The Economics of Progress in the Olympics movement

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Should we stay or should we go? That seems to be the question on many people’s minds in respect to August’s Olympic Games in Beijing and the torch relay that has been making its way around the world. The pro-Tibet protests that have already met this year’s Olympic torch relay at major cities such as London and Paris ensure the upcoming Games won’t be forgotten as quickly as some Australian swimming records will. Yet there is an interesting commonality between the two. At first glance, readers may baulk at the suggestion the issues of human rights protests and the use of the Speedo LZR racer suit are somehow related.

However, on closer analysis of the founding philosophy of the modern Olympic Games it becomes clear that current debates about the place of fairness, in sport and in political and cultural life were never truly reconciled by the Games’ modern founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, despite the IOC’s current day claims of universality and harmony.

De Coubertin considered himself both a patriot and internationalist but any claims of him being a true cosmopolitan should be dismissed for his internationalism was steeped in the ethnocentric longing for a second coming of Ancient Greece. His plans for the first modern Olympic Games were even dismissed by large sections of the Greek populace as hijacking their own plans for a revival of the sports festival.

A French aristocrat and Baron by title, de Coubertin’s philosophy largely centred on using sports as part of everyday life to control young urban working class men in a society facing the unpredictability of modern life. Believing the modern world to require ‘flexible’ bodies equipped with adaptable abilities, his ideal sportsman [for sport was ideally for men according to de Coubertin] would be able to learn new skills and be proficient in them on demand. He imagined the human body and scientifically designed machine working in unison and for that reason preferred sports such as cycling, rowing and horse riding.

The new Speedo swimming technology would arguably be applauded by de Coubertin as a triumph of innovation while overlooking the fact that its inception will further concentrate performance at the elite level and disenfranchise the grassroots - a juxtaposition de Coubertin never reconciled when celebrating his ideal athlete and sports festival. The recent tears of French champion swimmer Laure Manaudou upon losing out to swimmers wearing the suit do not tell a heart-warming story. Is technology now better for an athlete than talent and performance?

Placing de Coubertin’s philosophy to a grander scale we can see how current political and economical policies being pursued by world powers and powerful transnational organisations, such as the IOC, uncannily share many similarities with de Coubertin’s sporting ideals. I’m sure Australians do not have to remember too far back to recall WorkChoices was all about ‘flexibility’. Increasing mechanization and scrutiny of human performance is the not only the domain of sport now. It must be said, but Olympian and gold medallist Susie O’Neill is horribly mistaken in voicing her anger against people who “use the Olympics as their protesting forum. It's so removed from politics.”

O’Neill is now a member of the IOC and seems to have been taught well in diplomatic spin for it’s a line her boss, IOC President Jacques Rogge, has also repeated incessantly in recent weeks. In an interview with the Wall St Journal, Rogge is quoted as saying, “we didn't call for politics to come.” This position cannot be sustained when considering the holding of such a large-scale event [and choosing of] is by nature political even before the demands of corporate sponsors are considered.

China claims that since its “peaceful liberation of Tibet” it has ploughed resources and funds into the region, helping improve economic prosperity with infrastructure projects. In 2007, the State Council organized 180 projects involving more than 770 billion yuan [US$110b] including upgrades to the local airport, the extension of the huge Qinghai-Tibet Railway Line, the improvement of rural drinking water in, the construction of new power grids and telephone network, and the improvement in the infrastructure of farmers' and herdsmen's living spaces.

It is for this economic progress western powers such as America and Australia are loathe to strongly condemn China for its human rights abuses. The cost of this progress has been somewhere between 400,000 to 1.5 million Tibetans killed or sent to labour camps since 1950.

The selection of China as this year’s Olympic Games host augers well with the IOC’s rationale of spreading cosmopolitan capitalism. Yet conversely, this increased globalisation has allowed Tibetan protestors an amplified voice in the global community about their plight far above than what their population numbers would suggest. It is nonetheless disappointing to view recent comments by swimming legend Dawn Fraser supporting a boycott but also expressing concern over “the violence that the protestors are creating.”

The French social theorist Michel de Certeau in his seminal work The Practice of Everyday Life, discussed culture as being manipulated by either strategic or tactical uses, suggesting minorities and other disenfranchised peoples usually have access only to tactics that misuse or usurp conventional activities. For the Tibetans, the demonstrations spotting the Olympic torch relay is their best symbolic bet in challenging the entrenched legitimacy of Chinese rule for an improvement in conditions.

The Olympics can rightly be described as a site potential for communitas - an experience that for its duration has the ability to invert preconceived cultural notions to create a feeling of ‘coming together’. De Coubertin was certainly correct about the power of the sporting festival. Australians who experienced Cathy Freeman’s gold medal at Sydney will not need any reminding of their goose bumps and sense of shared experience, not to mention jubilation and joy. The Tibetans and their many supporters however would not be protesting if they were truly invited to this year’s party.