Subscribe to Print Edition | Sat., March 22, 2008 Adar2 16, 5768 | | Israel Time: 01:29 (EST+7) web haaretz.com   Back to Homepage Rosner's Domain Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Advertising Books Arts & Leisure Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File

On the Couch / Politics just muck up the Olympics By Jerrold Kessel "I asked the Holy Spirit where he was going to kick. He said "left" and I said "thank you." I went left and I saved the ball, so today I was very blessed." Thus, Bristol City's Brazilian goalkeeper Adriano Basso insisted that the "Hand of God" was involved in his critical penalty save in an English second-division match against fellow promotion aspirant Watford. Wouldn't sporting lives all be so much easier if everyone trusted in the higher powers to settle our human hashes? Last week I was worried. This Couch session, I'm beside myself: The Olympics are in jeopardy. It's not just that they are the world's greatest stage, the biggest sporting spectacle with the most worldwide focus, but because the Games really are about fraternity, spirited competition and the raising of the human spirit. They are a once-in-four-years opportunity to give skepticism a back seat and to bury cynicism - a time for genuine romantics, though not necessarily for blinkered romanticism. Advertisement Jacques Rogge clearly doesn't seem to believe there's any need for divine or any sort of outside intervention in the wake of China's controversial handling of the situation in Tibet. "No government has called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics," noted the president of the International Olympic Committee. European sports ministers and Olympic committees ruled that political action should not be linked to sport. He added: "We are heartened because boycotts will not be a solution," said Rogge. He was false-starting, however - jumping the gun, as they say. Not a day passed when, in Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, calculating to undermine Beijing's plans to use the Games as a platform for its coming-out party as a global powerhouse, suggested the EU should consider punishing China's crackdown by staying away from the Opening Ceremony. Call me a coward but I'm happy that, though Tibet continues to boil, even high-minded Europe isn't thinking (for now) of going beyond a symbolic boycott. That sort of action definitely bears consideration. But a full-scale boycott such as against the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and the counter-action four years later by the Soviet bloc against the Los Angeles Games achieved little. Rogge is correct on one point - a boycott hurts only the athletes and sports lovers everywhere. The run-up to Beijing begins on Monday at noon with the kindling of the Olympic torch at Olympia. The torch will be lit by the sun's rays just like in ancient times when Greek mythology says the sun god Apollo lit the flame to bring brightness and warmth to human beings. It then begins a global tour of 135 cities covering 137,000 kilometers before arriving in Beijing for the opening ceremony on August 8. To demonstrate political astuteness, the Chinese made a point of planning the torch route through Tibet and to the top of Mount Everest. Taking the torch to the top of the world was always going to be one of the grandest and most politicized feats of an already politicized Olympics - touching as it does on one of China's most sensitive issues, its often harsh 57-year rule over Tibet. The route won't change despite the violence in Lhasa, Beijing announced on Wednesday. Rogge and his IOC colleagues deserve to win the plastic booby medal for failing to appreciate that by giving the games to China inevitably meant there'd be no way to sustain the hoary cliche about keeping politics out of sport. I risk sounding like a bore but it's too important an issue so I urge you to join the campaign to secure a permanent home for the Olympics and so replace the ignominy of the quadrennial pandering to the world's powerful nations. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Declassifying AIPAC Two former pro-Israel lobbyists charged with revealing secret info. to Israeli diplomats. Jersualem pilgrimage Christian pilgrims flock to Holy City to mark Good Friday and retrace the route of Jesus.

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