The olympics of love and politics

Love and politics have increasingly played a dominant role in the Olympics since its history dating back to Ancient Greece 3,000 years ago. I did a quick research. This bit of history is that the Olympics originated as an arena for competing rivals to showcase their physical power or strength for the love of Zeus. From the year 776 BC, the Greeks held a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states of Ancient Greece at the Panhellenic religious sanctuary called Olympia. The prizes for the victors of the games competing for the love of Zeus were olive leaf wreaths or crowns.

Soon, the coveted booty became money and a bevy of beautiful girls who would lavish the victors with loving caresses, gifts, and power to summon more material rewards. Like the young Carlos Yulo, the Filipino first double Olympic gold medalist and other victors at the 2024 Paris Olympics in France who can’t resist the charm of the City of Love.

Origin

From the start, the competitions or the games that the Greeks played in the arena became a political tool used by city-states to assert dominance over their rival city-states. The Greek politicians would announce political alliances at the games, and in times of war, priests would offer sacrifices to show their love to the gods for victory. These were games held every four years and became known as the Olympiad. Warring rivals exerted efforts to excel and display their physical prowess above one another. Competition and fierce rivalry became more intense as the Olympics persisted for Zeus.

The International Olympic Committee frequently says that the Olympics are not meant to be political. But they are, and they cannot be anything but political. Governments and athletes have frequently used the Olympics as a political tool or leverage to make political statements, for example, through boycotts and protests.

The recent 2024 Summer Olympics,  officially known as the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, held in Paris, France, from July 26 to August 11, are no exemption. Athletes representing 206 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in more than 200 countries participated in the games, which featured 329 events across 32 sports and 48 disciplines. Both bitter geopolitical powers, China and the United States, tied for the most gold medals among NOCs, with 40 each, and like in the issue of the West Philippine Sea, China, and the US fought hard to beat each other like famished warriors out to devour the other on the arena. The IOC repeatedly said the Olympics should never be political.  However, it banned Russia and Belarus, so the Russian athletic delegation which garnered many medals in past Olympics was absent.

Politics and love

There were other precedents. In 1906, an Irish track-and-field athlete who won gold medals protested when identified as a representative of Great Britain in the Athens Olympics. He climbed up the Olympic flagpole with an Irish flag to assert his right. There were other similar political protests: the US athlete Victor saluted his flag, while the rival from Nazi Germany did his snappy Nazi salute; in the Berlin Winter and Summer Olympics, the US threatened to boycott the games. After World War II, the IOC awarded the holding of the Olympics to Japan, which backed out after facing international scorn for invading Manchuria in northeastern China in 1931 and pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933. By 1937, Japanese lawmakers postponed the games when they entered into war with China, and the United Kingdom considered a boycott.

At the height of the Cold War,  the Soviet Union competed in the Olympics at Helsinki, Finland, where media portrayed it as a competition between free and communist countries. The Soviet Union won 71 medals, the second-highest medal count of the games after the United States. The first boycott of the Olympics occurred in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics when China boycotted because the IOC decided to include Taiwan. Then, the case of the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland supported Hungary following the Soviet invasion. Tensions between Hungary and the Soviet Union came to a head during the games when a brawl erupted between their water polo teams. Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon also boycotted to protest the invasion of Egypt by France, Israel, and the UK over Cairo’s nationalization of the Suez Canal.

At the Tokyo Olympics, where Japan spent a vast $4B to rebuild its image after WW II, the IOC did not invite South Africa for its anti-apartheid pronouncements and banned it for the next two decades. Again, in a display of racial discrimination, the IOC kicked out two Black US athletes who won gold and bronze medals for raising their hands in the Black Power salute. The US campaigned to boycott the 1980 Olympics against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan; in retaliation, the Soviet Union led the boycott of the 1984 California Olympics. The IOC selected South Korea as the Olympic host, and North Korea suggested co-host, but the IOC rejected the idea. Then, NK refused to participate, and Cuba and Nicaragua boycotted to show solidarity. The Cold War Olympics mentality continues to this day. The modern rivalry took over the Ancient Greece Olympics. However, in 2018, North and South Korean athletes marched together during the opening ceremony at Pyeongchang. Love was in the air!

Again, in 2022, the US declared a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing due to China’s alleged human rights abuses. For a rare moment, the IOC opposed the boycott and reaffirmed its neutral position. This year, the boycott call did not prosper. And the games began!