Mark Reason has written an opinion piece, published on the Stuff website today. I’ve read it twice and cannot understand what he is trying to say. I especially struggle to believe that Stuff decided to publish this rubbish. True to form, its publication reflects the eroding standard of Stuff’s journalism. What started off as a “Daily Telegraph” is inching its way ever closer to “The Sun”.

Reason seems to have two confusing goals. One is to praise the performance of Zoi Sadowski-Synnott. And two is to tear into the IOC for selecting China as the location for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Reason goes overboard to a point usually reserved for British comedians on the Costa del Sol.

Imagine what Billy Connolly would make of this Reason gem.

“Her black suit twirled against the bright blue sky of China as she took us higher and higher and higher, a New Zealand freebird flying for joy.”  

You might think that would be enough clap-trap praise for what was in fact a hard-headed, well-trained professional at work. But Reason is in full flow. He is not about to be stopped. His beat goes on.

“The women’s slopestyle event was a return to innocence. When the New Zealander finished her final winning run she was engulfed by the other two medallists.”

“A return to innocence” – but was it really? Was it any different from Lotte Miller of Norway assisting Claire Michel of Belgium after the finish of women’s Tokyo Olympic Games’ triathlon or Gianmarco Tamberi, of Italy, embracing fellow gold medallist, Mutaz Barshim, of Qatar, after the final of the men’s high jump at the same Games or Saiah Jewett, of the United States, and Nijel Amos, of Botswana, shaking hands after tripping each other in the Tokyo men’s 800-meters. 

The history of sport is littered with good people doing good things. Zoi’s moment was one of them. But for Reason to put it into some Paul on the road to Damascus category is ridiculous. You might think the comparison with the biblical story of Paul is an exaggeration. But how else would you describe this Reason masterpiece?

“And then as we look to the heavens in despair, we see Zoi against the blue, taking us higher and higher, soaring above the dirty brown hillsides so naked of snow.”  

Best of all Reason tells us that after Zoi was “engulfed by the other two medallists”,

“Their smiles bounced off the white of the snow.”

How does Reason know that? If they were smiling, the smiles were well hidden under a pile of bodies. For all we know they could have had a Mike Tyson dental grip on their competitor’s ears.

Even though China’s hillsides are “dirty brown” Reason does acknowledge China has “bright blue sky” and “white snow”. It seems that is all China has going for it. Reason’s effusive praise of Zoi Sadowski-Synnott is matched by his condemnation of everything Chinese, or in Reason hyperbole, “these wretchedly hypocritical Olympics”.

The application of Reason’s twisted lens would see every country in the world banned from hosting the Olympic Games. Here is how Reason describes his Chinese obsession.          

“These are The Unfriendly Games. – The sight at the opening ceremony of the president of the IOC Thomas Bach bowing three times before the Chinese leader Xi Jinping and then rubbing his hands together like Uriah Heep was nauseating.”

Was Reason nauseated when the IOC President bowed to Queen Elizabeth in 2012? After all, her close relatives were responsible for the international slave trade, the world trade in Chinese opium, the Boer concentration camps and the Indian famine that her first Minister described as “their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” Would Reason have asked for the Games to be taken from London if he had known the Government was about to put on boozy parties while 158,000 people died from Covid disease?

Was Reason’s nausea brought on by the IOC decision to host the Olympic Games in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Atlanta? The United States is after all the world’s expert in oppression. Just ask an African American in New York about systemic racism. Just ask the citizens of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The My Lai massacre alone should have been enough reason. Add to that the American mutilation of war dead, water-boarding, rape and several foreign programmes of torture, interrogation, and assassination. Remember the seven children murdered by an American drone six months ago in downtown Kabul. Did that bring on any Reason Olympic nausea?

My point is only that Reason’s analysis is shallow to the point of juvenile twaddle, demonstrating a stunning vacuum of intellectual resources. I know seven-year-olds capable of better logic. I mean Reason’s comparison of the IOC President’s use of a wall analogy to the ice wall built to host the snowboarding is pathetic primary school point scoring. The Stuff editor surely must have lost her red pen.

And as for the scorn Reason heaps upon Beijing’s security. He would do well to remember that the Olympic record for the amount of security is still held by his home capital of London. Some “razor wire surrounding the Olympic facilities” hardly compares to London’s 17,000 armed forces staff posted to the Games compared with the 9,500 troops Britain had in Afghanistan at the time. The security arsenal also included RAF Typhoon combat jets, surface-to-air missiles on rooftops and an aircraft carrier on the River Thames.

Blacklisted at the London Games were “objects or clothing bearing political statements”. Remember the guy who got sent home from the weightlifting for wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. Bet that won’t happen in Beijing.

None of Reason’s adulation or nausea makes sense. A week ago, I gave Stuff a D- for an article on the Games. Reason beats last week’s effort by a distance. A grade of F is the only option.