The ballyhoo of another Olympics has begun. But this one is different. The Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City promise to be a tense, nervy event. No less than 11,000 law enforcement officers, backed up by undisclosed number of troops, more than outnumber the contestants taking part. Any unauthorized aircraft entering a 45-mile exclusion zone around the games is liable to be shot down by patrolling jet fighters.
This gathering of the world’s greatest winter athletes is also preparing for the worst possible catastrophe. After the horrors of Sept. 11, nothing seems unthinkable to the jittery Americans. Whatever sporting excitements the coming 14 days may bring us are likely to be diluted by the overwhelming sense of apprehension that will hang over the games, upon which no less than $300 million has been spent for security.
Some 2,300 athletes from 80 countries will be competing for gold. They can expect to be monitored for performance-enhancing drugs as never before. It seems no Olympics can pass these days without at least one drugs scandal. The fact that competitors are prepared to take such a terrible risk after training for years for what ought to be the pinnacle of their sporting lives demonstrates all too clearly the pressures to win that many feel themselves to be under.
Sports, of course, have long ceased to be an amateur contest. A gold medal is no longer the ultimate target. The aim is rather the immense wealth and publicity that a gold medal can bring. The right athlete, personable and photogenic, with the right sort of heroic victory or a string of victories behind him, can expect to become a multimillionaire through sponsorship deals, endorsements and personal appearance fees.
Meanwhile, perhaps one scandal will however remain buried beneath all the security and the excitement of the events themselves. This is the question about how Salt Lake City came to win the Winter Games in the first place. Last year, longstanding suspicions were proven correct when it was found that the International Olympic Committee was riddled with corruption and ten members were forced to resign. Their crime was that they had accepted largesse of one sort or another given by various would-be hosts of Summer or Winter Olympics. Salt Lake City was in the frame as one of the distributors of "inducements" worth an alleged $1 million.
The scandal brought an ignominious end to the long reign of Juan Antonio Samaranch as IOC president. However the clean out of the committee was supposed to relaunch the Olympic movement on a firmer and cleaner path. Since Olympic venues can hardly be chopped and changed quickly, the IOC stuck with its Salt Lake City choice. However from hereon in, the Olympic organizers are planning to be running a much cleaner and tighter ship.
Salt Lake City is therefore hopefully both the end of the bad old ways and the start of a new, clean era. It must, therefore, be hoped that all the other pressures, from performance-enhancing drug cheats to terrorists desperate to strike another blow against America before hundreds of millions of TV viewers will not besmirch what ought to be a noble and uplifting sporting event.
