The term the 'the olympic spirit' is somewhat misunderstood if you consider that in the ancient olympics, if you knew your opponent was better than you, it was quite the done thing to nip into his tent and night and snip is hamstrings thus clearing the way for your victory.
However, if you take it in
its modern sense of meaning helping and improving humanity (in somewhat limited
areas I grant you), fair play, trying to be the best and all the other sporting
metaphors that shouldn't always be used as a guide in other areas of life but
far too often are, then something else that seems against the spirit of the
thing is that the word olympics is a registered trademark.
This isn't new however.
The United States Olympic Committee and Trademark Infringement forbids the use of .. .
The words Olympic, Olympiad, Citius Altius Fortius, or any combination or simulation thereof tending to cause confusion, to cause mistake, to deceive, or to falsely suggest a connection with the corporation of any Olympic activity.
The London 2012 people have done the same thing . At a basic level this means that they could do you if, for example, you wanted to have a competition in your school (or technically even your back garden) called The ********* Secondary School Olympics as this might cause confusion with the real thing.
It's an indicator that these major sports, although we may or may not find them, or bits of them, enthralling, are definitely not of the people in the way that they are often portrayed.
Every time one of them comes round in any country troublemakers are rounded-up beforehand and people are evicted from their homes to make way for the tournament infrastructure. In the run-up to the China olympics there was much of this kind of thing in the media but for the London Olympics it has been there , but much less prominantly so.
Also, most of the money these tournaments escapes without doing any real good.
FIFA have been getting a bit of a going over in the media of late, the IOC could be doing with one too.
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