tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/pierre-de-coubertin-29731/articlesPierre de Coubertin – The Conversation2018-02-08T00:15:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/912122018-02-08T00:15:45Z2018-02-08T00:15:45ZWould the founder of the Olympics approve of the Games today?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204983/original/file-20180206-14072-eduwpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Current IOC President Thomas Bach touches a monument to Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin in ancient Olympia, southern Greece, in 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1927, <a href="http://coubertin.org/">Pierre de Coubertin</a>, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, visited <a href="http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/3/eh351.jsp?obj_id=2358">Ancient Olympia</a> for the unveiling of a monument in his honour. </p>
<p>He wandered through the ruins in pursuit of romantic visions of Ancient Greece. In a letter to the “youth of the world,” he declared the Olympics were not revived “in order to be a subject for film or an object in a museum,” but to be the emblem of a “religion of sport.”</p>
<p>Coubertin felt Olympia and the Olympics were not relics to be studied or read about in textbooks, but the living salvation of the modern world.</p>
<h2>The adaptable Olympics</h2>
<p>While the current <a href="https://www.olympic.org/pyeongchang-2018/results/en/general/competition-schedule.htm">Winter Olympics</a> may be <a href="http://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Media_Release__decision_RUS_IOC_.pdf">embroiled in scandals</a> — as modern Olympics often are — Coubertin’s vision remains relevant more than 80 years after his death.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/even-a-truce-between-the-two-koreas-might-not-save-the-winter-olympics-90560">Commentators may point to declining interest and other problems facing the Winter Games</a>, but the International Olympic Committee’s recent reiteration of the connection between sport and peace (<a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Documents/Olympism-in-Action/Olympism-in-Action-Sport-Serving-Humankind.pdf#_ga=2.252507341.517556001.1517768603-15800186.1517608319"><em>Sports for Hope</em></a>), <a href="https://www.olympic.org/news/refugee-olympic-team">the 2016 Refugee Team</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-winter-olympics-and-the-two-koreas-how-sport-diplomacy-could-save-the-world-89769">the possibility of these Games helping ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, if only in a small way,</a> makes Coubertin, perhaps, look less naive and more visionary. </p>
<p>Coubertin’s reputation rests on the Olympic movement. His ideal of sports as a tool for peace and his faith in youth and education bear remembering in uncertain times</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204742/original/file-20180204-19933-tc2wyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pierre de Coubertin (1925)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">[CC], via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Documents/Olympic-Agenda-2020/Olympic-Agenda-2020-Context-and-Background.pdf#_ga=1.60750253.1294426888.1465184939">As the Olympic movement contemplates change</a>, Coubertin’s legacy requires sober assessment. </p>
<p>It’s not clear Coubertin himself would recognize — <a href="https://theconversation.com/ioc-failing-on-human-rights-as-democracies-drop-olympic-bids-32308">much less approve of — the current incarnation of the Olympics</a>. He feared the Games would become a spectacle and despaired that large stadiums and crowds would dull the moral quality of his international sports festival.</p>
<p>He would find female participation odd, to say the least, though it isn’t clear he wouldn’t support the <a href="https://www.olympic.org/women-in-sport">IOC’s Women in Sport initiatives</a>. Coubertin thought the Olympics were adaptable to present conditions — whether in 1896 or 2018. To him, the Olympics were a means to an end.</p>
<h2>Olympic salvation</h2>
<p>Coubertin’s original interest was the educational potential of sport. Even as the Olympic Games became successful, the moral aspects of sport were central to him. </p>
<p>He saw a historic moment for sport in the 19th century, which began what he called “the physical renaissance.” (<a href="http://coubertin.org/docs/Olympism%20en.pdf"><em>Olympism:</em> 283</a>) His was a messianic mission: “It is only in certain historical epochs that physical exercise is called upon by general consent to accomplish a task of renewal, or restoration, or general rigour. We are living in such an epoch.” (<a href="http://coubertin.org/docs/Olympism%20en.pdf"><em>Olympism</em>: 221</a>)</p>
<p>In the midst of this mission, Coubertin recognized what to him were the signs of imminent decline: Ambition, money and specialization. He decided the way to prevent what he saw as sport’s corruption was to place athletics under “the patronage of Classical Antiquity!” (<a href="http://coubertin.org/docs/Olympism%20en.pdf"><em>Olympism</em>: 309</a>). </p>
<p>Coubertin did not intend <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-much-have-the-olympics-really-changed-since-ancient-times-63361">to recreate the ancient Olympics</a>, but he was inspired by them. His aim was to promote what he thought was ancient sport’s true virtue, “the merit of seeking effort only in the effort itself… to worship effort in a disinterested way and to love difficult things simply because they are difficult.” (<a href="http://coubertin.org/docs/Olympism%20en.pdf"><em>Olmypism</em>: 295</a>)</p>
<p>Whether the IOC has carefully managed this legacy or not, Coubertin’s vision remains.</p>
<h2>Antiquity and modernity</h2>
<p>Coubertin’s understanding of sport was anything but antiquarian. He saw athletics as modern, especially in its democratic and international character. He believed that athletics would promote international co-operation and, in fact, peace. </p>
<p>Democracy, internationalism and peace were the benefits modern sport had to offer the world. These would be coupled with the moral benefits of the pursuit of effort for effort’s sake. Sport was a fusing of old and new, tradition and innovation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204985/original/file-20180206-14107-183j7kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204985/original/file-20180206-14107-183j7kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204985/original/file-20180206-14107-183j7kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204985/original/file-20180206-14107-183j7kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204985/original/file-20180206-14107-183j7kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204985/original/file-20180206-14107-183j7kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204985/original/file-20180206-14107-183j7kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A priestess dances next to the Olympic flame during the lighting ceremony for the 2006 Turin Winter Games in the Pierre de Coubertin Grove in Ancient Olympia, Greece.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Dusan Vranic)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ancient Greece was a model, <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/history/regional-and-world-history-general-interest/past-foreign-country-revisited?format=PB&isbn=9780521616850#shux53HhsUCDSZo2.97">equal parts inspiration and lustrous veneer</a>. “Hellenism again!” cried Coubertin in one of his last publications in 1936, invoking the ancient Greek past. “We used to believe that Hellenism was a thing of the past, a dead notion, impossible to revive and inapplicable to current conditions. This is wrong. Hellenism is part of the future.”</p>
<h2>The Olympic future</h2>
<p>At the Panathenaic stadium at Athens, the venue for the first modern Olympics in 1896, Coubertin saw a manifestation of the merger of past and present in Olympic sport. </p>
<p>He received an inscribed seat at the stadium and watched a university team. He observed the novelties (“cinder track, spiked shoes”) but saw, reborn, an eternal athlete. “Their souls were the same and their youth ringed around by the same youthful surge of muscular joy.” (<a href="http://coubertin.org/docs/Olympism%20en.pdf"><em>Olympism</em>: 512</a>) </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204991/original/file-20180206-14078-wbipiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The old Panathenaic Olympic Stadium of Athens, a marble reconstruction of the city’s ancient stadium built for the first modern Olympics held in Athens in 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Coubertin spied one of these student-athletes as he prepared to leave the stadium: “The student [was] full of the joy of living, his body suffused with the voluptuous glow that comes only from healthy tiredness induced by sport… He was like a sculpture representing neo-Olympism, the symbol of future victories awaiting Hellenism—still very much alive, and eternally adapted to human circumstances.” </p>
<h2>Naive or visionary?</h2>
<p>Coubertin’s romantic vision for sport, young people and peace may seem naive. (Though <a href="https://nemeangames.org/">others have put a similar vision into practice in the home of another ancient Greek athletic festival</a>.) Or, considering the <a href="https://www.olympic.org/sponsors">incredible number of corporate partners in the modern Olympics</a>, we may choose to be cynics. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, it remains the case that 124 years after he fitted modern sport with an ancient pedigree, Coubertin’s Games remain an icon, and an enduring reminder of the possibilities of internationalism — <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-ioc-effectively-maintains-a-gag-order-on-nonsponsors-of-the-olympics-63747">often in spite of themselves</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter J. Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the Olympics get underway, what would the man who founded the modern Olympic movement think? Pierre de Coubertin’s vision of the Olympics as a tool of peace and faith in youth still resonates.Peter J. Miller, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of WinnipegLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/619792016-08-17T05:03:50Z2016-08-17T05:03:50ZWhy being a sporting role model isn’t as simple as most people think<p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-17/olympic-spirit-displayed-after-fall-on-track-in-rio/7749930">New reports</a> of Nikki Hamblin (New Zealand) stopping during the 5000m finals at the Rio Olympics to help fellow competitor Abbey D’Agostino (US) after they’d crashed on the track have evoked the “Olympic spirit”. The New Zealander also waited until D'Agostino, who was injured in the fall, could continue the race, sacrificing any chance of catching up to the main pack.</p>
<p>Hamblin’s actions are reminiscent of a small handful of other such moments at previous Olympics. Canadian sailor Lawrence Lemieux abandoned his silver medal position in the 1988 Seoul Olympics to rescue the crew of a capsized competing vessel. Lemieux missed out on a regular medal in the event, but was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for Sportsmanship by the International Olympic Committee president, who said his act embodied the Olympic ideal.</p>
<p>Athletes are increasingly expected to be good role models. But while Lemieux is outstanding, we don’t usually expect athletes to sacrifice their chance of winning to help others. In fact, the ideal of good sportsmanship carried to this extreme would be in tension with that other aim of Olympic competition – winning. </p>
<p>What, then, is the right balance between sportsmanship and coming out on top?</p>
<h2>The right stuff</h2>
<p>Discussion about athletes as role models often arises in response to bad behaviour. Recent on and off-court incidents involving tennis player Nick Kyrgios, for instance, prompted a public discussion about his <a href="https://theconversation.com/character-and-behaviour-off-the-field-should-not-be-selection-criteria-for-the-olympics-60520">suitability for Olympic selection</a>.</p>
<p>The contrasting cases of Lemieux and Kyrgios invite a distinction between two different meanings of role model. On the one hand, it picks out exceptional individuals such as Lemieux who exemplify qualities like sportsmanship. And, in a more mundane sense, it applies to anyone in the public eye. </p>
<p>All Olympic athletes are role models in the mundane sense. They represent their country, wearing its Olympic colours. Their performance is televised and commented on. Often, commentators also recount the athlete’s personal story to engage the audience watching their performance on television. </p>
<p>Given this, and since children are encouraged to follow and emulate their achievements, perhaps it is reasonable to expect that Olympic athletes meet a minimum standard of conduct. </p>
<p>Some minimum standards are already built into the rules of sport. An athlete such as Oscar Pistorius, who is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/06/oscar-pistorius-jailed-for-xx-years-reeva-steenkamp">serving time for murder</a>, for instance, cannot represent his country in the Olympics during his sentence. </p>
<p>Likewise, athletes who are involved in match-fixing or use performance-enhancing drugs are usually suspended. In extreme cases, unsporting behaviour can also be punished by disqualification. Several women’s badminton players <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/01/sports/la-sp-on-badminton-scandal-20120801">were disqualified</a> during the London 2012 Games, for instance, when they were found to be attempting to lose matches to secure easier finals.</p>
<h2>Increasing scrutiny</h2>
<p>But should we require more than this? Public scrutiny of athletes is increasing. This includes their political views, how they use their money and free time, and how they treat their partners and children. </p>
<p>Social media give us access to athletes’ personal lives and opinions. Improved microphones and cameras capture more of what happens on the field than ever.</p>
<p>One justification for this scrutiny is the influence of sports culture on wider society. When Kyrgios made a comment about opponent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/aug/14/nick-kyrgios-apologises-stan-wawrinka-comment--atp-fine">Stan Wawrinka’s girlfriend</a>, it rang alarm bells for those worried about <a href="https://theconversation.com/playing-the-woman-healy-and-kyrgios-expose-sports-sexism-problem-46137">sexism in sport</a>. </p>
<p>Identifying his outburst as an instance of “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3196589/Nick-Kyrgios-sledge-Stan-Wawrinka-puts-Thanasi-Kokkinakis-Donna-Vekic-spotlight-Australian-tennis-bad-boy-said-pair-slept-Vekic-started-dating-Wawrinka.html">slut shaming</a>”, mainstream media outlets drew attention to the way athletes’ behaviour can normalise sexist cultural practices. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, we are often blind to the social injustices around us. So while current sensitivity to sexism means Krygios’ comments to Wawrinka were widely condemned, in many cases it is those who draw attention to social problems who are criticised.</p>
<h2>Negative publicity</h2>
<p>In fact, some of the greatest role models in Olympic history were initially censured for their commitment to causes that were controversial at the time. </p>
<p>Tommy Smith and John Carlos’ <a href="http://time.com/3880999/black-power-salute-tommie-smith-and-john-carlos-at-the-1968-olympics/">black power salute</a> on the podium at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico is remembered by many as a defining moment in Olympic history. But, at the time, they were expelled from the Olympics and vilified at home. </p>
<p>More recently Australia’s beloved Indigenous runner, Cathy Freeman, was criticised for flying the Aboriginal flag at the 1994 <a href="http://nga.gov.au/federation/Detail.cfm?WorkID=27708">Commonwealth Games</a>. She was described as “un-Australian” and accused of politicising sport. </p>
<p>Six years later, the public felt differently. Freeman’s gold medal run in the 400m sprint at the Sydney 2000 Olympics was hailed as a moment of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/athletics/15-years-ago-today-cathy-freeman-ran-her-way-into-the-nations-heart-20150925-gjuo2q.html">reconciliation</a> between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.</p>
<p>Out gay athletes such as 2008 diving <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/diving/a-perfect-10-as-mitcham-dives-for-gold/2008/08/23/1219262633209.html">gold medallist</a> Matthew Mitcham are widely hailed as role models for gay, lesbian and bisexual kids. In contrast, intersex athletes still face accusations of cheating and risk of <a href="https://oii.org.au/30507/special-rapporteur-fgm/">human rights violations</a>. </p>
<p>Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska, who was stripped of her 1964 Olympic medals due to a failed gender test, was listed recently as one of the Olympics’ <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/tarnished-gold-some-of-the-great-olympics-cheats-7869830.html">greatest cheats</a>. But she would not fail current testing criteria. In a different era, Klobukowska might be regarded as a role model and trailblazer for intersex rights.</p>
<p>This suggests that it’s very difficult to pin down which athletes are good role models. But to underline just how subjective it is, it is worth considering one final type of role model athlete: the redeemed sinner. </p>
<h2>When prodigals return</h2>
<p>Perhaps the best example at this Olympic Games is US swimmer Michael Phelps. He is almost as well known for his drink-driving arrests and recreational drug use as for his achievements in the pool. But in a recent <a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/16425548/michael-phelps-prepares-life-2016-rio-olympics">feature article</a>, journalist Wayne Drehs argues that the swimmer has changed. </p>
<p>The new Phelps is presented as a self-aware teetotaller, rehabilitated from his addictions and reunited with his father. He sounds like the sort of person we would be happy for children to emulate. </p>
<p>But is Phelps a really a good role model, or has Drehs just spun a good story? </p>
<p>Given that there is no bright line between those who are good role models and those who are not, we need to be cautious about making rules for athletes’ conduct. Such rules are as likely to be used against the next Tommy Smith or John Carlos as Nick Kyrgios. </p>
<p>But what about the influence of athletes on kids? This is more of a problem if bad behaviour goes unremarked. Quality conversations at home and in the media about the things athletes do can help. This is perhaps most important when behaviour reflects social practices, such as how we treat women or those from different backgrounds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katrina Hutchison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Athletes are increasingly expected to be good role models. But we don’t usually expect them to sacrifice their chance of winning to help others.Katrina Hutchison, Postdoctoral research fellow, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/619042016-07-27T10:44:33Z2016-07-27T10:44:33ZAll the Olympics are a stage, and all the athletes merely players: the rich history of the modern Games<p>The Olympics transfix us. Six in every ten people in the world – including both you, dear reader, and me – watched the London 2012 Olympics. Use of the word Olympics increased in relative frequency 3,300% between 1924 and 1984. But what are the Olympics to us, how are we to read them socially and politically?</p>
<p>The Olympic Games are a theatre — sometimes farce, sometimes tragedy, theatre of the absurd, opera buffa, reality TV, morality play or soap opera — where geopolitical, social and technological dramas are played out. </p>
<p>The Olympic village (which first appeared in the 1932 Los Angeles Games) is itself a microworld, where all nationalities, creeds and colours come together and everyday dramas of sex, politics, human achievement and human weakness are played out. </p>
<p>Olympic competition is itself a media-constructed reality.</p>
<h2>The Olympics as cinema</h2>
<p>There’s always been an easy spillover between the Olympics and the mass media. Athletes have slipped seamlessly into media celebrity. Olympic weightlifter Harold Sakata won a silver medal in the 1948 London Olympics, but became better known as Oddjob in the James Bond film Goldfinger. </p>
<p>Less known is British freestyle wrestler Ken Richmond, the bloke who bangs the huge bronze gong at the start of J. Arthur Rank films. Appropriately, he won a bronze medal at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.</p>
<p>But cinematic links with the Olympics go much further back. Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie (gold medallist in three successive Olympics from 1928) became one of the highest-paid actors in the world. </p>
<p>Buster Crabbe (US gold medallist swimmer 1932) appeared in over 100 movies. Like Crabbe, shot-putter Herman Brix (silver medal, Amsterdam 1928), swimmer Johnny Weissmuller (five gold medals 1924-1928) and decathlete champion Glenn Morris (1936) all appeared as Tarzan, the last <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan%27s_Revenge">alongside US Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm</a> (1928 and 1932). </p>
<p>Weissmuller, fondly remembered by children of my generation as Jungle Jim, featured in Tarzan’s celebrated <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bc7KDyLV80">nude swim</a>, ostensibly with Maureen O’Sullivan, but actually with stand-in Olympic and world champion swimmer Josephine McKim.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131918/original/image-20160726-31198-zdapaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131918/original/image-20160726-31198-zdapaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131918/original/image-20160726-31198-zdapaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131918/original/image-20160726-31198-zdapaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131918/original/image-20160726-31198-zdapaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131918/original/image-20160726-31198-zdapaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131918/original/image-20160726-31198-zdapaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Buster Crabbe, US gold medallist, in Tarzan the Fearless (1933).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tom Simpson/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Olympics have also been the subject <em>of</em> film. Glenn “Tarzan” Morris also appeared in Leni Riefenstahl’s superb documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030522/">Olympia (1938)</a>, considered one of the best films ever made. </p>
<p>The classic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082158/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Chariots of Fire (1981)</a> was a morality play looking at the clash of spiritual and worldly values, when the evangelical Scottish athlete Eric Liddell refused to run on Sunday and sacrificed his chance of winning the 100-metre sprint. Liddell later returned to his birthplace in China as a missionary, only to die in a Japanese internment camp weeks before the liberation. </p>
<p>Spielberg’s dark <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408306/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Munich (2005)</a> explored the massacre of Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Games, and more recently <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106611/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Cool Runnings (1993)</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1083452/">Eddie the Eagle (2016)</a> have recounted some of the farcical aspects of the Games – the equally improbable efforts of a Jamaican bobsleigh team and an English ski-jumper.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jpdg5XOZZDY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Even Olympic venues are like film sets, scattered across the world’s most exotic destinations from Paris to Rio. Just like film sets, they’re often improvised and dismantled soon after the Games have finished. </p>
<p>Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer, improvised the 1936 Olympic stadium using 152 anti-aircraft searchlights pointed straight upwards. The <a href="http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/37/3/Teil_2.pdf">Lichtdom</a>, said British ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson, was “like being inside a cathedral of ice”. </p>
<p>Hermann Göring, never a fan of high art (“Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’, I reach for my revolver”), was unimpressed; Speer had commandeered all the anti-aircraft searchlights in Berlin, leaving the city unprotected. </p>
<p>The Berlin Olympic Village was converted to military barracks soon after the Games; perhaps the Allies should have read the signs. </p>
<h2>… as political drama</h2>
<p>In the ancient Olympics, warring states agreed to lay down their arms and establish an Olympic peace — Pax Olympica. In the modern era, the Games become a stylised working out of geopolitical tensions. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/spirit/english/e_spirit">George Orwell</a> famously described sport as “war without the bullets”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and British, Russians and Poles, and Italians and Jugoslavs, each match to be watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Olympic nations represent a kind of global geopolitics in miniature, shifting, coalescing and dividing as global politics change. The old Soviet Union is now represented by 15 national Olympic committees, the former Yugoslavia by seven, and the two Germanies by one. </p>
<p>There are, in fact, more Olympic “nations” – 206 – than there are countries in the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/member-states/">United Nations – 193</a>. </p>
<p>The International Olympic Committee (IOC) crystallises and provides the imprimatur for new geopolitical realities: accepting Japan back into the fold of civilised nations in 1952, and Germany in 1956; rehabilitating South Korea after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Park_Chung-hee">10.26 assassination</a> of president Park Chung-Hee by awarding it the 1988 Games; acknowledging the Soviet Union and Communist China in 1952; and refusing recognition of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo in 1936. </p>
<p>While the IOC Charter strictly forbids direct political interference in national Olympic committees, there is a wide gap between theory and practice. After the Soviet soccer team lost to heterodox Yugoslavia at the Helsinki Games in 1952 (a 5-5 draw; then 1-3 in the replay), Stalin disbanded the team, who were provided with new homes “inside the Arctic Circle”. </p>
<p>He had a historical precedent: in 1912, Tsar Nicholas dissolved the Russian soccer team after their 16-0 loss to Germany in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Clearly, Stalin set the bar a bit higher than the tsar.</p>
<p>The Games have also been the stage for celebrated political set pieces. I was 10 months old when there was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_in_the_Water_match">blood in the water</a> during the waterpolo clash between the Soviet Union and Hungary in the 1956 Melbourne Games. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131921/original/image-20160726-23692-1y7moqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131921/original/image-20160726-23692-1y7moqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131921/original/image-20160726-23692-1y7moqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131921/original/image-20160726-23692-1y7moqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131921/original/image-20160726-23692-1y7moqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131921/original/image-20160726-23692-1y7moqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131921/original/image-20160726-23692-1y7moqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s black power salute at the 1968 Mexican Olympic Games.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Carlos,_Tommie_Smith,_Peter_Norman_1968cr.jpg">By Angelo Cozzi via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Hungarians, on their long sea voyage to the Antipodes, were unaware of the Soviet invasion of their homeland. The clash was a bloody affair, with the Hungarians ultimately winning 4-0 and going on to win the gold medal. </p>
<p>In 1968, the Mexican military killed at least 49 students protesting against the Games in the Tlatelolco Massacre. Mexico also saw the Olympic podium used to stage the celebrated black power salute by John Carlos and Tommie Smith, with the Australian silver medallist Peter Norman stood by.</p>
<p>In 1972, militants from the Palestinian Black September movement murdered 11 Israeli athletes in the Munich Games village. </p>
<h2>… as feminist realism</h2>
<p>Women first appeared in the 1900 Olympics. The 22 women among the 997 athletes were limited to ladylike sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian and golf. Over the years, the number of sports open to women has gradually increased, bringing, in 2016, the unthinkable — women’s rugby. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131924/original/image-20160726-31195-19n1x4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131924/original/image-20160726-31195-19n1x4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131924/original/image-20160726-31195-19n1x4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131924/original/image-20160726-31195-19n1x4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131924/original/image-20160726-31195-19n1x4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131924/original/image-20160726-31195-19n1x4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131924/original/image-20160726-31195-19n1x4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">English tennis player Charlotte Cooper, who, in 1900, became the first female Olympic champion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlotte_Cooper.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, women constitute about 40% to 45% of Olympic competitors.</p>
<p>There is one unisex sport (equestrian), although at various times both sailing and rifle shooting have been unisex. And there is one sport where, thankfully, men have not been allowed to compete: synchronised swimming. </p>
<p>In others sports, there are odd historical hangovers of sex differences: there is no 1,500-metre swim for women; women compete in the heptathlon rather than the decathlon; and men’s and women’s gymnastics are radically different. </p>
<p>One can only say that there’s been a long march towards gender equality, but we wouldn’t want to take things too far too fast, given that the Australian Matildas, one of the best women’s soccer teams in the world, were recently <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/05/25/matildas-beaten-7-0-by-newcastle-jets-under-15-boys-team/">beaten 7-0 by an under-15 boys’ team</a>.</p>
<p>Gender issues have been played out in the Olympic theatre in other ways. Indeed, the Olympics have more than anything brought into question the whole notion of binary gender and what it means to be a man or a woman. </p>
<p>This issue poses a particular quandary for the Olympics. On the one hand, as the Matildas well know, it’s just not fair to have men competing against women in most sports. On the other hand, it’s not the place of the IOC to be telling people what sex they are.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132111/original/image-20160727-7058-qk84aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132111/original/image-20160727-7058-qk84aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132111/original/image-20160727-7058-qk84aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132111/original/image-20160727-7058-qk84aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132111/original/image-20160727-7058-qk84aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132111/original/image-20160727-7058-qk84aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132111/original/image-20160727-7058-qk84aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Edith Louise Weston in 1936, before gender change operations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weston_(athlete)#/media/File:Mary_Edith_Louise_Weston_1936b.jpg">Unknown via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sex testing was first requested by IOC executive member, and later president, Avery Brundage in 1936, over concerns about British javelin and discus champion Mary Louise Edith Weston. In 1936, Mary had a sex change to become Mark. It ran in the family; a year later, Mark’s elder sister Hilda also had gender re-assignment treatment. </p>
<p>The most famous transgender athlete — until Caitlyn Jenner — was Stanislawa Walasiewickz, a Polish sprinter who won the gold medal in the 100-metre dash in the 1932 Olympics, and silver in Berlin. Later, living as an American under the name Stella Walsh, she was found upon her death (she was shot during an armed robbery in 1981) to have male genitalia.</p>
<p>At the same Games, German Dora Ratjen competed in the high jump, finishing fourth, but was later found to be intersex.</p>
<p>Sex testing initially consisted of a physical examination, literally a “nude parade” of women. Chromosomal testing was introduced in 1968, and in 2012 hormonal testing for abnormal levels of testosterone began. </p>
<p>The official IOC position is that rather than sex testing, this is a test to determine if certain athletes are “unfairly advantaged” by an accident of birth. One can only say that this is a tricky position to maintain: just about every athlete is unfairly advantaged by an accident of birth, certainly relative to you and me, at least. That’s why they’re elite athletes.</p>
<p>In 2009, after South African runner Caster Semenya won gold in the women’s 800-metre run, the International Amateur Athletics Federation began receiving emails from people who had doubts about Semenya’s gender because of her masculine appearance. Some unkind commentators even pointed out that her name was <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/caster-semenya-gender-storm-is-the-answer-790360">an anagram of “Yes, a secret man”</a>. </p>
<p>The results of chromosomal tests were never released, but Semenya was cleared to run again. After winning the silver medal in London, Semenya will be among the favourites in Rio. Watch this space.</p>
<h2>… as romcom</h2>
<p>The Olympic stage is a theatre of sex in another way: it is a festival of youth where the athletes compete, celebrate and fornicate. And <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnclarke/2012/07/16/who-will-win-the-sex-olympics/#7e6efd6d18c6">fornicate they do</a>, by all accounts. </p>
<p>The London Games provided 150,000 condoms — 15 per athlete — for the 17-day event. That’s enough for 30 couplings per pair, or 1.7 couplings per day. </p>
<p>But Olympic love has flourished even in condom-less environments, and in those more innocent days when men’s and women’s living quarters were separated, as they still are for Muslim athletes. </p>
<p>In 1956, US gold medal hammer thrower Hal Connolly met and fell in love with Czech discus champion Olga Fikotová, a cross-Iron Curtain romance that blossomed into a marriage. </p>
<p>The scenario was repeated 48 years later in Athens when gold medallist rifleman Matt Emmons (US) fell for Czech riflewoman Katerina Kurková. Perhaps it was a shotgun wedding. </p>
<p>There are, in fact, dozens of Olympic lovers, most famously legendary Czech distance runner Emil Zatokpek and his wife Dana, a gold-medal-winning javelin thrower, who were witnesses to the Connolly wedding.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132115/original/image-20160727-5645-ovimdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132115/original/image-20160727-5645-ovimdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132115/original/image-20160727-5645-ovimdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132115/original/image-20160727-5645-ovimdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132115/original/image-20160727-5645-ovimdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132115/original/image-20160727-5645-ovimdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132115/original/image-20160727-5645-ovimdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_de_Coubertin#/media/File:Pierre_de_Coubertin_Anefo2.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>… as morality play</h2>
<p>The founder of the Games, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_de_Coubertin">Pierre de Coubertin</a>, envisaged them as a competition between gentleman amateurs, playing fairly and competing on a level playing field, figuratively and literally. </p>
<p>Native American athlete Jim Thorpe was relieved of his two gold medals from the 1912 Stockholm Games when it turned out he had accepted money for playing baseball. </p>
<p>But the myth of professionalism, freighted with classist assumptions, was a lost cause from the start. Gradually, begrudgingly, the Games were opened up to full professionals. </p>
<p>Fairness also proved to be an elusive ideal. </p>
<p>Over 50 Olympic athletes have been stripped of their medals, mainly for doping. Most famously, they included US swimmer Rick DeMont at the Montreal Games, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson at Seoul, US sprinter Marion Jones, who lost her five medals from Atlanta and Sydney, and US cyclists Lance Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton in Sydney and Athens. </p>
<p>The vexed question of artificial performance enhancement has plagued the Olympics, and raises a basic moral question: what does “natural” mean? What is the difference, one might ask, between taking the blood-booster EPO and training in altitude tents, which has the same effect, or for that matter having a natural genetic variant? </p>
<p>Although we think of cheating mainly as a pharmacological indiscretion, there have also been interesting cases of “technology doping”. </p>
<p>Boris Onishchenko, a Russian pentathlete, rigged his electrofoil at the 1976 Olympics to mark a score before he actually hit anyone, eliciting a protest from the British. He was known thereafter as “Boris Disonishchenko”. Soviet President Brezhnev was not happy, and Onishchenko was last seen working as a taxi driver in Kiev.</p>
<p>The issue of technological performance enhancement was raised again when the “blade runner” Oscar Pistorius became the first disabled track and field athlete to compete at the able-bodied games. Several sports scientists argued that his blades provided him with an unfair advantage, allowing a greater return of elastic energy. </p>
<h2>After the theatre</h2>
<p>By September, the stage will be dismantled, and our revels will be ended. Our athletes will melt into air, into thin air. The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. </p>
<p>All that will remain will be the cold wind whistling through the empty stadiums and the athletes’ Potemkin villages. Until, that is, we switch on our televisions for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61904/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Olds receives funding from the ARC and the NHMRC. In the past he has also been funded by the Australian Sports Commission.</span></em></p>The Olympic Games are a theatre — sometimes farce, sometimes tragedy, reality TV, morality play or soap opera — where geopolitical, social and technological dramas are played out.Tim Olds, Professor of Health Sciences, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.