Gold and glory: Let the Olympic Games begin!

For the next one month, the global sports party will return to the home of the founder of modern Olympics.

Athletes from around the world will converge on the French capital, Paris, for 19 days of thrills and spills.

This will be the third time that Paris will be hosting the bonanza after the 1900 and 1924 Games when French noble, Baron Pierre de Coubertin – who founded the modern Olympics in 1894 – was President of International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The Games have survived discrimination, bigotry, sexism, racism, bipolar global politics, terrorism, corruption and doping pandemic to retain its place on the pantheon of global pop culture as the most prestigious sporting gathering in the world, with a television audience only rivalled by its ilk, Fifa World Cup.

However, history is not too kind for De Coubertin. His own compatriots are not very fond of his legacy, despite his role in this socio-cultural phenomenon.

He waxed philosophical about sports, with phrases like “the important thing in life is not the triumph but the fight; the essential thing is not have won, but to have fought well”. Yet, De Coubertin was a self-avowed racist and misogynist, according to historical records. He described himself as a “fanatical colonialist”.

His belief that women had no place in modern Olympics, which some commentators justify and rationalise as “cultural norms of that era”, was his Achilles heel. De Coubertin spectacularly pronounced himself against allowing women to participate in the Olympics, saying “it is impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and we are not afraid to add: incorrect, such would be in our opinion this female half-Olympiad.”

Writing in a popular website, insidethegames.biz last June, Spain’s sports journalist, Raul Daffunchio Picazo, penned: “He was a class snob and even a supporter of colonialism, while partial to the Nazi regime.” 

Daphne Bolz, a sports historian at the University of Rouen, observed: “He created the movement, he had the idea, he laid the foundations. In that sense, he will never be completely forgotten. But he was a man of his time, out of step with the contemporary values of France and those promoted by today's International Olympic Committee (IOC).”

Third time

The question of how much prominence to give him as France organises its first Olympic Games in over a 100 years – the last Paris Games in 1900 and 1924 were in Coubertin's time – has posed a great dilemma among his countrymen. Some acknowledge him, while others criticise him for not thinking nearly 130 years ago as he is judged today.

This is the case of Tony Estanguet, President of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Organising Committee, who said: “Paris will host its third Games and we know what we owe to the Baron. If we are here, it is thanks to him. However, France and the Paris 2024 organisers have been careful not to mention Coubertin.

He does not feature in the official narrative of the Games, nor is there a major stadium in Paris named in his honour, apart from a municipal sports centre in the south-west of the capital that will be used as a training base.” 

The Games have survived some of the most egregious events, from snubbing of black athletes by the German chancellor in Berlin in 1936, the butchering of Israeli athletes inside the Games Village in Munich in 1972 by Black September terrorists, boycotts of Montreal 1976 Games and Moscow Games four years later, massive bribery to vote for Salt Lake City Winter Games of 2002, which claimed quite a few officials, including Kenya’s Charles Mukora (RIP).

Doping spoiled the party spectacularly in Seoul in 1988 for Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson and many heads rolled in 2000 in Sydney, with US sprinter Marion Jones as the biggest culprit. Many more cases are believed to have been swept under the carpet.

Enter The Fuhrer, German dictator, Adolf Hitler played out his deep-seated disdain for non-Aryan stock to a global stage on a massive scale.

People around the world, Kenyans included, believed that the Chancellor snubbed American sprinter Jesse Owens after his gold medal exploits.

When Jesse Owens won his first two rounds of heats for the 100m dash at the start of the day, the Fuhrer, who had a special box set up for him inside the stadium, the Honor Loge, had not arrived. 

American authors, Deborah Riley Draper and Travis Thrasher, in their book Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, wrote how the crowd cheered Owens wildly after his second round win in 10.2 seconds, which should have been a world record, had it not been for the tail wind.

‘Black Grasshopper’

“But the last event of the first day was high jump, which featured some 22 competitors, two of whom were Germans. They reached the finals but they could not march the three American competitors, Cornelius ‘Black Grasshopper’ Johnson and Dave Albritton. Johnson won gold and Albritton silver.

The third American Delos Thurber took bronze. Hitler bolted from the Honor Loge before shaking the hands of Johnson, Albritton, both blacks, and Thurber. He did not even stay around to salute the American anthem and witness the stars and stripes go up,” wrote the authors.

The IOC officials were so angry that they demanded that Hitler either shakes hands with all winners or none at all. No other winners ever set foot inside the Honor Loge for the rest of the Games. 

The first time in Olympic history that athletes lived together in a special area known as the Olympic Village, a tradition that continues to this day, was at the Xth Olympiad of Modern Era, 1932 in Los Angeles, California.

The newly-built village offered 550 portable houses, each built to accommodate four athletes in a pair of rooms. The Olympic Village also included five dining halls and amenities such as a post office, a hospital and a movie theatre.

But only men were welcomed into the Olympic Village. Women participants were staying at the Chapman Park Hotel on Whilshire Boulevard, situated near the training grounds as well as many shops and theaters.

But even as Hitler was curving his name in history, for all the wrong reasons, Americans had their own share of issues concerning human rights, especially those of minority folks. American Olympic Committee Chairman Avery Brundage, criticised Hitler’s anti-Semiticism.

He questioned why Dr Daniel Penn, one of the world’s best tennis players then, was ousted from the German Davis Cup team simply because he was Jewish. 

“My personal, but unofficial opinion is that the Games will not be held in any country where there will be interference with the fundamental Olympic theory of equality of all races,” Brundage said in 1933.

“The Olympic protocol provides there shall be no restriction of competition because of class, colour, or creed.” He supported the position taken by Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to turn down the invitation to compete in Berlin unless they were assured Jewish athletes could compete.

But in his own backyard, things were not any better. Four years earlier, during the Xth Olympiad in Los Angeles, two top sprinters of colour were dropped and were replaced by white athletes of lower quality.

When the team was lodged at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, where the Olympic team was treated like diplomats and movie stars, Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes were not allowed to enter through the lobby.

They were sneaked from behind and even were not allowed inside the grand ballroom where the team was hosted to a banquet. Instead, they were hidden in another floor where they had their meals and spent the night, away from the rest of the Olympic team.

They can’t eat with the rest of the team, they were told. Thus when the AAU criticised Germans for their anti-Nazi stance, The Philadelphia Tribune reminded them: “The AAU shouts against the cruelties of other nations and the brutalities in foreign climes, but conveniently forgets the things that sit on its own doorstep.”