View this page "THE GREEK KILLERS OF OLYMPISM"

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Revivals and capitalism





We all have selective memories. But when a politician, for instance,
conflates the first person singular with the first person plural, he
presents his selective memory as the collective memory. Asked if she
agreed that an annual IAFF or IOC track and field meet should be held
at Olympia, as the Greek Olympic Committee plans, Tourism Minister
Fani Palli-Petralia answered in the official plural:

“We all remember how proud we felt during the Olympic Games when the
Olympic Event of shot-put was held at Ancient Olympia stadium. I think
Olympia is a great treasure for Greece which we must capitalize on
every day.”



But we don’t all “remember how proud we felt” in not-so-distant 2004,
because the sanctuary of Olympia itself had been, predictably,
polluted by anabolic steroids.



Before Irina Korzhanenko, the Russian women’s shot-put winner, could
enjoy her victory, she was caught in a doping violation, and not for
the first time. The incident sufficed to show what value athletic
ideals have for professional sports people, their sponsors and their
leaders. It should be enough to persuade anyone that revivals of this
sort only harm the renowned site.



But since capitalization is like an anabolic steroid for those in
power, and since it has been decided that culture equates with
tourism(a dogma applied when the Olympeion was handed over during
Evangelos Venizelos’s term as Culture Minister to be used for Vangelis
Papathanasiou’s ostentatious “Mythodia,” and despite archaeologists’
protests), Ancient Olympia will be ritually slaughtered on the altar
of vanity and “capitalism.”



The Greek Olympic Committee refers to the “tourism development of the
area,” and to “highlighting the sacred site, Olympic values, Olympic
education and ideals born in their natural place.” As it was with
Irina Korzhanenko.



By Pantelis Boukalas

www.kathimerini.gr


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