In the late 19th century, Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat and dropout from the priesthood, found his life’s goal: to create a sporting culture that existed separate from political concerns. And in 1896, with the staging of the first modern Olympic Games, Coubertin got his wish. Sort of.

19世纪晚期，法国贵族皮埃尔·德·顾拜旦(Pierre de Coubertin)未能当上教士，却发现了自己毕生的目标：创立一种脱离政治而存在的体育文化。1896年，第一届现代奥林匹克运动会开幕，顾拜旦实现了自己的心愿。基本上算是吧。

In ancient Greece, athletic endeavors were seen as an important preparation for war, but Coubertin’s gathering in Athens was a more clumsy affair, with 241 athletes, all white and male, competing in nine different sports over two weeks. Races ran clockwise on tracks that measured a curious 330 yards. American sprinters began their heats by crouching, while those next to them stood erect. One Italian who lacked funds jogged most of the way from his home country to Greece. Black ties and top hats were worn for medal ceremonies, in which it was the silver medal, not a gold one, that was the top prize.

在古希腊，体育赛事被视为一项重要的战备活动，但是顾拜旦在雅典举办的赛会则要笨拙得多。参赛的241名运动员都是白人男性，一共九项赛事，为期两周。赛跑运动员沿顺时针在环形跑道上赛跑，跑道长度是奇怪的330码。美国短跑运动员以深蹲作为准备动作，边上其他人站得笔直。一个资金不足的意大利人基本是从家乡慢跑来希腊的。颁奖礼上，人们打黑领带，戴礼帽，当时第一名的奖牌是银牌而不是金牌。

The true history of the Games is a far cry from the platitude-laden, sepia-toned nostalgia pumped out by the International Olympic Committee and Olympic sponsors. But as David Goldblatt tells us, little has changed in what is often a story of Olympic absurdity and its disconnect from reality. “The Games” is an exhaustively researched account of the modern Olympics, from Coubertin’s early follies to the clouds hanging over this summer’s events in Rio de Janeiro.

奥林匹克的真实历史远非国际奥林匹克委员会与奥运赞助商口中那些充满空洞说教和浪漫色彩的怀旧叙事。但是正如大卫·戈德布拉特告诉我们的，奥运会的荒诞性，以及它和现实的脱节是经常发生的，几乎没有什么改变。《赛会》一书经过详尽研究，对现代奥林匹克运动会进行了全面描述，从顾拜旦早期的愚笨行为，到今年夏天里约热内卢奥运会上空笼罩的阴云。

In trying to write a narrative of the entire Olympics, Goldblatt, the author of a global history of soccer, has taken on a challenge worthy of a marathoner. A book about the scandals alone would risk being biblical in scope. But the greater difficulty is that a thorough Olympic history must also be something of a world history, with tentacles sprawling far beyond the Games themselves.

戈德布拉特是一位全球足球史作家，为了对整个奥林匹克运动做出全面描述，他接受了马拉松运动员般的挑战。就算仅仅是一本关于丑闻的书，也很可能要写成一部洋洋巨著。但更困难的是，一部完整的奥林匹克史在某种程度上也一定是一部世界史，其范围远远超出赛事本身。

Like a disciplined distance runner, Goldblatt takes an even-paced approach. His is basically an academic survey that spends roughly the same amount of time on each Olympiad. It is based largely on news accounts, academic journals and the official reports of the Games, all presented with the appropriate whiff of skepticism.

戈德布拉特像一位训练有素的长跑运动员一样，采取了稳健的方式。他基本上采取了学术调查的方法，在每一届奥运会上平均分配时间。他的书主要建立在和奥运赛事有关的新闻、学术期刊和官方报道上，但所有的材料引用都保持着一份必要的质疑。

If Howard Zinn gave us “A People’s History of the United States,” Goldblatt provides a people’s history of the Olympics. So we learn that volunteers at the 1968 Mexico Games were overwhelmingly light-skinned, upper-middle-class women, chosen over their darker-skinned counterparts. Then there’s the Chinese high jumper at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles; the windows of his Shanghai home were broken and his family was threatened after he failed to win a medal in his event. More recently at the Atlanta Games in 1996, many of the arenas were built by mostly Hispanic, low-wage laborers, Goldblatt points out, and some homeless Atlantans were offered one-way bus tickets to any place in the country where they said they had family members or could find a place to sleep.

如果霍华德·津恩(Howard Zinn)为我们带来的是《美国人民史》(A People’s History of the United States)，戈德布拉特带来的就是一部奥林匹克人民史。我们从中读到，1968年墨西哥奥运会上的志愿者大都是浅色皮肤，中上层阶级的女性，相同背景但深肤色的人则不能被选中。我们还可以读到，1984年洛杉矶奥运会上的中国跳高运动员未能获得奖牌，他在上海家中的玻璃被打破，他的家人受到威胁。戈德布拉特还写到，在更晚近一些的1996年亚特兰大奥运会上，许多场馆都主要是由西语裔低薪劳工修建的；一些无家可归的亚特兰大人只要说出自己在这个国家的任何地方有亲人，或者是可以在那里找到落脚的地方，就可以得到一张去往那里的单程大巴车票。

It was far from the first time that officials were blind to the concerns of the communities in which the Games were held. Goldblatt details worries that Greece was in no economic position to host the 1896 Games (nor those of 2004). The commercial success of Barcelona in 1992, which is often held up by today’s caravan of consultants as the model for host cities to emulate, was due to a combination of factors that are essentially unrepeatable, including a remarkable artistic heritage. Goldblatt writes that those Games were “a crowning achievement, not a catalyst.”

史上第一次赛事举办地的民生关切被官员们忽视，已经是很遥远的事了。戈德布拉特详细描写了当时人们对希腊没有经济条件主办1896年奥运会（2004年时也不行）的忧虑。1992年巴塞罗那奥运会经济上的成功通常被如今的顾问团作为值得主办城市效仿的典范，但当时的成功是种种因素结合的产物，基本难以复制，其中包括这座城市惊人的艺术遗产。戈德布拉特写道，那届赛事是“一次巅峰成就，却不是未来的催化剂”。

While the Olympics today are a picture of diversity and inclusiveness, Goldblatt presents a much more nuanced (and accurate) narrative of their past. When William DeHart Hubbard won a gold medal in the long jump in 1924 in Paris, the first ever gold to be gained by an -African-American, it was reported back home only in the black press. Twelve years later, when Jesse Owens captured four gold medals in Hitler’s Berlin, no paper south of the -Mason-Dixon line published a picture of him. Nor does it seem that top Olympic officials were particularly kind in matters of religion; the American Avery Brundage, an I.O.C. member and later its president, reportedly told the Germans that his own sports clubs in Chicago excluded Jews.

如今的奥林匹克赛事呈现出多样性和包容性，但戈德布拉特对历史上奥运会的叙述做到了更加细致入微的审辨（也更准确）。1924年，威廉·德哈特·哈伯德(William DeHart Hubbard)在巴黎奥运会上获得了跳远金牌，这是非裔美国人第一次获得金牌；但在美国，只有黑人媒体对此进行了报道。12年后，杰西·欧文斯(Jesse Owens)在希特勒时期的柏林奥运会上获得四块金牌；梅森－迪克森线(Mason-Dixon line)以南，没有任何报纸刊登他的照片。奥林匹克高官们对宗教问题也没有表现出多少宽容；国际奥委会成员、美国人埃弗里·布伦戴奇(Avery Brundage)（后来成了国际奥委会的主席）据报道曾告诉德国人，他自己在芝加哥的运动俱乐部拒绝接纳犹太人。

Coubertin considered women’s sport “the most unesthetic sight human eyes could contemplate” and in 1912 declared that “the Olympic Games must be reserved for men.” Sometimes the women who did compete, like Fanny -Blankers-Koen, a Dutch runner who won four gold medals at the 1948 London Games, received hate mail and jeers. As late as 1960, the Vatican “forbade the clergy to attend or watch women’s events,” and more recently, some female athletes have had to undergo invasive and humiliating gender testing.

顾拜旦觉得女子体育竞赛是“人类眼睛所能看到的最没有美感的景象”，1912年，他宣布“奥林匹克运动会必须只为男性举办”。有时候，女性参赛者会收到恶意的邮件和嘲弄，比如1948年伦敦奥运会上获得四块金牌的荷兰跑步运动员范妮·布朗克斯-科恩(Fanny -Blankers-Koen)。直到1960年，梵蒂冈还“禁止神职人员观看女性赛事”。在更晚近一些的年代，还有女性运动员不得不忍受侵犯性和羞辱人的性别检测。

Goldblatt also describes the perpetual war against doping, reminding readers that the use of -performance-enhancing drugs was very much an “open affair” in the early days of the Games. The I.O.C. became interested only in the late 1930s, and not because of concerns for the health of the athletes. It was worried that drugs threatened the (ultimately discarded) idea of amateurism. That debate is today echoed in the controversy surrounding the N.C.A.A.’s definition of student athletes and serves as a backdrop that explains some of the hollowness around current drug-testing efforts.

戈德布拉特还描述了与兴奋剂的长期斗争，提醒读者们，使用能提高运动成绩的药品，在早期的奥运赛事上是“公开的事”。国际奥委会直到20世纪30年代才开始关注，而且不是因为考虑到运动员的健康。他们担心，兴奋剂会威胁“业余”这个概念（这个概念最终被丢弃了）。当年的辩论，今天还能在全国大学生体育协会(N.C.A.A.)关于学生运动员的定义之争中听到回响，也有助于解释如今某些药品检测的空洞无谓。

Coubertin’s own end was far from a podium finish. He died widowed and broke, the latter a result of a series of bad investments. Today, while sponsor dollars still pour in, mounting global criticism is undercutting some of the glamour of the Games. Only two cities put themselves forward to host the 2022 Winter Games. Meanwhile, an Olympic sailing hopeful on the waters in Rio crashed his dinghy into a submerged sofa.

最终，顾拜旦自己的人生并没有登上领奖台。他去世时孑然鳏居，一文不名。破产是由于一系列错误的投资造成的。如今，尽管赞助资金持续涌入，但全世界不断增加的批评之声也令奥运会失色。只有两个城市申办2022年冬季奥运会。此外，一位有望角逐里约奥运会的帆船运动员在当地水面撞上了一只漂浮的沙发，船翻落水。

Because sports are a religion, it’s difficult to imagine a world without the Olympics, and to be sure, they have given us many glorious moments. It would be easy to conclude that the Olympic “movement” has lost its way since the time of Coubertin’s lofty vision, but that, as Goldblatt demonstrates, would be to rewrite history, since the idea of a clean and easy way to achieve peace through sport was a benevolent myth in the first place.

因为体育是一种信仰，很难想象这个世界没有奥林匹克运动。确实，奥运赛事也给了我们不少辉煌的时刻。人们很容做出这样的结论：奥林匹克“运动”已经背离了顾拜旦崇高的初衷，但是，正如戈德布拉特指出的，那将意味着改写历史，因为借助体育轻而易举地实现和平，这从一开始就是一个善意的神话。