IN THE sixth form, we smartarses argued ferociously that the novel was dead. There is a strong counter-argument we never came up with: a bookshop. Full of novels; new ones, old ones, good ones, bad ones. Love of stories is an aspect of the human condition. Similarly, people argue that religion is dead. Been to Africa lately? Iraq? A funeral?
Whenever you find anything that is very big and very important to people, you will find other people arguing it is dead. Or at best dying; terminal case, doctors can do nothing, send for the priest, send for the vet with the humane killer. So, naturally, there are those who argue that the Olympic Games are dead.
It seems a very lively sort of death to me. The Games that ended on Sunday night involved 202 countries, 28 sports, more than 10,500 athletes and 21,500 people from the media. Television figures topped ten million in Britain — better than Sydney because of the time difference. The global audience was in billions.
And as always, the Games delivered its for-all-time sporting memories: Matthew Pinsent, Kelly Holmes, Paula Radcliffe, to speak only parochially. If we move to the big stage, there were unforgettable things everywhere you looked: Ian Thorpe, Carolina Klüft, Svetlana Khorkina, Guo Jingjing, Hicham El Guerrouj and on and on.
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Love of sport — its action, its dramas, its soap operas, its narratives, its revelations of character, its creation of heroes, its instant ability to mythologise life — is also a part of the human condition. The Olympic Games happen to be very good at delivering all that stuff, which is why the alleged corpse is not so much lying down as dancing like Zorba.
One reason for the supposed death of the Olympics is drugs. Certainly, drugs have long been a factor in many of the Olympic disciplines. This is reprehensible, but I haven’t noticed this resulting in any loss of interest in the Games. Au contraire: the scandal of Konstantinos Kenteris, of Greece, the 200 metres gold medal-winner in Sydney, who missed a drugs test here and walked out of the Games, was on the front page of almost every newspaper across the world. There is a difference between being flawed and being dead.
Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, declared that every athlete caught out by the drugs testers was a victory for the Olympic movement. The drugs war continues and not without success. Look at the times the athletes are running in track and field. The winning time of Kelly Holmes in the 1,500 metres was between three and four seconds slower than the ten best times ever run. The records set by Florence Griffith Joyner in the 100 metres and 200 metres still stand; draw your own conclusions.
The corruption among Olympic administrators, of the kind revealed by Panorama shortly before the Games began, is also seen as an indication of Olympic death. Naturally there is corruption; the organisation is full of human beings. Naturally there is goodness and decency in there as well.
Corruption happens. Nor should we be smug about cheating athletes and dodgy administrators; kick ‘em out, right away. But all stories about Olympic corruption have a disproportionate moral weight. This is because of the absurd Olympic claims to a special kind of virtuousness — brotherly love, world peace and clap hands if you believe in fairies.
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It is dirty vicar syndrome — a plumber caught groping schoolgirls at Wimbledon rates half a paragraph, an archdeacon in the same situation is front-page news. The tradition of Olympic bullshit provides a rich setting for the stories of wrongdoing. I am no fan of any kind of bullshit, but the tales of hypocrisy do not constitute a proof of Olympic death, only that bullshit is getting a deserved battering.
Others point to the tabloid preoccupation with football to the exclusion of all other sports as evidence of the decline of the Olympics Games. This is to take an absurdly provincial view of a global event. Try explaining to Americans or Australians that Emile Heskey scoring a goal for Birmingham City is a bigger deal than Ian Thorpe v Michael Phelps.
Yet others complain that there are too many sports and cite the ones they dislike: handball, maybe, or judo, or canoeing. But the Olympic Games are not designed exclusively to please one person or one nation. The Games are a massive sporting buffet: help yourself to what you like and leave the other dishes to the the rest. Others complain that certain Olympic sports are flawed, particularly the judged sports. True, no question about it, but that doesn’t stop them being enthralling. Controversy is not a demonstration that something is uninteresting. Again, au contraire.
The Olympic Games come every four years and, from opening to closing ceremony, they last for 17 days. I wouldn’t want them any more often — scarcity value is an underrated matter in most mainstream sports, most especially football — and I wouldn’t want them a day longer. But by God I wouldn’t want them scarcer or shorter. Dead indeed! The Games continue: long live life.
MY HIGHLIGHT
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Gymnastics: Igor Cassina won the high bar gold medal. Where most opted for safety, Cassina went for risk. He made five massive release moves, each pulled off with near-perfection. He took wing