Flying the Flag

More from the Ironic Olympics.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the American delegation has appointed a Darfur refugee to carry its flag into the ‘bird’s nest’ stadium tomorrow night for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. The move is being interpreted as a slight on China’s Sudanese policy (it sends arms to the Government and has conspicuously failed to support peace moves) but Jacque Rogge, head of the International Olympic Committee, has asked the Americans not to ‘get into propaganda exercises’.

Rogge would know about propaganda exercises. One of his own officials has accused him of cutting a secret deal with China to ensure that the international media is censored during the games. See this report at The Australian for details.

In case you were wondering, the Olympic Movement stands for the ‘respect for universal fundamental ethical principles’.

Irony in the Time of the Olympics

It was a typically British farce that there was a lot of bother over whether drugs cheat Dwain Chambers should represent Britain at the Beijing Olympics. We are going to a country that has a human rights record that the Nazis would have been proud of and we are worried about a fellow who took drugs, served a ban and now would like to compete again?

Speaking of Nazi Germany, I wonder how the BBC would have represented the 1936 games if they were held today? Presumably, Monkey would have been replaced by a cartoon based on Adolf the Aryan and his adventures in prehistoric Germany.

Back to Beijing, however, and I am beginning to think that this should be called the Ironic Olympics. The Daily Telegraph reports that Beijing has been warned about the threat of new performance enhancing drugs, which could be more difficult than ever to detect. Given China’s previous record with drugs – see the scandals involving its swimmers in the 1990s – it is a good job that the threat from the drug is ‘minimal’ (although how does that square with the scientific warning that the drug is being used now?). But, no doubt, the swimmers were acting without the knowledge of the state. China has, after all, a good record of letting its citizens get on with their lives.

6 And Out

Bobby Moore lifts the World Cup in 1966

Of all the major sports in the United Kingdom, association football is by far the most sentimental. Witness Frank Lampardturning his eyes to heaven to thank his late mother every time he manages to run onto the pitch without falling over, or the way in which it only takes the death of a blade of grass in the south-west corner of the Kidderminster Harriers’ stadium for every team in the country to don their well worn black armband. Black? More likely grey by now.

Quite why football should be so sentimental is a mystery although it no doubt has a lot to do with the fact that the game has become incredibly rich without really deserving the money; hence, for as much filthy lucre as there is swilling around, there is also a lot of guilt too. Sentimentality is football’s well of showing that it hasn’t lost its soul.

The most recent case of sentimentality comes to us courtesy of West Ham United which, on the 50th anniversary of the debut of Bobby Moore as a Hammers player, has decided to retire his shirt. Or rather, his number: 6.

It is very laudable that we remember the great men and women of old. In Moore’s case, however, his greatness does not come so much from the fact that he was a West Ham player than that for 120 minutes on 30  1966 he had rather a good game with the England side, a game which resulted in the national side winning the FIFA World Cup for the first (and so far only) time.

As a result of this unprecedented triumph, Moore – who died in 1993 – has had a stand named after him at Upton Park as well as two statues of himself erected outside the West Ham ground and Wembley Stadium. That, it seems to me, is a more than perfectly adequate return for being a member of the 11 man squad that brought the World Cup to England.

But West Ham United have now gone further. Indeed, too far. What will they do on the 75th or 100th anniversary of Moore’s debut for the club? Or on the anniversary of the first time he captained the England team? Or played his last game for the club or, most sadly, died? In time it would not r me to find the area around Upton Park, every last street, pub and park bench named after Moore as if he were a god of Rome: Moore the First Time as Captain, Moore the World Cup Victor, Moore Who Took A Fancy To This Oak Tree When It Was In Full Leaf.

The problem with football is that, much like the Senate in Imperial Rome, it just doesn’t know when to stop heaping honours upon a man. At least the Senate could claim necessity arising out of a fear of its members being butchered if it did not acclaim the Emperor so.

If West Ham United want to honour Bobby Moore they should get back to the sources – the games that he played. Removing his shirt number acts against that as it suggests something that is plainly untrue: that he was irreplaceable. As good a player as he was, he was not that. No player ever is. They are turning the man into a myth and, ultimately, removing from the sight of the people the real reason for his being a legend.