Olympic politics again
Talk of boycott around Sochi is a dangerous game to play
The Olympic movement is a big, convenient target for those with socio-political agendas, so it comes as no surprise there have been two rationales advanced to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia next February.
The first one — boycotting the Games because Russia is harbouring former NSA technical contractor Edward Snowden, a leaker of classified information — was advanced by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. This faint echo of the 1960s Cold War is not worthy of further discussion.
A second suggestion to boycott the Games has been gaining some traction in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community, and does merit some dialogue, given the profoundly serious nature of the issues involved.
It is against Russian laws to be openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer in Russia. It’s also illegal to be an open supporter of the LGBTQ community.
Obviously, the ideals of the Olympic movement are at serious cross purposes with that sort of state-sanctioned repression.
At many levels, including government-to-government communication, the runup to the Winter Games becomes an occasion to voice disapproval, to lobby quietly, or not so quietly for change, for LGBTQ people around the world to protest an indefensible state policy, and much else.
But boycott the Games? Add Sochi to the lengthy list of cities subjected to that extreme and largely ineffective method of trying to affect social change?
It’s mighty hard to see that, although some can claim, not without justification, that for the LGBTQ community to have gathered worldwide momentum to even consider such action is a sort of progress.
There have long been serious reasons to at least consider Olympic boycotts, the notional refusal to run, jump and throw in Hitler’s Germany in 1936 at the top of the list.
A handful of Arab countries boycotted the 1956 Summer Games in Melbourne, Australia over the Suez Crisis; more than 20 Black African nations boycotted the 1976 Games in Montreal over what it considered the IOC’s hypocrisy regarding apartheid in South Africa; the Americans and Russians played tit-for-boycott-tat, first in 1980 in Moscow, then in 1984 in Los Angeles.
Humankind manages to provide plenty of fodder to seemingly justify an Olympic boycott every Olympiad, when it comes to that.
In 1980, Red Smith, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning sports columnist surprised many when he advocated a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow over the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
“It is unthinkable that in existing circumstances we could go play games with Ivan in Ivan’s yard and participate in a great lawn party showing off Russian splendours to the world,” Smith wrote in a January 1980 column.
But boycott the Games? Add Sochi to the lengthy list of cities subjected to that extreme and largely ineffective method of trying to affect social change?
Unthinkable, indeed. Given all that has unfolded in Afghanistan since then, including Canada’s decade-long Afghan experience, that Moscow boycott seems naive, in the extreme. And certainly utterly ineffective.
All that history under the bridge certainly doesn’t ease the pain and frustration felt by Canadian athletes who had no choice but to abandon the Olympic dream they had pursued for years. Having talked with a number of those athletes, I can assure you, the bitterness over being denied that chance has, if anything, grown over the years.
One key problem with using the Olympic podium as a bully pulpit is that it can be a messy business lecturing another country unless one’s own record on, say, human rights, is above reproach. This gets tricky, and sometimes horribly embarrassing.
One of the major supporters of the 1976 Montreal boycott was the OAS — the Organization of African States — whose head, at the time, was Idi Amin of Uganda, author of one of the most brutal, homicidal and repressive regimes in African history.
The spark for that boycott was a competitive tour of South Africa by the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team, despite the fact that the United Nations had called for a sporting embargo on South Africa. The African countries demanded that the IOC ban New Zealand from the Games. When the IOC refused, the African countries walked.
While a series of economic sanctions against South Africa over a period of decades may have played a part in the dismantling of apartheid, it’s hard to believe that 1976 Olympic boycott played even a tiny role in that effort.
It did deny Tanzania’s 1,500-metre runner Filbert Bayi the chance for an Olympic showdown with New Zealand’s John Walker.
In 1968, U.S. sociologist Harry Edwards did his best to organize a boycott by AfricanAmerican athletes of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
That effort failed, which led to the black-gloved salute on the victory podium by sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos after the 200 metres.
The issues of inequality for athletes of colour in the U.S. sports system at that were very harsh and very real. The gesture, which took courage and a social conscience, seems mild in today’s context.
IOC’s overreaction at the time — Smith and Carlos were sent home — seems more a function of its stiffnecked, out-of-touch leadership than anything else.
How might the IOC respond in Sochi, were an athlete to make a similar sort of symbolic gesture to protest Russia’s intolerance of gays and lesbians?
Well, before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, athletes were warned there would be zero tolerance of any sort of protest, silent, symbolic or otherwise, of China’s dreadful human rights history.
The IOC is not friendly to those who would use the Games as a platform for a cause, which is the correct position to take, even if the Olympic movement, over the course of its history, has been rife with all sorts of hypocrisy.
Smith and Carlos paid a terrible price for having the courage of their convictions, both at the 1968 Games and for years afterward in their own country.
Which does not mean an athlete or athletes should not use the occasion to make their own statement. But if they do have the courage to do so, they should also have the wisdom to expect serious repercussions.
In Berlin, Jesse Owens’ strongest rebuke to Adolf Hitler’s Aryan race superiority propaganda was to dominate the track meet, winning four gold medals.
It might be possible for a gay athlete to make a similar statement, except even now in 2013, many choose, for wholly justifiable reasons, not to be openly gay.
It is certainly possible, before and after the Sochi Games, for athletes, coaches and their supporters to engage in dialogue, debate and political action about Russian intolerance.
History has demonstrated that to opt, in Red Smith’s phrase, not to play in “Ivan’s yard,” next winter is an ineffectual way to try to effect social change in Russia, important though that change undoubtedly is.
What a boycott would be is a surefire way to ruin the careers of too many athletes, regardless of sexual orientation.