To be sure, there are a couple of Olympic events which everyone knows about - the 100-metre anabolic sprint, the steroid triple jump, the nandrolone high jump, the welterweight epitestrone clean and jerk, and of course, the women's Windolene pole vault. All captivating stuff, but it doesn't abolish the question: Why?
We know that in many of the events, participation is possible only with the assistance of the pharmaceutical industry. Anything which requires musculature - all the sprints, the vaults and jumps, the weightlifting, the swimming, the male gymnastics, the decathlon: at best, all are suspect. These were the traditional sports of the Olympics, before the IOC grew depraved and tried to lasso every other sport in the world into their Games - equestrianism, soccer, hockey, baseball, the three-legged dash, the ladies' excuse-me and gardening.
Funny hats
You didn't know that gardening, or oven-cleaning or tidying up the garage for the first time in five years is an Olympic sport? Well, until Jason Queally won a gold medal in the one kilometre bike race for chaps with big bums and funny hats, I didn't know of that category either; and the only reason I know of it now is that we live in anglo-medialand, and the British newspapers, radio and television have been treating his victory as the most momentous event since VE-Day. Now there's nobody else in the world who is aware of the existence of either the race, the gold medal or the name Jason Queally; but of course the British obsession with one cyclist with a couple of water-melons where his buttocks should be and a penchant for silly helmets is no doubt mirrored locally all over the planet. At the moment of writing, Mexico has a gold; and no doubt Tijuana is in a fair old tizz about it, and every Mexican's heart beats louder at the mention of the winner's name, convinced that in every country on earth, others are admiringly echoing that selfsame name as proof of the excellence of Mexico.
But of course they're not. Japan is doing much better than Britain, with two golds and three silvers; but for what, I cannot say. For sushi? For crashing planes onto American aircraft carriers? For karaoke? For sumo? Probably sumo. Though I don't actually know what Japan did to win two gold medals and three silver, you can bet your bottom yen that virtually everyone in Japan does, and moreover, is convinced that people everywhere are intoning the name of their gold winners as exemplifying the finest qualities of the Japanese people and of sportsmanship. (How long, by the way, before we are compelled by the Equality Committee to call its sportspersonship?)
Provincial and jingoistic
For more than anything else, the Olympics provide an occasion for people everywhere to delude themselves into believing that the eyes of the world are on their country, their athletes, their gold medals. Kyrgystan is probably convinced that its bronze medallist is now a household name in Peru and Samoa, and in North Korea, children are being urged to emulate that country's two medallists, who are honoured, they are assured, throughout the world. But it is all rubbish. Far from the Olympics proving an occasion of international friendship and honest competition, it merely provides an opportunity for people to show how deeply provincial, parochial and jingoistic they really are.
That's why it's nice to live in a country which in living memory has produced just a brace of fine athletes - R.J. Delaney and F.A. Else. So we have about as much chance of getting gold medals as the Saudi Women's Nude Mud-Wrestling Team. Our coverage and our perception of the Games should not thus be obscured by clouds of chauvinism - unless, of course, our competitors take a leaf out of the Michelle Smith pharmacopoeia, and some tiny firbolg from the Connor Pass wins the heavyweight boxing, Sile de Valera wins the pole vault, and Navan man takes the gold in the men's epee, which until he went to Sydney, he thought was what you did in your trousers when you got elegless.
Otherwise, we can observe the games with the neutrality of Martians, and so ask, puzzled: Who is genuinely convinced by these games? Who really believes that they are genuinely seeing the fastest, highest, strongest, when they watch the athletics? To be sure, there are some athletes who are honest, but how can we tell them from the crooked ones? After all, the IOC has deliberately avoided rigorous drug-testing because they will show the meaninglessness of nearly every record set for at least two decades.
Why the non-sports?
And even aside from the drugs, we know sprints up to 400 metres will always be won by athletes of West African ancestry - all 200 of the sub-ten seconds one hundred metre sprints have been run by men with those origins, which they share with all champion boxers over middleweight, Equally, virtually all races of 1500 metres and upwards are won by athletes of North or East African origin.
And what about the other events, less dominated by devious drugs and honest genes? What purpose is there in Olympic soccer, when we have the altogether more authentic World Cup? What reason for Olympic tennis when we have the annual Open circuit? And why are there non-sports there - mere recreation or self-expression such as softball, beach volleyball, and even artistic gymnastics, gadzooks? Yet, curiously, no golf.
Ah, So there is something to be said for the Olympics after all.