Nodar Kumaritashvili
Like most sports fans I shudder to think how many hours I have spent glued to the television or sitting in the outer and screaming my lungs out at the spectacle of the hour.
It would easily average at least four hours a week, which is a pretty normal level of consumption. It’s also pretty normal that these viewings have often taken place in an emotionally-charged environment, as if to illustrate the old maxim (attributed to Liverpool manager Bill Shankly regarding soccer) that sport isn’t matter of life or death, it’s much more important than that.
But the Winter Olympics has given us a pretty bleak reminder that in the overall scheme of things, sport doesn’t really matter that much at all. And with the Olympic Movement framed as it is around the principles of excellence – faster, higher, stronger – it seems ghoulishly appropriate that the Vancouver Games have set a new mark for tastelessness.
Continue reading "Going downhill fast: sport abandons taste and sense" »
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