Represent Your Talents

Often the highest honour for an athlete is thought to be to compete for his or her country. The biggest and most important sports tournaments are where nations are in competition, such as the Olympics in Torino. Strangely enough athletes don’t seem to care anymore which country they represent, as long as they can represent. Ivory Coast-born Salomon Kalou wants to play for the Netherlands. Dutch-born skater Bart Veldkamp is a Belgian. Czech Martina Navratilova became an American years ago.

Other, singular athletes cannot appear for their country for all kinds of personal or professional reasons. Some fight their national team coaches and don’t get selected: Eric Cantona rarely played for the France national soccer team. Others are the only good player to come out of that country, and thus the nation as a whole cannot field their own team: Hakeem Olajuwon never represented Nigerian basketball, but was in Team USA. Still others don’t make the cut, because there are so many other strong athletes in a country, such as the Dutch skaters.

To me it is quite unfair to leave athletes behind, who want the chance to compete at the highest level. In sports context, why should national pretenses be more important than the athletes’ skills? We lose out on a lot of talented people on the grandest stage.

Of course, national flags and symbols make it easier for a casual viewer to identify a side. Nothing polarizes a nation’s emotions like a success in sports. It calls on something very primal in people to support your nation, your tribe. That’s why so many people follow these nation-based tournaments. That’s why these events garner so much attention. That’s why they are so important.

The importance of these events are not justified. Sports just constitute a societal outlet, a channel which can be used and abused as people see fit. A tournament based on athletes competing on behalf of a nation thus overshoots its targets. I can support anyone I feel like, even if they are not Dutch. I can use a clash between nations as an excuse to project my aggression, which is definitely not sportsman-like.

In this sense, the setup for the major North American sports conforms more to pure athleticism and sports. Although strictly based in major cities, every team is a (franchised) sports team, with the specific purpose of competing in that particular sport. Of course, money becomes the major driving factor in these settings, and then the rant would not be about the unfairness of nation-based sports, but rather of business-minded sports.

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