The un-subtle politics of the Olympics (#18)
Competitive sports have and always will be political.
One of the most interesting parts of the Olympics opening ceremony is always the flag parade, which to me is like a mix between a fashion show and a lesson in international politics. For instance, there’s the awkwardness of commentators having to explain why the Taiwan team isn’t representing Taiwan but “Chinese Taipei,” a compromise by the International Olympics Committee (IOC), the independent body responsible for the Games, over the country’s political struggle with China.
The media has also had to explain why Russia is using the quasi-pseudonym ROC (Russian Olympics Committee) when they are supposed to be serving out a temporary ban due to a past doping scandal; the name was bestowed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport which allowed Russian athletes uncompromised by the scandal to compete in the Games so long as they did it under the neutral Olympics flag and a different team name, though the whole thing feels a bit like Superman putting on glasses to “hide” his identity. I do appreciate the fun hashtag that the team’s supporters have coined as a result: #WeWillROCYou.
I also couldn’t help notice how many of the 206 teams competing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics come from teeny tiny island nations. Did you know that the Cook Islands has a population so small that it’s estimated one in every 1,500 people there is an Olympian? Many of these island nations are former colonies of imperialist countries but some still hold that unfortunate status to this day like Guam, which remains a colony of the U.S. and is competing in Tokyo as an independent country [note: like Puerto Ricans, the people of Guam are U.S. citizens yet their Congressional representative does not get a vote.]
These flashes of geopolitics during the parade — combined with the slightly biased political blurbs provided by the two NBC commentators — are enough of a reminder that nothing is truly neutral, not sports and especially not an ultra-elite global competition like the Olympics. In fact, let’s look at the many ways it is political, beginning from its origins.
The Olympic Games we know today are vastly different than the original competition held by ancient Greeks thousands of years ago. Between 776 BC to at least 393 AD, the Olympics were mainly a religious event for the Greeks, featuring events from running and jumping to boxing and chariot races. That the Olympics were only open to men — any man was allowed to participate no matter their background — and they competed totally naked, undergirds the original purpose of the Games: as the ultimate measure of manhood. Because nothing says “I am Man” like performing tricks butt-naked in front of a giant crowd!
With this in mind, it’s no wonder that misogyny and sexism have remained constant themes throughout the history of the Games. When the Olympics were “revived” in the late 19th Century by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a bored French aristocrat looking for a way to maintain his self-importance as his country began to shed its feudalism, the competition remained off-limits to women. “Impractical, uninteresting, clumsy and, I don’t hesitate to add, inappropriate,” was de Coubertin’s response when asked about allowing women athletes to participate. He also admitted the modern Olympics was meant as a “display of manly virtue.”
The IOC eventually incorporated women athletes, at first only in sports that were considered “feminine” like tennis and swimming. They finally expanded women’s sports further after the Olympics’ popularity was threatened by the burgeoning Women’s World Games, a separate women-only international sporting competition created by Frenchwoman Alice Milliat after her attempts to push women’s participation at the Olympics were denied. Remnants of this sexism are still apparent today through the disturbing way the media covers Olympic women athletes, the outdated use of testosterone levels to qualify women athletes — which disproportionately impacts Black cis women and trans athletes — and the unfair dress codes that persist in some branches of competition.
But the politics around the Olympics also includes a history of racism. This was bluntly demonstrated in the 1904 “tribal games” in St. Louis, which was meant to be the first non-European Olympics and the first Olympics held stateside. Instead, it was a literal circus. The Games were relegated to a side-show attraction as part of the World’s Fair in which Indigenous and other people of color who were displayed in the human zoo (yes, that was a real thing) were coerced into “mimicking” the white collegiate athletes competing in the Games. The kinds of competitions the “savage” non-white performers completed were… special: a tree-climbing contest, fighting demonstrations, and mud throwing was among the “sports” they were put into. The 1904 sham Olympics was, more than anything, meant to support eugenicist ideas of a racial hierarchy, with white people being the supreme race as shown in their fake Olympic victories.
Racism at the Olympics didn’t just disappear thereafter. Today, athletes of Asian descent are frequent targets of racist remarks regarding their physique while Black athletes are constantly subjected to race-based double standards. Aside from the elite competition’s racism and sexism, there are lingering issues of class and corruption. The Olympics has never been “just sports.”
In addition, the Olympics have been turned into a proxy for geopolitical wars in the past. If you’ve heard a lot about the U.S. women’s gymnastics team and their superstar Simone Biles, that’s in part because the popularity of women’s gymnastics can be traced back to the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the post-WWII era, the Olympics became a propaganda tool — particularly for U.S. media — to spin anti-communist narratives about the “sports regimes” of the Eastern Bloc, and the idea that Americans compete in the Olympics on the virtues of integrity and freedom (huh?) unlike the Soviet machinery which they contend produces athletes through a cruel assembly-line system. While there are certainly criticisms to be made about Soviet-era leaders, the idea that western athletics are more ~virtuous~ than anywhere in the world is, of course, nonsensical.
Women’s gymnastics became a major point of coverage after the rise of gymnasts like the Soviet-bred Olga Korbut and Romanian Nadia Comăneci in the 1970s. As elite-gymnast-turned-sports-historian Georgia Cervin, who competed on behalf of New Zealand, revealed in a fascinating interview with Unorthodox Gymnastics:
This idea that it was a trend started in the Eastern Bloc is part of a wider narrative about the ruthlessness and cruelty of communist regimes. That kind of “Red Scare” rhetoric was used in sport to highlight how American athletes won by talent and hard work, and communists won by being part of a large machine—both inhuman and inhumane. That discourse has been used to elevate the USA and its allies as free and meritocratic, its values and achievements better than foreigners’. It has also led to an assumption that abuse was endemic to communist sport when there’s ample historical evidence that was not the case (although it did happen there too).
We’re now seeing that same rhetoric play out in how we talk about abuse in gymnastics. There’s a lot of talk about how it’s only, or mainly, foreigners, or how they introduced these negative methods. It’s not a helpful conversation to be having, casting blame on outsiders or those who were once outsiders. Clearly, a lot of different people are implicated. This is not an East vs. West, Us vs. Them problem. It involves everyone and it has for a long time. We’re not going to begin to address abuse in gymnastics without first acknowledging that.
This also led to the false idea that recruiting and intensely training adolescent athletes came from the Eastern Bloc countries because of their ~ruthless communist ideals~. Cervin argues that the tradition really started with the U.S., as a way to skirt around the financial burdens that exist for adult athletes.
Above: Russian gymnast Angelina Melnikova poses for a victorious selfie with fellow athletes Sunisa Lee (U.S.) and Rebeca Andrade (Brazil) after their medal ceremony. You love to see it!!
Today, this narrative persists, though the target has shifted. Last week, the New York Times published a story focused on China’s rigorous state-sponsored training programs, built to train young athletes to achieve its Olympic ambitions. But the article is full of “Red Scare” language similar to the coverage around Eastern Bloc athletes, like this entire paragraph, which manages to be both self-defeating and self-serving: “Most countries are eager for Olympic glory. The United States and the Soviet Union used the Games as a proxy Cold War battleground. But Beijing’s obsession with gold is tied up in the very founding in 1949 of the People’s Republic of China, which was seen as a revolutionary force that would reverse centuries of decay and defeat by foreign powers.”
There’s no real reason (other than geopolitics) to zero in on China’s “obsession” with winning gold medals as if it is unique — all countries participating in the Olympics want to win as many gold medals as possible, that’s the point. But many struggle to even win one medal because they lack the resources to support their athletes. The China and U.S. teams, meanwhile, are among the biggest delegations at this year’s Olympics with well over 400 athletes (!!!) each. Maybe it’s just by sheer math that both countries are dominating the overall medal board.
Having to deal with heavy personal and physical tolls to compete is also hardly unique to Chinese or Eastern Bloc athletes. It’s no secret that reaching Olympic-status success requires an almost-abusive dedication that takes a heavy toll on not just athletes’ bodies but also their mental health, financial stability, and personal lives. For U.S. athletes, and those in less wealthy countries, there is no direct federal support (a.k.a government funding) for them to access for training, etc, which pushes young athletes to depend on academic and corporate interests for money, and makes the Olympics even more exclusionary to those from less privileged backgrounds.
Sometimes systems that are supposed to support athletes can be complicit in their abuse, too, like the sexual abuse of hundreds of young athletes — many former members of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team — at the hands of disgraced physician Larry Nassar, a crime that was covered up by USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body. Gymnasts and other proponents of the sport have since spoken out against its systemic culture of abuse. As Cervin pointed out in her interview, abuses in competitive sports aren’t unique to just one country or culture, and shouldn’t be treated as such if real reforms are to be achieved.
Despite my ramblings about all the terrible politics related to the Olympics, the competition admittedly has its moments. Warm displays of transnational solidarity and sportsmanship between competing athletes can really tug your heartstrings. And the unimaginable triumphs, particularly for athletes of color who often represent underserved communities (shoutouts to America’s golden girl Sunisa Lee and the 29 incredible athletes who make up the Refugee Olympic Team!), will fill you with pride and hope regardless of your nationality. But I suspect these bright spots have less to do with the flashy competition itself and more with the real people at the heart of the Olympics that give meaning to it all.
SOME FAST FACTS ABOUT THE TOKYO OLYMPICS
Above: Kiribati weightlifter David Katoatau shows some king-level positivity (and freestyle dance moves) after an unsuccessful attempt. He’s a champion in my book.
🏅 Holding the Olympics is incredibly expensive but so is postponing it. The Games’ postponement alone cost Japan a cool $2.8 billion, two-thirds of which was paid with public funding.
🏅 Move a decimal from the number above and you get how much it’s actually cost Japan to host the Olympics: $28 billion.
🏅 As part of Japan’s ambitious pandemic protocols to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 at the Games, the spit from roughly 30,000 people — of which about 11,000 are athletes — at the event is collected and tested every day (gross).
🏅 The Olympics continues to add to its list of sports and this year it’s adding a handful of new fields: 3x3 basketball, karate, climbing, surfing, and skateboarding.
🏅 This year is also the first time openly trans and nonbinary athletes have competed at the Games.
🏅 Based on population size, Nauru, an island nation near Australia, holds the distinction as the smallest nation to compete in the Olympics.
🏅 There are 72 countries that have never won a medal, including Bolivia, sadly making it the only South American country without an Olympic medal :((
🏅 This year’s Olympics and Paralympics mascots, Miraitowa and Someity, were the first mascots to be selected by children through a survey of 16,000 Japanese schools.
Have you been following the Olympic Games at all? Or do you not really care? Either way, I won’t hold it against you but I would like to hear from you! Head to the comments section on the post or reply to this email.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
🔥 Officer Kyle DeFreytag, who responded to the Capitol insurrection on January 6, was found dead from suicide early this morning. His death makes him the fourth police responder to have died by suicide since the Capitol attack. | Yahoo News
🔥 Democrats in Congress are clashing over a bipartisan infrastructure bill in the Senate which critics say is woefully inadequate to address urgent concerns related to climate change. The Congressman behind the House bill isn’t too keen about the bipartisan bill, either. | The New Republic
🔥 New York Attorney General Letitia James finally made the findings of her office’s probe into the sexual harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo public. Hours later, POTUS said Cuomo should resign. | CNBC
🔥 A new global labor force, based everywhere from Kenya to the Philippines, is providing rich data to train self-driving cars — at a low hourly rate. | Rest of World
🔥 How Taiwan is winning the battle against COVID-19 — again. | The Diplomat
🔥 South Korean gold medalist archer An San gained public support following misogynistic attacks over her super short haircut which some men criticized as… “feminist”? Really, a haircut? | France 24
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TTFN,
Natasha