No More Girls in Bikinis
by Taki Theodoracopulos
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Just after the Berlin wall came down, I flew to Berlin with my German-Austrian wife and traveled around the city and its eastern parts. On visiting the Olympic stadium I told the taxi driver that my uncle, a hurdler, was the first athlete the Führer’s gaze fell upon as the parade of the 1936 games began, because we Greeks always go in first, having started the games back in 776 B.C., and because my uncle was the flag carrier. The taxi driver did not seem impressed in the least.
It might seem politically incorrect to say this, but the Berlin Olympics were the best ever staged, the last time white American and European men and women competed on an equal level with blacks, despite the great feat of Jesse Owens in winning four gold medals. The first games after the war, the 1948 London Olympics, were a festival for pure amateurs, as were the Helsinki and Melbourne games that followed. The best postwar Olympics were the Rome ones (1960). Europe had rebounded from the catastrophe of World War II, and Germany had been invited to compete. I remember them well. The crown prince of Greece, now ex-King Constantine, won a gold in the dragon-class sailing in the bay of Naples. Ari Onassis, the original Greek tycoon, came into the shower room where the prince was cleaning up after he and his crew had been dunked into the filthy waters of Naples—my father was crewing for him—and got into the shower fully clothed, kissing the prince and congratulating him. That night there was a great ball in the palazzo of the duke of Serra di Cassano, with most of Europe’s reigning royals attending. For a 23-year-old, it was quite impressive stuff.
On the field, a blond German, Armin Hary, won the 100-meter dash, the first non-American to win the most prestigious of events since 1928, and an Italian, Livio Berutti, won the 200 meters. The Roma stadium went wild as the Italian led from the start, chased by three African-Americans. Three white American hurdlers came one, two, three in the 400-meter hurdles, led by Glenn Davis, and a young Cassius Clay won the light-heavyweight title in the Palazzetto dello Sport, although an Australian friend of mine by the name of Madigan almost beat him—I was certain he had won—in the semifinal. The grand finale was the Marathon, won by a barefooted Ethiopian sergeant, Abebe Bekila, who smiled all along the route leading into the Borghese gardens and down the Via Veneto, and who rightly received the greatest cheers from the crowd.
The Rome Olympics were my last, although I did attend the judo competition in Athens in 2004. The games became much too big after Rome, much too politicized, and drugs began to play a much too important role. The Cold War saw nation-by-nation medal counts, although counting was against the spirit of the games. In 1984 the Los Angeles games became the first Olympics in which corporate sponsors got their filthy hooks in deep, making the event look like one big advertisement. It’s been downhill ever since. Athlete after athlete has been caught cheating with drugs, and all records are now suspect, as they well should be. In the 2004 Athens Olympics the Greek government spent $12 billion, five percent of the country’s economy. Many of the lavish facilities built so a political party could show off to the world lie empty and unused. In my not-so-humble opinion, the only way to save the games is to do away with them.
To begin with they are much too big and too inclusive. Rhythmic underwater dancing has more to do with entertainment than with sport. Although women’s softball has been eliminated, beach volleyball has not. Watching beautifully built women in tiny bikinis playing on sand has more to do with Playboy than with what the ancient Greeks had in mind. The games, after all, were started because the ancients believed it made their soldiers fighting fit. A foot race in armor was introduced at the 65th Games in 520 b.c. The other three events were running, wrestling, and the pentathlon, which included running and wrestling as well as the discus, javelin, and jumping. In other words, the games represented real life. No synchronized swimming and certainly no Tae Kwan Do, a phony martial art that resembles touch football. (Contestants wear padding and score points by touching the adversary.) Victors back then were given a simple wreath of olive sprays and the statue and victory poem that would be created in their honor back home. They were considered to be blessed by the gods. No Coca-Cola endorsements, no cornflakes contracts, no Nike sponsorships. Only glory.
So here’s Chronicles’ blueprint to save the bloated, cheating, corporate games: First and foremost they have to return to their original site, Olympia, in the northwest Peloponnese, where their spirit lives on. Shaded by olive, pine, and poplar, scented by oregano and thyme, the games would be restricted to track and field, wrestling, boxing, swimming, and equestrian events. Nothing else. No tennis, no football, no baseball and other invented sports. Greed, corruption, and commercialism would be eliminated at a stroke. Only amateurs need apply. The pros have their own world championships and other drug festivals. The Olympics will remain pure, and the winners will enjoy eternal glory.
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Taki Theodoracopulos is a contributing editor to Chronicles.
This article first appeared in the August 2008 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by moviedude on 13 August 2008:
I think the only sporting event worth watching is the Masters golf tournament and perhaps the tour de France even though doping is prevalent. I think I enjoy the tour for the views of the countryside.
I half expect that the Athletes upon winning the gold are running up to the camera to shill for Disney world.
2 Comment by Allen Wilson on 13 August 2008:
I would humbly add that perhaps fencing and other martially oriented sports with a long lineage be included, along with chess.
I would also add that perhaps poetry, sculpture, etc., should be included, but I’m not going to, since there’s no telling what ridiculous modernist poetry and abstract sculptures would be the result.
3 Comment by Allen Wilson on 13 August 2008:
Strike that first sentence supra. It should read: ”I would humbly add that fencing and other such martially oriented sports should be included, as long as they have a long lineage and are still real sports, and chess as well’.
4 Comment by Bernie on 13 August 2008:
“It might seem politically incorrect to say this, but the Berlin Olympics were the best ever staged, the last time white American and European men and women competed on an equal level with blacks.”
Huh? Whites always win the most medals in both the winter and summer Olympics. By last count we won over 60% of the current medals in the 2008 games.
5 Comment by Thomas Miller on 13 August 2008:
“Although women’s softball has been eliminated, beach volleyball has not. Watching beautifully built women in tiny bikinis playing on sand has more to do with Playboy than with what the ancient Greeks had in mind.”
Actually, if the modern Olympics were consistent with the spirit of the ancient games, it would feature oiled up, naked men wrestling each other for the enjoyment of their older, homosexual male patrons.
6 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 14 August 2008:
Panem et circenses is not such a new concept, but in surely departed from the Greek idea of competition within the original Olympic games, while the gladiatorial elements are surely present in today’s Olympics – not as the ancient Greeks would have wanted.
This “Roman departure” is neither the first nor the last change that Romans took as an “improvement”. Theater suffered even more. Thea-tron (the seeing place) where the stress is on the visual has been DEMOTED to Audi-torium (listening place), as we know today, true theater is a lot more than well spoken/written words (we need costumes, acting, lighting, action, reaction, directing, choreography, etc. etc.)
But with all the drawbacks of the present Olympics, I would surely vote against the East Germany’s steroid swimmers or Rumania’s steroid/hormone women gymnasts, both being replaced by McDonaldizing most of the Olympics. In an ideal world neither would exist and we would have chess, wrestling, swimming, discus, archery, fencing, horse racing (not equestrian), while skimpy bikini beach volleyball would be relegated to the back-rooms of topless bars on the outskirts of town. In either case it is next to impossible to dismiss the Panes et circenses factor. For now, let’s thank God that there are no Gay Olympics or Pregnant women’s Olympics – things could always get much worse.
7 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 14 August 2008:
#6
I hate to contribute to your disillusionment, but the Gay Games are apparently alive and well.
One couldn’t really lose money selling handbaskets these days.
8 Comment by I am not Spartacus on 14 August 2008:
Let the Greeks have their Olympics and restrict the games to Greek amateurs.
If other countries, states, or towns, want to have their amateur games, fine. Back in Old New England, towns used to compete against one another via football and that became quite violent. Who needs that sort of “competition.”
I had a blast as an amateur in Vermont and there were never any fisticuffs involved. I grew up playing baseball, football, basketball and golf but the most difficult amateur event I ever tried was writing love poems to the pretty young girl who lived in a town adjacent to mine.
More poetry. Fewer organised athletic events.
9 Comment by Roland de Chanson on 14 August 2008:
Taki: I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Nor would I. But let us concede that the classical Olympic Games are as unrecoverable a treasure as the so-called “Elgin” marbles.
But why cannot Greece revive the Pythian Games? Seize the initiative and showcase the Glory That Was Greece! They would open with the traditional invocation to Apollo. Some pretty dancing priestesses. The Pythia would inhale a hallucingenic effusion and deliver herself of some garbled hexameters. No commercial breaks. If all goes well, the Nemean and Isthmian games can be added later.
Of course, we will have to make concessions to the women. Not just as spectators. As competitors. No more girls in bikinis, indeed! In the nude! Let the gymnasts be gymnai! You’ll never look at the pankration the same way again.
Of course, it’s all doomed to failure. The IOC would lure viewers with mudwrestling. οὕτως διέρχεται ἡ τοῦ κόσμου δόξα.
10 Comment by Wolfgang Fenske on 15 August 2008:
“Although women’s softball has been eliminated, beach volleyball has not.”
That’s not true. Women’s softball is still on the game plan.
11 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 15 August 2008:
As far as I know Mr. Fenske is correct, women’s softball is (unfortunately) still being played. Does any man truly enjoy watching an adult lady play serious competitive sports? I’ll bet the misogynous gender benders just love it.
12 Comment by Flavius Claudius Julianus on 16 August 2008:
The modern world is most unimpressive. I could do without its so-called conveniences if guarantee was given to me of the revival of classic Hellenic society.
ΝΙΚΗ Ή ΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ
13 Comment by TJF on 16 August 2008:
I fear Monsieur Chanson has been inhaling the same hallucinigenic fumes as his imagined Pythia. The thing about religious mysteries is that we rarely know what happened. In the case of the Pythia, we do not know a) if she actually went into a trance as opposed to faking one, or b) if she did whether it was autohypnotic, induced by oxygen deprivation from the sulfur fumes, or inspired by Apollo. She probably did not speak in hexameters, though her utterances were crafted into verse that was by no means garbled. For a sense of what the Pythian Games represented to the Greeks, read Pindar’s Pythian Odes, especially the magnificent beginning of the first, with its invocation of Apollo whose music brings peace and order to the world and consternation and fear to the anarchic demons who oppose the rule of Zeus.
14 Comment by Robert Bruce on 17 August 2008:
Fencing is on the agenda during the Summer Olympics. Chess wouldn’t make it however, as us Americans would get smoked, just like in geopolitics.
15 Comment by Allen Wilson on 17 August 2008:
I fear you are right, Mr Bruce.
16 Comment by athanasius on 21 August 2008:
ROTFL!!! Sad but true.