Potchefstroom Olympic bid

BUSINESS DAY, 17 APRIL 2003

TODAY IS A mighty day, my friends. Today we stand on the threshold of a bright new beginning for world sport, and the good readers of this column are the first to know about it. This very evening Cape Town sees the launch of “Potch 2012” – the official Potchefstroom Olympic Bid. No, I am not joking. I know whereof I speak, because I am one of the directors of Potch 2012, and already an army marches behind us.

The bid is to be launched tonight with the support of the mayor and people of Potchefstroom and with a glittering cast of sport and entertainment celebrities. Should we win the South African nomination and then the actual bid itself, we promise a new beginning in the sordid history of world sport.

The Potch games are being dubbed the “Back to Basics Games”. The idea arose from a thoroughgoing disgruntlement with the commercialised, professionalised, degraded nature of sport today. For years we have watched in sorrow as the Olympics pay lip service to the noble ideals of sport while painting it with the harlot’s colours of branding and sponsorship. The Cricket World Cup in our own country was nearly unseated by wrangles with sponsors; the cricket itself belonged not to the players or to the crowds or even the people watching at home, but to the companies that offered most money.

For decades the ideals of sportsmanship have tarnished under the pressure of money. Sport has always been a business, but increasingly it is only a business, and that is draining away our enthusiasm and the simple pleasure of play. If we are successful with our bid, we will use the Games as a moral renaissance. Potchefstroom will be the first sporting event in two thousand years at which absolutely no one will make, lose or misplace money.

There will be no prize money at Potch 2012, and the Games will not be sponsored. We will ask television companies to defray the basic costs of broadcasting facilities, but thereafter we shall ask not one cent for rights. Everyone is welcome to screen the Potch Olympics, from the richest to the poorest, from NBC to e.tv. This expanded media coverage should off-set any disappointment about the availability of stadium seating. There will not be much stadium seating, as the stadium is not very big. There will be no admission fees and attendance is on a first-come, first-seated basis.

The Games will be marshalled by the same volunteers who did yeomen service at the Cricket World Cup. For this reason, purple is the official colour of Potch 2012. There will be no athletes’ village at the Games. As a gesture of old-fashioned South African hospitality we are calling upon the people of Potchefstroom to open their homes to the world’s athletes and make a room available for a visiting sportsperson for the duration of the Games. If you do not have a room, a sofa in the lounge will do. If you do not have a sofa, then God bless you.

Residents will obviously not be asked to house sports administrators or Australians. Sports administrators will not in fact be invited to Potch 2012. No one has ever, in the history of sport, said: “That was a nice event, but it would have been so much better if there had been more administrators.” Anyway they eat too much. While the Australians will probably be allowed to attend the Games, it would not be fair to the people of Potchefstroom to expect them to welcome an Aussie in their own home, where their family sleeps.

We want no money from these Games. We do not believe that sport needs money and we do not believe that money adds to our enjoyment of sport. Potch 2012 will be an exercise in international sporting spiritual renewal, a moral rebirth for the spirit of competition. So get behind us, good people of South Africa, sign up at the official website, and chant with us the official motto: “Potch – it could be worse”.