"I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure." Eric Liddell, as played by Ian Charlson, from the movie "Chariots of Fire"

Read in paper that Filipino athletes will receive eight million pesos each if they win gold in the Athens 2004 Olympics. I am not against a policy granting incentives to people for excelling in their respective fields of interest. But what is sad is that there seems to be a lot of cash to give after the event, but there seems to be no support in preparing them to compete. It is just like leaving a child to study on his own, sans books and references, then promising him a present if he gets high grades in school. How pathetic!

It is even much sadder how it seems to appear that in order for us to achieve, we would resort to "dangling" money to our athletes. Whatever happened to the so called "Olympic spirit?" When competing in the Olympic games meant glory and honor for one's country? Or is there no such thing?

Well, it is also amusing to note that even in the early age of the ancient Olympic games, politics and commercialism was already present. There was this story from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/spirit.html of an athlete from Crete, who then represented Ephesus the next festival.

This is what the site says:
Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans.