The XXVl (26th) Olympiad: Reform! Reform! Reform!

Yes, You read right! The Beijing Games are the twenty-sixth (26th) Olympiad NOT the twenty-ninth (XXlX) as advertised. Whoever reckoned 29 calculated on one Olympiad every four years since 1896, forgetting there were no games during the World Wars: 1916, 1940 and 1944. You read it here first! But to get to the point....

The events in the Olympic Games need to be restructured: the women's participation in particular. We are faced with a choice between five main options.

A: Make the Olympics gender-neutral. If white men cannot compete with black men over 100 metres, Tough! We don't have separate events for white boys. Why for women? But making the Olympics gender-neutral would involve their almost complete elimination. Women would only survive in the graceful events: synchronised diving and gymnastics perhaps. The big objection to this option is that the Olympics would then be boring. Women generate interest.

B: Separate Olympics for women, like the paraplegic games. Again, Boring!

C: Copycat events for men and women (the present policy) which caters to the pre-sexual denial of gender characteristics.

D: A fixed ratio of say 60:40 men's events to women's, reflecting the greater significance of athletics for men, for whom athletics represent an unqualified ideal. The Games were founded by and for men! Whereas women's athletics musy compete with motherhood. 100 events for men and 70 for women would be a completely intellectually honest solution. But I doubt its practicality.

E: The same limited number of events for men and women (the preferred solution). If men and women were obliged to choose their top 100 events, they would come up with substantially different lists. Weightlifting for men but synchronised swimming for women. Soccer might be a women's event but not a men's event. The Marathon for men; volleyball for women.

The Olympic Games reflect not just one principle but a resolution of many conflicts.

*Amateurs are to be preferred over professionals: an objection to basketball, for example.
*Individual effort over team effort: another objection to team sports. (Not including relay events, by the way.)
*Dedicated sports over recreational activities: like white water events.
*Open events over weight classes: weight divisions for rowing are problematic.
*Open events over style categories. Freestyle (crawl) is more valid than back, breast and fly, which are just slower swimming styles.
*Broad participation over narrow. There should be some equivalency between events. Billions of boys try the 100 metre dash, but only a handful of girls try weightlifting. The disparity is grotesque.
*Human effort over assisted effort, animal or mechanical. If we have equestrian events, Why not falconry?

These issues do not resolve in an open format but only in a structural context. Then we are forced to the point. The Olympic Games should be a celebration of the strength of the male, with an ancillary delight in the grace of the female.

Then the Games can really begin!