As calendar pages peel away to mark the midway point of the 2012 Summer Olympics, London, as we knew it would, has been a splendidly gracious host to all 204 participating countries. Although I’m not sure why Hong Kong, which is part of China, or Puerto Rico and Guam, which are U. S. territories, compete as if they aren’t, if a municipality can talk its way in, more power to them.
I have been to 50 of the competing countries and as a younger man competed in 11 outside America. As insignificant as these visits and games were and remain, they profoundly changed the way I look at life. Every four years I’m reminded me why.
The Olympic Games draw open the life’s curtain to nostalgia. The years have flown by but the memories, friendships, and colors remain vibrant. I proudly admit I homered in four of those countries. And struck out in all 11.
This summer it seems especially appropriate to echo the words of the 1960 Olympic gold medal winning light-heavyweight boxing champion: “A man who looks at 50 the same he did at 20 has wasted 30 years.”
He was Cassius Clay at 20, Muhammad Ali at 50. In between and every since, he used sports as a bridge to change the world. Clay burst on the world scene as a wide-eyed Olympian in Rome. This year, frail and shaky at 70, the former Olympic hero traveled to London out of respect for what he’s already proved: Athletes can, in fact, come together in sportsmanship and change the world for the better.
The 2012 Olympics is comprised of 300 events in 26 sports. From these games will come three types of Olympic champions: objective, subjective, and true.
Objective champions
Objective sports have measurable results, a clock usually the ultimate decision maker. In objective sports, the athletes decide who wins and loses. Referees may be engaged, as in tennis or volleyball, but the referee’s role is to facilitate the advancement of play. They are on the peripheral support personnel.
This is an important distinction: referees facilitate competition while judges determine the outcome.
At the heart of Olympic movement is the glass house theory that the world’s best athletes are brought together from its tiniest nations to its most massive to compete in an environment of protected fair sportsmanship; and the best man, woman, or team emerges victorious.
Sometimes this happens and sometimes it doesn’t, but part of the magic of the Games is the pocketful of miracles — randomly sprinkled pixie dust — that land upon the lives of unassuming people.
Fans, especially true sportsmen, love that about the Olympics. We love that there are winners and losers and tears of joy and sorrow. We also understand that the true power of the Olympics is not the self-serving shills of NBC, but everything beyond that. Surprises checkmate the expected. They always have and always will.
Subjective champions
Subjective sports, like gymnastics, diving, boxing, and synchronized everything are judge-dependent. In these sports, the best competitors often don’t win because the athletes cede control of the outcome to judges. Judges pretend to be unbiased, but each sits there with a sliding scale of skill, objectivity, ethics, biases, and integrity. In other words, judges are for sale.
Subjective Olympic judging isn’t just erratic, sometimes is downright criminal. Judges from impoverished nations have prices and before you condemn that notion, please remember that grabbing for self is, unfortunately, how the real world operates.
The Olympics are not immune. For many judges, the Olympics are their golden ticket. It is their one opportunity to maximize a life changing opportunity in a world too poor to fathom another way out of destitution.
Because subjective sports so predictably create controversy, they are the ones that red flag the Olympic ideal of fair competition. Fans do not want cheat judges and fraudulent winners. Fans want fairness. We want to see everyone given the chance to do his or her best so he or she has a fair chance to win. This is what we want from the Olympics because this is how we want our lives to unfold. We can live with fairness. We struggle with cheats.
The antidote to blatant mayhem caused by subjective judging is simple: drop judged sports from the Games. This means gymnastics, diving, boxing, and the rest are out of the Olympics and left to their own World Championships. Gymnasts strike me as an odd group anyway, their monastic existences robbing athletes of normal childhoods in order to do inordinate things before they’re old enough to drive that they won’t be able to do once out of school. Something inside me says their sport isn’t good like the other ones are. I don’t know how any sport you peak at puberty can be.
But whether I am right about that or wrong, the fact remains gymnastics is a cult sport rife with judging favoritism. There is never an objective winner in gymnastic. Judges choose. Like the other subjective pursuits, perhaps it is best to spin off into its own little world.
Dropping subjective sports also repositions the Olympics closer to what it claims to be: a fair world of competition, winning, and losing. Let each Olympian determine his or her fate. Leave no result to the mercy of a stonefaced someone with a prescripted agenda and fat wallet.
True champions
This is the first Olympics where all participating countries sent competing female athletes. Even the U.S. team bolstered its female focus; for the first time Team USA has more women competing than men (269 to 261).
One of them, the world’s top-ranked female saber fencer, Mariel Zagunis, carried the American flag. Since the Olympics also ushers us into a world of mindless sports trivia every four years, suffice it to say that the saber is one of the three weapons of modern fencing. It differs from the other two, the épée and foil, in that you can score with the edge of the blade. With the other two, touches are only scored using the point of the blade.
Mariel knows that. And so now do you.
More of these Games’ true champions arrived in London from the Middle East. Brunei, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia sent women to compete, something none of those countries had ever done. One of Qatar’s female athletes carried the flag. A more monumental gesture is Saudi Arabia’s, which is permitting two women to compete (one in judo, the other running the 800-meters). Saudi is an ultra-male dominated culture of 28 million. This small step disguises a huge stride in significance. These two women do not need to medal to be champions. In the eyes of the world, they already are.
These Games highlight major advancements for women and big progress by the often ridiculed International Olympic Committee. The IOC has aggressively promoted the inclusion of women in general, to the Saudis in particular, and their hard work has paid off. In 2012, the door for women athletes from the Middle East is finally cracked open.
Because of that, Muslim women from many countries will run, shoot, and scull in athletic clothing that still respects the modest dress required by their religion. They will have fun and honor their countries by doing their best. The fans will cheer their efforts. Young girls at home will aspire to be Olympians too.
Not all of these women qualified by winning trial competitions. Some are competing by invitation from the IOC or their sport’s governing body. But the invitations pave the way to something far more important than a medal. They encourage countries that have either refused to send women or foster women in sports to embrace the concept and build new programs.
This is titanic in ways most Americans watching on TV will never understand but those of us whose lives have been enriched by befriending these people will never forget.
This is the essence of why the Olympics survive: social progress despite the potholes. For better and worse the Games remain the world’s lone vehicle to come together with arms extended, not drawn.
When I mentioned at this column’s beginning that travel has changed me for the better, it did so in one very big way: The world taught me, over and over and over again, that people on all corners of it are 92 percent the same and eight percent different.
Our choice, therefore, is to do one of two things: build on the 92 percent or argue over the eight.
I am a builder. I hope you are too.