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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: IOC Pretends It Can Stick to Sports

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: IOC Pretends It Can Stick to Sports

by Anne Laurie|  January 10, 20203:03 am| 13 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Organizing & Resistance, Sports

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ICYMI: IOC details rules on political protests at Olympics (from @AP) https://t.co/5OwNiIDhLl

— Stephen Wade (@StephenWadeAP) January 9, 2020

Because ‘banning Russian participation‘ while permitting Russian athletes to participate has already done so much to quiet controversy, the elderly greedheads in charge of window-dressing the Olympics has laid down its markers to soothe the other authoritarian regimes. Per the Guardian:

Politicians and athletes should keep politics out of this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games to protect the event’s neutrality and its status as a peaceful meeting place, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has said.

The Games have seen both political protests by athletes in the past as well as boycotts of nations and Bach said any infusion of politics into the Games in Tokyo starting on 24 July would not be welcome.

The IOC’s guidelines specify which types of athlete protests will not be allowed. Athletes are prohibited by the Olympic Charter’s Rule 50 from taking a political stand in the field of play – like the raised fists by American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Games.

Today’s Olympians now know more about which acts of “divisive disruption” will lead to disciplinary action in Tokyo. They can still express political opinions in official media settings or on social media accounts.

“The mission of the Olympics is to unite and not to divide. We are the only event in the world that gets the entire world together in a peaceful competition,” Bach told reporters after a meeting with the IOC athletes’ commission chief Kirsty Coventry…

Athletes who break protest rules in Tokyo face three rounds of disciplinary action – by the IOC, a sport’s governing body and a national Olympic body.

The new guidelines come after two American athletes were reprimanded by the US Olympic Committee for medal podium protests at the Pan-American Games in August in Lima, Peru. Fencer Race Imboden kneeled and hammer thrower Gwen Berry raised a fist in protest. Both were put on probation for 12 months, a period that covers the Tokyo Olympics.

Other protests in 2019 included swimmers from Australia and Britain refusing to join world championship gold medallist Sun Yang on the podium because the Chinese star has been implicated in doping violations…

Actually, I suppose the highlighted section, exempting ‘official media settings’ and social media accounts, could actually be considered a positive step… if the IOC keeps its word.

As someone already noted, curbing athletes’ free speech rights is itself a political act by IOC. https://t.co/Z9GSDN46LO

— Stephen Wade (@StephenWadeAP) January 10, 2020

?? lawwwwd almighty, I’d be tempted to say this is a surprise but let’s not forget that sport is so ‘neutral’ they let Hitler and NAZI Germany host the Summer Olympics in 1936… actual Nazi Germany fam. https://t.co/DHvQL0qK3b

— Amy Thunig (@AmyThunig) January 10, 2020

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Reader Interactions

13Comments

  1. 1.

    Ninedragonspot

    January 10, 2020 at 3:31 am

    If the IOC wants politics out of sports, let the Taiwanese teams call themselves Taiwanese, not “Chinese Taipei”.

  2. 2.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    January 10, 2020 at 3:35 am

    “political, religious or racial propaganda”

    This is such a joke. They would never penalize someone who thanks Jesus for scoring a goal/touchdown/whatever. I wish they would. The other day Clemson players were attributing their victory to God being on their side and against Ohio St. I mean, it’s so ridiculous, everyone knows God is on LSU’s side.

  3. 3.

    Viva BrisVegas

    January 10, 2020 at 3:54 am

    But in 1936 there was no way to know how the Nazis would turn out. /s

    The Olympic Committee has always been a political body. It is a servant of the status quo, made up of genuine elites (the kind that have private planes on tap).

    Its amateur creed was entirely in aid of marginalising professional athletes to maintain its control over athletics and swimming.

    When that became financially untenable, they embraced corporatism wholeheartedly and have been riding the jetsetting gravy train ever since.

    Once a blood sucking parasite, always a blood sucking parasite.

  4. 4.

    CarolDuhart2

    January 10, 2020 at 4:16 am

    I would also argue that by having nations and states pay for facilities, and allowing them to pay for athletes, it’s inevitably political.  Just the matter of whose politics they cater to in order to have these every four year extravaganzas.

    And even without an explicit ban, a lot of athletes know that they can’t get too political if they want professional careers after their Olympic days are over.  Once they are pro, they could speak out more, but those medals for many mean the difference between paying off those loans incurred while training or not.

    And let us not ignore the repression of political thought that takes place outside those venues:  no demonstrations or picketing so that people could pretend that the real world is not part of this.

  5. 5.

    satby

    January 10, 2020 at 4:50 am

    Haven’t watched the Olympics in probably more than a decade. The jingoistic coverage done here by whatever American broadcaster gets the contract has been a huge turnoff for me. I don’t want to watch soft-focus life journey segments about our plucky little athletes, I want to watch the sport they’re competing in.

  6. 6.

    P Thomas

    January 10, 2020 at 6:47 am

    The Olympics is sports for people who don’t watch sports.  The coverage is all tinkly piano music and stories about the athlete’s dead grandmothers/aunties/granddad or other assorted inspirations.  Then a minute or two of “sports.”

    And, not to mention corrupt to the core.   I catch hell for watching football, and I get my revenge every Olympic session when I get to give crap right back.

  7. 7.

    debbie

    January 10, 2020 at 7:22 am

    @satby:

    Without a billion commercial breaks!

  8. 8.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    January 10, 2020 at 7:29 am

    @satby: The streaming coverage has actually been better the last couple of Olympics. I’ve gotten to watch the horse events and the biathlon exclusively without waiting desperately for little snippets around the “fluff to get the wimmens to watch”.

  9. 9.

    Shalimar

    January 10, 2020 at 9:32 am

    Only event in the world that gets the entire world together in a peaceful competition?  No one at the IOC has ever watched a World Cup?

  10. 10.

    mvr

    January 10, 2020 at 11:56 am

    Tommie Smith and John Carlos are memorialized in a statue in the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture. (One of my many favorite things about it.) I don’t thinnk Thomas Bach will ever be so honored.

  11. 11.

    Duane

    January 10, 2020 at 12:03 pm

    The IOC just challenged a bunch of young, determined people not to do something. Hold my Gatorade, Mr. Bach!

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    January 10, 2020 at 12:29 pm

    How very Avery Brundage of the IOC!  Amazing!

    Every one of these aristocrat assholes needs a tumbrel ride.

  13. 13.

    scav

    January 10, 2020 at 1:30 pm

    I’d be too much to hope for that similar censures will be applied to all those who wrap themselves in the flag and prance about for applause and camera-time afterward I’ve no doubt.

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