AWe are only one and a half years apart in terms of age, whereas I am four years earlier at the Olympic Games – and so we are worlds apart. When Thomas Bach, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), writes in an essay (“Welt” of October 24th) how the “Olympic spirit” in him when he moved into the Olympic Village in Montreal in 1976 “awoke his eyes opened for the unifying power of sport, ”then I remember my departure from the Olympic Village at the end of the Munich Summer Games in 1972: traumatized by the murder of eleven Israeli Olympic participants and a German police officer. The vulnerability of the Games, which was criminally underestimated by the German authorities, was brutally demonstrated. The Olympic spirit united us in sorrow.
Since then I have known: Olympia must defend itself if it wants to fulfill its mission and must not allow itself to be abused.
For Bach, the Olympic competitions can be “a model for a world in which everyone adheres to the same rules”. But corruption and abuse scandals as well as systematic doping, orchestrated by officials in numerous sports associations and countries, undermine this claim.
The rules of the sports may be the same for everyone, but what rules apply beyond pure competition, above all: Who are they good for and who are they harming?
Bach postulates: “The Olympic Games are not about politics.” But the political neutrality that Bach invokes must not lead to self-castration. The appeal that “neither the awarding of the games nor the participation in them (…) represent a political judgment about the host country” opens the door to the collection.
Because silence can also be an eminently political statement, see the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. Good IOC expression at the evil Nazi Games, even the victory of the African American Jesse Owens in the men’s 100-meter final turned out to be an unplanned one – political demonstration. 32 years later, in 1968 in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, first and third in the final over 200 meters, protested at the awards ceremony with a fist in black glove against the racism that also applied to them in their American homeland.
That was against the rules and, as IOC advisor Michael Vesper stated succinctly in the FAZ, they “were punished for it”. Not a word about the fact that fifty years later the action and its punishment have long since been rated very differently.
The current offensive of the IOC for political neutrality and compliance with rules is directed against athletes who want to actively fight for respect for fundamental Olympic values. This concerns Rule 50, Paragraph 2 of the Olympic Charter: “No type of demonstration or political, religious or racist propaganda is allowed at Olympic sites, venues or in any other area.”
Of course you can paint horror scenarios on the wall: an award ceremony where the winner demonstrates for liberal abortion rules, the second defends the stricter Polish law and the third holds up an embryo photo – who wants that?
The decisive factor is the demarcation: What does “demonstration” or “propaganda” mean? Is active commitment to Olympic values a personal expression of opinion? In view of the state of the world, isn’t this commitment needed right now in order to assert the Olympic spirit?
The dilemma between a gesture against racism and the dignity of an award ceremony cannot be resolved by referring to the prohibition of “racist propaganda”. How it could work, shows the demand of Athleten Deutschland eV, the “commitment for free-democratic basic values or the realization of human and basic rights” – which ultimately means: for the Olympic values - through “dedicated rules and clear agreements to enable” . But the IOC has not yet responded to this.
The World Football Association Fifa is far more flexible: At the Fifa World Cup 2018 in Russia, it classified the protest by women against the stadium ban for spectators in Iran as a “social issue”. This legitimized the banners. Football also reacted pragmatically to the Black Lives Matter movement: Although the use of the pitch for “non-sporting rallies” violates the principles of football, anti-discrimination and anti-racism are essential principles of football, which is why penalties should be avoided if footballers are playing kneel down.
The whole world is talking about the coronavirus. All news and analyzes about the spread and control of the pandemic in your e-mail inbox every day.
The IOC should first problematize its own dilemma and resolve it as quickly as possible: The Belarusian dictator Lukashenka, who – which the IOC cannot deny either – carries out massive repression against his own population, including athletes, is also President of the National Olympic Committee. Political neutrality becomes a farce as long as politics and Olympic sport are so intertwined, but the IOC strictly distinguishes between the role of head of government and that of NOK president. Can the NOK’s silence on the repression of athletes in Belarus also be seriously regarded as political neutrality and thus approved?
For a well-fortified Olympics, it is high time to work with athletes to find a way how Tokyo 2020 (summer games) and – probably even more explosive for the IOC – Beijing 2022 (winter games) convincingly combine the commitment to Olympic values with political neutrality can.
According to Thomas Bach, it is worthwhile “to fight day after day so that the Olympic Games can develop this magic and unite the whole world in peace”.
This struggle requires taking an offensive stand for the Olympic values - and kneeling if necessary.
The author is a lawyer, has been working voluntarily in sport for decades and heads the sport working group of Transparency International Germany.
.
