Sport: Are the Olympics Dead?

A new and lamentable Olympic record was getting as much attention throughout the world last week as the feats of Nadia Comaneci. "Nations boycotting: 25." That grim statistic raised severe doubts about the future of the Games themselves. There was widespread resentment against Canada for kowtowing to Peking and thereby forcing 42 athletes from Taiwan to withdraw (TIME, July 26). There was both consternation and anger over an African walkout directed against New Zealand because it sent a rugby team to South Africa.

"A global wrath against the Canadian government is certain," wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine. "In a confrontation between sports and politics, sports proved to be powerless." "Politics should not be an issue any more than religion," said Edward W. ("Moose") Krause, athletic director at Notre Dame. "This just makes me sick." Lord Killanin, head of the International Olympic Committee, was sick too. "Government interference is the most serious problem we face," he declared. "We're scarred, and I, as president, have had my eye blackened."

Nowhere was the disappointment greater than in Africa, where popular sentiment was strongly opposed to the political decision to withdraw the teams. A number of African athletes telephoned home to say they were considering forfeiting their citizenships and settling in the U.S. "I'm fed up with black politics," said a member of one team. "At the next Olympics I hope to be competing as an American." Added a coach: "If my boys wanted to play politics, they would run for Parliament. To wreck their sporting careers for petty political points is not only unfair—it is criminal." Lamented Tanzania's great Filbert Bayi, world record holder in the 1,500 meters: "Four years of hard work have been wasted."

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The fact is that nationalism long has been an aspect of the Games, and deliberately so. Nor has this been as bad a thing as pundits often paint it, at least to the degree that nationalism equates with patriotism. Politics too has long been a part of the Games, without dealing them fatal harm.

The modern Games had hardly begun when the U.S. outraged the British by refusing to dip the flag to King Edward VII during the 1908 opening ceremonies in London. (Nor did the U.S. dip the flag to Queen Elizabeth II last week; she was not offended.) The Finns, then under the domination of Imperial Russia, sought the same year to emphasize their strivings for national identity by refusing to march under the Russian flag. Hitler tried to use the 1936 Berlin Games as a display of the supremacy of the Aryan race.

In the past there have also been walkouts and bannings; Italy and France pulled out of the fencing in the 1912 Stockholm Games after a dispute over the rules. In 1956 Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon did not compete because of the Suez crisis. In the 1920 Antwerp Games and the 1948 London Games, the loser nations from the world wars were barred. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union stayed out of Olympic competition until the 1952 Helsinki Games. But never before have strictly pragmatic political considerations, as in the case of Canada v. Taiwan, been thrust upon the Games, and the consequences are explosive.

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