Dr. Jung Woo Lee
Senior Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh, Sport and Leisure Policy and founding Research Director of the Scottish Centre for Olympic Research and Education. He teaches the Olympic movement and international relations, and his research interests lie in sport, diplomacy and global politics. He co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Sport and Politics (2017) and Sport Mega-Events in Asia (Palgrave, 2023).
Email: J.W.Lee@ed.ac.uk
From the outset, the 2024 Olympic Summer Games in Paris was entangled with geopolitical tensions in different parts of the world. With the neoliberal international order being challenged by emerging non-Western powers, the structure of global politics has rapidly become volatile. Paris 2024 took place at this historical juncture. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) hoped this Olympics to present a beacon of international peace. Yet, a few incidents at this Games only revealed deep divisions between the nations in conflicts.
The suspension of Russia from this Olympics triggered a controversy. The IOC penalized Russia when it invaded Ukraine a few days after the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The IOC regarded this aggression as a violation of the Olympic Truce. Yet, the sport governing body allowed athletes from Russia to participate in the Summer Olympics in Paris as Individual Neutral Athletes. Nearly all international federations supported the IOC’s decision while World Athletics imposed a blanket ban on Team Russia.
Both Russia and Ukraine were unsatisfied with this situation. Moscow condemned the IOC for being a pro-Western organization and submitted an appeal against the suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport(CAS). Kyiv requested a full exclusion of Russians arguing that there was no such thing as a neutral person. With the prospect of seeing Russian athletes in Paris, Ukraine once considered boycotting the Olympics completely.
Later, Russia lost its appeal and Ukraine sent its delegation to the French capital. Just fifteen Russians appeared in the Olympic venues but they were not allowed to attend the opening ceremony due to the war in Ukraine. The Russian neutrals only earned one silver medal. Uninvited Russia denigrated the fifteen individuals as traitors and scorned the Olympics as the “Games of Satan”. On the other hand, 140 Ukraine athletes participated in Paris 2024, and they won twelve medals including two Olympic golds. The victory in the stadium may represent Ukraine’s determination to defend their country.
The war between Israel and Hamas also infused politics into the Olympics. Despite the ongoing war in Gaza, the IOC invited both the Israel and Palestine delegations to Paris. Russia immediately criticized the sport governing body for having a double standard. The conflicts in the Middle East were escalating during the Olympics, especially after the assassination of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Nevertheless, the IOC was reluctant to comment on the worsening tensions in the region.
The Palestine Olympic Committee (POC) asked the IOC to ban Israel from Paris 2024, arguing that the Jewish state violated the Olympic Truce. The IOC remained unmoved. The leader of the POC refused to greet Israeliat the Olympics until they recognised its sovereignty. Only eight athletes took part in this competition but none of them stood on the podium. However, for Palestine, carrying the flag at the opening and closing ceremoniesis equally important. This “non-member observer state” of the United Nations, the Olympic Games indeed presented a rare opportunity for Palestine to demonstrate their existence.
In the shadow of the conflicts, Israeli athletes received death threats during the Olympics. This is a striking reminder of Munich 1972 when eleven members of the Israel delegations were murdered by terrorists linked to the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Coincidently, the Israel delegation observed a ceremony in Paris to remember the victim of the Munich Massacre. The safety of the Jewish athletes was at risk in Paris, and France had to deploy its elite police force to protect them throughout the Olympics.
A symptom of the geopolitical rivalry between the USA and China also emerged during Paris 2024. The Olympic swimming pool turned into the stage where two parties confronted. At the Men’s 4x 100m medley relay, Team China beat the American quartet. However, American media questioned the Chinese athletic prowess in the water because two of the four members tested positive before the previous Olympics in Tokyo. Later, the World Anti-Doing Agency (WADA) concluded that the positive result was due to the consumption of contaminated meat and permitted the Chinese swimmers to enter the Olympic contest.
Nevertheless, the USA was still suspicious of the Chinese swimmers. Before the opening of the current Olympics, the US Department of Justice started a separate investigation into the case of the Chinese swimmers. The WADA, in response to such a challenge, announced that it would take the American counterpart to its Independent Compliance Review Committee. The Anti-Doping Agency also warned American media not to circulate misleading information to the public.
China blamed the USA for smearing the Chinese swimmers’ hard work and its anti-doping standards. The communist state media also condemned this doping allegation raised by American media for politicising the Olympics and WADA’s anti-doping regulations. This Sino-American dispute over doping was spread to athletic events because China, in retaliation, began to request a more comprehensive review of American track and field athletes. Seemingly, the Olympic Games turned into a surrogate battlefield between the two superpowers.
At the closing ceremony, the President of the IOC, Thomas Bach, praised the Olympic athletes from different countries for competing peacefully and demonstrating a culture of peace to the world. This may be true. Nonetheless, those nations involved in the current geopolitical tensions exposed their rivalries and hostilities to each other in Paris. Such contention may also prove that the Olympic Truce has become a mere cliché.
