It’s Time to Admit The Olympics Just Aren’t Worth It Anymore

I’m done with the Olympics.

You should be done with the Olympics.

Olympians should be done with the Olympics.

Once upon a time, the Olympics signified something special, but it’s become simply a biennial reminder that the sports world is just as corrupt, shady and despicable as the rest of the nonsense most of us rush to ignore.

The Rio Summer Olympics are set to begin on August 5th, but it’s difficult to imagine a sporting event I’ve not only cared less about, but am also currently actively rooting against. Every time I hear Olympic news about qualifying or a see a feature about the next plucky underdog I’m supposed to root for, I get momentarily excited but then the next immediate thought is something like: “Oh right, people are dying down there…”

Gone are the days of Jesse Owens, Jackie Joiner-Kersee, Mary-Lou Retton or The Dream Team. The Olympics are no longer in any sort of “Golden” or “Silver” era, but maybe something more like lead…poisonous and relatively worthless other than to prop up aged edifices long past their prime.

The Olympics do far more harm than good.

Don’t worry: This isn’t going to be an argument against the Olympics continued shift toward allowing professional athletes, because—seriously—screw the idealized praise of amateurism and all of the nonsense that engenderers. No, rather, this is about almost everything else the Olympics does, which is essentially trash covered up in a thin veneer of NBC’s highly-produced schmaltz.

Let’s start in Rio, because Rio is going to be awful.

If I’m actively rooting against the Rio Olympics, then there has to be some stronger term for how I feel about the politicians who made the Rio Olympics a thing and then shoehorned it into their city. I don’t believe in hatred, but maybe I’m awfully close here, and if you’re not, you’re not paying attention.

My ears started to perk up around the Rio Olympics due to the writing, reporting, advocacy and general badassery of Dave Zirin of The Nation, who has been on the case of what’s going on in Rio long before the rest of the general sports media or public. His book Deal with the Devil shows how events like the World Cup and Olympics have forever changed a culture of Brazilians who might love soccer, basketball, gymnastics and whatever the hell racewalking is supposed to be, but these people also love clean water and the ability to live without being displaced by a freaking racewalking pavilion.

Remember when everyone with a heart was pissed for like two minutes over the Chinese government’s treatment of their poorer citizens before forgetting about that to focus on whether or not someone none of us knew or cared about days earlier won in a sporting event none of us knew or cared about days earlier?

Well, the Brazilian government’s treatment of their most at-risk citizens is sort of like that, only without the cruel efficiency of the Chinese regime. The Brazilians have been able to screw up their inhumanity to the tune of: not being able to guarantee the safety of anyone in the country.

The reasoning behind much of this makes sense in a dystopian, authoritarian sort of way, because creating a little “athlete pavilion” isn’t only quaint, but it keeps all of the messy issues cordoned off from the cameras. But, while I get governments trying to put their best foot forward for an international audience, Brazil’s best foot isn’t really all that pretty when it’s laying on the beach with all of the other disembodied limbs.

Still, Hooray for fencing. Right guys?! RIGHT!?!

I could keep going, but Ashley Feinberg of Gawker has collected all of the reasons the Rio Olympics are a complete fustercluck. Here’s a few high notes for those of you who haven’t been paying attention:

• The police haven’t been paid and can’t guarantee anyone’s safety.
• Construction workers haven’t been paid and can’t guarantee infrastructure will be completed.
• There’s super bacteria in the water.
• There’s poop in the water.
• There’s oil in the water.
• There’s a deadly disease being carried by mosquitos.
• Hospitals are running out of medicine.
• Hospitals are running out of syringes and needles.
• Hospitals are running out of doctors.

There’s more, oh…there’s more.

All this? All this to watch a bunch of athletes compete in sports you could not get paid to watch in any other year? Seriously people? Why are we doing this to ourselves?

It’s not just Rio, by the way. The Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2020 are already fraught with corruption scandals which have claimed the jobs of two Tokyo governors. Meanwhile, the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi is dealing with a massive doping scandal two years later.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is such a corrupt bunch of jerkwads that they make the group over at FIFA look like humanitarians. They need to be corrupt, though, because they need to be able to convince unsuspecting citizens like those in Rio that the games will actually be good for them. They do this by greasing the palms of similarly corrupt politicians in these cities who preach the gospel of infrastructure investment when all they’re really doing is drowning in free gifts and swag from all the people who big on the construction projects.

In reality, there is little to no evidence that hosting an Olympics helps the host city in any way or makes them any actual money, while there’s a host of evidence that the process of picking a host is fraught with bribery and chicanery and cities are left ruined in the event’s wake.

But at least the athletes deserve this, right?

Bob Costas and Rowdy Gaines have assured me that these are all good people!

Sure, the vast majority of athletes are worth rooting for, especially when one completely forgets about all the doping scandals, age-related scandals, organized crime concerns and corruption in training facilities where young boys and girls are treated like lab rats and show ponies because some coach was paid millions to demand abuse excellence.

Athletes are people, and I’m sure many of them are good people, but why do we care so much about the hardships of people who play sports and are talked about in hushed tones with stock music quietly playing underneath when the mere fact the Olympics exists has created infinitely worse hardships for infinitely more people?

Great, you overcame acne to be the fourth-best trampoline gymnast in a world that never actually asked for any trampoline gymnasts, but this whole community used to have houses!

Honestly, aren’t we at the point in world history where we realize we have just as much in common with the person who was displaced so Olympians could have their giant (safe) sex party as we do with the horny Olympians themselves?

The Olympics were supposed to foster sportsmanship, unity, peace and make this great big world feel just a little bit smaller once every couple of years. Now, can’t you see how they kind of do the opposite of that—engendering nationalism, ruining countries, fostering corruption and legalized crime while making the rich and powerful more rich and powerful while making the poor and helpless even poorer and more helpless?

We can’t even hope for a moment in these Olympics where the athletes speak truth to power like Owens in Munich or John Carlos and Tommie Smith in Mexico City. The power, here, is the athletics and all of the nonsense that goes on behind the scenes so we can spend a couple of weeks curled up in a swimming-fueled stupor.

Enjoy the Olympics, I guess. Pretend that you know all there is to know about water polo to impress your family and friends and then go back to not remembering the name of any water polo players for another four years. If that’s your thing, have a blast.

If this were the last Olympics, we might all miss it in some way, shape or form, but the only things the Olympics this year will prove is that the world would be a whole lot better off without it.