Everything Sucks

Just when I was really getting into this World Cup thing, I see an interview with a guy called Declan Hill . Hill is an investigative journalist and former researcher with CBC’s the fifth estate and has won several awards for his work.

In 2008, Declan Hill published The Fix: Soccer & Organized Crime.

Over four years, he interviewed more than two hundred people, including professional gamblers, Mafia hitmen, undercover cops, top-level international soccer players, referees, and officials. He met men who claim they have bribed their way into fixing the results of some of the biggest matches in the sport. Initially very sceptical, Hill travelled across four continents to corroborate their stories. He found soccer leagues where mobsters have fixed more than eighty per cent of the games.

The book, however, is not just about match fixing in soccer, the world’s most popular sport. Throughout the text, Hill uses examples from other sports – tennis, hockey, even rowing – to show that the credibility of professional sport now lies on a fragile foundation, and it provides enough hints to suspect that all sports above amateur level should look nervously over their shoulder.

Hill’s book has been translated into 14 languages and within 3 weeks of its publication, the Union of European Football Associations set up a special unit comprised of gambling experts and police officers to conduct a thorough investigation. The unit helped German investigators identify some 200 matches that were fixed in Europe and arrested 75 people.

Unfortunately, FIFA (which Declan Hill calls the “Vatican of Soccer”) refuses to conduct an investigation into World Cup match-fixing. He reckons with 40 billion dollars in bets on World Cup events, there’s a lot at stake.

During the last World Cup, Hill befriended the former goalkeeping coach of the team from Ghana and was given the results of an upcoming match in advance.

They said the game against Brazil was going to be three goals and above two days before the game actually happened,” Hill said, adding that he believes that game was fixed. The goalkeeping coach was later fired after being caught fixing games.

According to the Globe & Mail, the most dangerous time for match fixing in the World Cup is coming up now that the preliminary eliminations are out of the way. On Hill’s blog this week he suggests a couple of things to be aware of during upcoming matches which might indicate fixed game possibilities:

Games where one team has nothing to play for. Even if they win the teams will not progress to the next stage of the competition.

Teams which have a history of not paying their players properly. It is the phenomenon of relative exploitation which drives fixing. The officials receive lots of money, the players comparatively little.

Check out the blog for further details and information.

Is anyone shocked and/or surprised by this? I kind of am. Probably I was being naive by never even considering that these things could be rigged. D’uh!

When I was watching the Declan Hill interview last night I felt kind of deflated. Is there anything left to enjoy that isn’t rife with corruption?

Olympic Fever, Chills & Diarrhea

How come we have so much money for the Olympics in these tough economic times when businesses are going bankrupt and people are losing their jobs and social program funding is being slashed?

•  The provincial governments of Saskatchewan and Newfoundland have contributed $1.5 million
• Quebec and Ontario have contributed $5 million
• Ottawa has made a 654.65 million dollar “investment” into the games
• Official sponsors, Canada Post, Royal Canadian Mint and the Vancouver Port Corporation have tossed in $23 million

Security alone is going to cost $900 million. No one can come up with a full tally of what the games are finally going to cost. There is a lot money going into infrastructure which isn’t being included in the actual Olympic tally:

•  $1 billion is being spent on highway improvements
• Close to another billion on the trade and convention centre
• $2 billion on the Canada Line Skytrain

 Then there are a few million here and there for other things such as:

• $47 million for the 2010 Winter Games Secretariat
• $300-million “Olympic bonus” that unionized government employees got for signing a four-year contract that ends after the Games (and after the election).

 So far, the tally seems to be around $6 billion[1].

I don’t remember getting to vote on whether I wanted that money spend on luge or homeless shelters. Do you? (Oh, but don’t worry. There won’t be any unsightly homeless people in view during the games. They’re being “relocated”, which means that once the security fences go up, any shiftless poor people that are still around will be arrested.)

Olympics Then & Now

The original Olympic games were just a 190-meter footrace held every 4 years in Olympia Greece. Then, around 700 BC, they added boxing, wrestling, equestrian events and a pentathlon (which involved jumping, discus, javelin, running and wrestling).  The whole thing was over in 3 days. And everyone competed naked[2]. The closing ceremony consisted of slaughtering 100 oxen and having a big-assed feast.

Around 400 AD the Emperor at the time cancelled the Olympics because he reckoned they were too pagan in light of the nation’s conversion to Christianity.

It wasn’t until the late 19^th century that the Olympics were revived. The first modern Olympics was held in 1896 in Athens and featured cycling, fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting, wrestling and athletics (12 track and field-type events) There were 241 participants representing 14 nations.

Today’s summer Olympics feature almost 11,000 competitors from over 200 countries. There are 33 sports, 52 disciplines and nearly 400 events[3].

The winter Olympics (that are going to cost us over $6 billion) feature only 2,500 athletes from 80 countries competing in 84 events in: snowboarding, hockey, figure skating, curling, speed skating, Alpine skiing, cross country skiing, ski jumping, biathlon, bobsleigh, luge and skeleton.

Pros & Cons

People say Olympic money is well-spent as it’s going to bring hoards of people into the country who have piles of money to spend; and that tourism will increase for years to come because of it; and that the new infrastructure will be good for all sorts of things in the future.

People also say that competition is good and healthy and inspirational and brings the country together and forges important ties with other countries and puts us into the international limelight which will be good for all sorts of things in the future.

Maybe I’m not seeing the big picture clearly because to me it looks like the Olympics are more about the promotion of political ideologies and commercialism these days than about sport. Between the boycotts, threats of terrorism and violence, the rampant drug use, the IOC scandals and the flogging of Olympic kitch[4], the whole athletic competition angle seems to get lost.

Also, I wonder how much the Olympics are about showcasing this country’s best athletes versus just showcasing elitist athletes – those who have the money to train hours every day and to hire personal coaches to work exhaustively with them.

Anyway, the Torch Relay[5] begins this Friday, October 30th in Victoria. This party alone is costing half a million and, from the sounds of it, there will be more protesters and journalists in attendance than regular citizens.

I don’t know… back when I was a kid the Olympics were exciting. We used to huddle around the TV every spare minute we had to watch the competitions. As time went on, all the craziness, corruption and Las Vegas glitz sort of spoiled that. These days, I’m wondering how we justify spending such obscene amounts of money on this particular reality show.

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[1] The 2012 summer Olympics in London are so far estimated to cost the equivalent of $15.5 billion Canadian, but with more than 2 years to go, the tally is far from complete.

[2] Hence the origin of the word “gymnasium” from the Greek “gymnos” meaning naked

[3]  Air sports, Bandy, Baseball, Basque pelota, Billiard sports,  Boules, Bowling, Bridge, Chess, Cricket, DanceSport, Floorball, Golf (new in 2016), Karate, Korfball, Lifesaving, Motorcycle sport, Mountaineering and Climbing, Netball, Orienteering, Polo, Powerboating, Racquetball, Roller sports, Rugby union (new in 2016), Softball, Sport Climbing, Squash, Sumo, Surfing, Tug of war, Underwater sports, Water skiing, Wushu

[4] Television revenues are contributing around $650 million to the Olympic pot.

[5] Interestingly, though the ancient Greeks kept flame going throughout the Olympics, there was never an Olympic Torch Relay until the 1936 Berlin Olympics when Hitler decided it would be a great symbolic connection to classical Greece as the Aryan forerunner of his view of the German Reich.