Lori Falce: The sportsmanship of the Olympics

I have always loved the Olympics.

Even if I disagree with the International Olympic Committee on whether any particular event is a sport or not, I gladly bow to the greater pageantry of the entire production.

Maybe I don’t think tug-of-war — yeah, it was an Olympic event until 1920 — really meets the definition. However, I’ll gladly concede that pulling off a global cavalcade that usually includes building million-dollar buildings should be a team sport.

That’s become increasingly more of a challenge. Let’s consider the recent problems.

In 2016, the Olympics were held in Rio de Janeiro. Aside from the Zika outbreak, there were problems with massive pollution — raw sewage kind of pollution — in water where events like rowing were set to take place. Then there was an Olympic Village some countries said was uninhabitable and inadequate transportation and security.

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, had incomplete construction of hotels and more problems with housing athletes. There also was a yellow water issue that I don’t like to think about too much given other plumbing catastrophes experienced.

These aren’t just about humiliation. They can also mean huge expenses. The Rio games lost $2 billion. Now it looks like Tokyo could have a similar financial issue as the 2020 games, pushed to 2021 by the coronavirus pandemic, have just been stripped of spectators.

This will hurt Japan, which will have to cover costs that should have been picked up by millions of dollars in ticket revenue. Rio’s loss — the biggest an Olympics had suffered to date — was after the Brazilian taxpayers had already sunk $11 billion into the event.

It’s enough to make some people, even enthusiasts like me, wonder why Japan and the IOC didn’t just cancel the games last summer instead of pushing them out another year. Yes, the pandemic was unpredictable and several vaccines are now in play, but so are several variants of covid-19. A rising tide of the delta variant prompted the ban on spectators.

It is probably exactly what sends so many people to the Olympics in the first place. Hope.

There are 205 countries that participate in the Olympic Games. The United States has the most medals. In the Summer Games alone, Team USA has stood on the medal platforms 2,520 times — more than double the next country, the Soviet Union at 1,122.

If you want to leave the games knowing what it’s like to hear your anthem play, there is a short list of countries that tend to get the honor. About 9,000 medals are spread between the top 10. So why do the other 195 countries show up?

Because sportsmanship isn’t playing a game to win. It’s about doing your best, even if you were already all but guaranteed to win. Simone Biles, for example, will probably not pull punches with her gymnastics routines just because consensus already says she is the best in the world. She will try to do better than she has before to prove it to herself, too.

So the games go on because the best runners and lifters, swimmers and jumpers from all over the globe want to stand next to others and do their best. It is noble of Japan and the IOC to continue to see the value in that kind of honest competition, especially at a time when many countries are so divided. It is just as important that they put aside the financial aspects in favor of the health concerns.

It is possible that I’m wrong about what makes up a sport. True sportsmanship — trying hard but doing what is right despite the outcome — might be the most important aspect of what makes up any game.