The Olympics Sold Out

2/13/2013

The International Olympic Committee has turned itself into a reality show. For money and approval from the networks, it has pushed one of its oldest partners off the island.

The shameful ban of wrestling after the 2016 Summer Games is the next logical step since admitting professionals in the 1990’s. Once the Games opened the door for Dream Team basketball types and Grand Slam tennis stars, there was not enough room in the village for old friends like wrestling, which has merely been around for over 2700 years.

Wrestling is a great sport. I covered it for years early in my career, had great respect for the training and intelligence of the athletes. It is also a sport for various body types. The I.O.C. dumped it over the side.

In all its sanctimonious self-promotion, the I.O.C. cites history. But now it is clear. Under Jacques Rogge and his masters from the networks, nothing is sacred. They are not caretakers for so-called Olympic sports. They are hucksters on the corner saying “check it out, check it out.”

I realized that in 2012, the first time I ever watched the Olympics on television after a childhood of following baseball and a working career of being at the Olympics.

When you cover the Games, you don’t watch canned network television. Instead, you eagerly choose to spend a day in the blessed company of weight-lifters and fencers and wrestlers, the odd sports you never see from year to year, but love when you get around the true believers. The I.O.C. was always prattling about being caretakers of these sports, but they were lying to us.

I also noticed in 2012 that the television production involved an endless loop of women’s beach volleyball, the same shot, from a camera held close to the sand -- legs and butts and swinging ponytails. Sure, beach volleyball is great competition among real and deserving athletes, but the I.O.C. was telling us something: it will scuttle old friends, with no conscience. Think of that when they come around again.

I didn’t mean to write this long, but I got carried away. For the real inside look at wrestling and the Olympic movement, please read the column by Mike Moran, the long-time spokesperson for the United States Olympic Committee, still the repository of conscience and tradition. Over to Mike:

http://www.coloradospringssports.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=612:68-mike-morans-commentary&catid=46:blog&Itemid=97

Brian Savin

2/14/2013 02:11:06 am

Spirit of athletic competition? Purity of sport?

Citius, Altius, Fortius, Pecunious

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4/29/2013 05:49:32 am

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Alan Rubin link

2/15/2013 07:00:08 am

George,

Nothing that the rich and powerful have done, whether it be in sports, politics, business, finance, etc. has ever surprised me until now. However, the IOC has achieved a new high in arrogance, indifference, hypocrisy and sheer chutzpah in the pending decision to drop wrestling after the 2016 Summer Olympics.

The Atlanta Summer Games were held during the “Year of the Woman”, yet woman’s soccer and softball were never shown. Maybe both sports should have been played on sand.

I learned wrestling during gym in junior and senior high school and fell in love with it. I was never particularly good at it, but usually advanced a few rounds in intramural compatition before getting my ears pinned back. It is amazing how long a three minute period can take.

Lehigh University had a major wrestling program. You had to get to the gym an hour before the freshman meet in order to get a seat. I was there between 1953 and 1958 and Lehigh was very competitive in the east and nationally. The link for Ed Eichelberger is an excellent example of the hard work and dedication of amateur wrestlers, both in high school and college.

I got to know Ed in the steam room of the school gym. I was there to relax, but the wrestlers were always trying to make weight. I got to appreciate how hard he worked, but also his passion for the sport. He was very modest about his success.

In the three years that he won his weight in the Easterns, Ed had defeated the winner of the weight classes above and below him during dual meets. The article said that he graduated with a 4.0 average in a tough curriculum. The electrical engineering program was considered the toughest of all the curriculum's by a very wide margin. I could not have gotten a 4.0 in my major, metallurgical engineering, if I had studied 40 hours a day.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/schl0490/collegewrestlingnews/2008/12/hall_of_fame_inductee_ed_eiche.html (Weebly said that posted links should work, but they do not)

Wrestling is usually ranked in the top five of participatory scholastic sports in the US. Mike Moran has asked for people to post a “like” on the “Keep Wrestling in the Olympics” Facebook page. I added a note that we should boycott the Olympic sponsors as money seems to be the only language that the IOC seems to understand.

George Vecsey

2/15/2013 10:36:26 am

Brian, Alan, thanks for your comments. It is a disgrace. Wrestling is such a hallowed part of the Olympics. I saw a lot of it at Hofstra when I worked as a student aide to the SID -- saw great matches with Lehigh, Springfield, etc, in the ECACs.Our grandson wrestles in PA and has taken to it. You don't have to be tall or run fast -- just a little strong and a little smart. The IOC is exposed as craven. Thanks for caring. GV

Ed Martin

2/15/2013 12:10:25 pm

Alans comments about wrestling at Lehigh rang a bell with me, I was neaby at Muhlenberg from 49-53. Lehigh, Penn State, and Iowa were top teams as I recall. On Long Island, Mempham HS was the tops year after year. Baldwin, when I spent a year there was very good.
And apropos of nothing, Jim Brown was a star Lacrosse player.

George Vecsey

2/16/2013 12:37:38 am

Ed, absolutely right. Mepham was the perennial champion under Sprig Gardner, who was still around when I started at Newsday in the late '50's. Their matches with Calhoun, Valley Stream Central and Baldwin were epic.
I think wrestling was the only sport Jim Brown did not play at Manhasset.
But the good thing about wrestling is not its American roots but rather its international roots going back over 2000 years. And the IOC scuttles it for ratings. What a fraud.
GV

Alan Rubin link

2/16/2013 03:34:46 am

Ed

Syracuse, Pitt, Cornell and Navy were some of the other wrestling powers in the east at the time. Lehigh would score decently in the nationals,but Iowa State, Iowa, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State dominated in the 50's.

Wrestling was also exciting listening on the radio. One year Lehigh needed to win the heavyweight match to clinch the Eastern's. Navy had a big super-great wrestler that was unbeaten. Lehigh's wrestler was small for a heavyweight, but very quick. He stayed away the whole match and went for broke in the last seconds with a take-down to win 2-1. Very exciting to listen to.

I mentioned these Jim Brown stories to George a few years ago.

My high school buddy played lacrosse for Tufts. Jim Brown played attack for Syracuse. Brown used a shortened attack stick and was impossible to defend as he would shoot from any angle with a quick wrist flick, even while being poke-checked. One shot was so powerful that the Tufts' goalie had a large welt on his chest after the game. Harry, a high school football player, said that Jim Brown would have been a bigger star in a professional lacrosse league than he was in football.

My college friend played high school football against Jim Brown. His job as a tackle, as well as the other inner linemen, was to trip Brown up for the backfield to stop him. All Joe got for his efforts was a face full of knees. Joe was a big, strong guy, but he said that Brown was too fast and powerful to even slow down.

George Vecsey

2/16/2013 04:01:32 am

My friend Paul (who said he struck out Brown in high school; that was the least of Brown's sports) said there was a guy in our town who was "never the same" after tackiling Brown.
Can you imagine Brown wrestling? GV

John McDermott

2/16/2013 09:00:16 am

With their vote to drop wrestling from the Olympics the privileged men and women in blazers and limousines have demonstrated their own unfitness to carry out their responsibilities as members of the IOC. I'm not sure which is worse, the IOC or FIFA. It's a close call..

bruce picken

2/17/2013 02:08:34 pm

george,

greetings from nara, japan.

no disagreement about this column, but perhaps you should've noted the AMERICAN tv coverage is canned. it isn't in canada. was in upstate new york a few weeks ago and some of the locals told me they could get canadian tv on cable and that's where they preferred to watch the olympics.

George Vecsey

2/18/2013 11:20:16 am

Bruce, you are absolutely right. My wife saw part of a winter Olympics in Seattle and she said the Vancouver station was much better than the Seattle station. (Although, I've had Canadian journos tell me the CBC can be pretty provincial, too.) But those canned features on US TV -- and the endless T&A shots of beach volleyball! GV

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10/17/2013 08:28:43 pm

In total its sanctimonious identical-advertising, the I.O.C. mentions chronicle. Still directly it is unobstructed. Sub Jacques Rogge besides hellos subdues from the systems, trifle is hallowed. They are negative custodians for so-called Olympic pastimes. They are vendors on the nook adage “hinder it absent, check it away.”

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QUOTES
“I don’t think people understand how Covid affects older Americans,” Mr. Caretti said with frustration. “In 2020, there was this all-in-this-together vibe, and it’s been annihilated. People just need to care about other people, man. That’s my soapbox.”
---Vic Caretti, 47, whose father recently died of Covid at 85.
---From an article by Paula Span, who covers old age for the NYT, which currently has 2646 comments, the majority criticizing the American public – and public officials – for acting as if the pandemic is “over.”
Classic wishful thinking, at a lethal level.
Please see:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/health/covid-pandemic-seniors.html

The Olympics Sold Out

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