A Grand Rambling History of the IOC

Part 1: Foundations 

Every two years, the best athletes in the world descend upon either a sleepy hillside village or a bustling metropolis for a few weeks and leave a mountain of insurmountable debt. This time, the IOC split the difference and went for both—Milan the metropolis, and Cortina the village.

While not quite as lucrative and widely-consumed as the World Cup, the Olympics are still a sporting mega-event of global importance. Here we’re going to explore the history of the Olympic movement from its humble origins as an idealistic international exposition to its emergence as a global financial behemoth. 

Sports are often a mirror for society, and the evolution of the Olympic movement parallels many of the trends around the world since the 19th century. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is framed as an international partnership, yet is hindered by the competitiveness of individual nations. The parallels with the United Nations are quite striking: both organizations idealistically aim to bring people and nations together around common goals, but both have constantly been subverted by nationalistic political considerations. The IOC frames itself as a not-for-profit non-governmental organization, yet depends on public funds to run the Olympic Games.  

The Olympics have been used by various political regimes to boost their international reputation and prove their own country’s superiority. International competitiveness fostered the erosion of amateurism and encouraged the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Globalization and technological innovations (read: television) fundamentally re-oriented the IOC in the 1970s, leading to decades of corruption allegations. Recent literature has also uncovered the true financial cost of hosting the Olympics, specifically the dependence on public funds, which can bankrupt entire countries—here’s looking at you, Greece. Despite this, the Olympics remain incredibly popular. Which begs the question: why would a country want to host the Olympics?

Amidst the 19th-century Romantic neoclassical revivalist movement inspired by the Greek revolution in 1821, a group of European aristocrats had a novel idea—to revive the Olympic Games. Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat, was fascinated by the role of physical education in schooling. He spent his formative years studying sports in English education in the 1880s and concluded that organized sport creates moral and social strength. As a neoclassical revivalist, de Coubertin romanticized the ancient Greek approach to physical education. He believed that athletic competition would promote understanding across cultures, which would limit the dangers of war—he was heavily influenced by the destruction of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.  He also believed that competition itself was more important than winning—a philosophy that would underpin the Olympic Movement. 

After a few years of lobbying the European aristocratic class, de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894. The Committee was created to prepare and organize the first Olympics in Athens in 1896, and to organize every subsequent Olympic Games. The IOC incorporated itself as a non-governmental organization, granting itself tax-exempt status in Switzerland, where it’s headquartered. 

Fourteen nations took part in the inaugural games. Despite objections from many aristocrats in French society, the German delegation was allowed to compete. Most of the nations competing were European, with the United States of America, Chile and Australia carrying the banner for the rest of the world. The committee decided to hold the Olympic Games every four years in a different host city. Cities would bid to host the games, and the committee would decide based on the merits of the bid. 

The Olympic Games have evolved plenty since the 19th century. The original Olympic Games were held over the course of the entire summer season—the 1908 games took six months. The Games were cancelled in 1916 as well as 1940 and 1944 because of the World Wars. The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924, inspired by the Nordic Games. 

Women first competed at the second Olympics in 1900, but only in golf and lawn tennis. Women were allowed to take part in athletics in 1928. The Paralympic Games were first introduced by British War veterans in 1948, and became a fully-fledged Olympic movement of their own right in 1960.

The International Olympic Committee has always made the final decision on competitions allowed in the Games, and will occasionally trial and add new sports. Surfing, baseball and karate joined us at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, 2024 added surfing, break dancing, skateboarding, and sport climbing.

So what exactly is the IOC? The International Olympic Committee describes itself as a not-for-profit independent international organization made up of volunteers. To them, the goal of the Olympic movement is to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind, in a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” This universal humanitarian language is used time and time again to justify their role in international sport governance. 

Critics of the IOC contend that it is actually a profit-maximizing corporate entity that engages in rent-seeking behaviour. They point out the tax-exempt status in Switzerland, the millions of dollars of marketing and television revenue the organization generates with each tournament cycle. The global television rights for the Rio Olympics were estimated at 9.3 billion dollars. The IOC pockets 70% of the television revenue, compared to around 4% before 1980. And of course, they point out the decades of corruption scandals that have dominated the IOC since the 1980s and the election of Juan Antonio Samaranch as president. 

The IOC is governed by an exclusive committee. Membership to the IOC is limited —new members are chosen by existing members. Nations that have hosted the Olympics are permitted two members on the select committee. There are currently 95 active members from 71 countries. Each member has one vote, which they use to elect a new president or choose the location of the next Olympic Games. 

There are 206 National Olympic Committees operating under the IOC charter, which is actually more than the United Nations (oh, hey Palestine). These committees are charged with organizing athletes in their own nations. The IOC purportedly funds each national association. 

Finally, there are the International Sporting Federations, who are charged with organizing the individual sports themselves, from rules to tournaments. There are global sporting bodies for Hockey, Basketball, Biathlon and Gymnastics, to name a few. Both the International Sporting Federations and National Olympic Committees are subsidiaries of the International Olympic Committee.

Canada’s National Olympic Committee was founded in 1904, and is headquartered in Toronto. They are responsible for organizing and coordinating the Canadian Olympic movement, which includes training, funding and putting together teams for the biannual competitions. The Canadian Olympic Committee is vague about its sources of revenue—saying that it’s “independent and predominantly privately funded” on its website. In actuality, the Canadian taxpayer is the single biggest contributor to the Committee. This rhetorical discrepancy and dependence on public funds is a consistent feature of the Olympic movement around the world. 

There has been a lot of criticism of the International Olympic Committee over the years. The biggest issues have been nationalism, corruption, doping and amateurism. 

Part 2: Nationalism 

At the heart of the Olympic movement are a number of idealistic universalist sentiments packaged as a philosophy. To wit: 

The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

The similarities between the Olympic Charter and the United Nations Charter are quite striking. As the Olympic Charter outlines: 

The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

The UN charter aims: 

…to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

As with the United Nations, the Olympic movement idealistically aimed to position itself outside the pernicious grasp of politics, power and profit. Naturally, this idealism has fomented a variety of conflicts over the decades. 

The toughest obstacle to these idealistic goals has been nationalism, which is premised on self-determination and the development of an identity through shared cultural or ethnic characteristics. Nationalism is also concerned with the preservation of culture and political independence, and in more extreme forms can emphasize comparative national superiority. Many political regimes have tried to use the Olympics to boost their international reputation, or to prove the superiority of their country. 

The French attempted to ban the Germans from the first Olympic Games in 1896, because the Germans had beaten them in a war over twenty years earlier. Budapest had been chosen to host the 1920 games, but the French-dominated International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose to move them to Antwerp at the last minute, as the Austro-Hungarian empire was allied with Germany in World War One. Germany was also banned from the 1920 and 1924 games for having the temerity to lose World War One.

By the 1930s, the IOC’s position on Germany had softened and they agreed to allow Berlin to host the Olympics in 1936. This decision was made before Hitler rose to power. Once it was clear Hitler intended to use the Olympics to prove German racial superiority, the IOC kept its head down. The President of the American Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage was especially forgiving to Hitler, even banning Jewish American athletes from competing. Brundage, by all accounts, was a racist. The 1936 Olympics were also the first to be televised, and Hitler was keenly aware of the power of images. The first Olympic Torch relay was held that year—Hitler wanted to flaunt the beauty of the German countryside. 

Given its global reach, the Olympic Games were the perfect stage for marginalized nations to express themselves. After the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the Hungarian and Soviet water polo teams squared off in the pool, in a match dubbed the blood in the water game. The Hungarians won the game, but lost their country. 

In response to South African apartheid in the early 1960s, the rest of the African delegations threatened to boycott the games unless South Africa was banned. They invoked the Olympic Charter. Despite heavy protestations from Avery Brundage, who was now the president of the IOC, the South Africans were banned. 

John Carlos and Tommie Smith famously raised gloved-black fists on the podium at the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968 in solidarity with the African American struggle—and Brundage sent them home and banned them from any future Olympics. Ten days before the games in 1968, the Mexican government sanctioned the massacre of over 300 students who were intending to use the games to protest the military government. Brundage didn’t budge. 

The 1972 games in Munich featured perhaps the most destructive and shocking effect of nationalism at the Olympics. Eight Palestinian terrorists infiltrated the Olympic Village and kidnapped eleven Israeli athletes. They made political demands, which were refused, and the athletes were executed. 

There was another African-led boycott at those same Olympics, this time pushing for the expulsion of Rhodesia. This proved too much for Brundage, and in an incendiary speech in the aftermath of the Munich Massacre equated anti-apartheid activism with terrorism, literally saying: 

The games of the 20th Olympiad have been subject to two savage attacks. We lost the Rhodesian battle to naked political blackmail. We have only the strength of a great ideal. I’m sure the public will agree that we cannot allow a handful of terrorists to destroy this nucleus of international competition and goodwill we have in the Olympic Movement.

The Olympic movement also became intertwined with the new politics of the post-World War Two era, specifically decolonisation and the Cold War. 

In 1962, Indonesia was hosting the Asian Games (a regional subsidiary of the Olympics). Under pressure from the Arab League and China, the Indonesians refused to allow Israel and Taiwan to compete. The IOC promptly suspended Indonesia. The Indonesians responded by establishing the Games of the New Emerging Forces. GANEFO, as it was known, was explicit about the links between politics and sports—while the IOC attempted to maintain its idealistic middle ground. Indonesian president Sukarno responded succinctly: “The IOC was itself political because it did not have the People's Republic of China or North Vietnam as members—the IOC was simply a tool of the imperialists and colonialists.” GANEFO folded in 1967 after the IOC banned any athlete from participating in their events. It is worth noting that there has never been a non-European president of the IOC. Recall that membership to the IOC is determined by existing members, kind of like an exclusive club. Sukarno was on to something. 

The Soviet Union and the United States of America were in the midst of a global ideological struggle—and the Olympics provided the perfect venue to showcase their political superiority. 

The Soviet Union was especially keen to use sport to express its dominance. The Soviet sports committee aimed to “spread sport to every corner of the land, raise the level of skill and, on that basis, help Soviet athletes win world supremacy in major sports.” Or perhaps take the world of a Russian sportswriter commenting before the 1980 Winter Olympics: “Olympic victories were one of the largest-caliber guns of the propaganda arsenal.” In the late 1950s, one journalist noted: “When it comes to shooting at the moon or at a basket, the United States cannot keep up with Russia.” Indeed, from 1956 until 1980, the Soviet Union was utterly dominant at the Olympics, almost consistently topping the medal charts. 

Congress in America finally responded in 1978 with legislation granting more powers and funding to the American Olympic Committee. They couldn’t bear to keep losing this valuable propaganda war. The Americans have topped the medal charts at every single summer Olympics since 1992. Interestingly, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Olympics continued to parallel world events. 

Global geopolitics heavily influenced this sporting rivalry. The 1980 Summer Olympics were held in Moscow. In late 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. In response, the American government issued an ultimatum: leave Afghanistan or NATO will boycott the Olympics. The Soviets refused, and America and her NATO allies pulled out of the games. This was a political decision made by the American government. The American Olympic Committee had no say. Conveniently, the next Summer Olympics were in Los Angeles in 1984. The Soviets led a boycott of those games. This seems a far cry from de Coubertin’s ideals of harmoniousness and peacefulness amongst peoples and nations. 

As we careen through the 21st century, the links between sports, politics and nationalism couldn’t be clearer.

Part 3: Amateurism and Doping 

The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a global ideological struggle for the latter half of the 20th century. The Olympics were the perfect venue for yet another proxy war in this conflict. The tensions between amateurism and professionalism were exposed by the Soviet Regime, and their introduction of state-sponsored performance-enhancing drug programmes further subverted de Coubertin’s ideals. None of these issues have been conclusively resolved either: from the NHL barring their athletes from the 2018 Winter Games to Russia’s comprehensive ban for doping.

Performance Enhancing Drugs, or PEDs, have long been a feature of the Olympics. The winner of the marathon at the Olympics in 1904 used a combination of whiskey and strychnine to improve his performance. His success led people to believe in the power of PEDs, without any ethical concerns. The Nazi regime extensively experimented with Benzedrine on their athletes during the 1936 Olympics. This attitude shifted in the 1960s when a Danish cyclist died two hours after a race at the Rome Olympics with traces of speed in his system. Mandatory drug testing was introduced at the Olympics in 1968. 

The Communist East German state was especially comprehensive in its PED use, with a fully state-funded doping program with thousands of scientists and physicians. One East German reporter compared the preparations for the 1976 Olympics to mission control prepping an astronaut for space. In fact, the East German secret police—the stasi—were charged with ensuring that neither physicians nor athletes resisted using PEDs. East Germany was disproportionately successful at the Olympics in the 1970s, finishing second in the medal charts to the Soviet Union twice. 

Western nations soon joined this drug-fuelled arms race. Famously, Canadian Ben Johnson was caught with PEDs in his system at the 1988 Olympics after winning gold in the 100-meter sprint. Indeed, many medal winners over the last forty years have been retrospectively banned for PED use, from Marion Jones to Justin Gatlin to Lance Armstrong. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been slow to react. They established the World Anti-Doping Agency in 1999, which was meant to monitor the use of drugs in sport. However, drug testing agencies have always been playing catch-up. 

It is clear now that, despite de Coubertin’s idealistic intentions—ones that are still outlined in the Olympic charter—nationalistic competition trumps all other considerations at the Olympics. The Olympic motto is “Faster, higher, stronger”, and PEDs are guaranteed to help achieve that goal. 

Reconciling the tensions between professionalism and amateurism had long been a feature of the Olympic Movement. The Cold War conflict put these tensions in sharp relief. 

Back in the 19th century, de Coubertin and his aristocratic friends were clear about amateurism. In their view, professional athletes were an unsightly rabble. The Olympics were meant to be for gentlemen aristocrats, the type of person who could afford to train for a sport while not worrying about a job. The administrators of the IOC fought long and hard to maintain this ethic. Take dear old Avery Brundage, an independently wealthy man, who used his own largesse to pay for his training back when he was an Olympic athlete in the early 20th century. Brundage banned Jesse Owens for life when it was revealed Owens was given a stipend for a trip abroad. Owens was poor and Black, and wasn’t able to use his athletic talent to improve himself financially. Today, that seems absurd. 

The Soviet State had a novel approach to circumventing the amateur ethic. Athletes would be nominally employed in the military or as food workers, for example. In reality, they were full-time athletes training year-round. American sports fans of a certain generation will recall the Miracle on Ice at the 1980 Winter Olympics. It was called the Cold War on Ice. The American team was composed entirely of amateurs and still beat the Soviets. 

By the 1980s, international television deals had expanded the financial reach of the Olympic Games. It became harder and harder to sell the notion of amateurism to athletes when there were millions of dollars in marketing sloshing around. Plus, global television audiences wanted to see the best athletes in the world. Professional athletes were allowed to compete in 1988. In 1992, the Americans trotted out the Dream Team in basketball, composed entirely of the best players in the world, and won their games by an average of 44 points en route to the gold medal. Michael Jordan and company soon became global icons, paving the way for such marketing luminaries as Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.

The world was changing quickly with the growth of international television and marketing contracts, and the IOC had to adjust to these new realities. 

Part 4: Bribery and Corruption

The official Olympic motto is “faster, higher, stronger.” This certainly characterizes the growth of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from borderline bankruptcy in the 1970s to a multi-million dollar global edifice rivalled in stature only by FIFA (the global organization that governs soccer and organizes the World Cup). The parallel with FIFA is especially instructive, and the links between the two organizations are deep and entrenched. 

FIFA was also in the midst of a budgetary crisis in the 1970s and pivoted towards a model premised on corporate sponsorship and financialization. The President of FIFA who oversaw this transition was Joao Havelange. He was also a member of the International Olympic Committee, serving from 1963-2011, finally stepping down amidst swirling corruption allegations. He was good friends with Juan Antonio Samaranch, the President of the IOC from 1980 to 2002, who was also implicated in a number of corruption scandals. 

Havelange was a pioneer—he had a new vision for international sporting organizations. After the success of the 1970 World Cup—the first broadcast in colour—he realised the potential of television and marketing, and doubled down on these new sources of revenue. He also firmly established a system of patronage that defines both FIFA and the IOC to this day. Havelange used the influx of money, aided by FIFA’s tax-exempt status in Switzerland, to provide disbursement payments to the national associations that make up the FIFA congress. Samaranch soon followed suit. 

This shift in the 1970s is critical to understanding the IOC (and FIFA by extension). The fundamental ethos of the organizations changed. No longer governed by idealistic humanitarian impulses, the lords of international sport doubled down on hyper-capitalization and greed. Havelange, rightly, realised that his position as President was dependent on disbursing enough money to each member of the IOC congress. Much like a dictator would enrich his inner circle, or a mafioso would pay off his underlings, Havelange understood the criticality of paying off the right people. Samaranch, once an official in Franco’s fascist Spain, also understood this and established the system of disbursement at the IOC. Neither the IOC nor FIFA were transparent about the sources of their revenue from the 1970s until the early 2010s. 

The IOC is a purposefully nebulous international organization so there is no global body to regulate them. Unlike multinational corporations, which at least have to adhere to the rules of the WTO and national economic laws, the IOC operates with impunity. They have leveraged their position as the guardians of sport into personal financial gain. The IOC own the Olympics, which gives them power over entire nations. 

Funding the Olympic Games themselves has long been a thorn in the side of the Olympic movement, going all the way back to de Coubertin and his attempts to secure enough private funding for the first-ever Olympic Games in Greece. Hosting the Olympics isn’t cheap. In the modern era, the host city pays for infrastructure upgrades, generally with public funds, while the IOC covers the administrative costs of running the event. These costs are incomparable, especially if the Olympics are held in a city that doesn’t necessarily already have the requisite infrastructure to host hundreds of thousands of guests for three weeks. This was especially apparent with the Rio Olympics and the World Cup in South Africa. In the bidding process, the IOC and the winning National Olympic Committee submit a budget to their local governments for approval. Since the 1960 Games in Rome, every single Olympics has gone over budget. 

This explains why the IOC has recently shifted their policy towards host cities. You’ll notice the last few games have taken place in Tokyo (2020), Beijing (2022), Paris (2024) and Milan-Cortina (2026) with Los Angeles (2028) up next. None of these hosts have needed to build extensive new infrastructure, as the IOC has finally cottoned on to the fact that nobody wants to host the games any more. 

Part 5: Hosting (why?) 

There has been a lot of recent literature on the costs of hosting the Olympic Games. Which begs the question: why would a city (or country) want to host them? For one, the Olympics are one of the biggest sporting events in the world, rivalled only by the World Cup. The 2016 Olympics claimed that 3.7 billion people at one point engaged with the Games. The 2014 World Cup claimed 3.2 billion viewers, with a cool 1 billion watching the final itself. According to the IOC, over 2 billion people tuned in to watch the 2022 Winter Olympics and nearly 5 billion people tuned in to watch the 2024 Olympics in some capacity. Those are numbers any nation’s marketing department would salivate at. Indeed, the Summer Olympics in Barcelona in 1992 were credited with kickstarting a cultural revival in the city, throwing off the shackles of the fascist Franco era. 

The costs of hosting the Olympics depend on the country itself. Developing economies require more infrastructure upgrades. From Greece to Beijing to Rio, the costs of upgrading stadiums, roads, public transit and all the other assorted segments of the economy were far higher than those in London, Vancouver and Sydney. Plus, richer countries have more rigid institutions that counter corruption in the construction industry. This helps explain the shift in hosting priorities.

The Greek case is especially instructive. Hosting the Olympics in 2004 has been consistently cited as one of the root causes of the Greek economic tragedy in the late 2000s. Conservatively, it is estimated that those games cost the Greek government over 7 billion euros, while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made a handsome 985 million euro profit. Greece is still trying to recover, while the IOC is happily planning the next games.

Authoritarian regimes have long used sporting events for propaganda purposes. The Chinese used the Summer Olympics in 2008 to emphasize their position as a new global power, and spent a mind-boggling 44 billion dollars on the games—including an audacious attempt to control the weather by firing chemical bullets into the sky. Not to be outdone, the Russians spent 51 billion dollars on the Sochi Games in 2014.

The Argentine Junta bribed the entire nation of Peru at the 1978 World Cup, as they knew winning the World Cup would pacify their people. In the weeks leading up to that World Cup, dozens of prominent Argentine journalists disappeared. The only press was good press. Hitler used the Olympics in 1936 as a massive propaganda campaign, and within two years of hosting, Germany invaded Poland. In a stark parallel, within months of hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia invaded Crimea. Notably, literally days after the conclusion of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Russia invaded Ukraine. Once the sport was done, the war could begin.

So if you want to host the Olympics, and you’ve got the funds to upgrade your infrastructure, there’s one final obstacle: the actual bidding process. You submit your bid to the IOC and then wait. If you’re honourable. Actually, you’re supposed to bribe enough officials on the IOC to vote for your city. 

This happened time and time again. From Nagano, to Salt Lake City, to Rio, to Tokyo in 2020, Olympic officials were bribed to vote for host cities. Salt Lake City lost the Olympics to Nagano, Japan, in 1998 because it didn’t pay enough bribes. One Japanese consortium promised 20 million dollars to help build a state-of-the-art museum in Switzerland for the IOC. In response, a businessman in Salt Lake City paid 400,000 dollars to fifteen IOC members to guarantee the 2002 Olympic Games. The same thing happens with the World Cup, which has been the subject of heavy scrutiny over the last few years. 

On top of it all, the IOC forces through laws to appease their corporate sponsors. This was especially pernicious before the London Olympic Games, when words like “gold”, “silver” and “Olympics” were banned, unless you were one of the few corporate sponsors. A University in Derby made a sign before the Olympics in London saying “Supporting the London Olympics”—it was taken down because it violated the marketing rules. 

The host city must also sanitize before the world descends, which creates a number of social issues. Homeless people were moved out in their droves before the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010. Forced evictions were a feature of Rio’s preparations for the 2016 Olympics. 

The Olympics are essentially a front for the corporate class to market their products and run away with the money. The host city pays off the IOC, then the marketing and television rights are sold to a few large multinationals. There is no transparency at the IOC—they claim 90% of the money goes to the National Olympic Committees, who supposedly disburse the money to the athletes themselves. Which can’t be true, as Canadian athletes live in poverty and can barely afford to train. All the while, the Canadian Olympic Committee depends on the taxpayer money. Where does the money go?

The IOC themselves couch this all in terms of “for the good of sport”. To quote an IOC official: “The IOC only enters into partnerships with organizations that it believes work in accordance with the values of the Olympic Movement. The IOC notes that both Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are long-standing sponsors and are involved in educational programmes to promote healthy lifestyles.” I’ll pause for laughter. 

So why do we watch the Olympics and the World Cup? Because I believe sports are one of the few global institutions that foster multilateralism and internationalism in a world characterized by nativism and nationalism. Sports and athletics are fairly universal and relatable. Plus, it’s just plain fun to watch skilled athletes perform their craft at the highest level in the spirit of competition and cooperation. It’s too bad the men in charge (yes, it’s almost entirely old—and white—men) are much more interested in lining their own pockets. 

Conclusion 

Sport, is war minus the shooting. And how could it be otherwise? I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

—George Orwell. ‘The Sporting Spirit’. First published: Tribune, GB, London, December 1945.

The Olympics started last week, and I made sure to watch the opening ceremony. It was the usual surreal mix of avant-garde artistic mysticism, flashing lights, extravagant costumes and political intrigue. 

This year's edition added a further wrinkle: since the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Russia and Belarus have been banned from competing at the Olympics (and the World Cup). This ban hasn’t stopped Russian athletes from competing at the Olympics, however. In figure skating alone, 18 Russians are competing at the 2026 Winter Olympics for other nations. Overall, more than 30 Russians are competing in a variety of disciplines at these games. 77 Russians competed under different flags at the 2024 Summer Olympics. 

The IOC is buckling under pressure, however, and there is talk about reinstating Russia ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics. Cynics will note that Israel has been allowed to compete at the Olympics with impunity despite the ongoing genocide in Palestine. 

Let’s remind ourselves of the IOC’s idealistic charter: 

The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

The Olympics are still an event of tremendous global import rivalled only by the World Cup. The Olympics tap into something fundamentally universal: we can all run, jump and swim, regardless of background. If you strip away all the baggage from the last hundred years, the Olympic ideal still holds: building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind, in a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play. 

However, the people in charge of administering the Olympics have displayed little care for these principles. Competing nationalistic interests have eroded the spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play. From Communist-era state-sponsored doping, to the Western financially-fuelled response, fair play has been thrown out the window. 

In many ways, the IOC is a microcosm for the world. It’s an international partnership, yet hindered by nationalism. The parallels with the United Nations are quite striking. Both organizations idealistically aim to bring people and nations together around common goals, but both have been constantly subverted by nationalistic political considerations. The tension between nationalism and internationalism is clear as day, exemplified by the ban on Russian athletes that wasn’t extended to Israeli athletes. But we should also recall Avery Brundage, banning Jewish American athletes from competing at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 at the behest of Hitler. There are no winners in this ethno-nationalist race. 

But here’s the thing: the Olympics are ours. We are the athletes, we are the consumers. I’ll never forget Sidney Crosby's game winner in Vancouver. I’ll never forget my jaw dropping as Usain Bolt pulled away in Beijing. There was something truly magical about Penny Oleksiak’s performance in Rio. I’m still emotional thinking about Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier at this year’s vintage. Many Americans will never forget the Miracle on Ice. The Olympics do bring us together as one for a few weeks out of the year. 

We should continue to support our athletes, but we should also hold our own National Olympic Committees accountable to the original Olympic ideals. We should applaud the IOC for banning Russia from the 2018 Winter Games. They flouted fair play. We should also criticize the IOC for allowing Russia to compete at the 2016 games, despite clear evidence of doping. We should applaud the IOC for immediately banning Russia and Belarus after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. We should criticise them for even thinking of reversing the ban. We should also criticise them for not banning Israel. 

Perhaps its best we recall one of de Coubertin’s points: the competition itself is more important than winning. It's particularly striking to observe the emotions and reactions of athletes who expect to win gold, versus the athletes who are just happy to be competing at the Olympics. The athletes striving for gold rarely display joy, they’re hyper focused and they’ve put themselves under incredible pressure. The best Olympic stories are often about the athletes who are merely there to compete: this year I was struck by Stevenson Savart, who finished a respectable 79th out of 113 in the 10k cross-country ski race. Savart finished his race to a standing ovation from the crowd. Why? He was the first Haitian to compete in Olympic cross-country skiing. That’s what the Olympics are all about. Inspiring, motivating, uplifting. 

The (mostly) men in charge of the IOC have used their positions to enrich themselves. The (mostly) men in charge of national governments have used the Olympics as propaganda tools. But we the people can still seek inspiration from our Olympians. In many ways, they appear to be the best of us. Faster, higher, stronger. The Olympic motto. But it's the human stories behind the athletes that really connect the Olympians to us. The struggle to the podium, the family and community support, overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges, tragedies or trauma. All for a moment, like Stevenson Savart, skiing like no Haitian has skied before. We the people know the simple truth: the journey is more important than the destination.