How politics has affected the Olympics
By Jason Coulombe
About: This is an adaptation of a speech from my introduction to speech course at EIU. This is by no means a full deep dive into every games just what I wanted to highlight in my speech which was about 7 and a half minutes. Enjoy!
According to an Article by Liam Reilly, a writer for CNN, “The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris drew a combined average of 30.6 million viewers across NBCU’s constellation of platforms (The broadcaster of the Olympics in the US) marking an 82% jump in viewership compared to the Tokyo Games and making the Games the most-streamed Olympics of all time. The media giant on Monday shared that its coverage saw a whopping 23.5 billion minutes of stream time,” (Reilly) The Olympics are the largest international event in the world. Given that the nations of the world are competing against each other at the highest stakes, political tensions have shown themselves at every games. I will inform you on how global politics has affected the Olympic games.
To give a better understanding I will go chronological and base it on three distinct eras, from the start of the modern Olympics in 1896 till the last games before World War two in 1936, the Cold War era Olympics from 1948 to 1990, and from the 1992 games till the most recent games this year.
Alfred Senn was a professor of History at the University of Wisconsin Madison; He wrote Power Politics and the Olympic Games in 1999, which discusses how world politics affected the Olympics from its founding till its publication date. From the start of the Olympic games the co-creator Frenchman Barron Pierre de Coubert was given a “Baptism of Fire in the delicate nuances of sport’s actual and potential in international relations” (Senn, 22) in dealing with the organizing of the first Olympics games, From the very start of the Olympics, world politicians were seeing the games as an opportunity for showcasing their countries.
No better example comes to mind than the 1936 Olympic Games. The 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin during the height of the Nazis’ power in Germany, they planned for the games to be a show of the strength of Germany after their rebuilding from the First World War. Oliver Hilmes is a German biographer who wrote Berlin 1936 in 2018 which is a day-to-day retelling of the Berlin games. In which he writes on the opening ceremony,
“At precisely 1 p.m. the gates of the Olympic stadium open. The roughly 100,000 spectators from all over the world have been instructed to get to their seats by 3:30. An 804-foot-long Zepplin the Hindenburg one of the biggest airships ever built is circling over the stadium” (Hilmes, 13). the size of the stadium and the airship were just some of how the Germans attempted to show their power beyond just athletics.
The United States also saw the Olympic games’ power as written in the US Olympic committees report of the 1936 Olympics “Young people imbued with the democratic spirit of competitive sports are not swayed by radical propaganda. For these and many other reasons the Olympic to grow in strength and power” (Rubien, 31). This can be seen in Jessie Owens.
Jesse Owens is considered the star of the 1936 games winning 4 gold medals for this reason he is considered a folk hero for beating Hitler Journalist Larry Schwartz wrote for ESPN, “Owens' story is one of a high-profile sports star making a statement that transcended athletics, spilling over into the world of global politics.” (Schwartz)
The 1936 games were the last for 12 years as the world was plunged into war.
This Section will go over major events of the Olympics that occurred between the restarting of the Olympic games after World War Two meaning the 1948 London Games till the end of the Cold War in 1990.
At the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia the recent violence of the failed Hungarian Revolution against the USSR had many Hungarian athletes motivated to win, Erin Elizabeth Redihan wrote on this in the book The Olympics and the cold war 1948-1968, a quote from a Hungary athlete ... “We had a duty to come to Melbourne and tell the world about our wonderful revolution” (Redihan,129).
The 1968 Olympics saw Black United States Athletes taking the games as a political stand on domestic racial issues with some boycotting the games, again from Senn “some black athletes who favored the boycott including spirter Tommie Smith and John Carlos agreed to go to Mexico City with the thought of making a pointed statement there in front of the whole world”(Senn, 136-137). Carlos and Smith would both podium in the 200m and give the Black Power salute which is one of the most famous moments in sports history, met with a mix of reactions as written in an article for Time Magazine by Ben Cosgrove
“When Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood atop the medal podium at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, bowed their heads, and raised black-gloved fists during the playing of the national anthem, millions of their fellow Americans were outraged. But countless millions more around the globe thrilled to the sight of two men standing before the world, unafraid, expressing disillusionment with a nation that so often fell, and still falls, so short of its promise,” (Cosgrove).
The 1980 Olympic Hockey Semifinals between the USA and USSR is one of the most famous hockey games ever the USSR had come into Lake Placid with four straight gold medals the US would shock the world and beat the USSR and go on to win the gold medal. This became another example of the games in the United States as soon as it happened as told by EM Swift in a Sports Illustrated article written the week after
“So move over, Dallas Cowboys. The fresh-faced U.S. hockey team had captured the imagination of a country. This was America's Team. When the score of the U.S.-Soviet game was announced at a high school basketball game in Athens, Ohio, the fans—many of whom had probably never seen a hockey game—stood and roared and produced dozens of miniature American flags. In a Miami hospital, a TV set was rolled into the surgical intensive care unit and doctors and nurses cheered on the U.S. between treating gunshot wounds and reading X-rays. In Atlanta, Leo Mulder, the manager of the Off Peachtree restaurant, concocted a special drink he called the Craig Cocktail, after U.S. Goalie Jim Craig. What's in a Craig Cocktail? "Everything but vodka," Mulder said. Impromptu choruses of the Star-Spangled Banner were heard in restaurants around Lake Placid,” (Swift)
The 1980 Winter Games were the last time a major event played into the theater of global politics, in more recent history politics affected the behind-the-scenes. The Early 1980s saw a wave of Olympic protests amid global tensions While the 1980 Winter Games were held in Lake Placid New York the 1980 Summer Games were held in Moscow Back to Senn where he said, “In protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan many western states including the United States boycotted the Moscow games with some flying the Olympic colors instead of their own” (Senn,173).
This caused the USSR and the Eastern Bloc countries to dominate the games with the USSR East Germany and Bulgaria in the top 3.
The 1984 games were protested by the Eastern Bloc, in response to the American boycott in 1980 once again from Senn “the Soviet Communist Party decided not to send a team to Los Angeles fearing for their safety” (Senn,197).
This section will focus on the Olympics from 1992 till today.
Due to the fall of the USSR, many former Eastern Bloc countries played under the Unified team with Olympic colors in 1992. This team won the most gold medals of any team that year in Barcelona with 112.
The Russian Olympic team was banned from the 2024 games by the Guardian’s Sean Ingle “Russia’s Olympic Committee has been suspended for violating the Olympic charter with “immediate effect and until further notice” after it incorporated sports bodies from four territories annexed from Ukraine.” (Ingle).
Global politics have and will continue to affect the Olympic games as long as they continue to happen. I hope you learned something new about this topic. Thanks for reading
Sources
Book
Senn, A. E. (1999). Power, politics, and the Olympic Games. Human Kinetics.
Senn’s book gives the history of how politics and the power that comes with it have influenced and impacted the Olympic games, from the first games of the Olympics during the cold war up to the publication of 1999. I have chosen to highlight events from the Olympics of the Cold War and the politics that go along with it. This book provides facts about those events.
Reference Resouce
Rubien, F. W. (Ed.). (1937). Report of the American Olympic Committee. Games of the XIth Olympiad, Berlin, Germany, August 1 to 16, 1936. IVth Olympic winter games, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, February 6 to 16, 1936. American Olympic Committee.
The report from the American Olympic Committee on the 1936 Berlin Olympics, contains facts about the events and statistics of the events. I have selected key events from the 1936 Olympics to highlight which I will gain information from this report.
Book
Hilmes, O. (2018). Berlin 1936: sixteen days in August (J. S. Chase, Tran.). Other Press.
Hilmes’ book gives a day-by-day retelling of the events of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games from the organizers to the athletes. I have chosen to highlight certain events from the 1936 Olympic games involving the organizers and their reactions to events of the game, this book will give me the facts about those events.
Book
Hilton, C. (2006). Hitler’s Olympics: the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Sutton.
Hilton’s Book is a Retelling of the events in and around the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. I have chosen to highlight certain events from the 1936 Olympics and will use this book to get facts about them.
Book
Redihan, E. E. (2017). The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968: sport as a battleground in the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.
Redihan’s book goes over how the politics of the Cold War influenced and affected the Olympic games from 1948-1968. I have chosen to highlight certain events from the Cold War and the Olympic games from this period. This book gives the facts that I will use.
News Article
Laker B (2024) What Happens When Politics Takes Center Stage At The Olympics https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2024/09/01/what-happens-when-politics-takes-center-stage-at-the-olympics/ Forbes Date Accessed September 13, 2024
News Article
Reilly, (2024) Paris Olympics ratings soar 82% over Tokyo Games, delivering a big boost to NBC’s Peacock streamer https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/media/paris-olympics-ratings-nbc-peacock-viewership-streaming/index.html#:~:text=The%202024%20Summer%20Olympics%20in%20Paris%20drew%20a,the%20Games%20the%20most-streamed%20Olympics%20of%20all%20time. CNN Business Accessed September 18 2024
News Article
Schwarz (2013) Black Power Salute: Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics https://web.archive.org/web/20131014191417/http://life.time.com/culture/black-power-salute-tommie-smith-and-john-carlos-at-the-1968-olympics/#1 LIFE.com (archive.org) Accessed September 20, 2024
News Article
Swift (1980) The U.S. went bonkers when Mike Eruzione's shot beat - 03.03.80 - SI Vault (archive. ph) https://archive.ph/20140215214309/http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1123214/index.htm#selection-557.0-569.46 Accessed September 20, 2024