IOC sporting events have become one giant political demonstration in which the athletes are a mere plot device
But is it clear? It does not seem to be entirely clear to Vladimir Putin, who is swanning about his $51bn ice-world like a homophobic
Mr Freeze, just as it didn't seem to be entirely clear in 2008 to the Chinese government, whose Games were a sporting event in the same way the Death Star was moon-shaped. Which is to say it was, but that was hardly the salient point.
In fact, having examined the realities of the IOC's typically faultless logic on this one, it would seem helpful to delineate the actual rules on politicking at the Games, intuitive though they may feel to us all by now. And so … People who are permitted to use the Olympics as a vehicle for advancing their own messages and agendas: the president of the host nation, the organisers, the sponsors, the IOC, the sportswear manufacturers, and anyone who pays (except the lowly customers). People who aren't: the athletes.
Any attempt to send a message from the podium – via peaceful gestures, obviously – will be punished by the IOC, whose motto should really be Faster, Higher, Stronger, Silenter.
Consequently, just as it always does, this policy will serve to emphasise the IOC's serial willingness to appease powerful governments at the expense of the competitors. The more the IOC (and indeed its spiritual twin, Fifa) continues to gift its sporting events to authoritarian regimes, the more they become one giant political demonstration, in which the athletes are a mere plot device. Their role is to shut up and compete, providing charming and unquestioning window dressing for events that are about something else entirely.
It is often remarked that bunfights like the Olympics are just war by other means, and increasingly these global sporting events really do seem to find their closest analogy in the characteristics of international conflict. Both involve incontinent spending, the corrupt awarding of contracts, and a civilian populace required to pay for it all unquestioningly or be accused of being unpatriotic, while allegations of human rights and civil liberties abuses always ensue.
Or as the IOC president prefers it: "When the athletes will be in Sochi, it will become clearer and clearer that the Olympic Games are first of all about the athletes and about sport."
Bless him, but if he spends four seconds thinking about it, I don't think Mr Bach will find it's about the athletes and sport for the Russian president. If it were actually about the athletes, of course, those competitors would be extended the same rights of expression as whichever cocktail of corporations and Kremlinites has bought the event this time round.
Richard Keys' absence not the only talking point in Andy Gray return
The erstwhile Sky Sports commentator was back in business thanks to BT Sport, with the outing only serving to throw the absence of Andy's banter buddy Richard Keys into even more bittersweet relief. Then again, I say "absence". And I say "comeback". But, of course, those who follow the mercilessly observed Keys parody account on Twitter – it is a parody, isn't it? – will know that "we've never been away. We're just working elsewhere".
Qatar, in fact, which Richard painted as a veritable paradise in an engrossing
interview last year, where he lamented press manipulation in the UK. "It's a huge thing for me," he declared of his Qatar residency, "to live in a country where that sort of hypocrisy doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist."
What a mind he is. And as the Zen master of hanging-out-the-back-of-it explained to a Twitter user only this weekend: "I'm far richer emotionally and financially my friend. I'm a long way from bitter."
But is he a long way from rekindling his bromance with Andy – his brobantz, if you will – on British telly? Well, as far as what actually happened with
The Unpleasantness at Sky is concerned, Richard seems to have drunk deeply from the well of conspiracy. To read his timeline is to see tantalising references to "the real story" and "the full facts" as to what befell him and Andy. Detractors are warned to "come back to me when the full story emerges". "We were set up as a distraction," he hints darkly. "We were bugged."
It would be helpful to think of the pair's quest for the truth as some kind of Jason Bourne-style thriller, where the stakes never stop getting higher, the danger is clear and present, the enemies go all the way to the top of the CIA, the World Bank and the Vatican, and which will soon require Andy to shake down some kind of hostile agent at dead of night in a Qatari storm drain while Richard demands: "Who is the keymaster? Who is the keymaster?"
Whether the denouement will come in time to make Richard and Andy the commonsense pick for Preston North End and Nottingham Forest's fourth round replay is unclear. But we can only wish our plucky enemies of the state all the best.
Video: Obama’s Speech
