“Character is not formed by the mind,” wrote Baron Pierre de Coubertin, “it is formed above all by the body. This is what the ancients knew, and that is what we are relearning, painfully.” Hoping that some of that knowledge might rub off on modernity, the Baron suggested reviving the Olympic Games. When he put forward the idea during an international sports conference at the Sorbonne in 1892, the ancient games had been dormant for twenty-five centuries.
The modern Olympics has always struggled to live up to its idealistic origins. Inevitably, political passions have often sidelined de Coubertin’s dream that a culture of competitive sports could reinforce a sense of our common humanity. Sadly, several Olympics have degenerated into spectacles that were primarily designed to enhance a host nation’s deeply held convictions of its own racial or political supremacy. The 1936 games in Munich, for instance, were meant to validate Nazi race theories until the incomparable Jesse Owens turned out to be far superior to anything the Germans could muster.
After a mixed record in the early and middle part of the twentieth century, the Olympics seemed fated to become synonymous with the sort of political crises they were meant to help us forget. In 1968, unarmed student protestors were gunned down in Mexico City; in 1972 Israeli athletes were massacred in Munich; in 1976 Montreal bankrupted itself in order to host the games and Russia used the 1980 games – which the US boycotted – almost entirely for propaganda purposes.
The resurrection of the brand began with the 1984 games in Los Angeles. The new president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Juan Antonio Samaranch, was a former fascist organizer in Franco’s Spain. He liked to be referred to as a Marquis, or even as “Your Excellency”, and his political instincts profoundly altered the character of the games. Under his watch they became the dazzling, lucrative and ethically dubious spectacles we know today.
Recognizing the vast commercial potential of a global brand, Samaranch brokered unprecedented deals with multinational corporations who became “official sponsors” of a particular Olympics, and he sold the television rights for previously unimagined sums of money. As with the equally exploitative monetization of world football under FIFA, the welter of bribery and corruption scandals that accompanied this makeover was scandalously under-reported for decades, as was the equally shameful abuse of performance enhancing drugs. When Samaranch passed away in 2011 at the age of 89, the Nation magazine’s sports correspondent Dave Zirin aptly described his legacy as one of “turning the Olympic movement into a sporting shock doctrine of disaster capitalism.”
As the Rio games open in the middle of a political crisis in Brazil, and within the long shadow of a doping scandal among Russia’s athletes, the ongoing corruption of Olympic ideals seems undeniable. As with the recent World Cup, it is hard to justify such lavish expenditures on infrastructure that will hardly be used once the games have finished – especially while so many Brazilians are so dissatisfied with the government’s performance on so many other fronts.
Nevertheless it is impossible to deny that Baron de Coubertin’s dream retains its power to draw us into something larger than ourselves; to marvel at what the human body can be made to do with sufficient talent, discipline and determination. Despite the IOC’s chronic maladministration the Olympic Games remain an irresistible spectacle. As we prepare ourselves for the joy of watching superstars like Simone Biles – possibly the best gymnast in history – during the next few weeks, along with the first time ‘refugees’ team that comprises athletes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Syria, parts of de Coubertin’s dream seem as well-grounded as ever.
Nelson Mandela once observed that “Sport reaches areas far beyond any sphere of political influence and has probably done more to unify nations than any politician has been capable of.” Mandela acted on this insight when he supported the Springboks rugby team during their successful 1995 World Cup campaign – even though the team was historically associated with white South Africa. The Springboks victory was momentous and unquestionably did a great deal to encourage political unity in South Africa.
As Usain Bolt chases an unprecedented 100m gold treble, West Indians will have something equally momentous to look forward to in the Rio games. Bolt’s unforced charm and his lighthearted dominance of track for more than a decade have made him one of the few global superstars who is universally popular. Unlike his main rival at these games, his drug-free record also exemplifies the Olympic ideals. All told, if everything goes as it should, he will spend less than a minute attaining this particular milestone, but, if he manages to get there, his triumph will be, as Baron de Coubertin understood, something for the ages.
