closing ceremony when a journalist slugged an
official in the Digger Bar at the press centre. Cheering turned rapidly
to condemnation when the police temporarily shut the bar down.
The crowds
couldn't spell jingoism, the volunteers were the sort your mother would
want you to marry, and the athletes' state of mind is best reflected in
the thousands of extra condoms that had to be flown in to the Athletes
Village.
And even
India, which usually takes five decades to produce a medallist, now has
two bronzes in successive Games. Hell, we even had a minister, Syed Shahnawaz
Hussain, who flew to Canberra to check out the sensational Australian
Institute of Sport, promised reforms, only to discover when he returned
home that he had a new portfolio. No wonder we are a nation which invests
so much in prayer; we need it.
But truth
be told, there was, if you searched carefully, the odd negative about
Sydney. The most damning in the gymnastics, when the vault was set at
the wrong height, a fatal problem for gymnasts whose margin of error is
usually calculated in millimetres. Some wept, others fell on their face,
four years rendered useless.
Fierce
Competition: It was also a Games without one supreme, shining star.
Perhaps that is not Sydney's fault but a reminder of the fierceness of
competition, the extent of specialisation. A seven-gold Mark Spitz (1972)
or a four-golds-in-a-day Vitaly Scherbo (1992) these days is improbable.
It leaves Inge de Bruijn as the Games' prima donna, for with three individual
golds and a bronze, plus world records, she managed to out-duel Marion
Jones who finished with two individual golds and a bronze, plus a gold
and a bronze in the relays.
If the swimming
pool where de Bruijn reigned was aflame with talent, 14 world records
being set, then for only the second time ever (London 1948 being the other)
not a single world record occurred in the track and field.
One reason
was the venues: while the pool was technically "fast", the track
was abominably slow. It was also the fag end of the athletics season (the
Olympics are usually held in the summer) and runners failed to rediscover
their peak. When asked why he didn't chase the 400 m world record Michael
Johnson explained, "It was too much of a risk."
Gold is
more important, and so what if the 5000 m champion ran 56 seconds off
the world record, he was here only to win. Perhaps, but it diminished
the competition. Does Citius, Altius, Fortius mean Faster, Higher, Stronger
than the next man, or Faster, Higher, Stronger than ever before?
The Olympics
were also evidence of a stain so permanent that no detergent can remove
it. Drug use needs no confirmation but it was there everyday in athletes
being escorted home (unembarrassed, one must add), though to Sydney's
eternal credit never has testing been so thorough.
It would
touch Jones through her testing-positive-husband C.J. Hunter adding a
painful asterisk (read: guilt by association) to her performance; it would
touch de Bruijn whose muscles were considered inappropriate for a woman,
to the point where, said her coach, she was weeping on her way to races.
Never before for a woman has triumph brought as much tragedy.
But in the
larger context these were aberrations, a millimetre scratch on the Kohinoor.
They were, too, not problems of Sydney's making, barring the vault, but
a reflection of the state of world sport.
They cannot
either overshadow what was a majestic occasion, where hype for once was
overtaken by an Olympian spirit. To see the 200 m freestyle favourite
Ian Thorpe throw an arm around his victor Pieter van den Hoogenband, to
hear him say, "It was a privilege to swim this race," was to
know that the Olympics had rediscovered its vanished heart. The Olympics
does not need to travel four more years to Athens to return home. It already
has.
Which leaves
us only one last thing to say.
Sydney,
Sydney, Sydney, oi, oi, oi.
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