Opinion Paper on Olympics, Free Example for You

Executive Summary

Sports activities present a significant opportunity of promoting environmental awareness, as well as social and economic development in the society. Subsequently, it also plays an essential role in achieving peace and reconciliation through the Olympic movements. Therefore, the stakeholders that are given the job to plan these events should be cautious not to cause more conflicts by discriminating on others, primarily through the host country selection process. The whole universe should feel united by the Olympic Games and explore its usefulness by promoting a positive legacy. Therefore this work will seek to extend our knowledge on various issues that are facing the current Olympics.

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Olympics Have Outlived Their Usefulness

In my view, Olympic has outlived their usefulness and needs to be disbanded. There have been various corrupt cases from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and also the individual committees. The IOC is only concerned about the money hence being vague from the professional sports leagues, specifically the NFL. Notably, the Olympics have transformed into power and money hungry hub. It has become an ideal example of how a legitimate union decentralizes to the level of being a self-parody.

Evidently, there has been blatant corruption in this global platform. For example, the case of Russian contractors where $51 billion which can be equated as a quarter of B.C's yearly gross domestic product went missing mysteriously in the pockets of Russian suppliers. Olympics have outlived their usefulness since there is no way nations can spend billions of dollars on temporary sports infrastructure and their citizens are dying in poverty. Nonetheless, governments that take part in Olympics are supposed to live at peace with one another (Gregory & Park, 2018). However, there are various political persecutions, open fights with rebel nations, human rights atrocities amongst other serious problems.

I agree with the core utopian concepts behind the Olympics. It is a moment where everybody puts aside their misunderstanding both dictatorships and democracies alike for a specific duration and comes together in the spirit of friendly competition. I have no issues with the sports carried out in this international sporting event. My problem is with the Olympics as an organization. Subsequently, the Olympics are entirely corporatized, traveling oligarchy, trademarked which are organized in every two years and camped in different cities. Unfortunately, they go ahead to siphon funds to itself and choose few sponsors commonly known as "Olympic partners."

United States Medal Winners Should be Compensated for the Medals They Earn

Olympic sportspersons shed blood, tears, and sweat for an opportunity to get gold and make their country pride. While various developed states expect their sportswomen and men to compete entirely for the glory of victory, on the other hand, developing countries shower their athletes with cash and other enticements with the intents of spurring the fight for medals (Abdul-Jabbar, 2015). In my view, despite other advantages enjoyed by the United States sportspeople, it is essential to reward medal winners.

The whole aspect of competing so hard in the Olympic Games is to show pride for your nation and win the shiny medal back home. Winning the medal is entirely a good thing, and it is only right to reward the athletes for the job well done. This is because the winning athletes sacrifice a lot during their training so that they can emerge winners. For them, their respective sports activities are like a full-time job. Therefore, they need to be rewarded for their dedication and willingness to fly the flag of United States of America at an international event such as the Olympics.

All the glory of fighting hard, the government should appreciate those who emerge the winner so that they can be motivated. It is essential to note that other professional athletes in leagues such as the National Hockey League amongst others are in most instances paid large sums of money to compensate for the time they spend preparing for their respective activities. Therefore, Olympic athletes should not be excepted since they also dedicate their time and energy in preparations for the competition.

The "Host City" Selection Process Is Biased

It is my view that the hosting country selection process is not fair. Hosting the global event provides various benefits and opportunities to the country and region at large. Therefore, the selection process requires careful, detailed planning so that the games can be successful and the best candidate is given the mandate for hosting the event. However, the selection process is increasingly based on the aspect of proving that one is a competitive global city as well as the inclinations that are depicted by the committees which determine the hosting city. Therefore, these processes are affected by the connectivity and position of the candidate applying. In that, the global networks tend to have political ramifications that influence which country will be selected.

Nonetheless, one of the requirements for the hosting cities is that it is expected to commit to billion-dollar investments for a term of seven years before the games are hosted without any corresponding guarantee of accomplishing these commitments (Weinberg, 2001). As a result, this is increasingly proving to be difficult for cities that are situated in the developing countries since the infrastructure tends to be insufficient to support these investments. This means that the current section process has transformed to cause severe economic challenges for a majority of citizens in the hosting nations hence the need to come up with a more cost-effective and few politicized strategy. Moreover, there is the aspect of building various expensive venues meant for the Olympic competition that is supposed to be held for only two weeks. In that, more than $50 billion will be required for each host city hence locking away cities that cannot afford to raise such an amount of money.

Streaming the 2018 Winter Olympics

The 23rd Olympic winter games started last month as a beacon of warmth in a place of extreme cold. The event was held at PyeongChang, in South Korea (Lenskyj, 2018). The first week of its opening saw the host country grab one gold medal in its signature sport: short-track speed skating. The event was decorated with a total of 102 games that made the competition to last for more than two weeks. I spent an estimate of thirty to one hour on streaming the 2018 winter Olympics.

Regardless of the various malpractices that are facing the Olympics, I could not resist watching the world games as I watched new athletes excelling in their respective fields. Moreover, the winter Olympics season is like Christmas for the spectators who love obscure sports. In that, there is a list of nationally televised events to choose from. The reason why I glued on the screen was because of the games such as figure skating, skiing en masses, and snowboarding. Notably, various new sports activities were introduced that I didn't know much about them such as curling and skeleton amongst many others (Lenskyj, 2018). It was enjoyable watching these sports too even though I did not know much about them.

To sum, it was a challenge watching all the sports because of the time difference precisely the reason why I took roughly thirty minutes watching every day. For instance, there is significant time variance between Pyeongchang and the United States hence that made watching some events to be a bit hard since I could not get up early or stay late at night watching the action online.

References

Abdul-Jabbar, K. (2015). Why Athletes Use Their Platform to Effect Change Off the Field. Time, 186(22/23), 35-36.

Gregory, S., & Park, A. (2018). The Real Olympic Drama. Time, 191(7/8), 84-88.

Lenskyj, H. J. (2018). The Winter Olympics. The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies. doi:10.1057/9780230367463.0011.

Weinberg, H. (2001). The Olympic selection process: Baden-Baden, 1981. Journal of Olympic History, 9(1), 19-27.