High life
Olympic freak show
Taki
The high point of the opening ceremony In Barcelona — at least for yours truly was seeing Princess Elena crying as the Spanish team entered the stadium. Her brother, Crown Prince Felipe, was the standard-bearer and that perhaps helped bring on the tears. But they were mostly tears of pride from a girl that has almost no Latin blood, but has been brought up in the Latin tradition. And there's no better cus- tom than that.
The Spanish are the proudest people in Europe, and their national pastime, bull- fighting, is a sacred ritual that separates the men from the girls. Just after showing us Princess Elena, the TV camera zeroed in
on the low point of the ceremony, the ghastly bureaucrat Delors, a smirking skunk of a lawyer whose minions are trying to abolish tauromachy. Fortunately, we were spared a glimpse of Delors' friend, Vasso Papandreou, as ghastly as Delors and twice as hairy (even the hucksters who run TV draw a line where the hairy one is concerned).
Worse was yet to come, however. The American team, which included the night- mare Afro-freaks who are representing Uncle Sam in the moronic game of basket- ball, entered chewing gum and carrying mobile telephones. If that didn't make Baron de Coubertin and Avery Brundage turn in their graves I don't know what would. Or perhaps I do.
During a press conference, the richest of the freaks, Michael Jordan, who makes 35 million greenbacks per annum, said things like, `Ah, ah, I don't know nuttin' about Angola except they're gonna fall . I ain't here to cut no deal or sponsor, I'm here to play ball. . . . ' Gee whiz, say I. Jordan's idi- otic pronouncements possessed dignity when compared to Charles Barkley, howev- er, who got into the Olympic spirit right away when with all his 250 pounds he drove an elbow into the stomach of a 170-pound economics student from a Third World, war-torn country, with the ball nowhere near. The US was winning about 49-0 at the time.
Which means it is time to stop the bull- shit and also the Olympics in their present form. Once upon a time the games had something to do with honour and courage. No longer. They are a pulpit for rich pro- fessionals and greedy merchants, especially the Americans. The Games should be awarded to ancient Olympia, and only track and field events, along with wrestling and boxing, should be included. And most important of all — only amateurs allowed. And what about the pros, you may well ask? Well, let them compete in their own world championships, grand prix and what have you, as they do already. But the Olympics should be cleaned out like the Augean stables, and the American Afro- freaks sent packing.
Mind you, sponsors aren't all bad, espe- cially Cartier, which last Sunday laid out a real feast at Windsor for the polo. The last time I watched a polo match was 20 years ago, when I was playing rather than watch- ing. If I had been playing last Sunday, how- ever, I would only have been watching, so fast has the game become. This was formu- la one polo, yet the game seemed to have retained its purity and innocence despite the presence of eight pros. The glittering crowd may have had something to do with it. I sat with Jamie Packer, Tania Bryer and Jilly Cooper and her husband, and one can't do better than that. But, typically, I was caught dpuble-dealing and lost both sweet young things. Oh well, it could be worse. I could be in Barcelona with Delors and the nightmare team.
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