On Sunday, in a stadium filled with athletes from around the world, International Olympic Committee chairman Thomas Bach closed out the Beijing Games with a list of all the ways in which they don't matter. Your example of solidarity and peace should inspire political leaders around the world.
The athletes in the audience cheered, even though the more perceptive among them recognized the emptiness of the speech. For the entire Winter Games, Russia had been threatening an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and it isn't going to back down just because Anna Shcherbakova won a gold medal in figure skating. The Olympics were held in a country that is currently pursuing a policy of genocide against a Muslim minority group, and it is unlikely that the Olympics will make life any easier.
The Olympics have a unifying power because so much of the world comes together to watch and participate in it. On days like Sunday, when sporteaucrats speak of transcendence as the world sits poised to collapse, the Olympic movement's empty promises feel especially difficult to stomach. The Winter Olympics did not inspire Russia or China. It has likely inspired them to think about what else the world will allow them to do.
No one thinks that the Olympics will bring about world peace, not even Thomas Bach. The international community will be so moved by the outcome of the Games that they will give equal. That would be nice, but it isn't how the world works. The IOC does not have men who ascend to the top.
At every Olympics closing ceremony that I can remember, the IOC has offered similar speeches about the power of the Games to unite the world and make the world a better place. The sporteaucrats need the narrative to be empty. It is the only way to justify the existence of the Games.
The Olympics are one of the most wasteful things humans do. They cost billions of dollars each cycle and the residents of the cities where they occur do not want them. The power of the Olympics is often used by autocrats to launder their ambitions, or by everyday crooks who see them as a way to enrich themselves.
At the beginning of the Winter Games, I wrote about how every Olympics I've ever covered has been indefensible. The Beijing Games did not change that trend. The rhetoric that world leaders use to justify the Olympics is mostly indefensible and self-serving. The Olympics won't save the world. No matter who wins gold in ice dancing, the world is going to destroy itself.
I think the best case for why the Olympics are important is made by the fact that cross-country skier Jessie Diggins won America's final medal of the Winter Games. The individual courage shown by Jessie Diggins shows us why the Olympics still mean something despite it all.
Diggins is an American Olympic hero. She is good at a sport that Americans dislike. Cross-country skiing is not as popular in the United States as it is in countries where the weather is consistently cold and snowy. It's unpopular because it's difficult and you can wear shorts. She has said that when she races, she inevitably enters the pain cave because of the combined force of her suffering and her will. Americans don't like going into the pain cave. Americans want other people to enter the pain cave for them.
The world was shocked when Diggins and Randall won gold in the women's team sprint event. It was the United States' first ever Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing, a sport that historically has been dominated by the Nordic countries and Russia. It was America's first Olympic cross-country medal since 1976, when Bill Koch took silver. Until this year, the United States had never won an Olympic cross-country medal.
In Beijing this year, Diggins won two more medals, a silver in the women's 30-kilometer mass start and a bronze in the women's sprint. She didn't win another gold, but her performance at the games was better than hers. She competed in six events in 15 days, starting with the 15-kilometer skiathlon on Feb. 5 and finishing with the 30-kilometer mass start on Sunday. The entire time she was in Beijing, she was in the pain cave.
The pain cave was at its deepest on Sunday. At the conclusion of the men's race, a Finn had to seek medical attention for his frozen penis. In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up. 30 hours before the race began, Diggins had contracted food poisoning and was in danger of dying. She had to ski the final 17 kilometers in physical agony because her legs started to cramp up after 13 kilometers. She said that she felt like she was going to die when she collapsed at the finish line.
If we had been in her skis, you and I would have quit and died. Cross-country skiing is very difficult. The difference between Olympic heroes and people like you and me is that they head straight into the pain cave. Diggins crossed the finish line less than two minutes after Johaug. Her silver medal was America's highest-ranking individual cross-country finish since 1976. It reminded me that the Summer and Winter Games are worth it.
The Olympics offer us rhetoric and courage. The Olympics rhetoric is usually devoid of courage. The courage of the Games can be found in the individual efforts of the participants and teams. The leaders of the International Olympic Committee want to make you believe that the Games don't matter at all, that they are a powerful force for world peace, and that they carry serious geopolitical import. The events of the Games offer many examples of individuals pushing their limits in order to see how far they can go.
The image of Diggins trudging around a cold snow circle, having just had food poisoning, after already skiing five other races over the course of the Olympics, is elegant and beautiful. It speaks to something crazy about the human spirit. Diggins won't get rich from her finish. She won't use her Beijing performance to get a multimillion-dollar cross-country skiing contract. She did it because she wanted to do it, and to test her resolve against a bunch of other maniacs who decided that they wanted to do it, too.
The 30-kilometer mass start medal winners got their medals on a podium in the middle of the stadium, in front of all of the amassed Olympians across all winter disciplines. After two weeks of nonstop Olympics coverage, I am delirious from lack of sleep and the joy on her face almost made me cry. The Olympic Games give us so many chances to watch people test their physical and mental limits in a variety of ways and to learn from their examples. The Games help us realize that if Jessie Diggins didn't collapse, then maybe we can summon the strength to keep going, and that maybe, if we just keep pressing forward through our own pain, there will ultimately be some reward for us.
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