Olympic Ice
Olympic Ice
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Olympic $10 Olympic |
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Olympic ice hockey (Olympic books) $8.69 This book is in Good Used condition |
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Richmond Oval, Speed Ice Skating Olympic Venue, Richmond, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada $24.99 Richmond Oval, Speed Ice Skating Olympic Venue, Richmond, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Photographic Print by Christian Kober. Product size approximately 12 x 16 inches. Available at Art.com. Embrace your Space – your source for high quality fine art posters and prints. |
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Olympic Skater Carol Heiss Performing on Ice Outdoors at Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park $99.99 Olympic Skater Carol Heiss Performing on Ice Outdoors at Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park Premium Photographic Print by Ralph Morse. Product size approximately 16 x 16 inches. Available at Art.com. Embrace your Space – your source for high quality fine art posters and prints. |
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Canadian Ice Hockey Legend Wayne Gretzky as He Lights the Olympic Flame at the 2010 Winter Games $24.99 Canadian Ice Hockey Legend Wayne Gretzky as He Lights the Olympic Flame at the 2010 Winter Games Photographic Print by . Product size approximately 12 x 16 inches. Available at Art.com. Embrace your Space – your source for high quality fine art posters and prints. |
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Ice Skate Figure Skating Hockey Metal Cookie Cutter $1.95 … |
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Olympics/1924/chamonix Photo Mugs Winter games at Chamonix ski jumping, ice hockey and skating …. |
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Richmond Oval, speed ice skating Olympic venue, Richmond, Vancouver, British Photo Mugs Richmond Oval, speed ice skating Olympic venue, Richmond, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America…. |
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Dance! – The World’s Favorite Ice-Skating Music $10.94 All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed…. |
TITLE: The Olympic Games Are Due Into London In 2012, But Will They Really Live Up To Their Promise Or Will The Unsavoury Side Of Sport Spoil The Party
I’ve been into various sports since I was a child, having been encouraged to watch football by my buddy when I was around eight years old. John was lucky enough to get a ticket for the F.A. Cup Final one year, and I, with childish innocence, spent the afternoon watching the match on television hoping that I would be able to see him in the stands. Of course, I didn’t notice him, but I had got drawn in by the spectacle of the big match. During my teens I turned into an obsessive football fan, with the results round-up at five o’clock|5pm|tea-time on a Saturday afternoon impacting on my state of mind for what remained of the weekend. Fortuitously for my family, I was a fan of a team who won more frequently than they lost!
In the years since, I started to watch a lot of other sports on television. Test cricket was soon a firm favourite at a time when a bout of glandular fever left me shut away at home during a series in the West Indies, snooker got dragged from the pubs and clubs of the UK and transformed into primetime viewing thanks to some creative marketing and the realisation that here was a sport that was relatively cheap and easy to show on television. And then there was the Olympic Games, an incredible sporting spectacle which happened every four years and in which the whole world competed on equal terms. Or so we were told.
Given that my earliest recollection of anything relating to the Olympics was the tragic events which happened in Munich in 1972, it’s maybe surprising that I embraced the whole idea of the event as much as I did. But those same games also produced Mark Spitz’s outstanding haul of seven gold medals in the swimming pool – an achievement only bettered in 2008 by Michael Phelps. Years of viewing East European athletes effortlessly outperforming allcomers due to performance enhancing drugs which were not identified didn’t dent my enthusiasm either, and I have avidly watched as much television footage as I could over the years – until now. (Is it any wonder that I now need glasses to see properly and am saving up for Laser eye surgery? Too many years spent watching sport on television!)
No matter how hard I try, I’m finding it impossible to build up any enthusiasm for the London Games. Even relations who usually don’t like sport think that they’d rather like to go and watch a couple of events, as it may be the only chance that they have in their lifetime, yet I, who used to be such an enthusiastic sports fan, and can get to the main Olympic arena in less than an hour from home, have little interest in trying to buy tickets.
I think that there are several reasons for this. Firstly, I am bored of the number of scandals and unsavoury events that have begun to sully many sports – bar brawl footballers, bribed cricketers, drug cheat athletes, jockeys taking backhanders, and behind all of them, the dodgy characters who instigate much of the damage and who encourage such havoc simply for personal financial profit.
Secondly, big business has forced its way into on so many events now. Everything has business branding, events are planned to fit in with television executives wishes ahead of the fans, sportsmen and women are told what clothes they can wear and which products they have to endorse, including diet supplements and Laser eye treatments – aren’t these actually ‘legal’ cheating? But the end result for the public is paying ridiculous prices to watch a tournament in order to fill the corporate pockets of the organisations who are running the sport, and without in reality being sure if teams or competitors are actually participating against each other on equal terms. The golfer who is advertising Laser eye surgery - doesn’t the treatment give him an unfair advantage? The football team whose owners have employed some obscure type of therapist – is everything he expects the team to do totally above board?
Finally, I don’t notice the wealth of personalities in sport these days. There are a small number of characters who might be described as entertaining, but due to the money now involved, many sportspeople don’t feel that they can say a few crazy things once in a while because anything they do or say may impact on their contract. I find myself wishing for another Daley Thompson, Jackie Stewart, Tommy Smith, Joe Bugner or John McEnroe (though I can believe that he’d probably be advertising Laser eye treatment if he was still playing at his peak now – though for the tennis officials rather than himself!)