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There is no separating the Olympic Games from politics, no separating the glorious athletic competition that will take place this summer in Beijing from what's happening in Tibet right now.
As much as some might like to pretend, as much as they'd prefer to fall back on fuzzy 19th-century ideals, the Games and the here-and-now are inextricably linked.
The Olympics don't take place in a world of forms, in a world apart. National flags are flown, anthems are played, medals are tallied by country, so the propaganda opportunities are legion. Governments pump money into Olympic sports in large part to bask in feel-good, patriotic moments.
(Including us. In Canada, the push is called Own The Podium, a federal initiative designed to make us winners in Vancouver/Whistler in 2010.)
Elected and unelected leaders also invest massive amounts and compete tooth and nail for the privilege of staging the great spectacle, knowing its value as image enhancer. Every modern Games has been used to showcase a country — a political and/or economic system — and by extension to sprinkle a bit of glory on those in power.
So politics provides much of the fuel for the Olympic engine. Under the current setup, with the massive amounts of public money required, you can't have it any other way.
The International Olympic Committee could change all of that tomorrow, it could ban all of the national symbols in the same way it bans the corporate icons of those who decline to pay the going rate, thus insulating the Games from overt political opportunism.
But the crowd in Lausanne have never even suggested such a thing, understanding all too well where their bread is buttered — and understanding, as well, that with the enormous payoff come risks.
Every once in a while, someone will use the global stage provided by the Olympics to make an uncomfortable political statement, whether through raised, gloved fists and lowered heads; through boycott; through the murder of innocent athletes and coaches.
And invariably, the host of the Games will wind up being some rather unsavoury characters, countries desperate to burnish their global reputation by association with the five rings, by being blessed with the Olympic imprimatur and its implicit higher calling, by providing a stage for all of those pure, fresh-faced athletes.
The full possibilities of the Olympic platform might not have been apparent until 1936, but since then, everyone has understood just what you can do with all of that pomp, circumstance and a really good filmmaker at your disposal.
The IOC has argued the Games themselves can help to open up formerly oppressive regimes, with the attention of the world and the presence of a huge, active press contingent paving the way for change. Perhaps in some cases it's true, with South Korea providing the best example.
What they don't talk about quite so much is how the messy business of democracy can make staging the Olympics much more difficult, how public dissent and fiscal responsibility can make it much tougher to put on a spectacular show. When dealing with totalitarian regimes, which the IOC historically has been more than happy to do, there are no worries about governments falling over soaring budgets, about embarrassing protests, about law and order in the Olympic city, about the buses running on time.
When China began throwing its considerable resources at securing a Summer Games, everyone understood that it could stage an Olympics flawlessly. Everyone understood, as well, that human-rights issues could stir a heated debate leading up to the lighting of the torch. (As could, to a lesser degree, China's environmental problems and its athletes' history of doping.) What would have been harder to predict a decade ago was the rest of the world's appetite — or lack thereof — for protest, for pushing back, in 2008.
The tit-for-tat boycotts of 1980 and 1984 were a byproduct of Cold War posturing. Now, with the ideological lines between us and them less black and white, there doesn't seem to be much chance of governmental action over Tibet. (Yesterday, European sports ministers voted unanimously to reject a Beijing boycott.) The only remaining question is whether the Olympic corporate sponsors will tolerate a little blood on their hands in order to make inroads into the booming Chinese market.
You can guess what the answer might be.
That's not part of Pierre de Coubertin's better world, but of the world in which his brainchild does business.
