Sport’s enduring failure to live up to its own philosophy
As far back as we could remember sport has been marketed as a powerful too for the unification of societies. More recently, we have been inundated with the increasing engagement of major international sporting organisations, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and football’s governing body, FIFA, in what global society generally accepts as ‘good causes’. We are being informed of the ‘exceptional’ work being done here and there in an effort to combat climate change, protect nature, promote gender equity, forge unity and assist refugees through sport and a host of other initiatives.
Unfortunately, not enough time is taken to engage in critical analysis of the background to these changes, who are responsible for their origins and/or their sustainability, the processes and personnel involved, the intended versus real outcomes and adequate monitoring, evaluation and learning.
Additionally, we are always being reminded of people in sport constitute a family. This myth has been exposed so often that it is difficult for some to grasp its relevance. It does appear in reality that the ‘family’ concept in sport is often something of a panacea and an aspiration.
‘Family’ in sport
In today’s world, more than ever before, sport leaders are anxious to promote sport as the great unifier in society. Close analysis however reveals a different and highly contradictory reality.
Some may recall the plight of Jesse Owens in track and field athletics. His achievements in the USA prior to attending the creating history at the Olympics in 1936 Hitler’s Germany. Owen’s great athletics achievements at home and at the Olympics remain legendary. But just as legendary is the racism to which he was exposed at different levels. As fate would have it, we hear more about the exemplary relationship he had with German athlete, Luc Long, which started in the Long Jump competition area during the Olympics and lasted throughout their lives. Less spoken about is the racism he experienced at home in an America that disrespected blacks whom they considered less than human and for whom, merely being black may well have been a justification for being lynched.
The world’s greatest boxer, Muhammad Ali, threw away his Olympic Gold medal because of the racism to which he was exposed following his victory at the Olympics. The American celebration of his remarkable feat did not extend to a recognition of him as a man as opposed to being a black athlete.
Many tend to ignore the fact that in the USA, blacks were encouraged to get involved in music and sporty because they were deemed incapable and unworthy of pursuing academic excellence. This was consistent with the global thinking and the pseudoscientific work deliberately encouraged to justify the indignity to which people of the darker hue were constantly exposed.
The harsh reality in global sport at the time and which continues today, is that black achievers in sport may well be anachronistic and not the norm.
Football
Football is one of the sports where the members of teams are eager to celebrate a goal of a victory by happily embracing each other. Fans of victorious teams also engage in similar practices. Unfortunately, the ‘family’ concept is unreal, in an increasing number of cases around the world, and not enough is being done to effect change.
On the field of play some black players are constantly subjected to racial slurs from both players and supporters of teams.
Vinicius the Brazilian footballer has been so racially abused that he has spoken of wanting to stop playing the game at which he is so outstanding. His consciousness has since allowed him to respond to the racist attacks but lifting his performance in football as a means of responding to the racist chants.
On 8 July of this year, the BBC carried a story in which they cite Troy Townsend lamenting the fact that ‘there are many out there’ who are only too eager for a black footballer to miss an opportunity on the field of play so they can justify the racist chanting and abuses they so badly wish to hurl.
Townsend is quoted as follows: “I don’t think things have changed…Because it is a positive tournament at the moment – for results – the fans are behind the team. At crucial moments, they will show their support. But I do feel there are many out there waiting for a negative moment, waiting for an English player to miss a penalty, so they can go back to their social platforms with that whole negativity around the players who were taking the penalty. We have seen white English players miss penalties before but they are never targeted or described by the colour of their skin…”
Townsend concluded, “They are waiting. Why do I say that? Because we have the information behind it.
“People will celebrate up until the last moment but, unfortunately, when something has gone wrong, as perceived in their eyes, they will target these individuals.
“The last Euros was the biggest scenario we have seen and some of the messages I have seen that were directed at players were absolutely disgraceful.”
Gymnastics
We have seen and heard of the case of successive groupings of gymnasts in the USA who were abused by Dr Nassar.
Earlier this year, ‘The Justice Department says it will pay $138.7 million to settle 139 claims arising from sexual abuse committed by former physician and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
The settlement agreements will resolve the claims lodged against the United States that alleged the FBI failed to conduct an adequate investigation of Nassar’s conduct. It also will likely put an end to years of efforts by some of the gymnasts including Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney to hold federal authorities accountable for not adequately investigating the dozens of allegations.
Nassar was a Michigan State University sports doctor as well as a lead physician for Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics. For nearly two decades, he sexually abused hundreds of victims, including elite and gold medal-winning Olympic gymnasts, under the guise of performing medical treatments.’ (https://www.npr.org/2024/04/23/1246647531/doj-settles-larry-nassar-usa-gymnastics-sexual-assault-victims)
Gymnasts had gone after USA Gymnastics, the governing body for the sport in the United States as well as the USOC (now USOPC) and had obtained a settlement in which ‘USA Gymnastics, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee and their insurers agreed to pay $380 million’ to ‘the victims of Larry Nassar, the former Olympic doctor who sexually abused girls for decades’.
The Olympic Movement
The world is aware that racial discrimination in sport is not in any way restricted to football. There is evidence in the vast majority of sports.
The prevalence of FIFA’s Fair Play awards has done little to change the persistence of racial and other forms of discrimination in sport. The same can be said of the IOC’s Olympic Truce, trumpeted as a major sport initiative. Conflict continued throughout the Paris2024 Olympic Games. The fact that efforts continue to be made to suggest that the Olympic Truce is impactful, there is little evidence that this is the reality.
In the aftermath of the Paris2024 Olympics, much has been made about the global impact in terms of unity and peace. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Whilst athletes have been on record as lauding the ‘togetherness’ they enjoyed during the Games, not many can speak to any enduring impact that the brief few days together will have on them becoming advocates of sport as the great unifier that the leaders of the Olympic Movement seem to suggest.
The IOC is still a self-perpetuating sport organisation that operates a relatively ‘closed shop’. In today’s world, a handful of individuals continue an archaic tradition of determining amongst themselves who should be brought into the ‘fold’ and join them in dictating the future of sport through the future of the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Movement, all as they would wish them to be.
National Olympic Committees, 206 in all, are caught up in the tragi-comic pantomime, a contemporary legacy of European expansionism, essentially colonial patronage. This is the reason that post any edition of the Olympics the leadership boasts the significant increase in revenue generated by the event. The beneficiaries of some of the largess so generated, become sated and pursue in their own respective domestic domains the same approach to leadership and ‘political’ dominance that they are victims of at the level of the IOC. This approach to global sport leadership is repeated several-fold in the different international sport federations, adding significantly to the ready acceptance of the repeated spawning of colonisation through sport.
There should be no surprise that that the most recent General Assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), convened in Cascais, Portugal, last week, St Vincent and the Grenadines raised concerns about the fact that too many of the Executive Members of the organisation are IOC members. It seems as through ANOC is the IOC speaking to itself. The argument presented suggests that it is highly unlikely that IOC members sitting on the ANOC Executive will agree to any decisions proposed by the NOCs that seem to challenge the status quo if the IOC, especially in the area of governance.
The St Vincent and the Grenadines Olympic Committee therefore submitted a proposal for meaningful change to take place within ANOC, starting with a Task Force being established to undertake a comprehensive review of the organisation’s reason for being in existence, governance and more of operation.
The argument was in part based on the firm belief that the Olympic Movement itself needs to undergo fundamental change.
Whilst ANOC has been in existence for several years its impact on the IOC has been at best minimal. It has never been a forum at which NOCs are afforded the opportunity to really make decisions in respect of which NOC leaders are submitted to the IOC for membership, in the way that Athletes are allowed to. There seems a high level of inconsistency regarding the application of the reforms proposed by the Kissinger Commission in the wake of the post Salt Lake City Scandal. Athletes are the main producers of the windfall profits the IOC consistently boast about but are not considered worthy of receipt of any of the values they generate through their exciting performances. There may well be some form of moral injustice involved here.
