Unpopular Opinion: The Olympics Needs To GTFO

credit: cameron spencer/getty images

I proudly watched zero hours of the Olympics this year. This marks two Summer Olympicses in a row that I missed, and I’m pretty happy about that. I also watched minimal amounts of the Sochi Winter Games, and my only regret is that I watched any at all. Here is why the Olympics needs to GTFO:

• Most of the events are just a genetics contest. No human alive can sprint faster than Usain Bolt no matter how hard they train. For the last eight years, Michael Phelps could have been taking bong hits and watching TV and still won against the scrubs who don’t have his genetic advantages;
• The IOC is entirely corrupt. It’s like FIFA’s demented brother;
• Judged events are hampered by biased judges, idiotic judges, and outright corrupt judges. It’s a complete joke, really;
• Every other athlete is doping, and why not dope when it gives you such a big advantage. The anti-doping rules are incomprehensible, incomplete, and ineffective. This “he said, she said” half-doping business is a lot of noise;
• Many Olympians start their trade when they are little kids, with no agency of their own, only to end up in the Olympics, then fade into obscurity with a particular set of skills that may or may not be useful;
• Olympic athletes are exploited. Few outside the NBA superstars who participate in the Olympics make even a tiny fraction of what Bob Costas makes for talking about the Olympics. All the money ends up with the media;
• Speaking of money and corruption, local politicians and their friends exploit the Olympics to build giant, wasteful stadiums and facilities that immediately fall into disuse and disrepair when the Olympics are over, enriching themselves at the expense of the taxpayers;
• Some of our most talented, hardest-working, and most capable human beings are wasted in the Olympics, exploited, turned into some character in a narrative spun by the media to make their stories more compelling, thereby enriching the media, and then discarded. Some also get used at photo ops by politicians along the way;
• Simone Biles could probably cure cancer and colonize Mars, but she got put into gymnastics at an early age and is now trying to sell me detergent. I’m allergic to Tide; knock it off, already. Maybe she knew as a six-year-old girl that she wanted to win ten billion Olympic medals, but maybe she didn’t. Maybe the media is deeply invested in selling the story of Olympic glory to kids, parents, and spectators so that they can rake in the money in Games after Games. As an aside, Mars has lower gravity than Earth, and gymnastics there would be absolutely bananas;
• The Olympic Games are predicated on a bizarre brand of nationalism that favors large, wealthy nations, and makes jokes out of bizarro entrants like the Jamaican bobsled team and the entire nation of Djibouti, and we need to remember that nationalism straight up sucks;
• Olympic gold medals aren’t even made out of gold. They’re about 1.5% gold. Weak.

credit: nick verreos