Athlete activism and the Olympic Games

Abstract

From the beginning of the modern Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has discouraged athletes from bringing politics, let alone political activism, into the Games. And yet, since the early days of the Olympics, athletes have carried out protests, even in the face of intimidation, outright threats, and rules constraining their behavior. In the context of the Olympics, athlete activism can take the form of direct engagement with political protest as well as symbolic actions that ripple with political import, but that are not immediately construed as deliberate political undertakings. Olympic athletes have expressed dissent, from Irish track star Peter O’Connor at the 1906 Olympics to Czech gymnast Vera Čáslavská and US sprinters John Carlos, Tommie Smith, and Wyomia Tyus at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City to an outburst of athlete activism in the twenty-first century. Activism has bubbled to the surface despite a rule in the Olympic Charter forbidding dissent. This chapter zeroes in on specific instances of athlete activism at the Olympics and how the IOC has responded, examining the dialectic of resistance and restriction as it plays out in the context of the Olympics, whereby athletes take political stances and Olympic powerbrokers take action to suppress them.