With the Olympics half over, it`s fun to reflect on the history of the modern games, and how long it has left to live before the Olympic movement is tragically crushed beneath the weight of its own success when a member of the German Full Contact Tiddlywinks team goes on a roid-rampage through the athlete`s village in 2024 and extinguishes the sacred flame of Olympicness. It`s kind of hard to want to keep competing after seeing something like that. Trust me. Everybody goes back home, and decides to compete the old fashion way again: war.

This isn`t actually a Top 10, because choosing the most controversial incidents in something as convoluted and wacky as the Olympics is like choosing the spiders with the most legs. So instead, these are just in chronological order. How big or important they really were in the grand scheme of things is up to.....well, just read them and see.

First, a little history: The Greek games began in 776 BC as a competition among amateur athletes from different city states to promote health, fairplay, community wellbeing and entertainment in an apolitical setting. Slowly over the centuries subtle corruption, bribery, blackmail, political tampering, cheating, rank dishonesty and professionalism seeped into the Games, and in 394 AD they were abolished because they had become a parody of the amateur ideal, a focus of corruption and a source of heated political tension.

The modern Olympic Games were established in 1896 as a competition among amateur athletes from different nation states to promote health, fairplay, community wellbeing and entertainment in an apolitical setting.

What took the Greeks a thousand years to do, we have done in less than one hundred. One thing the Greeks had no problems with, however, was the wholesale consumption of illicit substances for performance enhancement. So the Games aren`t all that bad.

Anyways, on with the list:

10. 1912: Jim Thorpe, professional athlete

Professionalism was a very sticky issue in the early games (but more of that anon). Jim Thorpe was the first ever super athlete of the early games; Bruce Jenner, Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson all in one. He won both the Decathlon and the Pentathlon by insurmountable margins, prompting King Gustav V of Sweden to crown him "The greatest athlete in the world". Those words still echo today, and are always ceremoniously bestowed to the winner of the gruelling Decathlon.

No endorsement deals, no contracts, no Wheaties boxes, no basketball shoes, not even a thanks for coming out. Without Jim Thorpe, ESPN would have to find some other ancient athlete to mine nostalgia from about the purity of unrewarded athleticism.

Professionalism was as much a taboo in the early games as doping is today. Even more so. Though the reasons are completely hokey. The ancient Greeks` interpretation of professionalism was different than ours. They saw a professional as someone performing for money, not someone performing for pride, heart, or the passion of the game. To them, professionals were scorned; people chasing something much lower (money) than the lofty ideal of human perfection. In addition, it was reasoned that professionals could not be trusted. Like mercenaries, they held no loyalties and no convictions. They traversed to where the money was. Thus, amateurs only were permitted, to preserve the purity and sanctity of the Games.

In the modern era, professionalism and amatuerism was wrapped around a more practical and somewhat sleazier angle: it was to preserve the delicate social order of snobbish Victorian society. Invented in the mid-19th century for the emerging field sports of association football and Rugby, amateurism was classism, pure and simple. It was a way to prevent the upper classes from mingling--much less competing--with commoners, and the Olympics, the bastion of amateurism, reflected such aristocratic bias in making things habitually difficult for the working class to participate. The modern Olympic definition of amateurism, vaguely defined and of British origin (not Greek), slowly began crumbling as the skill level of the Games and the standard for achievement escalated over the course of the 20th century into a full-time commitment, and communist countries, who acknowledged no distinction in such an outmoded concept, held a gross advantage over capitalist ones.

With the breaking down of the amateur/professional barriers in the last 20 years and the transforming of the Olympics into a "best against the best, bar none" affair, this controversy seems archaic and silly in hindsight. But it was exemplary of how far the IOC was willing to go to maintain the social order--even if it meant dispatching arguably the greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century. This is like kicking out Michael Phelps and stripping away his medals because he eats with his mouth open. Dummies.

9. 1936: Jesse Owens PWNS Adolf Hitler

As shown in the movie Contact, somewhere right now aliens on another world are receiving the first ever radio signals from earth. And they are going to translate them. And they are going to track the signal to its source. which will bring them here. And they are going to want to talk to this Hitler guy who is, for all intents and purposes, the Ambassador for the Human Race in outer space. Imagine the looks on their faces when we tell them: "Oh yeah. Him. Well, he just so happened to be the THE MOST EVIL HUMAN BEING EVER, AND WE FOUGHT A WAR KILLING 100 MILLION PEOPLE GETTING RID OF HIM." They`d probably say something like "Whoa. Bummer." Because, y`know....they`re surfer aliens.

America, Germany, Japan. It`s like World War II started right there on that podium.

Anyways, I`m digressing. Hitler loved technology. And evil Nazi scientists were at the forefront of everything. That`s why the Americans always boasted after the war that their evil Nazi scientists were better than the Soviet evil Nazi scientists. So it was that Hitler made his evil Nazi scientists broadcast the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games on TV. To show the world German ingenuity, engineering, and propaganda. And swastikas. The trailer went something like this (cue Don Lafontaine--movie voice guy): "In a world of depression and despair.........one man fights for justice. Now all that stands between him and greatness.......is something else. Leni Riefenstahl and Jerry Bruckheimer bring you: Triumph of the Black Guy."

Because it was around about this time that black people started winning, like, everything in the Olympics. Except swimming. And Jesse Owens was the Carl Lewis of the age before there were Carl Lewises. He won 4 gold medals, beating out upstanding, pure Aryan germans every time. You can imagine Hitler was pretty miffed at that. Not only did he not shake his hand or hand him the medal, but he was later on quoted as saying that it was unfair to have a negro in the Olympics, because negroes were technically not human. They were animals.

This is one of those controversies that gets more and more controversial as time goes on, and as Adolf more perfectly fits the role of worst. human. ever.

8. 1968: Black Panther salute

Ah, the 60s: where else can you turn to for your politically charged, timultuous American history? Civil Rights activists, clamboring about, organizing, rallying, explaining that "It`s been 100 years. This emancipation shit is moving too slow. Let`s give it a swift kick in the ass." And so they did.

The silver medal winner is Australian Peter Norman. See the patch on his chest? That`s an OPHR patch--Olympic Project for Human Rights--an organization of amateur black athletes boycotting the 1968 Games due to apartheid in South Africa and other things. He was in full agreement and support of Smith and Carlos` actions. I suppose he could`ve given the Black Panther salute too, but...come on....that would just look silly.

Enter the Black Panthers. The inspiration for the militant gang The Gramercy Riffs in the 70s cult film The Warriors, the Black Panthers moved for radical, revolutionary change for racial...umm...racial something, though I hesitate to say racial harmony. Maybe racial hegemony. Point is, they were mad and they weren`t going to take it anymore, and they were prepared to use violence to achieve their aims, if necessary. Their salute to black power was a raised black fist, usually worn in a black glove, because maybe their hands weren`t black enough or something? ....like people would be confused.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 1st and 3rd in the 200m respectively, showed their solidarity for the movement on the medal podium while the anthem played. In addition to the fists and the gloves, they also wore no shoes to protest black poverty, and beads around their necks to protest lynching. Within hours, they were stripped of their medals and sent home. IOC President Avery Brundage (and noted white supremacist...he`s one of the dorks that awarded Berlin the `36 Games) said of the decision: "They violated one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Bwahahahahahahaha. Okay, let me repeat that, because double takes are funny:

"...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Again, for emphasis:

"...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Man, I wonder if he said that with a straight face, too. I wonder also if he knows what planet he`s on, or if he has trouble buttoning himself in the mornings. Is he serious, or is this one of those joke statements, like when your older brother grabs your arm and hits you in the head with it, warning you to stop punching yourself. Controversy or not, this guy`s a riot.

7. 1972: Them terrorist sons o` bitches

Contrary to American mythology, terrorism was not invented on September 11, 2001 for the sole purpose of bringing the United States to its knees. The funny thing about this is the United States doesn`t think so, and when the British came up offering help: "Hey, mate. Want some help? We`ve kinda got experience dealing with this terrorism stuff." The yanks reply "No, sorry. You can`t possibly understand what we`re going through. This has never happened to anyone before. We`ll solve this ourselves." Brits: "Wankers."

Terrorism has been around for as long as people have been disgruntled (or even just gruntled) at the way things are but lack the numbers or the resources to do anything overt about it. So they go for covert. The Munich Massacre, as it's called, was one of the darkest days in Olympic history. People are supposed to be defeated at the Olympics. They aren`t supposed to die. Yet that`s what happened on September 5, when Arab terrorists (Palestinians, of course....is this all sounding like a record skipping?) snuck into the Athlete`s Village and held the Israeli wrestling team hostage. With demands that they be escorted to the airport and then on a plane to Cairo, German nationals worked to take the terrorists down. The ensuing firefight at the airport culminated in so much action that if it weren`t real life it would be so totally sweet to see, and by sweet I mean the flavour of awesomeness. It`s amazing Hollywood hasn`t made a movie about it yet. In the end, one downed helicopter, 5 terrorists dead, 3 escaped, and the 11 members of the Israeli wrestling team, to quote Jim McKay when hearing of the news live on ABC: "They`re all gone."

Hey, remember Avery Brundage? Remember that wickedass quote he made? Let`s say again: "...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Yeah, no politics. Bet you were giggling at that one, you turd.

But what was the controversy here? Well........the fact that our main man (and anti-semite) Brundage went on with the Games. I know the show must go on and everything, but--there wasn`t even a moment`s silence or day`s mourning or anything. They didn`t postpone a thing. Mass deaths at the Olympics and they treated it like a really slow breaststroke time? All the events continued as if nothing happened. Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times wrote of it: "It`s almost like having a dance at Dachau."

Or claiming there are no politics at the Olympics.

6. 1972: US basketball team gets robbed

As if the `72 Games didn`t have enough excitement going for it, this one was a doozy. The US basketball team has always enjoyed Olympic domination, Dream Team or no Dream Team. They mostly just send over their College stars and call it a day. Every so often a sizably decent international squad rises to the challenge, however, and they give the US a run for their money before being quietly snuffed. No sweat off their back, eh?

In `72, the Cold War is....fuck, you people already know about the damn Cold War, I don`t have to set things up for you. It`s the Americans and the Soviets, dummies. You figure it out. The US is running on a 63-game unbeaten streak, dating back to whenever the hell basketball was made an Olympic sport. And in the tournament, they cruise through the prelims and the semi-finals with an 8-0 record, to meet with the big bad Russkies in the Finals, who have an identical record and almost similar pasting of opponents. Sounds like a match for the ages.

The Russians win! They win by losing twice, and then winning. And if they continued to lose, they would have to keep playing (and losing) until they win. But ultimately....they win. This is Russia`s version of the Miracle on Ice, only they call it something else, like the Incredible Happening Thing on the Court. Gee, it`s a good thing they didn`t pull this shit at the hockey Summit Series with Canada a couple weeks later. There would seriously be a war if they did.

The United States men`s basketball team did not show up to the medal ceremony. To this day, their silver medals sit unclaimed in a vault in IOC headquarters. And each member of the team has it written in his will that no member of any of their families may claim the medals after their deaths.

Always remember: "...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Of course this pissed off the Americans, who aren`t supposed to lose at basketball. Ever. In 1976, they came back with a vengeance and crushed everybody, but it became clear by then that the competition was getting a bit tougher. Boycotts in 80 and 84 (see below) tainted things, but in 88 the US team lost--honestly and realistically, for the first time ever-- to the Soviets in the semi-finals, and had to settle for bronze.

Wow. Bronze. How unlike gold it is. Alright, world. You think you`re hot shit? You think you can fuck with USA basketball? You really want to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? The gloves are off, mothafuckas. Let`s see you ballers throw down, fo` shizzle.

Thus, in Barcelona 92, with the lifting of restrictions on professionals, all the frustration of United States basketball channeled into a single, diamond-tipped foci, culminating in the most awe-inspiring, most mind-blowing, most inhuman display of basketball the world had ever seen, and it will stay that way until the end of time. Jordan. Pippen. Bird. Stockton. Barkley. Ewing. Magic. The motherfucking Dream Team.

They won the gold medal before the tournament even started. They had a 37 point lead on Angola in the warmup. Their strongest competition--Croatia--lost the game just after the jump ball. It was such a vicious slaughtering of international inferiors, it bemused me to make the prophetic observation: "I give the world 10 years to catch up."

I won`t say I`m right.

5. 1980/1984: Communists and Capitalists trade boycotts

I know I`m beating a joke into the ground, but that quote is such hilaritude it bares cutnpasting again: "...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Ah, politics. What would the Olympics be, really, without politics? And it`s not just Cold War countries, everyone was boycotting something at one time or another. China boycotted the games until 1984 because the IOC insisted on recognizing Taiwan as its own country. Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands sat out the `56 games in Melbourne to protest the Soviet crackdown in Hungary, while Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon stayed home to protest Israel`s invasion of the Sinai Peninsula. 26 countries boycotted the `76 Games in Montreal after New Zealand was allowed to compete. What was so wrong about New Zealand? Well, their Rugby team had recently played in South Africa, and there was a worldwide moratorium against any international competition with South Africa. North Korea boycotted the `88 Seoul Olympics because....why? Who knows. North Korea is crazy. Even crazier: Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Cuba joined them, for some reason.

Petty politics, indeed. You have the quote memorized by now.

But politics aren`t all bad. They can also be used as a force for good as well. Witness the 28 year ban of South Africa from the Olympics (and all other world class events as well) due to their apartheid regime, embarrassing them towards moderate social change.

Of course, by the 90s things smoothed out, and the Olympics weren`t about politics anymore. Instead, they were about economics. Historically, Olympics were never really money-makers. It was the 1984 Los Angeles games that changed all that, as the new IOC President, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was less about the political meddling and stuffy aristocratic pretentiousness, and all about the bling bling. Boy was he ever. This guy would push over his own mother to get a nickel on the street. It was he who repealed the Games` inane law of amateurism, because he had good business sense, and in the world of sports marketing, professionalism brings the dolla bill, y0. 1984 invented the phrase "official soft drink/camera/toilet plunger of the Olympic Games", and without any communist countries around, no one was complaining. Reagan was in the White House, greed was good. Movies were being made about the stock market. It was like one big capitalism circle-jerk. They took what Orwell predicted and then ran laughing in the opposite direction.

This cleaned up a lot of things (nepotistic cliquism being one), but it also created a whole host of new, unfamiliar problems. In particular: bribing, commercialism, commodification of the Olympic ideal, and selling the Games--piecemeal--to the highest bidder. So instead of stuffy IOC functionaries meddling the Games for political purposes, you had stuffy IOC functionaries meddling the Games for financial purposes. This is a lot like switching the flat tire on your car with one of the other wheels, rather than the spare.

But does that mean that politics is gone for good? Ha ha ha. What do you think?

4. 1988: Korean boxing fix

Korea wanted to put on a good show in Seoul. Particularly, in boxing. Olympic boxing is the most crooked thing I`ve ever seen. One part martial art, two-parts rhythmic gymnastics, always remember: boxing is a judged sport. At times there is no rhyme, reason or consistency to any of the scoring in boxing, and when the right palms are greased, anything can happen.

The South Koreans had all sorts of backdealings going on in boxing when they had the Games, that it got an entire chapter all to itself in the bestselling bible of Olympic corruption, The New Lords of the Rings. Not wanting to lose face, there were two instances in which they were guaranteed a gold medal. No matter what happened. Even if their boxers convulsed into epileptic seizures on the canvas.

Look: you lost. Okay? Get over it. What do you think they`re going to do? Come up to you and say "Well gee, Korean boxer guy, we were gonna give the match to the Bulgarian, but seeing you sit here and throw a tantrum clearly shows that you`re the better fighter. Here`s your fucking medal." Uhhh...no. What are you, three? Be a man.

Of course Korea was just as livid. The New Zealand referee of the match, Keith Walker, nearly had the crap beaten out of him by Korean boxing officials and security guards. He had to flee Seoul the next day.

The second story is even more bizarre. Park Si-Hun, in the light-middleweight division, fought through five consecutive disputed victories, assured of the gold medal--and won. How? To this day nobody really knows. In the final match he met an upstart American teenager who absolutely destroyed him. I`m talking a big league demolishing, like Ivan Drago on Apollo Creed. The match was nowhere even close, the landed punches were something like 86-15 for the American, and if the fight had gone on another round, he would`ve sent Park into the parking lot (hehe). Yet the judges ruled for the Korean. Something this blatant is not a mistake or miscalculation. The fix was clearly on. But even though everyone knew, no one owned up to it, the judges insisted Park had won, and no investigation or protest was ever staged. The matter was quietly buried, and to this day the judges stand by their decision. Because, you know, obviously Park Si-Hun was the superior boxer. Why, just look at the incredible professional career he went on to have after the Olympics.

By the way, the name of the American who obliderated him? Some nobody called Roy Jones Jr.

3. 1988: Ben Johnson

Yeah, you knew I was going to get around to the doping sooner or later. And you know what: it`s really not as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be. But if that`s the way they want to have their Games, then let them. The truth is Ben Johnson was not the first high-profiled Olympian to juice himself up. He was just the one to get caught.

Drugs or no drugs, he still ran the fastest. Verifiable proof that winners do use drugs.

Six years after retirement, documents released showed Carl Lewis (y`know, the guy who finished behind Ben Johnson.....waaaay behind Ben Johnson) had tested positive for three stimulants during the 1988 Olympic trials. A initial suspension of six months, which would have resulted in Lewis missing the Games, was overturned on appeal. Neither the positive nor the reprieve was made public.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, documents released from Germany confirmed what the rest of the world had suspected for years: East Germany had engaged in a massive doping program in the 70s and 80s, involving some thousands of athletes. And then, almost by comedic circumstance, thereafter the Chinese swim program hired all the East German coaches and trainers. The next Olympics, they won like a bazillion more medals. And then Chinese athletes started failing doping tests in droves, as new technologies arose to catch sneakier substances. Nope, no drugs there. None at all.

It does put a damper on things though. I remember reading a story awhile ago about this one middle distance runner who managed to shave 24 seconds off their time in one year. That kind of rapid improvement raises eyebrows, and now the common assumption is that meteoric rises in performance, while possible, are disingenuous. But what if you`re just that good? You have IOC officials looking over your shoulder and shoving pee cups in your hands at every corner just for doing your best? With that amount of scrutiny, is it really worth it? When you think about it....we`ve pretty much hit the wall on some of those records. The 100m is not going to get much faster than maybe half a second more, and then that`s it. That`s the limit of human capability. It`s certainly not possible to do the thing in 1 second, or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or even 6, so somewhere between 6 and 10 seconds is the event horizon for human speed. Unless an athlete comes along and does something really insane, like unplugs himself from the Matrix or something. Dan, is that you?

2. 1994: Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan

Look, see. I broke her knee, she bnroke my skate lace. We`re even now, okay? Okay? Howabout we settle things once and for all in a celebrity boxing match. The ratings for that shit would go through the roof. Just imagine.

The ironic thing about this incident (or maybe because of it) is that today Tonya Harding is still in the news, though usually for the wrong reasons. Where`s Nancy Kerrigan? What`s she doing? Does anyone care? Why isn`t the news keeping us up to date with her!? It is imperative that we know this shit!

Seriously though, thanks to the media, the `94 Winter Games had the best ratings ever. And all because of controversy. For what would the Olympics be without controversy. Boring, lifeless and dull. It`s the Omarosas of the world that make life bitter sweet; the fetching personalities of Games past and present. Without them, and without the media to dote on them, we`re really just watching a bunch of guys in tight shorts run around in circles every four years.

1. 2002: Pairs figure skating

Why are we even surprised that the snooty French asshats would be up to something like this? We knew for years that these stupid "sports" were crooked to the core, why do we even honour their existence? If anyone had bothered to track down the nature of these controversies, they`d find that they almost always invariably involve judging sports. Why the hell are they even here? Trampolining isn`t a sport, it`s a circus spectacle, like juggling or the trapeze or the guy who has three testicles.

Yeah, okay. Give us the medals now. After all this shit has to happen. Way to go, doooods. Expert damage control there. No one thinks our sport is a laughing stock now. No. We`re the champions of integrity and sportsmanship. Thanks a fucking lot, assbeetles.

And then the unthinkable happened: the IOC actually got off its butt and fixed things. Why? For a greater sense of justice and fairness in the Games? Actually, no. They did it to put the matter behind them, and to quell the media circus surrounding the pair. The Games were barely half over. Other events--most notably, skiing--were complaining that the figure skating hype was completely and thoroughly stealing the spotlight. Newspapers forgot that bobsled existed. Speedskating was skating speedily to an empty venue. And hockey was quietly dismissed, except in Canada, because even though the figure skating scandal prominantly featured Canada front and centre, Canadians never forget about hockey. Ever.

Is this finally going to clean up the sport? Heh....no. Judges will just have to be sneakier next time. Because there`s just too much politics in the Olympics. And politics is why there`s controversy, and this big-ass article.