The Last Word
McCarthy, Eugene J.
THE LAST WORD } Eugene J. McCarthy Going for the Gold No fewer than twenty-nine corporations have paid at least $4 million each to the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee to become "official...
...Olympic training centers...
...That standard is the bottom line...
...This year, sailing, kayaking, wind-surfing, and judo will be among the Olympic competitions...
...The Olympics have never been free of outside influence...
...Miller, an unofficial beer, is funding two U.S...
...Ford, for example, is the official car of the National Volleyball Association...
...Eastman Kodak is sponsoring the U.S...
...When Diego Rivera objected to making changes in the mural he was painting at Rockefeller Center, Nelson Rockefeller is reported to have said, "It's my wall...
...Traditionally, historians were expected to come after the action, sometimes centuries later, to reconstruct what happened and interpret it...
...Behind the scenes," he reports, "the Olympic Committee has to ask, 'How many will watch the sport...
...The sports that fail to captivate the audience are likely to go the way of some of the events that have been included in the past Games—fishing, the firing of large-caliber cannon, musical composition, and even poetry writing...
...This latter reward could be a powerful incentive if offered to U.S...
...The Department of Defense has military historians who have probably already completed the history of the victory in Grenada...
...Strenk is identified as the resident historian on the staff of the 1984 Olympic Organizing Committee in Los Angeles...
...Just what corporate dominance and television marketing will do to the Olympics has not been demonstrated, but there are hints of things to come when athletes run not for the finish line but for the bottom line...
...In the modern version, political rather than commercial forces appear to have influenced the games in selection of events, eligibility of participants, choice of referees, equipment, location, and the like...
...For the Olympics, the resident historian is an innovation...
...We have come a long way since the 1896 revival of the Games, which was limited principally to classical contests of speed, endurance, and strength of individual athletes...
...In 1980, President Carter took the United States out of the Olympics for political reasons...
...THE LAST WORD } Eugene J. McCarthy Going for the Gold No fewer than twenty-nine corporations have paid at least $4 million each to the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee to become "official game sponsors...
...track-and-field team...
...athletes today...
...Corporations have company historians...
...The time may come when ABC or some other network that has "bought" the Games may take us out because the bottom line just isn't there...
...The intrusion of corporate influence has, according to Andrew Strenk, introduced a new standard for the selection of events to be included in the Olympics...
...Olympic Committee...
...None of these sports is likely to last long in Olympic meetings unless it provides photo opportunities and wins popular support from television viewers...
...The official group can use the logo of the U.S...
...Three hundred years after the establishment of the Olympic games, Euripides—poet, playwright, and athlete—wrote that "out of the tens of thousands of ills in Greece, none is worse than the tribe of professional athletes...
...Strenk has not yet proved himself as an Olympic historian, but he deserves credit for his openness in reporting the new standards upon which Olympic decisions are to be based: The compelling consideration as to which events will be included in the games and when and how they will be represented is, according to Strenk, "dollars and business sense...
...But now it seems that the old saying, "He who pays the piper calls the tune," will again be proved true...
...In a Washington Redskins football game last season, for example, a kick-off was called back by the referee because he thought the television crews and announcers had not been ready...
...This "official" group includes United Airlines, the Buick Motor Division of General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, and Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd...
...The seeds of commercialism were planted at the first contest of the Greek athletes at Olympia in 776 B.C...
...On the other hand, contests that were tried in the past and dropped may be brought back because of their commercial viability—Indian club swinging, one-handed weight lifting, tug-of-war, and holding one's breath under water (an event included only once and won by a French contestant who remained submerged in the Seine for sixty-eight seconds...
...the others must buy advertising television time from ABC-TV, the logo of the American Broadcasting Company...
...above and before all, "Is it adaptable to television...
...The office of resident historian is a relatively recent invention...
...Winners received not only wreaths and trophies, but free meals and a lifetime exemption from taxation...
...Today, we have not only resident historians but resident prehistorians, ready to write instant history or even history in advance...
...Both teams had been ready, and had responded to the whistle...
...Can we sell out the stadium?'" And one must consider Eugene J. McCarthy, the former Senator and Presidential candidate, is a director of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich...
...Other corporations are cutting in on the Olympic pie by sponsoring game-related activities...
Vol. 48 • May 1984 • No. 5
