Hop, skip and hang on a second

Kent Valentine tries to put a damp towel on our forehead before we get Olympic fever.

I think the Olympics are great for a number of reasons: they're a wonderful celebration of humanity’s potential for harmony, they promote interest in physical activity to a world getting increasingly fat, and it’s the only time that a hammer throw won’t get you tossed out of a hardware shop.

Having said that, I think there are a number of things we should consider before we spend 16 days worshiping at the altar of medal tallies and poolside domination:

1) Medal tallies
Surely there are enough ways for us to quantify our superiority over other nations without a freaking medal tally. The Olympic motto is “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, not “How many did you win Angola? One bronze? Hahahaha, sucks to be you!” If you’re the kind of person that gets excited by the medal tally, then it’s time for you to pull your fat arse away from the TV and go and contribute something to society that can be quantified by metallic colours and single-digit numbers.

3) Drugs
Yes, we know that drugs make you run faster, but so do robot legs, and you may have noticed that we’re not letting the 6 Million Dollar Man in the race. If you want to take drugs and run, then why don’t you do it the old fashioned way with heroin and a stolen DVD player?

3) China still likes to torture people
I know that this is an unpopular topic of conversation at the moment, but I think that it’s a legitimate point of concern. There are a number of reasons why China is a morally questionable choice for the Olympic Games (pollution, Tibet, censorship), but surely the fact that their human rights record is worse than Lindsay Lohan’s driving record is a start. Giving China the Olympics while it’s still engaging in morally reprehensible activities on a daily basis only legitimises their actions and makes it harder to get them to stop. Thinking that giving China the Olympics will improve their human rights recording is like trying to encourage a young boy to stop setting fire to kittens by buying him an Xbox.

4) Puns
Every four years, newspaper sub-editors the world over seem to have a sixteen-day wet dream where every pun they’ve ever imagined gets blown all over the front page. We’re all aware that Rice is both a staple of the Chinese diet and an Australian swimmer: well done.

5) Clapping the guy that comes last in the swimming
I don’t know how it happens, but for some reason, there is always one guy in a long distance swimming event that comes in about half an hour after everyone else. When he finally finishes the event (to a standing ovation from both the live and television audience) he reveals to the world press that a) that was first time he has ever been in a swimming pool, b) he trained for the event in a box full of sand, and c) he now risks being killed by the despotic dictator of his war-torn, sub-Saharan nation for intentionally embarrassing his country on the international stage.

My only question is how did this man qualify for the event? He’s now going to be murdered by his government (which probably receives some kind of US government funding) because no one at the Olympics trials had the heart to tell him that he wasn’t quite fast enough.

By all means, enjoy the next few weeks of Bruce McAvaney over-using the words ‘champion’ and ‘hero’, just remember: all things in moderation, including international sports carnivals.

- Kent Valentine