For its founder Pierre de Coubertin, the Olympics was never going to be merely about sports. The 33-year-old envisaged the event to be a vehicle of change for the world where wars will be fought in sporting arenas and finished there, without any blood being spilled on the battlefields. Although Coubertin’s dream couldn’t prevent two bloody wars from claiming millions of human lives, it did manage to rise from time to time from being just a sporting event to being much more socially significant.
The quadrennial event that brings athletes from all over the world together on one of the biggest sporting stages also brings together different races, identities, cultures together. And with eyes of the whole world on them, it serves as a great opportunity for them to say to the world what their national governments aren’t always listening to.
Here are five instances when the Olympics became the vehicle of social change
1) Jesse Owens shatters Hitler’s pride in 1936
It was 1936 and Adolf Hitler’s cacaphony of Aryan superiority was growing louder by the minute and the Olympics in Berlin were to give him the best chance to not only say it but show it to the world. In a spectacle that would have the world’s attention, Hitler wanted his German athletes to prove what he had been asking the world to believe and what would soon become the basis of his extermination of the Jews.
But Jesse Owens was scripting a tale of his own on the other side of the Atlantic and when he arrived at Berlin, he did what many had failed to do. He left a huge dent on the pride of the German dictator.
Jesse Owens ran like a dream in Berlin and left the world in awe to emerge as the most successful athlete of the 1936 Games. Owens also became the first American to win four track and field gold medals at a single Olympics (100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump), a record that stood unbroken for 48 years.
Although, there still remain doubts whether Hitler refused to shake Owens’ hands after his win, one thing is for sure that he shattered the myth that Hitler was propagating.
2) Tommie Smith and John Carlos Black power salute in 1968
One of the most powerful political statements in the Olympics was witnessed on 16 October, 1968. Egged by African American Sociologist Harry Edwards, who had asked the black Americans to boycott the games, Tommie Smith and John Carlos went one step further when they made a statement on the podium to attract attention to the plight of Blacks in the United States.
Tommie Smith won the 200 metre race with a world-record time of 19.83 seconds while John Carlos secured third place. The moment that remains etched in the annals of history of Olympics as well as Civil Rights movement came when they came to recieve their medals shoeless wearing black socks to bring attention to the poverty of their people.
The two black athletes then, in a show of solidarity with their community back home, raised a black-gloved fist as the American national anthem played.Carlos also wore a necklace of beads which he described "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for”. The pair faced backlash on their return to United States but by then they had given the Olympics one of the most enduring as well as politically powerful images.
3) Women’s inclusion in Olympics in 1900
Women in the 19th century were mostly forbidden from watching sports, let alone participating in them. But 1900 Olympics brought a new dawn in gender equality when 22 women competed in 5 sports - tennis, sailing, crocquet, equestrianism and golf.
In the last Olympics held at London, women accounted for 44% of the athletes who participated, which shows how far women have come in something where they were never expected to excel.
Besides, the IOC has also increased the number of women’s events on the Olympic programme. The move of introducing women in sports in 1900 Olympics in Paris has surely was a big step towards gender equality and their social and cultural empowerment.
4) Cathy Freeman carrying both Australian and Aboriginal flag in Sydney, 2000
Cathy Freeman had earlier stirred up the hornet’s nest when she celebrated her Gold at the 1994 Commonwealth Games by taking a victory lap while carrying the Aboriginal Flag. She won the silver in Atlanta Olympics in the 400m track event, but it was her action in the 2000 Olympics held in Sydney that was laced with a serious political message. Six years after carrying the Aboriginal Flag in Canada, Freeman had become a national icon who had left behind her struggles due to her aboriginal identity.
In Sydeny, Freeman carried both the Aboriginal Flag as well as the national flag of Australia to symbolise the reconcilliation between her community and the white Australians. The move raised some eyebrows as the Aboriginal flag was not recognised by the IOC.
5) South Africa banned from taking part in Olympics on account of apartheid, 1968
All sport in South Africa was segregated by race, with separate clubs and governing bodies. This was making the sporting authorites around the world impatient. Mixing politics and sports didn’t seem a good idea but the scenario in the country was turning bad from worse every year. The problem was compunded with teams reluctance to compete in tournaments that included South Africa. And that’s when it was decided that enough was enough.
Finally, on 21 April 1968, the IOC executive board met and decided that "due to the international climate, the executive committee was of the opinion it would be most unwise for South Africa to participate". This was a massive thumbs down to the racial policy of Apartheid in the country. The country was reinstated into Olympics after the country’s transition to multiracial equality.
