Can we also strip away the opportunism and corruption of Olympic officialdom, the TV biz and big money, the doping, the penetration of commercial interests, sponsoring, advertising, the whole tacky Coca-Cola razzmatazz of the Olympic circus?

If all you see is some noble ideal and individuals striving for excellence, your eyesight is curiously selective.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

If that's your prime motivation for writing your diary, I'm 100% with you. I've been increasingly annoyed by the attempts to target athletes into this whole charade of righteousness.

Whatever the opinions how political or commercial or blatantly ritualistic the Olympics have become, whatever the political alignment people want to affiliate themselves to voice their protest, whatever one feels about China's lacking progressiveness or equality or environmental policies - stay the fuck away from involving the athletes, in whatever shape, form, motivation, or action. It should not be their concern that China was chosen by the IOC. That's not what sport should be about. Full stop.

That may be what sport is all about. Well, my sister was on the Olympic track (in rowing) until she was 18 and her motivations were much more social ; she had a bunch of friends, so she kept on training with them. Once she changed towns, her interest for sports withered... I also know about high level kayakers, who quickly gave up on that sport after peaking - what's the influence of peer pressure, of social motivation about this ?

Also, this is often what sports is all about, but is this what the olympics are about ? In France, in many sports (and due to the reduction in national quotas in many sports) the decision as to who gets to participate is often subject to in-federation political fighting rather than actual performance...

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.