LOCKERROOM:The cost of Olympic protests is a bargain compared to the cost of doing nothing, writes Tom Humphries.

I VAGUELY REMEMBER a time when there was a spottier, skinnier incarnation of myself running about the place in desert boots and duffle coat earnestly trying to change the world. I was an irritant then less to dark empires and despots and more to middle-aged men whose little drop of idealism had been wrung out of them by life and mortgages and disappointment.

"Get back to me in 10 years," they'd say, with a theatrical yawn on hearing my ardent pleas on behalf of the cause du jour. "In 10 years the tides of the real world will have smoothed your jaggedness, sonny. Believe me, you'll end up just like me."

Probably the b******s were right. On life's exhausting mid-slopes it is easy to feel a little curmudgeonly ire when looking down at the earnest imprecations of the young, often caricature-like protesters who have been dogging the progress of the Olympic torch as it makes its may around the blighted globe.

On noting the zest with which the young and the dissident have embraced Tibet, the cuddly bear of human rights causes in many ways, and having heard little or nothing about the mysterious complexities of Darfur or any lucid reference to the human rights situation in China (what with all those confusing names and absence of celebrity endorsements) it is easy to give the remote a squeeze and say "yeah, yeah, yeah get back to me in 10 years, kids. By then you'll know what a tracker mortgage is."

Often I am reminded of a couple of cringingly amusing instances when myself and other newly-emigrated comrades were to be found bolstering the non-stop picket of the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square in London in the mid-80s. On being quizzed about our accents and being assured by our fellow picketers they were more republican than the greenest Falls Road republicans themselves, a fraternal chant of welcome was devised. And so we stood red-faced as the south London accents stood each with a fist in the air earnestly chanting "Belfast! Soweto! Londonderry! One Struggle! One Fight!" So they didn't know their Derry from their Londonderry and probably didn't know their Gerry Adams from their Sam Adams or Grizzly Adams and today, no doubt, they are bank managers and accountants and Tories living in the shires but back then they were on the pavement outside South Africa House every day reminding all who went in their to work that they were working for a regime that was fundamentally morally wrong.

That was a small good thing and I hope even if now they have grown into people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing they are happy with the value of their little contribution. That little torch of idealism that gets passed in relay form from generation to generation is far more important than the Olympic torch.

The Olympic torch has never, in fact, served a more useful purpose than is has in the past couple of weeks when it has provided a magnet and a focal point for disquiet about China's philosophies as that nation stands on the cusp of being the world's newest and greatest superpower.

The Olympics will be a tipping point in global history. At this moment to query the moral integrity of China's stance on Darfur, Tibet and umpteen domestic issues is not to betray the 1.3 billion of that nation's citizens who no doubt hope that the Olympics will be a gateway to a better future, it is just to say in Olympic year that despite the drug cheats and the tawdry commercialisation that we still hope sport represents the best of us.

Surely, still, there is still a small sliver of idealism coursing through the bloodstream of big-time sport and surely there are different expectations of you when you host a global celebration of sport than when you bring your T-shirts and widgets to the market stall.

Yes, we trade with you, because business speaks the lingua franca of cynicism; business has no friends or principles, just interests and bottom lines; yes, we talk with you because soon you will be our economic ruler but when it comes to sport we hope for more.

When it comes to sport we have to recognise the persistence of youthful optimism just as we did on the pavement outside South Africa house. We can wearily list off all the times when sport has been debauched by commerce and politics and propaganda, starting with the invention, say, of the Olympic torch for the Hitler Games in 1936 and fast forwarding, perhaps, to its revival in LA in 1984 when the "sacred" torch had the name of a commercial sponsor (Mizuno) engraved on it for the duration.

We can point to the wild inconsistencies that punctuate the marriage of sport and politics and we can mock. We can say, "see your predecessors in duffle coats and desert boots did nothing about that, they didn't know their Derry from their Londonderry, don't talk to me unless you would go and die for the Dalai Lama".

We can take every gesture of dissent and place it on the weighing scales of our own cynicism and pronounce it too light or too easy or too inexpensive.

Bah! We are better than that. And so is sport. Whatever the black power salute cost Carlos and Smith in 1968 it was a bargain compared to the cost of doing nothing. Whatever the price of sports' refusal to play with South Africa during the apartheid era it was more valuable than doing nothing. Whatever it cost Dr David Hickey to display a Cuba Libre T-shirt in Croke Park some years ago on the occasion of another step forward and wave affair,it was something, a small good thing.

It is true that it is not a very expensive gesture to boycott the Olympic opening ceremony. In reality, that is why that gesture is asked for. It might be a small good thing which would embarrass hosts who bought into the Games with a series of promises about cleaning up their act and who now propose to play the Games against a politically repugnant backdrop. It is better than being an obediently compliant digit in the bottom line calculations when the Chinese regime tots things up at end of year and decides that the world will accept China just as it is.

In May 1974 we sent our soccer team to play in the National Stadium in Chile, the vaults of which were still echoing with the cries of tortured political enemies of the Pinochet regime, the floors of which were still wet with their blood. The USSR had just given away two World Cup qualifying points rather than play there. We can shake our weary heads now and say USSR! Phooey! Who were they to talk about human rights?!!! But playing there in apparent friendship was an abandonment of already half-forgotten victims. Just as standing beaming in the Tribune in Beijing will be an abandonment.

We don't abandon honest competitors by cynically announcing that because drug testing misses more cheats than it catches we should leave the field open for every athlete to become a walking pharmacy. Why abandon entire races and ethnic tribes because previous Olympic boycotts have been expediency-driven by superpowers or because the Games have long since been corrupted by depressing real politik?

The corrosion of idealism subdues and diminishes all hope. Imagine the pain of watching the world blithely partying with your oppressor, your torturer? Acquiescence with China's opening hour(s) of propaganda is a very jaded and cynical exercise in doing nothing because the history of the world isn't perfectly consistent with the principle at hand. It is the cheapest compliance with this most expensively staged cabaret of the macabre.

It is an abandonment of the youthful ideal that informs sport and underpins a lot of dissent. It is a rejection of an opportunity to provoke discussion and reflection. It is a farewell to the spirit of optimism that sustains the gutsiest last-place marathon finisher or the men of the losingest GAA county in the country. It is a throwing in of the towel.

You can reach into the melee and take by the ear any one of the young protesters who disrupted the PR panto that is the Olympic torch relay and you can say "sunshine, get back to me in 10 years". You can sneer and ask the kid if in the meantime he could name a few provinces in the trendy bloody cause célèbre of a nation that is Tibet and then explain Darfur and finally distinguish the details and personalities between any three or four human rights cases in China which he feels so anguished about.

And no doubt the callow imperfection of the answers would bring a smile to your lips but, hey, if the last two weeks have switched the proganda dividend from the Chinese regime to the hippy-dippy victim that is Tibet and if the discussion now moves on to asking questions like "'what about Darfur?" and "what about employment rights in China?" and "what about mere honest to goodness morality underpinning sport?" - well that's a small good thing.

We all make our way across the sea of life in our little kayaks and most of us spend more time being wet than being dry. All each of us can hope for is to make it as far as we can with as much dignity as we can before the undertow of do nothing cynicism takes us under.

In a choppy sea, on a surface that will never be morally perfect, the dignity of hope and aspiration is all that distinguishes those who are waving from those who are drowning.