Do golf and rugby comply with Olympic ideal?
Picture the scene. The athletes village in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2016. The Summer Olympics are in full swing and Alistair Brownlee, a triathlete from Leeds, is in the village common room flicking through the Brazilian television channels, sat alongside Tiger Woods.
They are two of the hardest working sportsmen on the planet who have earned success in equal measure, but are a million miles apart in earnings, net worth and the amount of change they have in the pockets of their team tracksuits.
For Brownlee is an amateur sportsman, who embodies the Olympic ideal. Woods is the most famous sports person on the planet, has been for two decades, and is by a long way its richest.
He is a professional, and therefore not exactly the target audience Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he conceived the idea of the Olympic movement back in Paris in 1894.
The Olympic ideal has changed and evolved many times in its 120-year lifetime, largely for the better in many respects.
Professional sport has long been a part of the fabric of the five rings; in the NHL players who fill the ice hockey teams at the Winter Games, and the tennis players who fly in and out to play their matches in the Summer Games. The majority of sports are now professional in an era where money is thrown at the stars who make their name at the Olympics.
Gone are the days when Jesse Owens, the most iconic Olympic hero of all time, returned to America after the 1936 Berlin Games to seek his fame and fortune only to be ostricised by the sports national governing body for turning his back on athletics' amateur roots.
The Olympics is about sport, and therefore wishes to be all encompassing, and so today passed the law that golf and rugby sevens would become part of the global extravaganza in Rio in 2016.
But what about squash, a professional sport only for the top players, that has sought to gain Olympic recognition time and again, only to be denied an invite to the biggest show on earth, with no real reason being offered to the likes of James Willstrop and Nick Matthew.
Opposing the decision of the IOC is not my purpose, golf and rugby are sports I hold dear and I believe that rugby sevens is a worthy inductee and could be managed as football is in the Olympics, with only players under the age of 23 representing their country.
Golf shares a number of ideals and morals that strike a chord with the Olympic movement, the self-regulation of the laws of the game where a player readily disqualifies himself/herself from a tournament for the merest infringement, is its most admirable quality.
However, for me, the notion of Tiger sitting with Brownlee in the Olympic village does not sit right. A man who has trained all his life for a shot at Olympic gold against a man who has won everything and needs just one more collectable for that small space at the back of his trophy cabinet.
Not that Tiger would give anything less than 100%, but will Rio be his every thought from the moment the London Games close to mark the start of the next cycle for Olympic athletes?
Probably not. I hope to be proved wrong and that golf warrants its place at the greatest sporting spectacle on earth.
They are two of the hardest working sportsmen on the planet who have earned success in equal measure, but are a million miles apart in earnings, net worth and the amount of change they have in the pockets of their team tracksuits.
For Brownlee is an amateur sportsman, who embodies the Olympic ideal. Woods is the most famous sports person on the planet, has been for two decades, and is by a long way its richest.
He is a professional, and therefore not exactly the target audience Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he conceived the idea of the Olympic movement back in Paris in 1894.
The Olympic ideal has changed and evolved many times in its 120-year lifetime, largely for the better in many respects.
Professional sport has long been a part of the fabric of the five rings; in the NHL players who fill the ice hockey teams at the Winter Games, and the tennis players who fly in and out to play their matches in the Summer Games. The majority of sports are now professional in an era where money is thrown at the stars who make their name at the Olympics.
Gone are the days when Jesse Owens, the most iconic Olympic hero of all time, returned to America after the 1936 Berlin Games to seek his fame and fortune only to be ostricised by the sports national governing body for turning his back on athletics' amateur roots.
The Olympics is about sport, and therefore wishes to be all encompassing, and so today passed the law that golf and rugby sevens would become part of the global extravaganza in Rio in 2016.
But what about squash, a professional sport only for the top players, that has sought to gain Olympic recognition time and again, only to be denied an invite to the biggest show on earth, with no real reason being offered to the likes of James Willstrop and Nick Matthew.
Opposing the decision of the IOC is not my purpose, golf and rugby are sports I hold dear and I believe that rugby sevens is a worthy inductee and could be managed as football is in the Olympics, with only players under the age of 23 representing their country.
Golf shares a number of ideals and morals that strike a chord with the Olympic movement, the self-regulation of the laws of the game where a player readily disqualifies himself/herself from a tournament for the merest infringement, is its most admirable quality.
However, for me, the notion of Tiger sitting with Brownlee in the Olympic village does not sit right. A man who has trained all his life for a shot at Olympic gold against a man who has won everything and needs just one more collectable for that small space at the back of his trophy cabinet.
Not that Tiger would give anything less than 100%, but will Rio be his every thought from the moment the London Games close to mark the start of the next cycle for Olympic athletes?
Probably not. I hope to be proved wrong and that golf warrants its place at the greatest sporting spectacle on earth.
Labels: 2016, Alistair Brownlee, golf, Jesse Owens, Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, Rio, rugby sevens
posted by Nick Westby at 1:46 PM
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