On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:51:10 GMT, "Joe Morgan" <[email hidden]>
wrote:
..Greece is spending many BILLIONS of dollars on the Olympics, and they will
..be in debt for decades. Los Angeles is still paying for their Olympics 20
..years ago! Every four years some nation spends billions for what?? The
..Olympics are hardly more than a charade. Most of the athletes either were
..juicing at some point, or still are with advanced masking agents. So what is
..the point?? Not just of hosting the Olympics, but of supporting these
..arrogant athletes who never work and must be fed, clothed, and housed year
..after year??
..
..Hundreds of Millions of dollars are spent in the USA just housing these
..illiterate scumbags. WHY??? What for?? Who cares about any of the stupid
..records that they compete for??? Is it worth spending so much money??
..
..ALL THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS could be spent on education of children,
..instead of supporting jocks. I think that the OLYMPICS are a totally
..wasteful by-product of the past. They are a dinosaur, and they need to be
..scaled back to their original size. Synchronized Swimming? Ballroom Dancing?
..etc.?? It is not only that 35% of the events are not even SPORTS, but these
..folks participating are all getting a free ride on the TAXPAYER! Your Tax
..Dollar is paying for all this. You are buying them their vitamins, their
..protein shakes, their Creatine, and their steroids.
AMEN. And don't forget the destruction of the environment:
August 11, 1997
Juan Antonio Samaranch
President, International Olympic Committee
Chateau de Vidy
1007 Lausanne, Switzerland
Katia Mascagni Stivachtis, Chief, Section of Environmental Affairs
Department of International Cooperation and Public Information
International Olympic Committee
Chateau de Vidy
1007 Lausanne, Switzerland
Gentlepersons:
I was delighted to learn (from your web page) that protection
of the environment (after sports and culture) is now one of the
main goals of the Olympics. The visibility and prestige of the
Olympics give you enormous responsibility, especially toward young
people, who will be strongly influenced by what they see. As you
well know, nonverbal learning is very powerful, and is for many
people (e.g. preliterate children) the primary means by which the
Olympics teaches them about sports, culture, and the environment.
People, especially children, assume that what they see on
television, especially in the Olympics, is proper.
__________________________
Therefore, I was shocked, saddened, and embarrassed when I
discovered that mountain biking has been accepted as an Olympic
sport. I am enclosing several papers in which I explain in detail
the harm that mountain biking inflicts on wildlife. But I will try
to summarize that information here.
We are in the midst of a worldwide extinction crisis.
According to the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of
Nature and Natural Resources), one fourth of all of the world's
animals are threatened with extinction. The primary threat is loss
of habitat. Such loss includes obvious, outright destruction, such
as clearcutting and open-pit mining, but also the excessive
presence of humans, which often causes wildlife to abandon their
preferred habitat. In either case, the wildlife lose access to
important resources, such as certain food sources and potential
mates. When judging effects on wildlife, it is essential to look at
the situation from their point of view, not ours. If they abandon
_____ ____
an area, the habitat is effectively destroyed for them, regardless
of what we think.
__
The primary reason why mountain biking is harmful to wildlife,
thus, is that it makes it much easier for people to get into
____
wildlife habitat. Mountain bikers don't just show up at the
Olympics to race. They have to spend many hours training. And where
do they prefer to ride? In wilderness (wildlife habitat). And what
__________
kind of trail do they prefer to ride on? "Single-track" trails,
which are primarily in wilderness, or at least the most natural
part of any area. That is also, of course, the area preferred by
wildlife. The Olympics are a powerful motivator. When people see a
sport in the Olympics, they identify with the athletes and want to
participate in the sport. Thus, by simply including mountain biking
in the Olympics, you unleash a tidal wave of people buying mountain
bikes, flooding parks and wilderness areas, and participating in
races. As is usual when there is an increase in recreation,
wildlife lose more and more of their (already dangerously
dwindling) habitat.
The bicycle is a wonderful tool, but like any technological
aid, it can be used for good (e.g. to replace auto travel) or evil
(e.g. to expand man's domination of wildlife habitat). Similar
damage arises from the use of the use of other technologies, such
as climbing aids (extending man's reach onto cliffs), rafts (giving
people access to the entire length of a river), night-vision
goggles (making night-time access to habitat easier), etc.
Throughout our evolution, technological aids (e.g. guns, the
internal combustion engine, etc.) have given us vastly more power
than any other species, and the more we have wielded them, the more
damage we have done. You had the right idea when you banned sports
that "depend essentially on mechanical propulsion". Technological
aids have no place (or at most a minor place) in Olympic sports,
which are based on simple physical activities like walking and
swimming that measure the physical (e.g. strength and health) and
spiritual (e.g. sportsmanship) dimensions of a human being, not of
___
his or her tools.
Many mountain bikers also lack sportsmanship. They insist on
riding even when their enjoyment conflicts with that of wildlife
and other people. Elderly hikers are being driven off of hiking
trails they have enjoyed all their lives. Threatened species have
been killed by bikers, who then try to pretend that it didn't
happen or was insignificant. Anyone who speaks out against mountain
biking is attacked viciously, as I have been and continue to be. My
physical safety and that of my family have been threatened, for
simply telling the truth about the effects of mountain biking on
wildlife. Many mountain bikers seem to see their goal as conquering
anything and anyone in their path. I haven't seen such a lack of
sportsmanship in any other sport (with the exception of
professional wrestling and one infamous instance in ice skating).
Mountain biking also destroys vast numbers of organisms that
live in and on soil, creating devastating erosion. One Olympic
hopeful, for example, trained in Brown's Woods, DesMoines, Iowa,
where habitat destruction was so bad that the county was forced to
close the park to bikes. The knobby tires used by virtually all
mountain bikers are perfectly designed to rip up the soil and kill
the plants and animals that live there. They insist on using those
tires even though they don't need that much traction unless they
are traveling at excessive speed, or riding on steep slopes or wet
ground where biking is inappropriate.
The Earth's environmental problems are so huge that they will
not be solved without all of us doing our part. I appreciate that
you are striving to do your part, and are re-examining the Olympics
____
with the environment in mind. I hope you will consider dropping
mountain biking as an Olympic sport, and take another look at all
the other sports (e.g. canoeing, which also intrudes into important
wildlife habitat) from the point of view of wildlife.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.
P.S. A larger issue, of course, is whether an activity that
requires the long-distance travel of thousands of people can ever
____
be sustainable. I suggest that you recognize that the Earth's oil
supplies will soon be exhausted (estimated by the experts at about
2040), and create a committee to begin planning for it. (E.g., how
do we want to make use of the oil that is left? Burn it up?!).
Every organization should have such a committee!
_____
References:
Ehrlich, Paul and Anne, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of
__________________________________________
the Disappearance of Species. c.1981.
____________________________
Knight, Richard L. and Kevin J. Gutzwiller, eds. Wildlife and
____________
Recreationists. Covelo, California: Island Press, c.1995.
______________
Phillips, Kathryn, Tracking the Vanishing Frogs: An Ecological
___________________________________________
Mystery. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
____________________________________________
Stebbins, Robert, personal communication.
Vandeman, Michael J., Ph.D.
http://www.imaja.com/change/environment/mvarticles/
===
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"😉. Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)