Olympic Tribulations

Like ordinary mortals, the world Games too has its share of tribulations.  There’s doping; that is, athletes ingesting performance enhancing drugs to make them faster, higher, and stronger.  Olympic legend even covers tales of trainers who knowingly administered enhancement drugs to unknowing athletes.

Olympic doping has its own world records.  The only Olympic death caused by doping was in 1960 in Rome.  A Danish cyclist fell from his bicycle and died, reportedly because of amphetamines in his system.

The first athlete to test positive for doping was a Swede who lost his bronze medal in 1968 because of… alcohol.  Years later, among the disqualified athletes who tested positive for doping, the most famous was Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson who led the 100m at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

The Olympic battle against doping created in 1999 the World-Anti Doping Agency (WADA).  By the Winter Olympics of 2006, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) introduced blood testing for the first time.

But the Olympics has problems bigger than erratic athletes. The IOC can disqualify athletes, but what to do with violence and countries who opt out for political reasons?  Nothing, really.  Like any show, the Games has to go on, never mind that nations infuse geopolitics into what otherwise are simply athletic competitions.

The most infamous violence was the Munich Massacre of the 1972 Olympics when eleven members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by the Black September group.  Nine hostages, one policeman, and five of the abductors were killed.  (The aftermath of the massacre was the subject of the movie Munich.)  The bomb during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics killed two and injured 111 persons.

Then there are boycotts.  Spain, Switzerland, and The Netherlands boycotted the 1956 Melbourne Olympics because the Soviet Union repressed the Hungarian Uprising while Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon boycotted because of the Suez Crisis.

The 1972 Munich and 1976 Montreal Olympics were threatened with a boycott by many African countries that wanted South Africa, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and New Zealand out of the Olympics.  The IOC gave in to the demands except that against New Zealand.  So 22 countries withdrew their teams even after the games have started and their athletes have already competed.  There was world sympathy for the athletes, none for their countries.

Canada in the 1976 Games was pressured by the People’s Republic of China (the host now) to advise the Republic of China (Taiwan) that it could no longer compete under that name.  So Taiwan boycotted and didn’t join again until 1984, as Chinese Taipei with a special flag.

Sixty-five nations (including the Philippines) boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.  Only 81 countries participated, the lowest since 1956.  Then the USSR and its Eastern bloc partners, except Romania, did their turn at boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Other forms of politics show up at the Games.  There was the storied 1968 Mexico Olympics ‘Black Power Salute’ and the order of Iran’s government for their athletes never to compete in any Olympic level of games that has an Israeli athlete.

And there were those calls for a boycott against this year’s Beijing Olympics because of China’s poor human rights record and the issue on Tibet.

The Olympics must matter greatly; it brings out the best and worst of geopolitics, which the hapless IOC has no power to dictate.  Sometimes, countries can behave like bratty human beings.  But who says that politics and games don’t mix?

(10 Aug 2008)