'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

A Sporting Chance

In the field of sporting competition, anything can happen. Sport is a form of disinterested truth, based not on right or wrong nor on who is best, but as the ancient Greeks would have it, who the Gods favour on the day. Who would foresee The New York Giants going to a sub-zero Green Bay and beating ‘The Pack’ and then going on to beat the unbeaten Patriots in The Super Bowl? Who would foresee the lowly Barnsley soccer team beating two of the top four teams in the UK in consecutive FA Cup matches? The unfathomable nature of sport is at its very heart, but of course, we are human and like to tweak things, so artifice and gamesmanship creep in.

The rule makers often are to blame. For instance in two thousand and three, they made a new rule for sprinters so that the second person who false-starts goes out of the race. It's OK to false-start the first time.  So, why not do it if you think you have great control over your starts and that one of the top runners might easily false-start second time out, then you who false-started in the first place and set this situation up, will end up in their place at the end of the race? Besides, it is in the very deepest sense 'unsporting' to say to someone, "Oh, you were the second false-starter. Yes, you qualified, but unlike the guy who false-started first, you can't run." 

Just run the race and decide what to do about false starters, after it is over, why don’t you? An empty lane, what is that? It is a symptom of the empty headed, empty hearted bureaucrats, who control the Olympics, World Athletics and World Soccer. They should be junked and replaced by committed sports people, likely swifter in the body and more open in the mind.

Drugs are another way of tipping the scales in a particular direction, and they say that with some of the new performance enhancing drugs, at the forthcoming Olympics they will be unable to spot the users. I will not be watching that doomed, smog-ridden event, but it does seem that other than smog, this is a cloud, that will darken sporting skies for some time to come.

There is another side to the Olympics which has been worrying me for some time and that is all this guff about ‘competing for your country’. It makes some sense in team sports, not a lot, but some, but when you have a black man from Cardiff in Wales who now lives in Australia and trains half the year in The States, it makes nonsense.

Our chests are meant to swell as we are told of the haul of medals that our Nations have collected. Some countries actually pay athletes to change nationality, while other athletes chose which Country they compete for by how likely they are to get a place on the plane. What a lot of drum-beating stupidity it all is!
 
But the reason I will not be watching the Olympics, has nothing to do with the drugs or the smog or the drum-beating. It is TIBET. Tibet has not been given a chance, sporting or otherwise, and this is an opportunity to make the point in the only way that seems to have any clout in the modern world. That is, by not buying into it. ’Buying’ is the operative word. NBC will lose a billion dollars if we don’t watch it, and China will lose its pants. The whole thing depends on mass audience participation, which means us. Hit them where it hurts most. Don’t just sign a petition and think that you have done your bit. Boycott this farce. Tell them to get lost.

Send your opinions regarding Mr. Benedict's writings to bbenedict@netlistings.com