Sports for Athletes or Sports for All

Olympics provide a great opportunity to show one's passion for sports. Millions of people sit in front of TV for hours, watching athletes' performance, guessing new gold medalists and expecting the creation of new records. Every time a new record is created, audiences stand up and applaud, cheering for the breakthrough in human being's limits. But I have different opinions. When Bolt refreshed his Olympic record of men's 100m sprint by 9’63”, I know it has nothing to do with me though it may be important to human beings as a whole. He shortened his record by 0.06 second in four years, but it probably takes me even longer to finish 100m today than before due to abundant desk works and lack of exercises in recent years.

It's hoped that Olympics can encourage people to do more exercise. But Olympics is more like a stage for professional athletes to show how marvelous they are, not for ordinary people to figure out how much exercise he/she should get to be healthy. Actually many sports are almost impossible for amateurs: even if you have strong legs and a soft body, how likely can you bounce into the air and roll 720 degree before jumping into the pool? You can't just do more exercise and then become an Olympian; instead you have to choose between becoming a professional athlete or staying in your original career track. I'm one of those who very much appreciate the beauty and strengths that athletes demonstrate in their performance, and seldom miss TV relays of Olympics, but never have the slightest idea of doing it by myself.

A more direct impact on the public's health by Olympics is even negative. Olympics keep more people sitting in front of TV for longer hours by its brilliant competitions, while they usually spend the time in gyms. For people living in different time zones from London, Olympics also keep them stay up late or get up early to watch live games, thus disrupting their biological clocks. The joy of watching Olympics and the illusion of being close to sports make people less aware of the fact that they are doing nothing but laying the coach, and watching TV with popcorn and beers.

Some Olympic hosting countries had claimed that newly constructed Olympic venues and infrastructure would involve more citizens into sports, which has been falsified already (see Beijing Beijing). People are more conscious of what exercises they're willing to do, and a simple increase in the access to sports facilities don't guarantee an increase in sporting. Stadiums of unpopular sports always fell into ruins in the end.

Olympics are good at arousing people's enthusiasm, but how to transfer this enthusiasm into lasting motivations remains in doubts. In countries which offer comprehensive PEs in primary and secondary schools, people are more likely to gain regular exercises once they've developed some interests and fundamental skills in a certain sport. Commercial sporting clubs and associations also help these interested individuals explore further. But in countries with clear cut-off between athletes and amateurs, it's more challenging to transfer exciting audiences into exercisers as they may soon realize how different they're from professional athletes.

Nowadays, it lacks efficient ways of advocating sports for all instead of those designed only for athletes, partly because the latter is more exciting and lucrative. But if money is only channeled to fancy opening ceremonies and stadiums, Olympics is nothing more than a fiction movie which shows things that never happen to ordinary people. Yes, athletes are running faster, jumping further and lifting heavier barbell, but Americans are getting more obese, and more Chinese are getting sub-healthy.