Why this great sports fan won't be watching the Olympics..........

Z UPDATE: If the way this Gold Medal was covered isn't proof of Mr. Z's claims of the media counting more than our athletes, I don't know what is.

Mr. Z had to write and get the Olympics off his chest, which, in itself deserves a medal just from the sheer 'weight' of it!:

I am a huge sports fan, I was an excellent all-round athlete when I was young, so why would I not watch the Olympics? My wife is really unhappy I’m not going to be watching this year so I thought I’d explain:

- The Olympic ideal is dead. When it was pure sports, it was still fun. The “spectacle” part is more important than the honest athletic competition and it seems suddenly to be more important to participate than to win. Today, it is all about money. No athletic or moral principles. The athletes used to be “amateurs” – today they are mostly professionals, at least in those categories which attract most spectators. For me, an athlete who is barely surviving with very little financial help to compete in a “niche” sport does more to represent the Olympic idea than a Dirk Nowitzki who probably earns $15+ annually with the Dallas Mavericks (and I have nothing against Nowitzki nor professional basketball which I actually barely miss watching a game of “Go Lakers!”, but they should not participate in the Olympics).

- The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is as worthless as the U.N. because it has grown into a hugely corrupt organization which does not care about the athletes but only about money. I thought that that would be changed when Rogge came into power, but it hasn’t. The way they gave into the Chinese was astonishing, as if it’s honest and forthcoming to say the internet will be made available to the journalists “to the extent possible”. That’s not honest, it’s revealing, and they got a free pass!? Also, the games should not have been given to Beijing because it was foreseeable that the Chinese didn’t change their stand on human rights.

- The world witnessed what happened in the latest Tibet incident how China hasn’t changed. Many “world” politicians condemned the actions, most of them said that they would, as a consequence, not participate in the opening ceremony – and you know what happened. Their egos got in the way of keeping that promise, so all these would-be-Napoleons showed up, including Bush, Sarkozy, and Putin (I am actually not surprised about him, since Russia is not much better than China relative to human rights). Germany’s Angela Merkel held her ground and did not go…she deserves respect for that.

- If all of that is not enough – NBC has bought the rights for TV. Now they do what the Left does best, they decide for us what we are supposed to see. Meaning, the choice is very limited, interrupted every 3 minutes by commercials, showing only the major sports, and of those, only the first two or three best in the competition (what happened to Olympic ideals?). To top it off, they have mostly commentators who don’t know what they are talking about. Given the 15 hour time difference to Beijing, I suppose they are mostly not showing the competition live, but canned, which provides an excellent opportunity to make enough time available for the insufferable ads. I can’t watch that, it absolutely drives me nuts!

- And then there is DOPING. Because it is all about money, and despite the Olympic ideal it has become all about winning, almost all athletes in the major sports are doping to reach their goals. Some of the athletes are caught, most are not. That has to do with statistics (how do you control 10,000+ athletes on a constant basis?), but also with improved doping methods which are almost non detectable. The newest hit is stem cell doping, very effective, and the chance of detection is almost zero. Two facts among others stick out…. the track and field team of Russia has already been decimated by the officials having found that eleven athletes were doping, and undercover actions in China have proven how easy it is to get doping in China. There are countries which are relatively more honest, like Germany (controls are far more stringent there than anywhere else, from what I have heard), but other countries are really bad about it – some of them, because they feel it is a “trivial offense” (like Italy or Spain – see the Tour de France), others because they MUST win, such as Russia, China, and, yes, the United States (dare I mention Marion Jones and her ex-husband, Hunter, Floyd Landis, Major League Baseball, etc.?).

I feel for the “true” athletes; they prepare for 4 years to participate, then they have to perform in air which is difficult to breathe and against competitors they are sure are doping. And, in addition, the media doesn’t take note of them since they belong to ‘fringe sports’, and showing those on TV doesn’t provide TV a big audience, creating a loss of ad revenues. This is, I am sorry to say, capitalism at its worse. The Olympics are mostly about money and cheating. I would have liked to have watched true athleticism, but all we (minus me) are going to see are the disciplines in which nobody has a chance to win without doping.

Mr. Z ("up close and personal!")

Z: ADDS: This made me so sick I had to post it. And I believe it ties with Mr. Z's post and some of your comments. So many of us are just plain whores......is $50 million so worth it that you'd not play for your own country, your own city? Kobe's making gazillions as it is........how much richer can you be? Yes, I'm Republican, but........!! And yes, I'd be THIS hurt and angry if it wasn't Kobe Bryant of the Lakers, my home team. And is he over there shmoozing with other countries NOW? Who paid for his ticket room/board over there in China? US? You think he traveled coach? It's not the money, Kobe could afford to pay his own way probably more than America can right now, but it's the principle...and there he is......interviewing?

z