The 21st Winter Olympic Games – the ultimate orgy of statism – opened yesterday in Vancouver with two events symbolic of the state: The death of an innocent person and a technical malfunction that held up the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. No doubt the International Olympic Committee is more upset with the latter then the former.
Prior to the opening ceremonies, a Georgian luger was killed during a practice run. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports reported,
In an outrageous investigation that purposefully asked the wrong question to assure the most-desired answer, Olympic officials quickly concluded Friday that the death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was the fault of Nodar Kumaritashvili and no one or nothing else.
Most notably, it certainly wasn’t them or the wild track they built in the mountains here….…No one apparently asked why Kumaritashvili was forced to make such turns while whistling through Whistler at nearly 90 miles per hour. No one apparently questioned why they thought it necessary to build a $105 million missile launch, the world’s fastest track for what was already one of its most dangerous sports.
Two decades ago you could win Olympic gold by flying down a mountain at 70-75 miles per hour. Now you have to go 90-95. This is insane, unnecessary and recklessly arrogant.
Whether there were deficiencies to the track isn’t the issue. The track is the deficiency.
The IOC, which is fanatical about rooting out athletes’ drug use to the point of enslaving their bodies, has no concerns about whether its own facilities endanger the lives of athletes. No reason it should. The games must triumph over all – and Canada has mobilized its vast state apparatus to ensure that, reports the Wall Street Journal:
As the winter Olympics kick off here this weekend, so do plans for protests that could put thousands of demonstrators on the city’s streets, in a test of how Vancouver will balance security and civil liberties….
…Vancouver…has readied itself for all threats and disturbances, hosting a 15,500-strong dedicated security force whose cost is approaching an estimated $1 billion….
…Vancouver Olympics security chiefs say that all intelligence suggests the threat level for the Winter Games is “low.” But they are pulling out the stops to make sure it stays that way, bringing in 4,200 Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 4,500 Canadian Forces troops, 1,800 municipal police and 5,000 private security personnel–so many people that they have contracted three cruise ships to put everyone up.
Those forces are arrayed to protect Olympics venues and some outlying areas, with Canadian navy divers helping to secure waterfronts and army patrols on skis for snowy backcountry terrain.
An additional 1,300 Vancouver police officers are responsible for maintaining order in the city’s public spaces, where the demonstrations are expected. Security personnel are taking no chances: On Thursday, police evacuated and closed down the seabus terminal in north Vancouver for more than three hours after a suspicious package was reported there. It turned out to be a false alarm.
None of that security, of course, protected Mr. Kumaritashvili from the IOC’s reckless track design. And it won’t protect British Columbia taxpayers from years, if not decades, of debt payments to subsidize this month’s games. The Vancouver Sun reported last year,
Except for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, cities — including Montreal and Athens — generally don’t make a profit hosting the Games, said Kevin Walmsley, co-director of the University of Western Ontario’s International Centre for Olympic Studies…
Most are left holding the bag, which for Vancouver could be an $875-million-plus debt for the Olympic Athletes Village. In Montreal’s case it was a $1.5-billion debt and a white elephant Olympic Stadium dubbed the Big Owe, which was built in 1976 for the Summer Olympics and just recently paid off…
…Take Athens, which hoped to shed its drab image and become a true tourist haven, but was left with a $17-billion US debt. Or Italy, where the national government helped bail out the 2006 Turin Winter Games by covering $159.11 million US of a $195.82 million shortfall. Olympics watchers say Beijing’s bill will top $50 billion US.
But on the bright side, at least we get curling back on American television. Where it belongs.
UPDATE: There is video of Kumaritashvili’s crash, but it’s been removed from YouTube and other internet websites, because the IOC “has blocked it on copyright grounds.”
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Did you notice that the first people to enter the stadium at the beginning of the opening ceremonies were representatives of the federal police force?
The heavy police and military presence on the streets, the increased public debt, the porkbarrel contracts and the political junkets are the true purpose of the Olympics.
But the torch relay was good for laughs. The participants looked like obese mental patients carrying a giant reefer.
Unfortunately for IOC, the video of the deadly luge crash has been aired on NBC and is available on the Internet. And, anyone who watches it will understand that the low-height of the retaining wall combined with the exposed steel columns adjacent to the last turn obviously contributed to the severity of the young Georgian’s injuries. The simple expediency of raising the retaining wall at the exit of the fatal turn–perhaps by doing something as simple as adding transparent plexiglass extensions–would make the track less deadly. In sum, attributing 1005 of the fault to the courageous young competitor comes across as blatantly cowardly and crass–the court of public opinion will judge the IOC harshly.
The accident is a classic example of poor risk assessment and poor risk management. There seemed to be plenty of examples prior to the fatal accident that there was a problem with the track. People were crashing like crazy on that curve and more than one person had come close to flying off the track. Rather than recognizing the potential severity of the hazard, the people in charge consoled themselves with the fact that nobody had been badly hurt (yet). The same blindness to risk can be seen in both space shuttle accidents. Most fatal accidents occur in situations with low probability of occurrence, but high severity of outcome.
Almost every winter Olympic event involves some sort of semi-controlled sliding and very high speeds. When this results in somebody crashing into an object with significantly more inertia than the person, this should not come as a huge surprise. However, there appears to have been plenty of evidence before this terrible accident that the risks were significantly higher on this track, and some sort of mitigation could have been taken before hand (e.g., extending a wall up the sides of the track where the accidents were most frequent).
That’s just my opinion.
Anyone notice how a few years after the LA Olympics, the city broke out in riots. A few years after the Moscow Olympics, the fall of the USSR. Then there was the Sarajevo Olympics, no need to mention what happened there. Then there was the Sydney race riots. Athens was only a few years ago too, and now look at Greece.
to david c:
the sydney race riots were more a case of enforced multiculturalism. the timing was purely casual.
the usual laughable econometric studies proved conclusively what manna the games would be. whatever effect they may or may not have had, the shocking and corrupt administration (alp) of the state has long confined nsw to the economic sick bed.
And a few years after the Berlin Olympics there was World War II! I think you’ve got something here! When you put two unrelated events together, you can infer a connection! And if you’re trying to disparage one of those events, perhaps one you don’t like, how about you make that second event a bad one! That’s amazing what you did there! I can’t wait to see horrible yet completely unrelated event will happen in Vancouver a few years from now.
In honor of Mr. Kumaritashvili and to protest the jaw-dropping socialist offense of the IOC “investigation,” I call on all luge, skeleton, and bobsled competitors at the Vancouver Olympics to decline competing at all.
So the State did what the State does.
If the State were what the State was…
Rather than recognizing the potential severity of the hazard, the people in charge consoled themselves with the fact that nobody had been badly hurt (yet).
I feel as if I’m on some Democrat-nanny-state site.
Craig: “I feel as if I’m on some Democrat-nanny-state site.”
The argument here is that lugers are under immense pressure from their home governments (in many cases, violent pressure) to outperform other nations and be the absolute best. This is unnecessary and frankly would be laughable if it weren’t literally life-or-death.
There is, of course, no problem with private competitive luging, just as there is no problem with skydiving.
The day skydiving becomes an olympic event, expect parachute failures and deaths to increase dramatically. When a corporation allows someone to die, they’re called out in the media, sued, and demonized. When the state allows someone to die, it is made into a glorious, tragic death and fingers are never pointed.
“When you put two unrelated events together, you can infer a connection! … I can’t wait to see horrible yet completely unrelated event will happen in Vancouver a few years from now.”
Of course nobody really knows, but Vancouver could very likely have severe problems in the future. It isn’t called the “left coast” for nothing.
The frequent coincidence between Olympic games and later social problems may be because the games are a heavily interventionist fascist spectacle which are often promoted for a particular area because the politicians want to “do something” for an area which is “on the edge” economically. The games naturally do nothing positive for an area and sometimes leave it with problems more severe than previously, for example in Quebec after the 1976 games in Montreal. It wasn’t just the games themselves and their debt and corruption, but the fact that they (not accidentally) coincided with the rise of ethnic nationalist politicians whose crackdowns on English-speaking businesses essentially drove the business capital of Canada to Toronto, Ontario at the same time that the gigantic Olympic debt was assumed by the provincial government. In this case it led not to riots and insurrection but to referenda on secession in 1980 and 1995. Peace and unity (of a sort) have been maintained with huge federal transfers of cash and pork from the “have” provinces to the “have not” provinces, of which Quebec is the largest recipient.
I made the mistake of leaving the TV on news while browsing for something better this morning, and they showed masses of protesters outside the games.
These protesters weren’t mad about the thieves stealing their money to support this statist sporting spectacle, but instead that the stolen money wasn’t spent on providing free housing. No one – not any of the protesters, not any of the news commentators thought: maybe the govt just shouldn’t steal money in the first place!
Let people who wish to host sporting competitions do so, and let people who want to donate money to housing charities do so. How hard is this for people to understand?
Quote from Craig: “I feel as if I’m on some Democrat-nanny-state site.”
My point is about human nature and the way we typically (and poorly) assess risk. When people charge the state with their own protection, and the people who run the state make the same flawed risk assessments (that often result in catastrophe), then it should not be a surprise. Nor should it be a surprise that after the fact, the state then tries to shift the blame from themselves (rightly fixed or not) on to others.
If adequate risk assessment techniques had been used in this case, then perhaps a less terrible outcome would have resulted (or perhaps not), but it seems obvious to me that virtually no risk assessment was done in this case. Also, if the Olympics were not run by governments, then the outcome would most likely have been different as well.
Quote from Craig: “I feel as if I’m on some Democrat-nanny-state site.”
My point is about human nature and the way we typically (and poorly) assess risk. When people charge the state with their own protection, and the people who run the state make the same flawed risk assessments (that often result in catastrophe), then it should not be a surprise. Nor should it be a surprise that after the fact, the state then tries to shift the blame from themselves (rightly fixed or not) on to others.
If adequate risk assessment techniques had been used in this case, then perhaps a less terrible outcome would have resulted (or perhaps not), but it seems obvious to me that virtually no risk assessment was done in this case. Also, if the Olympics were not run by governments, then the outcome would most likely have been different as well.
“the ultimate orgy of statism”
Beautifully put.
Olympics are very useful to governments because they evoke national pride – a truly puzzling emotion experienced by the masses.
Because they are robbed by the same government as the athlete, not only do the masses feel somehow proud of the athlete’s achievement, they also feel superior to anybody who isn’t robbed by the same government.
Of course, the politicians in all parts the world masterfully exploit this feeling of national pride, to screw those pathetic morons even more.
Let people who wish to host sporting competitions do so, and let people who want to donate money to housing charities do so. How hard is this for people to understand?
About on a par with quantum gravity, IME.
Sports are an analog of war and the olympics are an analog of the Roman coliseum. The sports that have the greatest potential for fights, death, and injury attract the greatest crowds, baseball being the exception that makes the rule.
Ping Pong is probably the fastest and most skillful one on one sport. Why isn’t in the olympics? Because no one ever gets hurt.
Then why the olympic swim suit competitions like the juvenile female acrobatics? I suspect they please the dirty old men who bankroll the games. Why no acrobatics for juvenile boys? We all know the answer to that one. Just you wait . . .
billward,
Ping-pong is an olympic sport.
Olympics is based on the tradition of ancient Greece where it went on for seven centuries with strict rules against their favorite pastime, warring during the events.
It is just a game as its name implies. According to Mises, it is a serious error to mistake games with real life. Government involvement is not surprising considering the huge propaganda opportunities. The opposite would be surprising. More and more, the selection of the organizing country is a reflection of the level of etatism. Selection of Canada and especially BC is telling though Calgary, AB was selected before, too.
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