Olympic Games

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OLYMPIC GAMES.

INTERWAR GAMES
POSTWAR GAMES
AFTER THE COLD WAR
BIBLIOGRAPHY

The modern Olympic Games began in Athens in 1896 as a result of the enthusiasm of the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin. His vision, based on the sporting models of elite British and American schools and colleges, was of a peaceful sporting and artistic competition between nations. At the outset the games were closed to professional athletes and only amateurs could compete. This was a core principle at the heart of the Olympic movement that would not be changed until the early 1990s. The beginnings in Athens were small: 14 nations competed in 43 events. By 2004, when the Games returned to Athens, over 10,000 athletes representing 203 nations took part in 300 events. In the years preceding World War I, the Olympic Games struggled to establish themselves because they were linked to, and effectively overshadowed by, the World Expositions in Paris (1900) and Saint Louis (1904). By the time of the last pre–World War I Games, a level of stability had been found. In 1912 in Stockholm, 28 nations came together to compete in 102 events. The number of athletes had risen from 241 in Athens in 1896 to 2,407.

INTERWAR GAMES

World War I marked a period of change for the Olympic movement. Its administrative body, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), moved its headquarters from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Games planned for Berlin in 1916 were abandoned. In the wake of the damage Europe suffered in the war, the 1920 Games were awarded to Antwerp to honor the suffering that had been inflicted on the Belgian people. The 1920 opening ceremony was notable for the introduction of the Olympic flag, the release of doves as a symbol of peace, and the presentation of the Athletes' Oath. The Olympic movement had, by virtue of staging the Antwerp Games, proved it had survived the war. The introduction of the flag, representing the unity of the five continents, and the symbolic release of doves also demonstrated that the Olympic movement considered itself a harbinger of peace and unity for the nations of the world. Such beliefs were, however, difficult to sustain. The more the Olympics grew in size and scale, the more readily were they used by nations in pursuit of their own ideological purposes.

In 1924 the Winter Olympics were introduced. These took place in Chamonix, France, and attracted sixteen countries competing in sixteen alpine events. The Winter Olympics have historically been dominated by European nations. Of the nineteen Winter Games that had been staged by 2002, only six had taken place outside of Europe. The medal winners for the winter sports have also been primarily European. Although the Japanese, Americans, and Canadians have performed well, it is the Nordic countries that have traditionally dominated.

In 1931 the Summer (Berlin) and Winter Games (Garmisch-Partenkirchen) were awarded to Germany. Although the German economy under the Weimar Republic lacked political stability, the other bidding city, Barcelona, was in an equally parlous state. The members of the IOC could not have foreseen the rise to power of the Nazi Party, and although there were debates about boycotting the Berlin Games, these were muted. The 1936 Berlin Games were dominated by the Nazi machine and every aspect was meticulously planned. Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia recorded the event and her footage was transmitted live to a series of receivers across Berlin, creating the first televised Games. The Berlin Games have become associated in many people's minds with the African American athlete Jesse Owens. Against a background of Nazi efforts to use the Games to demonstrate the supremacy of "Aryan" athletes, Owens won four gold medals. The Berlin Games demonstrated how the Olympics could be harnessed for political purposes. Although no host nation would ever again go to such extremes, the Games' political potential had been illustrated for all to see.

POSTWAR GAMES

World War II resulted in the abandonment of the 1940 Games, set for Tokyo, and those planned for Helsinki in 1944. The first postwar Games were staged in London in 1948, when rationing was still in force and much of the city was still being cleared of bomb damage. Although attended by athletes from fifty-nine nations, the IOC banned Germany, Italy, and Japan for their part in the war. As the IOC's remit became increasingly global, the Summer Games were staged in various nations across the continents. Of the fourteen summer Olympics held between 1952 and 2008, only six were held in Europe. The IOC itself has remained in Lausanne, and its postwar presidents, with the exception of the American Avery Brundage, have all been European nationals. The growing commercial and political power of the IOC has meant that many international sporting organizations have also chosen Switzerland as their administrative base. So although the Olympic Games are staged across the world, the IOC's location, elite personnel, and impact remain dominantly European.

Germany returned to the Olympic Games at Helsinki in 1952 and competed as a unified team until 1972, when it divided along political lines into two separate teams: the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The experience of Germany is indicative of one of the gravest problems for the Olympic Games in the years after 1945: the Cold War. Growing Cold War tensions produced an American-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games (in opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), and a reciprocal Eastern bloc boycott of the 1984 Los AngelesSummer Games. The need for each of the major sporting nations to prove its athletic (and therefore ideological) supremacy also led to widespread use of intensive training methods and drug abuse, particularly by the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s. The 1972 Summer Games in Munich were also darkened by political activity when Palestinian terrorists kidnapped members of the Israeli wrestling team from the Olympic Village. The event culminated in a German attempt to free the hostages at Munich's Fuerstenfeldbruk airfield. The attempt failed and five of the eight Palestinians were killed, as were all of the Israeli hostages. IOC President Avery Brundage led a memorial service in the Olympic stadium and committed the Olympic movement to a policy of distancing itself from political events, stating "the Games must go on."

AFTER THE COLD WAR

The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s meant that the Olympic movement had to adapt rapidly to a wide range of new nations. At the 1992 Albertville Winter Games in France, the last to be held in the same year as the Summer Games, the former Soviet states competed under the title of the Unified Team and under the flag of the Olympic movement. The changing geopolitics of that era were also reflected in the first unified German team since 1972, in separate teams for the Baltic states, and in the wake of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in representation for Croatia and Slovenia.

In addition to dealing with the realities of post–Cold War politics, from the mid-1980s onward the Olympic movement also began adapting to the increasingly commercialized world of sport. Under the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC underwent a series of radical changes. In 1992 it removed any vestiges of its earlier ban on professional athletes and from 1984 onward sold the commercial rights for the sponsorship of the Games and the use of the five-ringed Olympic logo. It also began selling exclusive television rights to the Winter and Summer Games for ever-increasing amounts of money. By 2004 the IOC's income was estimated at $2,236 million from television rights, $1,339 million from sponsorship, $608 million from ticket sales, and $81 million from product licensing.

By the time of the Athens Summer Games, the IOC was, without question, the single most powerful sporting organization in the world. It had successfully adapted de Coubertin's idea for an international sporting competition, charted its way through a plethora of complex political situations, adapted to new media technologies, adopted commercial models, and applied them to the selling of its sporting events.

See alsoCold War; Riefensthal, Leni.