Sports hopelessly muddled with politics
International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry speaks after an IOC meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on June 24. Credit: AP/Cyril Zingaro
Russia is returning to the Olympics.
And so the long controversy over the messy nexus of politics and sports simmers again.
The road back was paved this past week by the International Olympic Committee, which “provisionally” allowed the Russians to field a team for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Russia was banned in 2023 after its invasion of Ukraine, though a few athletes not affiliated with Russia’s military were allowed to compete in 2024 and 2026 as “neutral” participants.
It seems baffling that the ban was lifted as the war rages on and Russia continues to target Ukraine’s civilians. IOC president Kirsty Coventry, a former Olympic swimmer from Zimbabwe, cited the IOC’s longstanding principle of neutrality in sports, saying all athletes should “have the possibility to participate in the Olympics and not be held responsible for the actions of their governments.”
It was a sentiment that sounds wonderful. But the reality is that athletes often are punished for and by their governments’ actions. There have been six politically related Olympic boycotts, most notably in 1976, 1980 and 1984. Individual nations were banned from other games, including several countries kept out of the 1920 Summer Olympics in Belgium for being on the losing side in World War I and South Africa’s long suspension due to its system of apartheid.
Coventry has been in office for barely one year so you could give her the benefit of the doubt and say she wants the IOC to consistently stand by its supposed principles. We’ll see how that goes. But the truth is that sports on the international and national stages has always been hopelessly muddled with politics.
National teams are avatars for their countries, lionized in victory and often for their valiance in defeat. The most notorious example was the Nazis’ use of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as propaganda for their heinous beliefs and policies. The other end of the spectrum has been on brilliant display during the current World Cup with teams’ robust renditions of national anthems, tiny nations like Cape Verde bursting with pride at their team’s play, and the entire populace of countries like Norway joyously enmeshed in their players’ success.
Russia has represented the dark side of that investment. The country has long been a pariah for its systemic doping program, especially before and during the Winter Games it hosted in Sochi in 2014, which led to a variety of suspensions. Nor has the World Cup been immune. French star Kylian Mbappé has criticized his nation’s far right, a fight bound to ratchet up after last week’s court decision that let far-right leader Marine Le Pen run for president next year. Her father and party predecessor, Jean-Marie Le Pen, vehemently attacked the multiethnic makeup of France’s 1998 World Cup-winning team and said those players did not truly represent France.
We have our own troubles with a polarizing president who has tried to align himself with various sports champions. In response, some teams and athletes, college and professional, have declined customary White House invitations. Most recently, President Donald Trump intervened with soccer’s international federation to have it lift a one-game World Cup suspension for top scorer Folarin Balogun — son of Nigerian parents, raised in England, eligible to play for the U.S. because he was born in Brooklyn. The irony was delicious.
Two days before Trump’s call, the Supreme Court ruled against his attempt to end birthright citizenship. Now he was going to bat for a birthright citizen he thought could help the United States win. The discomfort for soccer fans was bipartisan.
Most sports fans seem to want to keep sports separate from politics. It gets more complicated when the politics can help us win. Perhaps sports, like much of life, is more transactional than we’d like to think.
Columnist Michael Dobie is a retired member of the editorial board.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
