Olympics: Shut out the little guys and watch the fun fade

By TERRY MADDAFORD

No one could forget the incredulous look on Carl Lewis' face as Ben Johnson stormed by in the 100m final at the Seoul Olympics.

We can't say he won because - as we soon learned - he didn't. He cheated.

Now, 15 years later, even Lewis has had doubts cast on his squeaky clean image.

But despite Johnson and other high-profile drug cheats who have been tossed out since, the door to the Olympic Games still remains open.

Only a failed pre-Games drugs test or injury would keep the Johnsons and others from the so-called developed countries at home.

If new Olympic chief Jacques Rogge has his way, these "best of the best" will be all we see at future "sterile Olympics", where winners will indeed be grinners and also-rans not even given the chance.

Questioned on his stance, which would scrap the "wildcards" that allowed sportsmen and women such as swimmer Eric "The Eel" Moussambani, ski jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, Kenyan skier Philip Boit, Fijian and Cameroon skiers and even the Jamaican bobsleigh team to have their brief time in the Olympic spotlight, Rogge was uncompromising.

"We want to avoid what happened in swimming in Sydney," said the IOC president. "The public loved it, but I did not like it.

We have to respect the athletes.

"The Olympic Games are a mixture of pure quality, that is the best athletes in the world, and at the same time athletes of a lesser quality who achieve universality."

Rogge went on to admit that such a stance could wipe out half the nations on the IOC roster.

Have we missed something here?

Most Olympic sports now have world championships at which their best, we must presume, compete. Such events, surely, should be the stage for the "citius, altius, fortius" or "swifter, higher, stronger" ideals of the Olympic motto.

There has long been much chest-pounding at IOC headquarters in talk of the "Olympic family".

For how much longer. if countries like Moussambani's Equatorial Guinea, the Falkland Islands, Sierra Leone, Tonga (even if boxer Paea Wolfgramm was good enough to win silver in Atlanta) are not going to meet Rogge's criteria?

Like it or not, the Olympics are now a television spectacular and marketing exercise.

The athletes often play little more than bit parts on a big stage.

But to show only winners, as the American networks so delight to do, would be boring.

The stories of sportsmen and women from far-flung nations doing their best - no matter how good - add to the Olympic spirit which Rogge and others are happy to extinguish.

It is amazing that at a time these so-called also-rans are facing the chop, the IOC is happy to fly in the face of perceived opinion and add new, often questionable, sports to its roster in an attempt, one must believe, to attract greater interest.

These larger-than-life characters, wannabes who welcome the chance to take part in what is supposed to be the world's greatest sporting spectacle, hold special appeal.

For the big boys like America, the Olympics are the chance for another dose of feeling good, the opportunity for a daily check on the medal table and a quick polish for egos in a country where being the biggest and best is everything. Boring.

Of the 199 countries at the Sydney Olympics only 51 won one or more gold medals.

Just 80 took home a medal of any colour, including the first-ever for Colombia and Vietnam.

Does that mean Rogge does not want the 119 countries who did not trouble the judges in Athens next year?

One must hope not.