Games People And the Olympics Play

London 2012: Mitt Romney commits a diplomatic faux pas and the Open's editor in India invites the wrath of readers 

By Francis Adams

Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger to Barack Obama in the U.S. Presidential election received a taste of British sarcasm when, on the first day of his trip to London meant to test his foreign policy skills, he haphazardly commented on stories regarding the Olympics facing a shortage of security personnel, the immigration and custom officials going on strike and questioning whether Britons would turn up in large numbers to watch the Games.
  His disparaging remarks prompted British Prime Minister David Cameron to strike back by saying it is easy to run an Olympics "out of nowhere". Cameron was alluding to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake that had  brought Romney huge dollops of applause for his stewardship.
   

Courtesy: Newswhip.com

   By visiting Britain at the time of the Olympics, Romney had hoped to reignite some of that 2002 glory with people back home and claim additional support. Instead, his act backfired. London Mayor Boris Johnson picked up the baton from Cameron by asking a gathering, "I hear there's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we are ready. Are we ready?" The crowd, undoubtedly, responded with a loud cheer.
 Olympic legend Carl Lewis then stepped up the jibes on Romney by saying, "Seriously, some Americans just shouldn't leave the country."
 The Britons, government and the masses, have been preparing for this Games since the past seven years. They wouldn't have let a U.S. presidential candidate walk away smiling after airing such negative comments.
  In India, the editor of English-language magazine the Open was at the receiving end of the magazine's readers for unflinchingly dissing the Olympics as "a poor spectacle framed by the sometimes petty, sometimes dangerous idea -- nationalism."
  The editor wouldn't have earned those brickbats had he presented his entire article solely with a perspective on India and not included passages that condemned the Olympics as "essentially the hallucination of ordinary people who think they have been made to look better by the feats of some extraordinary people." and "Journalists will declare that the opening ceremony was ‘spectacular’, and that the London Olympics is the biggest in its history, featuring the largest ever number of athletes and sports events."
 Research shows that there is a lot of purpose behind the Olympic Games, the world's biggest sport mega-event.

Transnational Society

 Researchers and scholars have decoded several factors that support the Olympic Games and some that spotlight the drawbacks. A paper titled "Olympic and world sport: making transnational society" and published last month by the British Journal of Sociology says that sport mega-events such as the Olympics help build the "Transnational society", an offshoot of the social side of globalization.
 The scholars elucidate that "In sport, transnational society is constructed in many different ways: for example, in the everyday networks of supporter formations (social transnationalism); in the links between sport governing bodies, national governments, corporations, NGOs and other institutions engaged in the staging of sport mega-events (political transnationalism); in the production chains of sport merchandize companies (economic transnationalism); and, in the circulation of television images and media reports of major sport events (cultural transnationalism). All of these social groups and institutions are important actors within the fields of world sport."
 In other words, the Olympics and other mega-events such as the FIFA World Cup play important roles as catalysts in globalization because they involve organizations worldwide that feed into the globalization of sport. On the formal level, these mega-events bring together clubs and associations, federations, player unions and agent networks, sport media, spectator movements and supporter clubs, tiers of government sport and recreation departments, and corporate sponsors. At the informal level these events serve as platforms for face-to-face interactions between heads of state, CEOs of multinational corporations, celebrities, and opinion leaders than any world occasion. The scholars have illustrated the inner working of such a meeting of influential people in the Realpolitik concerning the Beijing Olympics, when the International Olympic Committee employed "silent diplomacy" to pressure the Chinese government on sensitive political issues.

 Good for host nation

Why would countries vie with each other to host the Olympic Games? Few have explored why is there an increasing trend among countries to engage in bidding and hosting the Olympic Games. The Beijing Olympics cost China an estimated £21.5 billion. London is likely to cost £9 billion ($14 billion). 

  In another paper "The politics of sports mega-events" that was published  by Political Insight in March this year, the scholars reveal that "the prevailing narrative surrounding such events – especially post-event – is almost without exception positive, such that commentators critical of them are generally looked upon as killjoys."

  There are several other pluses for the host country that end up as the legacy of the Olympic Games.

1. Mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup have the potential to inspire the masses, especially youngsters, to take up sport seriously. Thus, helping create a healthy society.

2. Economically, the Olympics is a lucrative business, attracting revenue from various sources, led by increased tourism.

3. Mega-events instill a ‘feel-good’ factor among citizens of the host country, thereby creating a positive effect on well-being.

4. Urban regeneration that has been held up owing to various reasons is accelerated, improving society.

 On Thursday, Cameron, while speaking at a government-organized event said that businesses in Britain are looking to capitalize on the Games and he expects more than £1 billion ($1.5 billion) worth of deals to be inked during this summer alone. The Prime Minister also highlighted the fact that the redevelopment of London's Battersea Power Station, at $12.4 billion, is likely to create about 33, 000 jobs.

5. By showcasing themselves internationally, host nations gain additional recognition and respect, leading to an increase in so-called ‘soft power’.

                                                            Boost to exports 

Research also shows that a country offers to host the Olympic Games despite the cost involved because hosting such a a mega-event increases exports. Scholars say "this effect is statistically robust, permanent and large; trade is over 20% higher for host countries."

Finally, scholars also reveal that, barring a minority, the desire to host the Olympic Games is widely held by the masses and the political elite.