Olympics and Politics

The modern olympics games have had to contend with protest, boycotts and even terrorism. Looking back at the notorious games, Nazi Germany was the first country to take advantage of the event as political propaganda in 1936. In 1972 the Olympics became a target of terrorism. I knew the event by watching a film of Spielberg's "Munich". In 1980 Moscow and in 1984 Los Angeles both games were a exchange of boycotts, which became a battle field of the cold war. These trends will continue to the next olympics. The controversial Beijing olympics has been held this year. Media criticises the Chinese government for its censorship on the internet and human right issues. The Chinese Premier Hu Jintao insisted in the runnup to the opening ceremony that politics should be kept out of sports. Indeed the olympics charter says that no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted. However, lots of people would consider the extent to which olympics has a political aspect. The Olympics always takes on a political aspect because athletes are chosen by countries. They always wear their national flags and national anthems are played during a prize giving ceremony. The audience cannot help feeling a sense of nationalism. It is the one that politics is seeking for. One impressive news report about olympics I watched on TV last year is that a Russian city Sochi was elected as the winter olympics 2014. The president Putin attended to a meeting to discuss the host city and gave a speech to help Sochi get elected. The highlight of his speech was not its contents, but the language. He did it in English and in French. I had never heard his English although I knew that he is good at foreign languages especially German. Sochi is located by the black sea near current disputing Georgia .It will be inevitable that the 2014 olympics has political content again. Politics and olympics are unlikely to go separate ways in the future as politics and religion do so.