A facade of harmony cannot hide truth – the Olympic ideal is dead

It is that time when Thomas Bach, the ultimate German bureaucrat and a man with more brass than the Berlin Philharmonic, gives his favourite stump speech. Just as no opening ceremony is complete without a gratuitous reference to his 1976 team gold medal in fencing, the president of the International Olympic Committee adores using the Games to parrot his bromides about peace, love and understanding. During a reception this week at the Elysee Palace, he claimed he had “rarely experienced such an e