The Olympics: Plus Ça Change . . .

The symbiotic relationship between sports and society has reverted to its original, proper status under the ancient Greeks: A good time had by all.

The Olympics ended a week ago yesterday, but I was on vacation—trying to emulate the academic or European approach to August—so wasn’t able to complete my thoughts on the Games until now. That’s doubly appropriate, because my kids go back to school today, even if I refuse to believe that summer’s over until Labor Day. I’m actually an Olympics fanatic. One of my earliest memories is watching on TV as Misha, an ursine mascot, “cried” through the use of spectator placards at the closing ceremonies of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (a year before we emigrated from the USSR). I ended up writing my master’s thesis at the London School of Economics on the state of the Olympics in the Cold War’s aftermath. So it’s a quadrennial big deal, though as I write here, people should enjoy the sports without reading in too much of the politics that now intrude on so much of our regular lives. —IS

In these dog days of summer, political observers despair that not even the Olympics can help us escape a disenchanting year. After all, if the “choice” between presidential candidates is bad, wait ’til you see the political crisis in host nation France. That’s not to mention an anarchistic attack on high-speed rail hours before the opening ceremonies that led to heightened security in the already tense Parisian core. Or the $1.5 billion spent in a largely futile effort to clean the Seine. Or an opening ceremony that featured a transgressive Last Supper and a “Team Palestine” amid the ongoing Gaza War. As punishment for their own transgressions, Russia and Belarus weren’t even allowed to compete.

More broadly, the media again reminded us of how hyper-capitalism, culture wars, and the threat of terrorism have spoiled the world’s preeminent athletic event. Pundits lament the passing of a purer age, when doctors trained in their spare time—recall “Chariots of Fire”—and competition was about more than endorsement contracts. These Cassandras habitually predict the demise of the Olympics as modern society wreaks havoc on the sacrosanct traditions of the ancients.

Yet this idea that the Games should promote a kinder, gentler world, the apotheosis of human progress, reflects sentimentalized history. Since the end of the Cold War, the Olympics have thrown off the corrosive chains of ideology to revert to the values of the original games, among which were the dominance of sports for their own sake rather than as a metaphor for national advancement.