Playing with the Games

Once you grasp the essential triviality of the Olympics, the Cultural Olympiad falls perfectly into place, says Lloyd Evans. Even Shakespeare can’t escape

Once you grasp the essential triviality of the Olympics, the Cultural Olympiad falls perfectly into place, says Lloyd Evans. Even Shakespeare can’t escape

Funny business the Olympics. No one seems to want it. Clearly it doesn’t belong here or anywhere else. So what’s it for? The main athletic competitions — ‘track and field’ — are disciplines devised by Greek hill-farmers during the Iron Age to improve their skills in battle. The field events, like discus and javelin, teach you to throw heavy and/or pointy things at your enemy. The track events, like sprinting and hurdling, teach you to run away from your enemy if he happens to be better trained than you in the field events. We don’t need these Homeric survival techniques any more. And their do-or-die ethos is no longer part of our sporting culture.

Our settled, peaceful way of life inclines us to softer, more collegiate games such as football, tennis, darts, snooker and golf. These are our mass-sports and, if they feature in the Olympics at all, it’s out of courtesy rather than necessity. So although physical competition is a minor concern, the Games still tests human prowess in three main areas: advertising, pharmacology and municipal logistics.

Advertisers fight to squeeze the most coverage from the smallest possible investment. Athletes flock to the Games to find out which apothecary has concocted the best masking agent this time. And host cities vie to see who can build the biggest and most elaborate unwanted sports park.

Of these three contests, the construction programme is the most significant. At first sight it seems absurd to sink cash into a vast, redundant civic project.