The IOC face some important decisions ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. Photo / Getty
The IOC face some important decisions ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
As another weird year ends, I'm going to Pollyanna it in my last column for 2021, and run through a wish list for the New Year.
Bring on Birmingham
May the Commonwealth Games due to start in Birmingham next July run smoothly. I know that's a long shot withBoris Johnson at the helm of the pandemic response in Britain, but let's keep our fingers crossed. The Commonwealth Games have a warmth and humanity about them that makes them much easier to love than the massively expensive, engorged Olympics.
The last Commonwealth Games I worked at was in Glasgow in 2014, where the city embraced the whole event in the same way, 40 years before, that Christchurch did.
On the day of the opening ceremony, local volunteers in Glasgow were almost hysterical with good cheer. What was remarkable was that their bonhomie never flagged.
"You know how it works," a sturdy Glaswegian directing queues outside the city's central rail station told me late in the Games. "They offered Scots free rail travel if we volunteered, and we all stopped listening after the word 'free'".
The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow were a wonderful occasion. Photo / Getty
An even longer shot. Signs of transparency from the International Olympic Committee.
One of the most stomach-churning stories from sport in 2021 has been the grovelling of the IOC to the official Chinese government party line over the mystery of tennis player Peng Shuai, when the 35-year-old basically vanished after she had accused a Chinese government official of sexual assault. Reassurances from Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, that he'd had video calls with Peng, and that basically she was fine, rang stunningly hollow.
The idea, floated by long-term IOC member Dick Pound, that Bach being an apologist for China was unrelated to the fact that the winter Olympics start in Beijing in February was an 'if you didn't laugh you'd cry' moment.
Given the luxury the hierarchy at the IOC enjoy, and the fact that 90 per cent of the organisation's income comes from television rights, it's easy to see why they don't want to sour things with China. Bach was at pains in a column he wrote last year to claim that the IOC was "strictly politically neutral" at all times. The least he could do then would be to let the Chinese government fight their own public relations battles.
Actual cultural change
That all the investigations into the culture at almost every major sport in New Zealand, and the $7.4 million from High Performance Sport New Zealand going to wellbeing management, will actually have some effect.
Brutal treatment of sportspeople here isn't new. The secret banning by the NZRU of All Black Ron Rangi in the 1960s, when he was struggling with alcohol problems that would plague him until he died, at just 47, was the first time I realised how heartless some administrators are.
I applaud sportspeople now who are prepared to speak up about their troubles. Hopefully they'll be listened to in the future.
Hopefully the Irish tour isn't booted from the schedule. Photo / Getty
As a rugby tragic, a personal wish. Let the All Blacks, who sometimes looked, as the late, great All Black Peter Jones once said, "absolutely buggered" at the end of the northern tour, be revitalised when the Irish arrive here in July for three tests.
Actually, let the words "when the Irish arrive here" not be foolishly optimistic. It'll be a miracle if Australian teams get here for Super Rugby at the start of the 2022 season. It'd be devastating if we missed seeing Ireland, the most anticipated rugby visitors since the 2017 Lions.
Meanwhile, it might be good for our peace of mind if we all pretend Ireland is handling Covid well, and ignore the fact that with a population slightly smaller than New Zealand's, they're currently averaging 113 people per day in intensive care.
Bless the volunteer army
Finally, let's hope every mum, dad, schoolteacher and all the other good people who give up their time to keep kids' sport running are all as cherished as they should be.
Now watching the cycle of life reoccurring with grandchildren, it never ceases to amaze me how generous spirited many people are who give their time to let children enjoy sport.
As our greatest coach, the late Arthur Lydiard, who took Peter Snell and Murray Halberg to Olympic gold in Rome in 1960, once said, "Time's the most precious thing you can give. You don't know how much you've got in your life. You can't get anymore."
