Olympics and the dream of peace

With the martial spirit originating from the ancient Greek sports competitions more than 2,500 years ago, the modern Olympic Games today are not only a competition of athletes but also a symbol of solidarity and peace between nations.

The 33rd Summer Olympic Games opened on July 26 on the Seine River in Paris, France. (Source: Reuters)

Since 700 BC, athletic competitions have been held in ancient Greece, with the first Olympic Games being held in 776 BC. The Games were held every four years until 394 AD, when the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the Games on religious grounds.

The Revival

In 1894, French thinker Baron Pierre Frèdy de Coubertin proposed reviving these games, arguing that the Olympic Games of the ancient Greeks should be revived to promote peace and unity among all mankind. Two years later, in 1896, the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens with 300 athletes from 15 countries competing in nine sports.

In order to restore the organization of the Olympic Games, in 1894, a committee with 15 members representing member countries was established in Paris called the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC has the function of supervising, deciding on the venue, establishing regulations and programs during the Olympic Games...

Initially, the Olympic Games consisted of only summer events, held every four years from 1896. By 1924, the Winter Games were held in the same year as the Summer Games. Since 1994, the Winter and Summer Games have been held every two years in even-numbered years.

The 2024 Paris Olympics - the 33rd Summer Olympics in history - opened in Paris on July 26 and will end on August 11. This is the third time France has hosted the Olympics after 1900 and 1924. The 2024 Paris Olympics will welcome 10,500 athletes with absolute gender equality, 5,250 men and 5,250 women, from 206 countries and territories competing in 32 sports. The Vietnamese delegation to the Paris Olympics has 16 athletes, competing in 11 sports.

For France, the highlight of this Olympics is the combination of organizing Olympic activities and events with promoting the monuments and landscapes of the capital Paris. Most notably, the opening ceremony is expected to take place on the Seine River when about 160 boats carrying sports delegations and officials parade on the river. This is the first time in history that the Olympics have opened on a river, instead of at stadiums as is traditional.

Political disagreement "casts a shadow"

With a history of more than 100 years, the Olympic competitions with the spirit of "sports beyond politics" unite people and countries to come closer together. However, there are still Olympics that are "overshadowed" by political disagreements.

The first Olympics, held in Athens in 1896, were marred by Türkiye’s refusal to participate due to geopolitical disputes with host country Greece. The 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics were a classic case of sports being used as a propaganda tool. The German capital was chosen by the IOC as the host city in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler came to power.

Due to Hitler's anti-Semitic policies, many countries asked the IOC to withdraw Germany's hosting rights, but in the end the Olympics were still held in Berlin. The United States and the majority of European countries participated, but the Olympics that year took place in an atmosphere of German nationalism, heavily tinged with racism.

This only abated when Jesse Owens, a young black American athlete, won four gold medals, including a victory over German Lutz Long in the long jump.

After the Berlin Olympics, World War II broke out, interrupting the Olympic Games for 12 years. In 1948, the Olympics were held again in London. This time, the IOC and host Britain did not invite Germany to participate, and the Soviet Union was also absent. Soviet sports did not officially join the Olympic movement until the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, in the atmosphere of the Cold War. However, in its first appearance, the Soviet Union won 71 medals, second only to the United States.

The 1956 Melbourne Olympics were also the Games with the “record” boycott for political reasons. China was absent because the IOC and the host country allowed Taiwanese athletes to compete. The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland did the same to protest the Soviet intervention in Hungary. Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon were also absent to protest the French, Israeli and British attacks on Egypt after it nationalized the Suez Canal.

After the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the following Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy (1960), Tokyo, Japan (1964) and Mexico (1968) passed relatively peacefully, although the matches between East and West representatives or between rival countries still contained tensions.

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, violence flared up again, this time because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the morning of September 5, 1972, a group of Palestinian militants from the “Black September” movement broke into the Olympic Village and took nine Israeli athletes hostage, demanding the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners. German police tried to intervene, but the sad result was that all nine Israeli hostages, one German policeman and five hostage-takers were killed.

The Montreal Olympics 1976 (Canada), Moscow Olympics 1980 (Soviet Union), Los Angeles Olympics 1984 (USA) the "boycott" situation returned and took place on a large scale. Refusal to participate in the Olympics was used by countries as a weapon of the Cold War.

The Montreal Summer Olympics were boycotted by 22 African countries in protest of New Zealand's participation, as the country's rugby team had gone to South Africa, which was then under apartheid. South African sports were excluded from the Olympics in 1960 because of apartheid, and only returned when apartheid ended in 1990.

Four years later, at the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics, the United States and Western countries such as West Germany, Canada, Japan, and South Korea boycotted the games in response to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan a year earlier. In response, at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics held in the United States, all countries in the socialist bloc, except Romania, also boycotted the games.

After relatively smooth Olympics in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the political ban on some countries from the Olympics has returned in 2024. Due to the conflict in Ukraine, the national teams of Russia and Belarus will not be allowed to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Athletes from these two countries will only be allowed to compete as individual neutrals with a very small number of players through screening, Russia has 15 athletes, and Belarus has 11. In addition, there will be no flags or national anthems of Russia and Belarus in the opening and closing parades, nor will there be any medals received by the athletes.

Come closer together

Although political disagreements have limited the opportunities for athletes to compete at the highest level, there have been Olympics that have brought countries together. At the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, North Korea refused to participate after Pyongyang’s proposal to co-host with South Korea was rejected by the IOC.

However, at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics, 2004 Athens Olympics, 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics (USA), 2006 Turin Olympics (Italy), North and South Korea marched together under a white flag with a blue Korean peninsula, wearing the same uniform on the opening day. Unfortunately, that meaningful symbol of unity has not been repeated since the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

In addition to unfortunate stories and incidents, the Olympics have repeatedly played a role in uniting and striving to bring peace to the world.

Most recently, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics made history in the modern Olympic movement when the host country, Japan, showed its determination and utmost efforts to ensure the event ran smoothly in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic raging around the world. Japan and the IOC issued regulations on conduct for athletes, such as strictly prohibiting “political” gestures, including hand gestures or kneeling... These moves demonstrated the efforts of the IOC and Japan in maintaining a “non-political” competition environment.

Continuing the spirit of chivalry originating from the ancient Olympic Games and as Chapter 5 of the Olympic Charter states: “No political, religious or ethnic activities shall be permitted at the Olympic Games”, it is expected that the Olympic torch will not only light up the place where athletes compete but also symbolize the spirit of solidarity and love for peace of all humanity as the theme of the 2024 Paris Olympics is “Open Game” for all nations and peoples.

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/olympic-va-giac-mo-hoa-binh-280957.html