No Olympic Truce

A week ago, the Paris Olympics opened to subversion and showers. While 850,000 people were affected by the disruption of French trains travelling from north, east, and west into the capita, rain fell on the specular opening ceremonies, polluting the Seine and preventing swimmers from training in the river.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) rejected Palestine’s call for the exclusion of Israel over the Gaza war and brutal West Bank crack down and anti-war, anti-Israel protests erupted in the streets of Paris. Ignoring the ancient practice of an Olympic Truce, Israel has continued its offensives in Gaza and the West Bank, compelling the French police to mount 24-hour protection for Israel’s team. Undaunted, the games have gone on.

Trouble is nothing new. Since the first modern era Games in 1896, the Olympics have survived wars, attacks, political contestation, doping, and covid.

The original Olympic Games, which date to 700 BC, were held every four years in honour of the chief god Zeus at the sanctuary of Olympia in the Peloponnese. Competitors came from Greek city states observing an Olympic truce which enabled athletes and visitors to travel safely to Olympia. The Games continued when Greece fell under Roman rule in the 2nd century BC and ended in 393 AD. The all-male events included foot, horse and chariot races, boxing, discus throwing, and wrestling. Although based on religion, the Games provided ambitious Greek rulers with occasions to cement military and political alliances.

France played a key role in the revival of the games. French historian and teacher Pierre de Coubertin founded the IOC in 1894 with the aim of promoting global understanding through sports. The first Olympiad was held in Athens in 1896 in the world’s largest stadium. There were just 245 competitors, nearly all Greeks, but there were sportsmen from 14 other countries, including the US. More than 100,000 attended the opening.

The second Games took place in Paris in 1900 and attracted 1,000 athletes, including 20 women. The Games merged with the Paris World’s Fair and went on for five months. A distinction was made between amateur and professional competitors.

The venue of the third Olympics was set for Chicago, Illinois, but organisers of a rival exhibition in St. Louis, Missouri, threatened to stage its own sporting events to compete with the Olympics. De Coubertin capitulated to St. Louis. While athletes from a dozen countries attended these Games, the first held outside Europe, only about 79 from outside North American took part due to St. Louis location and tensions arising from the Russo-Japanese war. France did not send a competitor but a French athlete resident in the US took part, claiming to represent France.

The 1908 Games were in London and the 1912 Games in Stockholm, and the 1916 Olympics were in Berlin in the run-up to World War I. The well attended 1920 Games were in war-wounded Antwerp in Belgium and the historic 1924 Games in Paris. They inspired the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire” depicting the gold medal foot races of Britons Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddel. The 1928 Games were held in Amsterdam and the 1932 Games in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, which had risen to power in Germany in 1933, filmed the 1936 Games to promote White racial superiority and antisemitism. Nevertheless, Hitler congratulated US sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens – the Black grandson of a slave – after he won four gold medals, the most of any athlete. Owens later complained that US President Franklin Roosevelt “snubbed” him and “didn’t even send [him] a telegram” of congratulations.

Suspended for 12 years during World II, the Games did not resume until 1948 in London which was struggling to recover from German blitz bombing. Post-war Olympics were skewed by the Cold War and neo-colonialism and subjected to boycotts, banning, bullets and bombs. France, Britain, Greece, Switzerland and Australia have been the only countries to be represented at all the Games since their resumption in 1896.

The 1956 Malborne Games, the first to be staged in southern hemisphere, were boycotted by Egypt, Iraq, Cambodia, and Lebanon after Egypt was invaded by Israel, France, and Britain. The Netherlands, Spain, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland were absent following the Soviet invasion of Hungary and communist China over a dispute over representation of China.

South Africa was banned from 1964 until 1992 because of the apartheid regime. In 1972 Southern Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – was barred from the Munich Games because of racial separation.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict impinged on the 1972 Munich Olympics in West Germany when Fatah’s Black September killed two Israeli athletes and held eight hostage in exchange for 234 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. West German police mounted an operation which killed all the Israelis and five of the eight Palestinians. The survivors were released a month later following the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner flying from Beirut via Damascus and Damascus to Frankfurt.

In 1976, 29 countries, mostly African, boycotted the Montreal Games when the IOC refused to exclude New Zealand after its rugby team toured South Africa, violating UN calls for sports ban due to apartheid.

In 1980, the Moscow Olympics – the first in a communist country – were boycotted by 66 countries led by the US following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Fourteen Soviet bloc states followed up by staying away from the 1984 games in Los Angeles.

A pipe bomb killed two and injured 111 in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics which was criticised for excessive commercialisation.

So far, during this century the Games have not involved major boycotts or attracted serious violence despite West-East tensions, wars in Palestine, Ukraine, conflicts in Africa, uprisings in this region, and a gradual shift to the right in some Western countries.

The 2000, Millennial Games, in Sydney, Australia, were attended by 199 countries, with Afghanistan excluded for the Taliban’s treatment of women. In 2004 the Games returned to Athens while the 2008 Olympics were held in Beijing, with China becoming the second communist country to stage the Games. In 2012, the Games were in London and in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed until 2021 by the covid pandemic.

While the Taliban has been banned from this year’s Olympics over its treatment of women, Afghanistan has been represented by the pre-Taliban Islamic Republic. Armed with their usual double standards, the West has excluded Russia and Belarus over the Ukraine war but not Israel for the far more deadly and devastating Gaza onslaught.

Photo: AP