Atlanta. July 1996. Michelle Smith was late emerging for her final race. Her goggles had broken. In the stands three of her staunchest journalistic defenders sweated profusely. "Oh no," said one. "She's been caught." Various bleats of dismay followed. Then the golden girl scurried into view. Alarm over. Back to the merry mythmaking. Next month it begins again, the great cavalcade of excess, whimsy and testosterone that is the Olympic Games. There will be two types of journalist there, those who are on the bandwagon and those, and I'm quoting here, who "swim against the bandwagon". For the latter group the Olympics are a truly perplexing task. It is expected of sports journalists that they uncritically convey in their copy some or all of the inherent excitement in the contests they cover. In Sydney heroes will be made and duly they shall be feted with headlines and applause. Yet, sincerely, most journalists will believe little of what they see. Not the sprints. Not the throwers. Not the weightlifters. Not the heroes.
What to do? It is rumoured in America that at least one prominent track correspondent has agreed that he will provide the type of copy expected of him only if little disclaimers are issued at the end of his reports stating that the journalist whose name appears above has extreme reservations about the validity of everything he is reporting on. Perhaps it's a solution. He will travel, though, knowing that most readers and most editors sincerely wish that journalists would just shut up and stop spoiling the fun. Poor Andrew Jennings. He wants us to think less of people we couldn't care less about. He has devoted great chunks of his life to becoming a one-man tribunal for the International Olympic Committee. With a whistle in his mouth and an apt sermon close at hand he is perpetually alerting us to the evil deeds of the International Olympic Committee. And we keep our hands over our ears. We're-not-listen-ing. We're-not-listen-ing.
We're just not. We enjoy our illusions. Do we rise up as one and ransack the Palace Hotel in Lausanne, turfing old Juan Antonio Samaranch out on his ear? Do we turn away in disgust at the quadrenniel spectacle of excess and drugs which Juan Antonio presides over? Do we decide to clean up our own house first? We do not.
We do none of these things. Truth is that we are nonplussed and maybe a little charmed by Jennings's dispatches from the front lines of top-level sports administration. Why does he bother? The more we learn from him the less we are surprised. The court cases relating to Salt Lake City's successful bid for the Winter Olympics of 2002 began in the last few days. We are scarcely agog. Marion Jones and her "drive for five" is what entrances us. When it comes to the Olympic Movement we are supremely capable of accommodating our pleasures by means of doublethink. Drugs in sport are wrong if the Chinese are using them - but if Michelle is being accused, well, "they're all at it, so why pick on our girl?" The Olympic movement should be squeaky clean but if the Olympic movement is to be the great TV production we wish it to be, well, palms are going to get greased, so let's pretend.
With two previous books to his credit on the subject of soiled Olympism, Jennings has become as much a part of the four-year Olympic cycle as the summer games themselves. He is the heckler on the balcony, the fellow pegging tomatoes and issuing catcalls during the opening ceremony. Much has happened since his last foray between covers. The Olympic movement has come under severe pressure to clean up its act on drugs in sport, and the stern line taken by the US government and other elected bodies has stirred if not shaken the gerontocracy. And of course the bidding process has been exposed as the corrupt sham which Jennings always said it was. Reforms have been made which ensure that if there is going to be graft, it will be smaller graft and more discreet graft.
Jennings's weakness is, perhaps, that he gives too little credit or recognition for those aspects of the Games which people find attractive and inspiring - and no recognition to grudging reforms either. His bonnet is still as warm with bees and the sight of it diminishes his authority. The Great Olympic Swindle is more of the same. Outraged dispatches to a world beyond outrage.