The Road to Peace or War

Olympics is always associated with peace. When Olympics were held in ancient Greeks, troops at war ceased fire to the end of the game. The truce, though temporary, gave people a glimmer hope of peace. When athletes from North and South Korea entered the main stadium hand in hand in 2000, audience hailed to them, believing this is exactly what the Olympics Spirit is: expanding understanding between rivalries, and promoting the course of peace.

However, as the most important competitive sports event, perhaps Olympics is leading its way to a different direction. Competition means winners and losers: athletes from one country winning the game, and the rest losing it. With a motto of "higher faster stronger" in mind, nothing else could look better than receiving medals on the podium. Thus competition is doomed to be superior to cooperation or hypocritical friendship. Since everyone - athletes, coaches and even audience - cares about the result, all means are exhausted to change  rankings. Instead of bringing peace, Olympics are triggering wars between rivalries.

A dramatic reversal happened at the end of Men's Gymnastics Team Final, when the Japanese top seed player Uchimura fell off pommel horse and his team's ranking dropped from the 2nd to the 4th. Britain, who historically won the 2nd place in gymnastics started to celebrate their biggest victory since modern Olympics held in 1896. Ukrain ranking the 3rd in the scoreboard was about to embrace a bronze medal and perk up in gymnastics since the collapse of Soviet Union. But seven minutes later, scores for the Japanese team were recalculated after appeals from Japanese coach, which raised its ranking to the 2nd. London audiences who had just celebrated this historical silver medal had to accept the fact that their silver medal was replaced by a bronze one about $5 worth. The audiences were obviously unhappy with the result, and their catcalls lasted for several minutes until awarding ceremony. Later on, many comments were found on twitter and micro-blog joking about "declaring a war against Japan" and how they "must have bribed judges for scores." Coincidentally a few days ago, China lost to Korea in the Women's Archery Team Final by one ring after Korean coach's appeal, which also aroused resentment within Chinese audience against Korea and doubts on the justice of the game.

Almost at the same time as the Gymnastics Final, a Korean female fencer appealed to the judge panel on her rival's last attack, which knocked her out in the semi-final. The appeal lasted half an hour and she declined to leave the stage when the result was not favoring her. The whole dispute took more than an hour. Her rivalry, a fencing superstar in German thus could not take a break between her semi-final and final, and ended up with a silver medal. The Germany media got very angry with the Korean athlete who delayed the competition and blamed her for disturbing the final. Furious netizens soon started lengthy accusation of the Korean girl of stealing the gold medal away.

The tension between badminton teams in China and Indonesia also escalated this morning when the Indonesian coach denounced Chinese players for starting the tradition of throwing their matches to face easier opponents in the next round in previous competitions and described Indonesian players as "victims" after the Badminton World Federation disqualified eight female badminton players from China, Indonesia and Korea from London Olympics a few hours earlier this morning. This coach's comment evoked wide anger within Chinese audiences who referred it as "outrageous and shameless."

Most furious resentment occurred over controversial disputes, when people believed it was due to some unfair subjective factors that their players lost the game. If this happened between countries with tense relationship - Britain and France, China and Japan, or Russia and the US, things could get worse. Patriotism can be easily translated into hostility against rival countries on such exciting occasions. Thank god we don't have athletes from Iran and Iraq competing for one gold medal, otherwise we may expect a nuclear bombing soon.

It sounds ridiculous to hope for peace when encouraging players from 204 countries to fight against each other fiercely. Perhaps Olympics can bring a transitory peace during wartime, but nothing more than trivial frictions when peace already arrives.