The Olympics’ achilles heel

This week the Olympic torch will arrive in the UK to begin its 70 day journey across the country. As the relay makes its way to London and the Opening Ceremony, the torch will be carried by 8000 torchbearers, will visit 1000 places and, in a heroic display of logistical planning, will come within a one hour journey for 95 per cent of the population. The torch is one of the enduring symbols of the Games, a symbol of the sporting spirit uniting people around the world in peaceful competition.

But did you know that the Olympic torch relay was actually invented by the Nazis? It was planned for Berlin 1936 to project the image of the Third Reich as a modern, economically dynamic state with growing international influence. The resurrection of what is an ancient Olympic symbol also helped propagate the Nazi belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich. It was a classic piece of Nazi propaganda: perverting history and publicising contemporary German power.

Sadly, this blatant nationalism is by no means consigned to the Games of the past. Beijing 2008 saw China spending 1.5 times more than the five previous Olympics combined in an attempt to be seen, like Germany in 1936, as a modern, economically dynamic state with growing international influence. And in 2002, at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, President Bush departed from the Olympic charter when he put the words “On behalf of a proud, determined and grateful nation”, in front of the official line, “I declare open the Games of Salt Lake City…”, whilst also cramming the city with more security personnel than were in Afghanistan at the time.
Surely this nationalistic showboating is not what the Olympics is about. In ancient Greece, where city states were constantly at war, the Olympic games brought a general cease-fire known as the Olympic Truce so that enemies on the battlefield could safely attend the event and be united, however briefly, under their universal admiration for sportsmanship. The modern Olympics, meanwhile, fuels the combustible patriotism and nationalism that leaders ignite to back their own war efforts, whether that be in Poland in 1939 or Iraq in 2003.

But why should the Olympics even provoke patriotism? An olympic athlete could spend all her time living and training in one country and then qualify to compete for another. Take recent Team GB recruit Shara Proctor: her country Anguilla – a tiny Caribbean island defined as a British overseas territory – is not recognised by the International Olympic Committee and so, simply by a quirk of bureaucracy, she would not have been allowed to compete at all. The first time she set foot in this country was last year and yet, if she wins her event, the long jump, there is no doubt she will be heralded as a national hero – a British national hero.

Clearly, the spotlight should shine on the sportsman or woman and not the nation. But how can this be achieved? In 1957 the Dutch Olympic Committee came up three proposals with the aim of stripping the Games of their ‘nationalistic and chauvinistic tendencies’:

1) Abolish parades by Olympic athletes under their national colours: group them, instead, according to their sports, and parade them under the banners of the Olympic organisation and the various international sports federations.

2) Substitute a uniform Olympic dress to be worn by all athletes, instead of having each country design its own attire.

3) Change the medal presentation ceremony so that winners stand under the Olympic flag instead of their national flag, while the Olympic hymn rather than the respective national anthem is played.

While these proposals seem rather radical and almost sinisterly communist, they make excellent sense. The IOC should ditch the flag-waving and jingoism and dare to go with the Dutch.