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【原文标题】A Look Back at Beijing 2008 【来源地址】http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,574504,00.html
A Look Back at Beijing 2008
The organizers of this year's Olympic Games in Beijing wanted us to believe that the event was purely about sports. Instead, the pundits were right. It was about politics, money and fraud.
Looking at the Olympic flame late last week, its reflection flickering in large puddles left by a heavy downpour, it was difficult to tell that the two-week sporting extravaganza was coming to an end. The day-to-day of the games still reigned: IOC President Jacques Rogge chided Jamaican sprinter and gold medalist Usain Bolt for his unsportsmanlike behavior; a Ukrainian athlete was asked to provide a urine sample after winning silver in the heptathlon; and the 110-meter hurdles took place in the evening without Chinese track star Liu Xiang, who was injured. Away from the competition, American protesters had been arrested and Chinese newspapers were reporting the death of party patriarch Hua Guofeng.
But with the games rapidly approaching their end, many had started to look back at Beijing 2008. A time of reckoning had begun.
The sports photographers working at the Beijing Olympic facilities, for their part, were ecstatic. Never before in the history of the games had their working conditions been so good, and never before have the organizers allowed so much, made so many things possible and turned a blind eye so often. They were permitted to climb onto roofs in Beijing and steel beams in the Bird's Nest -- they were allowed to slip into VIP seats and set up their cameras inside the swimming pool in the Water Cube. Even the water pit in the 3,000-meter steeplechase course wasn't off limits. For the photographers, the sky was the limit, and for both them and the organizers, it was a win-win situation. Beijing allowed them to shoot the kinds of images that presented the city at its very best.
In the final days of the Olympics, athletes, too, were delighted by the sports facilities China had prepared for them. Archers, hockey players, volleyball players and indoor cyclists all had nothing but praise for the complexes and arenas. Track & field athletes were pleasantly awed by the Bird's Nest stadium.
A Sharp Divide
For them, and for the many journalists at the games, the competitions inside stadium will remain unforgettable, the running and jumping in front of an audience of 90,000 people sitting in steeply pitched rows of seats. The setting created by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron was thoroughly grand -- they created what will likely become an enduring monument, even as it remains unclear what that monument will eventually come to represent. There were two worlds in Beijing, one on the inside of the stadium and the other sporting facilities. And one on the outside. And there was a sharp divide between the two.
On the inside, in the so-called Accredited Zones, these Olympic Games were perfect. The images of these perfect games circled the globe, accompanied by postcard pictures of pagodas, terracotta warriors and graceful Chinese girls. Against the story told by this picture book, criticism of the games seemed like little more than sour grapes.
But on the outside, in the city of Beijing and throughout China, the lives of ordinary people went on. A number of changes in those lives have taken place, to be sure, but they are still lives led under the watchful eyes of the government. In this China, those disagreeable to the government are simply removed, staging a protest remains a criminal offense, public celebrations are frowned upon and all roads make wide detours around restricted zones guarded by soldiers -- zones that include Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
With these record-breaking Olympics now behind us, it is a time of reckoning and a time to look forward. A new Olympiad has begun, as the four-year wait begins until the next global festival of sports in London. Those who are no longer interested in China can turn their attention to sports itself, or to the activities of the major sponsors, or the politics of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). What happens next after these 29th Summer Games, the most politicized since the 1980s?
'Disastrous Debates'
Where is the Olympic movement -- what is the status of sports -- in these times of ongoing suspicions of doping, suspicions that were only heightened with every win by a Jamaican sprinter and each additional gold medal won by American swimmer Michael Phelps? How much more commercialized can sports become? And what happens to the athletes when the world becomes all but obsessed with keeping track of the medal count?
"There are two grand delusions in sports," says Thomas Bach, one of the four IOC vice presidents. He is a powerful man and a potential candidate to succeed Jacques Rogge as the organization's president. He wore a tracksuit to our meeting in the Olympic Family Lounge inside the Olympic Village. "The one delusion," said Bach, "is that sport has nothing to do with money. And the other one is that it has nothing to do with politics. Both lead to unnecessary and sometimes disastrous debates."
Bach is the sort of person who, when asked difficult questions, begins by saying: Let's not kid ourselves. When asked about the IOC's prediction that China would change for the better after the games, and that it would "open up" politically, he said: "Let's not kid ourselves. We, as the IOC, cannot change an entire society."
But, he conceded, at least, that the IOC must "recognize and express" its opportunities and limitations more sharply in the future. Bach said he believes that sport is an "icebreaker," and that it helps promote processes. "But to change China? Or look at the Russia-Georgia conflict. We have no mandate there. If we were to play the intermediary, we would be overstepping our bounds."
Bach's conclusions, given that they were also those of the IOC, were hardly unpredictable. About the games, he said, "all of that was done exceedingly well." The organization, the sports complexes, the village, the support, everything was outstanding, he said. "That, first of all, is the most important aspect."
Bach was not overly surprised that a true, nation-wide celebration never materialized. In Europe, both the World Cup and the European Championships have been accompanied by massive public viewing festivals across the continent. In China, nothing even close came to pass -- no fan festivals in city centers and no giant screens on Tiananmen Square. First of all, Bach said, the Olympic Games are not the World Cup and, second, we shouldn't kid ourselves. "No one expected," said Bach, "that a Chinese person would behave like an Italian football fan."
Difficult to Circumvent
Rain began drumming down onto the buildings in the Olympic Village. After 20 minutes, as Bach began feeling more comfortable in the lounge, he leaned back and switched from talking to chatting. He said that "first of all," it is because of globalization that in Beijing a Moroccan won a gold medal for Bahrain, an American played basketball for Germany and the Georgian women's beach volleyball team included Brazilians -- in a match against Russia, of all things.
Of course, Bach added, successful athletes are sometimes willing to change their nationality for a gold medal these days, and if good people can simply be purchased in the future, it would be a problem. And it would be difficult to circumvent.
"We are already imposing lockout periods on people if they have already competed for another country in the past," Bach explained. "But you wouldn't believe some of the stories the athletes come up with to explain the switch. What you can you say when they tell you it's because they fell in love, or found a new home and love their new country?"
When asked about the third grand delusion of sports -- that top athletes are all clean and that world records are simply the products of a healthy mind in a healthy body -- Bach said: Let's not kid ourselves. Of course there are doubts about some of the contests, he said, but the IOC and the national committees are doing everything within their power to break the pattern.
According to Bach, the network of monitoring is now tighter than it has ever before been. The scientists at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) are convinced, Bach said, that there is currently no doping agent on the market "that we cannot detect. And besides," said Bach, "let's look at an example. We had 9,500 checks in Germany last year, and of those about 70 were positive. Even if you add an estimated number of unreported cases, there is really no reason for any blanket suspicion."
Some 4,500 doping tests were performed during the games in Beijing, and only a handful of athletes tested positive for banned substances. A Ukrainian heptathlete used a testosterone product, and a North Korean shooter, a Vietnamese gymnast and four horses in the Olympic equestrian team jumping competition in Hong Kong tested positive. But some of the other athletes competing in Beijing have been caught doping in the past, including Tunisian swimmer Oussama Mellouli, who was stripped of his world championship a year ago for doping. "He shouldn't have been here in the first place" said Örjan Madsen, the technical director of the German Swimming Federation (DSV). "It's truly counterproductive."
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【译文】
今年北京奥运会组织者们想让我们相信，这届奥运会是纯粹的体育。相反，权威人士们是正确的。这是届有关政治，金钱和欺骗的运动会。 上周末的时候看着奥运圣火，它的倒影闪烁在因为大雨而带来的大水坑中，不好说这个为期两周的盛典就要接近尾声。奥运会的日常事务还在进行：国际奥委会主席罗格指责牙买加短跑运动员和金牌获得者Usain Bolt的不道德行为；一名乌克兰运动员在赢得女子七项全能的银牌后被要求提供尿样；110米栏在晚上进行了比赛，而中国的田径明星刘翔因伤没有参加。比赛以外，美国的抗议者被逮捕，中国的报纸报道了党内元老华国锋逝世。 但随着运动会很快就要接近尾声，许多人已经开始回顾北京2008了。思忖的时候到了。 对在北京奥运设施里工作的体育摄影记者们来说，是欣喜若狂的。在奥运会历史上，他们的工作条件从没有这么好，而且以前的组织者也没有这次允许开放这么多，这使得很多事情成为了可能。他们被允许爬上北京的屋顶和“鸟巢”的钢制横粱 ---他们可以进入贵宾席，还可以将摄象机放置在“水立方”游泳池里。甚至在3000米障碍赛的水坑里。
作为摄影师，天空已是极限，对于他们和组织者而言，这是一个双赢的局面。北京允许他们拍摄的各种代表城市最好的影象。
在最后几天的奥运会，运动员也很满意中国为他们准备的体育设施。射箭、曲棍球、排球和室内自行车都是赞扬了建筑物和场馆。田径运动员愉快地称赞了“鸟巢体育场”
巨大的鸿沟
对于他们，以及许多奥运记者来说，赛场内的比赛将令人难忘，在90000名坐在大斜度的座位上的观众面前跑步和跳跃。这一由瑞士建筑师Herzog & de Meuron创作的场馆是非常伟大的---它将可能成为一座永久的丰碑，即使目前还不清楚最终用来纪念或代表什么。在北京有两个世界，一个是在体育场和其他运动场馆里面，一个是在外面。在这两个世界中间，是一道巨大的鸿沟。
在里面，是所谓的被认可的区域，这些奥运会是完美的。这些完美运动会的影象伴随着印着塔、兵马俑和美丽的中国女孩的名信片，传遍全球。如果反对由这些图册带来的故事，那么批评看起来好象酸葡萄一样。
但在外面，在北京城和整个中国，普通老百姓的生活在继续。
生活中许多的变化已经在发生了，无可否认，他们仍然生活在政府的监视之下。在这个中国，那些反对政府的声音很容易被删除了，集结起来抗议仍然是犯罪行为，公共庆祝活动也是让他们不开心的，所有的道路，到了有士兵守卫的禁区都要绕一个大圈子---包括北京的天安门广场。
这个屡破记录的奥运会现在已经留在我们身后，现在是一个判断和期待的时刻。一个新的奥运会已经开始了，4年的等待之后，下一个全球性的体育盛会是在伦敦。那些对中国不再感兴趣的人可以把他们的兴趣转移到体育本身，或者主要赞助商的活动，或者国际奥委会的政治活动。在第29届奥运会，这个20世纪80年代以来最政治化的运动会之后，会发生什么呢？
“灾难性的争论”
奥林匹克运动在哪里---什么是体育的位置----在对使用兴奋剂的怀疑的时候？对牙买加短跑运动员每获胜一次怀疑都增加一点的时候？还是美国游泳选手Michael Phelps赢得的每次再夺得一块金牌的时候？体育可以再被商业化多少呢？当世界被奖牌痴迷者所缠绕，运动员会如何做？
（未完）
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狗仔卡
发表于 2008-8-28 15:45
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