Olympiablog

Doping in Beijing

2008-10-08T15:09:00.002+02:00

Yesterday the IOC announced that the some 5,000 blood samples from the Beijing Olympics will be retested. The Olympic officials want to check that they do not contain CERA, the third generation EPO, which was responsible for Riccardo Riccò’s disqualification from the last Tour de France, and for that of Leonardo Piepoli, just a few days ago. Following the recent scandal one of the IOC vice-presidents, Thomas Bach, declared that the future of road cycling at the Olympics is uncertain, unless the international cycling federetion does not take immediate measures against doping.

Some days earlier, on October 2, the Ioc had disqualified the Brazilian horseman Rodrigo Pessoa, who concluded the jumping event at the 5^th place, for testing his horse Rufus positive to a doping substance. Ironically, Pessoa had won the gold medal in the same event in Athens after the disqualification of Cian O’Connor from Ireland. Equestrian sports seem to emerge as a new doping central: apart from Pessoa, five more horsemen were disqualified in Beijing for administrating doping substances to their horses. Pessoa is the twelfth athlete overall disqualified for doping charges (but we are still far from Athen’s record, were they were 27). Three more cases are still pending: two hammer throwers from Belarus, who won the silver and bronze medal and a Polish canoeist were also caught during anti-doping controls, but more tests are necessary before a definitive decision.

The Beijing Games: an assessment - 3

2008-09-30T17:45:00.002+02:00

In connection with what I said in my last post, this blog (I will talk again about this site) reminds that the Mauritius are the smallest country which won a medal in Beijing, but not the smallest country ever to win an Olympic medal. Liechtenstein, with only 35.000 inhabitants, won nine medals (two of which gold), all at the Winter Games. The smallest nation ever to win a medal at the Summer Games are the Bermuda (65.000 inhabitants), which won a bronze in boxing (like the Mauritius) in 1976. In another post, the same blog at the beginning of the Olympics listed the largest countries which never won a medal. Among the first 10, two finally won one in Beijing, Afghanistan and Sudan. The largest nation without any medal is still Bangladesh (158 million inhabitants). The same post proposes another count, listing the countries which had more participants in the Olympics, failing to win a single medal. The worst country in this classification is Guatemala, which had 200 athletes at the Olympics overall. In Beijing, the largest team with no medals was Hong Kong (34 athletes), while the smallest teams winning a medal were Panama and Togo (3 athletes each).
The count of medals by population is a classic of the ‘alternative’ medal tallies which are proposed at each edition of the Games. Some people cannot satisfy with the mere total of golden or overall medals, and like proposing more ‘rational’ medal tallies. In general, this is a way to show that the nation which actually won is in fact not so good, when we consider the ‘true’ values. The problem is that these classifications may vary greatly if we change the parameters, and it is quite easy to let our preferred nation win (or – more often – let a nation we don’t like lose). To obtain a good score in the medals by population classification, China, hosting one fifth of the world’s population should have won a fifth of the 958 medals which were given, i.e. 191, twice the medals it actually won.
This post is devoted to some of the ‘alternative’ medal tallies which have been proposed for the last Olympics. In all cases, I will list all five nations, as well as the position of China and of the US. Just to remember it, the ‘classical’ medal tally was the following:

o a b
1. China 51 21 28
2. US 36 38 36
3. Russia 23 21 28
4. UK 19 13 15
5. Germany 16 10 15

This site proposes various classifications, considering both population and GDP. The classification of medals by population is as follows:

1. Bahamas
2. Jamaica
3. Iceland
4. Slovenia
5. Australia
…
83. Indonesia
84. South Africa
85. Egypt
86. Vietnam
87. India

165,000 Bahamians are enough to win a medal, while you need 378 million Indians to win one. In this classification the US are in the 44th position, and China in the 68th.
Unsurprisingly, such countries as Zimbabwe or North Korea lead the medals by GDP classification:

1. Zimbabwe
2. North Korea
3. Jamaica
4. Mongolia
5. Armenia
…
83. Belgium
84. Venezuela
85. South Africa
86. Mexico
87. India

Of course, in this case the US are in the bottom part of the classification (75th place), while China is in the 44th place.
The Blogosfere site, on the other hand, recalls the classification made by SportWeek (the weekly magazine by la Gazzetta dello Sport), which considers, together with medals, the first 8 athletes for each event (i.e. all finalists). The main interest of this classification is that it is lead by the US, with almost 100 points more than China:

1. US 1054
2. China 956
3. Russia 794
4. Australia 507
5. UK 499

Finally, it is possible to think of another classification, inspired by the one cited above. While for Panama and Togo 3 athletes were enough to win a medal, 136 were needed to South Africa. This classification too, however, may be discussed: is it fair to compare the results of Panama and Togo, whose medals were won thanks to personal performances (Saladino for Panama and canoeist Boukpeti for Togo) with those of Ethiopia which won 7 medals (four of them gold) with only 22 athletes (all in long-distance running events)? In this case too, I give the first and the last five countries:

1. Panama 3
Togo 3
3. Ethiopia 3,1
4. Zimbabwe 3,25
5. Afghanistan 4
Kenya 4
…
83. Greece 39,7
84. Belgium 48
85. Egypt 103
86. Venezuela 109
87. South Africa 136

In this classification the US are in the 10th place (5,4 athletes per medal), while China is in the 14th place (6,4 athletes per medal).

The Beijing Games: an assessment - 2

2008-09-10T10:28:00.004+02:00

In the last post I made some commentaries about the medal count and in particular about China’s 51 gold medals. However, an analysis of the lower part of the medal tally is also interesting. In Beijing a record number of 87 countries won at least a medal. At Sydney 2000 they were 80 and at Athens 2004 they were “only” 74. Moreover, in Beijing, six nations won a medal for the first time (they were only three in Athens). Many commentaries were made about Afghanistan’s first Olympic medal (it got a bronze in taekwondo). Funnily, Sudan, whose relationships with China created much debate before the Olympics, won its first medal ever (a silver in the men’s 800 meters). The other new medal winners are Bahrain, the Mauritius, Tajikistan and Togo. Moreover, Serbia participated for the first time with such name since 1912 and won one silver and two bronze medals. One could think that the number of medal winning countries simply increases because the number of the nations which participate in the Olympics. In fact, the rate of medal winning nations on the total of participants also increased in Beijing. This is the increasing of this rate in the last five editions of the Olympic Games:

Barcelona 1992 – 37,8%

Atlanta 1996 – 40,1%

Sydney 2000 – 40,2

Athens 2004 – 36,6%

Beijing 2008 – 42,6%

Which are the reasons of the almost constant increasing in the number of nations which win medals at the Olympics? The main reason is certainly a great dispersion in the distribution of the available medals. In Beijing China and the US won more than a third (36%) of the gold medals available, and more than a fifth (22%) of the total medals. The remaining medals was distributed, as we saw, among a record number of nations. The nations which won less than four medals are 39, almost a half of the medal winning nations. One other reason is certainly the globalization of athletes. Thus, a Frenchman could win a medal for Togo and a Moroccan one for Bahrain. However, another important reason is in my opinion the extension of the Olympic program. If we analyze the distribution of medals in different sports, the one in which the greatest number of nations won medals is of course athletics (42 nations). However, it was also the sport with the greatest number of medals avalaible (141). This gives a ratio of 3,3 medals / nation. Therefore, athletics is in fact one of the least “democratic” sports in the Olympic program (only swimming, with a ratio of 4,9 medals / nation is less democratic). From this point of view, the most democratic sports (if we exclude team sports) are taekwondo (1,4 medals / nation), weightlifting and tennis (1,5 medals / nation), which are also three of the most recently added sports. Taekwondo as well as women’s weightlifting were admitted in the Olympic program in 2000, whereas tennis was reintroduced in 1988, after a 60 years break.

The Beijing Games: an assessment - 1

2008-08-31T15:43:00.002+02:00

After the end of the Beijing Games, it is time to analyze them in depth. In this first post I want to propose some considerations about the medal count. First of all, there was a slight raising of Russia, after a bad start, which got 23 golds and 72 medals globally. It is, in any case, its worst result since it stopped participating in the Games as the Soviet Union (or the CIS). On the other hand, China confirmed its power, reaching 100 medals. As many had predicted, China definitely won in the number of golden medals, but was behind the United States in the number of total medals. This clearly indicates that the Chinese mainly aimed at being first in the medal count. To have an idea of the importance of China’s result, we can have a look at the best results obtained in a single Olympic Games. Here I list the five best results in terms of gold medals in all the Olympics since 1948 (the only ones which can be compared with the present ones):

USA (1984) – 83 gold
USSR (1980) – 80 gold
China (2008) – 51 gold
USSR (1972) – 50 gold
USSR (1976) – 49 gold

As one can see, with the exception of the two editions which underwent boycotts (1980 and 1984), China obtained the top score in terms of gold medals obtained in a single edition of the Olympics, and can be compared with the results of Soviet Union in its best years. It is true that today there are many more medals available than in the Seventies. However, China’s result is the best one also in the ratio of gold medals on the total:

USA (1984) – 83 gold / 174 medals (47,7%)
USSR (1980) – 80 gold / 195 medals (41%)
China (2008) – 51 gold / 100 medals (51%)
USSR (1972) – 50 gold / 99 medals (50,5%)
USSR (1976) – 49 gold / 125 medals (39,2%)

On this point of view, the medal count of the second (the United States) and of the third (Russia) is much more balanced. If China’s gold was to triumph in the largest number of events, it was perfectly reached. Chinese athletes were probably not interested in getting a silver or a bronze. An article by Paolo Garimberti (Le Olimpiadi che non hanno cambiato la Cina, The Olympics which did not change China) on the Italian magazine Venerdì di Repubblica tries to reduce the importance of China’s success:

in sports China is still a country of ping pong players and of laboratory-made acrobats: their medal count is richer than that of the United States, but with no medals in the sports preferred by Chinese social climbers (from basketball to football), and without which the neo superpower still feels "the sick man of Asia", a country lacking attractiveness and respect.

This analysis does not take into account the effectiveness with which China planned its success since its return on the Olympic stage. One of the ways of doing that was to occupy the space unoccupied by other sport superpowers, or partially freed after the dissolution of the socialist block. This explains China’s unsatisfactory results in athletics and its slow progression (with the exclusion of the doping era) in swimming. On the contrary, apart from the national sport of table tennis, China obtained most of its successes in shooting, weightlifting, diving, gymnastics, i.e. in sports in which the other Olympic superpowers (the US in particular) were weaker. I will write again on this matter in another post. Moreover, as the above list shows, China concentrated on paying sports, that is sports in which one or few athletes can win many medals. This is at the opposite of basketball and football, in which you need a full team, including reserves, to obtain a medal which always counts as one in the medal tally. Of course, not to speak of those pseudo-sociological analyses according to which the Chinese would be, by their culture, more disposed to individual sports. Actually, there are many individual sports in which they are weak and, on the other hand, they obtained important successes in some team sports, such as women volleyball and football.

Bush and Sarkozy in Beijing

2008-07-05T14:18:00.002+02:00

In the last days, the Chinese got two important confirmation. Both the American President G.W. Bush and French President Sarkozy announced they will participate in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Bush’s announcement wasn’t really a surprise, even if several US politicians (including Barack Obama) urged him to boycott the Games. Yesterday’s edition of Le Monde announced that Sarkozy will take part in the opening too. It is an important announcement, since France is the current president of the EU. Sarkozy’s condition for his participation was that the Beijing officials accepted to meet with the Dalai Lama’s representatives. Sarkozy himself declared he would meet with the Dalai Lama, who will be in France just during the Olympics, even the meeting will probably not take place on that occasion. The Chinese are not happy with Sarko’s trip to Beijing for the Olympics. Several Chinese sites cited negative statements from commentators or bloggers, like this one, which quotes a Chinese researcher pointing out Sarkozy’s “immaturity and carelessness” in posing a condition for his presence at the Olympics. According to the same site, 89% of the Chinese are opposed to Sarkozy’s participation in the opening ceremony.

The medals war - 2

2008-07-01T22:45:00.001+02:00

Discussions about China’s chances to become the first Olympic power and to overcome the US at the next Olympics in Beijing started at the end of the former edition in Athens, 2004. In Athens China reached its top result, both for gold medals (it was second with 32 golds) and for total medals (third with 63). China’s first Olympic appearance was at Los Angeles 1984, and in twenty years it doubled the number of won medals (recall that in Los Angeles the USSR and all the East-European countries did not compete). At the end of the Athens Olympics many observers predicted that in Beijing China will finally outdo the US in the medal struggle. Nevertheless, China’s sport officials maintained a low profile and claimed that the country did not reach yet the top of its potential. In Athens the chief de mission of the Chinese delegation Yuan Weimin had declared “Though China is in second place in the gold medal standings, we are not a sports superpower […] There is still a considerable gap between us and the United States and Russia […] We are still comparatively weak in track and field and swimming, two premier sports at the Olympic Games”. Last year I quoted the result of a research by the British Olympic Committee according to which, if the Games had taken place in 2006, China would have been ahead of the US in the gold medal count. Now the society PriceWaterhouseCoopers published a study according to which China could win 88 medals, the US 87 and Russia 79. The results for the five top nations would be the following (the study only considers the number of total medals):

	Beijing 2008	Athens 2004	difference
1. China	88	63	+25
2. US	87	103	-16
3. Russia	79	92	-13
4. Germany	43	48	-5

The diagram illustrates the total number of medals won by the first four Olympic powers from 1984 (the year of China’s Olympic debut) to 2008, if the predictions of the study are correct, and shows in particular China’s amazing progression.

Flame heroes

2008-04-11T23:20:00.005+02:00

The first heroin of the Beijing Olympics, at least for the Chinese, is without any doubt Jin Jing, a paralympic fencer. An exalted protester tried to grab the torch from her hands on Monday in Paris. Even if one is sympathetic with the Tibetan struggle, it should be acknowledged that it was not a particularly elegant gesture. Just because she held the torch, Jin Jing became a symbol of China’s resistance, at a moment in which it is attacked by the rest of the World. The People’s Daily published a full article on her arrival in China after her misadventure in Paris. Chinese victories at the Olympics were always considered a victory of all China. Similarly, the Olympic flame becomes today the symbol of China’s honor, a country defending the values of olympism. The article from the People’s Daily speaks of “incredible courage”, but in her declarations she is humble. In this too she is similar to Chinese Olympic winners: she only did what any good Chinese would have done, her gesture was all China’s gesture.

If we analyze in depth China’s sport history, we realize that the Beijing Olympics are the achievement of a century of Chinese efforts to escape the semi-colonial status in which they were at the beginning of the 20^th century and to become a World super-power. Sports were an important platform for these efforts. At the beginning of last century, Chinese officials believed that by making the people stronger sport would have allowed China to counter regular attacks from foreign powers and to emerge as a great nation. At that time, the Chinese loved to repeat that abroad China was referred to as “the sick man of East Asia”. For many Chinese the tiny one-legged fencer must have appeared as a perfect symbol of that sick man of East Asia who finally is able to fight bravely to defend its values. This blog is right in pointing out that this episode in particular is harmful for Tibet supporters, and that Beijing officials couldn’t have thought of a better pro-Chinese advertising:

This public relations show was not even scripted by the Chinese Communists, who are unlikely to ever accomplish this level of success no matter how hard they try. Faced with the beautiful heroine with one leg, how is any liberal dissidence on behalf of Tibet independence going to work inside Chinese? This was a bonanza handed to the Chinese Communists by the pro-Tibet protestors.

Finally, Tibetan supporters too have their heroes. Many refused to carry the torch (for example, Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathay). Those two American torchbearers did carry the flame and took the moment to contest China and support Tibet. During the San Francisco relay Andrew Michael (another wheelchair torchbearer) showed a small card with the Tibetan flag on the back of his hand, and Majora Carter took a Tibetan flag out of her sleeve after passing the flame to the following torchbearer.

Who are the men in blue?

2008-04-09T11:13:00.002+02:00

A quite stunning thing about the Olympic torch relay in Paris, which was disturbed by repeated protests, is the way in which the relay itself was organized. The images broadcasted by French televisions clearly show torchbearers surrounded by six or seven Chinese in a blue and white sport suit. Their official task is to survey the torch’s correct functioning, but their real role is not very clear. Former Olympic judoka David Douillet, one of the Parisian torchbearers, on the other hand, called them “robots” and “watchdogs”, complaining about the fact that they “shove you, mistreat you, insult you in Chinese”.

The British too were puzzled by the mysterious “men in blue” and by their behavior during the relay in London. Even Sebastian Coe, the president of the London 2012 organizing committee, was caught by a television while referring to them as “thugs”.

Their attitude is indeed quite strange. On TV they could be seen in lighting and turning the flame off as they wanted, without giving any explanation to the torchbearers, or deciding to turn back without any warning… In Paris the “men in blue” also tried to have the badge with the inscription “For a better world” removed from the French torchbearers’ suits, even if the badge had been approved by the French Olympic committee.

Moreover, the torch procession was led by a car in which sat a Chinese man in permanent telephonic contact with the Chinese embassy. (This is what the French journalists said, and we don’t know with whom the embassy was in contact on its turn…). In the images it can clearly be seen that it is this man who decides that the flame will skip the stop at the Paris town hall, and a French official can be seen asking him “Ah, you don’t want to stop here?. ”

In Paris some Tibetan flags were tolerated, but the majority of them was torn away by the police. Apparently, the Chinese had asked all the Tibetan flags that could have disturbed them to be removed. And at various moments they decided to turn back because they noticed too many Tibetan flags. A Tibetan flag was also exposed at a window of the Hotel de Ville, the Paris town hall. Paris mayor Delanoë, who had decided to expose a banner invoking human rights, apparently refused to have the flag removed and said “it is not to the Chinese officials to decide” (at least according to le Monde). This is probably the main reason for the Chinese decision to skip the ceremony at the Hotel de Ville.

The impression is that the men in blue and white did whatever they wanted, without giving any explanation to the French, who were hosting them, and with the arrogance they are used to within their country. Should we agree with those protesters (I precise I wouldn’t have been one of them) who said yesterday that, instead of exporting democracy to China, we are importing their methods?

The flame under siege: what can the IOC do?

2008-04-07T12:48:00.002+02:00

After the protests yesterday in London, it is easy to imagine that today the Olympic torch path through Paris will be disrupted by anti-Chinese manifestations. In any case is will be a hyper-secured journey: in Paris the flame will be protected by at least 3,000 policemen. The number of athletes who will compete in Beijing in August will be slightly more than 10,000. Given these figures, one might ask if organizing an Olympic torch relay is still worthy. The Chinese organizers are probably wondering if including such big Western cities like London, Paris or San Francisco into the torch route was a good idea. Not to speak about Coca Cola and Samsung, the relay’s sponsors. Even in Istanbul there were some protests in favor of the Uyghur minority. An entirely Chinese relay, or a relay which would have included only less risky stops, like Saint Petersburg (where in fact the torch encountered no problem) or Pyongyang, would have been much smoother. As usual, for the Chinese public opinion, manipulated by their media, le protests targeting the Olympic torch are just marginal attempts of sabotage the Olympics, their message and China’s prestige. For the web site of the Chinese press agency Xinhua the fact that the Olympic torch has crossed London amid snow and amid protests are equally relevant.

In all this the IOC has finally broken its deafening silence: at the opening ceremony of the national Olympic committees in Beijing, president Rogge said he is “very concerned” about the situation in Tibet and called for a “rapid peaceful resolution”. The meeting will end on April 10. Maybe, we can expect a stronger reaction by the Olympic chief. This morning the former French sports minister Jean-François Lamour was interviewed by France Inter, and was certain that such a declaration will be made. We’ll see…

In spite of the progresses it made in the last years, the IOC is still a relatively little democratic institution, and in any case the power of its president is still very important. In the history, IOC presidents always determined the character of the Olympic movement. In the last decades, when the Olympics became a profitable business and a really global movement, the power of the IOC’s president extended beyond the mere Olympic domain. This is why Rogge is probably one of the few persons in the World who could do something to change the situation in China. Like all responsibilities, this one is heavy to be carried. He also has the responsibility of leading the Olympics without damage out of the desert they are crossing, and of preventing the Beijing Games to be transformed in a Chinese patriotic festival (as it was the case for the Russians in 1980). From his point of view, he also carries the responsibility of respecting the 114-year old history of the IOC, and of not irritating too much one of today’s main sports powers. Twenty-five years ago China was the last frontier the olympism had still to conquer. The Games in Beijing should have been the coronation of this conquest. The IOC will never admit they were a mistake. We also shouldn’t forget that the 2014 Winter Olympics have been assigned to Sochi and to Russia, another country whose democracy deficit risks embarrassing the Olympic movement.

What the IOC could and should do is to abandon hypocrisy, admit that the Chinese are the firsts to use the Olympics as a political instrument, and ask them to face their responsibility for this.

Samaranch and China

2008-03-31T17:22:00.002+02:00

In my last post I was talking about the embarrassment of the current IOC’s rulers towards China, and I recalled the role of the former president Samaranch in awarding the Games to Beijing. Subsequently, I found out an interview to Samaranch himself on the Spanish paper Abc, in which he talks about his presidency, he recalls how he rescued olympism after the Moscow Games, and he talks enthusiastically about China, revealing some aspects of Beijing’s appointment I wasn’t aware of. Here are some significant quotes from the interview:

-I have personally a very intense relationship with China, I love and I admire that people. I have known this country for the last 30 years and the changes which went on there are impressive.

-Did it change even more after being chosen as Olympic host?

-The choice of China was easy. IOC members wanted to go to China, they knew a fifth of the World’s population lives there, that they were doing a lot for sports. Don’t forget, moreover, how they behaved finely with us in participating in the US [in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, which were boycotted by communist countries] in a very delicate moment.

-However, they had already submitted a bid…

-It was for the 2000 Olympics and they lost for two votes. They were very disappointed, so that to comfort them I told the Chinese President to bid for 2004, and he told me “when a Chinese is bitten by a poisonous snake, he remembers for a long time”, and in fact they didn’t bid. They did for the 2008 Olympics, which they won very easily, and the progress they did in these 8 years, with a growth of 12-15%, are impressive.

-Are these changes only economic?

-They did a lot of good things, and the main one is for me that Chinese people now live much better than before.

Obviously, there was also a reference to the situation in Tibet.

Of course, in the last days there was the Tibet issue, but China is open enough now. There are already international journalists there who will know and report what happened with the unrest. They repressed it with the means they has, but there’s a positive thing, the Dalai Lama doesn’t claim autonomy for Tibet, he claims more freedom and he never asked to punish the Chinese people, he is saying that the Games must be celebrated.

And finally, an example of how cynically IOC’s presumed apoliticism can be used:

Nobody is talking of a boycott. People talk of boycotting the opening ceremony. If some politicians don’t want to go to the ceremony, no matter, what does matter are athletes.

The torch relay and IOC's silence

2008-03-29T22:41:00.004+01:00

The events of last weeks clearly show which will be the atmosphere around China and its Olympic Games in the four and half months up to August 8, when the Games will open. A campaign of unprecedented pressure on Beijing started, following Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal as an artistic consultant for the Games’ opening ceremony and the violent repression of the uprising in Tibet. Most recently, some Reporters without Borders activists briefly interrupted the Olympic flame lightning ceremony at Ancient Olympia, Greece. It is easy to imagine that other protests will disturb the journey of the Olympic torch, at least in its international route. Chinese authorities will certainly block any contestation on the Chinese part. British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, David Miliband, already announced that his government will not stop protests during the torch’s stop in London, on April 6. Protests are also likely to happen as the flame will stop in Paris (April 7) and San Francisco (April 9). If so, the two last editions of the Olympic Games will have a great impact on this Olympic tradition. The journey of the flame of the Turin Winter Games in 2006 had already undergone systematic perturbations by political and social activists. Yet, the Turin Olympics didn’t raise any particular political problem, unlike those of Beijing. Prospective Olympic organizers would better be careful in planning torch relay routes. As another former British minister, Michael Portillo, pointed out in the Sunday Times,

the unprecedented grandiosity of the torch’s itinerary must have looked great on the drawing board. In practice, Beijing has secured a rolling programme of antiChinese protest circling the globe.

The Olympic torch relay was first introduced by Hitler’s collaborators for the 1936 Berlin Games. The Olympic symbol of the flame was then used to show Nazi power to a large part of Europe. The relay was adopted again after WWII. Before the advent of television, it was useful for the Olympic movement to pass through cities and countries. But today, bringing the Olympics among real people, outside their hyper-secured stadiums, is a bad idea.

One could wonder why the Olympic organizers still pay a fortune to organize an extravaganza whose main effect will be to cause headache to them. If the Olympic torch relay is a risky business, what is most surprising is the authorities’ reaction when it is disturbed. It looks like both the Chinese government and the IOC were not prepared to an event everyone could have foreseen. Moreover, the actions against the Olympic flame are just a metaphor for the pressures the Beijing Olympics currently undergo. The Chinese and the IOC react to protests and boycott threats by doing what they always did: the firsts didn’t change anything in their policies towards Sudan, Tibet, didn’t stop jailing dissidents and suffocating free circulation of information; the second continues supporting its anachronistic principle of separation of sports and politics. It maybe rescued the Olympic movement in the Cold War years, but nobody believes anymore to it.

Concerning the attitude of the Chinese rulers, I agree with those who claim that it is mainly due to their unskillfulness to deal with their own image outside their country, but also that this is not their main problem. Ruling 1.3 billions of Chinese is more important than listening Western activists’ and politicians’ grief. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman defined the Olympic flame lightning action as “shameful and unpopular” when talking to foreign press; meanwhile, the Chinese newspapers and televisions employed such adjectives as “perfect” and “wonderful” to describe the ceremony.

The IOC position is more complicated. How to explain the passiveness of the Olympic authority in this matter? The words used by most commentators are “connivance” and “complicity”. But this is reductive. Like all other big international organizations, the IOC is slow in changing its habits. It almost led the city of Montreal to bankruptcy, before understanding that the Olympic needed to find autonomous sources of revenues; and it was only after Ben Johnson’s scandal that it decided to seriously fight against doping. On the other side, it is useful to take a step backwards, and to go back to the award of the Olympics to Beijing, in 2001. It was Juan Antonio Samaranch, the czar of Olympism at that time, who strongly wanted a Chinese Olympic Games as the final act of his presidency. He must have looked at it as the achievement of his twenty-year work for a new globalization of the Olympics, after the dark age of boycotts (Samaranch was appointed in 1980, in the middle of the Moscow Olympics crisis). It might be that his megalomania made him underestimate the risks of an Olympics in China; or maybe he was simply sincerely persuaded that the Olympics would have improved the situation in China, as it did for South Korea in 1988. He recently stated that assigning the Games to China was “less risky” than assigning them to the USSR in 1980. In 2001 Samaranch clearly favored Beijing’s bid, and many experts agree in emphasizing the weight of the president’s opinion in this matter. At one point, a rumor even circulated (dismissed by the IOC), that Samaranch had forced the evaluation commission to change its conclusions, in order to favor Beijing. In any case, the Beijing Olympics appear to be Samaranch’s last poisoned gift to his successor.

It is also interesting to recall the circumstances of the current president’s appointment. Jacques Rogge was elected three days after the Games were awarded to Beijing. During that IOC session, many newspapers wrote about a silent agreement between its members: the new president would not come from the continent to which the Games would have been awarded. (Rogge’s contenders were South Korea’s Kim Un-Yong and Canada’s Dick Pound). Rogge, which was Samaranch’s favorite candidate, was eventually elected, as Beijing was chosen as host for the 2008 Olympics. Of course, he had followed the IOC’s official line on China and Beijing. Yet, in 1993, when the Chinese capital first bid for the Olympics, the current IOC president had declared “I consider that the political situation in China is so unstable that we’d better ask them to wait” (quoted in A. Lunzenfichter, Athènes... Pékin (1896-2008). Choix épiques des villes olympiques). We don’t know if Rogge changed his mind in the following seven years. What we do know is that today the IOC’s official statements, as well as its silence, show its embarrassment. The Olympic leaders are today in a really uncomfortable position. They are forced to find a balance between the respect of their non-political tradition, the pressures of public opinion in the West and an embarrassing Olympic host they have to deal with. In last October, Rogge declared to the French newspaper Le Monde

we experience contestations, and we’ll experience them until the closing ceremony. I think it is normal, it is their right. There’s a worldwide event, and they take advantage of it to defend their causes, which are perfectly honorable and respectable.

The impression is that the IOC is currently trying not to displease anybody, and lets someone else do the dirty work of reminding China of its duties.

Prague 2016

2007-09-04T21:22:00.000+02:00

Prague is the sixth city to announce its candidature for the 2016 Summer Olympics, the second from Europe after Madrid. The announcement was made today and the logo was unveiled as well. In fact, the chances for an European city to host the Games are quite narrow, just four years after London 2012. The best chances are those of America, which hasn’t hosted an Olympics since 1996 (it will be 20 years in 2016). The deadline for presenting a candidature is September 13, and the host of the 2016 Games will be announced in October 2009. The six cities which made a bid so far are Chicago (USA), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Doha (Qatar), Tokyo (Japan), Madrid (Spain) and Prague (Czech Republic). The bids of Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Monterrey (Mexico) and Baku (Azerbaijan) are also almost certain.

New voices against China

2007-09-04T10:39:00.000+02:00

The next Olympics in Beijing are still a topic of discussion and of criticism from various parts, unfortunately mostly from outside China. On August 9 The Guardian published an interview with Ai Weiwei, the architect who conceived the futuristic Beijing Olympic stadium, the so-called “bird’s nest”. Ai told he wants to be disconnected from any act of promotion of the Olympics, for not being involved in the “disgusting” political conditions of today’s China. Among others, he affirmed: “I hate the kind of feeling stirred up by promotion or propaganda ... It's the kind of sentiment when you don't stick to the facts, but try to make up something, to mislead people away from a true discussion. It is not good for anyone.” Ai also spoke about film directors Steven Spielberg and Zhang Yimou, involved in the organization of the opening ceremony.

Yesterday, moreover, some newspapers relayed that Richard Gere, a Buddhist and the chairman of the International Campaignfor Tibet organization, called for a boycott of the Beijing Games. In fact, if we should trust today’s Italian newspapers (for instance, Il Corriere della Sera), which interviewed him at the Venice festival, the actor expressed a more careful position: “In one year there will be the Olympics: it is necessary to open a discussion on the treatment of minorities, on human rights violations. It is not true that I want a boycott of the Games, because isolation is not useful. But a great country like China cannot host such an important event, which will be watched by the whole World, without facing its inner contradictions.”

A voice against

2007-09-01T14:44:00.000+02:00

Among the various articles and reportages which have been devoted to the next Olympics in Beijing last August, one year before the opening, I particularly appreciated an interview to the rower Carlo Mornati, published by the newspaper La Repubblica on August 17. (The full text of the interview can be read on the Web site of the Italian Rowing Federation). Mornati was a silver medalist at Sydney 2000, and is a member of the Coni’s (the Italian Olympic committee) executive board. He was interviewed about the present Coni’s crisis, and he also talked about the IOC and the opportunity of awarding the 2008 Olympics to Beijing. So far, it is one of the few voices I heard from the sport world criticizing this choice, and claiming that there is no guarantee that the Olympics will contribute to democratize the Beijing regime, and that they risk, on the contrary, to strengthen it. This is, in my opinion, the most significant part of the interview:

“-Aren’t you pleased by the opening to China?

-I am upset when I think that these Games will not be used to improve the system, but to strengthen its power and give a good impression to the World.

-Maybe, there will be some reforms.

-The mechanism should be different: do you want the Olympics? Do a step forward, eliminate death penalty and we’ll give you the Games. But they do the opposite. Berlin ’36? I am exactly thinking to that precedent”.

I felicitate Mornati, also for having qualified for Beijing, anyway.

Sochi 2014

2007-07-11T23:04:00.000+02:00

So, it will be Sochi which will host the Winter Olympics in 2014. For once, I agree with the IOC. Even if Sochi was told to be a possible outsider, the great favorite was South Korean Pyeongchang. But Russia is one of the great nations of the Winter Olympics. The total of medals won by the USSR and by Russia is 270 (of which 111 golds), ten less than Norway (which however won just 98 golds). The Russians, moreover, are the only ones, apart from the Canadians, which can organize a Winter Olympics at the sea level.

A road on Mount Everest

2007-06-22T18:30:00.000+02:00

The affair of the road the Chinese government is building on Mount Everest, in order to facilitate the arrival of the Olympic torch, is a new demonstration of the feeling of impunity behind every act of the Beijing regime. I already evoked it in a preceding post. Even if the international community carefully observes each act of the Chinese rulers, they don’t consider necessary to follow the feelings of the World’s public opinion, and seem interested only in the image they have inside China. The 108 km blacktopped and fenced road which will link the Everest Base Camp to the rest of the World will probably cause the death of the mountain. But the People’s Republic is more interested in showing that Tibet is one of its provinces. The most striking thing, in all this, is the IOC’s silence on every act of the Beijing regime. The Olympic torch relay within China will probably not undergo all the protests that took place, for instance, for the Turin Olympics. But it is likely that its international route will not be easy, as I already claimed in one of my former posts.

New problems for Beijing

2007-06-13T22:34:00.001+02:00

Some IOC official are maybe reflecting on their decision of assigning the Olympics to China. Of course, China is a huge future market for sport business, but problems and polemics are emerging almost every day. Human rights, Tibet, Taiwan, Darfur… The last one is the report published by the non-governmental organization “Play Fair” about working conditions in some Chinese factories producing licensed products for the Beijing 2008 organizing committee. This organization investigated on four textile manufacturers. Charges go from child labor exploitation to non respect of health regulations, and regulations on working hours, pay scale. Sports Illustrated quoted one of the organizing committee’s marketing directors announcing an investigation and speaking of a “huge gap between the report and what the businesses told us”. What I find more surprising are the arrogance and sense of impunity the Chinese organizing committee shows in these matters. So far, it has been more or less supported by the IOC. But maybe one of these days will the IOC feel forced to intervene?

The London 2012 logo - II

2007-06-06T22:35:00.001+02:00

One day only after having been unveiled, the London 2012 Olympics new logo provokes almost unanimous criticism. A glance at Google blogs is enough to find thousands of pages strongly criticizing the choice of the organizing committee. Blogs about design, in particular, are very active in criticizing it. A petition asking to change the logo has even been launched on the Web, which at the moment got almost 50,000 signatures. And, as if all this wasn't enough, a presentation film has been accused of provoking epilepsy and removed from the London 2012 website. The best comment I read is the one of The Independent, in an article titled Hideous and puerile: Olympics logo falls at the first hurdle. It says, among others: "Is it a multicoloured swastika? Is it the graffiti at your local bus stop? Or is it a sign to your nearest 80s disco? No, it's the new 2012 Olympics logo, unveiled yesterday to great fanfare from organisers and stinging criticism by the public." The article goes on quoting some graphic design experts expressing harsh criticism towards the logo. This sentence by one of them seems to me a perfect conclusion: "It was a wonderful chance to do something magnificent and it was a waste of resources".

A new logo for London 2012

2007-06-04T21:35:00.000+02:00

The new logo of the London 2012 has been presented today. The bid logo already wasn't great, but the definitive one is going to win the gold medal for the worst logo ever. In my opinion, it is even worse than the one of Turin 2006, which was quite bad as well. The new logo exists in four colors, green, orange, fuchsia and blue. According to the organizing committee, the logo of the London Olympics (designed by Wolff Olins) should be a "new generation" logo, not static, but dynamic, even if their intentions are not fully clear to me. In his declaration, the chairman of the organizing committee, Sebastian Coe, says: del presidente del comitato organizzatore, Sebastian Coe, recita:

"The new Olympic emblem is based on the number 2012 – the year of the Games - and includes the Olympic Rings, one of the world’s most recognised brands, and the word 'London' – the world's most diverse city. [...]

The powerful, modern emblem symbolises the dynamic Olympic spirit and its inspirational ability to reach out to people all over the world.

London 2012 will be Everyone's Games, everyone's 2012. This is the vision at the very heart of our brand. It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world. It is an invitation to take part and be involved. [...]

The new emblem is dynamic, modern and flexible reflecting a brand savvy world where people, especially young people, no longer relate to static logos but respond to a dynamic brand that works with new technology and across traditional and new media networks.

It will become London 2012's visual icon, instantly recognisable amongst all age groups, all around the world. It will establish the character and identity of the London 2012 Games and what the Games will symbolise nationally and internationally."

Anyway, on the London 2012 site there is a section che proposing to "create your own design", on the base of the proposed logo. I reproduce the design I prefer among those in the gallery.

Tiananmen

2007-06-04T15:06:00.000+02:00

Just an image to remember that today is the 18th anniversary of the end of the Tiananmen Square protests, on June 4, 1989. (The cartoon is taken from Cagle.com).

Doping in cycling

2007-06-03T14:48:00.000+02:00

The IOC opened an investigation following recent admissions on doping in the last middle of the 1990’s by numerous cyclist from former Team Telekom. A panel was set up, which should, in particular “inquire into possible anti-doping violations at previous Olympic Games, in connection with recent revelations concerning the Telekom Cycling Team”. The Olympics in question is the Sydney 2000 one. In the individual road race at those Olympic Games, first, second and third were, respectively, Jan Ullrich, Aleksandr Vinokourov and Andreas Klöden, all belonging, at the time, to Team Telekom. Ullrich, who retired in February, and goes on denying doping charges, also won a silver in the time trial. No schedule was given for the panel’s activity. According to its rules, the IOC has the right of modifying the results of competitions, and withdraw medals, for a period of eight years after the end of an Olympic Games. The results of the two competitions in question at Sydney were the following:

Individual road race
1- Ullrich (GER)
2- Vinokourov (KAZ)
3- Klöden (GER)
4- Bartoli (ITA)
5- Jalabert (FRA)
6- Hoj (DEN)

Individual team trial
1- Ekimov (RUS)
2- Ullrich (GER)
3- Armstrong (USA)
4- Olano (ESP)

Madrid 2016

2007-06-02T00:38:00.000+02:00

On May 29 the Spanish Olympic committee officially designated Madrid as “applicant” (candidate to be candidate in the IOC’s jargon) for the 2016 Olympic Games. “Applicants” are thus five now: apart from Madrid, there are Chicago, Prague, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
In 2005, during the vote for the 2012 Games, Madrid was eliminated at the third round, beating New York and Moscow. Previously, the Spanish capital had been candidate for the 1972 Games. It is probably the most important European capital which hasn’t hoisted them yet (the only Spanish Olympics were Barcelona 1992). Even if Madrid certainly learnt much from the unsuccessful bid two years ago, it has little chances of being selected – as any other European city. In fact, since 1952 the Games have never been held twice in the same continent, and in 2012, as it is known, they will take place in London. Tokyo has some more hope, but it is very likely that the 2016 Olympics (whose host will be selected in 2009) will take place in America. In 2016, in fact, no American city will have hosted the Olympics since 20 years. That’s why Chicago has good chances in this case, 112 years later than St. Louis “stole” its Games. Unless Rio or another South-American city presents a really serious bid.

Chevaleresque

2007-05-24T16:30:00.000+02:00

I was happy to learn today that players from the NBA team Cleveland Cavaliers, currently playing for play-off semifinals, sent an open letter to the Chinese government, in order to make pressure on the Darfur issue. The letter was written by player Ira Newble and signed by almost all his teammates. It states, among others, “China cannot be a legitimate host to the premier international event in the sporting world [...] while it remains complicit in the terrible suffering and destruction that continues to this day”. The players who didn’t sign the letter are Damon Jones and LeBron James, raising NBA star and probable member of the US team at Beijing. Critics (for instance in this article or in this one) affirm that one of the possible reasons is the $90 million contract James signed with Nike, given Nike’s interests in China. Honor to his other teammates.

Chasing the Flame

2007-05-23T16:09:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, it happens to discover interesting things on the Web. Recently, I found a site with a captivating name, Chasing the Flame, which proposes a different view of the Olympics. The site is maintained by an American student, Gregory P. Groggel, who is writing his PhD thesis about the impact of the Olympic Games on host cities, the so called legacy. Thanks to a grant, he left Nebraska and is literally traveling around the World, in order to visit six Olympic cities (Mexico City, Munich, Moscow, Sydney, Seoul and Beijing) and collect materials for his work. During his trip, he maintains his site and writes a blog, with many interesting posts about the history and cultural aspects of the Olympic Games. Gregory is a photographer too, and his site includes a photographic section, proposing a mix of his own picture and archive images showing the evolution the Olympic cities went through. So far, there are pictures of Mexico City, Munich and Sydney on line, as well as some pictures of Turin and Sarajevo. Those in this post are two of my favorite ones (Mexico City and Sarajevo).

The Chicago 2016 logo

2007-05-18T19:04:00.001+02:00

Chicago is one of the four cities presently candidate to host the summer Games in 2016. It was selected by the US Olympic Committee on April 16. However, the logo chosen for the bid, a stylized flame representing the city’s skyline, doesn’t meet IOC requirements. In fact, an applicant city, the phase preceding the official bid, cannot insert in the bid logo any official Olympic symbol (the five rings, the motto, a flame, a torch or a medal). Only after the IOC has selected it as an official candidate, the city can put the five rings in the logo. That’s why, in the past, bidding cities found ingenuous ways to evoke the five rings, without representing them directly, in their logos, with colors, forms, etc. (for instance, the logos of the Berlin 2000, Istanbul 2008 or Borjomi 2014 bids).

China/Darfur

2007-05-17T00:50:00.000+02:00

Finally, Steven Spielberg, one of the artists appointed to organize the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, to whom Mia Farrow addressed directly in her letter on the "genocide Olympics", broke the silence on the question with a letter to Chinese president Hu Jintao, in which he wrote: " I add my voice to those who ask that China change its policy toward Sudan and pressure the Sudanese government to accept the entrance of United Nations peacekeepers to protect the victims of genocide in Darfur".

Pressure made on China by several people seems to be fruitful. This is what the newsmagazine Time of May 10 wrote:

" China names special envoy for Darfur

China

announced the appointment of a special envoy dedicated to the Darfur crisis Thursday as Beijing faces international pressure to do more to resolve the conflict and the possibility of an Olympic boycott if it fails to act.
The move came a day after a group of U.S. politicians demanded China use its influence as one of Sudan's biggest trade partners to persuade the African nation to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.
It also followed the release of an Amnesty International report this week claiming China and Russia breached a U.N. arms embargo by letting weapons into Sudan. Both countries denied the charge.
China has been widely accused of not doing enough on Darfur, given that it buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports and sells the Khartoum regime weapons and military aircraft. As a veto-holding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China has blocked efforts to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur without Sudan's consent.
But faced with intensifying criticism, Beijing has been trying to demonstrate it is willing to help while not overly embarrassing or alienating Sudan's leadership.
In the latest step, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Liu Guijin, a former ambassador to Zimbabwe and South Africa, has been appointed to the newly created post of special representative on African affairs and will focus on Darfur.
A letter to President Hu Jintao from 108 U.S. House members Wednesday suggested that unless China changed its approach on Sudan, the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing could become a disaster for the Chinese rather than the image enhancer the government is expecting.
French politicians floated the idea of a boycott during their recent presidential race and actress Mia Farrow has called on corporate sponsors of the Games to pressure China to do more on Darfur.
China has bristled at the attempts to link the Games to Darfur, but analysts said the threat got Beijing's attention.
"This Olympic issue has got them moving," said Francis Kornegay, an analyst at the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa. "They definitely don't want a global or even halfway successful boycott of the Olympics. They can't take that too lightly, which they aren't."
The letter from U.S. lawmakers said that "unless China does its part to ensure that the government of Sudan accepts the best and most reasonable path to peace, history will judge your government as having bankrolled a genocide."

Medals war begins

2007-05-13T00:40:00.001+02:00

Predictions are common on the eve of each Olympics. This time there is a further question: will China get the first place in the medal tally, winning also in those sports in which it has never been strong, as tennis? Some even talk of an Olympic “war” between nations traditionally strong at the Olympic Games and China. For instance, this post from The China blog, published by the weekly newsmagazine Time. It states that the British Olympic Association issued a report in which it calculated the medals which would have been distributed at the Olympics, on the basis of the results obtained in 2005 and in 2006 in major competitions of the various Olympic sports. From 2005 to 2006 China made a jump, passing from 63 to 84 total medals, from 29 to 48 golds, and from the third to the first place in the medal tally. Just for curiosity, here are the first five nations in the medal count in 2005 and in 2006:

2005

1. United States	49	31	22	102
2. Russia	33	26	26	85
3. China	29	23	11	63
4. Australia	18	10	17	45
5. Germany	16	19	24	59

2006

1. China	48	19	17	84
2. United States	37	27	29	93
3. Russia	32	26	24	82
4. Australia	20	14	9	43
5. Netherlands	13	3	4	20

Other curiosities: in 2005 83 countries would have won at least one medal, they would have been 81 in 2006. At Athens 2004 they were 75, and at Sydney 2000 (the record so far) they were 80. The countries winning a medal for the first time would have been Bahrain (2 golds in 2005, 1 silver and 1 gold in 2006), Cyprus and Tajikistan (1 bronze each both in 2005 and 2006), Saint Kitts and Nevis (1 bronze in 2005) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1 silver in 2006).

Letters from Iwo Jima

2007-05-10T15:45:00.000+02:00

On May 22 Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima will be released on DVD. I take the occasion to recall that one of the main characters in the movie is lieutenant Takeichi Nishi, who won a gold medal in equestrian (jumping) at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. This circumstance is recalled many times during the film. Together with general Kuribayashi and private Sato, lieutenant Nishi is one of the best characters in the film; unlike his fellow Japanese officers, he displays culture and humanity. A memorable scene is the one in which he meets a captive American soldier and talks to him in English. It is, in my opinion one of the best moments in which cinema has talked about the Olympics, though indirectly.

A strange relay

2007-05-09T21:22:00.001+02:00

A glance at the map of the Olympic torch relay for Beijing 2008 is enough to be surprised by the choices made by the Chinese Olympic committee. In particular, the international section follows a winding route, passing from one continent to another, even if the main part will be obviously held in Asia. The choice of some cities is partly understandable: London will host the following Olympic Games; Paris is where the Olympics were born (but why not including Lausanne as well, then?); San Francisco, the only North American stop, has a large Chinese community; the stop in Buenos Aires seems to be a compensation for the fact that in 2004 the flame stopped in Rio de Janeiro. There are however also more bizarre choices. For instance, the Canadian Olympic committee said it was “disappointed” that neither Vancouver, the venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics, nor any other city in Canada were included on the torch relay route. One of the reasons is probably the tensions existing between China and Canada on the issue of human rights. On the forum of the GamesBids site I found a post which tries to explain some of the choices. For instance, the African stop is in Dar es Salaam because today Tanzania is the first place in sub-Sahara Africa the Chinese reached in the 15^th century. The Japanese stop is in Nagano and not in Tokyo, because China does not want Japan to exploit the torch to promote its capital’s bid for the 2016 Games. Finally, China has planned to pass the torch directly from Seoul to Pyongyang in order to contribute in improving relationships between the two Koreas.

The Olympics and democracy

2007-05-09T21:21:00.001+02:00

During the debate between the two candidates to the French presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy opposed to the hypothesis of a boycott of the Beijing Games the usual argument that organizing the Olympics in China will certainly have a positive effect, and will contribute to democratize and open Chinese society. The same argument had been put forth by the IOC some days earlier during a press conference, as an answer, although indirect, to the accusation for Beijing of supporting the Sudanese regime in the Darfur war. The argument is a corollary to the idea that the Olympic Games should not be touched by any political dispute. So, I wondered if in the past the Olympics have indeed had this benefic effect, or if it is a myth. The Olympic Games took place in country ruled by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes for five times: Berlin 1936, Mexico City 1968, Moscow 1980, Sarajevo 1984 and Seoul 1988. The last is in fact the only case in which organizing the Olympic really encouraged a regime to make reforms. However, even in this case the democratization process was more induced by the fear of losing the right of organizing the Games than by good sentiments inspired by the Olympic ideal. While surfing on the Net in search of documents about the Olympic "crisis" between China and Taiwan, I found out a very interesting article by Randall Schriver on the Taipei Times. The author proposes the same analysis, limiting himself to the 1936, 1984 and 1988 Olympics, and comparing them with the present situation of China. In particular, in the article the author asks: “Will China's time in the spotlight reveal a country that is out of step with mainstream international concepts of human rights and dignity (1936), a country that is grossly under-prepared for internal challenges and domestic turmoil (1984) or a country that is committed to modernization, reform and constructive international behavior (1988)? To date, the data we can glean suggests the situation is still fluid”.

The Olympic flame in the future

2007-05-09T21:08:00.000+02:00

Taiwan's refusal to accept the Olympic torch on its territory raises questions not only on diplomatic relationships between the two Chinas, but also on the meaning of the Olympic fire in the 21st century.After the strong protests which accompanied the Olympic torch along almost all its route to Turin in 2006, another stage has been reached in the process of desacralization of this symbol of the Olympic movement. Now, not only isolated groups of people refuse or try to boycott it, but even a country. The IOC will hardly renounce to the torch relay, one of the main symbols of Olympism, which has, moreover, been taken up by sponsors. One can imagine, however, that – independently from the Taiwan issue – the trip of the torch to Beijing will be hard. In Turin it was the anti-Tav (the Italian high-speed train) protesters who took advantage of its resonance, tomorrow it will probably be human rights advocates, Darfur or Tibet supporters, in particular when the flame will stop in big Western cities (the regime of Beijing will probably be able to calm protests on its territory). Not to forget the anti-Coca Cola committees, which already took part in the protests in 2006. The Olympic torch relay was born, as it is known, in 1936. It was created for the Berlin Games; it was part of a larger project of the grandeur the Nazi regime wanted these Olympics to show with a propagandistic purpose. Afterwards, the IOC definitively adopted it: the symbolism of fire is highly evocative, and the flame allows, moreover, establishing a link with Ancient Greece. It was also an extraordinary way of spreading the Olympic idea and to present itself as a really worldwide movement. But today we are no more at the time of the flame, passing through a cheering crowd. Gigantism also struck the Olympic flame, so that today we have more and more ‘global’ and huge relays. Nevertheless, its visibility makes it an easy target for any kind of protests, so that the relays are more and more secured and the torchbearers more and more unapproachable. It will be interesting to see how will be the Olympic relays in the future.

Twenty years later: politics again

2007-04-25T22:39:00.000+02:00

As it could be foreseen, the Beijing Olympics are raising various political issues, as it didn’t occur since twenty years at least, with the Seoul Games in 1988. In my other blog (in Italian) I already wrote about the Darfur question, and the proposals which have been made by various personalities, in particular actress Mia Farrow, to use the Olympic Games in order to force China to change its policy in Sudan. Recently, the weekly Italian magazine Internazionale published an article on the issue, relating the position of various US newspapers, such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times. Today, during a press conference in Beijing, the IOC itself was forced to intervene in the debate, confirming its classical position and just making a vague statement: “we believe that the Olympic Games will have definitely a positive, lasting effect on the Chinese society”. Though not intervening in political matters is one of the IOC fundamental credos, an interesting article from the site Asia Sentinel, published in the French magazine Courrier International, reminds that in June 1987, one year prior to the Seoul Olympics, a series of violent demonstrations spread through South Korea, and the IOC forced the regime to stop them, threatening to withdraw the right to organize the Games. It seems to be the scenario at which most of the opponents to the Beijing regime are aiming. In any case, the next fifteen months promise to be hot.

Taiwan said yes

2007-04-24T22:42:00.000+02:00

Apparently, the organizers of the Beijing Olympics reached an accord with the government of Taiwan (whose official name for Olympic institutions is Chinese Taipei) for the transit of the Olympic torch through its territory. The main controversy was about the fact that the authorities of the People’s Republic of China wanted the torch to cross Taiwan like any other of its provinces, while the government of the Republic of China wanted it to be clear that it is an independent territory, with its own Olympic committee. For this, it proposed a compromise: the torch should have entered and gone out from Taiwan not through mainland China, but through other territories which are IOC members, such as South Korea or Hong Kong. We don’t know by now if the accord was reached on this basis, and which will be the exact route of the relay, which shall be revealed in Beijing on Thursday. The Chinese are already planning a grandiose relay: the torch should cross 70 cities in China, 28 cities outside China, and reach the peak of Mount Everest.

Just to begin...

2007-04-20T23:57:00.000+02:00

The Olympics are my (second?!?) passion. Since three or four years, thanks to the Web, I collect news, pictures, histories, etc. concerning the Olympic Games. I am particularly interested in history and in political and cultural aspects, but I don't leave any aside. For instance, I collected a quite large number of images of the Olympic rings I found on the Web, and some other pics I found interesting. This little blog - of which I write a parallel version in Italian - will talk about any news or any other interesting stuff about the Olympics I will find on the Web (or elsewhere). Among the various sites of Olympic news I visit regularly are, apart that of the IOC, NewsMotion, SportsFeatures, Sports Illustrated, Around the Rings, GamesBids, and some blogs such as this one, or the one from Blogosfere (in Italian). And I shouldn't forget the Olympic pages on Wikipedia. I contributed to some of them, both in English and Italian.