I love an opening ceremony filled with quirky performances and parades of uniquely dressed athletes. What I don’t like is athletes using their mobile phones during the event: taking selfies, holding the phone up for some random filming, or probably livestreaming the whole thing.
Selfie-taking appeared to peak at the opening ceremony of Rio 2016. Credit:AP
At last year’s Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony – remember the games with 2020 signage that took place in 2021? – I estimated that half the athletes were focused on their phones.
Thankfully, the number of athletes with phones at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was much lower.
I reckon the all-time high was at the 2016 Olympics, so maybe the trend is on the way out, but to give it a firm nudge toward athlete-phone-zero I’d like to encourage athletes of the world to leave their phones out of the stadium.
If that feels too hard, how about keeping them firmly in your pocket (kudos to Puerto Rico’s 2021 outfit designers for including a phone-sized pouch).
I’m not anti-phones or the idea of people making their own memories, but there are two reasons athletes should step away from their phones.
Rugby Sevens players from Australia, Fiji and New Zealand take a giant selfie at the Commonwealth Games in England. Credit:Richard Heathcote
Firstly, at these ceremonies, athletes are performers, just like Duran Duran (my childhood music heroes). The performance was being watched by 30,000 people who had paid big money to be in the stadium and organisers estimate that over 1 billion people watched from home. Just like the dancers and singers, athletes are part of the show.
The second reason for athletes keeping their hands off their phone is that any photo or video they take is going to be reasonably bad. Sure, phone camera technology is pretty epic, but a stadium ceremony is hardly an ideal amateur filming environment. It’s nighttime, there are frenzies of light and athletes are on the move most of the time.