NAKED CITY: THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY!

It’s twelve years now since Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympics and the homeless mysteriously disappeared from out city streets during the duration of the games. Despite some dubious social cleansing it will generally be remembered as an upbeat time when the city welcomed visitors from all over the world and was enlivened with a real international buzz.

It also drove up real estate prices, hit us with a bill for over $6 billion, failed to do anything significant for inbound tourism and flooded the $2 shops with unsold Olympic memorabilia. Thank God only rich countries get to host the Olympics and only rich countries bother to spend millions in their insatiable grab for gold.

Standby – we are about to have the London Olympics rammed down our throats for the next couple of weeks with every Australian medal lauded in an unashamed orgy of media jingoism, regardless of the fact that all our athlete’s uniforms were made in China. It’s enough to drive the less sporting minded amongst us into uncontrollable fits of frustration and rage – the sort of unbridled anger that makes you want to punch holes in the wall and all but destroy your apartment –  hey did somebody mention Grant Hackett?

It’s been estimated that if you tally up all the costs of coaching, training, sponsorship, airfares etc, the average cost to the taxpayer of an Australian gold medal in the past twenty years is about $40 million – a staggering amount which is no doubt matched by the big guns like the USA, the UK, China and Germany. There is definitely something out of kilter when a country like India, with the world’s second biggest population, can manage only three medals at the Beijing Olympics and a total of only twenty in over a hundred years of Olympic participation.

Are Indians less athletic than Australians or Russians or do they just have a shortage of swimming pools and training facilities dedicated to churning out everybody from archers to track cyclists and beach volleyballers. The reality is that like many countries in the world they have neither the money nor the obsession to big note themselves on the international stage by bagging a swag of gold, silver and bronze.

Sure some of the smaller countries like Kenya and Ethiopia will excel in track and field but overall it’s the big rich bastard countries who will dominate right across the chosen 26 Olympic sports. Here at the Naked City we would love to see a complete revision of this agenda, a dumping of sports which only favour the richest nations and an inclusion of events that give the less advantaged countries a go.

Out with swimming, diving and equestrian and in with activities like Bollywood Dancing, Elephant Wrangling, Snake Charming, Vuvuzela Blowing and trying to live on a dollar a day.

The only concession we would make to Western countries would be the inclusion of some egalitarian old favourites like egg and spoon racing, marbles and tug of war which believe it or not was once a real Olympic sport.

Finally spare a thought for those poor unfortunate souls in London who have to live through the entire Olympics with a surface to air missile pad positioned on their roof. That must play havoc with their TV reception and be a real bummer when it’s time to tune into EastEnders – it’s enough to make them punch a hole in the wall, turn the tele off and forget that the Olympics are even on!