Olympic Games (Essay Sample)

Preparing for the Sydney 2000 Olympics: The Shortcomings.
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The Olympics is arguably the most prestigious sporting event of the modern world. First inspired by the Ancient Olympic Games of Greece, it have come to be appreciated as the most celebrated worldwide sporting event of today’s world. Participants are from all over the world with the latest 2010 Olympics attracting sportsmen and women from at least 200 countries (Young, 2014). The games were revived in the 19th Century to adopt a fashion that was in the original games that lasted from the historical period of 8th Century B.C. to 4th Century A.D. when Greece was a reckonable force. Baron Pierre of Coubertin founded the International Olympics Committee (IOC) and later the Olympics Charter was formed for the smooth running of the games.
The Sydney games were summer events attracting 199 countries from all parts of the world. This was the second time for the games to be held in the Southern Hemisphere after Melbourne, Victoria had been the first to host in 1958. Despite the various economic and social benefits of the games, they were surrounded by controversy and general public outcry from the Australian people over what they thought was a misplacement of priorities. It was the general feeling of the Australian people that the government would have been more prudent in the management and preparation of the games. In this paper, I will delve into the depths of the preparations to determine the short comings of the Australian government, first from a political point of view, then social and legal.
Political issues.
There was general political uproar as to the percentage that went to the games being slapped on the public. Various politicians noted with concern that up to 35% of the A$ 6.6 billion budget was imposed on the general Australian public (Liebrich, 2003). However, this was in fact the efforts of very keen politicians and investigative journalists that noted the mass media’s concentration in the positive vigor of the games as opposed to the huge amounts spent on entertaining the IOC’s representatives in the country (Lenskyj, 2000). Such funds were those that were retracted from education and health to boost the final preparations of the Olympics especially in the couple of years before the Millennium event (Findling, 2004). News of bribery and corruption while in the business of entertaining visiting IOC officials attracted a lot of criticism to the Australian government that led to the release of the various Olympic scandals. The one that had most clamor was the vote-buying scam where Australia Olympics Committee chairman admitted that, in the company of other officials, he engaged in a mass vote buying bid in 1993 to secure their bid (Phillips, 1999).
The government of Australia spent a lot of its money on preparation of the games. Particularly the buildings of stadiums, artificial rapids and so forth have proved of no use beyond their most immediate use for the games. It was noted that funds were diverted to the games at the expense of development projects such as hospital expansions among other forms of infrastructure (Salwick, 2008). The people and leaders of Sydney foresaw a situation where the expense of the government on the games lacked a return factor to their investment. According to reports from the Auditor-General, the A$ 2.2 billion that was shaved from public consumption at the time before and during the games has not yet been recovered. Tourism to the Southern Wales city has not improved beyond that of the rest of the country after the games. Further, they noted that building sports facilities did not add to the general productivity of an area (Auditor-General Report, 2002).
Social problems.
The political factors surrounding education and infrastructure most definitely stretched themselves into the realms of the social. A diversion of funds from the education sector led to lower standards of education among the Australians, especially in the period just before and after the games. Funds being diverted from key sectors such as education and health led to tight resources and limited action of the sectors in their capacity to act in the aim of satisfactory public service. Hospitals that were scheduled for upgrades had their plans temporary halted. Patients that enjoyed government support in terms of their medical bills experienced a reduced amount in the coverage that the government offered in a bid to cut government expense owing to the expenditure on the games (Rentwatchers Report, 1998).
Further afield, poverty was "criminalized”. Ordinances were put in place to outlaw survival tactics employed by the homeless and street people outlawing them. This was all in a bid to remove them from the streets and create the image of a world class city in the eyes of visiting foreigners in the period of the games (Lenskyj, 2000). Despite the positive change appearing prima facie, the government moved these people out of the streets into homes which, ultimately owing to the huge expenditure to the Olympics, it was unable to cater for their upkeep and hence the people in these homes and halfway houses lived in deplorable and wanting conditions (PriceWaterCoopers, 2000).
In addition, the environmental issues that were raised during the preparation period became of importance to the public and the general society (Bower, 1993). For consideration would be the contamination of the Homebush Bay. This was a ship wrecking yard on the outskirts of the host city which due to the nature of its use subjected the area to myriads of problems in relation to environmental pollution. Rusted metal from the old ships as well as waste material from the vessels were dumped there. Albeit not a direct controversy, government efforts to clear this in conjunction with the Olympics corporate environmentalism came under public scrutiny since human rights lobbies were ignored in their move to protest the continued use of the bay to its destructive ends (Bruce, 2007). The efforts for these groups to stop the reduce pollution caused at the Bay during the mid 20th Century, in preparation of the games, didn’t bear fruit with the government citing the "good side" of the place, in particular the floating forest aboard the SS Ayrfield (Jobson, 2013) among other things.
On legality.
On a legal standpoint, the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) came under a lot of legal fire for partisan inclusion in the public airing of the games. In the landmark case of Maguire V SOCOG, the defendants came under fire for the partisan treatment of the claimant. In her claim, Maguire said that due to the inaccessibility of the defendant’s website, she could not access the proceedings of the Olympics, owing to the her state that she was blind and thus required a Braille edition of the site. In response, the defendants said that they were progressively updating their site so that it would meet the requirements of disabled persons. The court ruled in favor of the claimant that as an internationally airing entity thought along with the fact that the airing of the games was of global importance, then the site would have to comply with a complete update or would otherwise be discriminating not only against the substantial number of blind citizens in Australia, but all around the globe.
In other legal matters, the widespread corruption of the 1993 host city selection that incriminated the crème of the Olympics community came as a huge blow to the already diminishing public image of the committee and other Olympics bodies (BBC, 1999). The credibility of the IOC was once again tarnished in the eyes of the public. Quotes from John Coates as to the nature of the selections for the city presented perpetual corruption at such events. In one statement, he said: "Sydney officials were very naïve at first, but they later intensified their efforts”. This was in effect to the fact that they had lost their second bid to host the games earlier and thus had to be more vigorous this time. Despite IOC Vice-president comments that the few "bad apples" tainting the image of the body, the report showed that this was a continual habit of the sports entity (Foy, 1999).
Further, the Olympics body IOC was accused of wrongfully administering punitive measures on players as well as failing to strictly follow procedures laid out in the Olympics Charter. In failing to administer drug test to some players such as the famous Marion Jones, there was unfair competition owing to the "stellar" performance of these athletes. The IOC failed in its duty to ensure equality of all athletes (El...