LOCKER ROOM:Despite the combined forces of the Obamas and Oprah Winfrey, America's bid to host the Olympics still came up short again
FUN IT was to be in Copenhagen last Friday evening. Fun, even for those of us who had been rooting for the great and fair city of Chicago to be awarded the Olympic Games of 2016. I’ve never met anybody who has spent anytime in Chicago who didn’t love the place. The possibility of an Olympic Games being held there, knowing how brilliantly and with what pride the city can run big events, was mouthwatering.
And yet, when it was announced to huge gasps in the massive press centre that Chicago had been bumped out in the first round of voting, the entertainment was so good it made Brazilians of us all. People from Rio and Madrid high-fived. The Japanese looked at each other earnestly. But every American in the place jumped to their feet and formed a righteous posse charged with finding out who was to blame and hanging them from a rafter.
Now I love and slavishly imitate the writing style of American sports hacks and I envy them their admiring sense of their own worth, this picture they have of themselves of being important players in the scheme of things.
We Irish hacks know by contrast that if the plane carrying ourselves and the Irish soccer team ever went down on the way to a game we’d reach under our seats and there would be flotation devices for our laptops but not for us.
The recovery of our moderately expensive machines would be presented as one of those inspiring good news stories like “dog found alive after earthquake” or “O’Donoghue Stays in Four Star Hotel”. Anyway, I digress.
American hacks are fine but as a herd they are a pain in the ass. The males of the species are all neat and dapper like the Mormon missionaries you have to shoo away from your door occasionally. The females are very intimidating and speak very loudly even by American standards. You may as well have a tour bus full of plaid-slacked, early bird-eating, Bob and Wilma-type American tourists disgorged into a press centre as let three American sports hacks in. The volume is the same and the depressing effect on the rest of the room is the same.
Usually they come in to a large press hall and spread out strategically. They are adept at separating themselves with precisely the amount of distance at which they can still hear each other when shouting at the top of their voices.
“BOB, ANY THOUGHTS ON DINNER TONIGHT?” “I’LL SPEAK TO STACEY ABOUT IT. SHE’S BEEN TO YURP BEFORE. STACE?” “NEAT. THANKS BOB.” “STACE??? STACE???”! “STACEY’S GONE TO THE BATHROOM, BOB. LOCAL FOOD ISSUE.” “YEAH, BOB IT’S STACEY. I’M IN THE BATHROOM BUT I CAN HEAR YOU. WHAT IS IT? YOU GUYS NEED DIRECTIONS TO MICKEY D’S?”
Anyway on Friday afternoon Chicago was eliminated straight off and suddenly it was Pearl Harbour. The shouting reached the sort of levels prone to cause tinnitus in the rest of us and there was a stampede of loud self- righteousness straight out the door and towards the hall in which the IOC were in session. Thinking the Americans were definitely going to invade the place and napalm the poor old dudes, a large number of us who had better things to be doing followed along for the entertainment.
The Danes still eat their fish raw and don’t know how to put a top slice of bread on to a sandwich, but they are smart and resolute. They created a narrow pass through which the the forces of the American Fourth Estate could not pass. This created wonderful chaos.
The guys charged with keeping the diarrhoea of breaking news flowing back to American TV stations kept turning their backs to the fighting and announcing, again and again, Chicago were out and there were “no availabilities for now from the Chicago bid team.”
Behind them the storm-troopers of the written press, for whom the term “no availabilities” is insufficient in terms of written copy, were roaring at the implacable Danes and roaring at dazed members of the Chicago bid team whom they could glimpse in the distance. “Bob. Bob. Over here Bob. Over here.”
Finally and deliciously, just as the Danes were making a push forward to clear the area, a foolhardy member of the Chicago bid team, whose name was actually Bob, made a run for it. He got as far as the door beside the Gourmet Cafe (which retails topless sandwiches at exorbitant prices) and he got brought down. Penned in aft and rear, he chose to give his interview while standing in the door frame, which meant in scientific terms he was receiving the same amount of physical pressure from the massive scrum behind him as he was from the great heave of hacks in front of him. We pushed him hither and thither like it was some mad party game while he tried to answer questions about why the IOC had just bitch-slapped president Obama and the entire American nation.
It was all frightening and very amusing in equal measure. Then some of the hacks at the back of the scrum had a brilliant idea. Unable to hear a word Bob was saying, they proposed repeating the exercise but with the “guys at the back rotating to the front”. The guys at the front who were pressed groin to groin with poor Bob didn’t think this was such a swell idea so with Bob trapped helplessly in the middle, media men and women tried uselessly to slide past each other, inadvertently performing acts of lewdness on each other which are still illegal in many southern states.
The whole rotation exercise broke down briefly and, spotting a gap, Bob made a run for it, his egress helped by the diversionary sighting of two United States Olympic Committee members standing on the far side of the entrance lobby talking to each other. Chaaaaaaaaaarge! By the time the guys and gals reached the railing separating them from the two USOC members they were in disarray.
Reporters were separated from their camera operators and instructions had to be given to Steffi and (I think, another) Bob that when this reporter was asking a question Steffi or Bob had to look at that camera over there.
So it proceeded. How could the most American of American cities which had presented the IOC with not just President Obama, but Oprah too, have been snubbed this way?
And in the answers that followed and the reports they generated you could find the answer without even trying. Many American reports felt Chicago had lost because America lacks clout at IOC politics level. In fact, Anita de Franz is one of the most respected IOC members. The IOC owns the Games, however. It does what it likes with them. It’s not about clout. America, whose companies cough up most of the finance for the Games and America, which takes back the same-sized slice as all the other 205 nations divide up between themselves, will never accept this or even fully understand it. Not just won’t accept it but can’t see it, cannot get a grasp on the whole phoney baloney spirit of Olympism for long enough to see the other 205 nations aren’t just the supporting cast in an everlasting narrative about American sporting glory but have their own hopes and aspirations, their own narratives to write.
Americans can’t come to grips with the fact that if their TV companies pay more for the Games than anybody else does, and their corporations chip in more sponsorship, it is for no other reason than that the market will sustain that. Nobody except its own competitive market forces NBC to pay so much to be the Olympic channel. NBC’s money buys it lots of privileges and gives the Games saturation coverage on US televisions which means it makes sense for American corporations to weigh in as sponsors.
The IOC owns the Games though! In two successive campaigns the IOC has emphatically rejected the claims of great American cities to host the Games. There was no post 9/11 sympathy vote for New York four years ago. President Obama’s brief visit to Copenhagen was described by one former IOC member, Kai Holm, as being “too businesslike. It can be that some IOC members see it as a lack of respect.” He hit the nail on the head.
The IOC may be an absurd collection of the grand poobahs of sport but they own the Games and they run the Games. On Friday the IOC smiled at the Obamas and then settled its own score with the USOC.
It will be a long time before another leading American politician will take the risk which Barack Obama took last Friday. Probably even longer before we see a summer games going to the USA. Having opened up South America to the Games the IOC will be sweet on the idea of doing the same with Africa and Cape Town is the early favourite for 2020.
Our American friends? They won’t get the Games again till they get the politics of the Games.
