> I thought the Olympics were an international competition where the best athletes from all over the world convene in one major city every four years to show the world their athletic talent.
>
> What's that quote again about the non-importance of winning and losing? :)

This looks like a good place to go off on a tangent about that quote and how much I hate it. Witness its current effects in the nice, friendly, modern world of enforced equality. The Olympics seem to be the only place left where you ARE supposed to compete for the purpose of winning -- where the entire goal of every competitor is to end up standing on a small box and metaphorically saying "I am the best in the world at doing this, so HA. Yah boo. Nyah nyah nyah pbbbtttththththththt! Also, your country is ugly and its mother dresses it funny." I approve of this. There are few places left where someone is allowed to be damn good at what they do, and proud of it.

I also approve of the "...it's how you play the game" part of that quote. The Olympics, of course, is not blameless in needing to pay attention to this. You're always going to get corruption and bad sportsmanship. What I do object to, is how political correctness teaches us that the second part of the quote is the only part that matters. It's *OK* to be mediocre, we're supposed to believe, just so long as nobody gets their feelings hurt and nobody feels like they're worse at something than another person.

I don't know about other countries, but here we have schools where little kids run races on sports days and no winner is announced. The kid who crosses the line first gets the same "You tried hard! A winner is you!" happyface cardboard medal as the kid who came fortieth. The school grading system has been rewritten again and again over the last ten years so the exams (we still have exams, but I'm pretty sure people are working on ways to get rid of those too) don't get marked in a way which might indicate failure and thereby traumatise the poor student for life.

I *hate* this whole culture of mediocrity. We're teaching kids that there's no point in extending themselves, because they're fine the way they already are, and that it's Not Nice to show you're better at something than other people. And then we're arguing on sports talkback shows about why this country can't put together a decent international side anymore, when Back In The Day we used to wipe out every other team the world could throw our way, and moaning in the newspapers about how all our top science graduates move overseas.

I think this is why so many countries get swept up in patriotic fervour for the Olympics. People *need* competition, and they need heroes and winners and a sense of how good it's possible to get through your own hard work, and be allowed to CHEER about it instead of apologising. The Olympics always get huge TV audiences, even among those who don't usually watch sport, and I think that's a lot of the reason why.

Brunnen-"of course, adding beach volleyball didn't hurt either"G