31 March 2008

Olympic Games Are World’s Biggest Magnet for Publicizing Causes

Global audience watches competition and harmony among athletes

U.S. track star Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. (© AP Images)

By Eric Green
Staff Writer

Washington -- The Olympic Games offer the optimum moment for individuals or groups to share their grievances and demands with the world, several leading U.S. sports journalists tell America.gov.

Washington Post sports columnist and best-selling author John Feinstein says because the Olympics are a “worldwide platform, they’re seen as a natural target for people who want to make a political statement.”

“Obviously governments and political factions … know that the attention of the world is going to be on the Olympics. So if they have a statement of some kind to make, this is an ideal arena for it,” said Feinstein, whose new book about baseball, called Living on the Black, will be coming out May 1.

Feinstein said the Olympics are the Number 1 event for attracting controversy because “it’s become a tradition to use the Olympics for political purposes.”

He said the World Cup football championship probably is watched by more people than the Olympics.  But the World Cup, said Feinstein, does not draw the same type of political attention as the Olympics “perhaps because the United States has not been an important participant” in the football tournament “for most of the last 50 years.”

OLYMPICS ATTRACT THE WORLD

Christine Brennan, an award-winning sports columnist for USA Today, agrees with Feinstein’s assessment that the Olympics are the “Number 1 spot in the world for those who want to demonstrate for or against various causes.”

The reason for this, she said, is that the Olympics “attract the world.” Other events such as the World Cup football championship are “huge” in a big part of the world, “but nothing outdoes the Olympics.”

The Olympics are the “largest regularly scheduled meeting of the world -- only wars get bigger and of course they are not necessarily scheduled,” said Brennan, also a best-selling author and a commentator for several U.S. television and radio networks.

Because Olympics are scheduled events, “that lets everyone know that’s the place to be if you do want to protest or have your cause be heard,” said Brennan, who has covered every Olympics since 1984.

Derartu Tulu leads Elana Meyer in the 10,000-meters in 1992. After Tulu won, the two took a victory lap together. (© AP Images)

Brennan said the Olympics are a “magnet” for protesters and political controversy. Despite contentions otherwise, Brennan said the Olympics always have been about politics. The athletes, she pointed out, walk into the Olympic opening ceremonies behind the flag of their country.

Brennan said the political nature of the Olympics aptly was demonstrated when German dictator Adolf Hitler tried to use the 1936 games in Berlin to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. She said U.S. track star Jesse Owens showed the fallacy of Hitler’s claims when the African American won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

Brennan also cited the tragic aspects of the Olympics, such as when 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered by terrorists during the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, Germany. In addition, she said several hundred Mexican student protesters were killed in demonstrations before the 1968 games in Mexico City, and violence in the streets preceded the 1988 games in Seoul, South Korea.

Brennan said she is not “surprised at all” about demonstrations continuing against China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics, which take place August 8-24. The protests center on the Chinese government’s human rights policies and other issues.

The only thing that surprises Brennan is that the protests have started so far in advance of the games, which she said “portends that this could be the most protested Olympics … ever.”

OLYMPICS BUILD BRIDGES AMONG NATIONS, PEOPLE

Philip Hersh, who covers the Olympics for the Chicago Tribune, says “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration” to rank the event as the world’s Number 1 forum for people to publicize their particular cause.

Hersh said the fact that the Olympics are a sports event means that, by nature, more people pay attention to the games than would be the case for a gathering of political leaders, such as a G8 meeting of major industrial nations, or an environmental summit.

Hersh said the Olympics outstrip the football World Cup because that tournament’s finals are reduced to teams from 32 countries, while the Olympics can attract squads from more than 200 nations.

A positive side to the Olympics, said Hersh, is that the Olympics are played in a rare atmosphere where “people from the whole world can get along for 17 days despite the fact they’re competing against each other.”

As evidence of that idealism, Hersh pointed to a victory lap taken at the 1992 Barcelona, Spain, Olympics by 10,000-meter gold medalist Derartu Tulu, a black woman from Ethiopia, with silver medalist Elana Meyer, a white South African. The picture of the two athletes making the victorlap together, said Hersh, was a “great moment for the powerful images” showing what sports “can help produce on the good side.”

See “Athleticism, Politics Indomitable Parts of Olympic Games.”