There is never a lack of big words when it comes to the Olympics. We then talk about the Olympic values, about the legacy that the Games leave behind in the host cities, so that they may inspire generations of young people around the world. World peace is also invoked.
This doesn’t happen in Lausanne, the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee, no, in New York, at the United Nations, an Olympic ceasefire is called for whenever the Games are scheduled to take place again. The General Assembly wished last November that all countries in the world should lay down their arms for the duration of the competitions, including for the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
It was that one first appearance by Kirsty Coventry on a major diplomatic stage. The two-time Olympic swimming champion from Zimbabwe has been President of the IOC since June. She dutifully thanked the envoys of Italy, the host country of the games. She also thanked Monaco and Qatar. Why is that, you may ask? The two countries share the chairmanship of the informal “Group of Friends of Sports for Development and Peace” at the UN. Of course, Coventry knows that things aren’t going too well for world peace right now. Now she wants to see what she sees as an innocent sport separated from this warlike world.
“When athletes come together, they don’t see nationality, religion or origin. They see each other as athletes. They show us what human coexistence can be in the best sense,” she said in the best Olympic peace chant. She then explained how bad it must be for an athlete to be excluded from the games despite proven performance. Athletes should not be held responsible for anything that governments do. Since then, the doors of several associations have opened again for female athletes from Russia and Belarus.
At the Paralympics again with the Russian flag
After Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, the IOC stipulated that that only athletes from warmongering nations who do not belong to a military organization and who have not allowed themselves to be used for war propaganda are allowed to take part in international competitions. In addition, they were only allowed to perform under a neutral flag without a national emblem or anthem. This applies to 20 athletes from Russia and Belarus at the upcoming Winter Games.
All of these rules have already fallen for youth sports. The Russian flag will also be flown again at the Paralympics, the world games for people with disabilities, which begin on March 6th in Milan. Nobody in the IOC will really think that this will serve world peace. But the decision fits with the picture of two worlds that has been painted at the IOC for decades. There is a world in which all people live, one in which there can sometimes be war. And there is the ideal sports world, which is supposed to exist completely independently of it.
The IOC clings to this worldview like a defiant child, even though major conflicts have penetrated the sporting world at every Games so far. The rules with which the IOC wants to ensure that politics does not affect sport cannot prevent this. One of these rules states that political messages are not allowed to be shown at the competition venues. At the Summer Games in Paris a year and a half ago, Afghan breakdance artist Manizha Talash was removed from the competition because she wore a scarf with the words “Free Afghan Women” written on it. Then there was just more talk about the situation of women in Afghanistan and about the IOC, which likes to proudly say that as many women as men took part in the Paris Games.
The culture wars of today also penetrate the world of games all too quickly. After the opening ceremony of the Paris Games was celebrated as a celebration of diversity, the IOC had to allow itself to be insulted as woke from the right-wing corner. Also the debate about the boxer Imane Khelifwho was blatantly called a man by notorious anti-trans activists after a corrupt boxing association claimed a gender test showed she was not a woman, the IOC failed to catch.
Athletes as propaganda tools
And the games in Milan and Cortina had not yet started when things were already starting to relax a heated debate about the deployment of Donald Trump’s ICE henchmen to protect the US delegation in Italy. The fact that the US team is now acting as a representative of a state in Italy that is developing towards authoritarianism turns its athletes into propaganda tools, whether they want it or not. The propaganda mudslinger against the West that Russia staged around the teenage figure skater Kamila Valiyeva, whose positive doping test became public at the last Winter Olympics in Beijing, will not soon be forgotten by those who persecuted her.
When Coventry lets Donald Trump open the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in two years, people will certainly think of the numerous male-friendly handshakes between their predecessor Thomas Bach and Russian President Vladimir Putin or his Chinese colleague Xi Jinping. There is nothing to suggest that the IOC will change in this regard. Just as the games have always followed the same pattern for decades.
In Milan, Cortina and the other Italian Alpine towns where the competitions are taking place, everything is going as we know it from previous games. Intense debates also within the IOC about climate change and sustainability have not led to a cautious approach to the Alps. The new construction of a bobsleigh and toboggan run in Cortina d’Ampezzo is an example of this. An Olympic ceasefire in the fight against irresponsible consumption of nature is almost as unlikely as world peace.