Phelps personifies nearly everything that is wrong with the Olympics

Michael Phelps has won a lot of Olympic medals. This time. Last time. And, according to himself, will win them next time around as well. The world is so united in praise of the human dolphin, to disagree is to take one’s life in one’s hands.

So here goes. Michael Phelps personifies nearly everything that’s wrong with the Olympics.

The abiding myth of sporting events of this scale is that they raise the spirits of individuals, empower potential athletes and create role models who inspire ordinary folk, thereby improving global health and happiness.

What a load of hyped-up hogwash. Michael Phelps inspired a lot of journalists last week, including some hacks employed by newspapers with proud traditions. He inspired them to try out his diet. Just in case you’ve missed it, his breakfast consists of half a dozen pancakes, three large bowls of porridge, some French toast, several fried egg and bacon sandwiches and a number of other protein, fat and sugar-laden items which contribute just a little to the 12,000 calories he ingests every day.

Individual editors in different publications were all struck, simultaneously, by the same creative, innovative and insightful idea: let’s cook up Michael Phelps’s breakfast, take pictures of it, and get one of our colour writers to try to eat it.

Now, if we stand back from that idea and if our brain cells are lined up the way normal brain cells line up, a number of considerations would strike us. First of all, we might think; “Hey, you know, someone else is likely to come up with this idea, because it’s kind of obvious.” Then we might go on to think: “The story emerging from this exercise is fairly predictable. Our journalist is going to fail to eat the full breakfast, is going to recount how disgusting and nauseating it was to tackle, and what’s the point of setting up something any fool could prophecy the results of in advance?”

Our thinking might even get a little moral, as in looking at the wider issues affecting the western world, like obesity. At a time when British health authorities are threatening to take grossly fat children into care, on the basis that over-feeding a child so that its health, if not survival, is threatened is as bad as starving a child, is it a good thing to promote precisely the kind of foodstuffs and scale of consumption involved in the Phelps’s diet? At a time when waste is an ever-present issue in the developed world and starvation occupies the same position in the developing world, how gross is it to toss out food which should never have been cooked for this purpose in the first place? Fans of Michael Phelps may rightly say that it’s not his fault that media sink to such lows in addressing his triumphs, but it’s worth asking if the media reaction doesn’t partly derive from the non-triumphant nature of some of the victories. If someone wins a gold medal by a fraction of a percentage point of a second, what we’re witnessing is the triumph of electronic measurement, rather than human achievement.

Furthermore, no offence to the lad, but even that word “human” might usefully be interrogated in this context. This man eats enough to feed four male adults or five female adults a day. He then spends all of each of six days of every week throughout the year training. Training to win gold medals, in some cases by a fraction of a percentage point of a second. What aspect of humanity does this express or validate?

The reverse is the case: the world is applauding a man who has turned away from life in order to become a marine medal-winning machine.

To paraphrase Churchill: the Olympics is a rotten cod wrapped in history and surrounded by myth. Even its fans acknowledge that it’s a rotten cod, accepting that in many events, drug-taking outstrips the capacity of the authorities to monitor and prevent it, so that what is measured is not the real performance of striving individuals, but the relative cleverality of performance-enhancers and money.

Of course, those fans of the Olympics who know in their hearts they’re not witnessing real human achievement have already surrendered, since they’re precisely the same people who scoff at the inclusion of synchronised swimming and volleyball in the global event. These fans say, with a vague air of being virtuously cynical, that they don’t watch “that stuff” but save themselves for the gymnastics and the athletics. A bit like the folks who never watch Big Brother or Fáilte Towers, believing and hoping to convince others that they save themselves for news, current affairs and the odd high-end documentary. If that were the case, bilge TV wouldn’t have the numbers to ensure its survival, and the Olympics coverage wouldn’t stress how many billions of people watched the opening ceremony, almost all of whom were codded up to their two credulous eyes.

Those billions of gullible viewers, egged on by broadcasters, decided the opening ceremonies and the ensuing spectacles were “incredible.” How right they were.

For starters, the fireworks weren’t fireworks at all. Well, ok, what the Irish sports reporters saw on that first day were fireworks, I’ll concede that much. But what the viewers worldwide saw were animated electronic pretend fireworks, because the cameras couldn’t do justice to the real thing. So they mocked up something which definitely was not the real thing, sold it to the world as authentic, and the world bought it, hook, line and synthetic roman candle. Could someone please locate whatever moron first said, “The camera does not lie” and ram the coverage of the opening ceremony down his gizzard? Please? Not only did the cameras lie, they lied repeatedly. The little girl who sang Ode to the Motherland, all sweet voice and bright-eyed prettiness, didn’t actually sing the song at all. She mimed. The real singer wasn’t considered attractive enough to allow in front of the cameras. Some member of the Politburo apparently decided her teeth were crooked. Although the entire Chinese project is founded on the notion of equality, this powerful representative of communism went right back to the days of foot-binding: never mind the humiliation and discomfort to the woman (or, in this case, to a talented little girl) — concentrate on meeting the needs of the men involved.

Of course, it helped that putting out a prettier child would also meet the needs of beauty-obsessed western media and the big sponsors involved.

Lest anybody think the mortification of the little girl with the crooked teeth was an exceptional visual fraud perpetrated by the Chinese authorities with the collaboration of TV stations worldwide, let’s not forget the parading of China’s 56 ethic groups.

Again, this used children dressed in the costumes typical of each group. Except that the children used in this demonstration of diversity weren’t from those ethnic groups at all. They were from the dominant majority group.

There are lies, damned lies — and Olympics.