UNVEILING the gruesome twosome, who take their name from mythical gods, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, president of the Athens Organising Committee, said: ”The figures represent the Olympic values of fair play, friendship and equality,” a remark that suggests she was cryogenically frozen in 1905 and has only just been brought back to life. Sadly, her fellow citizens were not as impressed. One Greek newspaper likened the duo to the results of a nuclear accident, while the filmmaker Yiannis Smaragdis called them ”a national catastrophe”.
Raised on ideals of truth and beauty, the Greeks are clearly unprepared to deal with some of the uglier aspects of modern culture. They have apparently failed to come to terms with one of the indivisible truths of our age – that the mascots for international sporting events are always crap and often pretentious crap at that.
Since England started the ball rolling with World Cup Willy in 1966, mascots have become an increasingly irritating part of any major competition.
At first they were relatively inoffensive things such as Schuss, a sort of skiing tomato who served as the unofficial emblem of the Grenoble Winter Olympics in 1968, Juanito the urchin in the sombrero from Mexico 1970 and Munich’s Waldi the wallpaper-striped dachshund.
Since then, however, in a quest for originality, designs have become ever more desperate. We have had Naranjito the football-playing orange, Hidy and Howdy the sibling polar bears with the penchant for country-and-western clothing, Pique the football-playing chilli, Hodori and Hosuni the Tigers in the Korean peasant hats, Ciao the football-playing green-red-and-white Lego-man and Magique, ”a combination of cube, sprite and star” that appeared at Albertville in 1992.
And the odder the mascots have become, the more the International Olympic Committee and Fifa have embellished them, adding ever stranger cod-folkloric explanations to justify their selection.
Thus Atlanta was represented by the large, blue figure of Izzy the Whatizit who, we were told, ”lives inside the Olympic flame”, a hazardous place of residence for a creature apparently formed entirely from plastic and polyester. The Kids Advisory Council chose Izzy’s moniker for him, though many feel a simple acronym of that organisation’s name would have been even more appropriate.
In Nagano, meanwhile, we had the ”Snowlets” Sukki, Nokki, Lekki and Tsukki. The Snowlets (”four little owls who love the snow”), the organisers informed us, were chosen because the name summed up the joys of the event. ”Snow” representing the winter games themselves and ”lets” being the invitation for all to participate (as in let’s all throw-up).
Should the Greeks need any further confirmation of what they were letting themselves in for when they signed up for hosting the games, they have only to glance at Korea and Japan where millions of workers are stamping the images of World Cup mascots Ato, Nik and Kaz on everything from T-shirts to chopsticks.
According to Fifa’s marketing arm, ISL, Ato, Nik and Kaz represent ”energy particles in the atmosphere”. Regrettably they are not quite so small.
Speaking of the brightly coloured trio who apparently hail from the Kingdom of Atomzone, a land located in the Earth’s stratosphere, Choi Chang-Shin, secretary general of South Korea’s World Cup organising committee, said: ”They have mysterious powers to fan enthusiasm among the audience at football matches.”
To which the only sane response is: ”Quick, somebody take that cutlery off him.”
All of this would not matter much at all, of course, were it not for the staggering sums of money it costs to develop those things.
Fifa has spent an estimated £400 000 llon Ato, Nik and Kaz and it is unlikely their Greek counterparts have come in much cheaper. To say that this money might have been better spent on providing sports equipment for underprivileged youngsters would no doubt be lldenounced as childish and oversimplistic. Funnily enough, that is exactly what some people think of Phevos and Athena.