The Beach Bum & the Olympics

A runner's life 

Yesterday's run in the olive grove

Ancient tree with tales to tell

Stunning views down to the sea

Been to the mountain top--and then got to run down

The village cats love me

Shadow puppet theather, borne in the Middle Ages

In the distance, our spitaki 

Beach bum

Ignoring for one moment the double entendre in this heading, I have been in training most of my life to be a beach bum. It clearly takes a level of commitment and the kind of consistency that defines any meaningful aspiration. While parenthood, work, and life in general have often (rightly) taken precedence, I remain firmly committed to this critical activity.

Barely enough room for me--looking west

Looking east

The Olympics

I began my daily running life in 1973, inspired in part by my Marine Corps colonel father, who would bring me to the local YMCA on Saturdays, where I ran on the elevated banked, wooden track above the basketball court. It was something like 375 laps to the mile—maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

The post-run prize was a hot pastrami on rye at the Jewish delicatessen across the street. We all take our inspirations from different sources.

I recall my father’s World War II buddies commenting: “George, that boy can really run,” which filled my adolescent spirit with pride. Finally, my father had conjured some pride in me, too, which felt great to a fourteen year old.

All through high school I ran competitively, cross country in the fall and the 1 mile and 2 mile during indoor and outdoor track seasons. Then at Bates College I ran on a cross country team that was the NCAA Division III runner up in my sophomore year (although I missed the cut for the traveling team). But, sadly, I was prodded and humiliated by an Eisenhower-era coach who nearly extinguished the pure joy of running. Winning was the object, in his mind, and injuries were the stuff of “sissies and quitters.”

 

Our village's one-room schoolhouse

Should I stay or should I go?

Like so many young lads, I dreamed of the Olympics—so unrealistically, because I was a good runner but far from exceptional. And some emerging lifestyle decisions in my early twenties affected my growth as a competitive runner. Also, living in then polluted Athens during the early 1980s, for my first publishing gig, made running all but impossible.

 

But I never gave up, and at age 65 I still run daily—more for the joy than the glory. (By my last guesstimate--based on boxes of runing journals--over 90,000 miles over 51 years.) Admittedly, it does feel nice to outpace the occasional twenty-something on a race course.

 

And so now, on the cusp of the 2024 Olympic Games, I reflect on this “premiere” event—with no small amount of disdain.

 

Warning: If you are an advocate of the modern Olympic movement, please read no further because your little bubble is about to be burst by an unrelenting cynic.

I anticipate some targeted vitriol from both friends and foes, who entertain the hopeless mythology that is attached to the modern Olympics

Operators are standing by...

Syncronized swimming? Badmington? Why not frisbee golf?

Acqueduct, my friend (Venetian)

 

An Olympic diatribe

 

Given that we have arrived at the period of the quadrennial Olympics, I can’t help but reflect on this abomination and how far removed it is from the classical ideal. But, as the Greeks know, mythology is hard to erase, it remains engrained in the human spirit.

 

Of course, I must begin by saluting the dedicated athletes who give their lives in training to qualify for any number of events (even synchronized swimming, which would have given the ancients a giant migraine).

 

But let’s face it, the current Games are a hugely blasphemous iteration of an ideal, a living breathing monstrosity of bloodsucking corporate greed and excess. The modern Olympics have been so utterly transformed into a paragon of hypocrisy, a disgusting modern spectacle, one long commerical break by our sponsors that defy any sense of decency or honor. Not the athletes, who I honor, but the event itself. The athletes are exceptional--except the increasing percentage who all doped up, with the IOC's blessing.

 

This capitalist circus bankrupts nations and heartlessly ridicules history with a grotesque commericalization of what was once pure. The modern Olympics, in their current form, belong squarely in the dustbin of human failure. The wrecking ball is long overdue.

 

Is there a solution to this sporting misfit?

 

Yes: Return the Olympics to their original home (if not to Olympia itself, then to several venues in Greece), ban corporate sponsorship but allow anonymous giving. Replace the phony pageantry with sport, not banal entertainment. And in the name of decency, strike at least half of the events—Olympic golf? Olympic baseball? Where does it end? I’d rather see the return of deadly chariot racing than endure another afternoon of … you name it.

 

Someone should resurrect any number of the other Games that existed in parallel to the games at Olympia. The games at Olympia, after all, were just one of many in antiquity. How about the Pythian Games, the Corinthian Games, the Delphic Games?

 

Restore the laurel crowns, ban the Nike contracts.

 

Asclepius, the son of Apollo, was slain by Zeus’s thunderbolt for his audacity, that is, for violating the laws of nature. Eventually the modern Olympics will suffer a similar fate. Give it time.

If you've got lemons, make lemonade

Life is...like a bowl of cherries?