Sports Column by Red Ruffansore.
Montreal, Canada — Yours truly has never understood why sports reporters are dispatched to cover the Olympic so-called games. What we have goin’ on here is the usual slow-motion, nonviolent version of World War III. No one here is indulging in what you and I, gentle reader, would call a sport. At best, they perform exercices which might be considered warm-ups for sports… or suitable events for half time entertainment. Buncha Goddamn acrobats and ballet dancers, is all.
No football. No baseball. And so, naturally, the poor old U.S. of A. comes out looking bad in the standings, having very few able-bodied youngsters whose idea of an afternoon’s athletics is jumping around in a bathing suit waving a ribbon in time to a scratchy Shostakovich record.
Water, which has never struck old Red as much of a drink, also fails to impress as a playing field. Take my word for it, watching a swimming race live is even more boring than watching it on television.
Naturally, the holier-than-thou squeaky-clean cyptosocialist Olympic committee rejected the recommendation from this corner and others more august to install parimutual machines at all track events and post the odds, to add a little interest to the spectacle of a bunch of people trying to do what horses and machines were invented to do better, viz, run.
If there’s no way to get sports back into the Olympics — and by sports I mean teams, a ball, physical contact, and some real money changing hands — this man’s country had better leave ‘em alone in the future. All we get now is a black eye in the propaganda department and a collective national Charley horse.
And by the way, Montreal was a great choice of sites for the summer games. Where they gonna hold the winter games? Jamaica?
