Olympic sports medals is a vain metric that all it does is hide the fact that authoriterian regimes are destroying their countries and pressing their people.
In the Ancient Greek times the Olympic Games were an opportunities for friends an enemies to come together and have FUN!
It wasn't about who won the most medals. Can you imagine if Sparta and Athens were competing for the highest number of golds? Pathetic. But that's what's happening today.
> In the Ancient Greek times the Olympic Games were an opportunities for friends an enemies to come together and have FUN!
Not sure if you're being serious or being sarcastic. Any evidence for your claim?
The ancient Olympics (as the name itself implies!) is about religion. Olympus!
Violence, murder, corruption was part of it. Perhaps as much as it is today.
"Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans."
"In 67, the Roman Emperor Nero competed in the chariot race at Olympia. He was thrown from his chariot and was thus unable to finish the race. Nevertheless, he was declared the winner on the basis that he would have won if he had finished the race."
It might be a vain metric in the aggregate, but to an individual, the people who are passionate about their sport and have worked nearly their entire lives to become the best at it across the entire globe, it's an accomplishment that is nearly incomparable.
Maybe we could have our cake and eat it too: award medals privately. In fact, do all the scoring privately. All the public (and the countries) get is a spectacle. If your country so much as runs a news story afterward about what kind of medal your guy came back with, you’re banned from ever coming back to the Olympics. Only the participant gets to know how they did.
(Yes, this is prima facie ridiculous. But also kind of fun to imagine.)
I dunno, people were literally dying over olive wreaths! See pankration, the most fun sport of all:
> For when he was contending for the wild olive with the last remaining competitor, whoever he was, the latter got a grip first, and held Arrhachion, hugging him with his legs, and at the same time he squeezed his neck with his hands. Arrhachion dislocated his opponent's toe, but expired owing to suffocation; but he who suffocated Arrhachion was forced to give in at the same time because of the pain in his toe. The Eleans crowned and proclaimed victor the corpse of Arrhachion.
> Philostratus of Athens writes in his Gymnasticus that Arrichion's failure to submit to his opponent was the result of his trainer, Eryxias, shouting to him, "What a noble epitaph, 'He was never defeated at Olympia.'"
In the Ancient Greek times the Olympic Games were an opportunities for friends an enemies to come together and have FUN!
It wasn't about who won the most medals. Can you imagine if Sparta and Athens were competing for the highest number of golds? Pathetic. But that's what's happening today.