Politics and the Games

The impact of international politics on the Olympic Games: a historical look through Monitor Page One stories.

 

World Sports Are Declared Cure For War 1925. The Monitor interviewed Capt. Percy Redfern Creed, a British sportswriter who helped found a "Sportsmanship Brotherhood" in Boston to pursue world peace by promoting sportsmanship principles. Suspension of the 1916 Olympic Games because of World War I must have weighed heavily on his mind. "If German children had been taught sportsmanship instead of the goose step, perhaps we should have had no war," Capt. Creed told the Monitor.PDF. 141K


 

Olympics Open With Pageantry Of World Youth 1936. Monitor correspondent R. Maillerd Stead wrote from the opening of the 1936 Berlin Games, "The Olympic Games call into being a veritable League of Nations, operated not by diplomats, but by young people." Chancellor Adolph Hitler opened the ceremonies. Stead looks back on the years since WWI, noting Germany's exclusion from the 1920 and 1924 Games and its successful reentry into international competition. PDF. 239K


 

War Stringency Forces Japan To Suspend Olympics 1940-1944. The 1940 Winter Games, scheduled to take place in Sapporo, Japan, were suspended in July of 1938. Japan was already a year into war with China and foresaw a long struggle. The 1940 Summer Games were scheduled to be held in Tokyo, then were moved to Helsinki, Finland before being canceled altogether with the start of World War II. The 1944 Games were canceled, too. PDF. 92K


 

Olympic Decision Nicks Bonn 1965. East Germany scored a political coup in 1965 when the International Olympic Committee ruled that it had the right to field its own team, separate from West Germany, for the 1968 Olympics. Though both teams appeared under the same flag, the ruling was a small step toward greater international recognition for the German Democratic Republic (DDR). The 1956, 1960, and 1964 Olympics had seen the two Germanys share a team. PDF. 86K


 

Olympic Medal For Mexicans? 1968. At the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, black American athletes used their position on the victory stand to display solidarity with the civil-rights movement, making "black-power" hand gestures wearing black gloves. PDF. 137K


 

Germany's Olympic Leap 1972. A glowing piece by David Winder in the Monitor of May 12, 1972, described the upcoming Summer Games in Munich as "a celebration to show Germany has fully emerged from the shadows of the last war into the clear light of international acceptance." The last Olympics held in Germany, just three years before the outbreak of World War II, were remembered largely for the thorn American athlete Jesse Owens (who was black) put in Hitler's side by winning three gold medals, thus giving lie to the myth of Aryan athletic superiority. "But all that is past," Winder writes, "Now Germany is hosting Games that will be worthy of this modern, thriving democracy." PDF. 69K


 

Olympic dilemma 1972. Unfortunately the '72 Olympics were not to be so rosy. Several African nations, as well as individual athletes from the American team, threatened to boycott if the invitation to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was not withdrawn. Rhodesia, a former British colony, declared independence from Britain in 1965, and in 1972 was ruled by a white minority in a system of apartheid. Apartheid policies in South Africa had already led to that country's invitation to the Olympics being withdrawn. PDF. 213K


 

Olympic security dilemma vexes Germans 1972.A greater tragedy struck the Games just weeks later. A team of eight Arab terrorists broke into the Olympic Village and killed two members of the Israeli team, taking nine others as hostages. German organizers, consciously avoiding a repeat of the militarism that marked the 1936 Games, were accused of providing insufficient security. PDF. 302K Later, a rescue attempt resulted in the deaths of all the hostages and all but three of the terrorists. After a day of mourning, the Games went on. However, repercussions of the incident continued to plague the Middle East and Europe.


 

Summer Olympics storm over the winter games 1980. In early February of 1980, the Olympic news at Lake Placid, N.Y. was that US President Jimmy Carter was asking the International Olympic Committee to move the summer games from Moscow. The US was extremely upset about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979, and threatened to boycott the Moscow Olympics if the USSR did not withdraw. PDF. 328 K They did not withdraw, and the US did not attend the 1980 Summer Games. PDF. 220K


 

The Golden Boys and the come-from-behind Olympics 1980. However, before that February was out, the US did manage to assert its dominance in one traditional stronghold of Soviet power - the hockey rink. In what Monitor writer Ross Atkin referred to as "alchemy on ice," the US team beat the USSR in a 4-3, come-from-behind victory that remains one of the greatest moments in American sports. The US went on to win the gold by defeating Finland. PDF. 555K


 

Soviets blow a cold wind on the flame at Summer Olympics 1984. The saga of cold-war politics and the Olympics didn't end there. The USSR refused to attend the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The official reason was "alleged violations of the Olympic Charter by US authorities," but Monitor correspondent Gary Thatcher paints a picture of plain-old politics: "Although the Soviet authorities will never officially admit it, they are exacting belated retribution for the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics of 1980." PDF. 231K

Sources: The Christian Science Monitor; about.com; TheFreeDictionary.com

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Aug. 26, 2004