(wow… my first post in nearly 8 weeks…)
The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad (yes, that’s its official name) are not even a week into its schedule and already I am tired of hearing the phrase “defending <insert metallic color here> medalist.” It has become tedious.
Why do I say this? It is because the process to even reach the Olympics is not certain for anyone, even previous medal winners. They have to compete, to qualify, to win multiple previous competitions just to get on that plane to the Olympics venue.
The medal is not something handed from winner to winner in successive games, but earned in its own right in each event, in each Games. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE stop calling our athletes a “defending Gold Medalist” or anything resemblant of that phrase. The medals are not something to be taken away by the next winner…
(and while we’re on the subject of the Paris 2024 Olympics, was anyone else as put off by the fact that two PROFESSIONAL athletes were the two flag bearers for the United States team? The spirit of the Olympics is about competition between AMATEUR athletes - not pros - so someone who worked from the bottom of the stack to earn their place to compete should have carried the flags. For that matter, I think the IOC should go back to its decades-long ban on professional athlete participation in the games at all.)
They allowed the pros to compete because many of them are drawing cards for audiences around the world. Given that the profit margins for every Olympics are very slim (in my homeland of Canada, Montreal has never entirely financially recovered from hosting the 1976 Summer Olympics), the IOC wants to make sure they can make money. Otherwise, they'd resurrect the anti-pro ban in a heartbeat.