Sporting scandals, doping and remote prospects of Sri Lanka hosting the Olympics
View(s):Athlete Susanthika Jayasinghe wrote her name in the history books a few years ago when she won silver at the Olympic Games, the second Sri Lankan to achieve this honour. If winning silver was a remote possibility, hosting the games one day in Sri Lanka is a distant but not impossible dream. During a discussion on “Ethics, sports and the media: A scandalous relationship?” at the Global Media Forum last week I asked whether smaller countries like Sri Lanka would ever be able to host the Olympics given its enormous cost and extensive infrastructure requirements.
Pat came the reply: “That is possible.” Explaining, Craig Spence, Director of Media and Communications of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) which is based in Bonn, said: “For the 2028 (Games), we are also accommodating joint bids where two or more countries can make a combined bid to stage it in these countries.”
Sweet news for Sri Lanka? Maybe, like hosting the Cricket World Cup in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. However the Olympics is a different ball game: 200 countries, over 13,000 athletes, 400 events and half a million visitors expected at the August 2016 games in Rio, Brazil. Also include the 1.4 billion Euros cost for the Rio games including giant stadiums. That is too much to ask even for a combined bid from South Asia, an impoverished region. The panellists at the discussion, along with Mr. Spence included Dagmar Freitag, Member of the German Bundestag, chairperson of Germany’s Sports Committee; Annika Zeyen -Wheelchair Basketball Paralympics winner 2012, Germany; and Joscha Weber, Head of DW online sports, Deutsche Welle as the moderator.
Ms. Zeyen, who is taking part in Rio, said not all sports are tainted by scandals but when a scandal is reported it puts a bad taste on sports.
Ms. Freitag noted that the Olympics oath professes to follow sportsmanship, ethics and values but the games would be in jeopardy if athletes don’t believe the oath they must take at every games. On the issue of the huge cost of hosting a games, Mr. Spence said many countries are waiting to submit bids, there is corporate support and ‘we’ are also bringing down costs. He dismissed claims that Olympic venues have been abandoned as white elephants saying after the 2012 games in Britain, all venues are being used. Ms. Frietag disagreed saying there were examples where Olympic venues were not being used while uprooting people from their neighbourhoods to build infrastructure was also unacceptable. “The games should be working for the benefit of the people.”
On costs, she found it unacceptable that Brazil, having severe economic problems, was spending so much on the games instead of its responsibility of looking after the people. On the Olympic oath, athlete Zeyen said that “for every athlete the oath means something. You want fair sport, clean sport for everyone. I must be able to trust my competitor and on my part be clean of doping.” The conversation then took up cheating with many referring to Russian athletes as ‘cheats’. Ms. Frietag said some states in Russia are proud that they have many successes and cheating is a way to get this. “Russia doesn’t have an existing anti-doping system, they try to cheat by hiding positive samples and hide doping cases. This is unacceptable. I hope the Olympics Committee will propose a suspension of the entire Russian athletics team. This should be a decision of the IOC.”