I. K. Gyasi
8 September 2008
column
WE SENT a slim team of six boxers and three athletes to the just-needed 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and did not have even a bronze medal to show for it. When Frenchman Baron Pierre D'Coubertin revived the Olympic Games in 1896, he emphasized the importance of taking part in the Games as opposed to winning.
As I have had occasion to observe, the ancient Greeks would have treated the ideal of the Baron with amusement at best and contempt at worst. The ancient Greeks engaged in the Games not only to please the dead but, even more important, to win the coveted laurel that encircled the head of the winner.
I have written about the ancient Olympic Games about four or five times. The last time was in 2004 when I wrote about the astonishing victory of the Greek soccer team over the Portuguese team. I plead with the reader to allow me to bore and irritate him by referring once more to the ancient Olympics as a background for my comments on our very dismal performance, more correctly our non-performance.
In their book, THE OLYMPIC GAMES: THE FIRST THOUSAND YEARS, Professor M. I. Finlay and Dr. H. W. Pleket tell of the passion which gripped the Greeks as far as the Games were concerned.
In ancient Greece, city-states as artistically and intellectually advanced as Athens, and as militarily-powerful as Sparta, had the highest reverence for the Games. When it was time for the Games, even city-states at war would suspend hostilities and grant safe passage for sportsmen crossing enemy territory so that the Games could be held.
According to the authors, there were many honours for the winners. Statues were erected in their honour out of public funds at home, in Olympia, Delphi and other places. Special honorary decrees were inscribed in stone or metal and displayed, sometimes for many years, in one public place or another. Again, honorary citizenship was offered to outstanding athletes from other city-states.
Material rewards included pensions, subsidies and payments of fines incurred by the athlete for breach of the rules of the Games.
There were elaborate home-coming celebrations with processions being a regular feature.
Apart from cash and goods, winners were well rewarded in many other ways, for, as stated by the authors, " all athletes expected and accepted material rewards for victory, regardless of class or personal fortune."
As Stan Greenberg states in the book, THE GUINNESS BOOK OF OLYMPICS: FACTS AND FIGURES (1984), "Eventually, the importance of winning at Olympia, and the reflected glory it bestowed on the winner's birthplace, led to the cities hiring professionals and bribing judges." Today, it is athletes cheating by taking performance enhancing drugs in order to win. Some losers have also brought charges of bias against today's judges.
One Peter Jones wrote in the August 30,2003 issue of the British newsmagazine, THE SPECTATOR, that victorious athletes in ancient Greece " commissioned poets like Pinder to celebrate their achievements in song, and sculptors to put up statues of them in public display (that is why Olympia was full of them"). According to Jones, the Games were not held for fun but were taken seriously. He writes that, while the victors advertised their victory, "the losers kept quiet about the fact: Pinder describes them as having no glad homecoming, but keeping well out of the way of their enemies." Why?
Jones writes that "no Greek liked to be laughed at in public, and losers knew that the fate that could await them. Jones states further, "In fact, the ancient Olympic Committee took this into account by demanding that all contestants turn up at Olympics a month in advance to train."
He also states, "The result was that, if a contestant, seeing what the competition was like, knew that he had no chance, he could find some excuse to abandon his entry.
Jones finally concludes, "Hence no Greek said, 'It's the taking part that counts' or 'Everyone's a winner". Winning was the whole point of taking part; everyone but the actual winner was a loser. There were no prizes for second or third."
We can sometimes be a funny and strange people. When I say 'we', I refer to all of us, namely, the citizens, the athletes, the sports authorities and the government itself.
We dislike losers while we derive vicarious pleasures from the victory of winners. When Joshua Clottey's feet touched our soil, no less a person than the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, Professor Fobih, was there himself to meet the champion. If Clottey had lost, perhaps only his trusting mother would have been at the airport to meet him.
We would like to eat fish but we would not like to wet our feet, just like the poor cat in the adage, as alluded to by Shakespeare in his play, MACBETH. As sure as night is night and day is day, we will send a team to the 2012 Olympics to be held in London. We shall show our flag and our kente. However, unless we change our attitude and approach towards sports, we will have nothing to bring home except humiliation.
The year 2012 seems to be very far away but it will catch up with us within a twinkle of an eye. What do we need to succeed at the 2012 London Olympics? Of course, the most important "material' is a squad of sportsmen and women in athletics, boxing and soccer. We need not stretch our resources to include ice hockey players.
Our sportsmen and women should be given the motivation necessary so that they can die a little for mother Ghana. We may not be able to give them the moon or the sun should we deny them such necessary things as football boots, running spikes, punching bags, rings, adequate medical care and respectable pocket allowance?
The best sportsmen and women in the world need first-class coaching. Do we have very competent coaches for track and field? Have we sent or do we intend sending our coaches abroad to learn the latest techniques in coaching athletes for the high jump, the discus and the shot putt, for example? What about the various track races?
Our Physical Education teachers are doing their best to raise sportsmen and women at the basic and second cycle levels. Unfortunately, they are forced to teach all the disciplines including hockey, soccer and volley ball. When the 'boys' and 'girls' have left school they need to be more competently coached to do good job in sports competitions.
At one time, Ghana was the strongest boxing nation in the Commonwealth. What has happened? Is it poor coaching? Poor human material? Poor or even non-existent equipment? What?
We can do it, and even earn more than the four medals (one silver in boxing, two bronze, also in boxing and a bronze in soccer) we have had to be content with so far. Usain Bolt is a human being.
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