Atlanta Olympics 1996 - 9 August 1996

Within our time, the Olympic Games have left indelible memories, some splendid, like the black man Jesse Owens outrunning everybody, to the visible inner rage of the games' host, Adolf Hitler, some memories horrific – the sudden slaughter of those Israeli athletes.

What, I wonder, will we have left in our memory banks for the Olympics of 1996?

I've been wincing my way through the American press – and I do mean the newspapers and magazines – to find a general agreement about the Games. There is one, and the only thing that's surprising about it, is that it should be Americans themselves, who are almost to a voice, disgusted by the commercialism of the scene itself and damningly critical of the television network that bought it, and has put up billions, literally, to go on covering the summer games from now through 2008.

If they maintain their monopoly, I can only say I positively relish the thought that I shall not be here in 2008 unless a very cruel Almighty decides to keep me lingering on into my hundredth year.

Some years ago in the heyday of John McEnroe when some inspired English reporter dubbed him "Superbrat" I wrote a sad piece about the transformation of tennis from a gallant game into a money game. It was written when a famous woman player objected to a linesman's call – you see how long ago it was, before we were compelled to say linesperson – she objected, gathered her collection of racquets and marched off, while the crowd – once known as the spectators – booed not the player but the chair umpire. The prima donna stayed away long enough for the umpire and the referee to go begging her to come back, which she did to the cheers of the audience, which, it struck me then, had come there partly to see and enjoy such tantrums.

The money by then had grown so big that nobody dared throw McEnroe out of any game, no matter how atrocious his behaviour, how foul his language. He'd been at it by then, I believe, eight or nine years, till it took the Australians to tell him that he'd forfeited a match. I can still recall, with a glow of Schadenfreude delight in somebody else's pain – I can still recall the look on McEnroe's face, the blank, eye-bulging disbelief as if some junior officer had told Napoleon to go to his room until he was sent for.

Well we've all lamented for years now, the commercialism that has overtaken just about every sport there is. My first awareness that it could ever come within purchasing distance of golf, came on my first visit to an English golf tournament thirty years ago in which the course was marked, or blotched, here and there by big billboards advertising the cigarette made by the tournament sponsor. A bizarre intrusion, I thought, on a beautiful stretch of landscape.

It's something I'm relieved to say that has never been copied in America. Just as we've never succumbed to the custom, which must be at least thirty years old in Europe, of having to watch ten minutes of motion picture advertising when you go to the cinema. I can't think why the Americans have never taken it up. Same with advertising posters on buses. New York gave into that about fifty years after Britain.

I mention particularly those offences which were not committed by Americans because as a little boy, I picked up the universal prejudice that all forms of commercialism – the more vulgar the better – came from America. Well now, let me say, not for myself, but to report the verdict of nine-tenths of the American press, of the men and women who were sports writers all the time, and of columnists who took on Atlanta as a special assignment. The first, loudest complaint was about the appearance of the Centennial Park. The mildest criticism from a highly old-fashioned paper went like this:

"The Games's five-ring circle which should have dominated the place, was represented on the floor of the walk-in fountain the children used as a respite from the heat, while the names displayed on high, were those of the corporations that had antied up for the purpose. The physical structures were so undistinguished, one had to conclude that they were meant to be that way, so as not to compete with the commercial attractions".

That's a comparatively calm, merely regretful note. Most workaday sports writers were appalled the first time they walked down the so-called "international boulevard" where one reporter wrote; "You could spend your pocket money on beer, giros and schlocky souvenirs, make a date with a stripper, watch bleached blondes in bikini tops chaperoned by tattooed men in muscle shirts".

This young writer, whom I'd never heard of before, one Erica Goode, captured what she called "the best and the worst of America" in a running splatter of prose as good as anything that came out of Atlanta. Quote: "American gymnast performs. Wild cheers. Ukrainian gymnast performs. Scattered applause. We have crassness – a 165 foot Coke-bottled shaped tower, media hubris – get that so and so television camera out of my face". She ends: "To paraphrase Popeye, we are what we are. Terrorists, we've got 'em. Chrome-plated pickup trucks filled with cheerleaders, those too. Bad coffee – plenty of it. Commercialism that threatens to overwhelm any remaining vestige of sportsmanship? Yup. Also a young couple standing near the shrine of flowers at the site of the bombing. They'd been there the night it happened. Why did they return? To say we're not afraid. We have that too, and Michael Johnson".

So the consensus of the press is that Atlanta symbolised the triumph of commercialism over a sport, a whole raft of sports, beyond anything the greediest sponsor had ever dared to dream.

There were two single incidents which seemed to say that the so-called "spirit of the Games" is either a fiction or a genteel relic of a vanished time. The day the Irish swimmer won her second gold medal, the beaten American girl called a press conference and dropped the strong hint that no doubt the winner was on forbidden drugs. Another girl refused to wear the Olympic logo, keeping her sponsor's togs on. Happily, she was disqualified. A man, a runner, a nationality I'm afraid too obvious, jumped the starting gun twice and was disqualified but refused to leave the blocks.

Where were these people trained, brought up? A question that will never be answered because I believe by the turn of the century, there will have grown up a generation so used to a 165 foot Coke-bottle tower, they'll miss it if it isn't there. And if you say you went to the Derby, they'll naturally want to know whose Derby. In golf today, I have to look at the fine print under the title, the name of a tournament, to see where it's being played. We used to watch the Southern Open, the San Diego Open. Now they're likely to be billed as the Quickie Mint Julep Open and the Tailored Slate Open. The day we arrive at Augusta to watch the Cadillac Masters, I won't be one of the arrivals.

Of the actual television coverage in this country, you could see barely five minutes of any continuous sport. One writer clocked in an hour nineteen minutes of performance and forty-one minutes of chatter. Typical is a couple of games of the tennis final with Agassi slashing the puzzled Bruguera, and then they say, he won the second set easily and here he is taking his gold. The star-spangled banner thumped in, Andre looked up to heaven, he bit his lip, he slowly closed his eyes, something glinted, rolling down his cheek. Could it be a tear? The Wall Street Journal reporter thought Agassi was not far enough along in his acting lessons to make it a tear. He thought it was sweat.

Same with other sports. You never got anything like enough of your favourite game unless it was gymnastics. Prime time in the evenings seemed to be given over to every form of them. The New York Times man said: "Throw out synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics. Any event that needs background music isn't a sport".

Incidentally, one unpleasant memory I'm afraid will stay with a lot of viewers, is the nasty reflection we had on the training of very young girls for those same gymnastics. The serious contenders must start at the age of nine or ten. Many are shipped from home to a gruelling forty-hour week in a training centre under coaches about as gentle as Bela Lugosi. Such a one, just before Kerri Strug was about to do her final vault, heard her – we heard her – complain that she couldn't feel her leg. The coach grinned: "We gotta go one more time. Shake it out." She did, injured herself, had to be carried to the podium. This was hailed in some quarters as an inspiring example of youthful heroism. In others as a form of child abuse.

The respectable writer I quoted earlier said, after pondering the training routine of these gymnastic tots: "If these kids were making sneakers in Honduras under these conditions, we'd be outraged." Well I don't suppose there's anything we can do about the impressment of nine year old girls into gymnastics, any more than we can stop parents shoving ten, eleven year old girls into the money world of tennis, which includes today, along with good, clean fun, putting adolescents under the spell – to put it tactfully – of voracious, manly coaches.

But about the presentation of the Games something should be done, and the rousing word from Sydney, which gets them in 2000, is that some decent house cleaning will be done. The Sydney Organising Committee has already given a pledge that the central plaza, square or whatever will be free from any sponsor's enclave, hospitality tents and the like.

A happy and crucial point is that the new buildings, all the new construction required for the Games will be financed not by private companies, television rights and big time sponsors. It will be financed by the New South Wales Government.

So there'll be no need to put up, or put up with, a 165 foot tower in the shape of a Coke bottle. One interested dead-pan party said: "We'll be celebrating, well frankly the Olympic Games".

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