Inside OutBeijing Winter Olympics’ legacy may be upholding spirit of participation, not threat of boycotts

Despite Olympic officials’ insistence on sport and politics being kept separate, such events are an inevitable magnet for the global controversies of the day

China is unlikely to win a huge medal haul at these Games and will thus exemplify the Olympic spirit through its athletes taking part

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Medical personnel in protective suits watch as the China Ice Sports College hockey team practices during the Experience Beijing ice hockey domestic test activity, a test event for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, at the National Indoor Stadium in Beijing, on November 10. Photo: AP

Published: 8:30pm, 21 Nov 2021

Back in 1896, as Baron Pierre de Coubertin worked towards launching the “modern” Olympics in Athens, he faced a major headache. Both France and Germany, still at loggerheads over a decade after the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, were adamant they would boycott the Games. Only after protracted cajoling did they reluctantly agree to join.

In short, from the start of modern Olympic history, most Games have been engulfed in controversy and faced boycott threats – from Hitler’s efforts to make the 1936 Olympics all about Aryan racial superiority, to African boycotts of the 1976 Montreal Olympics over apartheid, and the American-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

There have been continuous doping scandals and cost overruns, tragedies like the slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and protests such as the Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico Games.

Despite Olympic officials’ insistence on sport and politics being kept separate, such massive and high-profile events are a magnet for the global controversies of the day.

As Alfred Senn, author of Power, Politics and the Olympic Games, wrote in 2008: “So long as the Olympics continue to be organised around national teams and nation states, political disputes involving those states will be part and parcel of the Games.”

Senn noted that, “Politics, together with demands for action, are a natural part of any endeavour where a great many people care, where there is a great deal of money, and where there are lots of cameras to beam images across the world in an instant.”