Commentary : Olympics Have More to Offer Than Medals

“The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these precepts is to build up a stronger and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.”

--Baron Pierre de Coubertin, 1908

“Winning medals must always be the primary goal.”

--U.S. Olympic Committee Overview Commission, 1989

The Olympic movement in recent weeks has been focused on North America, where two extraordinary groups have been meeting to examine their respective nations’ experiences in international sport and to chart courses that will guarantee a more rewarding future.

In Canada, this has been a soul-searching, self-flagellating process. Dubin’s Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Charles Dubin, Ontario associate chief justice, was appointed by the Canadian government in the wake of track and weightlifting drug scandals last year to identify the pressures that tempt the nation’s athletes to cheat in order to win.

“Have we, as Canadians, lost track of what athletic competition is all about?” Dubin asked in January at the beginning of hearings that are expected to last for several months. The track and field phase of the inquiry, expected to feature testimony from Ben Johnson, is scheduled to begin next Tuesday at Toronto.

On this side of the border, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Overview Commission concluded its 12-month evaluation of the country’s Olympic effort Sunday at Portland, Ore., with the delivery of a 21-page report to the USOC’s executive board. In the report, the eight-member commission, chaired by New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, offered its view of what athletic competition is about.

“Winning medals must always be the primary goal,” the report said on the second page, reiterating 12 pages later that “the objective of the U.S. Olympic team is to win medals.”

Those two sentences set the report’s tone, and it is that tone that threatens to lead U.S. athletes down the same path that has proved so damaging to the Canadians. As Ben Johnson discovered, at the end of that path often lies fool’s gold.

The report is not without merit. Perhaps its greatest value to the USOC will be in preventing a Congressional investigation.

Congress reportedly had its interest aroused last year by media reports concerning the USOC’s wasteful financial operation. Those same reports, USOC officials say, cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in fund raising. But most, if not all, of the criticisms were addressed by the commission.

It demanded the institution of sound business policies and strict accounting for expenditures by administrators, suggesting that they learn to operate without limousines and chartered aircraft. It also warned them to avoid conflicts of interest or even the appearance of conflicts of interest.

Most welcome is the priority the commission put on athletes over administrators, recommending that potential Olympians receive more financial support through scholarships, job opportunities programs and even direct payments.

But by emphasizing winning medals, the commission ultimately failed the athletes.

“The report is symptomatic of the problem rather than the solution to it,” said John MacAloon, a University of Chicago anthropologist and student of the Olympics. “It does not recognize the Olympic Games as a means to an end but as an end itself.”

For what should an Olympian strive?

Certainly victory is one thing. There is nothing wrong with winning. But Pierre de Coubertin, the French baron credited with reviving the modern Olympics almost a century ago, also listed goals such as beauty, justice, boldness, honor, joy, imagination, progress and peace.

The commission did not tell the athletes that the Olympics are not just another sports event, like the contest for the American League East pennant that Steinbrenner’s Yankees wage each year. It did not tell the athletes that they are part of a greater design when they become Olympians. It did not tell the athletes that they should not use drugs to enhance their performances. It told them to win.

In doing so, the commission allowed the Soviet Bloc to set the agenda. The Soviet Union did not participate in the Olympics until 1952, when it was sure that it could win a representative number of medals. East Germany has built an unparalleled sports machine designed to win medals. It is important for the United States, Steinbrenner said Sunday, to be among the best.

“It’s interesting that the commission would take this approach at a time when we, as a nation, are moving away from Cold War rhetoric,” MacAloon said. “I have a feeling that the American public has a more complex, more sophisticated idea of what the Olympic movement means than is contained in Steinbrenner’s report.”

Indications are that he is correct. Upset about the negative feedback they have received because of Ben Johnson’s positive steroid test at Seoul, more than one U.S. Olympian has complained that college and professional sports in this country have not suffered as much despite the publicity surrounding numerous athletes who are involved with not only steroids but illicit street drugs as well.

The answer to that is that much of the public, despite so much evidence to the contrary, still believes Olympians belong on a higher plane than most other athletes.

For example, Harvard University will present an award this weekend to Florence Griffith Joyner for her outstanding contributions to society. Previous winners include Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Javier Perez de Cuellar.

Olympic athletes should not resent their responsibility to the public, but embrace it. And the U.S. Olympic Committee should judge its athletes by a standard other than gold, silver and bronze.