FLYING DOWN TO RIO

PERHAPS LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I enjoy a little bit of the Olympic spirit once in a while, and, as has been revealed in Sunday Mornings passim, I fully expect none of this to be on display in the pestilent city of Rio de Janeiro later on this summer. Although I am pleased to express my surprise at the speed of construction of the Olympic Village, above.

MY DISTRUST OF THIS YEAR'S OLYMPICS is not simply because of the legacy of Brazilian legend Jean-Marie Faustin Godefroid "João" de Havelange, former president of FIFA, member of the International Olympic Committee and once described as "the most corrupt man who ever lived", nor by the fact that the former President of the Brazilian Republic, Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva and the current one, Dilma Vana Rousseff, have been or are being hauled over the coals for charges of corruption in the extreme.

NO, IT PERHAPS HAS MORE to do with the recent spate of doping scandals in sport and the fact that the Olympics this year are going to be held in a city where it is easier to acquire drugs than it is to find clean drinking water.

YET ON A MORE PERSONAL LEVEL, I am amazed that drug-taking should be deemed illegal in sport. When I see some of the "events" that these athletes practice it is extremely difficult to imagine any sane human being wishing to indulge in them without some form of consciousness-changing stimulant.

WHY ELSE WOULD SOMEONE wish to do the pole vault, charging along a track with a flexible pole and hurtling twenty feet into the air then crashing onto a bouncy castle without the side protection parts? Or speeding down a hundred-and-fifty yard snow piste and flying off into the air with a couple of plastic planks tied to one's feet? Wearing spandex and a Smurf costume to ride a bicycle? And why a grown man would want to enter the 10,000 metres race, running round in circles for half an hour is beyond me.

I HAVE ALWAYS ASSUMED that these people were on drugs and that trying to prevent them from taking whatever it is that they need would be as foolish as attempting to get a jazz musician to play without (at least) a little hashish. Sport today is entertainment, as it used to be in Ancient Greece, when chaps and ladies would delight in watching naked men indulge in Greco-Roman wrestling after a few glasses of wine (all round). And, to be honest, not very many tennis fans care what Maria Sharapova has inside her body, as long as she can inspire someone to want to carry out a good backhand smash, as seen above.

IN FACT, I WOULD GO SO FAR as to say that sport in general, and the Olympics in particular, should take its lead from American football, basketball and ice hockey, and introduce drug-taking as a compulsory element. One can imagine the possibilities of sponsorship and the entertainment value of, say, the 400 metres hurdles on marijuana, the cocaine triple jump event, the 4 x 400 metres passing the joint, the heroin synchronised swimming or the legal high jump.

OF COURSE, THERE MUST ALWAYS be safety concerns: javelin and hammer throwers should be restricted to methadone, speed should be kept out of some pool events, and opiates, acids and such derivatives should not be allowed in the Marathon, as, in their confused states, even more athletes might get lost than usually do. 

(My last photos show a non Olympic event that will, coincidentally, be taking place over the summer. This is the three-legged bicycle race in which major British political figures will compete to see which of them (if any) still have a job when parliament reopens next September. Unfortunately, Andrew Mitchell (bottom), former chief whip of the Conservative Party, was disqualified when found not to be respecting rules over helmets.)