So many people have such reverence for the Olympics. I think it’s obvious that I am rather contemptuous when it comes to the sports—or sports in general. Sure, I like a good ball game once in a while, but the way we idolize athletes has always bothered me. I don’t think playing a game is a good reason to be paid millions of dollars a year, and I certainly don’t think that a person playing a sport (see, it’s even called playing, not working!) should be seen as a hero. (I also don’t like the way these events create such ungodly amounts of waste on our planet; see the link above regarding that.)
Here’s the latest news regarding a potential Olympic “hero”: 18-year-old Robert “Sandy” Vietze, a hopeful for the U.S. ski team in Sochi, was recently kicked off the team for peeing on an 11-year-old girl. At first I thought it might be a case of bullying or sexual harassment, which would have been even more heinous, but don’t worry; the idiot was just drunk.
And his apology was so eloquent, too: “I was drunk, and I did not realize I was pissing on her leg.”
This comes from one of the supposedly best skiers in the country, who attends an all-skier boarding school for over $40,000 a year—more than my husband and I make together to support our family of four.
Yeah, he’s a hero, alright.
And I’m not saying that he is an example of all athletes, but he sure is an example of what a white, privileged, rich kid in America looks like—which happens to be the makeup of many Olympians, too. We definitely have a few stories about kids from poor backgrounds making it big, but most of us know that children who train for the Olympics are well funded by either sponsors or rich parents, which only fuels the whole rich/powerful/successful modus operandi that we have in this world: to be important or idolized, you must have money, and lots of it. And I won’t even start on what this sort of training has done to children in the past.
He’s being charged with indecency or some other garbage, but no one seems to be raising a stink about his underage drinking. Normally I wouldn’t care, except that this kid was supposed to be an athlete, whom many other young people look up to and aspire to become. I really don’t care what he does in the privacy of his home, but when a star athlete—any star athlete, no matter his age—steps out into public, he or she ought to at least earn some of those millions by modeling decent behavior for his or her fans.
Of course, Sandy was only on his way to becoming such a “hero,” and didn’t have the full status yet. Will his peeing incident blow over so he can fully take that chance? Honestly, I don’t give a fig myself, but my guess is yes. We let athletes get away with murder, rape, and plenty of other crimes in this country; why would peeing on a little girl be any different?