Disruptions in the Olympics
I never really sat down and thought about the times that the world didn’t have the Olympics in certain uncontrollable events until tonight when I decided to read up on some of the Games’ history. Sure I’ve heard of World War I and II, and other political wars in certain countries but I didn’t really think about how these events affected the Olympics. The past hour has been a great eye-opener for me.
Let me share 4 major forces that caused the cancellation or disruption of the Olympics since it was re-launched in 1896.
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WAR
The occurence of World War I and II prompted the cancellation of 3 Games: 1916, 1940 and 1944 Olympics. I couldn’t even believe that they banned the defeated countries after WWI to play during the 1920 Olympics.
TERRORISM
1972 Munich Games — Who hasn’t heard of the Munich Massacre? There’s even a movie about it now. It’s one of the most horrific things to happen during an event that was supposedly celebrating the unification of coutries through sports.
1996 Atlanta Games — It’s the Centennial Olympic Park bombing that definitely stayed on people’s minds.
And though there were no scheduled games in the year 2001, the 9/11 left a huge dent in people’s spirits, which carried over to the 2002 Winter Olympics because it was the U.S. who hosted it.
POLITICS
There are numerous occasions enumerated where Olympics and Politics mixed which affected a a lot of athletes, organisations and countries in the process.
One example is Hitler’s refusal to award Jesse Owen his medal for winning the long jump with the reason that he is not of Aryan origin during the 1936 Berlin Games. Another example is the latest one, which stated that Afghanistan only returned to the Olympic competition during the 2004 Sydney Games after being suspended between the period of 1999 and 2002. It was only lifted after the U.S. invasion of the country and the subsequent overthrowing of the Taliban regime.
BOYCOTT
It was during the 1956 Melbourne Games when the countries: Spain, Netherlands, and Switzerland boycotted the Games as form of protest to the Warsaw Pact that repressed the Hungarian Revolt. Also, in the same year, countries: Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon, did the same thing because of the Suez Crisis.
After all these, I continued to wonder what else may cause a disruption to the Games, well, I guess anything can happen. Not that I’m wishing it but I reckon as long as there’s conflict somewhere in the world, the Olympics is not safe from it. Even the upcoming 2008 Beijing Games is facing a threat of boycott because, according to some environmental groups, China has allegedly imported materials that are taken from Indonesia’s endangered rain forests, which will be used for the construction for the Games.
Ha. The Olympics isn’t as simple and pretty as it looks after all.
Wikipedia
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