Thus Endeth Another Winter Olympics

[Occhidiangela]

To me the biggest slap in the face to the Olympic spirit is when companies like Exxon Mobile or VISA use them to advertise themselves; the ones who make billions by ripping people off.  That goes against the meaning and spirit of the Olympics more than anything else.
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Let's look at some fairly recent history. The neo-Olympics are profoundly elitist in conception. The initial premise was that the competitors were amateurs competing for their nation, their empire, their country. The quaint habit of some rich persons was to seek out and sponsor poor athletes to hone into Olympians, with credit of course accruing to the patron. Patron of the athletic arts, as it were. The significant change to professionals competing at the Olympics has happened during my lifetime, and is IIRC post 1980.

Amateur status and eligibility was a huge sticking point for many years. It no longer is, and in my opinion, the Olympics has suffered for it for reasons related to what disappoints you, and over commercialization in general.

As to the root of sports as competition, and as ritual battle, that is a well founded argument of numerous sociologists, which makes the Olympics, conceptually, a ritual battle of images between nations. The simple example of an analogue is Hector and Achilles, or the previous Hector and Ajax, in their battle of champions before Troy. The Olympic boxing or fencing matches are martial echoes of such a legendary duel for the honor of clan and country.

The "Olympic spirit" you see is the Neo-Olympic spirit. It is at root an elitist, nationalistic, Statist vehicle for flag waving and national pride. That has its place, for sure, but if you grew up in the Cold War and watched the political influence -- or for that matter saw the political side of the 1936 Berlin Olympiad as my father did -- you can see that "the best part," the sports competition, is a come on. National Olympic organizations do a lot of good as they pursue excellence in human performance, but the motivation is rooted in the political.

The purity of spirit you describe has always been stained by the political connotation of the Neo Olympics. Ironically, that "spirit" has been sold as part of the attraction to boost participation and suppport, with the beneficial outcome being that the bulk of the competitors seem to embrace that spirit (boors like Tanya Harding being a general exception) and uphold both good sportsmanship and the celebration of excellence through doing one's utmost.

Occhi