Summer Olympics - the Gift of the Greeks

In May 1997 I embarked on a coach tour of Southern Greece, taking in Athens and the Peloponnese. The Parthenon, Delphi and the ancient Mycenae fortress were all amazing places but possibly the most memorable activity of the whole week was joining a rag-tag bunch of international tourists in an impromptu sprint in the original athletics stadium at Olympia. Why is that? I’m no runner (although I did finish second), nor even a scholar of Ancient Greek social history. No, it’s the aura of the Olympic Games which has seeped into my bones. The very first Games took place on that very spot in 776BC and, although you’ll be relieved to know we weren’t channelling the spirit of those pioneering Spartans, Corinthians and Arcadians by running naked, for just a few seconds we were part of a fantastic tradition.

There is something so fundamental, primitive even, about man (and then it was only men, of course) seeking to run faster, throw further or jump higher than anybody else with no financial inducement. How things have changed. Amateurism did persist until the 1980s, although under-the-table payments were surely paid to the top athletes for many years. The gruesome spectre of performance-enhancing drugs showed its ugly face in Seoul then crass commercialism and vulgar nationalism by NBC spoilt the Atlanta Games of 1996. At least we could rely on the BBC to be an impeccably impartial host broadcaster in 2012. Er, no. That was the one disappointment of that wonderful fortnight, of which more later.

Like their classical Greek counterparts, the modern Olympic Games have rooted themselves deep in my own psyche. It’s one of the few sporting occasions which has sustained my considerable interest over fifty years. It helps having the BBC retain its broadcasting rights free to the masses but there’s something about the world coming together every four years, competing in a mix of sports in a kaleidoscope of flags and costumes in and around one city. I can do without the extravagant opening ceremony but the lighting of the flame would stir my blood in anticipation of a true festival of sport. Similarly I would find the extinguishing of said flame a fortnight or so later as an incredibly moving and emotional image, symbolising far more than the imminent flights home of a few thousand men and women in tracksuits. It represented the fact that I’d have to wait four years before I could next enjoy the Games. Like Misha the Moscow mascot in 1980 I would unashamedly shed a tear.

The first I remember watching on what must have been blurry black-and-white television was the Mexico City event in 1968. There was David Hemery’s 400m hurdles world record, Bob Beamon’s phenomenal long jump, Lilian Board’s 400m battles with Colette Besson and Chris Finnegan winning a boxing gold for Britain, and I lapped it up.

It hasn’t all been centred on the fortunes of what is now branded Team GB. Just as well because, before the modern fetish for lavishly state-funded Olympic glory-hunting, every British medal was savoured like a cup of water in the Sahara. In my lifetime, all the way up to Sydney in 2000, we would reap at best only a handful of golds. While I enjoyed witnessing our star athletes standing proudly on the podium, the Olympic also provided fleeting fame for those whose sports were just as obscure as their names. For every Mary Peters or David Wilkie winning races live on our screens, there would be a clip of an army officer wielding a skinny sword as part of Modern Pentathlon or another posh bloke in a red jacket completing a clee-ah rahnd on a horse or some old boy under a hat firing a rifle, shaking hands with an official and shuffling off into immortality within the Trap shooting fraternity.

For just a few short weeks, we were whisked away into weird and wonderful worlds of judo, fencing and archery. Most of them, if you started devising an Olympic programme from scratch, would never make the cut. Regardless, I would eagerly and dutifully do my utmost to record all the results in my increasingly tatty Radio Times pull-out. No reliance on Google searches or Wikipedia back then! For the 1976 event I even bought a paperback book into which I’d squeeze their names and nationalities in my finest microscopic capital letters. Athletics, swimming and boxing were filled pretty comprehensively while sections for sports such as Wrestling tended to be riddled with holes. They would probably be dominated by the Soviet Union and East Germany anyway. No Brits, so zero coverage.

Some little-known sports suddenly became hugely popular in this country, not necessarily linked to British success. Gymnastics in the early Seventies may have been the fiefdoms of the Eastern Bloc and, in the men’s events, Japan but in ’72 Olga Korbut’s sweet smile and mini-pigtails delighted the nation. In 2016 the sport has been opened up to allow 16 countries a share of the medals on offer, from the USA and Russia down to Spain and Switzerland. Even Britain has grabbed some memorable golds. In those dark days of giant empires and shy impoverished continents, only about 120 countries took part but that tally has almost doubled. The splintering of the Soviet Union, opening up of China and the American universities developing talents from previously little-known African republics and Caribbean islands have all helped make the Olympics truly global in both participation and opportunities for bringing home a medal or two.

Politics began to interfere with sometimes deadly consequences, as in Munich. Grim boycotts cast a dismal shadow over the 1980 and 1984 Games in particular as the Cold War protagonists embarked on last-ditch displays of willy-waving before Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika hastened what I hope will prove the end of crazy nuclear posturing, Trump and Putin notwithstanding.

All the while, the sport continued to delight, even of some of the world’s best were missing from the biggest stage. Professionalism may have heralded lucrative Diamond Leagues and other world championships but an Olympic gold remains the pinnacle of sporting achievement. That’s why, in the past few decades, millionaire golfers and tennis players seem happy to set aside a few weeks in their money-making schedules to helicopter into the Olympic village. Some, like Andy Murray or Justin Rose, might even expend enough energy to actually win. While I welcome the introduction to the Olympic family sports such as triathlon, BMX, Taekwondo and Beach volleyball, I remain a sceptic about the fit of long-standing professional favourites. What I will make of Sport Climbing or Karate at Tokyo next year is anyone’s guess.