Am I an Olympic Games Heretic?

Our national Aussie Rules Football game, which my soccer loving father (RIP) in a laconic and affectionate way referred to as 'Aeriel ping-pong' is a game that was fashioned on an activity played by fit and athletic Indigenous youth before the colonization of Australia by the white-man.
These young boys kicked around a stuffed elliptical ball made from possum skin. This activity, known by the Gunditjmara people in Victoria was known as Marn Grook.
To this day Aboriginal youth in this country seem to have inherent skills that make them the most excellent of footballers. The reasons there are not many more Indigenous boys and men playing professional football is a matter that has much more to do with culture than talent.
These young boys and men kicked around the ball displaying and performing their various athletic skills until they got tired or hungry or both. The whole point of the activity was to test and extend your skills and to perhaps also socialize. It was an activity with no specific start or end point; hence I call it an activity and not a game. There were no sides taken, no teams and it was not a competition. The enjoyment came in knowing or extending your edge.

Team sport, games and other athletic practices infer controlled circumstances; beginning and end points, and perhaps team work. In assessing 'best performances' only limited criteria are used. And not everyone with outstanding ability partakes.

Let me illustrate more:
I used to be a daily lap-swimmer at a public pool used for training competitors and visiting overseas squads training for the Commonwealth games etc so I was often exposed to this level of athlete.
However there was another subset of swimmers who used the pool daily, mostly at lunch time. This little lunch-time group of swimmers were not officially organized, ordered or recognized and their group was made up of ex medal holders who were merely keeping fit and having some fun every lunchtime.
These people broke Olympic records on an almost daily basis.
They had previously in their lives won medals then abandoned the public arena and, sometimes before even reaching their best.

When I quizzed some of them further about being in the Commonwealth Games or Olympics a normal response was something like, "been there - done that and got out for (whatever) reason".
The 'whatever' reasons often included things like 'not enough money in it' and 'not enough freedom for a normal life'.

In fact one of them was also a swimming teacher who would regularly display his skill to his students only on the final day of class where kids get assessed and he would get in and race them but he would get in the pool when most of the kids were at around the 30 - 35 meter point and then he would still always manage to beat them.

I remember another afternoon when the local professional football club ('go the Dockers') were 'mucking around in the water' and doing a bit of swimming. One of the Indigenous players broke the current world freestyle 50 meter time - and he didn't even have the most perfect or aquarobic stroke either. I offered to coach him saying it wouldn't take much to turn him into an Olympian swimmer that no-one could match.
My father was also an athletic man. When he was around thirty years of age one of his young children took off the car handbrake when it was parked atop a hill. Everyone joked that on that day he broke the world record sprint time and I believe he may well of too.

So the point I am making is that structures such as the Olympic Games create false environments in which to measure superhuman feats. I think we all know that many athletes cannot perform at their very best every single day and in any given set of circumstance or in any environment.
Perhaps instead there should be something like an Olympic Register where people may enter details of their outstanding endeavors; but I guess this may already be called the Guinness Book of Records.
But even the Guinness Book of Records, as with the Commonwealth or Olympic Games works on the assumption that such feats can be repeatedly performed at will. We can only be our best once.
Nonetheless I think the Olympic Games gives us some great landmarks that other athletes who for whatever reasons choose to not partake may pit themselves against if they are feeling competitive.

But really - what do these great and wonderful Competitions really display and what are the chances that the conditions of the Games actually do bring out the very best in each and every performer?

For more information about Marn Grook visit;

http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/1832236.html

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/23/1022038457500.html

http://www.aboriginalfootball.com.au/marngrook.html

http://www.roninfilms.com.au/video/1871945/0/1832074.html