The Winter Olympics in Russia have not yet begun, but the scandals surrounding the games in Sochi started a while ago.

One would think that hosting an international event in a country run by a despotic, homophobic regime would be a bad idea. Washington Post journo, Charles Lane seems to think so – he called the olympics a “corrupt quadrennial exercise.”

And, at least at first glance, he seems to have summed the games up quite aptly. The Putin regime is not the first host dictatorship to spoil the Olympics; previous examples include Nazi Germany in 1936, the Soviet Union in 1980 and the People’s Republic of China in 2008.

Critics argue that it is a global embarrassment to have such a large event hosted in such a small-minded country. But like the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, and the following 2022 cup in Qatar – we tend to glance over the big issues.

The modern Olympics were established by a French aristocrat, Pierre de Coubertin, who believed that by reviving the ancient Greek custom of periodic truces for athletic competition, we could promote international peace and understanding.

A look back in history will tell us that this didn’t work. There were the boycotts of the games in Montreal in 1976 (by African nations protesting apartheid), of Moscow in 1980 (by the United States and other Western countries protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) and of Los Angeles in 1984 (by communist countries retaliating for 1980).

The Olympics is failing at what it set out to do.

Should we bin it then?

[Source : Washington Post]