Dani Garavelli: Olympic spirit? Let the Games begone

IF THEY handed out gold medals for Olympic apathy, I’d be right up there on the winners’ podium. I don’t think I could be more apathetic if I’d spent the last 20 years doing rigorous I-don’t give-a-monkey’s workouts or competing in I’d-rather-watch-paint-dry pentathalons.

All around me people seem to be whipping themselves into a frenzy of excitement. The torch is due to wend its way along the bottom of my road in the south side of Glasgow next week, and plans are already being hatched for the big day.

Although there are parts of the city in which seeing a flame being brandished in the streets is far from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I’m sure crowds will gather to tuck into burgers and cheer it on.

Since the last time I felt a flicker of Olympic fervour I was recording Nadia Comaneci’s perfect ten on my free-with-the-Daily-Express wall chart, I, however, will be found locked in my bedroom, singing Peter Gabriel’s Games Without Frontiers under my breath.

It isn’t the fact the torch relay was thought up by Goebbels in an attempt to whip up nationalism that bothers me (after all, Henry Ford was an anti-semite and I still drive cars), it’s the way it’s being used to imply we’re all in this great jamboree together when, in fact, for anyone outside the M25, the Games might as well be back in Beijing. That and the way its journey is being charted as if it were the Pope or Nelson Mandela as opposed to a natural phenomenon achieved by striking a match. The BBC’s surreal anthropomorphic coverage, delivered in a deadpan tone more commonly associated with royal weddings, reached its nadir when it described the flame as having “spent the night in the British Embassy”, as if it had been granted diplomatic immunity and offered a plate of Ferrero Rocher.

Sadly, if the torch symbolises anything, it’s the organisers’ almighty cynicism and our schmuck-like willingness to buy into an event which sets itself up as a showcase of friendly international rivalry at a time when the very structures set up to foster co-operation and peace amongst once warring countries are crumbling.

Even as the cameras lingered on the rain-sodden plane waiting to take off from Athens runway with the flame on board, the Eurozone was being told to brace itself for stricken Greece crashing out of it. No wonder it’s difficult to work up any enthusiasm.

Even at the best of times, I’m not much inspired by sporting events. Maybe in the days when Roger Bannister was running the four-minute mile or Joe DiMaggio was achieving his 56-game streak, they were potent reminders of what the human race was capable of. But nowadays, when athletes are shaving 0.01 seconds off previous world records and so much of their success depends on their aerodynamic sportswear and the “supplements” they may or may not be taking, there’s an element of “so what?” about it all.

I could probably overcome that, though – and try to engage with Tom Daley, Jessica Ennis et al – if the whole thing hadn’t been turned into such a commercial junket. There’s nothing wrong with sponsorship, per se, but when the need to protect financial backers becomes so all-consuming that a baker is prevented from icing his cakes with the words Olympics 2012, heavies are on hand during the torch relays to ensure nearby cafes don’t sell “Olympic” breakfasts and landmarks such as the Brains Beer Bridge, have to be covered up to prevent companies which are not official sponsors “advertising”, the idea that the Games are meant to promote a sense of community is difficult to sustain.

Ditto the unseemly rush to sell torches on eBay. Many of those who have been chosen to run deserve their time in the limelight, though why Will.i.am should have joined their ranks is anyone’s guess. Either way, if taking part is such a “privilege” why aren’t participants holding on to torches as a souvenir to show their children instead of selling them off to the highest bidder?

From the moment the event put its foot on the starting block, the omens weren’t good. First there was the God-awful logo, then the ticketing debacle, then the Heathrow Airport borders control panic. Even as Seb Coe and Boris Johnson unveiled the first giant Olympic rings, landlords were beginning to decant poor people out of Newham (in much the same way as slum dwellers were decanted out of the favelas of Brazil) to make way for wealthy city types. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, the MoD has set about transforming the capital into a military zone, with the roofs of flats in east London being used to site surface-to-air missiles in case of a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile – though the UK government has vowed to show Syrian sports officials the door – the International Olympic Committee is refusing either to take sanctions against Saudi Arabia for refusing to send any women athletes to the Games or to allow the country’s female athletes to compete under its flag of the five rings (though Afghanistan was barred from the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney for the same offence).

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe as Danny Boyle’s The Isles of Wonder opening ceremony begins I will suddenly be imbued with Olympic spirit and a pride in being (sort of) British. I doubt it, though. More likely all that razzmatazz will just remind me how the country’s going down the pan. That’s the glass half-empty kind of woman I am, I guess. Although I’ll say one thing in favour of the Olympics – they’re a marginally less mind-numbing prospect than the European Championships.