Political Olympics part 2 - olympians

Last Modified: 07 Aug 2008
By: Channel 4 News

In part two of this series, Martin Keady looks at the Olympic competitors whose actions stunned the sporting world and the world at large.

There are two types of "political olympian" - the "deliberate" and the "accidental" activists.

The deliberate political olympians are those athletes who have made explicit political statements using the opportunity that the Olympics gave them to spread their message to the watching and listening world.

The accidental activists are those athletes who unintentionally took a stand that somehow achieved a political resonance that they had never really intended to create.

There have been far more accidental activists, largely because to take a deliberate political stance at the Olympics was to run the risk of invoking the wrath of the IOC, which, like most sporting bodies, has always actively discouraged political statements.

Activists

Foremost among those who inadvertently became figureheads of political ideas or movements is Cathy Freeman.

The great 400 metres runner's triumph at the 2000 Sydney games provided the sporting highlight of that Olympics and was seen as symbolising the struggle for civil rights and wider public recognition of the native Australian or Aboriginal people, from whom she was descended.

Even though Freeman herself was avowedly non-political, the fact that she could be celebrated and held up as a role model by the whole of Australia, a country and culture that in the past had virtually tried to decimate its native people, was seen as a landmark in Australian social history.

Even in taking an apparently apolitical stance, they were effectively making a political point.

Those olympians who have taken a deliberate political stance include the athletes of the boycott era - 1976-1984 - who refused to bow to political pressure and insisted on competing at a games despite the opposition of their own Government.

For example, the legendary British middle-distance duo, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, maintained that sport and politics should be kept separate and insisted on competing in Russia despite the British Government's desire to support the US boycott.

Even in taking an apparently apolitical stance, they were effectively making a political point.

Political podium

The make-up of the top three political olympians reflects this division between the accidental and the deliberate activists.

Gold: Jesse Owens, Berlin, 1936
Fittingly, the most political of Olympics was dominated by the most political of olympians, even though Jesse Owens, like most athletes, professed to have little or no interest in politics per se.

His incredible haul of four gold medals - in the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and 4 x 100 metres relay - was only equalled nearly fifty years later by Carl Lewis at the 1984 Los Angeles games.

However, the Soviet Bloc's boycott of the LA games meant that Lewis did not have to face many of his major rivals and he did not have to compete against an entire ideology, namely "National Socialism" or Nazism.

Hitler wanted the 1936 games to show the world a new, and Nazi, Germany and hoped that German athletes would achieve a record medal haul. However, even though the German team did extremely well, their efforts were completely overshadowed by the achievements of Jesse Owens and the controversy surrounding them.

Not only did Owens beat more fancied German rivals, including the long jumper Luz Long, but he effectively forced Hitler to boycott what he had regarded as his own games.

On the first day of the games Hitler shook hands only with the German medal-winners. IOC officials then demanded that Hitler acknowledge every medallist, regardless of their nationality, or none of them.

Probably because he did not want to be seen shaking hands with a "negro" like Owens, Hitler avoided all further medal presentations and thereafter the 1936 Games would forever be regarded as "Jesse Owens's Games", not "Adolf Hitler's".

There is a fascinating footnote to Jesse Owens's career as a political Olympian.

In 1980, shortly before he died, he tried to persuade President Carter not to proceed with the planned US boycott of the Moscow Games in response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. He argued that sport, including the Olympics, was above politics. President Carter, however, ignored his request.

Silver: Tommie Smith and John Carlos,
Mexico City, 1968
If Owens is the single most famous political olympian then without a doubt the single most famous and important political gesture in Olympic history was made by two other black American athletes more than thirty years later when Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their black power salute.

Nearly 40 years later, they are now almost universally regarded as genuine American heroes.

Smith and Carlos had come first and third respectively in the 200 metres at the Mexico City games in 1968. When they received their medals and the US national anthem played, they lifted a single, black-gloved hand as a demonstration of their solidarity with the struggle for black civil rights in their homeland.

The reaction to their gesture, at a time when radical groups like the Black Panthers were becoming more politically active and even turning to violence, was immediate and largely damning.

Smith and Carlos were suspended from the US Olympic team, banned from the Olympic village and on their return to America received vitriolic abuse, hate mail and even death threats.

Yet, nearly 40 years later, they are now almost universally regarded as genuine American heroes, with their political stance commemorated in the form of a statue on the campus of a leading US university.

Bronze: Otto Peltzer
I admit that my choice of German athlete, Otto Peltzer, is contentious, even leftfield.

For one thing, he is far less famous than the gold and silver medallists; for another, his own record as an olympian was chequered - at the two games in which he competed, in 1928 and 1932, he did not win a single medal.

Nevertheless, Peltzer is an authentic political olympian - and authentic Olympic hero - because, perhaps more than anyone else in the history of the games, he remained true to the original Olympic ideal of amateurism.

It's a concept that is now almost entirely forgotten in the professionalisation of sport and the rush to include world-famous millionaires from previously non-Olympic sports in the games, such as Roger Federer or the American basketball dream teams.

In the mid-1920s, Peltzer was one of the greatest athletes in the world, holding numerous German and even world records in events as varied as the 400 metres hurdles and the 5,000 metres.

After defeating the "Flying Finn" Paavo Nurmi in a 1,500 metres race in Berlin, he was approached by two American sports promoters who offered him a fortune - $250,000 a year, which would amount to many millions of dollars a year in today's prices - to compete in America.

Peltzer refused on the basis that he wanted to compete in the Olympics and thus had to remain an amateur.

Otto Peltzer achieved many things in his life - later openly defying the Nazis and being persecuted by them for his homosexuality - but for his dedication to the Olympic ideal, he deserves his place on the podium of political olympians.

Martin Keady is a writer and scriptwriter. His work includes The Final, a short film about the 1979 FA Cup Final, and Moon the Loon, a play about the legendary Who drummer, Keith Moon.