Life is grand

The scenes from London over the weekend were disturbing. Watching portesters hurl themselves at the Olympic torch as riot police aggresively brought them down left me confused and worried. Is sport political? I’m not sure it always is but I am coming round to the thought that something as massive and staged as the Olympic games is political. It shows a level of support for a country that cannot be denied. The organisation of the Olympic games is an engagement with every facet of the host country; from the sports bodies to the economic system and right up to the top of government.

They wouldn’t have held the Olympic games in apartheid South Africa. They didn’t even let one off Rugby games happen during those days.

Sir Steve Redgrave was interiewed in London and he said that the boycotting of the Berlin games many years ago did absolutely nothing. Maybe they didn’t but these protests of the Beijing 2008 Olympic games certainly are higlighting the situation in Tibet to many people who were only vaguely aware of the trouble. To see riot police bringing people down on the streets of London is a powerful statement.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 10:32 am and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.