SPORTRITE - Misgivings likely to be forgotten as Games go on

With Tim Eves
THE trouble with taking the moral high ground is that the tide keeps coming in.
Consider global warming for a start. Just how many ice shelves are there in Antarctica anyway? There must surely be a few more to go yet before we have to start printing iceberg warnings for Northland boaties.
Judging by the last time an environmental scientist clashed with the sports department, these icebergs might not be a bad thing anyway.
The way it was going - the environmental scientist reckoned - the water around these parts was getting so tepid that the arrival of sea snakes and salt water crocodiles was imminent.
One rampaging iceberg just off the coast of the the Hen and Chicken Islands would sort those ugly critters out quick smart.
It might take a while though: The last time an iceberg arrived off the coast of New Zealand we were told it had taken about 50 years for the oversized popsicle to get here.
Which is part of the problem when taking moralistic standpoints on big issues. Change takes time. You feel a bit like a mosquito at a nudist convention; you know what you should do, but you're not sure where to start.
Ditto for the vexing issue of the Beijing Olympics.
The Olympic sporting festival might be a symbol for peace and harmony, and could well be a vehicle to help international understanding between diametrically opposed nations of the world.
But when people are getting shot, maimed, arrested, tortured and beaten up so a symbolic flame can be carried from one side of the planet to the other it might be time to stop for a moment.
If ever there was a time to take stock of what should be important in this world it might be now.
Just what is being achieved by this torch relay thing anyway? Why, considering the Olympic Torch Relay was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler in 1936, do we need to have an Olympic Torch at the top of Mt Everest anyway?
That's right, Adolf Hitler. There was no such thing as the Olympic Torch Relay until Hitler decided it was a good way to promote the Games in his neck of the woods.
A few years later, you may recall, he went on to commit a few atrocities of his own.
The point is this: China is using the Olympic Games for its own self-aggrandisement. The chance to arrest a few Tibetan monks in the name of keeping the peace while a symbolic flame is in Tibet is just happy happenstance for the Chinese regime.
But are you outraged or just a bit curious?
Some of you are outraged. Some of you are, indeed, jolly well annoyed. Even I shook my head yesterday and muttered a very naughty word when reading a headline about a monk and a policeman in riot gear.
The thing is, it is very easy to sit in your lounger, glass of imported vino in one hand and the chicken liver pate within reach of the other, and make pious noises about how countries should boycott the Beijing Olympics.
That won't happen. There will be an Olympic Games in Beijing, even if a few monks have expired to ensure they go ahead. And when the Games begin you will be watching, because you are like me and the rest of the world: There is nothing quite so enthralling as watching when best takes on best or when champion takes on champion.
In those moments when gold medals are hanging in the balance, torches and flames, vows of world unity and peace, scenes of dancing children and doves flying free are forgotten.
The flame? Who cares, some drug-fuelled athlete has just run quicker than anyone thought humanly possible.
Human rights atrocities and nasty, foreboding government institutions?
Hell, it's the Olympic Games, man. Get a grip would ya, it's not as if Antarctica is melting or anything.