On July 31 Raven Saunders won the silver medal in women’s shot put at the Tokyo Olympics. On the podium, she raised her hands above her head in an X formation. Saunders, a Black LGBTQ athlete, explained that it symbolized “where all people who are oppressed meet.” Immediately after the ceremony, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched an investigation into the hand gesture as a potential breach of the Olympic Charter’s Rule 50, which states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues, or other areas.”
Officials suspended the investigation after her mother passed away; however, the controversy surrounding the Rule 50 is not going away. Debate about the right of the IOC to govern protests dates back to 1955, when the Olympic Charter first mentioned demonstrations in its bylaws. The Charter rules about protest have been fluid and at times ambiguous over the last six decades, reflecting the IOC’s desire to limit athletes’ rights in the service of promoting the myth that the Olympics could transcend politics. However, the recent rise of athlete activism brings the IOC’s claim that sports are a neutral space into direct conflict with athletes’ increasingly vocal demands for freedom of expression and the right to use their platform to advance human rights and social justice issues.
Indeed, protests at sporting events have proliferated around the globe in recent years. From Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling to Premier League protests against racism and activism for indigenous rights in Australian sports leagues, athletes are increasingly using their stardom to spotlight and advocate for pressing concerns in their societies. Yet, the Olympics garner a special sort of scrutiny as one of the most watched events in the world. Even with no fans allowed at this year’s games and lower viewership than usual, the summer Olympics average 2 billion viewers around the globe and companies pay astronomical amounts for the right to televise and stream them. This attention brings with it the ability for athletes to raise political issues that animate them.
Yet, IOC governing officials have long sought to fend off this type of attention. Pierre de Coubertin helped resurrect the modern games in the 1890s and was fervent in his view that Olympic ideals transcended differences in culture, history, and geography. Avery Brundage, a Michigan-born businessman, furthered these ideas. Brundage participated in the 1912 Olympics as an athlete, and ascended to the presidency of the U.S. Olympic Association and Committee (USOC, now known as United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee [USOPC]) from 1929 until 1953, a period that coincided with his vice presidency of the IOC from 1945-1952. He took over as president of the IOC in 1952 and held the position until 1972. Brundage had a long track record of attempting to ignore the significant interweaving of politics and sports, perhaps exemplified best by his refusal to boycott the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany as the president of the USOC.