The Olympic Machinations

...Moreover, with a growing number of Asian, African and Communist nations among its members, the International Olympic Committee is gradually becoming an ideological battleground where the Western democracies, if they continue to be represented by such antiquated innocents, must soon expect to experience some unpleasant surprises...

...I don't see what business they have in the field of sports...

...In recent years, however, archers have not been allowed to compete in the Olympics simply because archery contests no longer attract enough paying spectators...

...He also recommended sending sportsmen from the more developed countries to help organize sports activities in Africa, and even drafted a grandiose project whereby prosperous cities in Europe or elsewhere might be invited to "adopt" growing African cities and foster their sports activities...

...In an endless rigmarole of debate over the weird issue, the Committee would not tolerate the use of the word "race...

...When the East Germans asked to be allowed to send a separate team, Avery Brundage asked them rhetorically: "Are you Germans...

...De Beaumont had already found some sponsors for his project, including a few European national Olympic committees, several international sports associations and a couple of interested municipalities...

...The minutes of this historic meeting must read like a chapter from a Dickens novel on Victorian hypocrisy and avarice, if not from Alice in Wonderland...

...In contrast to the archers, the International Federation of Football Associations is perhaps the wealthiest of the sports federations...

...Mexico City, on the other hand, which spent less on such obvious lobbying, was almost unanimously selected as the site for the 1968 Games...

...The report clearly implied collecting and spending money...

...Thus, the real issues were evaded in a torrent of gobbledygook...

...First, a year ago the Committee suspended Indonesia's membership because Israel had not been allowed to participate in the Asian Games in Jakarta...

...Each of these nations is now individually represented in the International Committee and allowed to send separate teams to the games, though the North Koreans are allowed to participate only as North Koreans and not under the official name of the Korean People's Republic...

...Among other points, de Beaumont's report revealed that the most popular amateur sport throughout Africa is volleyball...

...asked Avery Brundage...

...Among the international sports federations which the Committee recognizes officially, and without whose support the Olympics would be impossible, the one that represents the world's amateur archers is perhaps the poorest...

...Obviously, whether it likes it or not, the Olympic Committee is now up to its neck in Arab League politics, and will soon have to reinstate Indonesia with servile apologies or suspend a number of other Moslem national committees which follow Indonesia's initiative in other forthcoming international sports events...

...Since volleyball happens to be one of the cheapest of all team sports, it is particularly popular among working-class amateurs who cannot afford to participate in expensive sports...

...Both have already invited the Olympic Committee to participate in these programs, if only in an advisory capacity...

...As chairman of this new body...

...At the same time, however, the International Olympic Committee finds it extremely difficult to make up its mind to suspend the Union of South Africa...

...Similarly, Hong-Kong is also recognized as a separate entity under its official name of HongKong, though many Hong-Kong sportsmen might well answer "Yes," as might those of Taiwan, if asked whether they are Chinese...

...But sport is no longer, if it ever was, an activity that exists in vacuo...

...It has long been an element of our economic, political or educational life...

...In the long run, many governments may even withdraw their support from the Committee's activities and begin to organize Asian, African, perhaps even other Olympic games under the sponsorship of some more cooperative, less irresponsible international organization...

...On political matters, too, the International Committee must face issues more squarely...

...Detroit, for instance, is reputed to have spent over a million dollars on its successive attempts to impose itself as the chosen city...

...Are we going into politics...

...It may soon find itself no longer invited to take part in a great number of such celebrations...

...And the great travel agencies—especially Thomas Cook and Son and the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits—understood from the beginning that such athletic events were likely to be a veritable gold mine...

...but Taiwan is recognized, though only under the names of Taiwan, never as the National Republic of China...

...Yet the Committee needs the Federation's moral and financial support and cannot bring itself to withdraw its official recognition, while at the same time it increasingly excludes football from the list of sports to be represented in the Olympics...

...sportsmen of European, Asian, Bantu and mixed (colored) origin are not allowed to compete against each other—either as individuals or in racially segregated or mixed teams—within the national boundaries, even for the purpose of selection for the Olympics...

...In October 1963, in honor of the centenary of the birth of Pierre de Coubertin, UNESCO organized a celebration which stressed the educational value of his achievement...

...Yet this principle does not apply to North Korea and South Korea...

...Volleyball presents a still more confusing situation...

...Evasion of the real financial or political issues that are at stake can serve no useful purpose, not even allowing us to gain time...

...In all its deliberations, the Committee and its various organs go to great lengths to stress the disinterested and even idealistic character of their work...

...Their answer, like that of the West Germans, being "Yes," they were then told that there cannot possibly be two German teams...

...The International Committee simply refuses to recognize this...

...Are we going into business...

...Count de Beaumont, a Frenchman, undertook extensive trips to Africa and subsequently drew up a remarkably comprehensive report on African sports activities, with stress on their financial and other needs...

...In chairing the meetings of the Committee, its Executive Board, its Assembly or its various sub-committees, America's Avery Brundage...

...Nobody among the Olympians yet dares to admit that their movement has long ceased to be the politically innocent and commercially impartial hobby of a group of high-minded Edwardian amateur athletes that it once set out to be...

...Because the International Federation for volleyball is not rich enough to carry any weight in the deliberations of the Olympic Committee, one of the most widely practiced of all sports may thus for a long while continue not to be represented in the Olympics...

...or "Are we going into business...

...Two other political issues seem to bedevil the International Olympic Committee's deliberations in a particularly vicious manner...

...The Greek government, though originally skeptical about the success of this revival, was surprised to see that so outlandishly highbrow a project not only met with popular support in Greece itself but contributed toward increasing the nation's prestige in the eyes of the entire world...

...SPORTS, MONEY AND POLITICS The Olympic Machinations By Terence Riordan Ever since their somewhat hectic fin de siècle revival in 1898, when Baron Pierre de Coubertin managed to overcome endless difficulties in promoting Olympic Games in Athens for the first time since classical antiquity, the Olympics have proven a tremendous commercial and political asset to the nation granted the privilege of acting as host...

...Count de Beaumont's committee was immediately abolished...

...the current president, finds himself again and again obliged to interrupt fruitless discussions of deadlocked problems by repeating one or the other of two rhetorical questions: "Are we going into politics...

...Again, Communist China is not recognized as a member nation and sends no team to the Games...

...Terence Riordan, a freelance journalist, is a longtime observer of the international sports scene...

...It is already common knowledge that, because of the expensive facilities needed for sportsmen and spectators, the Olympic Games can only be held in very wealthy cities or in the capitals of totalitarian nations which are willing to sacrifice enough money to supply the necessary accommodations...

...came the docile reply, and the debate was closed...

...Such an arrangement might well be an improvement over the current gathering of charmingly obsolete men who continue to run the Olympics in Olympian ignorance of all the real issues of business and politics that are at stake in their deliberations...

...The International Olympic Committee, however, has always seemed to ignore, or at least to deprecate, the political and financial aspects of the contests that it organizes...

...Throughout the world, affiliated football clubs own valuable real estate in the form of stadiums and regularly attract huge, paying crowds...

...But football—whether American or European, Association or Rugby —is a team sport, and the Olympic Games were originally revived by Baron de Coubertin chiefly to promote individual effort in amateur sports...

...This year it sent a dellegation of some 100 representatives to Baden-Baden...

...But since UNESCO is a political organization, the International Committee declined to participate...

...As for the funds that it had collected and not yet spent, these were paid into the International Committee's own dormant non-commercial treasury, where a good $100,000 already lie idle...

...If the International Committee would only face such financial issues more frankly, it would soon cease to be, as it now is, a mere arena for lobbying, graft and public relations experts who can be sure to outsmart themselves...

...Two years ago, the International Olympic Committee decided to set up a special committee for the purpose of studying the athletic needs of underdeveloped countries...

...To all such invitations Avery Brundage has but one reply: "These are political organizations...

...The pious answer to these questions is always and unanimously an emphatic "No...

...The sport is also popular in underdeveloped nations, where funds are not available to provide costly facilities or equipment for other sports...

...Yet archery, surely, is one of the very few amateur sports that is still practiced almost as it was in ancient times, when it constituted one of the principal attractions of the original Olympic Games...

...But upon hearing de Beaumont's report, the Olympic Committee got cold feet...

...Count de Beaumont's committee proved a source of real embarrassment to the International Olympic Committee when it reported that many African nations expect financial or technical aid rather than high-minded advice about the spirit of sportsmanship...

...Moreover, the football games that draw large crowds in most countries are mainly played by professional teams...

...Soon, other governments insisted that the new Olympic Games be held every four years in a different country, and not, as the Greeks suggested, exclusively in Greece...

...On the issue of East and West Germany, where there are now two separate Olympic committees, it insists on sitting on the fence, admitting representatives of both committees to its deliberations but refusing to allow two German teams, so that East and West Germany must always be represented by a single combined team...

...A few problems from the many that continually prove most controversial in the Olympic Committee's deliberations should suffice to reveal the situation...

...In that event, its already feeble link with the contemporary world would be broken...

...Among other things, de Beaumont suggested bringing African sportsmen to Europe on scholarships, to obtain training as instructors, umpires, referees, sports-club counselors, etc...

...In many European countries well-run betting pools provide the national football association with such vast income that they have become public benefactors in other fields: in Germany, for instance, they have donated expensive works of art to the West Berlin museums...

...At its recent Baden-Baden conference, the Committee decided to admit a half-dozen newly constituted African Olympic committees as members, but it also chose not to include in the 1964 Olympics the one sport in which these countries might be able to provide good teams —volleyball...

...The International Federation, though, continues to group both amateurs and professionals together, so that it constantly finds itself at loggerheads with the Olympic Committee...

...In political matters, the International Olympic Committee can sound equally hypocritical or paradoxical...

...Under South Africa's apartheid laws, of course...

...It insists that in South Africa there exists only a color bar, though the country clearly recognizes four—not merely two—different racial communities by their color...

...UNESCO and the Council of Europe, for instance, both sponsor programs and projects concerned with sports as an element of education or recreation...

...Indeed, it spent money there so lavishly that it even aroused antagonism...