Athens 2004: Just a beginning or the end?
Deniz Akkan*
The Olympics Games 2004 has long taken its place in the pages of the history. It shall be remembered for ever to come…without a doubt…but maybe not so much for all the great things that have happened. By answering to my friends at Vision, I intend to focus on the “dark side” of the Games.
First of all, no Olympic games in the history have ever taken place with such little enthusiasm from the audience. Only about 60% of all the seats in Athens were filled, contrary to all the previous games, e.g. Sydney and Atlanta, where most of the tickets were sold on the black market for over a 1.000 USD each. Somehow, this time, not only the tourists but also the Greeks themselves have preferred the sun and the beach to the spirit of the games. Most of the highlight events, such as the men’s finals in volleyball, the Italian dream team against Brazil, have taken place facing empty seats.
Second, no Olympic game has ever witnessed such lack of sportsmanship and gentlemanliness. The participants have been booed not only during the games but even during the medals ceremony, which has set the Olympic record for disgraceful events.
And last but not the least, no Olympic games have ever been interrupted by so many doping scandals. As it has been stated by the President of the IOC, Mr. Jacques Rogge, never before have there been so many attempts for fraud in the Olympics.
Doping is not new to the Olympics. There have always been a few sportsmen in each Olympics, banned from the games for using illegal substances (except for once - in Moscow) however; as it has been stated by the British newspaper, the Guardian, “the first Olympics which have taken place over 3.000 years ago, have been marked by fraud and scandals, and so far Athens has done nothing more than keeping that title.”
Here is a list of all the sportsmen who have tested positive for doping throughout the latest Olympic Games: (the doping tests have first been applied in 1972)
Rome (1960) 1 sportsman: Knut Jensen (Denmark) Bicycle (who died during the games of amphetamine overdose.)
Mexico City (1968) 1 sportsman: Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall (Sweden) Modern pentathlon(overdose alcohol)
Munich (1972) 7 sportsmen: Bakhaava Buidaa (Mongolia), Judo Miguel Coll (Puerto Rico) Basketball, Rick Demont (USA) Swimming, Jaime Huelamo (Spain) Bicycle, Walter Legel (Austria) Weight lifting, Muhammed Nasihi Ercument (Iraq) weight lifting, Aad van Den Hoek (Holland) Bicycle.
Montreal (1976) 11 sportsmen: Blagoi Blagoev (Bulgaria) Halter, Mark Cameron (USA) Halter, Paul Cerrutti (Monaco) marksmenship, Valentin Hristov (Bulgaria) weightlifting, Dragomir Ciorosian (Romania) weight lifting, Phillip Grippaldi (USA) weight lifting, Zbigniew Kaczmarek (Poland) weight lifting, Lorne Leibel (Canada) yachting, Arne Norback (Sweden) weight lifting, Petr Pavlasek (Czechoslovakia) weight lifting, Danuta Rosani (Poland) Athletics.
Moscow (1980) No sportsman has been tested positive for doping!
Los Angeles (1984) 12 sportsmen: Serafin Grammatikopolous (Greece) weight lifting, Vesteinn Hafsteinsson (Iceland) Athletics, Tomas Johansson (Sweden) wrestling, Stefan Laggner (Austria) weight lifting, Goran Pefferson (Sweden) weight lifiting, Eiji Simomura (Japan) Volleyball, Mikiyasu Tanaka (Japan) Volleyball, Ahmed Tarbi (Algeria) weight lifting, Mahmud Tarha (Libya) weight lifting, Gianpaolo Urlando (Italy) Athletics, Martti Vainio (Finland) Athletics, Anna Verouli (Greece) Athletics.
Seul (1988) 10 sportsmen: Alidad (Afghanistan) wrestling, Kerrith Brown (England) Judo, Mitko Grablev (Bulgaria) weight lifting, Angel Gençev (Bulgaria) weight lifting, Ben Johnson (Canada) Athletics, Fernando Mariaca (Spain) weight lifting, Jorge Quesada (Spain) Modern Pentathlon, Kalman Scengeri (Hungary) weight lifting, Andor Szanyi (Hungary) weight lifting, Alexander Watson (Australia) Modern Pentathlon.
Barcelona (1992) 5 sportsmen: Madina Biktagirova (Belarus) Athletics, Bonnie Dasse (USA) Athletics, Jud Logan (USA) Athletics, Nijole Medvedieva (Lithuania) Athletics, Wu Dan (China) Volleyball.
Atlanta (1996) 2 sportsmen: Natalya Shekhodanova (Russia) Athletics, Iva Prandzheva (Bulgaria) Athletics.
Sydney (2000) 9 sportsmen: Ivan Ivanov (Bulgaria) weight lifting, Sevdalin Minchev (Bulgaria) weight lifting, Izabela Dragneva (Bulgaria) weight lifting, Andris Reinholds (Latvia) Blade, Andreea Raducan (Romania) Gymnastics, Fritz Aanes (Norway) wrestling, Ashot Danielyan (Armenia) weight lifting, Alexander Leipold (Germany) wrestling, Oyunbileg Purevbaatar (Mongolia) wrestling.
Athens (2004) 16 sportsmen (so far): Andrew James Brack (Greece) Baseball, Derek Nicholson (Greece) Baseball, David Munyasi (Kenya) Boxing, Aye Khine Nan (Myanmar) weight lifitng, Sanamacha Chanu (India) weight lifting, Viktor Chislean (Moldavia) weight lifting Zoltan Kecskes (Hungary) weight lifting, Sule Sahbaz (Turkey) weight lifting, Pratima Kumari (India) weight lifting, Vefa Ammuri (Morocco) weight lifting, Olga Sçukina (Uzbekistan) Athletics, Albina Komiç (Russia) weight lifiting, Leonidas Sampanis (Greece) weight lifting, Irina Korzanenko (Russia) Athletics, Robert Fazekas (Hungary) Athletics, Aleksey Lesnichiy (Byelorussia) Athletics.
Doping used to be an ongoing war between the pharmaceutical sector and the sports authorities. However, lately, it has taken another dimension, providing genetic engineering at the service of those in search of super powers. Genetic doping, untraceable even by the latest tests, creates more red blood cells in the body which produce more oxygen, which eventually means more power or more speed.
Scientifics claim that the latest developments in genetic engineering should be seen as a chance to heal the infected cells in human body to save a certain organ from a terminal disease such as cancer or to create more powerful animals to serve human being at times of emergency. However, as it has been discussed by the most popular scientific magazines, “Scientific American” and “Discovery”, those getting in line first to get injected, are not the sick and the old; it is the young and the healthy, who just want more and more.
The latest developments seem like a chapter from Aldous Huxley's famous science fiction book, A Brave New World (1932). In this famous utopia, the writer has foreseen almost a century ago, that following the utmost aggressive behavior among all human beings, the world would be lead by a new superior civilization of technicians, praising the psychobiology as the dominant force. We are not there yet, but the latest developments do make us wonder where we are heading to. We eat genetically modified veggies; decide upon the sex of our fetus, clone ourselves so we can reproduce without the opposite sex, and can look like whoever we choose to. Plastic surgery, accessible to almost anyone with a credit card, is creating a world full of people who resemble each other, like on the MTV’s most-popular-of-all-times-show “I want a famous face”.
The search for perfection is what keeps the world evolving but the drive for immortality becoming an obsession is what might perhaps bring it to an end. Beauty and physical power has a natural charm on all beings. The nature has little to offer to the insignificant and the weak. However, in an era where the overweight is obese, the slim is bulimic, and the talent is being measured by how far one is willing to take risks, there seems little if any limits to what may happen next.
Watching the Olympics used to be about watching sports with people from different nations. Lately it gives the impression of a war of superpowers, created in an artificial world. Is it, then, surprising to see that the ordinary people choose to enjoy the sun and the beach instead of cheering for the games? Not really.
Istanbul, Semptember 5th 2004
* Deniz Akkan is a PhD student on EU Economics at Marmara University in Istanbul. She has been collaborating with Vision in several European projects. She has an MA degree on Internal Policies of the EU at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and a BA degree in International Relations at Galatasaray University, Istanbul (the only francophone university in Turkey). She currently works as a consultant, specialized in monitoring, analyzing and interpreting EU law and policies, providing assistance to both Turkish and foreign companies.
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