A Political History Of The Olympic Games

David B Kanin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429724312
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The turmoil surrounding the 1980 Olympic Games, says the author, was nothing new--it was merely the most recent, and most complex, manifestation of the political content of modern sport. Despite the mythology perpetrated by Olympic publicists, the modern Olympic Games were founded with expressly political goals in mind and continue to thrive on tie

1
Introduction

Every four years complaints are heard about the intrusion of politics in the Olympic Games. It seems that, if only the latter could be freed from the former, the beauty of sport and the experience of international contact could contribute to building mutual respect and human understanding. We are told that the international Olympic system idealizes fair play and sportsmanship, and ameliorates struggle, hatred, and petty jealousy through structured competition and institutional goodwill.

In fact, however, international sport thrives on the very politics Olympic publicists decry. Sport organs are structured to maximize political rivalry over the Games or other major sporting events; they are neither more or less "political" than anything else. An analysis of the politics of sport, on the other hand, reveals a specific place for sport in the international system.

Sport and Politics

International sport is a form of cross-cultural activity which attracts the interest of, and is understood by, a mass public. Most of those involved in sport transactions are indirect participants who have their contact with athletes and fans from other states second hand, via the mass media. Modern communications technology makes màtches of national interest immediately available to anyone who wants to watch or listen. It enables this mass public, which tends to identify with the athletes, to take notice of contests against teams or individuals from friendly or hostile states. Governments can use this identification when sporting events are staged to demonstrate the temper of relations between the states represented by the athletes.

The cancellation of such an activity can also be a risk-free method of expressing displeasure with another country and its policies. The Soviet Union and United States, for example, cancelled several events during the 1960s, when both countries wished to express their mutual dislike without losing control over their confrontation.

Sport is safe in this way because it is peripheral to the international system. Sporting activities are simply not as vital as are economic, legal, or diplomatic relations. A defeat in a match will not normally be avenged by the use of force by the state whose athletic representatives have lost. Although sport is an activity organized largely into units corresponding in name and jurisdiction to the state, governments have little control over the rules, equipment, standard, and outcome of play. Yet, even without the direct involvement of state power, the public can be made aware of moods and policies toward other countries.

Unlike many forms of inter-cultural relations, sport is competitive in nature. Art works can be exchanged without necessarily leading to a zero-sum comparision of national heritages. Comparisons between cultures are common, of course, but they are not required by the mechanism of cultural activity itself.

Such comparisions are intrinsic to the nature of international sport. If the staging of a sporting event can be a sign of cooperation, the activity itself is a direct comparison of the physical and mental abilities of the societies' human resources. States may try to use sport to represent international goodwill, but the mechanism of sport makes it a potential forum for interstate confrontation as well.

Paradoxically, sport is also important in international relations because, as an activity, it has no intrinsic political value. It can be used by any state to demonstrate the physical prowess of the human resources of any ideology or value system. Sport activity has no political content in itself, therefore the sporting process can be given any political interpretation imaginable. The Gentlemen Sportsman, All-American Boy, and New Soviet Man can all play the same sport controlled by the same federation. Sport provides an arena for the direct comparison of athletes representing different societies by spectators who understand rules which are common to most of the world.

The use of sport to convey a diplomatic message or to promote the identification of the citizen with the state and its policies is now a regularized and systematic phenomenon. It is so because the political and technological revolutions of the last two centuries have called for active participation of political "spectators" in most political systems.

Participation

The international sport system is divided on the question of credentials for participation. Athletes are loosely defined as "amateur" or "professional" depending on whether or not they take money directly for their participation in sport. There is no single institution which controls all of the world's professional athletes. On the other hand, amateur sport is largely controlled through the Olympic Movement.

The amateur-professional distinction has always been difficult to define, and the growing interest of states and corporations in sport has made it even more so. Some states now subsidize their best athletes, and many companies pay competitors to advertise their products. There are federations, such as the Inter-national Association Football Federation (FIFA), that accept professionals in their activities. Only "amateurs" may compete in Olympic soccer competition, but professionals are welcomed by FIFA in the World Cup championships, easily the most popular single international event.

Despite the World Cup, and the relatively recent explosion of professional athletics, the amateur-based Olympic system remains the chief source of political sport transactions. Its organization, ideology, and historical development have provided the main focus for the growth of sport as an important activity in the international system. States permit Olympic institutions to retain control over sport, and tend to base domestic sport programs on some version of the Olympic ideal amended to correspond to stated national goals.

Interstate sport does not always depend on units of the Olympic system for promotion and execution. Bilateral sport exchanges are often arranged through the same diplomatic channels as other forms of cultural and political interactions. But even such events as "Ping Pong Diplomacy" take advantage of the fact that the Olympic system (which includes federations in control of sports not in the Olympic Games) provides states with a representative, yet peripheral forum in which to arrange activities influencing popular perceptions of political moods. The visit of an American table tennis team to China did more to alter public perceptions of US-China relations than any of the other signs leading to President Nixon's trip to Beijing.

The Olympic System

The International Olympic System consists of four parts:

1. The International Olympic Committee
2. National Olympic Committees
3. International Sport Federations
4. Regional Games Federations

These organs control the following events:

1. The Olympic Games have been held every four years (except during the two World Wars) since 1896. Each four year cycle is called an "Olympiad," with the Games celebated at the end. The Moscow Olympics were the Games of the XXII Olympiad. If they had not been held the Olympic cycle would still count them as having taken place; in any case the 1984 Olympics will be those of the XXIII Olympiad. Olympic Winter-Games, held in the same year, do not hold the same designation, since the ancient Greeks had no such skiing and skating festivals. Since World War II the winter Olympics have been awarded separately from the summer (before this the summer host had the right of first refusal concerning the winter Olympics.)
2. Regional Games are celebrated at four-year cycles as well. Each region has its Games in a non-Olympic year, following the tradition of other ancient Games.
3. World, Regional, and National Championships in each sport are held at varying intervals under the control of sport federations or of their sanctioned national units.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), founded in 1894, is still the centerpiece of the Olympic movement. Its founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, perceived the need for a unifying ideology for all sportsmen (female competition came much later) to preserve the ideals of sportsmanship and goodwill. He turned to ancient Olympic tradition and adapted it to postulate the philosophical unity of mind and body as the model for future social man. To popularize his ideas he had to construct an organization which could satisfy the desires for prestige held by the states and governments to which he preached.

As the system of sport federations grew, the functions of the IOC were increasingly limited to the selection and supervision of Olympic sites and the perpetuation of its own membership. As the federations have taken control of the actual mechanism of sport, the IOC has evolved into a body largely concerned with its ideology and privileges.

Lausanne was chosen as the site for IOC headquarters in 1913. The IOC President, who is expected to be the leading spokesman for the Olympic movement, chairs a nine-member Executive Board with the assistance of three vice-presidents. The president is elected initially for an eight-year term and can be reelected at subsequent four-year intervals. Executive Board members sit for four year terms.

IOC members- are not official representatives of their states, but rather ambassadors of the Olympic ideal in their homelands. Yet, from the beginning, the IOC has reflected the political situation around it. The IOC was born in the era of the "Great Powers" and so these were overrepresented in its membership. Neither the subsequent League or United Nations Assembly models led to any change in that system; Olympic demography continues to reflect, more or less, the prevailing power balance. The superpowers, former Olympic hosts (overwhelmingly white and European), and several other states have more than one member on the IOC. Other countries acquire representation as they gain political independence. The IOC thus has a sort of weighted voting system, similar to that suggested for the UN General Assembly.

The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) are composed of local Olympic officials, representatives of various national sporting bodies (state organs or the local units of sport federations), and persons from other interested government and business agencies. The NOCs are the national representatives of the International Olympic Committee and act for it on all domestic matters. As long as they recognize the supremacy of the IOC and Olympic ideology the NOCs are granted considerable autonomy over local affairs. In order for a national Olympic committee to be recognized by the IOC it must represent a viable political unit with a stable government. The NOC must have international Olympic sanction before its athletes may compete in the Olympic Games. Sport federations have the same power over their own national units.

Although IOC spokesmen bemoan the mixing of sports and politics, the Olympic system almost exactly duplicates the names and territorial jurisdiction of states. In effect, the recognition of a national Olympic committee is tacit recognition of a government and existing boundaries. Those few sub-state units in international sport cling to their separate Olympic status, making use of it in the search for domestic and international legitimacy.

The IOC insists that NOCs be structurally separate from their governments, but makes no complaint if they are under the de facto control of political authorities. The IOC prefers to bend its own rules rather than risk driving an offending state into forming a rival sport organization, a constant IOC concern.

If a group objects to a certain government a boycott of its athletes provides a means of publicizing opposition in a manner understandable to the largest audience in international politics. Representative assaults on the legitimacy of states, whether through boycott, terror, or propaganda, are possible because the Olympic system is an expression of the political status quo.

No city may submit a bid for the Olympic Games except through its NOC, which also controls national team formation. The IOC allows national Olympic authorities wide lattitude regarding methods of team selection.

When an Olympic member state receives the honor of hosting the Olympic Games, the NOC forms, along with local federation units, government and business agencies, a Games Organizing Committee. The organizing committee is responsible for preparation of the Olympic site. This body also manages the Games themselves, but must conform to federation rules concerning the equipment and conduct of each sport.

The organizing committee must also finance Olympic preparation, and is subject to IOC overview during the long period required to create the Olympic Games. The organizing committee can adjudicate disputes that cannot be settled under specific IOC guidelines and can sometimes add sports to the Olympic program.

The NOCs serve to guard the purely political character of the Olympic movement. Only those wearing state colors may participate in the Olympic Games, and NOCs usually insist that their teams include only citizens of the country in question. The teams, once chosen, march in the opening Olympic ceremony behind the state flag. Olympic victors are usually saluted to the strains of their national anthems.* No individuals may compete in the Olympics outside the prevailing political framework of international sport.

NOCs have gradually increased their say in Olympic politics, but have had to protect themselves from IOC protection of its fading prerogatives. A few NOCs from each continent gather periodically in an umbrella Association of Olympic Committees, but the attempt to unite in a Permanent General Assembly of NOCs foundered after effective IOC exploitation of disputes among NOC officials themselves.

Each sport is under the control of an International Sport Federation. Some of these are older than the IOC itself, but all have grown and prospered through association with the Olympic system. The federations legislate standards for equipment, and athletic programs. In addition, they choose all referees and control participation by defining the word "amateur" as they wish. While all parts of the Olympic system insist that only amateurs may participate in the Olympic Games, this word continues to be as difficult to define as "aggression," and the enormous financial benefits offered to athletes and their federations by governments and corporations make the term increasingly meaningless. Once, in exasperation, IOC President Avery Brundage threatened to throw alpine skiing out of the Olympic system because he alleged that the International Ski Federation was guilty of some special venality in the Karl Schranz case. In fact, the publicity of the incident publicized the general commercial domination of sport, and Brundage's eventual failure to make his word stick reflected the continuing decline of IOC authority.

The federations are represented on IOC special commissions dealing with contemporary Olympic problems such as drugs, the Olympic Academy (at which the word "politics" is excised from the curriculum), and ideology. Federations have the same jurisdictional tug-of-war with the IOC as national Olympic committees, so they meet together in a General Assembly of International Federations, an increasingly influential body in international sport.

The international sport federations are also influential in Regional Games Federations. The regional games can be as politically important as the Olympics, since regional powers can display their sporting talent without competition from the rest of the world.

The events controlled by federations have as much political content as the Olympic Games. World, Regional, and National championships exist in the same system and are subject to the same considerations of legitimacy, propaganda, and prestige. The following pages use the Olympics to represent the sport system as a whole, and Olympic politics should not be seen as the sum of politics in sport.

In dealing with competition and politics in sport, the body of this book leaves out most of those events that go beyond Olympic and legal rules into the realm of conflict. Violence and sport have a special relationship, one which approaches the issue of sport and human maturation from a different perspective than ordinary political sport, even though all political sport exists in the same organizational framework.

*Refusal to do this by West European teams was a serious blow to Moscow's Olympic policy, which was based on attracting representative political displays.

2
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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Glossary
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 THE OLYMPIC REVIVAL
• 3 THE EARLY OLYMPIADS
• 4 THE RISE AND FALL OF INTERNATIONALISM
• 5 THE COLD WAR
• 6 THE EMERGING FORCES
• 7 THE MOSCOW OLYMPICS
• 8 LOS ANGELES AND BEYOND
• INDEX