Sporting contradictions
Advocates of the importance of sport to humanity often point to the positive values attendant thereto.
We have, as far as we can recall, heard of the ways in which engagement in sport can help build the human condition, facilitate the inculcation of values that enhance the peaceful coexistence of peoples and engender a way of life that builds communities and societies.
Unfortunately, many of those who involve themselves in sport often fail to study its history across the centuries and therefore do not understand the glaring contradictions that have to be confronted if we are to transform sport into all that those who have gone before us hoped that it would be.
Antiquity
A brief analysis of sport in antiquity immediately reveals the reality of sport as a significantly discriminatory societal exercise.
The much cherished Olympics of Antiquity amongst Mediterranean States, the Ancient Olympics, were actually intended for the upper classes. The lower classes whose livelihood involved labouring for the rest of society, were not seen as sufficiently intelligent to be eligible to compete amongst the better classes. In short, they were the victims of discrimination even as the leaders of their societies advocated the positive nature of sport for the endowment of the human condition.
Students of sporting history would argue that in antiquity, the advocates of sport thought that women were unsuited to sporting endeavour. Here again, there was evidence of discrimination against women.
Importantly, history also reveals that there was generally discrimination on the basis of gender. Even in antiquity, the matter of gender being only binary, was very much challenged by the reality that existed in societies. Being biologically different came at a significant personal cost.
It is unfortunate that so many of the leaders of societies around the world now appear all too eager to destroy history. One wonders if it is that they have grown ashamed of the past which their ancestors created, perpetuated, and left for them to continue to plunder.
Sport in antiquity was also not very clean. Evidence seems to suggest that doping in an effort to gain a competitive advantage over one’s opponents was in existence. How pervasive the practice would have been remains hazy, but it existed.
Similarly, it appears that money was involved in respect of those who attained success in competition. In other words, it appears that sport was not regarded as an exercise in which only amateurs competed.
In antiquity, it appears that sporting prowess was used to highlight the physical superiority of those who won.
Winners were worthy of national acclaim and an endorsement of the viability of the life offered them by their respective societies.
Europe
In the United Kingdom as well as across much of Europe, sport developed as an exercise that could only be mastered by those who were considered superior. This superiority was manifested in the class structure as well as the racial structure of the societies.
The poor were committed to menial tasks, and as much as they sought after sporting endeavours their perceived social status prevented them from being worthy enough to compete against members of the higher classes.
We have to understand that sport is a social endeavour, not merely physical. In this regard, therefore, sport competitions were just another social institution to highlight the superiority of their participants and belittle those who were not considered socially acceptable, incapable of engaging in any endeavour that required the application of intelligence and ultimately, critical thinking.
But the eventual economic challenges facing Europe that yielded industrialisation, expansionism, and urbanisation, across the rest of the world, eventually spawned social degradation. The lower classes were the ones who, despite their overwhelming contribution of labour fuelled economic growth and development, ended up on the streets, impoverished. They were the delinquent with a seeming commitment to deviance of an ever-increasing sort.
The clamour that history seems to suggest was largely philanthropic and which gave rise to the re-birth of the Olympics under the ambit of the modern Olympics and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) may well not be all praiseworthy as many would have us believe.
The philanthropists that established the Olympic Movement are the same ones that abrogated unto themselves the right to create the IOC, a self-perpetuating organisation that is answerable to nought but itself, a phenomenon that exists to this day.
Many analysts have allowed themselves to so readily buy into the seeming idealism that has been deliberately associated with the new institutions under the banner of the Olympics that they have consistently failed to analyse the socialisation that has taken place through all of the foregoing.
A group of wealthy do-gooders created institutions that they fashioned after their own beliefs, values, and ideals, determined that only they had the right to determine who should be considered worthy enough to be brought unto their ranks as self-perpetuating leaders through the centuries thereafter. They created their own rules and continue to do so today, utilising the changing technologies and to sustain their control under the ambit of a benevolence that is bred out of a kind of dictatorship over the participants in sport.
Like all other social institutions, sport has been an agent of socialisation that is in large measure propped up by the financial war chest that it establishes around the world.
The recent spat that FIFA’s declaration of an examination of the potential of adding another World Cup in a four-period created amongst the leadership of the IOC could well be interpreted as confirmation of the anxiety of the IOC and its leadership over the possibility of losing its location at the pinnacle of global sport.
The IOC remains propped up by the advocacy of ‘good causes’ as seeming justification for its continued pursuit of ‘the almighty dollar’, dictating what new sport proves sufficiently attractive to be decidedly lucrative, bolstering its coffers.
Contradictions abound
The contradictory omens about in and around world sport.
The IOC has determined, in its own wisdom, that it will be the ‘unofficial ‘global sport police’. In this regard, it has been engaged in what is increasingly being perceived as a war of attrition against Boxing. It alone knows what is right for the sport.
Many analysts are closely examining the key players involved in the new international boxing entity that is being aggressively promoted.
On another front, the new international Golf organised, created, and backed by ‘oil dollars’ has provided evidence of the role of money in the determination of what sport becomes. It is increasingly less about positive values than the unfettered pursuit of money. It seems less about the enhancement of the human condition than it is about fuelling a new type of greed.
While many rush to support the increasingly fashionable conclusion that ‘sport is changing’, the reality remains ‘the same old khaki pants’, in many respects.
Sport today appears to be as discriminatory as it has always been. Sport leaders seek possession of power much like the leaders of old.
Sport has done precious little to positively combat the ills of societies around us.
We have had growing revelations of the abuses meted out to athletes in sport; indeed, in almost every sphere of life. This is as old as society and sport, yet we appear to have just woken up and now advocate for the world to be concerned about safeguarding.
Our focus in sport is now heavily weighted in favour of attending to the mental health of the athlete, having long ignored the mental health issues of general populations in societies around the world.
Athletes have been among the protagonists of change in every historical period, but their contributions have been largely ignored. Now, as the benevolent dictators of sport have determined in their own wisdom, we can appease them by having them involved in Athletes Commissions whose mandate is often determined for them.
Any time the athletes choose their own pathways, rules are hastily created to curtail their thrust towards independence of thought in respect of their own interests in and through sport.
It remains decidedly difficult to understand the longstanding contradiction that the Olympic Industry can utilise the athletes to generate billions and insist that they are not direct beneficiaries through any form of remuneration. In other spheres, this would have been labelled exploitation. This is not the case in respect of the Olympics.
Winds of Change
The years of exploitation have been impacting the athletes.
Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos committed to raising black-gloved fists after their success in the 200m at the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968. Australia’s Peter Norman understood their cause and supported them by taking his own action on the podium.
James Montague, writing in 2013, noted that, “On his left breast he (Norman) wore a small badge that read: “Olympic Project for Human Rights” – an organization set up a year previously opposed to racism in sport”.
Writing in Sports Illustrated in 2020, Michael Shapiro quoted Tommie Smith as saying, “When I came back, my dad said, ‘There are a lot of people who say you did a bad thing,’” Smith recalls. “I said, ‘Daddy, you’ve been working in the fields your whole life, picking cotton, being a cowboy, and you know there are some things that were done to you and you knew it wasn’t right. I put my hand up to say let’s work together and let’s fight racism. You are working for a man, but he needs to treat you like a man.’”
“He looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Well you better keep talking.’ ”
Importantly, Smith is also quoted as saying to Shapiro, “Those athletes who stand up for the society of righteousness have my right hand, the hand that was in the air in 1968,” Smith says. “We were far ahead of our time trying to break the cycle of ignorance. And it did work to a point, and it’s being taken over now by young folks who are probably highlighted now more than Tommie Smith and John Carlos.” The sporting contradictions will continue to exist. The challenge for all who understand sports’ history is the use to which they put their knowledge and understanding in pursuit of humanity’s sustainable development.
