Feb 282013
 

Duncan Harley reflects on Life, the Universe and Everything. A sideways look at the world and its foibles.

Went out for a Sunday newspaper at the weekend and bought the one with the front page article about the Scottish Cardinal who has been accused of inappropriate behaviour towards priests stretching back 30 years or so.
Big mitre, nice smile, firm lips and seemingly about to vote in the next Vatican elections despite the accusations.

I asked the check out man the usual ‘how is your day’ stuff since I like to enhance the checkout experience and am committed to lightening up the day for those in crap occupations.

Without any hesitation he commented on my choice of newspaper.

“Isn’t that Cardinal O’Brien,” he said, “the man that Stonewall voted Bigot of the Year in 2012?”

When the Cardinal O’Brien allegations were first public made, the Roman Catholic Church was saying that it was up to him to decide whether or not to attend the Sistine Chapel hustings.  I could see the logic of the argument of course, but just for a wee moment my jaw dropped in complete amazement.

The accused was being left to make up his mind if he could continue in the role of representing the faithful of the UK despite allegations which would have landed that Saville man in police custody.

Today of course everything has changed.

The man has been sacked according to reports, such as that in the Independent on Monday:

“Make no mistake about it, Cardinal Keith O’Brien has not resigned as Scotland’s leading Roman Catholic, he has been sacked by the Pope and that is a measure of just how grave the crisis in the world’s biggest church has become,” says Paul Vallely.

The church continues to talk about ‘great sadness’ as opposed to ‘great shock’ and there are conspiracy theory rumours sweeping the net regarding the timing of the allegations.  But when the chips are down there is no getting away from the reality that he was, indeed, sacked by the Pope.

Now, I hear you ask, what has that to do with a large plastic cow on wheels?

Well, not much really, except that from the perspective of the cow it’s all good news since it diverts attention from the continuing issues in the food industry.

What a week it’s been though.

Ikea have found horse DNA in their meatballs although, to be honest, I would have been more surprised if they had found wood in their bookcases.

The Papal hustings will now go ahead without a UK vote due, it seems, to a mix up about how church officials should act in private.
The government appear to have a sex scandal on their hands, although it’s seemingly not a government problem just a Liberal Democrat issue.

To top it all DVLA are now issuing driving licences to dogs, providing they speak English and can reverse into a parking bay without barking.

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Aug 092012
 

Dave Watt presents the third article of a series of three concerning ‘strops and arguments’ in the olympics.

“May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic Torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.”
– Baron Pierre de Coubertin – founder of the modern Olympics. Athens 1896.

1948 Olympiad London.

Although World War II was over, Europe was still ravaged from the war. When it was announced that the Olympic Games would be resumed, many debated whether it was wise to have a festival when many European countries were in ruins and people were near starvation.

To limit Britain’s responsibility to feed the participants, it was agreed that they would bring their own food. No new facilities were built for these Games, but Wembley Stadium had survived the war and proved adequate.

No Olympic Village was erected; the male athletes were housed at an army camp in Uxbridge and the women housed at Southlands College in dormitories. Germany and Japan, needless to say, were not invited to participate.

It was a generally good natured Olympiad, apart from US protests after their relay team was disqualified and the second placed British team had to give up their gold medals and received silver medals – which had been given up by the Italian team. The Italian team then received the bronze medals which had been given up by the Hungarian team.

1952 Olympiad Helsinki.

A total of 69 nations participated in these Games, up from 59 in the 1948 Games. Japan and Germany were both reinstated, but getting back to normal, the strops began with only West Germany providing athletes, since East Germany refused to participate in a joint German team.

The Republic of China, listed as “China (Formosa)”, withdrew from the Games on July 20, in protest at the People’s Republic of China’s men and women being permitted to compete. Israel entered for first time.

The US won 40 golds and a total of 76 medals with the new participants the USSR coming second with 22 golds and a total of 71 medals which just goes to show what you can do if sport is open to the entire population instead of being the preserve of a few toffs.

1956 Olympiad Melbourne.

In Europe, the USSR, suspecting the resurgence of fascism in Hungary, invaded the country, while the British and French attacked Egypt in order to regain control of the newly nationalised Suez Canal.

As a sign of protest 6 countries withdrew from the Olympics. The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland withdrew because of the events in Hungary, while Iraq and Lebanon withdrew because of the conflict in Suez.

Less than two weeks before the opening ceremony, the People’s Republic of China also pulled out because the Republic of China (Taiwan) had been allowed to compete. Although the Games were not cancelled, there were many episodes such as the water-polo match between Russia and Hungary which turned into a major aquatic ruck.

On the plus side, East and West Germany were represented by one combined unified team.

Strangely, as the quarantine laws did not allow the entry of foreign horses into Australia, equestrian events were held in Stockholm in June 1956. The rest of the Games started in late November, when it was summertime in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Butterfly event in swimming was “invented” for the 1956 Games after some swimmers had begun to exploit a loophole in the breaststroke rules and rocketed past their more traditional opponents.

The Soviets dominated the Olympiad, winning 98 medals with 37 gold , while the Americans won 74 medals with 32 gold.

1960 Olympiad in Rome.

This proved to have a disappointing lack of strops apart from the ludicrous spectacle of Formosa representing all of China yet again. The points of interest were Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia winning the marathon bare-footed, to become the first black African Olympic champion; and a relatively unknown US boxer called Cassius Clay winning the boxing light-heavyweight gold medal.

Soviet gymnasts won 15 of 16 possible medals in women’s gymnastics, and the USSR won 43 golds, 29 silver and 31 bronze medals, comfortably topping the medal table.

1964 Olympiad in Tokyo.

In 1964, the IOC banned South Africa from the Games over its policy on racial segregation. The Sharpeville Massacre two years previously had been too much even for the UK and the US, who had been cheerleading happily for the South African state up until this point. The ban continued right up until 1992, following the abolition of apartheid in South Africa.

The US & Soviets shared the medals table, with the US winning more golds (36) but the USSR winning more medals overall (96 to the US’s 90).

Yoshinori Sakai, who was born in Miyoshi, Hiroshima on the day that it was destroyed by an atomic bomb, was chosen as the final torchbearer.

1968 Olympiad in Mexico City.

The 1968 Olympiad came during a turbulent year. Soviet tanks rolled into Prague, the US was fully involved in a full scale war against the Vietnamese and the country was riven internally by the repression of the Civil Rights movement culminating in the murder of Martin Luther King.

Only a few weeks prior to the games, the Mexican government had carried out a massacre of workers and students in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, known as the Tlatelolco massacre. At one point there was serious speculation as to whether the games should go ahead.

East Germany and West Germany competed as separate entities for the first time at a Summer Olympiad, Formosa became Taiwan and continued to represent mainland China – at least in the eyes of Avery Brundage, president of the IOC.

However, the creation of the most iconic symbol that was to represent the 1968 Olympiad for all time came about because of the struggle of black athletes in the US.

Amateur black athletes initially formed OPHR, the Olympic Project for Human Rights, to organise a black boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games. OPHR was deeply influenced by the black freedom struggle and their goal was nothing less than to expose how the US used black athletes to project a lie about race relations both at home and internationally.

OPHR had four central demands: restore Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight boxing title, remove Avery Brundage as head of the International Olympic Committee, hire more black coaches, and disinvite South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics.

Ali’s belt had been taken by boxing’s powers-that-be earlier in the year for his resistance to the Vietnam draft. By standing with Ali, OPHR was expressing its opposition to the war and opposing a campaign of harassment and intimidation orchestrated by the IOC supporters of Brundage.

The wind went out of the sails of a broader boycott for many reasons, partly because the IOC re-committed to banning apartheid countries from the Games and also because some black athletes were unwilling to sacrifice their years of training on a point of principle.

However, On October 16, 1968, black sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medalists in the men’s 200-meter race, took their places on the podium for the medal ceremony wearing black socks without shoes and civil rights badges. They lowered their heads and each defiantly raised a black-gloved fist as the Star Spangled Banner was played. Both were members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights.

Supporters praised the men for their courage in making their stand.

Some people, particularly Avery Brundage, felt that a political statement had no place in the international forum of the Olympic Games. In an immediate response to their actions, Smith and Carlos were suspended from the U.S. team by Brundage, and banned from the Olympic Village.

Those who opposed the protest said that the actions disgraced all Americans. Supporters, on the other hand, praised the men for their courage in making their stand.

Peter Norman, the Australian sprinter who came second in the 200m race, and Martin Jellinghaus, a member of the German bronze medal-winning 4×400-meter relay team, also wore Olympic Project for Human Rights badges at the games to show support for the suspended American sprinters.

Norman’s actions resulted in a reprimand, his absence from the following Olympic Games in Munich, despite easily making the qualifying time, and a failure of his national association to invite him to join other Australian medallists at the opening ceremony for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Rather more creditably, Tommie Smith and John Carlos acted as pallbearers at Peter Norman’s funeral in 2006.

Aug 032012
 

Dave Watt presents the second article of a series of 3 concerning ‘strops and arguments’ in the olympics.

May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic Torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure : – Baron Pierre de Coubertin – founder of the modern Olympics. Athens 1896

After some discussion in which the Germans put in a spirited bid Stockholm in Sweden was awarded the 1912 Olympiad with the unlucky Germans being promised the 1916 Games.

Stockholm introduced a series of firsts to the Olympics with the introduction of a electronic timing, a public address system and female athletes in the swimming and diving competitions with the last innovation causing an  Australian journalist to worry that the sight of women in bathing suits might incite lust amongst the spectators causing them to behave like ‘primitive blacks’.

The Swedish organisers banned boxing on humanitarian grounds but introduced the highly militaristic pentathlon in which the future megalomaniac George S Patton finished a disappointing fifth despite a diet of raw steak, salad and opium.

The usual growls and snarls began at the opening ceremony with the Finns opting out of the Russian team, the Czechs marching separately from their fellow Austro-Hungarian subject races and the Germans tramping around in formation eliciting boos and cries of ‘Prussian Militarism’ from the Swedes.

The usual racism was also on display with the US’s commendably diverse team being the subject of protests at non-white athletes ‘violating the Olympic ethos’ by having too much melanin in their skins.

Owing to World War One (having been unsuccessfully marketed as the ‘War to End Wars’ and the ‘War for Civilisation’ but eventually having to settle for the more prosaic ‘Great War’) the Berlin Olympiad didn’t materialise. The Germans consoled themselves by invading Belgium where, according to Allied propaganda, they bayoneted babies, raped nuns, shot civilians and threw poison gas around willy-nilly by way of endearing themselves to the locals.

Not surprisingly, the 1920 Olympiad, held in war-damaged Antwerp was rather low key and the Germans along with the Austrians, Turks, Bulgarians and Hungarians were all banned for picking the wrong side in the war and the Soviet Union was banned for presumably not having anyone closely related to Queen Victoria running their country.

The first five were also banned from the 1924 games as well (not that the IOC are ones to bear a grudge) but the Soviets were sportingly allowed to eventually compete in 1952 whereupon they wiped the floor with every other country in the medals haul until they returned to the wonderful paradise that is free-market capitalism in 1990.

Having participated in a four year bloodbath the few participants in Antwerp games were pretty matey all round with the US bagging most of the medals and the newly independent Finland coming second with the legendary Paavo Nurmi taking three track golds.

The 1924 Paris Olympiad.  Eh…Eric Liddell not running on a Sunday, Harold Abrahams, Chariots of Fire, men running along beach in vest and pants, blah, blah blah.

While this delightful piece of Anglocentric nostalgia was going on the Finns bagged thirteen gold, thirteen silver and five gold medals which isn’t bad for a country which has roughly the same population as Scotland but is obviously less devoted to Scotch pies and crap lager.

Needless to say, the usual deranged elements in the European press obligingly attributed the Finns success to the ‘wild mongol strain’ of their savage ancestors.

Love and international understanding reasserted itself when a Frenchman severely thrashed an enthusiastic American fan with a cane during the Franco-American rugby match and William DeHart became the first black athlete to win an individual gold amidst the usual grumblings about non-whites participating.

Having pocketed two Olympiads the French decided to outsource the Olympics to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1928 which saw the introduction of the five rings Olympic symbol for the first time.

The huge US team garnered most of the medals despite being managed by another megalomaniac in the shape of Douglas McArthur who kept the athletes marooned on board a liner/prison hulk from which they were only allowed ashore to compete.

The re-instated Germans, having presumably promised that they would behave much better in any future wars, performed exceptionally well with eleven gold, nine silver and nineteen bronze medals, coming second in the medals haul.

  Not surprisingly, this led to protests by impoverished and hungry people turning up bearing banners proclaiming ‘Groceries Not Games’.

After ‘some discussion’ the Olympic committee settled on Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympiad which saw the introduction of the first Olympic Village and the first major anti-Olympic protest over the games being held at all. In 1931, with a million unemployed in California and soup kitchens springing up all over the state, a massive press campaign gulled local voters into voting for huge funding for expanding and improving the Olympic facilities.

Not surprisingly, this led to protests by impoverished and hungry people turning up bearing banners proclaiming ‘Groceries Not Games’. One can sympathise with their point of view – I mean, what kind of idiots would spend millions on a pointless sports junket in the midst of a huge recession and massive poverty………..?

Thirty four nations turned up including a rather unpopular entrant in the shape of Japan which was engaged in the conquest of Manchuria at the time and attempted to hijack a a formidable Chinese sprinter resident there to run for their puppet state of Manchukuo.

The sprinter, Liu Changchun refused to run replying that “he would never betray his own nation to serve others like a horse or a cow” which is obviously not the view of the Scottish footballers in Team GB.

Predictably the US won forty-one gold medals but the surprise teams were the Italians who came second in the medals table and the Japanese who dominated the men’s swimming events.

Berlin 1936. When Germany was initially chosen to host the 1936 Olympiad it was a liberal democracy but by 1935, with the games one year off, Germany was a Nazi dictatorship with the racist Nuremberg Laws banning Jews from all aspects of civil life and attacks on their shops homes and persons becoming ever more frequent and ever more violent.

Consequently a great deal of soul-searching went on, particularly in the US, about the morality of sending a multi-racial team to the Berlin Olympics. There were campaigns for a boycott of the games both in the US and Europe while the Germans fudged the implications of their racial laws and hinted that Jewish athletes would be eligible for selection.

  From the Nazis’ point of view Brundage was the ideal choice

However, as they were banned from participating in the qualifying events as they weren’t members of German sporting clubs having been expelled early in Hitler’s reign this wasn’t very likely.

Eventually, the IOC in the US sent Avery Brundage to discuss the situation with Hitler’s ’regime. From the Nazis’ point of view Brundage was the ideal choice as his bigoted and racist views permeated the Olympics (a bit like a polluted stream running through a children’s play park) for nearly forty years.

On arriving in Germany Brundage set out the ground rules early on by proudly announcing that he was a member of several clubs that barred Jews from their membership thus indicating that he wasn’t going to be too hard to deal with.

Despite Hitler’s previous assertion that the Olympics were ‘a plot by Freemasons and Jews’ the Nazi regime was very interested in holding the games and assurances that multi-racial teams would be welcomed and treated equally were forthcoming.

This turned out to be quite genuine and black athletes like Jesse Owens and high jumper David Albritton were accommodated in the Olympic Village whereas they weren’t allowed to live on the campus where they studied at Ohio State University.

The Jewish athletes competing for Germany was more problematical when the world-rated Gretel Bergmann (classified as a full Jew by the Nuremberg laws) was told that her qualifying jumps were not of sufficient quality to allow her into the national team. As she emigrated to the US and won successive trophies there it’s a pretty fair bet that she could have qualified for the rather poor German womens high jump team if she’d jumped while carrying her week’s shopping.

A compromise was reached whereby blonde haired, green-eyed Helene Mayer, rated as only a half-Jew and resident in the US was allowed to compete as an honorary Aryan for the duration of the games where she won a silver medal.

In a little known attempt to “clean up” Berlin (which would surely endear him to the leader writers of a certain present-day local rag) , the German Ministry of the Interior authorized the chief of police to arrest all Romani/Gypsies and keep them in the Berlin-Marzahn concentration camp during the games.

Protests about the games in Britain were more subdued and Harold Abrahams, winner of the 1924 100 metres, undertook a lot of work to persuade fellow Jews in the country not to boycott the Nazi games. Presumably, he spent much of 1945 removing these particular endeavours from his CV.

Anyway, the Berlin Games went ahead with forty-nine nations competing, Germany winning 89 medals, including 33 golds and the whole event was wonderfully filmed by Leni Reifenstahl who was very pleased with her cinematic efforts until she discovered that Hitler was a Nazi in 1983.

Contrary to popular belief about the Berlin Olympics Hitler did not actually snub Jesse Owens. Hitler had greeted all the winning German athletes on the first day with a handshake and some Fuhrerly chit-chat but was told by the Olympic Committee that he either had to personally greet all of the winning athletes or none of them and he chose the latter course.

Consequently we can excuse Adolf from that particular breach of good manners – however, on the down side, there is just that little matter of fifty million war dead.

 

Jul 262012
 

Dave Watt presents the first article of a series of 3 concerning ‘strops and arguments’ in the olympics.

“May joy and good fellowship reign and in this manner, may the Olympic Torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.”

– Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, Athens 1896

These noble sentiments expressed by de Coubertin in 1896 must have caused a certain amount of eye rolling and throat clearing, even at the first modern Olympiad, as he had just overcome a threatened boycott by the French Gymnastic Union which was incensed by the Germans being allowed to compete.

In addition, the Hungarians, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, paid their own travel costs and refused to take part as anything but native Hungarians under their own flag.

Irish athletes refused to compete as part of Britain and the Turks refused to take part at all, denouncing the Athens games as a tool of Greek expansionism in Asia minor.

The scene was thus set for over a century of huffs, strops, snubs, accusations and counter-accusations of sharp practice, boycotts, threats of boycotts and the international equivalent of the stamping of little feet and tossing of curls.

De Coubertin, having begun in the home of the original Olympiad, was anxious to take the second modern Olympiad to France.  Unfortunately, to do this, he was obliged to run the 1900 games as part of the French world fair – the Exposition Universalle International (EUI) – whose chairman, Alfred Picart, stated tactfully that all sports were for morons.  Consequently, the events were fitted in as and when the disaffected EUI officials felt like it, ran from mid May to late October and included bizarre sports such as fire-fighting, ballooning and pigeon shooting.  (No, not clay pigeon shooting, real pigeon shooting).

The competitors had also to deal with their events being shunted off into wherever the EUI could find space and the swimmers, banished to the fast flowing River Seine, found their exceptionally fast times being offset by an interesting variety of unpleasant skin diseases from the heavily polluted river.

The 1900 Olympic Games also featured the first accusations of cheating when, during the marathon, Arthur Newton of the United States  finished fifth but stated he had not been passed by any other runner during the race.  Another American, Richard Grant, claimed he was run down by a cyclist as he made ground on the leaders.

Eventually, Frenchman Michel Théato crossed the finish line first and France took first and second place.  The US was later to allege that Théato was actually from Luxembourg and held a passport for that country, so the stage was set for a certain amount of transatlantic friction over the event.

Despite the France/US acrimony it was, predictably, the German participation which set Gallic teeth on edge.  The French president, Felix Faure, tried to keep the Germans out of the games and it was only persistent lobbying by de Coubertin and friends which ensured their participation.

However, having grudgingly accepted the presence of the evil ‘Boche’ at their games, the French went out of their way to make the German team feel as unwelcome as their means would allow.

The organisers refused to meet the German team at the station so that they were obliged to roam the city looking for their accommodation.  They were not allowed to train on any French equipment and were not informed of the timings of sporting events, resulting in the sprinters arriving at the stadium as the gun went off for the 100 metre race.

One morning the Germans awoke to find that their hotel had been adorned with the words “Cochons – a bas la Prusse!” (Pigs – down with Prussia!) and, upon returning to the hotel in the evening, the team captain, Fritz Hoffmann found an enormous pile of excrement in his bed.  His indignation at this was increased by, as he asserted,

This being the work of several persons.”

Obviously, you didn’t get to be captain of a German athletics team in those days if you displayed any kind of milksop unwillingness to delve around a pile of turds on your counterpane in order to find how many culprits had been involved.  I’d like to see Philipp Lahm try that one.

Things went slightly better for the Teutons in 1904 when the Olympics were held in St Louis in the US.  Not only did eight of their ten entrants win medals, but their bedding was completely free of any solid wastes.  The enormous US team – 432 of the 554 athletes were from America-predictably won most of the medals with twenty two golds, with two African Americans taking part for the first time.

However, an unfortunate sideshow to the Olympics were the Anthropology Games involving Africans, Asians, Filipinos and Native Americans, none of whom were eligible to appear in the Olympics proper as officials stated that, ”this type of man is hardly capable of Olympic calibre endeavour and, in any case, would hardly have understood the principles of amateurism.”

On the plus side for the Anthropology Games competitors, a local St Louis newspaper extolled their games saying :

“The meeting was a grand success from every point of view and served as a good example of what little brown men are capable of doing with training”.

Obviously, if heavy duty patronising was an Olympic event the US would have been well on the way to their twenty third gold medal.

The US contingent ….  refused to dip their flag to the Royal Box

The relatively peaceful 1904 Olympics were followed by a dramatic change of venue from Rome to London in 1908 owing to a natural disaster on Vesuvius.  There can’t have been many sporting events in history which have been cancelled owing to a volcanic eruption.

The opening parade at the White City was the usual brotherly fest when the Finns, whose land had been annexed by Russia in 1809, marched separately from the Russian imperial contingent and pointedly without a flag.   The US contingent, full of Irish first and second generation athletes, refused to dip their flag to the Royal Box, one of their athletes having previously stated,

This flag dips to no earthly king”.

Catcalls and boos from the pro-royal English crowd ensued and local newspapers later reprinted US pre-contest headlines containing such charmingly modest predictions as,

“American Athletes sure of success” and, “We will knock spots off Britishers.”  

The scene was set for a transatlantic head to head tussle and a series of protests and accusations flew from both sides.  The British accused the Americans of cheating in one of the heats for the 400 metres, the US runner was disqualified and his two team mates who had previously qualified withdrew from the final.

The British tug of war team, consisting of hefty Liverpool policemen, humiliatingly pulled the US team ‘over in a rush’ whereupon the Americans complained about their opponents heavy iron-reinforced boots which they referred to as ‘illegal equipment’.

In the marathon, the heroic Italian runner Dorando Pietri, leading the race by some distance, was so tired and disoriented by heat exhaustion that he ran the wrong way, fell down, got up, fell down again, was briefly treated by doctors and staggered to his feet stumbling towards the line, where he collapsed yet again.

They sportingly blamed this on the English weather

An Olympic official helped him up and half-dragged, half-carried him over the line where he collapsed once more.  He was taken off to hospital and, while he lay in critical condition, the US lodged a protest which was upheld despite a national outcry around Britain.

The German team, one of the initial favourites for the medals, performed less well than they and a disappointed Kaiser Wilhelm expected, coming in sixth in the medals table. They sportingly blamed this on the English weather; London’s heavily polluted air and the ‘hopelessly biased’ British judges.

This was echoed by the US after the Olympic medal tally ended with fifty seven golds for Britain compared to twenty two for the US. John Sullivan, the head of the Amateur Athletic Union in the US referred to the British judges as ‘cruel, irresponsible and utterly unfair’.

President Theodore Roosevelt referred to ‘so-called British sportsmanship’ and initiated a ticker tape parade in New York for the returning Olympians at which a papier-mâché British lion was dragged behind, jeered at and pelted by the crowd.

All things considered, I think we’d have to give the first four Olympics a bit of a failing grade on de Coubertin’s hoped for,

“… increasing friendly understanding among nations.”