Athletics As A Tool For National Pride

• Hitler and the Berlin Olympics
• Eastern Bloc Countries in the Past
• New Independent Countries
• End of Cold War
• Former Yugoslavia

Hitler and the Berlin Olympics

Berlin staged the 1936 Games, which Adolf Hitler hoped would prove Aryan superiority on the playing field. But a black American runner, Jesse Owens, posted a series of sensational victories and upset Hitler's plans. Before the 1936 Nazi Games in Berlin, Olympic officials, including many in the American contingent, carefully closed their eyes to the systematic exclusion of Jewish athletes from German sports clubs in direct violation of Olympic rules.

A member of the U.S. track team in the 1936 Olympic Games, held in Berlin, Owens won four gold medals. He won

Jesse Owens, 4-time Olympic Gold Medalist

The black Americans, wildly popular as exotic creatures in Germany, were dehumanized, even in the American press. Meanwhile, two Jewish members of the team, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, were bumped off a relay team to prevent embarrassing host Hitler. The Berlin Olympics gave Germany what Senator Bradley calls "an international stamp of approval."iii

Eastern Bloc Countries in the Past

It was from the meager 1948, post World War II, surroundings that an astonishing sports system was born. Over the next 40 years East Germany grew into an international athletic power, dedicating billions of dollars to the effort. Only in 1990, in the midst of political change that drew so much of East Germany's past into question, that the sports system is being attacked as a perverted use of precious funds. ''Some people say that in the past, we only gave priority to high-performance sports for reasons of prestige,'' stated a former East German athletic director. "That is not true."iv

Early East German political and sports leaders were compelled to do what they did, why they felt the urgency to dedicate so many resources to sports. In the aftermath of the war, as Germany was split into separate and politically opposite states, West Germany re-created a sports federation as it had existed before the war, with some of the same people in control. A national Olympic committee was formed in 1949 and recognized by the International Olympic Committee two years later, which meant that West German athletes could participate in the 1952 Olympics.

In East Germany, no such apparatus had existed. Authorities decided that the only way to gain recognition by the IOC was to prove that athletes in their country were superior to those in West Germany. The East felt it needed high performances to demonstrate and underline the existence of our sports system. In fact, early achievements of East German athletes actually opened doors for the nation's political leaders, who were facing the same dilemma trying to gain immediate recognition from the new United Nations.

But in 1952, the emphasis began to change. The Soviet Union in the midst of developing its own high-performance system, created a national Olympic committee in 1951, won instant IOC recognition and competed in the Olympics for the first time the following year. East Germany formed an Olympic committee in 1951 and in 1956 then was recognized by the IOC, which would only allow East German athletes to compete as members of a combined German team. It was not a comfortable marriage, each side feeling cheated. Selecting the team became a tortuous affair. East Germany's campaign for separate recognition, fueled by increasingly more impressive results in competition, finally convinced the IOC to accept the country for the 1968 Olympics. West Germany won Olympic autonomy, as well.v

New Independent Countries

In the same way that Lithuania's political leaders struggled to make Moscow and the rest of the world recognize their republic as an independent state after the break up of the Soviet Union, Lithuanian sports officials have engaged their Soviet counterparts in a fight for sovereignty. When Lithuania declared its independence on March 11, 1990, the republic withdrew its athletes from all Soviet national competitions.

Lithuanian officials immediately stated their athletes would participate as an independent team in the next Olympics, or not at all. Their absence would be especially critical to the success of the Soviet team in basketball, since four prominent members of the team that won the gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics were from Lithuania. Lithuania's campaign to achieve independent sports status gained energy more in 1989, when all three Baltic republics reconstituted their national Olympic committees. Their claim to legitimacy stemmed from the fact that all three had been independent organizations, recognized by the International Olympic Committee and international federations for 12 sports, before the Soviet Union's annexation of the three republics in 1940.

When the Soviet Union's Olympic Committee was founded in 1951, the IOC and the international federations no longer recognized the Baltic republics as sovereign states. The IOC charter stipulates that a national Olympic committee must represent sovereign territory. While the three Baltic Olympic committees never formally resigned or dissolved, they lay dormant for nearly 40 years, their athletes participating alongside athletes from the other Soviet republics.vi

Amid the economic crisis and political reforms in former the Soviet Union, sports authorities strained to preserve a costly system that has made the Soviet Union the leading country in the Olympics for almost 20 years. While a comparable situation forced sports leaders in East Germany to scrap a system that lifted their Olympic athletes to second place, Russian officials contended that success at the international level is too important to the Russian people to allow the apparatus to degenerate. As a result, they defend the system against an increasing number of critics who say elite sports are being maintained at the expense of sports programs for ordinary citizens. Officials are also facing an assault from within: the expanding capitalist tendencies of elite athletes, who want to be treated the same as their counterparts in Western countries.

The vast system of sports clubs, schools and colleges, run by the Russian national sports committee, is supported by revenues generated from a national lottery, the sale of daily sports newspapers and of tickets to events, plus the sponsorship of enterprises and trade unions affiliated with various clubs. The Government makes an annual contribution, but officials say the sports committee returns all of it and more in the form of taxes. In its ideal form, the system blends mass sports and elite programs, producing Olympic champions as a result of exposing all citizens to all sports. As the more skilled athletes emerge, currently some 23,000, they move along an assembly line through any of 40 sports schools, in which they learn from coaches who trained at one of the country's 50 sports colleges.

But while the Soviet economy has deteriorated in recent years, creating severe shortages of food and consumer goods, only the elite half of the equation seems to be working. In all except 2 of the 10 Olympic Games staged since 1972, Soviet athletes have won the most medals. The exceptions were the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games, in which East Germany won one more, and the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games, which the Soviet Union did not attend for political reasons.

Changes are being planned. The national sports committee recently proposed laws to the national Parliament that would lead to reorganization and are similar to those adopted in the early 1990s by sports leaders in East Germany. Further, Russia has several joint-venture deals with Western firms, including Adidas of West Germany, for plants to produce equipment and clothing. But change on a grand scale in a country of nearly 290 million is usually painfully slow.vii

In 1991, Officials of the International Olympic Committee met with sports officials in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia about the possibility that those three Soviet republics could field their own national Olympic teams. Meeting with officials of Atlanta's 1996 Olympic organizing committee, the IOC officials said there will be no decision about participation before the status of the three republics is decided politically. The IOC took the position that it was not an "Olympic" problem and that some kind of political solution would have to be arranged before the Olympic world could respond.viii

Later that year, Samaranch, announced that former Soviet athletes would compete as planned at Albertville, France, in the Winter Games and in Barcelona, Spain, in the Summer Games. Despite the breakup of the Soviet empire, the 12 republics—minus the newly independent Baltic states—agreed to send a joint team to both Olympic Games in 1992.

More than their obvious need for funds, the Olympic organizers explained their groping for some fresh symbolism as well as their concern that the best team athletes not be sent parading into the arena to the disparate drummings of nationalism. Some officials were concerned that sports computer predictions of the 1992 "joint" team as one of the best ever would be brought to naught by attempts in Ukraine and elsewhere to have national teams specially certified by the International Olympic Committee in time for the summer games in Barcelona.ix

A Unified Team was eventually fielded in Barcelona and Albertville. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Baltic lands whose independence predated the Commonwealth, returned to the Olympics as individual teams for the first time in 56 years. Since, though, each former Soviet state has become fully independent, both politically and at the Olympics. While many of the top athletes on teams representing former Soviet republics were raised under the Soviet sports machine, some of the younger participants are products of their own systems. And the competition among these countries remains friendly, a remarkable achievement in such a short period.

End of Cold War

The Albertville Olympics was the first major international sports event to reflect the reconfiguration of Europe following the demise of Communism and the resurgence of nationalism. Gone were the two powers that dominated the medal charts for years, the Soviet Union and East Germany. Both were countries that used their success as political propaganda, as a symbol of triumphant socialism. The Soviet Union, which disappeared the winter of 1991–92, began competing in the Winter Olympics in 1956 and won more medals than any other country in every meeting but two, 1968 and 1980. East Germany, a nation of 16 million absorbed into West Germany two years ago, never ranked lower than second in gold medals or total medals since 1972. At Calgary, the Soviet Union and East Germany were one-two in the standing, capturing 20 of the 46 gold medals available.

As the Soviet Union splintered and then declared itself out of existence, its athletes were freed to represent their own republics. For the Albertville Games, those from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan, representative of the new Commonwealth of Independent States, competed together as the United Team and march into the opening ceremonies behind the IOC banner of five rings, rather than the familiar red flag bearing a hammer and sickle, now retired. Victories by a United Team athlete were celebrated by the Olympic anthem, Beethoven's Ode to Joy.x

In Calgary, more than 1,700 athletes from 57 countries participated, which were record numbers. At Albertville, over 65 countries and territories signed up to compete in 55 events, both records. Now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its transformation into the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the formation of one Germany, there's no enemy in the Olympics for the American public. No they. No them. And that's the way it should be. The Olympics do not need an enemy.

Former Yugoslavia

Sarajevo's link to Olympic history added to the irony of the International Olympic Committee debates in 1992 to decide if Yugoslavia would be permitted to compete in the Summer Olympics at Barcelona, Spain. But if the threat of an Olympic ban were to contribute to stopping the shelling and sniping in Sarajevo, many felt the Bosnian people who hosted the 1984 Winter Games deserved attention.

The IOC's final decision on Yugoslavia's Olympic participation was delayed until just before the start of the Games. "You know, in politics, things change,' Samaranch said. 'We will make the decision at the last minute." Yugoslavia -- now consisting of Serbia and Montenegro -- was banned from international team sports competitions under sanctions adopted by the United Nations Security Council in May of 1992. The sanctions were designed to pressure Serbia and Montenegro to end their involvement in the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina.xi

Initially, only Croatia and Slovenia among the six republics that comprised Yugoslavia before its recent breakup were assured of participation in the Games. The United Nations recognized them as independent states early in 1992, and the IOC quickly recognized their individual national Olympic committees. But participation by athletes from the other former republics remained uncertain because of United Nations sanctions against the new Yugoslavia, as aggressor in the ethnic wars.

In an attempt minimize the intrusion of politics, the IOC proposed that Yugoslav athletes represent themselves under the neutral Olympic flag in Barcelona. The Yugoslav Olympic Committee accepted the offer, but the Spanish Government, wary of violating a United Nations resolution, asked the sanctions committee of the U.N. Security Council to approve the IOC solution before allowing any Yugoslavs from Serbia or Montenegro into the country.

A compromise was reached that would allowing a portion of the Olympic team to attend the Barcelona Games. 'Though the Olympic Committee preferred that the Bosnian team not compete in Barcelona, none disputed the political significance of the evolving situation on the ground in Bosnia participation of former Yugoslav athletes in the Games.

The XVII Winter Games, two years later in Norway, opened with an impassioned appeal for a cease-fire in the Balkans, as the Olympic movement escalated its involvement in renewed peace efforts to halt the bloodletting in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Samaranch delivered an emotional call for Bosnia's warring factions to 'drop your guns' and abide by the ancient Greek tradition to halt all forms of warfare for the duration of Olympic competition. "Our message is stronger than ever," Samaranch said, after summoning the 40,000 athletes, dignitaries and spectators at the inaugural ceremony and an estimated 1 billion television viewers worldwide to stand for a moment's silence in memory of Sarajevo. "Please stop the fighting. Stop the killing."xii

Ten years after Sarajevo hosted the Winter Games, the scenes of devastation and bloodshed in the Bosnian capital served as a painful reminder to the Olympic movement that its pleas for peace and harmony transcending borders and religions are ignored all too often. By 1994, Norway organized a campaign called Olympic Aid that raised $2 million from business groups, delegates and the athletes themselves to provide assistance to victims of the Bosnian war, particularly the children of Sarajevo. Nine Bosnian athletes participated in the 1994 Games and were overwhelmed by the sympathy and moral support offered by fellow Olympians from around the world.

Officials from the IOC and Norway said they believed it would be a travesty of Olympic ideals if NATO conducted threatened air strikes in Bosnia, even if the Serbs engaged in provocative shelling while the Games are in session. In October 1994, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted two resolutions proclaiming 1994 as the International Year of Sports and the Olympic Ideal, and global respect for the Olympic truce.

NATO forces now occupy much of the war-torn area of Bosnia. The conflict is by no means over as the 1996 Atlanta Games approach opening ceremonies.