Tokyo 2020: Olympics needs to stand up for athletes to take a knee

Just five months ago, when Tokyo was still hoping that their Olympics were going to take place in 2020 and not 2021, the IOC doubled down on its commitment to eradicating politics from sport.

Cynics might suggest it actually reaffirmed its stance on keeping politics away from its commercial partners.

Things change. As we have seen in the past two or so weeks, where even Olympic partners like Adidas have got involved in the Black Lives Matter protests that have spread across first the US and then the world, including host city Tokyo.

Perhaps this change in temperature has led the IOC to offer what appears to be the first glimpse of compromise when it comes to athlete activism and its Rule 50.

The rule is in place to ensure neutrality, it says, but does allow for athletes to express their opinions in post-Games interviews and on social media.

It also prevents raising fists, taking a knee and political messages in both competition and on the podium.

Still, IOC chair Thomas Bach has suggested that change to this could be afoot – as long as it takes place in a “dignified” way.

The question is how will the IOC wake up to being woke?

Will it have a preapproved list of causes that are OK, the ones that “represent the Olympic spirit”? Is Bach suggesting a compromise?

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Compromise saw the introduction of designated protest zones for the 2000 Games in Sydney. Beijing in 2008 took it to its Kafkaesque conclusion.

That Games saw protest zones placed some 12 kilometres from the Olympic Park behind a litany of rules and bureaucracy.

This needed preapproval from Beijing’s Public Security Bureau, which demanded protesters submitted slogans, purpose of the protest, what would be shouted and what any banners would say, estimates for the number of protesters and the length of any protest. Foreigners needed to do all this in Mandarin.

Needless to say they went largely unused.

The irony is that the Olympics has a history of protest and the most iconic images of the Games are often ones of political protest.

History has been kinder than the media and public opinion were to Tommie Smith and John Carlos for their “Black Power” salutes at Mexico ’68.

Athlete protest ban at odds with Olympic history

The image of Jesse Owens atop the podium at the 1936 Games has been politicised after the fact. While Owens did not protest per se, his very presence is the protest at a Games in Nazi Germany.

Then there is Muhammad Ali.

The boxer won Olympic gold as light heavyweight in 1960 under the name Cassius Clay but famously said he threw his medal into the Ohio River over racial segregation in the US.

Vilified at the time, Ali became a global icon, lionised for his protests against the Vietnam war. The Olympics know this – that is why Ali lit the torch at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.

It is also why the Olympics themselves do not shy away from using the photo of the Mexico 200m podium, where the raised fists of Smith and Carlos stand proud, and still resonate.

That is why it was so rich when the IOC, ahead of the Tokyo Games, put its foot down to stamp out political protests and why this new line towards protest appears to be little more than lip service.

That was the criticism of the NFL last week. Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league should have listened to its players but at no point did it deal with its treatment of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

He, along with Eric Reid, led protests against police brutality by kneeling during the US national anthem in 2016. Kaepernick has not played in the NFL since; Reid has, but both agreed a financial settlement with the NFL last year.

This was a chance for the NFL to own what it did wrong. Instead, it is a halfway house, ready to slip back into its bad habits.

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Many NBA players supported Kaepernick since the QB first took a knee before the game and more NBA athletes than the record 46 in Rio four years ago were expected in Tokyo this summer, depending on who qualified.

Whoever goes they are likely to be outspoken, as they should be.

Sport is arguably the most egalitarian element of society. All are equal under the rules, the finish line or the score determining the winner.

Why not let the victorious athletes champion their causes?

It is what young people want, after all. We have seen that by the number taking to the streets of the world to demand change from their leaders.

Young people are what the IOC wants, too, as we have seen with the new sports added to the Games.

More than skateboarding, surfing and rock climbing, let the world watch its greatest athletes compete for the podium and then use it as a platform for change.