The Shadow of War

The Olympics can never truly escape the wider political landscape with athletes often competing while bombs are dropping elsewhere. Philip Barker tells the story of Games impacted by the ugly head of war.

One way or another, war and conflict has cast a longstanding shadow over the modern Olympic Movement.

Over the last four decades, military action ordered from the Kremlin has often been the catalyst for crisis.

In late December 1979, as sports officials were making their final preparations for the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow, Soviet forces crossed the border into Afghanistan.

This action provoked an almost immediate response of condemnation from many Western Governments.

“I regard the Soviet invasion and the attempted suppression of Afghanistan as a serious violation of international law and an extremely serious threat to world peace,” said American President Jimmy Carter, as he wrote to the United States Olympic Committee.

“This invasion also endangers neighbouring independent countries and access to a major part of the world’s oil supplies. It therefore threatens our own national security, as well as the security of the region and the entire world.

“If Soviet troops do not fully withdraw from Afghanistan within the next month, Moscow will become an unsuitable site for a festival meant to celebrate peace and goodwill.”

By a strange twist of fate, the 1980 Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid in the US.

Carter did not attend, but sent vice-president Walter Mondale to open the Games.

PHILIP BARKER HISTORIAN, INSIDETHEGAMES

A few days before, a speech made by secretary of state Cyrus Vance at the International Olympic Committee Session had angered members.

“We have concluded a boycott of the Olympics by citizens of the free world would be one of the most effective measures to bring home to the Soviet Government and Russian people the abhorrence in which their actions in Afghanistan are held,” Vance said.

IOC President Lord Killanin later revealed that the speech had galvanised members into ensuring the Moscow Games went ahead.

However, only 80 nations took part as the boycott kicked in. Athletes from the US, West Germany, Japan and Canada were among the notable absentees, but not all stayed away.

Australia, Denmark, Britain, France, Italy and Switzerland were among those who did take part.

These nations used the Olympic Flag while New Zealand and Spain marched under the flag of their respective National Olympic Committees.

On July 19, the Games duly opened in Moscow with a spectacular Opening Ceremony.

The Soviet team included participants from Ukraine, who contributed in full measure to a haul of 80 gold medals.

At the Closing Ceremony, Killanin called on the world to “unite in peace before a holocaust descends”.

Few at that time would have imagined that, in only 11 years, the Soviet Union would no longer exist.

Almost as inconceivable was the idea that the Balkans would be the epicentre of a bitter war as Yugoslavia disintegrated into bloody conflict.

Sarajevo, now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina but then a part of Yugoslavia, hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch had succeeded Killanin as IOC President by this time, and forged a strong emotional connection with the city.

As the Olympics in his home city of Barcelona approached in 1992, ethnic and religious tensions had erupted and Sarajevo was besieged and shelled by Serbian forces.

United Nations sanctions were imposed on Yugoslavia and its football team was expelled from the 1992 European Championships.

The ban was extended to the Olympics in Barcelona, but the response from the corridors of power in Lausanne was remarkable.

“The IOC could not accept a decision of this kind,” reported the Official Olympic Review.

“In the teeth of considerable difficulties and by dint of direct negotiations with the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee, it prevailed upon the latter to revise its point of view to allow, after all, the participation of individual athletes.”

This allowed athletes from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia to compete as “Independent Olympic Participants”.

Sarajevo remained under siege and citizens faced the horror of sniper rifles. In Olympic terms they were also “stateless”, until their NOC was granted 11th-hour recognition.

It was a move which paved the way for the participation of other displaced people at future Games, and, ultimately, the establishment of the Refugee Olympic Team which debuted at Rio 2016.

The situation also galvanised the notion of the “Olympic Truce”, which was adopted in time for the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer.

Trucks carrying humanitarian supplies were sent to Sarajevo and at the Opening Ceremony, Samaranch called for silent remembrance of those who were there.

It would still be some time before peace fully returned to the Balkans, however.

As the new millennium turned, Boris Yeltsin stepped down and Vladimir Putin became the Russian President for the first time.

Aged only 47, he was a contrast to the “old men of the Kremlin” who had been in charge throughout the Soviet era.

Putin was, however, a lieutenant colonel in the Federal Security Service - formerly the KGB - and it was soon clear that he craved the grandeur of the old USSR.

In 2008, Putin attended the Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, when the truce had become an essential part of the fabric of the Games.

That year, a resolution to implement it had again been approved by the UN, and the organisation’s secretary general Ban Ki-moon sent his own message to those at war while in the Chinese capital.

“Let them lay down their weapons, if only temporarily, so that humanity can lay claim to gold even before the Games begin,” he pleaded.

“Such a truce, while limited in duration, can provide a pause in which to reconsider the heavy cost of war.

“It can demonstrate to the world that peace is possible in even the most seemingly intractable situations, if we truly work towards it.”

But at almost the very instant that the Games began in Beijing, Russian forces were attacking Georgia.

Despite this flashpoint, there was little meaningful criticism of the Russian aggression in Olympic circles.

Instead, a lot of attention focussed on the women’s 10 metres air pistol which brought together Georgia’s Nino Salukvadze, who won bronze, and Russian silver medallist Natalia Paderina.

The world watched on to see how the pair would react when standing together on the podium at the medal ceremony.

Salukvadze put her arm around Paderina and the two posed together for photographs.

Paderina then kissed Salukvadze on the cheek.

“I think this kind of sportsmanship and fair play and brotherhood is remarkable,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said.

The Moscow 1980 Olympic Games were boycotted after the Soviet

Union invaded Afghanistan. Photo: Getty Images

Georgia’s Nino Salukvadze and Russia's Natalia Paderina posed together in Beijing as war raged between the countries.

Photo: Getty Images

PHILIP BARKER HISTORIAN, INSIDETHEGAMES

Pierre de Coubertin was influenced by a French military defeat

to Prussia. Photo: Getty Images

By this time, Russian city Sochi had already been designated as the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Putin took a keen interest and many of the key figures in the Games were known to be among his supporters.

The Opening Ceremony was directed by Konstantin Ernst, who had been decorated for his work by Putin.

Ernst was also in charge of Channel One, a television station which closely identified with the ruling regime.

The show was a television tour de force, although an early set piece which featured the appearance of the five Olympic Rings malfunctioned.

Also included was a very positive and sanitised depiction of life in the Soviet era.

What happened between the end of the 2014 Olympics and the beginning of the Paralympic Games took a very similar pattern to this year.

In 2014, Russian forces moved into Ukraine and occupied Crimea.

A UN resolution condemned the “illegal annexation” of the region but, despite further calls for Russian withdrawal, the peninsula remains occupied.

Over the last 125 years, other conflicts have spilled over into the world of sport.

In 1870, Prussian armies laid siege to Paris, bringing an end to a war between the two states.

The French defeat was considered a major national humiliation, and the episode had a profound influence on Pierre de Coubertin, the man responsible for reviving the Olympic Games.

Although Pierre was only seven at the time, the Prussian victory influenced some of his later ideas.

It was said that he saw the Olympics as an opportunity to “re bronzer la France” and to return his nation to its former standing in the world.

Coubertin travelled extensively to see how sport was practiced abroad, notably in the US and England.

In 1894, his efforts bore fruit with agreement to revive the Olympics for the modern era.

The first Games in Athens in 1896 were described in local newspapers as “a festival of peace”.

At the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, Coubertin’s own poem Ode to Sport won a gold medal in the artistic competitions.

Written under a pseudonym, the final verse begins: “O Sport you are Peace! You promote happy relations between peoples”.

Coubertin’s new Olympic Movement faced its first test from war in 1914.

Everything seemed to be progressing well when Berlin was chosen as the host city for 1916, and the Germans built an Olympic Stadium which was opened by the Kaiser.

In 1914, the IOC celebrated its 20th anniversary with a festival event in Paris, but war was declared only a few days later.

The First World War threw the very future of the Olympic Movement into jeopardy and Coubertin, now more than 50 years old, enlisted in the French army.

He had already asked Swiss nobleman Godefroy de Blonay to become the IOC’s Interim President, although Coubertin’s hand at the helm remained visible.

In a circular to members, Coubertin noted the death of German IOC member Baron Karl Von Venningen in the early months of the war.

Soon afterwards, in 1915, he oversaw the relocation of the Olympic headquarters to Lausanne on the banks of Lake Geneva.

This was “to keep his Movement, at least institutionally, from the reach of war’s caprices,” an official IOC collection of Coubertin’s writings says.

The 1916 Olympics remain listed in the records as the sixth Olympiad, but with the footnote “not celebrated”.

Russian forces moved into Crimea in the same year as Sochi 2014.

Photo: Getty Images

The birth

of the Truce

It was during the war in the Balkans 30 years ago that the Olympic Movement officially embraced the idea of the “Olympic Truce”.

But many years before, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the driving force of the modern Olympic Games, invoked its spirit in a radio broadcast.

In 1952, at the height of the Cold War, Olympic organisers in Helsinki decided to proclaim a truce to “animate the greatest athletic festival of modern times”.

The idea originated in the Games of antiquity when a cessation of hostilities known as “ekecheiria” was said to have enabled athletes from rival city states to travel safely to Olympia for their competitions.

In 1992, as war raged in the former Yugoslavia, there were calls for a truce, but it was not until just before the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer that International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch successfully petitioned the United Nations.

They adopted a resolution “for a truce from the seventh day before the opening to the seventh day following the closing of each Olympic Games”.

Sarajevo, the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics, remained under siege as Lillehammer’s Games began.

“We want all of you in Sarajevo to know that we are thinking of you and that suffering and war can be overcome, if all of us give an undying effort for peace,” actress Liv Ullmann said as she helped narrate the Opening Ceremony.

A truce resolution has been adopted for every subsequent Olympics, and a paragraph was included in the UN Millennium Declaration. This urged member states to observe the truce during all future Games.

An Olympic Truce Centre has been established in Athens with the support of the IOC.

Since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, people have been invited to sign a “Truce Wall” in the Athletes’ Village.

The Olympic flag flies next to a military vehicle in 1984 Winter Games host Sarajevo. Photo: Getty Images

Only nine members took part in the first post-war IOC Session in 1919.

Coubertin described the gathering as the “peaceful deliberations” of “a group of friends happy to meet again and realise the solid nature of our Olympic armour”.

Even so, IOC member Sir Theodore Cook, who had been prominent when helping to organise the 1908 Games in London, resigned his position.

“It seemed to me that sport with Germany as a comrade had become impossible,” he said.

“Games without her could neither be called Olympic or open to the world.”

In 1919, a multi-sport event along Olympic lines took place in Paris.

Only soldiers from the victorious powers were allowed to participate in what were styled as “Inter-Allied Games”, and they were not officially recognised by the IOC.

In his memoirs, Coubertin recorded that “a French politician and a French journalist were waging a fruitless campaign to hand over the Games to the League of Nations”. He fretted about “cracks in the Olympic structure”.

The 1920 Games were awarded to the Belgian city of Antwerp, but Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey, all members of the defeated Central Powers, were not permitted to take part.

Coubertin described these nations as “the league of belligerents”. Their reintegration came up for consideration in 1922, when the German sports secretary Carl Diem was invited to meet Coubertin.

Although Austria, Hungary and Turkey did reappear for the 1924 Games in Paris, Germany remained out in the cold.

In those days, invitations were sent from the host city itself and, for many Parisians, war with Germany remained too vivid a memory.

German athletes did not return to the Olympic fold until 1928, nearly 10 years after the war.

By 1936, they were hosting the Olympics, as the new Nazi regime inherited the organisation of the Berlin Games.

Tokyo had been elected as host city for 1940, but shortly afterwards the Japanese army invaded China after already occupying Korea.

The demand of the Japanese military for resources meant that, in 1938, Olympic officials were obliged to hand the Games back.

In the wake of the Second World War, Germany and Japan were both barred from participation.

They were also banned from the 1948 Winter Olympics in St Moritz and the Summer Games in London in the same year.

The revulsion felt against atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime was widespread, and IOC Executive Committee member Lord Aberdare made this clear.

“I hope I may have some assurance that if the Olympic Games are to be held in 1948, at least the Germans and Japanese will not be invited to compete following the agreement of the IOC as regards the Games of 1920,” he said.

German gymnast Helmut Bantz was a prisoner of war but was permitted to coach

PHILIP BARKER HISTORIAN, INSIDETHEGAMES

the British team. Diem was also invited as a “personal guest” by IOC members.

The IOC took a major step towards reintegrating Japan into the Olympic world with the appointment as a member of Dr Ryotaro Azuma, an urbane physician who had studied in London in the pre-war years.

“The candidature of Dr Azuma will be placed before the full Session,” the official minutes recorded.

Japanese rowing, swimming, wrestling and cycling organisations had already re-joined their respective International Federations.

“My biggest job here was to impress upon the individual sports federations Japan’s desire to be re-affiliated,” Azuma told reporters.

“I have been given to understand that if we are able to re-join most of the other federations, we will be allowed to participate at the 1952 Oslo and Helsinki Olympic Games.”

Elsewhere, a group of Germans had taken part in International Student Sports Week, held in Merano in Italy in 1949.

The following year, General Brian Robertson, the British High Commissioner in Germany, suggested that the time had come for further action.

“You should use your best endeavours to obtain agreement that the Federal Republic of Germany should be invited to take part in the Olympic Games at Helsinki in 1952,” he said.

Robertson then wrote to IOC member Lord Burghley.

“The objective of allied policy is that she should become in all senses a member of the community of peace loving nations,” he said.

“We must look to the youth of the country to make a new start. I suggest that the invitation to Germany to re-enter international sport would be one of the best possible steps.”

The situation was further complicated because Germany had been divided into East and West, and the IOC were unwilling to recognise two NOCs for what they regarded as one country.

The team which took part in 1952 was notionally from both East and West, but only Western athletes were included.

The shadow of the Cold War hung over the decade and, in 1956, it had a telling effect on the Games in Melbourne.

The crisis in Suez prompted a boycott by some Middle Eastern nations, and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising by Soviet forces led to further absentees from the Games.

In parallel with the remarkable journey of Ukrainian Paralympians to Beijing in March, Olympic chancellor Otto Mayer helped with arrangements for Hungarian athletes hoping to secure passage to Melbourne.

This group included the remarkable gymnast Ágnes Keleti, who won four gold medals at the Games and was among many who did not return home.

This year, a passionate speech at Beijing 2022 by International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons summed up the indignation and anger felt by so many at the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“The Olympic Truce is a consensus and it must be respected and observed, not violated,” he said.

“Here in Beijing, Paralympic athletes from 46 countries will compete with each other, not against each other.

“Paralympians! An opponent does not have to be an enemy.”

The IPC had originally intended to allow Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag but this concession was dramatically reversed 24 hours later.

Although no details were given, it was rumoured that some nations were ready to withdraw their own athletes had the Russians been permitted to participate.

A few days earlier, the IOC Executive Board had published its position.

“In order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants, the IOC EB recommends that International Sports Federations and sports event organisers not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions,” a statement said.

It prompted a stampede from many federations to exclude Russian athletes and officials, but the situation took a nasty turn after the reaction of some competitors.

Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak was widely lambasted for wearing a “Z” symbol on his kit as he received his medal at a World Cup event in Doha.

This has been displayed on Russian tanks and is a symbol of support for the invasion.

Later, the presence of Russian Olympic athletes at a political rally in support of Putin also drew widespread disapproval.

What does seem certain is that it will be a long time before normality is restored completely.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has hinted that the effect might still be felt at the next Summer Olympics in the French capital in 2024.

If the Russians are excluded for making war, just as the Germans were from Paris 1924, it would complete an extremely unhappy circle.

Ágnes Keleti did not return home to Hungary from the Melbourne

Olympics. Photo: Getty Images