The religion in Olympic tourism

Abstract

Olympic tourism has been likened to pilgrimage [Weed, M. (2008). Olympic tourism. Oxford: Elsevier], and Olympic sites called ‘shrines’ for the ‘pious sport tourist’ [Gammon, 2004]. Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, promoted the ‘cult of the human being’ [Ruprecht, L.A. (2008). Greek exercises: The modern Olympics as Hellenic appropriation and reinvention. Thesis eleven, 93, pp. 72–87], which had distinctly religious overtones. Sport may be a functional equivalent of religion in the modern world [Cusack, C.M. (2010). Sport. In R.D. Hecht & V.F. Biondo (Eds.), Religion in everyday life and culture (pp. 915–943). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger], and as a global spectacle, the Olympics perform the ideal of de Coubertin's ‘harmony of nationalisms’ [Moltmann, J. (1989). Olympia between politics and religion. Concilium, 101–109]. This acting out and collective affirmation of humanist principles is civil religion; quasi-religious beliefs and practices connected with citizenship and political community, which here affirm the pre-eminence of the human individual. Olympic tourists celebrate human achievement, and participate in a mediatised mass spectacle of consumerism. Olympic tourism has similar religious significance to other mass-mobility events (the Hajj and the Kumbh Mela), which take on significance for visitors beyond the immediately theological. Yet, the religio-spiritual elements of Olympic tourism have received less attention than other secular pilgrimages (battlefields and the World Cup). We argue Olympic tourism is a quasi-religious pilgrimage that moves participants closer to, and through, a spectacle event upholding certain socio-cultural ideals of the wider project of the affluent, Western culture and identity, embodied in the Olympics.