Friday, March 7, 2014

Winter Paralympic Games Start Today



Earlier this year I posted a number of stories on the Winter Olympics.
Now the Winter Paralympic Games are about to begin in Sochi.  Opening ceremonies are today (Friday) with competitions starting Saturday.


These Paralympic Games are held every 4 years following the Winter Olympics.  They will last ten days with athletes from more than 40 countries participating in five categories of sporting events.


Winter Paralympic sporting events include:
Alpine skiing.
Biathlon (combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting).
Cross-country skiing.
Ice sledge hockey.
Wheelchair curling.


In 2014, two medal events in para-snowboarding have been added to the schedule.  You’ll find lots more details at http://www.sochi2014.com/en


Politics and Sports


Last Saturday Toronto Star Sports columnist Cathal Kelly called for an athlete’s boycott of the Winter Paralympic Games in Sochi. http://www.thestar.com/sports/sochi2014/2014/03/01/canada_needs_to_step_up_and_boycott_paralympic_games_in_sochi_kelly.html


There have been boycotts before.  Did they do any good?  Did anything in the world of politics change as a result of these boycotts?  Probably not. 


Here is a story from the Star from last summer when there was speculation that the Sochi Olympic Games that just finished in February would be boycotted. The story does a good job of conveying the perspective of athletes who were burned in 1980 when the Moscow Games were boycotted because of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.


In advance of a possible boycott of Beijing 2008, I wrote a little piece on the recent history of such actions.  http://foreveryoungnews.com/posts/1231-the-spirit-lives-on


Re-reading that piece now, it seems I was a bit of a poseur for the Olympic movement.  “Faster Higher Stronger;” maybe I drank the Kool Aid.  There is more to consider.


Today’s situation, for example.  Right now, the host of the Para Olympics has invaded a sovereign nation.  A mere three hundred miles from Sochi, sixteen thousand Russian troops are in control of Crimea.
I’m thinking back to last summer when I read Laura Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken.  It is a World War II story of “survival, resilience and redemption.”  Olympian Louis Zamperini, the subject of the book, was an American Airman who crashed in the Pacific in WWII. He then spent 2 1/2 years in a Japanese POW camp.  Conditions were brutal.  


If not for the war, Zamperini might have been the first runner to crack the four-minute barrier for the mile.  (As you know, Brit Roger Banister achieved that milestone in 1954.)


Hillenbrand’s book is a great read.  Her observations on the 1936 Games where 19 year-old Zamperini finished eighth in the 5,000 metres are relevant to today’s situation, I think.


At Hitler’s Berlin Olympics, the Germans took these Olympics to a completely different level compared to previous games.  Did their games legitimize, to some extent, the Third Reich?  Yes, they did.


But after the Games were over things were different.  Hillenbrand recounts how American basketball player Frank Lubin stayed behind for a few days after the official closing of the Olympics.


“His German hosts had invited him out for dinner, so they cruised the streets in search of a restaurant.  A pretty place caught Lubin’s eye, but when he suggested it, his hosts balked: a Star of David hung in the window.  To be seen there, they said 'might prove harmful to us.’  The group found a gentile restaurant, then visited a public swimming pool.  As they walked in, Lubin saw a sign reading JUDEN VERBOTEN.  The sign hadn’t been there during the Games.”  


Lubin knew that “(s)omething terrible was coming.”


Can we compare Hitler’s Germany to Putin’s Russia? Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird did just earlier this week.


The athletes who are currently in Sochi have worked for four years and more to get to this competition. These athletes are probably the closest we get to real amateur athletes these days. Punishing them by imposing a boycott won’t correct injustices in Russia politics or change things on the international scene. Nevertheless,  participation in these two international events would seem   to endorse Putin’s repressive regime and the validate the obscene spending on facilities that has become the modern Olympics.
 
For this and other reasons, it has come time to rethink the Olympics.


I’ll come back to this in my next post.