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Magazine
CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Politics of sport
BY BILL KIRKMAN
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The purist view of sport as existing solely for its own sake has probably never been true.
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Photo: AP
High-profile resignation: Steven Spielberg. :
Steven Spielberg’s decision to resign as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics is, inevitably, a major embarrassment for the Chinese government. As a leading, Oscar-winning, film director, he was recruited to raise the profile of the Ga
mes. His withdrawal cannot fail to have high-profile consequences. What is particularly interesting about it is the reason: the investment role of China in Darfur, the deeply troubled region of Sudan. It is clearly a political decision, reflecting a critical analysis of China’s human rights record, but focusing on that record outside China.
There have, of course, been other political controversies which have affected previous Olympic Games. The Moscow Games in 1980, at the time of the Soviet Union, were the subject of a boycott led by the United States.
Go back to the Berlin Games of 1936, and you find, not a boycott, but an attempt by Hitler to use the event to prove his theories of Aryan racial superiority. It failed. The most popular hero was the African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals.
Different realities
In reality there is inevitably a political dimension to the Olympics. On the website of the Olympic Movement appears the statement that “The Games have always brought people together in peace to respect universal moral principles. The upcoming Games will feature athletes from all over the world and help promote the Olympic spirit.”
It is a high-minded, and undoubtedly sincere, assertion of what the Games are intended to be. It does not necessarily describe the approach of the human beings concerned.
It is not only the Olympics which have been affected by political conflict. During the struggle in South Africa against apartheid, sports boycotts were crucially important. India played its part, as is made clear in a paper “India and struggle against apartheid”, written in 1985 by E.S. Reddy, a former Director of the UN Centre against Apartheid. He wrote: “In South Africa, as nowhere else, sports boycott made a great contribution to liberation. The Indian community can be proud that Indian sportspersons and administrators were in the vanguard of this front of the anti-apartheid struggle.”
Whatever one’s view of the rightness or wrongness, or likely effectiveness, of any particular boycott, the fact that boycotts occur should be no surprise. The purist view of international sport as something which exists simply for its own sake is no longer realistic.
Indeed, it is questionable whether it ever has been. According to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology: “It’s easy to assume that the ancient Olympic Games were different, that ancient Greek athletes were pure in mind and body, that they trained and competed for no other reason than the love of physical exercise, fair competition and to honour their gods. But is this really true? Well, no. In fact, politics, nationalism, commercialism and athletics were intimately related in the ancient Olympic Games.”
Concern about principles
At the national level, too, there can be concerns about the purpose of sport, and the principles on which it is based. Such concerns have been much in the news in Britain in the past few days because of plans by the Premier League, the group of leading national football clubs, to establish a round of international fixtures. The League’s 20 club chairmen voted to “further examine” the idea of staging 10 matches at international venues every season. The plans have aroused strong criticism. To quote Bill Bradshaw, in the Daily Express, “the Greed-is-Good League have given up any pretence of looking after the interests of the competition”. The critics make the point that becoming international in this way would be bad for players, who are said to be playing too much football anyway, and would show scant regard for the fans.
The story is not over. Against the background of the barrage of criticism, the Football Association, England football’s governing body, has expressed serious reservations about the proposals, and is likely to oppose them.
In honesty, I must at this point admit that I am terribly un-English in having virtually no interest in sport. I am, however, interested in attitudes to sport. At the international level of the Olympic Games, I would suggest, political overtones are an inevitable fact of life. At the national level, by contrast, there seem to be no compelling reasons why specifically English football teams, with a “domestic” role, should pursue that role overseas. Money may not be the root of all evil, but inordinate love of it does sport no good.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, U.K. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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