EDITORIAL
The Olympics Are About Competing
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Last Friday evening in Athens, the Cayman Islands Olympic Team consisting
of track and field athletes Kareem Streete-Thompson and Cydonie Mothersill,
and swimmers Shaune Fraser and Heather Roffey participated in the opening
ceremony of the 2004 Games.
Cayman’s other Olympic swimmer, Andrew Mackay was excused from
participating in the opening ceremonies because he was unwell, which in
combination with an early-morning swim event the next day, made it unadvisable
for him to spend five hours standing and marching before performing the next
day.
As reported in Cayman Net News last week, some of our other athletes would
have preferred not to participate in those opening ceremonies, not because
they weren’t proud to represent the Cayman Islands, but because they wanted to
be in peak physical and mental condition when they represented the country in
the athletic arena.
Apparently, however, the Cayman Islands Olympic Committee (CIOC) felt that
the athletes’ performance in their individual events was less important than
the show of nationalism that was presented in the opening ceremonies, and
therefore gave Cayman’s other Olympians an ultimatum: march or go home.
Although the situation is different with Cayman’s track and field athletes,
the truth of the matter is that Cayman’s Olympic swimmers have little chance
of winning any medals in Athens, having made it there with ‘B’ qualifying
times.
However, the swimmers still actually qualified, something that required
extreme dedication and sacrifice over many years, and they all want to do the
best they can in the pool, even if that effort only leads to a personal best
time. That they wanted to maximize their performance in order to best
represent both the Cayman Islands and themselves, is not being unpatriotic.
These athletes were not saying that they did not love their homeland. What
they were saying was let us do our best for the country when our long-awaited
swimming event comes.
The Opening Ceremony of the Olympics was watched by millions of people
around the world. The fact that a contingent from the Cayman Islands
participated in that pageantry is something we can all be proud of, but the
key word of that event is ‘ceremony.’
The bigger event is called the Olympic Games, not the Olympic Ceremony.
Friendly competition among nations is what the Olympics are all about, and the
priority of participating is competing in the Games.
There can be no doubt that the CIOC worked strenuously to support Cayman’s
five Olympic athletes, support that was much needed and appreciated. But the
Olympics are not about what the CIOC has done. It was the athletes themselves
that made their participation in the Olympics possible with athletic
performances. Making their achievements nothing more than a chance for
flag-waving nationalism is to reduce those achievements to a charade.
Ask any athlete who actually qualified for the Olympics if they would
rather participate in the opening ceremony and follow it with a poor
performance in their event, or miss the opening ceremony and follow it with a
personal best performance in the Games, and nearly all would tell you the
latter. This should not be surprising, for it is their very competitiveness
that drives these athletes in the first place.
In the end, at the very least the athletes themselves should be able to
choose whether to attend the opening ceremonies. The CIOC could always require
their attendance in the closing ceremonies if they opt out of the opening
ceremonies.
In the meantime, other official delegates – many who would probably even
pay their own way for the honour of representing their country – that are not
participating in the Games can be chosen to represent the Cayman Islands in
future opening ceremonies of the Olympics. This way the country can have its
moment to shine in national pride, and the participating athletes can have a
best chance possible to shine in their respective events.
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