My dark secret as an activist and someone committed to a revolution of the violent, global system in which we live is that I get obsessed by the Olympic Games. My activist friends can’t quite really understand it, denouncing them as a huge waste of money and as a way of keeping the people anaesthetised from the real problems the world faces, which of course they are.
My obsession however first started in 1980 when my imagination was captured by dozens of countries coming together for the winter games in Lake Placid, United States and was reinforced six months later by the summer games in Moscow. It was also my first introduction to Cold War politics when the USA led a boycott by many nations of the first ever games in a Communist country in retaliation for the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan earlier in the year. Four years later, with the summer games hosted by Los Angeles, the USSR had her revenge boycott.
None of this though prevented my fascination with the games from growing. In 1984 the summer games took place in my school holidays so I had the glorious opportunity to watch everything on TV. The games also gave me my first experience of jetlag without having to get on a plane as I moved my body clock forward by 8 hours, getting up at 4pm and going to bed at 8am, much to my mother’s annoyance as it took me several days to recover and she would come home from work in the early afternoon and still find me asleep!
What fascinated me, and still does, about the Olympics is this international element; this idealism of the best sportsmen and women of the world coming together to compete in their chosen disciplines; everyone competing fairly to see who is the best; hopefully someone from my country winning a medal. Of course, the sport can be exhilarating, but the joy and emotions generated in the fans and in an entire country is something very powerful.
I was lucky enough to be in London in the summer of 2012 when the Olympic Games were taking place and of all my 17 years living in the English capital, these 2 weeks were the highlight. All those who hated the sport conveniently left the city to go on holiday, so there were much less people on the public transport, and the tourists who came from all over the world to support their countrymen and women were all in London to have a great time. The atmosphere was the best I ever experienced it and in Hyde Park where fans from all nations came together to watch the sport on huge screens when they didn’t have tickets for the venues, I really had a feeling of how a Universal Human Nation could be like.
And this year, from feeling utter shame for my country as the Brexit referendum led to an unleashing of disgraceful racism and xenophobia, somehow my British pride has been restored by the performance of our sporting heroes. Saying this, these days I find the patriotism increasingly jingoistic and I am deeply concerned how my emotions can be turned on so quickly by seeing someone who has absolutely nothing to do with me apart from coming from the same island winning a race on a bicycle or in a boat.
With this concern acting as a caveat against my support of the Olympics, as Rio 2016 has just finished I wanted to highlight some of the good things.
First time in South America
Of all the great things about these games, the most important is that for the first time in the 120 years of the modern games, they took place in South America. Other cities applied in the past, and Latin America hosted the games in Mexico City in 1968, but this is the first time the games took place in South America and it is important for a global spectacle that the games can happen anywhere on the planet. Africa is surely due its turn to host. Yet, with the expense of hosting the games prohibiting developing countries from being candidates it seems a long way in the future.
Surpassing political differences
Most of the time, the young men and women competing don’t give a shit about international politics. They are just young people competing and innocently getting to know one another. One of the memorable images of this games was of North Korea’s Hong Un-Jong and South Korea’s Lee Eun-Ju taking a selfie during a practice session for the women’s gymnastics competition.
It shows that what unites the people is so much more important than the self-serving interests of politicians who try to divide the people and turn friends into enemies. These two countries are still formally at war!
The opposite of these two gymnasts’ friendliness was displayed by the Egyptian judo player who refused to shake the hand of his Israeli opponent at the end of their fight: a huge show of disrespect in this Japanese martial art.
Refugee Team
The increasing problems of wars and refugees has not been forgotten by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and a symbolic team of refugees has taken part this time, with some quite harrowing stories to humanise the news and counteract the increasing discrimination that refugees are facing.
Yusra Mardini from Syria is a case in point, she and her sister saved the lives of 20 people by jumping out of the boat they were in and pulling it to land on Lesbos by swimming for 3 and a half hours in cold water. She now lives in Berlin and represented the Refugee Team in the women’s 100m butterfly swimming competition.
Same sex marriage proposals
Love was in the air at these Olympics, and no more so than during the proposals of marriage that took place over the two weeks. The Olympics is not known for its openness towards homosexuality, in fact the IOC refused to say anything at the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, when the Russian government introduced homophobic legislation, despite the fact that the Olympic Charter rejects all forms of discrimination, yet this time gays and lesbians were much more visible.
Two of the UK women’s hockey team were already a married couple before coming to Rio and this Olympics had more openly gay and lesbian athletes than ever before.
In this spirit, a member of the Brazilian women’s rugby team was proposed to by her girlfriend at the end of the competition, and the British race walker, Tom Bosworth got down on one knee on Copacabana Beach to propose to his boyfriend.
Sportsmanship
In the 5000m race in the athletics competition, Nikki Hamblin from New Zealand fell and US runner Abbey D’Agostino collided with her and also landed on the track. The American got up but instead of just running ahead, she made sure her injured fellow competitor also got up and made it to the end of the race. Neither of them ran a fast time, and neither of them qualified for the final, in fact the New Zealander had to be taken away in a wheelchair, but the incident shows that there are more important things in life than winning a race, and their actions inspired millions on social media.
There were many other extraordinary moments in these games: 10 countries won their first ever Gold medals, a hijab-wearing Egyptian volleyball player, a Brazilian gold-medallist coming from the Rio favelas among many others. These extraordinary things can’t justify the expense of the Olympics, but in a world where military spending is around 1.7 trillion dollars a year, certainly there is room for a festival of sport every four years or at least there should be.
Maybe the Universal Human Nation will not have an Olympic Games as we know it which has today essentially become a competition between nations spending as much money as they can, or cheating through the systematic use of drugs, to see how many gold medals they can win, but surely there is a place for sport in an ideal world, and surely watching the best young men and women in the world pushing themselves to win will always be inspiring?
As Mr Keating (played by Robin Williams) said in the Film, Dead Poets Society, “Sport is actually a chance for us to have other human beings push us to excel.”
