Introduction
The history of massive athletic events is always accompanied by controversies, scandals, and political statements. Being the major event in the world of sports, the Olympic Games is one of the examples as multiple controversies of different levels of value follow each of the games. This essay will cover some of the controversies that happened during the Olympic Games in Berlin, Munich, Beijing, Mexico City, Moscow, and Los Angeles.
Main body
One of the most prominent controversies in the history of the Olympic games, the 1936 Berlin games, have been remembered by the general audience as the Nazi games. The time of the games coincided with the height of Adolf Hitler’s power and the dawn of Nazi Germany. Although the possibility of changing the location of the Olympics was discussed among the delegates, Hitler’s regime assured that the Jewish athletes would be able to compete despite the German anti-Semitic policies. As Wheeler pointed it, the Olympic games were supposed to be used by Hitler to demonstrate the Aryan domination of the world and promote Nazi propaganda (2). However, in the process of the Games, Hitler and other high-ranked Nazis were faced with disappointment as African American athlete Jesse Owens became the most successful athlete of the Games, earning four gold medals. The story is now perceived as one of the most dramatic outcomes in sports and media history.
On the other hand, the Munich Olympic Games took place in 1972 and were remembered as one of the most tragic events in the Olympic Games History. Eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September killed two Israeli athletes from the Olympic team, took them hostage, and killed the other nine team members. The Black September attack has been described as a moment that permanently shifted the dynamics of modern terrorism (Silke and Filippidou 214). Although there were significantly fewer people killed in the attack, the impact of the Munich massacre stands right next to the 9/11 attack. The tragedy emphasized the security issues in the Games in the lack of preparation from the authorities. Since the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, the security system of the Olympic Games has been improved, and nowadays security became a primary concern for multiple events of massive scale in the sports field.
In several cases, there is more than one controversy occurring during the Olympic Games. For Example, the 2008 Olympic Games in China, Beijing, were marked by the delay of Olympic torch arrival. The delay was due to multiple attempts to extinguish the torch on its route in London and Paris by protesters who considered human rights issues in China and China’s occupation of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. China’s permanent violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights almost caused the Games to be boycotted by many countries. As the domestic population perceived the Beijing Olympic Games as the symbol of national unity and international prestige, the protests for human rights hurt Chinese pride and formed a backlash of nationalism outbreak (Ma 306). The later controversies include the detention and deportation of several foreign journalists who have decided to cover the anti-Olympic protests and the arrests of human rights activists.
The countries, politics, and organizational issues are not the only ones to blame for Olympic Games controversies, as some of the athletes decide to make political statements themselves. In the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968, two African American athletes, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos made a black power fist salute during the medal ceremony. Moreover, Smith wore a black scarf to represent the black pride; they each wore one black glove and received the medals barefoot, but wearing black socks to represent the black poverty. Both athletes later explained that the silent gesture was meant to symbolize human rights and emphasized that they wore human rights badges on their jackets along with the silver medalist Peter Norman, who supported them. The statement is considered the most powerful political statement in the modern history of the Olympic games. Even though the initial criticism from the public, Smith and Carlos’s protest is now perceived as an act of great courage.
The Cold War significantly influenced the international sports scene in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. The 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow were boycotted by the United States and other countries due to the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, making it the most significant boycott in the Olympic Games history. Historians often reject international exchanges and prefer research on particular countries providing juxtaposing national cases (Vonnard and Quin 266). However, the international exchange in sports competitions like the Olympic Games in the time of the Cold War was one of the crucial factors for the games. The Soviets’ exploitation of the Olympic games for communism propaganda was met with psychological warfare of promoting democracy and American economics from the United States. The IOC rejected the boycott led by the United States and stated that the United States used the violation of Human Rights policies for political purposes.
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games were boycotted by the Soviet Union and several allies and Eastern Bloc countries, with the reason for anti-Soviet propaganda in the United States. The United States acknowledged the boycott as the Soviet’s retaliation for the previous Moscow Olympic Games boycott, but the Soviet Union pushed the narrative of boycotting the games for the safety of Soviet athletes. Although both countries acted according to their interests, the withdrawal of valued athletes from the games could weaken the competition, which was the primary concern for the IOC. As a result of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Games, The United States won the most gold medals and showed an example of hosting a financially successful Olympic Games event for other countries. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, organized a separate sports event, Friendship Games, for the boycotting countries and dominated the medal table of the event.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this essay covered several controversies that occurred during events of Olympic Games in Berlin, Munich, Beijing, Mexico City, Moscow, and Los Angeles. The controversies include various political reasons and statements made by countries or athletes. As the event involves a variety of international relationships, the scale of the controversies reflects the scale of the event. Although some of the issues are based on genuine concerns regarding the violation of Human rights policy, some could occur from countries’ private political interests.
Works Cited
Ma, Yiben. “Online Chinese Nationalism: A Competing discourse? A Discourse Analysis of Chinese Media Texts Relating to the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay in Paris.” The Journal of International Communication, vol. 24, no. 2, 2018, pp. 305–325.
Silke, Andrew, and Anastasia Filippidou. “What Drives Terrorist Innovation? Lessons from Black September and Munich 1972.” Security Journal, vol. 33, 2020, pp. 210-227.
Vonnard, Philippe, and Grégory Quin. “Studying International Sports Organizations During the Cold War” Sport in History, vol. 37, no. 3, 2017, pp. 265-272.
Wheeler, Paul. “Six Minutes in Berlin: Broadcast Spectacle and Rowing Gold at the Nazi Olympics.” Sport in History, vol. 38, no. 2, 2018, pp. 264–266.