The Olympics were wonderful. They brought the world together in the spirit of peace and fair play, with athletes gathering from all over the world to compete in a celebration of human excellence and accomplishment.
Those days, however, are long past.
Blame it on the Russians for continuing to make doping a state-sponsored practice, a tradition they started decades ago as the Soviet Union.
Blame it on global terrorism.
Blame it on unbridled nationalism and countries spending their way to success, like Canada and its Own The Podium campaign.
Blame on the International Olympic Committee, an organization as corrupt as the Fdration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), soccer's global governing body.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't cheer on Prince George's Alyx Treasure, competing in the women's high jump, or the other 300-plus Canadian athletes proudly wearing the Maple Leaf in Rio during the next two weeks. They have earned their moment of glory and we should cheer their success.
Wherever she goes and however high she jumps when she gets there, Treasure is already Prince George's and Canada's ambassador and our city and our country is richer for it.
Going forward, however, the Olympics should be retired.
For many international sports bodies, Olympic years are a nuisance, an extra event that needs to be incorporated around the major annual competitions on an already crowded schedule.
The Rio Olympics are a distraction for many golfer and tennis players, to take just two examples. These athletes are normally busy on their respective league tours in the middle of summer and the winnings from those tour stops pay the bills.
Canada's Milos Raonic, a finalist at Wimbledon in June, is sitting out the Olympics. He blamed it on the zika virus but he's also looking ahead to the U.S. Open, the final tennis major in September. Winning that major would be far more financially lucrative to him, not to mention more significant within the tennis world, than Olympic glory. Just as a Stanley Cup means more to hockey players and fans than Olympic gold, winning a tennis major is the real pinnacle of the sport.
NHL stars playing for their country in hockey comes at significant risk, both for the players and the owners of the professional teams they play for. If Connor McDavid were to suffer a season-ending injury while playing in the Olympic tournament, the Edmonton Oilers and their fans would be rightfully outraged. Players always say the right thing to reporters about their excitement to be playing for their country and winning medals but take their comments with a grain of salt.
Roberto Luongo won a gold medal as Canada's goaltender at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver while Tim Thomas took home a silver medal as the backup goalie for the U.S. team. Just over a year later, on the same ice surface, Thomas recorded a shutout for the Boston Bruins, as they defeated the Vancouver Canucks in the deciding Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. Luongo took the loss for the Canucks.
Which player is happier with the outcome of those two games - Luongo or Thomas?
Even in Treasure's sport of high jump, the International Association of Athletics Federations, the world governing body for track and field, the Olympics are a once-every-four-years disruption to the competition schedule. The Olympics will be an incredible unique experience for Treasure and her fellow members of the Canadian track team but the IAAF Diamond League (Treasure took part in the London stop on July 22) not only gives the world's best track stars their own international stage, the athletes get paid.
International events like the Diamond League, the Commonwealth and the Pan-American Games are great because they accomplish all of the same athletic and international peace-building goals the Olympics do, without the bloated spectacles that require a billion dollars just for security and the jet-setting plutocrat organizers lining their pockets with bribes.
For the most part, the Olympics used to be wonderful celebrations of peace and achievement. Now they are just wasteful extravagances, a once-sweet fruit now rotten inside and out.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
