‘To say that politics are not a part of sports is not realistic. When I run, I am more than a runner. I am a diplomat, an ambassador for my country.” – Tanzanian track star Filbert Bayi.
Bayi once held the record for fastest mile. But he missed out on the 1976 Summer Olympic Games in Montreal because Tanzania boycotted those games due to New Zealand’s participation. New Zealand’s sin was that its rugby team played in South Africa, then a pariah due to apartheid. Bayi did compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics – which the United States boycotted due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Then the Soviet bloc boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
So how much should politics influence international sport? Were the above boycotts justified?
Politics are ubiquitous. To utterly separate the political from the athletic is impossible. Did Hitler exploit the 1936 Berlin Olympics to demonstrate Nazi-Aryan superiority? Of course. (The Germans won 89 medals to the USA’s 56.) Did the Soviet bloc exploit subsequent Olympics to demonstrate the superiority of the communist system? Of course. So when should sports boycotts occur?
Consider China and the 2022 Winter Olympics slated for greater Beijing. Recent Chinese actions collectively cause great concern – from the crackdown in Hong Kong to military expansion in the South China Sea to economic warfare against the West. Ponder what the Chinese did to Tibet. China is the world’s worst polluter. The authoritarian communist government in China threatens global well-being.
Then there are the Uyghurs.
An oppressed minority in China’s Xinjiang Province, the Uyghers have long been targeted by Beijing for cultural extermination – or worse. Around a million have been rounded up and placed in concentration camps, where many have perished.
So should Western nations threaten a Chinese Olympic boycott if Chinese behavior remains unchanged?
Yes. But this should be done quietly, through “diplomacy.” Loud and public threatening is counterproductive, as top leaders can’t afford to lose “face.”
As a dictatorship, China is immune to some of the pressures that impact democracies. But a potential Olympic boycott is an arrow in the diplomatic quiver that should not be discarded.
While Hitler was relatively new to the international scene in 1936, his noxious racial policies were already widely offensive – enough so that there was a movement to switch the games to Spain. However, Civil War broke out there and the Berlin Olympics went forward.
Would an international boycott of the Berlin Olympics have impacted the Nazi regime?
Maybe. We know that in 1936 there were powerful elements in the German military and elsewhere looking to overthrow Hitler before he gained a national stranglehold. The humiliation of a major Olympic boycott may have been enough to unite the anti-Hitler factions for action before it was too late.
We’ll never know if such a boycott may have prevented World War II. We only know that that conflict took over 40 million lives.
So does a Chinese Olympic boycott movement rate support?
The Uyghers would definitely say, “Yes.”
(Mike Moffett of Loudon was a professor of sports management for Plymouth State University and NHTI.)