SPORTS: The Olympics and Mexico...again

Lest my remarks be interpreted as US chauvinism, let me say that I dislike American football and think the rise of soccer in Latin countries is a remarkable phenomenon. Bob Gard says: "Soccer should be encouraged since a good player does not have to be as big and muscular as a football player. Teamwork, skill and endurance are at a premium, and both sexes can play." There is a hierarchy of sports, with boxing and bull-fighting at the bottom.

There is hope. Some day the US will adopt the metric system and Americans will become soccer fans. Americans speak an archaic form of English. Some day the US will catch up with the world. In view of the fact that the Congo just beaten Brazil in the Olympics soccer matches, and Latin America has been eliminated, we will have to reconsider the world sports picture. At least Spain is still in.

But, sports superfans, you have your priorities wrong. A Greek ferry, carrying 500 people, mostly tourists, sank after hitting a well-marked reef, with the loss of 70 or more lives. The captain and crew members had left the bridge and were watching a soccer match. They had their priorities wrong.

Take Mexico, which is near and dear to us. No country has devoted more TV time to the Olympics than Mexico. There is a villain in the games: the judge who disqualified Bernardo Segura. He also disqualified young Graciela Mendoza in the 20 km- walk for women. She was a lovely person, crying and saying she was looking forward to being with her family. But that villainous judge! He also disqualified a leading Chinese woman, but he did it in the tunnel, before exposing her to the humiliation to which Bernardo Segura had been subjected. Televisa had proudly set up an impressive TV studio in Sydney. Queen Sofia of Spain visited it with her sports champion son-in-law the Duke of Majorca, as did the president of the Olympic committee, the rather doddering Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch. A Televisa reporter put him on the spot with questions about the disqualification of Mexicans. He was owlish.

Back in Mexico, the players, winners and losers, were received like heroes. Much was made of the fact that moat of them came from very poor communities in the state of Mexico. Its governor had promise that each winner would receive an expensive automobile like a Daimler Benz. Let's hope they sold them and bought necessities for their families.

All this is very interesting. It is really a secularization of religious pilgrimages. In the past pilgrims traveled long distances to go to shrines like Santiago. Muslims still go in crowds to Mecca. A religious people, Mexicans still flock to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Now sports faithful travel long distances to Barcelona, Atlanta or Sydney. Pilgrims to shrines like Santiago revered the bones of saints. Mexicans watching TV were fascinated by loving views of the running shoes of Bermardo Segura.

Then Mexican TV returned abruptly to the reality of life. In a Mexico City vocational school a deposit of weapons and drugs was found. The students, angered by the administration's criticism of them, smashed up the school and wounded the principal, forcing the administrators to flee in automobiles.

The contrast was repeated in other countries. In Spain, for the 50th time this year, a woman was killed in domestic violence. In Italy, police discovered a vast Moscow-based network for the sale of pedophile films which even showed how to murder a child. A very humane priest set out to save the children, victims of original sin,which is still very much with us. Watching the idiocy of most TV programs, one concludes that life is so horrible or dull for so many people that these programs provide an escape from reality. So do sports competitions. The captains and the crews abandon the decks and watch soccer matches.

Ronald Hilton - 9/28/00