The Hijacking of Olympic Dreams

 “Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and strive for his goals”. These words spoken by Aristotle are just as true today as they were in his time. But, yesterday’s goals have evolved into today’s Olympic dreams. And with the struggles of the world as a backdrop, men and women will gather from all over the globe to compete for the title of Olympic Champion. They all share a common dream, one that they have worked an entire life time to reach. They are walking a path that was first taken thousands of years before they were born. And though they may never know that athlete’s name, they embrace his spirit as their own. Many a nation have held these games as symbols of achieving dreams and truly coming together as a world, much as the ancient Greeks had intended it to be. But only since the games of 1896, which are considered the beginning of the modern era of the Olympics, that there have been governments and individuals who use protest by boycott in order to highlight humanitarian needs or political causes. Since that time, several countries have employed this tactic in hopes of bringing about changes. But history has shown that these actions did not bring about the desired results, one can even argue that these boycotts were failures. Instead they resulted in something unintended, the hijacking of Olympic dreams.

The practice of politicizing the Olympic Games is not a new occurrence Governments have been taking advantage of the Olympics for centuries on end. The ancient Greeks though recognized that this would be in complete contradiction to what they intended them to be, which was peaceful competition in honor of the God Zeus. So they issued a decree, and under this decree all wars were suspended, and all armies were banned from entering the city. And as an added bonus, all legal wrangling as well as executions was forbidden during this time. This lasted for hundreds of years until the games stopped. It is when the games were reintroduced in 1896 in Athens, Greece that politics and the Olympics came into its own. It was in 1936, when Adolf Hitler decided to use the games being held in Berlin, Germany as a platform for Aryan supremacy propaganda. The Melbourne, Australia games of 1956 were the first time a country had boycotted some or all of the games. In fact seven countries boycotted over three separate issues that were happening at that time. China boycotted over the recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon boycotted over Israel’s invasion of Egypt. And the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland boycotted over the Soviet Unions invasion of Hungary.  In 1979 The Soviet Union again invaded a sovereign nation this time Afghanistan. The following year the Olympic Games were held in Moscow, Russia and over sixty nations; led by the United States boycotted those games. And in 1984, the Soviet Union along with other Eastern Block countries boycotted the Los Angeles games citing security concerns.
          No one disputes or questions the motives of these countries, what is debated are the effectiveness of these actions. In the situation of the 1936 Olympics, Hitler’s propaganda campaign suffered a major blow by America’s Jesse Owens in Track and Field. Owens’s victory exposed the very real flaw in Hitler’s belief that Aryan Germans were superior in every way possible to the rest of the world. With the Melbourne games the Chinese governments protest was over the recognition of Taiwan as an independent country, but history shows that their actions fell on deaf ears. Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon were protesting the Invasion of Egypt by Israel, which did not remove its troops until it had met all of its military objectives. And looking back in time and seeing that Hungary became a Soviet Block nation anyway is evidence that the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland’s boycott was considered annoying at best by the Soviets. In 1980 President Carter was sure that a show of disapproval from the world would force the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan and it did, nine years later. The Soviets boycott of the Los Angeles games resulted in nothing because it was widely viewed at the time as nothing more than retaliation for the American led boycotts of the Moscow games.

One might look at these results and ask, if they did not achieve their desired result then who was affected. The answer is the Athletes. American swimmer Craig Beardsley grew up in the Garden State of New Jersey and dreamed of being a champion swimmer. He was excited to learn that he was going to do what every athlete in the world wants and that was a chance to compete against the best that the world had to offer. That dream was taken away from him by President Carter who felt so strongly in favor of the boycott that he threatened the Athletes with a revocation of their passports if they attended on their own. Luckily Mr. Beardsley was able to achieve his goal of being the best in the world, when ten days later he set a new world record at the U.S. Nationals event. But The Olympics are a global event and when viewed in that light, the stories that end the way Mr. Beardsley ended are the exception and not the rule. Canadian brothers John & Paul Craig thought that they too had arrived at their destination. But their happiness was short lived when Canada followed the United States lead in boycotting the Moscow games. They were told that their sacrifice would be but part of a larger plan that included both diplomatic and economic sanctions. It did not take the brothers long to realize though that the only ones who were sacrificing were the Athletes. For on the day the Moscow Olympics started, Canadian ships were off loading wheat in Russian ports.

  We can all agree that there are very real and very serious problems in our world that society should not ignore. With pain, hunger, and unimaginable suffering in places such as Tibet and Darfur a message should be sent that in today’s world mans inhumanity towards man will not be tolerated. One should not confuse though a government’s willingness to use a band-aid to treat a massive cut, with the willingness to fix all the damage the cut has caused. Boycotts and protests can and have been useful tools in the past to activate change. It is when governments and individuals use these tools during the Olympics that it hijacks someone’s Olympic dreams.