Saturday 23 August 2008

Sacred, Humble...

Jacques Rogge, sinister and increasingly deranged head of the IOC, last night declared that 'the experience of the Olympic Village is sacred' and that the lesson of the Beijing Olympics is 'to be humble'. Oh I see.
His ravings were, as Reason To Be Cheerful Mihir Bose pointed out, by way of reminding us that we don't own the Olympics; the IOC does. We just pay for it.

7 comments:

  1. I have commented before about our Norwegian friend / Lillehammer / envelopes of a certain hue / etc. Jackie the lad was I think one of the cast at the time.
    Nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean squire.
    Mind you that's another famous Belgian to add to the list, making five if you count Dirk Bogarde.
    Does he mean humble in the sense that the size of his Zurich account, when viewed from above, is a humbling experience. And sacred of course as in sacred blue, another million, mes amis.
    Forgive the lapse into Poirotese.
    The IOC should be renamed, IBB, the international bung brigade.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nige, I think his point was that we have to live up to the Olympic ideal, which is to make ourselves bankrupt over the next four years so a few totalitarian states can use sport to again show what a wonderful nations they are.

    Quite reasonable, I thought.

    ReplyDelete
  3. And of course over the coming months we will have this keeping us enthralled.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Don't get me started on that Malty...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Don't get me started on that Malty...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Every time I have a minute to see an Olympic sport, it's something strange. Last one I saw was women's weight-lifting. She-men heaving up hundreds of lbs over their heads, cords straining in their necks, biceps bulging, and the audience shrieking at them in Korean, Chinese, Russian .... saying, what? "Don't drop it?"

    How does anyone get into a sport like this? How do women? As toddlers do they think, When I grow up I want to heft barbells over my head?

    ReplyDelete
  7. The man's a poet. I'm sure that for a suitably generous fee Jacques will help London's estate agents sell off the 2012 village as flats and houses before anyone notices they've been built so badly they're about to fall down anyway. Something along the lines of "Nestling in a enchanted village among the sacred groves of Leytonstone, where Demeter and Persephone may still be glimpsed dallying by the humble lamps of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Experience ..."

    ReplyDelete