The Magic of The Games

By Pico Iyer

When Magic Johnson told the world last year that he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, even those who could not tell a triple double from a Triple Crown felt a knelling sense of loss. Much of the reason for this lies with Magic himself: bringing entertainment to the world of sports, and sports to the world of entertainment, he had a rare gift for making hard work look like fun, and miracles seem as easy as a stroll down to the candy store. But there was something more to it than that. Magic, in a sense, seemed to embody all the purest qualities that attract us toward sports. Innocence. Enthusiasm. Joy. The Olympic spirit at its best.

If the world of sports ever held those virtues, that time seems a distant memory. These days the Sports news might more appropriately be found under Medicine, or Law, or Business. In the past few months alone, tragedy has followed travesty has followed cautionary tale: the former heavyweight champion of the world is serving six years in jail for rape; the most famous soccer player in the world is found to be a cocaine addict; the five-time Wimbledon champion of a decade ago, a model of grace and poise on the court, is humiliated yet again in the divorce courts. Even a show-jumping competitor in England is charged with tampering with his horse.

Much of this is a reflection not on the athletes themselves, but on those of us who would demand perfection of them. We ask them to be exemplars in every aspect of their lives, and they mock our reverence daily. In that sense, the people who worship athletes can be a little like the devil, leading their redeemer up to a high place and then showing him all the pleasures of the world. "All this," we say, "I will give to you, if only you will show yourself better -- as well as no better -- than the rest of us." A single American baseball player today signs contracts that will bring him as much money as 20,000 Laotians will earn from now till the end of the century. And the Olympics, with their multinational coverage and million-dollar endorsement possibilities, are hardly innocent of this.

Yet the Olympics have a built-in advantage, for the Olympics offer no official cash prizes, and they reward the majority of their competitors with nothing but bright memories. For every Larry Bird or Steffi Graf, there are at least 300 athletes with the odds firmly stacked against them. And for every Ben Johnson, there are a hundred others who are neither competitive nor affluent enough to boost their chances with illicit drugs. The Olympics, in fact, are a festival of underdogs: at least 130 of the nations that will compete in Barcelona will have the luxury of being in a can't-lose position -- expectations for them are so low that any achievement will be a triumph. And perhaps 90% of all the athletes can do no more than remind themselves that David beat Goliath in the Slingshot Event. Even the former Soviet Union is an underdog this time. And though the soccer World Cup offers a little of the same excitement -- when Cameroon met England two years ago, all the small countries of the world were surely backing one of their number against a former imperial power -- the Olympics offer a double dose: a little competitor from a little country up against Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

That may help explain why even grandparents who have never heard of Sergei Bubka will shout along with the Games, and why half the world tunes in. If the first joy of following sports is seeing skill at work in a partisan cause, the second is watching surprise defeat expectation. Every hopeless cause is everybody's favorite, and every 1,000-to-1 shot seems like our hometown hero. The pleasure of watching Michael Jordan play is almost matched by the very different pleasure of seeing an Angolan accountant turned point guard play Michael Jordan one-on-one. That is why two of the most popular athletes in the world today are George Foreman and Jimmy Connors, who inspire support not because of all they have achieved over the years, but in spite of it. Suddenly, in early middle age, both are born again as underdogs; suddenly, the perennial champions are overweight, out-of-breath, underestimated long shots competing for the hell of it. Time is no longer on their side. But we are.

That may be one of the reasons why the Olympics appeal more than ever this year to Magic, who is now an underdog for the first time, a newcomer to the event, with the odds (personally) against him. For perhaps the first time in memory, we will not greet another no-look pass with a shrug of familiarity: Magic is an amateur again. Why should he, suddenly mortal, risk his health to play in the Olympics? Why should we race off to watch him play in Barcelona? Because the root of the word amateur -- still the heart of the Games, even in these professional times -- is the first Latin verb that every student learns: amo, or "I love."