New Motto: Tardus, Inferus, Infirmus*

(*Slower, Lower, Weaker)
Juan Antonio Samaranch, who employed the benevolent fascism he learned from Generalissimo Francisco Franco to destroy the Olympic ideal, has died of heart failure at the age of 89. When Samaranch took the reins of the International Olympic Committee in 1980, the city of Montreal was still reeling from the cost of hosting the 1976 games and the amateurs of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team had just upset the vaunted Soviet Union en route to winning the gold medal. When he left, the Games had become bloated spectacles, with cities lining up to impoverish themselves building stadia and facilities they would never use again, corporate names adorning everything including the condoms handed out at the athlete’s village, professional athletes everywhere, regular headlines about doping scandals as athletes took the short cut to endorsement dollars and the most amateurish element remaining being NBC’s television coverage. But at least they turn a profit, for the IOC, anyway. And that’s not even counting the bribes.