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One thing that the
Olympics have always provided is that hardy
perennial known as the "feel-good story." The sort
of story in which, against all odds--and with
undeniable drama--the farm boy from Iowa who grew up
with rickets in one leg and a missing thumb wins,
say, the gold medal for shot-putting (as Mom watches
from home).
The feel-good story of this Olympiad was supposed to
be the triumph of the Greek athlete. With the Games
staged in Athens, in the heady atmosphere of mythic
temples and ruined Hellenic monuments, the Greeks
were given high hopes. After all, Greece's national
soccer team had just emerged from a historic
campaign in Europe, felling such futbol titans as
France and Portugal on its way to winning a first
Delaunay trophy. But then the Games began last week,
and--from boxing to swimming to soccer--the Greeks
began meekly, compiling a mere two medals as China
and Australia amassed handfuls. And yesterday, two
of the country's most popular athletes, the
sprinters Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou,
withdrew from the Games after missing a drug test.
But one story has developed in Athens that cannot be
dismissed as hype or as typical media puffery. This
is the story of the Iraqi Olympic soccer team,
which, after two wonderful wins and a loss yesterday
against Morocco, has earned itself a place in the
quarterfinals this Saturday against Australia.
Grouped with favorite Portugal and the respectable
Costa Rican and Moroccan teams, Iraq was not
expected to do much. It had been the fourth (and
last) Asian team to qualify for the Olympics, and
before the tournament coach Adnan Hamd had said
modestly, "We may have a chance against Costa Rica
and Morocco" (but not, by implication, against
Portugal).
In Iraq, one had not only a nation with a very
modest soccer tradition but a group of players
sorely worried about their families at home,
distracted by the news from their war-torn country,
faced with the pressure of representing a fragile
and fledgling new state, and blitzed by a press that
constantly wanted to evoke memories of Uday's reign
as head of the Olympic committee (during which,
allegedly, he tortured athletes who did not perform
well).
But on Aug. 12 the Iraqi team pulled off a shock
upset at the Pampeloponnisiako stadium in Patras,
netting four goals and conceding two against a
Portugal team that included the teenage prodigy
Cristiano Ronaldo (whose annual salary at Manchester
United could in itself reconstruct a few cities in
Iraq). After the game--an affair in which the Iraqis
veered from spells of brilliance to periods of
delinquency, at one point conceding an own
goal--Iraq's coach proclaimed, "The whole of Iraq
was watching on TV, and for at least a short while,
we helped them to forget their problems." Indeed,
not only were there celebrations across Iraq, even
on the field there were celebrations, as Iraqi
supporters spilled over the balustrades to kiss and
hug the players.
If Iraq had played unevenly in their first game,
they got down to business in their second this past
Sunday, soundly defeating Costa Rica, 2-0. Once
again celebrations broke out across Iraq, and on the
pitch, and once again grand statements were made by
Iraqi officials. Hussein Mohammed, head of the Iraqi
soccer federation, declared: "We call on all Iraqis
to respect this victory . . . to use it as a
platform to ceasefire, and to be peaceful in what
they are doing, and to come back from the brink."
Yet as striking as these victories were, the style
of play of the Iraqi team was even more remarkable.
It was a style grounded in teamwork, passion and
unselfishness. Finding himself alone in front of
Portuguese goalkeeper Moreira, striker Mohammed Emad
generously crossed to his teammate Younis Mahmoud,
who scored comfortably. Given a nasty professional
elbow by Ronaldo, Mahmoud left the game briefly,
only to return sportingly with a bandaged eye. The
composition of the team was also remarkable: Sunnis,
Shiites, and one Kurd--the inspirational Harwa Mulla
Mohammed--stood shoulder to shoulder on the pitch.
Unable to unite as a political unit, Iraqis have, in
their Olympic soccer team, a model of unity,
and--just possibly--nationhood.
The story of the Iraqi soccer team at this Olympiad,
no matter how it performs in the quarterfinals
against its likely opponent, Australia, provides the
intellectual case for the Olympics. Ever since the
1936 Games in Berlin, when Hitler used the various
sporting events as a platform to promote the
supposed superiority of his "master race," it has
been hard to deny that international sporting events
such as the Olympics lack intellectual
respectability, and this is for the simple reason
that the rhetoric of the Olympic charter ("building
a peaceful and better world . . . with a spirit of
friendship, solidarity and fair play") has almost
always been belied by reality. The fact is that this
supposedly international event is more often than
not nationalist, a forum for the old bogies of group
hatred and racial superiority to raise their
heads--not to mention an instigator of the most
viperous rivalries.
Intellectuals have been clever enough to see that
the Olympics have often been not so much an
athletic, but a political, event. George Orwell, for
one, in his 1945 essay "The Sporting Spirit," wrote
perhaps the best case against the Games and other
international sporting contests. He said: "If you
wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing
in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it
better than by a series of football matches between
Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and
British, Russians and Poles . . . each match to be
watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators."
And later: "There cannot be much doubt that the
[rise of sports contests] is bound up with the rise
of nationalism--that is, with the lunatic modern
habit of identifying oneself with large power units
and seeing everything in terms of competitive
prestige."
Orwell was no doubt right enough. Even in the past
week, a controversy has emerged over an Iranian
wrestler who refuses to wrestle an Israeli, claiming
that he doesn't recognize the state of
Israel--hardly an action in the spirit of
solidarity.
But the case of the Iraqi soccer team shows the real
virtue of the Olympics. Precisely what Iraqis need
right now is a sense of nationhood, and--even--a
spirit of competitive pride. Call it nationalism,
but intellectuals have perhaps overlooked the
importance of that feeling of unity with one's
countrymen, especially in a fragmented country like
Iraq. The sight of Iraqis cheering in the streets of
Baghdad, storming the field in Athens every time
Iraq scores a goal, and swelling with pride at the
thought of their team and their country, is, for the
moment, a good thing.
That is the significance of the Olympics at its
best, though it cannot, admittedly, be expected to
harmonize the races and cure the world of all its
evils.
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