Is the World Really more “united” through Sports Competitions?

The successful organization of the World Cup in South Africa should
indeed be congratulated. Once again (after that controversial Games
of the XXIX Olympiad held at Beijing from 8th to the 24th of August
2008), the international sports community has shown the insight and
wisdom in steadfastly resisting widespread criticism regarding the
choice of a seemingly unfit host nation.

The fierce, spectacular, yet friendly competitions as well as the
nearly flawless, despite some minor flaws, executions of the events
have shown both the courage of the South African government to defy
widely held negative opinions and proved once and for all that the
choice of the host nation was not one to be regretted by the future
generations.

However, accompanying such tremendous success is an equally gigantic
problem that has become gradually more prominent. Such is the problem
of individual nations using international sports competition such as
the World Cup and the Olympics and the success of their own athletes
in these games to appeal to excessively fervent nationalist pride.

Much as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did in their entire
histories of Olympic participation, sports has been manipulated by the
individual national governments to make covert political statements of
national, if not racial, superiority with strong support from an
excessively proud general populace. Such facts really makes the
message of "No to Racism" so frequently shown at the World Cup quite a
hypocritical statement.

Thus, a simple and straightforward sports competition has been
repeatedly turned into indirect political showdowns among the major
powers of the world, whether they are Nazi Germany and Soviet Union of
the past or China and the United States of today when it comes to the
Olympics. With the raging political competition in the background,
the superficial unity, sportsmanship, and friendship the athletes and
fans show in the sports arenas are absolutely meaningless.

The few major sports powers, whether deliberately or not, have
diverted the public's attention from amazing athletic feats to figures
to demonstrate the power of the collective: the national medal count
in the Olympics and final rankings in the World Cup. Thereby, it is
necessary to reform the sports ranking system in order to suppress the
unnecessarily and dangerously divisive "sports nationalism."

First, to dampen the enthusiasm of the top countries for medal
competition, it is definitely needed for other countries to be
recognized for their accomplishments, even if smaller and less
spectacular, in the games. Recently, young Chinese author Zhang Yiyi
has brilliantly came up with the idea of recognition for 4th to 7th
places of each competition, namely in the form of iron, aluminum, tin,
and lead medals, respectively.

The idea of extra medals should be utilized for the very reason of
appreciating the participation of smaller countries who have made
generous investments in their sports industries yet unfortunately does
not have the financial and human resources to compete with the world's
major sporting powers. The extra medals awarded will continue to
encourage sports investment worldwide with the hope that greater
global participation would unseat dominance of one or a few countries
in any particular sport.

Second, the needs to be a standardization of the method in which
ranking is calculated to prevent further bickering between those who
value high rankings in individual competitions such as the World Cup
and those who argue that international ranking of the teams based on
performances in multiple competitions are more important.

As a compromising gesture, the following method should be used by all
countries and the IOC to measure national achievement. Each rank
awarded should have a distinct value corresponding to the level of
achievement attained by its recipient. For instance, first place may
have a value of 7, second 6, and third 5. Then, rank can be replaced
with a tally of the standardized point values.

It is even better if the point value system can be undertaken along
with Mr. Zhang's idea of extra medals, with fourth, fifth, sixth, and
seventh receiving point values of 4, 3, 2, and 1, respectively. As
both ideas are executed, it is guaranteed that the perceived large gap
between the few major sporting powers and other participating
countries can be dramatically decreased, again leading to less
dominance of few countries.

Modern sports games were created with the noble ideal of bring
together people from different parts of world and generating equality
among the Earth's human residents. But with the games repeatedly
hijacked, without sound opposition, by certain countries to display
their own might at the expense of others, reform is necessary to
reverse the trend.

Countries with weak athletic traditions should not only be encouraged
to develop their sports industries and widely participate in the games
but also be rewarded in the games at the expense of the major sporting
powers. Only with creation of a more equitable competitive
atmosphere, where the threat of elite dominance and athletic
politicization are minimal, can the world go a step closer to truly
achieving the original ideals of the forefathers of modern sports.