Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age
Another day at work
THE Olympic Games, Summer and Winter, and even the Commonwealth Games, have lost a good deal by allowing participation by professionals. Once they were the preserve of amateurs, which might have reduced the quality of the competition somewhat (although in those days track and field, swimming and the like had yet to genuinely turn professional, and there was nary a hint that the likes of golf and tennis would become Olympic sports), but meant they really were the pinnacle of an athlete's career. There could be no greater achievement than winning an Olympic medal, and even selection was an honour above all others, recognition of ability and commitment.
This country took enormous (and perhaps special) pride in the gold medal won by the rowing eight at Munich in 1972, not only because they beat the best that the rest of the world could put on the water but because they got there as amateurs, with a coach who was responsible not only for honing their skills and getting them to the start in peak physical condition but also largely for raising the money they needed to get there. The principal means of fundraising, according to folk lore, was raffling pigs in barrows.
How different it is now. These days athletes are professional, and their costs, not only of representing New Zealand but their living, training, travelling and competition expenses, are met by their codes, which in turn are largely funded by taxpayers, and in some cases sponsors. So while the standard of competition has clearly improved, the drive and commitment once needed to win the chance to perform on the world's greatest athletic stage has, in some cases, dwindled.
Athletes obviously need to be on top of their game to win a place in an Olympic team, but the professional era has changed attitudes beyond all recognition. Many competitors make no secret of the fact that the Olympics is just another meet, not especially different from any other. And the days of raffling pigs in barrows, and training before and after work, have certainly gone.
For most athletes the chance to compete at an Olympic Games no doubt remains a goal to be pursued with single-minded determination, and the winning of a place in the team is an achievement to be savoured for a lifetime, but winning a place in their countrymen's hearts can be as tough as winning a medal.
New Zealanders tend to judge unsuccessful Olympians, anyone who represents us and fails in any sport actually, with a distinct lack of a sympathy. Most would presumably accept that the Olympic Games need also-rans, competitors who will never medal but deserve the chance to compete. Without them the Games couldn't happen. And most probably accept that a Kiwi with a world ranking of 62 isn't likely to hear the national anthem. There tends to be less understanding of those who are seen as not achieving to their potential, who talk a good game but bow out in the first heat. And that has rarely been fair, especially in the amateur days.
It is difficult to imagine the heartbreak of failing to achieve what one is capable of achieving after years of preparation. Sport, at any level, can be cruel, but never more so than at amateur Olympic level, where the chance to win a medal on the biggest stage, the dreamed of reward for years of effort and sacrifice, might never be repeated.
Years ago medals, and perhaps a brief period of public adulation, were the only rewards on offer - no promise of government funding or sponsorships, just a street parade back home and perhaps the odd invitation as an after dinner speaker - and yet we saw athletes, New Zealanders included, literally run themselves to a standstill in desperate but usually doomed attempts to keep their dreams alive.
How different it is now. And deservedly or not, New Zealand snowboarder Rebecca Torr exemplifies all that we and the Olympics have lost.
Torr has been credited with causing a stir at the Sochi Olympics courtesy of what she now says, somewhat lamely, was an attempt at humour. She arrived in Russia with a smartphone equipped with the app Tinder, technology that reportedly enables the user to locate people of a very particular kind within his or her geographical vicinity. It's been likened to speed dating without having to go to the trouble of meeting face to face. And Torr, born in Te Puke but now living in Colorado, and an athlete by profession, made it clear that she was using it to 'match' with the Jamaican bobsled team.
Presumably she could have done that the old fashioned way without making world headlines, but the fact that her mind was on picking up a bobsledder says a great deal about her attitude towards representing New Zealand at the Olympics. She had yet to compete when she launched her bid for some sort of relationship with a Jamaican, but she was in luck. The Olympic Village newspaper picked up the story, and that, by all accounts, produced the desired result.
The snowboarding didn't go quite so well. Torr competed in some sort of repechage, but didn't make the final. Never mind. There was still the prospect of getting to know the Jamaicans.
It is probably not a coincidence that athletes whose aspirations seemingly only go as far as selection to represent New Zealand don't have a great record of success. One of the most famous examples of that was Kit Fawcett, who toured South Africa with the All Blacks in 1976, and who got the tour off to a magnificent start by stating, in South Africa, that he and his mates were hoping to score more off the field than on it.
He played two tests, won one lost one, but if memory serves he wasn't much of a fullback. We don't know how he fared off the field but he didn't score on it, and he was never selected again. He reportedly ended his rugby career playing overseas, but became such a nonentity that even Google doesn't seem to know how he got on.
Torr seems to be cut from similar cloth, her only saving grace perhaps being that she is more a product of her generation and changing social attitudes than an immature aberration. The organisers of this the most prestigious competition of its kind on the planet, the International Olympic Committee, reportedly handed out around 100,000 condoms to the 2800 athletes, 35 apiece with a few left over. Wonder how many condoms were given to the rowers in Munich. Or the men's hockey team, ranked 18th, that beat Australia to win the gold medal in Montreal in 1976. Or John Walker, Dick Quax and co.
Sport, the Olympics included, have produced some extraordinary stories of courage, commitment, sacrifice, triumph and tragedy, in this country and others. The vast majority of Olympians have competed with honour in the spirit of the Olympic motto, 'Swifter, Higher, Stronger.' There will always be those with less noble aspirations, but that won't bother them too much, as long as their sponsors keep paying the bills and the taxpayer funding doesn't run out. And Rebecca Torr and others of her ilk will have some stories to tell their grandchildren, even if they aren't about overcoming huge odds to make the 2014 Winter Olympics and the pride they took in wearing the silver fern. For them, it's just another day at the office.
News snippets from the Far North.