VOX POPULI II: The Supervillain Exposes the Bullshit of the Olympic Games

            Well, well, well…full of water and very deep.  Thus concludes the poetry portion of this article.

            But in seriousness, what sort of gall and impertinence would I have to possess to deride the great Olympic Games?  It’s one of the world’s greatest traditions and display of honor, pride, and athletic supremacy.  Of course I have nothing negative to say about sporting, competition, and the quest to dominate; those are some of the things that get me excited and give me a purpose.  But the truth is that the Olympic Games go beyond the ostensible athletics.  Whenever there is money, nationalism, and politics involved, bullshit is bound to arise.  Anyone who has been employed by any sort of bureaucracy knows that a system where there are several levels of power produces inane and perplexing decisions that are far disjointed from pragmatism and the proletariat.  And many of these decisions approbated by the invisible powers are impudent to the athletes, unjust to the public, and compromising to the dignity of sports competition.

 

            So sit back, watch some Equestrian events on network television, hear the athletes thank Jesus during an event held to venerate Zeus, and experience the Supervillain expose the BULLSHIT of the Olympic Games.

"Hera, get my thunderbolt; another one of these bastards thanked the wrong guy."

Welcome to the Jingoism Café, Where We Serve You Whatever We Want to and You Say it’s Fucking Delicious

            Is everyone enjoying the 2012 Swimming Championships?  If you turn on the television at any arbitrary time, that’s what you may believe is ongoing.  The country goes nearly four years without expressing any interest in swimming and then suddenly, come Olympic time, it’s practically our national sport.  After all, swimming is the embodiment of human athleticism, correct?  Well, no; the simple fact is that swimming in the Olympics has an ABSURDLY EXORBITANT number of events and the United States has a good chance to win a majority of them.  Thus, broadcast the shit out of this aquatic activity.  And then toss up a chart which displays each nation’s medal count in order to reassure us that the USA is still #1.  (Don’t worry; most people will overlook that over half those medals come from people doing laps in a pool.)

Another one of those swimming tailgates, I would presume

  

            Even during Men’s All-Around Gymnastics Finals, one of the greatest display of athletic versatility, you witness the network cutting back to swimming as soon as the United States men are mathematically eliminated  (“A man is not a piece of fruit!” shouts Willy Lowman.)  After all, citizens like watching their home country win, despite their ambivalence towards the sport.  And why do the Olympic Games need people watching?

            That’s right; money.  These London 2012 games cost nearly 15 BILLION dollars to produce.  The committee needs as many viewers as possible tuned in and watching advertisements and what not.  Thus, it is nearly impossible for me to view sports which actually compel me.  It would require pure thaumaturgy for me to come across weightlifting, wrestling, Judo, or even soccer (not something I am interested in but it is the world’s most popular sport and it is treated like a heretic by the networks.)  This is simply because you’ll be hard pressed to find many betting favored Americans on the rosters of any of those sports.  But it isn’t fair to isolate the United States in this myopic broadcasting.  I’m sure China isn’t broadcasting too much cycling, volleyball, tennis, or track&field.

Hmm, that's certainly a unique way to count medals...

 

            However, this blind nationalism is preventing us from truly experiencing the greatest athletes in the world.  Why shouldn’t I get to see Dmitry Klokov or Bilyal Makhov or Teddy Riner?  What relevance is it to me what country an athlete is from?  Should someone’s achievement be casually cast in the shadows due to their origin of birth?

Instead we are subjected to the physiques of prepubescent male divers in vagina exposing Speedos

            I personally possess the caustic belief that an athlete’s allegiance to a nation is utterly superfluous.  An appellation has no impact on the sport itself.  The focus and accolades should belong solely to the individual rather than a nation.  Often times a nation is stated to have won an event, rather than the athlete itself.  The classification into country is a simple gewgaw intended to keep the casual citizen involved; it makes them feel as if the sport matters to them, as if they are relevant, as if they have a bearing on the outcome and deserve credit for a victory.  Fuck that shit.  As an athlete myself, I have to undergo a disciplined and demanding regimen of exhausting dedication and hard work.  Whenever it is time to reap my rewards, I’ll be damned if an indolent nation of overweight, sedentary, beer guzzling laymen decided they are owed some credit.  If you want to feel the warmth of the spotlight, get off your corpulent ass and earn it.

"Mom, come look!  I just won the gold in volleyball!"

            But great athletes who are denied exposure are one thing.  What about the athletes who don’t even have a chance to compete?

The Olympic GAMES

            It is important to note that the event is referred to as the Olympic Games, not the Olympic Sports.  Surveying an itinerary of the Olympics and you see such events as: synchronized swimming, shooting, three different equestrian events (dominated by Sarah Jessica Parker each year.)  

The only horse to win both Olympic gold and the Triple Crown

            That’s fine, no problem; I’m not here to debase people’s medium of athletics.  The more the merrier.  If it does not appeal to me, I shall simply change the channel.  But what does irk me is the surprising amount of sports which are precluded from the Games.  Where is kickboxing?  The tradition has existed for hundreds of years and holds popularity through much of Europe, Asia, and the United States.  Where is submission grappling?  Jiujutsu is vastly popular in South America, Asia, UAE, as is catch wrestling in the United States and Submission Sambo is in Europe.  And perhaps most confounding of all, where the fuck is powerlifting?  Is it not relevant to try and determine WHO THE STRONGEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD ARE?  Is raw strength not an integral aspect of athleticism?

If this doesn't build anticipation and excitement, then back to water polo with you.

Now as some of you may know, a variant of modern powerlifting known as “odd lifts” was previously in the Olympics.  However, marred by steroid controversies, all the records were erased and “odd lifting” was nixed from the Games.  Yes, it is blatantly apparent that the world’s top powerlifters utilize steroids.  But you must be some sort of delusional idealist if you don’t think steroid use is rampant in the current Olympic Games.  If you see someone receiving a medal in an athletic sport (sans table tennis, diving, equestrian, etc.), it’d be a safe bet to say that they have used some sort of PED prior to the event.  Oh, but the games are tested, you insist?  Well, rather than retorting to that, I’m going to leave you to peacefully exist in your world of unicorns, rainbow defecation, and STD-free prostitutes.

The view from your window

But so what?  Why should steroid use in the Olympics matter?  The intent is to become as proficient at your sport as possible, and that simply is not possible without PED’s.

Back to the initial point, why are certain combat sports excluded?  They provide us with Taekwondo, one of the most impractical martial arts extant, and expect us to be content.  Oh, but there’s boxing, you say?  Yes, you would think that as a boxer myself, I would be glued to the television set.  But the truth is Olympic boxing is unwatchable and utterly irrelevant to the sport of boxing.  Quick, name all the Olympic gold medalists that have gone on to be great professional boxers.  I am positive that you have produced a very brief list.  Olympic boxing is blighted by an asinine scoring system, atrocious judging, excessive equipment, baffling rules, and inexperienced boxers.  It is the only Olympic sport which disallows professionals of that sport to compete.  What’s the point then?  To figure who the best boxers in the world are if the world’s best boxers are all trapped in the underground sewage system by some Batman villain?  There is no prestige in winning an Olympic boxing medal.  Olympic boxing is akin to college baseball, in the sense that if you are truly talented, you are probably going to begin your venture into the professional ranks without going through these “middle men” per say.

 

Perhaps the most pertinent and digestible example of the discrepancy between professional and Olympic boxing is the case of Mike Tyson and Henry Tillman (I can’t tell if you all are doing your owl impressions or saying “Who?”)  Tillman defeated Tyson twice in amateur bouts, propelling him to win Olympic gold in 1984 and keeping Tyson from the event.  Well, in 1990, Tyson and Tillman met in the realm of professional boxing.  Keep in mind, this is a drugged up, incarcerated, divorcing, partying Tyson four months removed from his upset defeat to James Douglas.  What was the result of the bout?  Tyson was victorious by knockout in the first round.

How many points for ear dismemberment?

  

Anyway, I would like to conclude with what exasperates me most about these Olympic Games.

The Phelps Delusion

Not sure if the Subway guy or Olympic gold medalist...

            Yesterday I watched as USA swimmer, Michael Phelps, received his 22^nd Olympic medal.  Immediately after the ceremony, the broadcast cut to Bob Costas who then provided us with a heartfelt monologue insisting that Michael Phelps was the greatest Olympic athlete of all time.  However, it did not seem as if Bob was simply expressing his humble opinion; it seemed more like a demagogue attempting to convince us that Michael Phelps was the greatest Olympic athlete of all time.  And I’m sure a majority of the nation believed him.  I’m sure that a majority of the nation believes that Michael Phelps, a swimmer, is the greatest to have ever participated in the Olympic Games.  So that’s that, right?  Well, no.

            Olympic swimming is fucking comical.  The sheer amount of events is nearly laughable.  Olympic swimming hands out more medals than a drunken whore at a party hands out, well, handjobs.  At this 2012 Olympics, there were 17 MALE SWIMMING EVENTS.  Fucking 17!  When the fuck did swimming require so many variants?  It’s fucking swimming; as simple as an activity as it gets.  At what point, when you’re virtually tossing medals into a crowd, does the medal lose its prestige?

Fucking thousands of whores doesn't make you the greatest lay ever. Apply that metaphor to the picture above.

            Okay, I have nothing against the distances.  I understand that different distances require different muscular and cardiovascular strengths/systems.  But WHY THE FUCK IS THERE ANY OTHER WAY TO SWIM A DISTANCE OTHER THAN FREESTYLE?  Freestyle is the most efficient method to swim.  It gets the swimmer from point A to point B the fastest.  Why the fuck are we inventing more inefficient ways to swim and then awarding medals for them?  Is there any sense in this?  Is there any demand for this?  Fuck, why don’t we take every track distance and then create a medal for backwards running, one-legged running, hands tied to the side running, jello in your pants running and whatever other BULLSHIT we can make up in order to ensure a particular nation/athlete has the most medals.

Why not integrate sharks into swimming?  Even more medals!

            (And fuck these team relay medals, also.  Why are we mutating individual sports into pussy team sports?)

            In 2008, when Phelps won his infamous eight gold medals, he only swam two different distances.  Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter, also ran two different distances.  He only took home three gold medals, simply because he didn’t have the opportunity to win any more than three.  Let’s integrate some of my aforementioned  running variations and then maybe suddenly a Jamaican is the greatest Olympian ever.

This is me playing the race card.  HAHA!  Get it, you cunt?

            If you want to keep all these variants of swimming strokes, then why not have each swimmer do each of the four strokes for a particular distance, take the lowest accumulated time, and award an overall medal for that distance?  Sensible, no?

 

            Whatever, let them celebrate their excessive medals.  What impresses me more are the Olympic events which require you to fight countless battles for the chance to emerge with one, TRUE medal.  In wrestling, you have dozens of matches.  You win ONE medal.  In weightlifting, you have to hit lift after lift.  You win ONE medal.

 

            So now I would like to  briefly discuss two men who should truly be considered the greatest Olympic athletes of all time.

Aleksandr Karelin

No caption needed.

            “Alexander the Great”, “The Russian Bear”, “The Experiment”, call him what you’d like.  One things for sure, you won’t hear Bob Costas touting this Hero of the Russian Federation as the Olympic great.  That’s like having Drago beating Rocky; blasphemy!  (Everyone thinks that Rocky IV displayed the US conquering the Soviet Union.  What they don’t realize is that “The Italian Stallion” defeated Drago.  Drago, on the other hand, LITERALLY MURDERED Apollo Creed, the embodiment of the American lifestyle.)

"If he dies, he dies."  Move over Kant.

            Aleksandr Karelin is the most dominant Greco-Roman wrestler to ever have lived.  In the Superheavyweight division, Karelin won gold at the 1988 Seoul Games, gold at the 1992 Barcelona Games, gold at the 1996 Atlanta Games.  And if I said he was dominant, that would be an understatement.  Karelin didn’t lose a single match for 13 years.  Fuck that, he didn’t lose a single round.  Fuck that, for six years, HE DIDN’T GIVE UP A SINGLE POINT.

 

            So wow, gold for three straight Olympics in the heaviest division in arguably one of the toughest sports.  Impressive.  Wait, no, FUCK THAT.  Karelin came back to compete in the 2000 Sydney Games, in which he won a silver medal (losing in the finals to American Rulon Gardner in a match where any sighted monkey could see Karelin won.)

            Karelin was best known for his patented move called “The Karelin Lift.”  This involved wrapping his arms around another 300 lbs man, picking him up AGAINST HIS WILL, turning him mid-air, and slamming him onto his back.  A little more impressive than stroking through malleable water, huh?

Pyrros Dimas

"...the hell did you say?....Who?....The swimmer?....LOL"

            This 180 lbs. weightlifter may be able to put more weight overhead than you can even deadlift.  Dimas holds career bests in the snatch at 180.5 kg (397.1 lbs) and in the clean&jerk at 215 kg (473 lbs.; yeah, you’re reading that right.)

Because lifting weights makes you slow, bulky, and nonathletic, right?

            Dimas won gold at the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Olympic games.  In 1996 he took the time to set two new world records.  In 2004, Dimas had just undergone knee surgery and was marred with chronic wrist problems.  However, in stark juxtaposition to a healthy Phelps who proclaims he will not be competing four years in advance, Dimas decided to compete anyway and take home a bronze medal.  His final lift of his Olympic career was a world record attempt at the clean&jerk, which he had overhead but just could not stand upright with.  After failing, he took his shoes off, placed them on the platform, and exited as possibly the greatest Olympian of all time.

            Like I said, I love everything there is about pure sporting competition.  What I don’t enjoy is propaganda, selective broadcasting, oversaturation, neglecting great talent, and of course, BULLSHIT.

Are you concerned with the nationality of this picture?

-Sameer Saklani


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