circleWhen French historian Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the governing body of the modern Olympics, in the late 19th century, he touted the Olympics as a movement for peace that would unite the world through sport. “Wars come because nations misunderstand each other,” he said. The theory was that competition would foster understanding and reconciliation between hostile nations.
More than a century later, Coubertin's vision hasn't necessarily come to fruition. Far from ending war, the Olympics have become embroiled in it and forced its cancellation. While the Olympics are ostensibly apolitical, the world in which they are held is not. In fact, authoritarians, past and present, have used the Olympic spectacle to further their own political propaganda. Olympic officials insist that the games should be strictly neutral, but the IOC has made a number of decisions that some have criticized as partisan, most recently suspending the Russian Olympic Committee in the aftermath of Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine.
The upcoming Summer Olympics is poised to be “the most politically charged Olympics in decades,” says Jules Boykov, an international expert on sports politics. In Ukraine, Russia still occupies 18 percent of the country, and in Gaza, Israel's ongoing war against Hamas has destroyed much of the Strip and killed more than 37,000 people, according to figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip Ministry of Health that are also viewed as credible by the U.S. and the UN. With these two major ground wars as a backdrop, Boykov and others warn that the 2024 Olympics cannot take place in a geopolitical vacuum.
If recent international competitions are any indication, that's not a mistake. From the Eurovision Song Contest to the UEFA Champions League, global events have been engulfed in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But the response has not been uniform. Russia was summarily barred from several international competitions and matches after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including the Paris Olympics, where Russian and Belarusian athletes will only be allowed to compete as neutral participants. Meanwhile, calls by activists to similarly bar Israel have met with little response.
The IOC has previously rejected such requests, saying the situation in Gaza is “completely different,” but now it is citing Russia's violations of the Olympic Charter, specifically the Russian Olympic Committee's takeover of the regional Olympic organization in occupied Ukrainian territory, as the reason for the ban. “This situation cannot be compared to any other armed conflict in the world,” an IOC spokesperson told TIME in an email.
Still, some critics argue that the IOC's silence on Gaza represents a double standard. Although Israel has not annexed Gaza or taken over its sports organizations, its military has destroyed much of its infrastructure, including sports venues. What little remains, such as Gaza's iconic Yarmouk Stadium, has reportedly been converted by Israeli forces into holding space for Palestinian detainees, a move the Palestinian Football Association denounced as a “clear violation of the Olympic Charter.” As of late May, the Palestinian Olympic Committee estimated that 300 Palestinian athletes had been killed since October 7, including Palestinian Olympic soccer coach Hani Al-Masdar and karate champion Nagham Abu Samra. For survivors, any prospect of sport resuming in Gaza remains years, if not decades, away.
Several Palestinian athletes have qualified for the Paris Games, along with athletes from Israel, Ukraine and Russia. (Unlike the others, the Russian athletes will not be allowed to compete as a team and will not be allowed to use their flag, anthem or other national symbols.) But it remains to be seen how they will be received by the other participating teams and by each other. There have been instances in previous tournaments when athletes have refused to shake hands, such as when Ukrainian Olympic fencer Olga Harlan ignored her Russian opponent Anna Smirnova at last summer's world championships in Milan, and more recently when the Irish women's basketball team refused to make the customary handshake with their Israeli opponents during a EuroBasket qualifier in February.
“I think we'll see athlete activism come to the surface in a way we've never seen before,” said Shireen Ahmed, a journalist who writes about the intersection of sports and politics. “Not only will athletes refuse to play against Israeli athletes, but we'll see protests in the streets and people talking about divestment. It's going to be very polarizing, and there's going to be backlash at all levels at an event that's meant to be about unity.”
When asked about the possibility of athletes staging political protests or demonstrations during the Olympics, an IOC spokesperson told TIME that “athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments,” and that if any incidents deemed discriminatory occur, the IOC will work with National Olympic Committees and relevant international federations to ensure “swift action” is taken.
The spokesperson did not go into details, but past cases offer some clues. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Algerian judoka Fethi Noureen was banned from competing for 10 years after refusing to compete against an Israeli athlete. At the same Olympics, American shot putter Raven Sanders made the first demonstration by climbing onto the podium with her arms raised in an X shape after being awarded her silver medal. Sanders said this symbolized “the intersection where all the oppressed meet.” The IOC investigated the incident, which ignored rules banning protests during competitions or on the podium, but did not impose sanctions. “The IOC has been inconsistent at best when it comes to responding to political protests,” Boykoff said.
Perhaps that's because, despite Coubetan's vision, the Olympics have always been seen as an inherently political event by both host nations and athletes, as in 1936, when Adolf Hitler used the Olympic spectacle as a propaganda tool for his Nazi regime, or decades later, at the height of the civil rights movement, when American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos used the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics to demonstrate against racial discrimination, in perhaps the most famous moment of political speech in Olympic history.
Speaking at a press conference about the geopolitical situation's likely impact on the Paris Games, IOC President Thomas Bach referenced Coubertin's founding creed, saying that in times of conflict “it is even more important to have this connection and to provide a symbol of hope.”
Boykoff, on the other hand, isn't convinced: “If they think this is going to go away, then they're living in a fairyland that's even more isolated than I can imagine,” he says.
