This is what the Olympics should be all about. But now the headlines are being dominated by lurid tales of who paid how much to which members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its inability to come to grips with the longstanding problem of drug use. Fortunately, the IOC’s headaches have very little impact on the preparations of the world’s greatest athletes for Sydney 2000 or Salt Lake City 2002. But they are a threat to the overall integrity of the Olympics, which is, after all, what makes the entire experience so special. We have to clean up the Olympics–everything from administration to competition–and keep them clean so that the Games can retain their mystique and incomparable glory.
Ultimately, the bribery allegations and investigations will be viewed as a temporary distraction. After all, the Olympics are not about the IOC’s so-called ““Lords of the Rings’’ or any other administrators. No, they are first and foremost about the athletes–from Jesse Owens to Muhammad Ali, from Mary Lou Retton to Jackie Joyner-Kersee–and about athletic achievement of the highest order. For me, the Olympics are embodied in one of my favorite passages from the Indian spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy: ““All athletes should bear in mind that they are competing not with other athletes but with their own capacities. Whatever I have already achieved, I have to go beyond.’’ I turned to this notion whenever I needed an injection of competitive fire. Believe me, the joy that comes from ““going beyond’’ is the most incredible feeling in the world. I have felt it many times. And I have enjoyed watching others experience it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not naive enough to think that the Olympics are exclusively defined by that old rah-rah credo of faster, higher, stronger. Throughout my career, there was always at least one major uproar each Olympic year: political boycotts; drug scandals; the end of amateurism; the ever-expanding influence of TV and corporate sponsors, and, in 1996, the flap over Juan Antonio Samaranch’s boast that the Olympic movement is ““more important than the Catholic religion.’’ Still, the controversies come and go. It’s the athletes who form the grand continuum of the Games. Once they take center stage, all seems right again.
With that in mind we need to do several things for the athletes. We need to keep supporting their efforts–both financially and emotionally–despite any blemishes on the Olympic scene. We need to ensure that athletes have much greater input into major Olympic decisions, such as the choice of host cities, that have always been controlled by bureaucrats. We need to put current athletes, the people most affected by all these decisions, on all key committees. What’s good for the athletes is good for competition and ultimately good for the fans.
Reliable drug testing is one of the most urgent issues facing the Olympics, because it only takes one cheating athlete to tarnish an entire competition. It can be an extraordinary distraction to settle into the starting blocks or prepare to launch oneself into the pool wondering if the person in the next lane might beat you because of something he or she ingested or injected.
If athletes had the deciding say in drug testing, we would no longer be debating the merits of an independent drug-testing lab, as the IOC is now doing. We would already have a more open, reliable and accountable system, including an independent lab that eliminates anyone with a vested interest from the process. (The IOC might have an incentive to cover up certain revelations so as not to detract from the Games.)
Another issue is what I call population control. With the IOC constantly adding sports–beach volleyball, mountain biking, ballroom dancing–the Games are feeling the crunch of overcrowding. Athletes are jammed into inadequate housing. Competition venues are forced further outside the host city. Security becomes a nightmare.
The IOC is supposedly considering many different reforms to clean up its traditionally unregulated house of gold. So this is the perfect time to consider a shift in the overall balance of power. If the IOC is indeed serious about turning its ongoing brouhaha into something positive, then let’s make sure that the real stars of the Games–the athletes–emerge with something they can rally around.
