“The show must go on” is a phrase that is believed to have originated in the circus. So it is an appropriate phrase to use when referring to the five ring circus that is the modern Olympic Games.
The phrase was used in the Circus to try and distract paying customers when something had gone wrong. With the Olympic Games in just over a month once again it has to do with money, but in this instant those paying are the sponsors and the broadcasters.
There are many across the world who feel that the Olympics should not be going ahead. So it will be interesting to see whether the viewing figures from Tokyo are impacted because of those strong feelings.
For many of the sports that are part of the Olympic Games it is vital that the games go ahead. As they are dependent on some of the money generated filtering down to them to keep their International Federation afloat. The money will most likely be massively reduced from previous Olympic Games and some Federations have received money in advance, whether they receive any more is according to some up in the air.
Live television coverage of the Olympic Games commenced in 1964 when ironically Tokyo was the host city. NBC were the first company to offer such a service.
The 1960 Rome Olympic Games saw twenty hours of action broadcast in the United States, with footage being sent from Rome each night on an airplane to New York. This was a major turning point for the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee. The Italians who had hosted the Olympic Games had read the IOC rule book thoroughly, especially the part that stated that the hosts had sole control over television rights. The IOC desperately tried to grab a slice of the television pie. In the end they managed to negotiate for five percent of the revenue. The IOC then waited for the official accounts to be produced to see what share of the proceeds they would receive. This too was not good news, the Italians recording a deficit of USD$3.3million. Which left the IOC no monies to pass onto the Federations.
The end result was that the IOC changed its rules so that they had more control over the television rights. It was a wise move on their part as by 1968 the television rights for the Mexico Olympic Games were already nudging USD$10million. In 2011, American Broadcaster NBC agreed to a USD$4.38 billion contract with the International Olympic Committee to broadcast the Olympics through to the 2020 games. This was at the time the most expensive television rights deal in Olympic history.On May 7th 2014 NBC agreed to a $7.75 billion contract extension to air the Olympics through the 2032 games. This pot of gold enables the IOC to subsidise all of the Olympic Sports for the next Olympic cycle.
With a deal such as this in place and so many sports reliant on the revenue flowing back to them one has a good idea as to why the Tokyo Olympic Games, which have already been delayed a year, must go ahead in 2021. Without that revenue not only will the Olympic Games future be at risk, but so too the future of many of the sports that are part of the Olympic Games.
There is of course another argument as to why the Tokyo Olympic Games have not been cancelled, and that is that historically the International Olympic Committee has never been very good at making the hard decisions. The decisions that seem clear and obvious to sports fans and athletes the world over.
There have been many controversies as you would expect in numerous events over the years, however the biggest was probably allowing Hitler’s Germany to host the Berlin Games of 1936. Much has surfaced over the years as to how the Germans hoodwinked IOC members when they came to visit Germany after concerns were raised in relation to many of the policies being enacted. In 1936 after Germany had hosted the Winter Olympics The Times reported “this is really the most efficient propaganda conceivable.”
In 1934 Avery Brundage, who would later become IOC President visited Germany to investigate the treatment of Jews. When he returned to the USA, he reported, “I was given positive assurance in writing … that there will be no discrimination against Jews. You can’t ask more than that and I think the guarantee will be fulfilled. “When the Games came around a number of record-holding German athletes were excluded from competing at Berlin for being racially undesirable, and the only Jewish athlete to compete on the German team was fencer Helene Mayer. (Inspirational Athletes – 27 ) While the obtaining of information in these times was far harder than today, the members of the IOC in that era have been and were criticised for turning a blind eye and allowing the event to proceed.
Following the Second World War at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne the issue of the state-sponsored “full-time amateur athlete” – mainly out of the Eastern Bloc countries, – became an issue. The Olympic Games at the time were still supposed to be strictly amateur and the sponsored athlete was eroding that ethos. Avery Brundage was now President of the IOC and was a man who publicly pushed for the Games to remain strictly amateur with no athlete receiving any remuneration for their endeavours.
In 1954 as President of the IOC he paid a visit to the USSR. The Soviet Olympic Committee offered to pay for the trip, but Brundage decided it was best that the IOC foot the bill. He was blinded by what he saw, or possibly what he wanted to see. When he confronted his hosts on the allegations that athletes were taken away from their work and studies and put into training camps, given special allowances and favours as well as cash prizes and that sport was used for Political purposes, for propaganda and to promote the Communist ideal, he accepted their denial. Yet two years later it was the USSR that created the medal table in Melbourne, as they wished to show the world that the Communist way of life was superior to the Western world. A table the Soviet Union topped ahead of the USA and Australia. It is worth noting here that the IOC does not officially recognise a nation as a winner of the Olympic Games. The medal table created by the USSR has now been adopted by the media and also many Olympic Committees and their governments as a sign of their success.
The State sponsored Athlete would be an issue that was never addressed for the next thirty years.
By the time the Rome Olympic Games came around in 1960 another issue that had been rumbling for almost a decade came back to the fore. In 1952, the mainland Chinese National Olympic Committee (the All-China Athletic Federation), wrote to the IOC stating that it desired to participate in the Helsinki Olympics to be held that year. As the Taiwanese also proposed to send a team, the IOC had a problem as this conflicted with their rules which stated that only one committee could represent a country. Both Chinese groups dug their heels in and were unwilling to negotiate with the other, and had no intention of sending a joint team. To try and dig themselves out of a political hole the IOC decided that if either committee was recognized by an International Sports Federation for a sport, then the committee would be permitted to send athletes to participate in events in that sport. Taiwan withdrew and the People’s Republic of China sent a team; although they arrived late for the Games.
Over the next six years the Peoples Republic tried to ensure that Taiwan was excluded from the Games. In 1958 they gave up and withdrew from the IOC. The following year, the IOC ruled the Taiwanese could not compete under the name Republic of China Olympic Committee. They would have to compete under some other name which did not imply they governed sports in China. The Taiwanese officials decided to participate in the 1960 Rome Games, hoping to secure their first Olympic medal; no doubt they also believed that their continued presence would help keep mainland China out of the Games.Taiwan athletes did compete, but under the designation Formosa; an alternate name for Taiwan. As the athletes marched into the stadium for the opening ceremony they caused a stir at the time when they unfurled a sign reading “Under Protest.”
The issue rumbled on for three decades. It was not until 1975, after Avery Brundage’s departure as president, that the Peoples Republic of China applied to rejoin the Olympic movement. They competed at their first Olympic Games since 1952 when they participated at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Taiwan had competed as the Republic of China in 1968 and 1972; but when it was refused permission to compete under that name in 1976, it boycotted the 1976 and 1980 games, only returning also in 1984, but as Chinese Taipei.
Also at the Rome Olympic Games came the first known case of athletes taking performance enhancing drugs. Oluf Jorgensen the trainer of the Danish Cycling team admitted following the death of Knud Enemark Jensen that he had given the team Roniacol before the race, a drug that intensified blood circulation. As we all know once the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 performance enhancing drugs became a very big issue. The Germans had competed in Rome and would also in Tokyo, as a unified team. Yet by Tokyo with the wall erected there was very little unification apart from in name. The East Germans had seen how sport was a way of promoting a superior way of life, as the USSR had shown. Their deputy chef de mission from Rome, Manfred Ewald, along with a medical director set up a program of strengthening these athletes through a daily program of steroids. The athletes being told that they were taking vitamins.
The failure by the IOC to act in Rome and punish Denmark, would have a lasting effect that is still a problem today. It may surprise many but the first Olympic athlete to test positive for the use of performance-enhancing drugs was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swedish pentathlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics. He lost his bronze medal for alcohol use, he had had ‘two beers to steady his nerves.!’
While other athletes were caught using performance enhancing drugs not a single East German or soviet athlete was ever caught during the 70’s or 80’s. The first Russian caught was hurdler Natalya Shekhodanova in Atlanta in 1996 and the first German, after the Berlin Wall had come down was wrestler Alexander Leipold in 2000 in Sydney.
More recently it was revealed that a highly co-ordinated state-sponsored operation in Russia had seen lab technicians swap tainted urine samples for clean ones. It was reported that 643 positive samples were covered up over a four year period. There were 139 from Track and Field athletes and 117 in weightlifting. This led to a ban for the Russian Olympic Committee and its athletes. For the Rio Olympic Games the Russians had submitted a list of 389 athletes. In the end 278 were cleared for competition, and 111 excluded. Which begs the question are the Olympics about the Individual or the Nation?
Ironically at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich Vince Matthews had won the 400m Gold medal. During the medal ceremony he had stood with his hand on his hip, played with his facial hair and chatted to silver medallist fellow American Wayne Collett. The crowd booed. The two were sent home and banned from future Olympic Games. The reason for Matthews behaviour? He felt that the country he was representing was getting all of the recognition for something he had done.
At the end of the 1950’s the IOC was faced with another issue that would not go away, the Apartheid regime in South Africa. While many sports had opted to boycott playing against South Africa the IOC allowed them to compete in Rome in 1960. The IOC had accepted the statement from the South African Olympic Committee stating that they were allowing all citizens to compete it was just that the black or coloured athletes were not talented enough to make their team. History will show that this was clearly not true.
With many African nations achieving independence in the early 1960’s Avery Brundage and the IOC looked to maintain power by trying to prevent the new nations from overwhelming the International Sports Federations. He proposed that the federations adopt weighted voting systems to allow those long standing members to wield disproportionate influence. As we have seen in a number of sports these “new nations” have now been used in many instants to influence the outcome of a vote over the past 50 years, and the issue of restricting that influence is still a very hot topic.
In 1963 the IOC suspended South Africa unless it adopted non-discrimination policies regarding Olympic selection.The South Africans did not compete in Tokyo in 1964. In 1968 the IOC invited them back into the fold, but faced with an international boycott and South Africa still not prepared to send a multiracial team, the South Africans withdrew. Only in 1971 did the IOC strip the South African Olympic Committee of its recognition. South Africa would not compete at the Olympic Games again until 1992. Similar issues would occur with Rhodesia which would rumble on from when it declared its independence in 1965 until the IOC finally expelled it in 1972 just before the start of the Munich Olympics.
In more recent times we have seen Human Rights issues come to the fore as Host Cities prepare for the Olympic Games. In 1968 students in Mexico City tried to make use of the media attention for their country thanks to the Olympic Games to protest against the authoritarian Mexican government. The end result was the Tlatelolco Massacre ten days before the Games began and more than two thousand protesters were shot at by government forces.The death count was believed to be between 300-400.
The minute that the 2008 Olympic Games were awarded to Beijing the matter of Human Rights came to the fore and the IOC were constantly questioned as to how they could condone such issues by allowing China to host the Games. There were other issues with Beijing that kept cropping up, one being the air pollution. The IOC’s own medical commission analysed air-quality data recorded by the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau in August 2007, when test athletic events were held in the Chinese capital. The commission found that “outdoor endurance events—defined as those that include at least an hour of continuous, high-intensity physical effort—may pose some risk.” Yet the Games went ahead as planned.
The last Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 was also linked is to widespread human rights violations that included accusations of police violence, forceful evictions and bad labor conditions for those building the venues. The Olympic Games are intended to showcase th very best of the Host City, but in the modern world they seem to be used more as a distraction to what is actually happening in some nations. Or do the nations leaders really believe that the revenue from visitors will honestly offset the cost of hosting the games and building new stadia and accommodation?
Only in 2017 after the Rio Games did the IOC decide to incorporate human rights principles in its Host City Contract. The revised Host City Contract was developed with recommendations from a coalition of leading rights, transparency, and athletes’ organizations, and was finalized in January 2017. It will first apply to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. It was reported that “the IOC has included explicit reference to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), which outline the human rights responsibilities of businesses, as well as references to anti-corruption standards. The Guiding Principles explain how commercial enterprises should assess human rights risks, take effective steps to avoid human rights problems, and ensure a remedy for abuses that occur in spite of those efforts.”
As illustrated here history shows that the IOC takes its time to make decisions. They are not an organisation renowned for making quick decisions, and some would argue they have a history of making the wrong decisions. While many believe that the right decision would be to cancel the Tokyo Games in a month’s time, that is not going to be a decision made by the IOC.
One would think that those elected to the high table at the International Olympic Committee, would be the people that the member nations are looking to for leadership and to make the hard decisions. History will show that this has never been the case.
The answer as to why this is the case may have come in October last year when Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates who is also an IOC vice-president was talking about the controversial rule 50 and an athletes right to protest. Mr Coates was asked by ABC journalist Tracey Holmes “whether the IOC was equipped to make substantial changes in its approach to human rights issues should athletes call for it?” Mr Coates replied “Yes, they can.The IOC can make change, the members of the IOC set the rules for the Games. But they also are protectors of the Olympic values and all of those things, and it’ll be a balance … things can be adapted.”
Looking back on the past century it would appear that the IOC historically has failed to keep pace with change or read the mood of the people. Just like the ringmaster in the circus, it adopted the view that if the Show went on, the distraction would be so great that it would hide all the wrongs. They may well have been right. However these are different times…
It was Winston Churchill who said ‘to improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often,’ The Tokyo Games will go ahead. The question remains what will be the feeling towards the IOC after they have finished? How will the world feel about the Olympic Games come September? Is this now the time for a dramatic shift in the Olympic Movement?
The Olympic Charter specifies that: “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Are those ideals really still true today? For two weeks the IOC hope that “the Show” will stop people asking such questions.
