Geography Is The Summer Olympics: Yes... They're Political

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Hey, Jeff, are you planningon watching the Summer Olympics this year?
I mean kind of. So thecaveat here is that I think it's always
NBC who has the rights in theUnited States to broadcast the Olympics WI.
Yeah, yeah, they have it, I mean for as long as I
can remember, and I don't havecable television, and I'm not sure I

(00:25):
know they have like their Peacock streamingapp. I'm not sure how much of
this. I don't know how muchsports stuff their streaming app does. So
maybe if it's on Peacock their app, and I can like get like a
month long thing for ten bucks.Yeah, I'll probably end up watching a
lot of it, especially the soccer, right, the women's in particular,
because US women's are usually doing prettysolid this in this tournament, but also

(00:47):
the US men's is in it thistime for the first time in a while,
so yeah, it should be alot of fun. Yeah, so
soccer, So you're looking forward tosoccer. It sounds like more than anything
else broadly, But I think thepageantry that, like all the different sports,
I think it's all very fun.Right, And this is so obviously
we're talking a lot about Summer Olympicstoday Winter Olympics as well. Like,

(01:07):
there's just a lot of like sportsthat I wouldn't normally watch that I will
watch during the Olympics times because there'sjust a little extra I don't know what
it is. I can't really putmy finger on it. There's not there.
You're not a year round curling fan, for example, not a year
round curling fan. It looks prettygood, right, yeah, exactly,

(01:29):
Yeah, And I've watched some forthe last Winter Olympics. I watched them
curling with some friends who are Canadian, and it was to be able to
like experience curling with Canadians who reallylove this sport generally. To be able
to experience with them was like alot more fun than it probably would be
if I was just watching a curlingmatch at home on a random Right,

(01:52):
whatever day, they bring the nuance, probably, right, they bring the
nuance, they bring the Juada vie, you know, right, Well,
all right, I'm going to askyou one more question here, because the
Paris Olympics are coming up right twentytwenty four as of this broadcast, they'll
be in just a few days.The opening ceremonies on July twenty sixth.
There's a few events that start onJuly twenty fourth, and the closing ceremony

(02:15):
is August eleventh, so it's youknow, close to a couple of weeks,
two and a half weeks or somethinglike that. Are there any sports
that are not in the Olympics thatyou would like to see added to the
Olympics? Well, I'm a millennialand that means that my generation, along
with the boomer generation, we've allglommed onto the sport better known as pickleball.

(02:38):
Yes, that was going to comeup, right, Yeah, and
so yeah, I don't know.I feel like pickleball is probably a good
a good option. That said,I will say I was looking at before
we started this episode. I didn'tknow you were asked this question by I
was like, Okay, I knowwe're doing some Olympics. I should go
see what sports are involved. That'llprobably be part of the conversation, right,

(02:59):
And you know, they have abig list of sports that are currently
and then sports that used to beinvolved but are no longer currently and one
that I think should make a roaringcomeback is Tug of War, which lasted
from nineteen hundred to nineteen twenty andI just like, I think, I
like the idea of just a bunchof people just pulling itside like to see
who falls into some sort of Idon't know, pit or something. I

(03:21):
just like the idea. I feellike that could be popular, you know,
I mean, that's great, yeah, right, and you could even
have it with you know, differentnumbers of people and you know, all
kinds of different variations of that.The sport that I desperately want to see
in the Olympics is roller derby.Oh of course, I think roller derby.

(03:44):
It is one of the most excitingsports out there, and the athletes
to participate in it are amazing.Some people, I think maybe don't look
at them as athletes, but theyone hundred percent are. And I think
that the Olympics might be an interestingway to showcase that there are, as
you mentioned, sports that come andgo from the Olympics, right, And

(04:04):
so the main reason that sports areadded these days is to attract more young
people to the viewership and for sponsorshippurposes as well, So you know,
getting young people. So that's whyyou know, maybe the pickleball thing,
you know, that's that's an extremelypopular sport. Maybe that comes up.
There are There is a new sportmaking its debut in Paris, and that

(04:28):
is breaking or break dancing, whichmaybe the first time will be in the
Olympics. It's it's something that originatedin New York City more specifically the Bronx
in the nineteen seventies, late seventies, I think, and the Olympic breakdancing
competit competitors will not know the musicahead of time, so you know,

(04:49):
that's like if you're in figure skatingor gymnastics, they know it. They
have to improvise because that's part ofthe skill and it's not coming back in
La twenty twenty eight for some reason. So the different thing, I think
hosting committees get to sort of havesome leeway and what sports they get to
try to have, and then theyhave to vet that with the International Olympic

(05:09):
Committee the IOC. Another new sportin Paris is kayak cross, in which
four competitors simultaneously compete on whitewater course. So instead of just recording the times,
it's I guess it's supposed to bea little bit more dynamic, like
a foot race or something like that. In Tokyo twenty twenty by which I

(05:30):
mean twenty twenty one because that's whenit actually happened. Karate was introduced,
and that's from Okinawa, which ispart of Japan sport climbing, so you
know, indoor rock climbing kind ofthing that's in the modern recreational climbing that
developed in England, Germany and Italy, but I'm pretty sure people have done
that all over the world for along time. Surfing was in Tokyo twenty

(05:53):
twenty. That was practiced at leasteight hundred years ago in Polynesia, but
modern surfing states back more explicitly toHawaii. Skateboarding was entered in Tokyo twenty
twenty. It's from California and theUnited States, Southern California. And baseball
and softball, which originally in theUnited States, and I think we're on

(06:14):
some Olympics and they sort of cameback. Of the sports that I just
mentioned, only climbing, surfing,and skateboarding will return to the Paris Games.
However, baseball and softball will beback for the twenty twenty eight Games,
and then the surfing competition continues.But as you know, this is
happening in Paris where the surf's notup on the sende. They're still holding

(06:40):
in a sense, they're still holdingit France. They're holding it in French
Polynesia, more specifically Tahiti. Sothat's almost ten thousand miles away from Paris,
and so that's where the surfing competitionfor the twenty twenty four Olympics will
be, so some interesting geography there. And then also in Tokyo men's and
women's three on three basketball competitions werestaged, and that's back in Paris as

(07:02):
well. You know, going throughall of these, well, so many
different sort of conversation points that Iwant to I can't get them all.
Is the first question I have foryou? Is this the first time when
there is this large of a gapbetween where like one aspect of one sport

(07:25):
is being held away from the actualtournament itself. I would think, I'm
sure the research I did that Iwould have an answer for that that would
be correct, and I'm not.There's probably a precedent for this. Usually
what you see is Olympic venues thatare held a little outside of the city,
for example, because you can't reallyhave skiing competitions in a city,

(07:46):
so they do it in a mountainnearby or something like that. But this
might be one of the most farflung Olympics, right and I don't Yeah,
it almost has to be. I'mnot sure if there's another. You
know, acute listeners who know thiswill be like, wait a minute,
you're missing this. But let's justsay for now that it's it's got to

(08:07):
be, if not the most extreme, the one of them for sure.
Right well we so we a whileback, we did a whole episode on
Antipodes, right. You know thatthe idea that you know, things that
are directly across from from each other, on on the islands or on the
world. And I distinctly remember thatthe island chain, the Antipodes Islands,

(08:31):
or as as a as a listenercorrected me or corrected us, it's the
Antipuy. I just distinctly remember thembeing sort of in that Polynesian area and
directly across from them was sort oflike they were in Spain or something like
that. Right, So, justknowing my geography, the French Polynesian islands
are, it's probably pretty dang closeto being directly across. It's near Antipodal,

(08:54):
It's it's close to being antipodal.It's close to being the other the
world, that's right. So youknow, we're talking about the Olympics on
the episode today, and there's alot of different dimensions we can talk about.
We sort of ripped on a coupleinteresting things already, but what I
really want to focus on is theOlympics is an international sport mega event.

(09:16):
Another example would be the World Cup, and you know, the the International
Olympic Committee from the very beginning hasinsisted that politics don't belong in the Olympics.
Politics don't belong in sport, andthat's something that you still hear a
lot. But today we're going tofocus largely on just how political the Olympics
really are and the idea that politicscan be extracted from sport or the Olympics,

(09:39):
it doesn't really hold up under anykind of scrutiny. So that's something
that you hear a little bit aboutonce in a while, but that's something
that we'll focus on today. AndI wanted to call out a few key
sources that I use and preparing forthe episode today because there's a bunch of
researchers out there who are looking atjust this. They're looking at sports and
the Olympic or the World Cup ordifferent things. And so for anybody who

(10:01):
wants to go deeper than we're goingto be able to go into the political
dimensions of the Olympics, I highlyrecommend a book by Jules Boycoff called Power
Games, a Political History of theOlympics. Boycoff is a professor and chair
in the Politics and Government Department atPacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon,
so not too far from us,and this book was published I think circa

(10:24):
two thousand and so from an Olympicstandpoint, it's still pretty recent, and
it goes into incredible detail and verywell researched, very well written, and
so anybody who wants to get deeperinto I would check out Power Games by
Jills Boycoff. Another helpful source Ifound was Dave Goldblatz The Games, a
Global History of the Olympics. Thisis by David Goldblat. He is a

(10:45):
sociologist and journalist from Bristol, England, and he also wrote a very excellent
book in two thousand and one aboutthe history of soccer called The Ball Is
Round. And then one more shoutout to my colleague Chris Gaffney of New
York University, who has written extensabout the history of both the Olympics and
the World Cup and mega events,and particularly focused on the Olympics when they

(11:07):
were in Rio and the World Cupwhen it was in Brazil back in twenty
fourteen. I want to say itwas so there. There's a rich legature
about that and others. So Ijust want to make sure that everybody knows
that we're standing on the shoulders ofimpressive scholars who've done a lot of this
work and have drawn a lot fromtheir work. Absolutely, so the summer

(11:31):
in the winter Olympics, let's lessjust broach that right away as well,
because there's there's both now and itstarted. The modern Olympics started in Athens
in eighteen ninety six, but itstarted as a summer event. And I
don't think that the ancients had awinter Olympics because that was in the Mediterranean
as possible to have some events,but that wasn't really a thing. In
fact, the first Winter Olympics wereheld in Shamouni, France in nineteen twenty

(11:54):
four. So for the first coupledecades there was just Summer Olympics and the
summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics wereheld in the same year up until nineteen
ninety two, so that year theWinter Olympics were in Albertville, France,
and the Summer Olympics were in Barcelonaand Cataluna in Spain, if you like.

(12:16):
They started to decided to stagger itbecause I think for a number of
reasons. One they wanted to perhapsbring a little bit more attention to the
Winter Olympics, but also they wantedto be able to have an Olympics every
two years and able to take itof monetizing Olympics every couple of years instead

(12:37):
of every four years. So Imean, I'm sure there's other things that
went into it, but that's abig part of it. We'll be largely
focusing on the Olympics of the SummerOlympics for this but you know, we
can talk a little bit about theWinter Olympics if it comes up. We
don't have to, you don't haveto restrict ourselves that much. This feels
like the same sort of marketing ployas. So you know, you look

(13:01):
at like the back of like ashampoo bottle and it says rinse, lather,
repeat, and I'm vaguely familiar withshampoo. I don't you know,
I like a bottle lasts me liketwelve years kind of thing. So yeah,
well, so for a long timethey said rinse, lather, repeats
like the directions right right, No, I've heard all the time it said

(13:22):
rints and lather. And then somemarketing person was like, well, what
if we add and repeat to getpeople to use more shampoo and like that,
use twice as much, start makingyou know, a lot more profit.
This rings of the same sort ofmarketing sort of bell. It's like,
well, why don't we just separatethem by two years and instead of
just getting money once every four years, we can get basically the same amount

(13:43):
of money every two years instead.Well, you're you're hitting on a really
important point here, and something thatwe'll talk a bit about, which is
that the Olympics is big money,big money. There is a lot of
politics around the hosting of the Olympics, around the corporate sponsorship of the Olympics,
and we'll touch on a few ofthose things. You've got your eye
in the right place, I think, And yeah, let's you know,

(14:07):
there's the international spirit of competition andcollaboration and everything but there's a lot of
money involved as well. Absolutely,I wanted to highlight a few other Olympic
type that happened. The Paralympics,which features athletes with disabilities, which officially
began in Rome in nineteen sixty Theearliest precursor started in London in nineteen forty

(14:31):
eight, and I think it mostlyfeatured soldiers who were wounded in World War
One and that were mostly local tothe UK. Since nineteen eighty eight,
when the Olympics were in Seoul,the Paralympics have been held in the same
city that hosts the Olympic Games theSummer Games, so this year the Paralympics
will be in Paris. For example. The Special Olympics features athletes with intellectual

(14:56):
disabilities, and although since nineteen ninetytwo, these athletes have also taken part
in the Paralympics as well, sothere's a couple of venues there for these
athletes to compete. The first SpecialOlympics was held in Chicago in nineteen sixty
eight, and the first ten SpecialOlympics were all held in the United States,
and six of those only involved athletesfrom the United States. But now

(15:20):
it's become more of a global competition. And then in twenty twenty seven,
the Special Olympics will be held inSantiago, Chile, which will be the
first time that the Special Olympics havebeen held in the summer's at hemisphere before
interesting cool, There's also I wantto call out the Death Olympics, which
began in Paris in nineteen twenty four. In twenty twenty five, they'll be
held in Tokyo, and this isan opportunity for athletes who don't here to

(15:46):
be able to compete with one anotherin various ways. So these are important
events and I won't spend a wholelot of time talking about them, but
I wanted to make sure that wegave them their due in some way,
and maybe it might be really interestingto focus on a few of those for
a future episode as well. Absolutely. Yeah, So we're going to go

(16:06):
to the way back machine just fora little bit because I like to do
that. Like the histories, geography, geography is history, it's all a
loop together. And to understand what'shappening with the modern Olympic Games, I
think we need to know a littlebit something about the ancient Olympics. So
the Ancient Olympics were held in theSanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece,
from the eighth century BCE, probablyseventy seventy six BCE to the fourth century

(16:32):
Common Era, so for a while, I mean that covers a lot of
time. The last of the gameswas apparently held in two sixty one,
so we're talking about the order ofa thousand years and the Olympic Games were
designed to coincide. Originally, theywere built around the Greek religion, right,
which is a Polypheistic religion. Itsteeped in mythology, which holds that

(16:56):
Zeus and his son first established thegames and that it was the gods that
were participating. The games were originallyheld every four years, with the midpoint
of the games occurring during the secondfull moon after the summer solstice. So
we've got some astronomy, we've gotsome religion already mixed in here. And
then the games stopped being held intwo sixty one, around the time that

(17:21):
Christianity was on the rise and therewas a desire to eliminate pagan traditions,
and so because the Olympics was seenas a pagan tradition, that's one of
the reasons that they stopped doing theOlympics. When they did, that must
have coincided with the riot. Well, obviously, Rome, the Roman Empire
was very much a thing at thispoint, but there's a certain inflection point

(17:41):
where Rome tilts from sort of notnecessarily the Greek pantheon of gods, but
a similar sort of Greek pantheon ofgods to Christianity with I think a single
Roman emperor and I can't remember hisname, but I'm assuming this is sort
of that point. This is thatinflection point Constantine, probably, I believe

(18:02):
it was. And so yeah,this is a moment in history where the
Roman Empire all of a sudden adoptsChristianity. This happens around that time third
fourth century Common Era, and thenChristianity gets diffused forcibly throughout many parts of
Europe and subsequently prostulties throughout the world. At first at the Olympics. At

(18:26):
the ancient Olympics, the first participantsthere were a couple of requirements. One,
you had to be men. Onlymen were allowed to compete. In
fact, it was so restricted thatwomen who were married weren't even allowed to
view the Olympics. Upon the penaltyof death, apparently, so this was

(18:47):
a pretty stark situation where only menwere the competitors. Most of the viewers
the spectators were men as well,and initially that to be the suns of
freeborn Greek parents as well, sothere was sort of a bit of an
aristocracy involved here. I think thatthis may have changed over time, and

(19:07):
more of what you might call theproletariat were allowed to participate. After Macedonia
and then Rome conquered Greece, thecriteria for participating were only to be able
to speak Greek, not be Greek, but still be a man. There
appears to be a change when withthe Spartan influence in the Olympics, because

(19:29):
the Spartan society civilization encouraged athletics forboth men and women, and so the
loophole into women participating in the Olympicsinitially apparently was that owners of horses that
competed in the chariot races, Soif you owned a horse that won the
chariot race, that the owners ofthe horses would be the Olympic champions.

(19:52):
It was largely enslave people that weredoing the chariot racing, and they weren't
celebrated as the victors. It wasowners, and so we see a situation
where women who bred horses indirectly participatedin these chariot races. In this way,
the Spartan Princess Kiniska of Sparta isthought to have been the first women
who are participated in the ancient Olympics. And then at some point women were

(20:18):
allowed to directly participate apparently against menin chariot and foot racing events as well.
So this is a little bit offoreshadowing because women have had to struggle
and to fight for every opportunity atthe Olympics, and that's something that starts
with the moderate that continues with themodern Olympics, which we're going to talk
about when we get back from ashort break. Oh great, yes,

(20:42):
so let's hit our first ad breakand we will be right back, and
we're back. It's the Geography IsEverything podcast, and we're talking about geography
as this Summer Olympics today, andwe talked a little bit about the ancient

(21:03):
Olympics and so let's bring it forwardto the modern Olympics. We're going to
talk about the where, of course, the when, the why. There
were several competitions that emulated the Olympics, which took place in seventeenth century England,
Lay, eighteenth century France, innineteenth century Sweden, nineteenth century England
and then nineteenth century Greece as well, so these were all sort of leading

(21:25):
up to what would become the modernOlympics. However, the official IOC histories
traced the origin of the modern Gamesto Athens in eighteen ninety six, which
featured athletes from fourteen countries and nearlyseventy five percent of the athletes were Greek.
Because travel was what continues to beexpensive and continues to be a divider
and who participates in some ways.The central figure and establishing the modern Olympic

(21:52):
Games was Baron Pierre de Kuberte,a French aristocrat, educator and historian.
Du Kubert founded the an International OlympicCommittee which still rules the Games today,
still governs the Games today, andhe was its second president. He envisioned
the Games as a way to sharpenthe physical, mental and moral acumen of

(22:17):
young Frenchmen, and this approach wasbased on the British schooling system and Dicportin
wanted to revive the French nation afterits defeat in the Franco Prussian War of
eighteen seventy seventy one. So that'sa shout out to what the rumblings of
what would devolve into World War One. So check out the World War One

(22:40):
episode if you want to hear alittle bit more about the Franco Prussian War.
And indeed, the modern Olympics wasfounded in the context of rising nationalism
across Europe was absolutely intwined with politics. Yet Kubertine insisted that the games were
to operate outside of politics, sohe was given some mixed messages. You
might say, you know, it'sinteresting as as you're unfolding sort of the

(23:03):
history of the modern day Olympics,that this event, which was I guess
the very first modern one, wasbased in Greece, but it seems like
it's still very much French, orlike I seek parallels with with a lot
of different things in history where it'slike another outside entity that's coming in and

(23:23):
sort of establishing an old tradition,as if it was like you know,
I don't I don't know what theright term for it is, but like
this sort of almost like cultural youknow, colonization of sorts, right where
they're like sort of top nation,right, yeah, so you have this.
I mean there were other people whoare involved in the initial Olympic movement.

(23:44):
There was an individual from from GreatBritain who is from the UK,
who is really important. But Dikurotlike made this his life goal and probably
would have liked to hold the firstOlympics in France, but I think to
get enough international support for that,it was held in Athens as a way
to hearken back with the ancient games. And the first president for that matter

(24:08):
was Greek, although he only servedfor like a few years, and then
Dicobot took over and was leader ofthe IOC for at least twenty years I
think. And so you know,in order to get this thing off the
ground, they held it in Athensand it was kind of well received.
There wasn't tons of participation, LikeI said, it was what fourteen countries

(24:29):
or something like that. So thesecond and the third Olympic Games, the
second one was held in Paris andthe third one was held in Saint Louis
in the United States. Now,these games didn't gain much attraction, they
didn't gain much notice and were completelyovershadowed by the world's fairs. That were
held in those same cities in thosesame years, and so clearly we have

(24:52):
to give a shout out to ourWorld Fair episode, which was more interesting.
And this was at a time,as we talked about then, that
the World Fairs was a they werekind of a big deal at that time.
It was a way before kind ofit was when mass communication was only
starting to crop up. It wasa way that cities were trying to forecast
or project their their grandeur across theworld. So nineteen hundred and Paris,

(25:15):
nineteen four in Saint Louis, theOlympics were kind of a side show to
those World Fairs. They didn't receivea whole lot of attention. And in
this case of Saint Louis, mostof the athletes were from the United States
and Canada. So in nineteen osix, in order to sort of get
them back on track a little bit, they decided to hold them in Athens
again. And this is the Olympicsthat started picking up a little bit of

(25:40):
steam for something that's called the OlympicMovement with a capital O and a capital
M, and it's this sort ofspirit of the Olympics idea, this idea
of participating in sport as a almostas a surrogate for war. You know
that this would be a competition,but a healthy way to exercise this competition.
In nineteen oh eight, the Olympicswere supposed to be held in Rome,
but the eruption of Mount Vesuvius gotin the way and forced the Games

(26:03):
to be relocated to London. Somother nature has a way of minding people
that they're not in charge completely.It was in this nineteen eight Olympics,
Jeff, that was held in Londonthat the marathon runners in the marathon,
I think was this central event inthe ancient Olympics, and it still holds

(26:26):
a lot of prestige. But Ithink this was a big event in the
ancient Olympics. But in nineteen oheight, in order for the runners to
cross the finish line in from theRoyal Box at the stadium, they had
to run an additional two hundred andeighty five yards, so it was twenty
six miles plus that two hundred andeighty five yards, And since then that

(26:47):
standard has kept remained the same,so it's twenty six point two miles and
it's the point two miles so thatthe runners would be able to run in
front of the Royal Box, andso that's a sting piece of royalty politics
that worked its way into the structureof the marathon and now probably not going
to change it because then you can'treally compare across years. Right, it's

(27:11):
having the set distance is important forbeing able to have records and chronicle those
records. So that's probably here tostay. As we mentioned before, the
from the beginning of the modern Games, the cost of travel has privileged those
from the most affluent countries in theworld, and that's a situation that continues
today. To be able to financeOlympics, to be able to have a

(27:36):
delegation to put together to travel todifferent places in the world, it truly
favors the most affluent places and ifyou look at the places that have hosted
them and that have participated, that'slargely born out the Olympic Games. Just
to bring politics, you know,we'll be doing this throughout the episode.
Have been canceled three times. Canyou can you give any of that?

(27:59):
Can you have any idea why thatmight have happened? Well, if I
if I want a hazard, Iguess I'm gonna go ahead and say World
War one I'm gonna say World Wartwo, and then I'm gonna throw in
I don't know, but maybe theGreat Depression. Well you already nailed the
two by saying the first and thesecond World War. Because so the nineteen

(28:19):
sixteen Games were slated to be heldin Berlin and that was canceled because of
World War One, and then theOlympics resumed in Antwerp in nineteen twenty.
By the way, Germany, Austrianand Hungary were not invited by the Belgians
to participate in that Olympics, abig surprise of its right. So you
know that suggests that, you know, the political aspect of war like weighed

(28:44):
pretty heavily on this situation. Russiadidn't make it to the Olympics that year
either, because there was a prettybig revolution that happened in nineteen seventeen and
it took them a while to cometo the Soviet Union to participate in the
Olympics. But when they came back, they came with full force and were
a major force in the Olympics.The nineteen forty and the nineteen forty four
Olympics, which were to be heldin Helsinki and London, were both canceled

(29:07):
because of World War Two. SoWorld War two was responsible for the cancelation
of two games. And then,as a side note here, there are
only I think five countries that haveparticipated in every Olympic Games. You want
to throw out a couple ideas onthat one, I mean, I'll go
ahead and throw out France, theUnited Kingdom, the United States, correct

(29:29):
and correct, Canada incorrect. Yougot you nailed the first two France,
UK have anticipated. The other onesare not the ones you mentioned, and
I'll tell you what they are.Yeah, I just go ahead and tell
me, greed, this is oneof those. I guess that Australia,
interestingly enough, because that's all.Yeah. And Switzerland, and the headquarters

(29:53):
for the Olympics is in Lausanne,Switzerland, but it used to be in
France, and I think it wasmoved after World War One or during World
War One, because Switzerland was supposedlyneutral during the conflict. Right. So
here's another aspect of politics that weshould be talking about right off the bat,

(30:14):
and that relates to the sex ofthe competitors, like men and women
competing in sports. And Dicubte statedexplicitly over and over again that women should
not be competing in the games.He thought, no, it would be
interested and many early IOC officials supportedthis idea. And it was also based
in this idea that somehow women didn'tbelong in sports and that this was not

(30:38):
suit this particular group of people.And of course women have been fighting from
that point on to not only becomepart of the Olympics, it would become
of sports more broadly. This hasreached a very high profile recently in terms
of equity of pay and this kindof thing. But in eighteen ninety six,
the first modern Olympics, the onlycompetitors were men. Now, women

(31:00):
did compete in Paris in the Gamesof nineteen hundred, which is to say
that of the nine hundred and ninetyseven athletes, twenty two were women.
So not a whole lot, right, not a lot of participation. Four
years later, only eight women participatedin the Games, and the participation of
women in the Olympics only really increasedsignificantly after de Coubertin stepped down as IOC

(31:23):
president in nineteen twenty four. Soyou know, he was this massive influence.
He started it, and I thinkafter he left a lot of other
people who had warmed up to theidea that this is this, we shouldn't
restrict this in this way, shouldbut to protest the exclusion of women in
the Olympic sports, another organization wasestablished, and it was the Women's Olympics,

(31:45):
which was later renamed the Women's WorldGames, probably for copyright reasons,
and four competitions were held Paris intwenty two, nineteen twenty two, Gothenburg
in nineteen twenty six, Prague innineteen thirty, in London in nineteen thirty
four, all in European places.And things of course have changed regarding the
participation women in the Olympics, andhaving said that, there's still great inequities

(32:08):
and inequalities that exist. Jeff,I'm gonna ask you a trivia question here
that I think is interesting. Doyou have any guesses the first time that
every country who participated in the Olympicssent both men and women in their delegation.
What was the first year that thathappened. I'm going to guess it

(32:30):
was. I mean, I wouldn'tbe surprised if it was like twenty sixteen
or something like that. It waslike very recent, you know, like
just thinking about some of the countries, you know, there's still a lot
of countries that still I mean,most countries still have a lot of inequalities
between men and women. There's somecountries that are definitely still very much patriarchal,
right, and I can only imaginethat some of those countries are still

(32:52):
very resistant to the idea of womengoing and playing i mean sport. Even
the more progressive countries are a patriarchal. It's a scale to continuum. But
you're right, I mean, youhave quite nailed the year. But you
were really close. The first yearthat every country participating in the Olympics sent
men and women to compete was twentytwelve. Oh wow, I did get

(33:15):
close. You were very savvy there. And the three countries who had previously
only sent male delegation to the Olympicsbut finally sent female athletes that year were
Brunei, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.So these are the countries that jumped into

(33:35):
the modern world and of women participatingpretty recently. And as you said,
all three of those countries like that, none of them, none of them
were surprising. I'm actually kind ofsurprised that those are the only three because
there was a lot of other countriesthat I can think of that would also
be very resistant to the idea.So anyways, all that's to say is

(33:58):
I'm not surprised by those three.Keep in mind that the number of women
participating for those countries was much lowerthan men. There were just a few,
I mean, some of these countriesonly sent a few competitors to begin
with. But again there was somepresence there that changed. Another sort of
political aspect of participation in the Olympicsrelates to something we've talked about a number
of times before, this tension betweenprofessionalism and amateurism in athletics, and so

(34:24):
the idea of Dicoborta was that theGames should be a competition for amateurs only.
He felt strongly about this, thatthat was the true spirit of competition.
However, his definition of amateurism wasn'tlike amateur athletes and versus professional athletes.
It's that if you were a profession, if you had a profession of

(34:46):
any kind, you were a professional. So what that meant is that if
you were working class, because that'swhat you had to do to support yourself,
you weren't considered to be legitimate participant, and that it was only the
independently wealthy or those who could findwealthy sponsors to pay them to support them

(35:07):
to train full time. That thatwas the idea, that was duber Di
Kuborn's idea, like Pierre was like, this is the way it should work.
And so that's a pretty narrow viewand was pretty restricting in terms of
the working class participating in the Olympics. Initially, you know, just knowing
his back or a little bit ofhis background, so he started off by

(35:29):
introducing him as Baron you know whateverhis first name was. That sounds like
it's a very telling hint out sortof the background that he has, which
is that he is probably of nobility, which is not typically a class that
is works. Right. Yeah,I mean once he got the baron title,
like he rocked that for his entirelife, Like he was totally Baron

(35:51):
Di. And so this version ofamateurism starts to loosen over time over the
first couple decades. In around nineteennineteen, Diko Grota walks back the notion
of excluding the working class, youknow, sort of revisionists. It's like,
I didn't really mean that. Youknow, of course we should have
these athletes, but they you know, they can't be professional athletes, and

(36:13):
the movement towards including professional athletes reallychanges gradually over time, but by the
nineteen nineties there was a pretty bigshift to professional athletes. And so,
for example, we saw NBA playerscompete in the nineteen ninety Olympics, where
we didn't see that before. Itwas college athletes. Having said that,
the Soviets team team what's that?It was the Dream team, right,

(36:37):
yeah, where you know, MagicJohnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird were
all on the same team. Theydid quite well at the tournament, I
remember, but I don't know ifyou remember. That's bringing a little bit
of economic politics to this, thatthey were the Olympics were sponsored, their
outfitter was Rebok, and Michael Jordanand number of the other athletes were had

(37:00):
contracts with Nike, and so therewas a big debate about whether they could
wear, you know, their warmup suits which had the Reebok logo,
and so what they did is theyunziped the jackets and so you couldn't really
see the logo, and Michael Jordanand a number of them pinned US flags
to the uniforms, so there wasno chance of showing that affiliation. Wow.

(37:22):
So that's and that's a pretty amazingmetaphorical sort of moment there that the
flag is covering the sponsorship and what'sit really covering? Up right, Let's
talk a little bit about host cities, okay, because that's another big aspect
of the Olympics, and politics involvedin hosting the Olympics is extreme. Remember

(37:45):
it's cities that host the Olympics andcountries that host the World Cup. So
that's that's the difference there. Thereis, well, there has been a
lot of prestige associated with hosting theOlympic Games. There is the promise of
economic development, of urban development,of international exposure, international reputation, and

(38:09):
the desire for politicians and organizers toestablish legacies. These are all reasons for
wanting to host the Olympic Games.But there are many issues associated with hosting
the Olympics, and we quickly willget into sort of the darker side of
sport politics and economics when we talkabout that. Now, the competition to
host the Olympics used to be,and still is to some degree, extremely

(38:30):
fierce. So you have sometimes Ithink would be five candidates from different continents,
different parts of the world that wouldbe bidding to host the Olympics,
and the International Olympic Committee would visiteach of these cities and vet the plans.
And what started happening is that thepeople who were bidding for the Olympics

(38:52):
started gifting things to the International OlympicCommittee. That's one way of putting it.
Another way of putting it is thatthey were bribing them. And this
became a pretty well known practice,well documented, where money, travel,
scholarships for members, children's, extremewining and dining, all these kinds of

(39:14):
things were bestowed upon IOC members extensivelyin exchange for votes. One of the
Olympics that's pretty notorious for this wasthe two thousand and two Winter Olympic Games
in Salt Lake City. It wasin cover that was riddled by all these
kinds of gifting or bribes that wenton, and of course it's not the
only one that had that. Financingthe Olympic Games is also the responsibility of

(39:37):
the host cities and then by extension, perhaps the countries as well in which
the cities are located. It's notthe responsibility to IOC, just like FIFA
in global soccer, to pay forthese things. They get the money for
this, right they're paid for beingbestowing the right to host these things.

(40:00):
Increasingly in corporations have been involved infinancing the Olympics, although corporations have involved
for a long time, but generallyit's public funds, you know, taxpayer
money that ultimately is used to guaranteethe cost of the Olympics, and the
cost of the Olympics I think almostin every case has gone over budget,

(40:21):
but then not by a little.It's gone way over budgets. So you
know, you selling it to thepeople of your city and to say,
hey, this will cost us thismuch, but we're going to get this
much in return, and those budgetsget busted immediately for the venues and the
infrastructure and all the different things thatgo into hosting the Olympics. So overrun

(40:43):
budgets are super commonplace, and asa result, fewer and fewer countries are
actually seeking to host the games becausethat's becoming pretty well known. I think,
yeah, I mean, it's tome, it's one of those things
where in a lot of ways,similar to the World Cup, where where
the IOC has this event that hasbeen long sought after for a long time.

(41:05):
You know, they built it,they built up this thing to being
like this premier event, and thenall of a sudden it became a commodity
that they could then sell. Andso then they would go and pitch it
to a bunch of different places,where a bunch of places would say,
hey, it's our turn. Wewant to have it here, and you
know, the Barcelona, and wewant to have it over here in La
and we want to have it downhere in Buenos Aires. I don't know
if any of these have all competed, you know, directly with each other,

(41:28):
but it becomes this thing where it'slike, now, all of a
sudden, the IOC can say,well, this looks like a really nice
stadium La, but Barcelona's going tobuild a whole brand new one and we
think that'll look better, right,Yeah, so they get to play.
I mean that's it's this huge competitionand there is city and city and it's
like, so what do you got? You know, what are you going

(41:50):
to do? I have to raisethis that did you know that Portland,
Oregon bid for the Summer Olympics forthe nineteen sixty eight Summer Olympics. I
know, I had no idea.I'd never heard that they attempted. What
they attempted to do was get theUS nomination, so each country can only
nominate one city the countries that wantto participate, and so Portland was vying

(42:12):
with a number of other cities,including Detroit, which won the US nomination
for nineteen sixty eight, which wasultimately held in Mexico City, so that
Detroit didn't Portland didn't get it.Portland was going to feature all these water
events in the Willamette River, whichin the nineteen sixties was heavily polluted.

(42:34):
No, no, no no.And Bannis and I we uncovered some pamphlets
that related to the bid that wasmade for Portland to join the Olympics,
and there were two things that werelauded as like, we'd be perfect for
the Olympics. That were building lotsof highways all over the place, many
of those subsequently didn't get built,some of them did. And that we
have this amazing outdoor mall called theLloyd Center that people absolutely want to visit

(43:00):
and this will be a huge attraction. So maybe not super shocking that Portland
didn't get that bit, No,probably not. Do you really not know?
I thought that you knew all aboutthis. Yeah, maybe I had
heard something about I remember there waslike a time when Portland was was going
to build a brand new, likereally large stadium, like an NFL sized

(43:22):
stadium at the time, and maybethat was also wrapped up into this Olympic.
And I have no idea that Ithink that's what's sort of where my
mind goes and sort of like thesebig sporting events. But also I think
a lot about sort of when Portlandwas going for like a World's Fair,
right, and you know, obviouslythey got the Lewis and Clark expedition,
but they didn't get the whatever.It was all absolute, right, Yeah,

(43:42):
I mean it was a world Fair, but it didn't get listed as
an official one. So yeah,so there's there's a lot of competition,
but there's a lot of costs associatedwith that. And there are a lot
of critics who suggest, hey,you're spending all this money on the Olympics.
Can you think of any other wayto spend that money? How about
housing, education, how health care, transportation, other aspects of well being.

(44:02):
So you know, that's part ofthe debate there, and of course
the Olympics, I think would counteris like, well, we're actually raising
awareness for these kinds of things,and that's turned out to be highly debatable.
There's an enormous amount of displacement thathappens that associated with the Olympics,
So parts of cities that are renovated, revitalized, so to speak, that

(44:24):
often involves displacing many tens of thousandsor sometimes even more people. And that
happens with the World Cup as well. There's a lot of debt that's incurred
by cities and countries involved in hostingthe Olympics that can take decades to pay
off. So this is all kindsof economists Andrew Zimbalists and others who have

(44:45):
argued that this is not going topan out for cities from an economic standpoint.
That's just it's it generally doesn't dothat. There are a couple exceptions
sort of to that, though,which is that the nineteen eighty four Olympics
in Los Angeles did pretty well financially. They used a lot of older venues
and amped up the corporate sponsorship.So Peter Uberroth, who was behind that,

(45:07):
that's seen as a very successful Olympics. And then the Barcelona Olympics of
nineteen ninety two are seen as kindof an important model and there were a
lot of renovations to the waterfront andchanges to the urban infrastructure that were sort
of planned ahead of time. Butonce the Olympics were awarded to Barcelona and
I think eighty eight, then thatsort of became amplified and Barcelona completely transformed,

(45:31):
and it's one of the most touristedcities in the world today, which
they're not loving. They've gone farin the other direction, but the Olympics
sort of marked that city as thisglobal city, and I think a lot
of other cities are hoping to getthat kind of Barcelona effect. From hosting.
There's increased control and militarization at timesof public space. This happens all

(45:55):
over the place. Beijing, Reo, we're like sort of famous examples of
this. There's the corruption of theIOC, which takes many forms, some
of which we've talked about, themissed opportunities to prove the lives of many
indeference to the enrichment of the few. Right, so it's the poor benefiting
from this. Generally, the middleclass aren't necessarily benefit of this. It's

(46:17):
like a small group. And there'sa real stark geography to where the Olympic
Games have ever been held. Ithink only two of them have ever been
held in the summer hemisphere, forexample, So one of them is Sydney,
and I believe the other one isBuenos Aires, but maybe I don't
have that correct. I should knowthis because I have a list right in
front of it. There is goingto be one in Brisbane, Australia in

(46:38):
twenty thirty two, so that's comingup. The overwhelming majority of them have
been held in Europe, the UnitedStates, and Canada. House of a
Bunch. The last one that's beenhosted in North America, however, was
in twenty ten. That was inVancouver, and there are some cities that
have hosted it multiple times. Sofor example, let's see, do I

(47:01):
have that in front of me?Sorry, I'm not seeing that right now.
There's one city that's hosted both onlyone city that's hosted both the Winter
and the Summer Olympics. Can youthink of what city that is, Jeff?
I mean, well, I haveno idea because they required very different

(47:23):
types of geography. Right, you'dneed something that's sort of located near mountains.
Actually, you know what I'm I'mgonna guess potentially Munich because it's sort
of near the Alps. You couldprobably do some winter stuff there, but
you can also do summer stuff.How where am I at right now?
Am I close the answer? Itturns out to be Beijing, China.
Oh interesting, China closed it up. Yeah, Munich has hosted one Olympics.

(47:46):
I think it was so. Londonhas hosted three, Paris has hosted
three, Los Angeles has hosted three, Athens is hosted two. Tokyo has
although actually have hosted three, butDikoport didn't count the one that happened in
two thousand and six because he didn'treally want it there in the first place,
So the IOC doesn't officially recognize thatOlympics, which is amazing. Tokyo's

(48:09):
hosted it twice, and then onthe side of the Winter Olympics. Saint
Maurritch, Switzerland, inns Brook,Austria, Lake Placid, New York,
which is a city of like twothousand people, and Courtina, Italy have
hosted it twice. Actually, Courtina'scoming up in twenty twenty six. In
terms of world regions, thirty twoof the Olympics have been held in Europe,

(48:30):
fourteen have been held in the Americas, eight in Asia. Three in
Oceania and none in Africa. Sono African country has yet to host an
Olympics and in terms of the WorldCup, South Africa once in twenty ten,
right, which is start surprising.Yeah, both not surprising, and

(48:52):
also I think points to the Iget, I guess the unfairness of the
EYEC right, because it's supposed tobe this global event. It's supposed to
be and it does represent people fromall over the world, but it's supposed
to also go around and allow peopleto engage in the games, just people
who aren't athletes. And yet there'sa whole region of the world, Africa

(49:15):
and all of the many countries thatare a part of it, that have
never been able to have that directexperience and be able to put their own
their own spin, their own cultureinto it. Whichever country it might be,
right, it's like, I don'tknow, so on the one side,
at the one side, this isan entire continent that's been left out.
On the other hand, they haven'thad, you know, they would

(49:37):
like the choice, I think,but based on how some how it's panned
out for some cities to host theOlympics, that some leaders in Africa might
be thinking maybe this is a maybethis is not something we want to do,
you know, yeah, maybe wedon't want to bring this on.
But there have been bids from Ithink Morocco and maybe Algeria. I'm not
sure if Egypt has bid before,but there have been bids before. But

(50:00):
this is something that that hasn't happenedyet, and the ones that are coming
up are not slated to happen inAfrica either. We have let's see what's
coming up. I mentioned that Brisbane, Australia in twenty thirty two for the
Summer Olympics. Los Angeles is hostingit again in twenty twenty eight, and

(50:22):
for the Summer Olympics, Milan andCourtina are hosting. That's in Italy twenty
twenty six. And I guess they'reabout to decide in the next couple Winter
Olympics. Apparently the front runner forone of them is Salt Lake City,
which has hosted did it before,and then the French Alps look like they're

(50:42):
going to get another one as well. So that hasn't been that might be
determined like coming up like this weekor something like that. Oh wow,
so timely, right, But they'rethey've they've fast tracked a couple of these
places for that. Well, let'sdo this. I want to talk a
bit more about the Olympics and somereally famous political moments or maybe some people
haven't heard of. But we're gonnahave to take a short break first.

(51:06):
Okay, Well, let's do ourfinal ad break and then we're going to
come back. We're going to talka lot more about some of these i
highly charged political events. I'm gonnaguess because yeah, Olympics. Thanks,
all right, Well, we willbe right back, and we're back.

(51:29):
It's Jeff and Hunter. We arethe hosts of the Geography Is Everything podcast.
We're talking about geographies the Summer Olympics, and we've talked a lot about
different aspects of the Olympics and hostingthem and some of the competition and politics
that go on. But what Iwant to hone in on this last part
portion of our episode is some veryfamous and perhaps some less known moments that

(51:52):
happened, and they relate to protestmostly. Right. So, the Olympics
is a way for countries and citiesto promote themselves in the global stage,
and it's very state centric from thatstandpoint, But there have been lots of
moments that have sort of where theOlympics has been a vehicle for promoting different
ideas and for protesting certain things.So I want to look at some of

(52:14):
those moments. So nineteen oh sixOlympics in Rome, which I already mentioned,
was not considered to be like atrue host because IOC doesn't list that
as one. In nineteen oh six, there was an Irish track athlete named
Peter O'Connor and he and several otherIrish participants were forced to participate as part
of the United Kingdom delegation because theywere part of the United Kingdom at that

(52:37):
point. It would be another fifteenyears or something like that before there was
a war of independence from UK andthe Republic of Ireland would become independent.
So to protest this at the metalceremony, O'Connor climbed up what was said
to be a twenty foot flagpole thatbore the Union jack and he he hung

(53:00):
up there and he unfurled a greenflag and blazon with the gold harp and
the words Erngobra, which is IrelandForever. So this this is one of
the first modern Olympics, and thisis a pretty strong moment of protest from
somebody who want to medal. Wehave a gold medal winner. There's somebody
on the ground who was also wavinga similar flag to sort of deter people

(53:22):
from trying to get him down,and you don't here. I've not heard
a lot about this particular instance,but this is very interesting to me.
You know. It's interesting because asyou're talking about this aspect of the Irish
athletes being forced to play with theUK delegation, it sort of, you
know, reminds me of sort ofthe differences between the Olympics and the World

(53:44):
Cup a little bit because in theOlympics it's it's again it's a UK delegation,
right, which would comprise Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England.
But if you look over to theWorld Cup, each of those places have
their own teams within the World Cup. Recognize pend is for exactly right,
Yeah, And so it's just it'sinteresting and we talk about this a lot,

(54:06):
but like how you know, placescountries are getting recognized by different global
entities changes and matters so much todifferent people at different points of time,
and it's certainly for the nineteen ohsix the Peter O'Connor and his Irish compatriots.
That was a venue for them tosay no, we're not We're not

(54:28):
part of the United Kingdom, rightat least as far as they were concerned,
in face of the nationalism of theUK. They're pushing back against state
and colonial power because this was acolonial power in Ireland and brought a lot
of international attention to Irish nationalism.And you know, this is further evidence
from way back that sport and politicsare extremely closely intertwined. Let's jump ahead

(54:52):
to Berlin nineteen thirty six. Soboy, yeah, I mean, what's
happening in Germany in nineteen thirty sixis the rise to power of the Germany
the Nationalist Socialist Party, which manyof us commonly refer to as the Nazi
Party. So that's what's happening.The Olympics were awarded to Berlin in nineteen

(55:16):
thirty one during a time when therewas a centrist democratic government that ruled Germany,
but once the Nazi Party took over, there was a lot of consternation,
an international debate about well, whereshould the should we still have these
games in Berlin considering what's going onin Germany at this time, is this

(55:36):
something that we could do, Andultimately the decision was taken to have them
in Berlin. And the Nazi Partywas attempting, as countries do, to
use the Games to improve the internationalreputation and promote their country. In this
case, they're trying to promote theidea of German supremacy, Arian supremacy,

(55:59):
right, this is what they're usingthe Games to do. And there were
some new traditions that are well knownbut that were just initiated for the nineteen
thirty six Games. So the torchrelay, which begins with how a top
mount Olympus and culminates when the Olympiccauldron is illuminated in the main stadium of
the host city. This began inthe nineteen thirty six Games in Berlin.

(56:21):
Wow, I did not know that. That's a really big part of the
Olympic ceremony and leading up to thegame. Yeah, So that sheds a
really different light on the origin ofthis tradition, which is supposed to be
associated with cooperation and communal activity.That was something that really wasn't initiated for

(56:44):
that reason. Turns out now,so Germany did well in the Olympics,
that year, they did well inthe metal count but there were a couple
high profile track and field victories thatstruck blows against the racist ideology of the
party. And one of them wasIboya sask, a Jewish woman from Hungary

(57:05):
who took the gold women's high jumpevents. So this would you know,
the whole thing was to prove thesupremacy of another group of people. And
here's an individual who is a trackstar from years before who wins this and
suggests, hey that you don't youdon't have this right. It turns out

(57:27):
the other which is probably more wellknown in the United States, was a
very famous athlete named Jesse Owens,who was an African American who won four
gold medals and broke several Olympic andworld records in the nineteen thirty six Olympics.
And so in winning these, youknow, this brought a lot of

(57:47):
attention to the idea that people ofcolor are fantastic athletes. It turns out,
you know, just like other people. And but that because that was
not the conventional wisdom among many ofthe organizers at the time. Oh absolutely,
yeah, I mean I'm assuming thiswere In a lot of ways,
this is like blows against probably againstthe Nazi Party in general, right,

(58:07):
because they probably had athletes competing againstJesse Owens and and Bula and like like,
yeah, they were probably you know, pretty upset by that and they
were looking for right. Yeah.A little sideline here, which I think
is really important to note, andsomething I'd never heard before, was that

(58:29):
Jesse Owens was part of the fourhundred meter relay okay, but he wasn't
initially slated to be a competitor inthat race. But at the last minute,
the US coaches replaced two athletes,Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, with
Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalffs, whoare two African American athletes, and they
replaced a Glickman and Stoller who wereJewish American athletes. So these runners who

(58:52):
were trained explicitly for this event andheavily favored to win gold as as that
team did, we we're held backfrom participating in the Olympics. So that's
a little known dark note to thatOlympics. Among those who were criticized for
this decision was a person named AveryBrundage, who is president of the US

(59:15):
Olympic Association. As it was calledthen and would go on to become the
IOC president from nineteen fifty two intonineteen seventy two, and he was well
known for his anti Semitic views.So this is the person from the United
States has a lot of influence runningthe IOC for twenty years, and to
this day he's the only non Europeanto ever hold the position of IOC president.

(59:40):
So that gives you a little geographicbias going on there as well.
And there have only been nine presidentsof the IOC since eighteen ninety six.
That seems that seems problem right.I mean, that's the entrenched power is
what that's called. I think likeDukibertin publicly claimed that the politics had no

(01:00:04):
place in the Olympics, but thatturned out to be kind of a ruse.
And actually Jesse Owens later and laterinterviews held a lot of contempt for
President Franklin Delan R. Roosevelt,who never publicly acknowledged or personally acknowledges Owen's
achievements, and so that was seenas a slight. Jesse Owens had this

(01:00:27):
potential to come back and be sponsoredand to cash in like mini athletes do
on the Olympics. He was largelyunable to do that because of the racist
atmosphere of the time, which I'mnot suggesting has disappeared, but was at
a different degree at that point.But as a side note to just rope

(01:00:49):
in Portland one more time, JesseOwens owned the Portland Rosebuds, who was
a baseball team in the Negro Leaguein the nineteen forties. But that fascinating
for very long but little shout outto the Portland Rosebuds when I was growing
up. Like the big conflict thatthe Olympics became wrapped up in and sort

(01:01:10):
of a proxy war almost for wasthe Cold War. So this was the
battle between the United States and theSoviet Union and their associated allies for supreme
superpower status, and after World WarTwo, the Olympics became a very heated
venue for playing out different aspects ofthe Cold War. Now, having not
participated in the Olympics since before theBolshevik Resilu Revolution in nineteen seventeen, the

(01:01:36):
Soviet Union rejoined the Games in nineteenfifty two with the Summer Olympics in Helsinki,
and from that point on the Olympicsbecame this battle ground for the ideologies
of the Soviets and the United Statessurrogate for communism versus capitalism, and the
media of the Soviet Union and themedia of the United States used the Olympics

(01:01:58):
to stir up lots of negative pressand feelings for the rival country as well.
The Soviet Union was paying its athletesto train full time, which was
seen as some by using professional athleteswhich were not being used by many other
countries, so this became a pointof contention. But also during the Helsinki

(01:02:20):
Games, as we get this sortof heating up of the Cold War within
the context of the sport eighteen,companies become what we would call official Olympic
sponsors today, and this included CocaCola, included Nesle, and from that
point on corporate involvement really started tosnowball in the Olympics and become stronger and
stronger. And incidentally, Helsinki Gameswere the first ones that Avery Brundage of

(01:02:44):
the United States presided over. So's'syou know, some of what went on
during the Cold War. That's tonot even mention, which I guess I
will now the nineteen eighty Winter Olympicsin Lake Placid, that pitted the Soviets
against the United States in the semifinal match spoiler alert, and won that

(01:03:04):
match and went on to win thegold medal. But that's perhaps one of
the most famous Cold War moments inthe history of sports. That's the miracle
on ice, right, the icehockey game. Miracle on ice. Yeah,
I mean that was what I asyou were talking about this, I
was like, that's the that's thethat's the pivotal moment between Soviet US sort
of Olympic competitions. It's like theMiracle on ice. And if I remember

(01:03:28):
correctly, I think the US teamwas not expected to do that. Well,
I mean they weren't, Like,it wasn't again, this this was
I think this predated like when NHL, you know, professional hockey players were
playing in the Olympics, right,So these were largely probably college students,
I don't know they were, butmore amateur yeah. Yeah. And then

(01:03:51):
the Soviets not only had Russian athletes, but athletes from all the other parts
of the Silly Union, so theCzechs for example, and a number of
other countries that excel at hockey,and so in fact, they played a
game before the Olympics as a warmup for the Olympics the Soviets in the
United States, and the Silviets wonlike ten to three or something like outrageous

(01:04:14):
like. So this is not whatwas anticipated. And although we're talking about
the Summer Olympics have to mention themiracle on ice, I'm going to highlight
one other thing here, and thisis really there are a lot of dark
moments. The Olympics bring a lotof joy and a lot of good things.
There have been a lot of darkmoments, but the darkest probably occurred
in Munich in nineteen seventy two.And I think you probably know where I'm

(01:04:36):
going with this. And so innineteen seventy two there was a Milton Palestinian
group called the Black September organization thattook eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team,
including both athletes and officials, hostage, and in this happened in the
Olympic village and in the taking ofthe High Sages. Two Israelis were killed

(01:05:01):
during that the initial takeover, andso there was what to do, what
to do about this? And theIsraeli government says, we, you know,
we don't negotiate with Terrists. That'snot something that we're going to do.
But then it sort of fell tothe IOC and to the German authorities
to try to figure out what todo with this. And the terrorists wanted
a plane to fly out of Berlinwith their hostages, and so that was

(01:05:27):
arranged. But at the same timeGerman government and the local government of Munich
were organizing a rescue attempt to tryto liberate the hostages. It went terribly
wrong and shooting battle broke out andthe remaining nine hostages were all killed,
along with the German police officer andfive of the eight Black September militants during

(01:05:50):
this incident. So this happens inthe context of the Olympics. What the
Olympics are happening. It is nowreferred to as the Munich massacre. And
the decision had to be made,well, are we going to still continue
having the Olympics or not? Right? Like, I mean, this is
a devastating moment in the history ofsports, and I mean you almost ask

(01:06:15):
yourself, how could this go on? How could this go on? At
this point and Brundage made the decisionto delay the games by a day,
but to continue with the rest ofthe Olympic program, and he received quite
a lot of criticism for this.Some delegations left, Some delegations like,
we can't possibly participate in this atthis point, you know, right,

(01:06:35):
obviously Israeli on delegation left, andother countries, you know, some athletes
like I can't, I can't dothis right now, I can't be a
part of this Olympics because we can'tdeny what happened right well. And it's
also like I've never been in anOlympic village before. I'm not not an
Olympic athlete. I've never experienced thatkind of thing. But based on sort

(01:06:58):
of like what I can tell,it's it's a lot of like they're intermingling
a lot, right, They're they'rethese aren't They're not just inside their own
little pods. Sometimes there's some separationgoing on depending on where it's helled.
And but yeah, the idea,the spirit is that athletes from different countries
come together and they meet in commonspaces. They have this exchange, and

(01:07:20):
so you have to imagine that theseathletes probably interacted with a lot of other
athletes, became friends even, right, so you can totally, you know,
a runner from Japan probably is.Yeah, this is totally I don't
know if this actually happened, butI can I can see this like a
runner from Japan saying like I am, no, I'm no longer in an
emotional or mental capacity to compete becausesomebody that I just I knew, and

(01:07:42):
I've met and I've interacted with isnow no longer here right in concern for
one's own safety as well, rightof course, I've also Yeah, I
mean, if you read about thisand Jules Boycoff breaks this down, I
mean there was it was kind ofthe security was hopelessly understaffed, and they
just truly weren't prepared for these kindsof things. This scenario had been raised

(01:08:04):
as a possible scenario, wasn't properlyprepared for. And then I want to
mention one more moment of Olympic terroristactivity, which happened in nineteen ninety six
in Atlanta and the United States,where a bomb was set off by a
US citizen at the Olympic Park whichkilled two people and wounded over one hundred

(01:08:27):
others, and so interesting, somepeople may have forgotten about that because we
don't like to emphasize that that happenedvery much. But that did happen at
the Olympics in ninety six, whichis, to me, not that long
ago. Let's try to wrap thingsup. I know we've gone a little
bit over here, but this isa topic I just couldn't spend less time
on. I guess I just hadto talk about all this stuff because I

(01:08:51):
really want people to appreciate like that, this is a complicated situation like that.
The idea that you can separate sportsin politics, to me, doesn't
really doesn't really hold up very well. And so I just doesn't mean you
can't appreciate the Olympics, but it'simportant to recognize that this is indeed a
deeply political endeavor. So let's talka few a little bit about boycotts.

(01:09:15):
In nineteen thirty six, Ireland boycottedthe nineteen thirty six Berlin Games largely because
the IOC wouldn't let it represent theentire Ireland Island of Ireland. They could
represent the Republic of Ireland, butnot the provinces of Ulster that were part
of the UK, and so thatwas the reason that Ireland boycotted that.
In nineteen fifty six, the MelbourneOlympics had three three separate boycotts going against

(01:09:40):
it. So the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland boycotted due to the Soviet
Union repression of the Hungarian uprising.So oh, they said, you know,
we can't, we can't be participatingthis while this sort of conflict is
happening on our continent. Where thiscontinent has happened, this conflict is happening
nearby now during the Sue Create crisis, by which I mean the British and

(01:10:01):
the French imposing themselves on the SuezCanal zone. Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq
and Lebanon boycotted the Melbourne Games forthat reason. So it's not the hosting
country that was the issue. Itwas to bring attention to something that other
Olympic countries were involved in. Andthen the People's Republic of China boycotted because
Taiwan was permitted to participate under theirown name, and so they didn't go

(01:10:27):
because they couldn't have that. Youknow, it's really interesting. This is
all in the nineteen fifty six that'sright. This is a big boycott from
a lot of different angles here.But it's interesting, you know, when
you brought up Spain not being ableto not boycotting this this particular game because
of the Soviet Union's you know,brutal you know handling of the Hungarian uprising.

(01:10:48):
Like this was during a time whenSpain was under a dictatorship, you
know, Franco who was very wellknown for also, you know, squashing
any sort of uprising or rebellion oror thoughts against sort of his states.
Right, So it's just interesting.It's like like, well, I just
like there's like a there's a there'sa cognitive dissonance here. I think.

(01:11:10):
I'm like, what's going on here, because you do this too, Yeah,
I mean yeah, Catalonia, theBasque country Galicia, where any any
movement towards any kind of independence orautonomy was was brutally repressed. But you
know, some of the other politicalsubjects for this is that you have the
Soviet Union with the communist government andthe Spain with the fascist government. So

(01:11:33):
although they're both au authitarian regimes,they don't see eye to eye on how
to rule with an iron fist.So that's that was the pretext there,
I think. So another set ofprotests or or threatened protests happened in association
with the apartheid government of South Africaand South Africa's involvement in the Olympics,

(01:11:58):
the IOC withdrew invitation to South Africato compete in both the sixty four and
sixty eight Olympics. In South Africadid not rejoin the Olympics until nineteen ninety
two, until after the fall ofapartheid, and there were many countries who
were going to boycott in sixty fourif the South African delegation was allowed to
participate in IOC initially didn't want todo it, but realized that they would

(01:12:24):
be making I guess a bigger sceneif they didn't do that, and so
that's what happened there. In Montrealin nineteen seventy six, a large group
threatened to boycott if South Africa andRhodesia, which has subsequently been renamed Zimbabwe
in nineteen eighty if these two countrieswith policies of segregation were allowed to participate.

(01:12:44):
The IOC agreed that they wouldn't invitethese countries. Ultimately, however,
twenty African nations, along with Guyanain Iraq, withdrew because New Zealand was
allowed to participate. In New Zealand, their national rugby team had just toured
South Africa, a country ruled byapartheid, so by association, they're like,
we're not going to compete against peoplefrom a country that think it's okay

(01:13:09):
to go and compete in South Africa. However, the IOC ended up not
banning New Zealand, and so anumber of these countries. A bunch of
countries did boycott the Olympics that time. The revulk of China, which is
another way of saying Taiwan, refusedto compete under a different name and therefore
was not allowed to participate do thePrime Minister of Canada succumbing to the PRC

(01:13:31):
demands that they can't use China anywherein their name, they can't use their
symbols, and so athletes from Taiwandid not compete again in the Games until
the nineteen eighty four LA Games,where they were officially referred to as Chinese
Taipei. So that's that's how theyget through that. In the nineteen eighty
and from the nineteen eighty Olympics,the United States and sixty five other countries

(01:13:54):
boycotted the Summer Olympics in Moscow,and this was in the context of the
Cold War particularly the Siviet invasion ofAfghanistan. President Carter told the Scibets to
withdraw from the US or boycott theSummer Olympics in Moscow, and they didn't
then, so these countries decided notto go. Subsequently, the Soviet Union

(01:14:15):
fifteen other countries boycotted the nineteen eightyfour Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles as
retribution for the earlier boycotting in nineteeneighty and then the United States and several
other countries participated in what what's calleda diplomatic boycott for the twenty twenty two
Winter Olympic Games in Beijing due tohuman rights violations and concerns. So this
meant that athletes from these countries wereallowed to compete, but the diplomatics didn't

(01:14:39):
go. So that's a pretty softboycott. But I guess boycotted some kinds
as well. It's like, well, we just won't send the president or
vice president or anybody like that there, but the athletes can participate. So
you know, the other thing i'draise here, and we touch on a
little bit, is the idea ofwhat to do with all these venues after
they're done. Right, these Olympicvillages, A lot of them are pretty

(01:15:02):
empty, like the birds nest inBeijing. Apparently it's rarely used for anything.
This phenomenal structure designed in part byway Way. These are sometimes called
white elephants, and Chris Gaffney talksa lot about this, and it's like,
what happens these venues when they're done. There was this promise of development
for urban infrastructure and that these arelaying vacant oftentimes, So Jeff, there's

(01:15:24):
a lot of people who are talkingabout maybe the Olympics should have a permanent
home so that this sort of fundingdebacle doesn't continue. Although there's other obviously
some controversies associated with just choosing oneor a few places. And then there's
some people are voicing this opinion,Hey, should we even have the Olympics
at all? I mean, whatdo you think? Well, I mean,

(01:15:45):
with respects to having it in asingle place, I see the logic.
I would also be supportive of,you know, a single place in
you know, different regions and itjust sort of moves and it's a very
sort of there's a normal cadence,right, It's like this year it's going
to be in North America, andit's always going to be you know,
in I know, Chicago, andthis year it's going to be in Europe,

(01:16:05):
and it's always going to be inParis, and this year it's going
to be an Asian it's always goingto be in where And of course there's
gonna be issues around that, rightbecause you know, especially when you get
into Europe with people will probably belike, well, why is France always
get it right? But it alsoseems like maybe it's just less problematic and
they don't need to build everything,and maybe countries and cities are no longer

(01:16:26):
that interested in spending all this moneyto prop up this tournament that they don't
actually get all that much benefit from. I mean, of course there are
visitors who come in for a shortperiod and that probably gives you a little
boost here over economy, but isthat offsetting its cost. I think that's
been shown to me not the case. Basically, aside from a very handful,
very few handful of tournaments, there'ssome researcher suggests that overall tourism to

(01:16:51):
a city goes down in the Europeand the Olympics. So there are people
coming for the Olympics, but alot of people are just straight up avoiding
it because of the things as well. So there's a little bit of a
there. I've talked to you.Yeah, if you were to offer me
a trip fully paid to like orat least my flight to go to Paris

(01:17:13):
this summer, I would be like, no, I'm not gonna I don't
want to deal with I don't wantto deal with the madness of the tournament.
Like it's it's fine, I'll goto Paris some other time, Like
it'll still be there, Paris ain'tgoing anywhere, But like, I'm not
gonna do that. I'm not goingto subject that myself to that unless I
wanted to go see the Olympics,right. I had that exact conversation with
a couple friends of mine who havevisited Paris in the last few months and

(01:17:36):
even in the months leading up untilthe Olympics, it was just hectic and
crowded and sort of chaotic, andso they were speculating, Wow, what's
it going to be like when theOlympics are actually happening here. So yeah,
there's a lot of evidence for that, and you know, and should
the Olympics happen at all, Ithink that a lot of people would be

(01:17:58):
disappointed to not have this opportunity,a lot of athletes. This is a
big moment. Even though there areworld national championships that are held in other
years, the Olympics has got thissort of special role. But when you
consider the displacement of people and thedisparity of equity that is exacerbated oftentimes by
the Olympics, it's a question thatat least gets to be asked. I

(01:18:23):
think, absolutely, yeah, Iwould be disappointed if they went away entirely,
But I also recognize how problematic theyare for a lot of multifaceted different
reasons, right, And of courseit's not either all. It's like,
we either have to have the Olympicsin the way we've been having them or
have no Olympics at all. Sowhat are models for having things differently?

(01:18:45):
You know, some scholars have calledfor a sort of a third party review
board kind of thing that's not attachedto the Olympics or to the host country
that would vet these things and sortof have a little bit of a detached
view on like, all right,is this reasonable or not? But that
remains to be seen. So ofcourse, like every topic, there's a

(01:19:09):
lot more we could talk about herea lot of other facets of the Summer
Olympics for today's episode. That's morethan the time we have for sure.
Yeah. Yeah, it's been along one, but it's also a really
big event that only comes once everyfour years, and so I think we
gave it a little bit of extratime, which I think is more than
appropriate. And it's been really funlearning all about sort of the history of

(01:19:31):
the Olympics and sort of the politicalaspects of it, especially because we're now
we're right on the precipice. Ithink listeners, as you listen to this,
when does the Olympics officially kicks offthe twenty sixth, Right, when
you're listening to this, it'll bethe twenty third, right, So you'll
have a few days sort of toget get immersed in sort of what this
event is, right. It's beenvery very fun, Yeah, and so

(01:19:56):
also have an eye to it towardslooking towards what political moments rise or you
know, some of them are verysubtle, some of them are pretty blatant.
But I feel like it's time forme to say I'm Hunter show b
I'm a professor of geography at PortlandState University, co author with David Bannis
Portland is a cultural atlets and UpperLeft Cities, a cultural atlas of San
Francisco, Portland, and Seattle,and co host with you Jeff of Geographies

(01:20:20):
Everything podcast. Yeah, thanks Hunter, this was really fun episode. I'm
Jeff. I'm the co host ofthis podcast. You can also find me
over on YouTube. That's YouTube dotcom slash the Last Time Geography by Jeff
and I have a new podcast thatalso lives over there on that channel if
you want to come listen to me. I have a guest on from different
places around the world and we justsort of talk about some geography and visitor

(01:20:43):
information, all that kind of stuff. It's pretty fun and actually just came
out well as you're listening to this. A first episode was out last week.
The next episode will be out tomorrow, Wednesday, the whatever, the
twenty fourth. There you go,mark it out, Go check that out,
go check it out. Yeah.I just so tomorrow's episodes can be
all about back I just interviewed ourfriend Trevor Cherlein, who we interviewed all
about the Moon. I invited himback on because I was like, you

(01:21:05):
were really fun to talk with.Let's talk about so nice you talked to
them twice, Yeah, exactly,Yeah, yeah, And I was thinking,
I was like, you know,Hunter, at some point we should
have you on or I should haveyou onto that podcast and we'll just talk
all about Connecticut. Okay, rightright, limited target audience there. We
might have to throw it open toNew England. But yeah, I'm totally
on board with that. Absolutely.It should be fun regardless as the guest

(01:21:28):
host and ask you about California.There you go. Well, I think
I know more about Oregon at thispoint. Okay, well, but anyways,
go check that out around the world. That just lives on the YouTube
channel. I think it's also onpodcast apps. I think if you really
enjoyed listening to today's episode, likeplease rate and review the episode on pod
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever appyou use, or liken subscribe to for

(01:21:49):
watching this on YouTube. All reallygreat things for us, and of course
you're always welcome to go over tosubstack Geography is Everything dot substack dot com
to get even more geography from us, particularly this podcast sent directly to your
email box. Next week, weare returning to something a little more well,
highly geographic, but a little morenatural I would say, and that

(01:22:12):
is tornadoes because it is it istornado season if you didn't know. And
as we're recording this on the nineteenth, it is the day that the new
movie Twisters comes out. So wedidn't plan that, but here it is.
That's our tie in for why we'redoing that. That's a fantastic tie
in. This is the sequel toa movie that's like twenty or thirty years

(01:22:32):
old. I think, right,yeah, yeah, we're going to talk
a little bit about it. Socome back next week. We will talk
all about Twisters. We'll talk aboutwell, we'll talk about Twisters the phenomena,
we'll talk a little bit about themovie. But you know, whatever,
Tornadoes come back. I see alot of fun I guess. Until
then, well, we'll see younext time. Thanks for listening.

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.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

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Geography Is The Summer Olympics: Yes... They're Political

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