Swedish Press June 2008 Issue

The Olympic Games in Stockholm, in 1912, were the first to fulfill Baron Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time since the modern Games had started in 1896, all continents were represented at the games with the 2 504 athletes competing in the same stadium.

The ultimate dream of the founder of the Olympics was that it would not be “the winning, it's the taking part and competing well that counts". Only amateurs were to be allowed and there was not to be any political involvement.

I myself feel it is important to make a distinction between the competition and the inauguration. While the competitions should be all about sportsmanship and nothing else, the inauguration of an Olym- pic Game is in essence all about politics. It is a spectacle to showcase the host country at its best. A boycott of the inauguration is now being widely discussed as one way of protesting China's human rights abuses. A Dagens Nyheter sports columnist suggests that the athletes should even be spared from parading in this charade and it should instead be the Swedish IOC board members Gunilla Lindberg, Pernilla Wiberg and Arne Ljungqvist walking around with the Swedish flag by themselves. This will surely not happen but I promise this discussion will come up again before the Russian Winter Olympics in 2014.

I think the Dalai Lama has the right idea. He does not want to stop the games, but to allow legitimate protests. The United States and some 60 other countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to protest the invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets and their allies did the same with the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. The only ones who suffered were the athletes.

The International Olympic Committee has been very upset about the protests along the Torch Relay this year. It should, however, be noted that the Torch Relay was not part of the original Coubertin idea, but a much later clever public relation gimmick by the Nazis for the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It is essentially a political spectacle just like the inauguration and should as such be open for protests.

If there is something that the IOC should be upset about, it has to be the fact that China has not honored its human rights commitments. Just like the Nazis never fulfilled their promise to allow German Jews to compete in their games, something that the IOC also chose to ignore. On the whole the International Olympic Committee does not have much of a track record when it comes to ideals (as detailed in Sverker Lindström's Det stora sveket. Den olympiska rörelsen i diktaturens tjänst.) and the Olympics have essentially become all about money. Today many of the athletes are amateurs just by name while sportsmanship continues to take a beating as ever more sophisticated performance enhancement substances evolve.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is probably turning in his grave in Geneva, while his heart, that was buried separately in a monument near the ruins of ancient Olympia, is breaking to pieces.