Primeau & Grose: Behind the Scenes

Do you remember the motto of the Olympics??  Higher, faster, stronger. It doesn’t mention cunning or strategy or upmanship.  It doesn’t actually mention winning, but come on; the point of the Olympics or ANY competition IS to win, isn’t it? What kind of sham do we pull when we say ‘as long as you try your best’? No one cares if the effort was your best; we only care if you win. Frankly second is only the first place loser! Remember Olympic Games evolved from war, and in war if you don’t win you likely get annihilated!  

These are the facts of life. Your kid will play some sport or game, hockey, soccer, baseball, tetherball, marbles, skating, chess, checkers; I think you get my drift. No matter what they play, strategy is part of the effort to win and trust me it’s to win, not place third. Parents, coaches, spectators; we all have some ‘trick’ that would help them win and it all has to do with the cunning and strategy.

So why are we so outraged that a bunch of badminton players tossed the birdie into the net in order to get a better round of play? Why are we ‘surprised’ at the cunning and strategy displayed by the Chinese especially? I suppose those who bought tickets to see the best in the world and got a game I could have delivered should at least get a refund. I would have been a tad miffed to see five year olds play if I paid for world champs. Maybe we’re so used to seeing subtlety when cunning and strategy are used. After all do you really believe Tunisia had a chance against the USA basketball team? But the Yanks didn’t totally annihilate them, they toyed with them.  In CFL action we don’t usually see the power team run up the score, or in hockey.

So what exactly outraged us? Maybe that we all got caught up in the ‘lie’ of the games. Just as we really don’t care if the fastest runner in the world took an extra ‘vitamin’, we don’t care if you use cunning and strategy, we just don’t want it thrown in our face. Especially if it has the ‘feel’ of poor sportsmanship.