The Olympic Games are a cornerstone of international sports competition, representing the pinnacle of achievement in many of the sports represented in the Summer and Winter Games. But it, like most of modern sport itself, is still a relatively new institution. Most sporting rules were not codified and written down until the mid-1800s and the first Olympic Games in Athens took place in 1896. The organizers and the countries represented were largely Western European and North American, spearheaded by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat. Though he preached that the Olympics would bring international friendship and world peace through the amateur and universalist practice of sport, his perspective was limited. All the organizers and most of the athletes, at this point, were the citizens, and therefore beneficiaries, of colonial empires. And as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) attempted to expand its reach into the African continent in the early 20th century, its racial stereotypes and flawed ideology became exceedingly clear. By taking a closer look at Pierre de Coubertin and the IOC’s writings and engagements with Africa, one can identify the discursive and ideological tools that were used first to ‘other,’ and then to ‘civilize’ African colonial subjects through sport. 

After the first World War, the global influence of the Olympic Games expanded greatly. Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Uruguay all formed their own Olympic Committees following Coubertin and Henri de Baillet-Latour’s tour of the American continent in the 1920s; Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia​ joined soon after the formation of their respective nations, and representatives from China, Egypt, India, Japan, and Turkey all expanded the IOC’s geographic reach (Llewellyn & Gleaves). However, their impact was limited. The IOC did not operate on the one-country-one-vote system, and instead centralized power in legacy members. While the IOC became slightly more representative of its athletes by 1928, with only 41% of its members being European nobility as opposed to 68% in 1908, it still generally “remained a distinctly Eurocentric Old Boys club,” and this state of affairs was reflected in the IOC’s relationship with Africa (ibid. 57-58).

Colonization Through Sport

Stuart Hall’s work on discourse uses orientalism, which stereotyped and othered non-Europeans during the Age of Exploration, as an example of how discourses shape regimes of truth, and therefore shape institutions. Because colonizers hold a monopoly on knowledge production, they tend to try to fit outsiders into their already established frameworks of understanding rather than reconsidering or altering their worldview. Once the outsider has been collapsed into a set of inaccurate and incomplete characteristics, this stereotype is then split into two sides, the good and the bad, in a process called stereotypical dualism. This serves not necessarily to elevate any members of the group, but to incentivize acquiescence and assimilation to European ideals. Hall also discusses four key themes drawn from colonial descriptions of natives, specifically from Peter Martyr’s descriptions of Columbus’ voyages. Thesewere (1) the Golden World, an Earthly Paradise, (2) natives seen as simple and innocent, (3) a lack of civil society and developed social orders, and (4) natives’ lives seen as a pure state of nature (Hall).

 In examining the IOC, and specifically Coubertin’s statements, we can see the institution mirroring this same colonial discourse, as was blatantly announced by Coubertin’s 1923 notice to the IOC that “Sport seeks to conquer Africa!” (Guest 1341). In his speeches and writings, Coubertin speaks of Africa as that “vast continent which it [sport] has as yet hardly touched” and of the African as possessing “an innocent gentleness that is not without its charm” (Chatziefstathiou, Dikaia, et al. 283, Guest 1340). The land is untarnished, but also undomesticated, and so is the type of man who lives there. Coubertin even worries that it may seem “premature” to try to bring sport to a continent that is so “behind the times and among peoples still without elementary culture” (Guest 1340). But nonetheless, Coubertin believes strongly that the core precepts of sport are “sufficiently humane to suit all conditions of men from the semisavage state to that of the ultra-civilized state,” and therefore champions its importation (Chatziefstathiou, Dikaia, et al. 283).

But far from providing sport as merely an option for the ‘semisavage’ African, Coubertin’s main aim in bringing sport to Africa is “to bring to its people the enjoyment of ordered and disciplined muscular effort, with all the benefits which flow from it” (ibid 283). He believes that sport in itself is a civilizing pedagogical system. And importantly, it is not necessarily the physical exercise or social time spent with a community that makes sport valuable, it is the rules. About indigenous sports, Coubertin writes, 

There are certain forms of sport activities among natives, which localised to a region, sometimes even to a district, should not be discouraged, on the contrary, they ought to be encouraged, but they do not pretend to be anything else but a form of entertainment and recreation. If we want to extend to natives of colonized countries, what we call boldly the benefits of 'sport civilisation', it is imperative that we allow them to belong to the vast sport system, which entails rules and regulations and competitive sports results performances, which form the basis of this civilisation.” (ibid. 282-283)

The bureaucratic and regulatory system of modern European sport is the main thrust of Coubertin’s conceptualization of sport civilization. While the physical exercise, gains in strength and agility, and health benefits may be a welcome byproduct, it is the discipline needed to succeed within a European-style system of rules and regulations that Coubertin thinks will civilize the African. On the one hand, the individual physical and mental discipline needed to consistently train and push through exertion, fatigue, and pain requires the cultivation of an ambitious drive, one antithetical to the stereotype of the “lazy African,” and on the other, the strict hierarchy of coach over player, especially on a team sport, teaches a subservience to and approval-seeking from authority figures (Llewellyn & Gleaves58). This drive to push through pain, to achieve athletic excellence, often at substantial physical and mental cost, has been conceptualized by sociologists as the ‘sport ethic,’ a value system that governs who can claim the status of “real athlete.” Hughes and Coakley discuss tactics employed by coaches to incentivize “positive deviance,” an overcommitment to the sport ethic that keeps athletes in a “perpetual state of adolescence” as they stay anxious for approval from their coaches, improving their dedication to the sport, but also increasing their risks of harming themselves, family, or friends. Of amateur sport like that promoted by the IOC, they write, “There are no championships to be won or money to be made, but there is an identity and moral worth to be established and reaffirmed, and a connection to a coach and a group of teammates to be honored. These are powerful motives” (Hughes & Coakley). 

Practicing civilized sport requires accepting the baseline validity of the rules. As opposed to casual games like cornhole, poker and any number of popular drinking games, where every play session begins with the shared negotiation of terms and house rules, formalized sports rules are already set. In the former circumstance, the players are active participants in shaping their sporting reality, the acceptability of certain methods, and the goals they pursue to ultimately win the game. In the latter, their agency is limited to the confines of the already established rules, rules which can only be changed by the leaders of whichever athletic federation governs their sport in their area of the sports bureaucracy. Imbuing colonial subjects with the sport ethic and cultivating their belief in the ideology of civilized sport makes them much more easily controllable by those coaches and teachers who are most likely of the colonizing class.

And it is easy to see how this uncritical acceptance of set rules and hierarchies in one arena can affect one’s perception of others. Louis Althusser argues that “those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside of ideology” because ideology inherently becomes invisible to those within it. His model posits ideology as the set of assumptions that one uses to make sense of everything else that isn’t already explained. When one sees something that doesn’t fit into the already ingrained system, it is clearly recognizable as ideology, like the statements of a member of an opposing political party. But one’s own ideology becomes immune to scrutiny. To apply this framework, imagine a young African colonial subject who participates in sport, learns the rules and the regulations, the recordkeeping and competitive structures, and the social expectations that say that he must obey and try to impress his coach. He learns that they both must listen to the referee, the representative of the far-off bureaucratic office of whatever league or federation whose word is final. When this young man finally emerges into colonial society and must obey and seek to impress his boss, or the police, or whoever wields control in a chain that ultimately stretches back to the colonial Metropolis, this state of affairs is not very different at all from sport. Coubertin describes the African as torn in “the conflict between wishing to submit to discipline and to escape from it” (Guest 1340). If a colonial subject first encounters this conflict when confronted with the authority of his coach, could the sport ethic–the desire to win, to not let down your teammates, to push through and succeed, to be a true athlete–not overrule the drive for self-determination and freedom? Through the ideology of civilized sport, the athlete is taught obedience, discipline, and how to not question the rules and bureaucratic systems that govern his life.

Sport as a Tool of Resistance and Protest

But not everyone was convinced that sport would help turn Africans into productive and disciplined colonial subjects. Coubertin proposed and tried multiple times to organize the Africa Games, a version of the Olympics hosted by African nations and attended by African athletes. In effect, this would have segregated the Olympics. However, these Games never took place, chiefly due to resistance from the French. Coubertin sums up their objections as such: “The notion that the prestige of the Metropolis might be jeopardized by colonial successes” (Chatziefstathiou, Dikaia, et al. 282). This answer is relatively vague and diplomatic, concerned with the notion of ‘prestige’ rather than any material actions or occurrences. It implies that the French are worried, for appearance-related reasons, that their African colonies might show them up when put on a (separate, but) equal playing field. A more direct response came in Coubertin’s writings in 1931, where he wrote, “The January 1912 Olympic Review already dealt with this matter and opposed the view that a victory over the dominant race in the field of sport by the people in bondage may have a dangerous effect and risk to be exploited by the local opinion as an enticement to rebellion” (ibid. 281). While the French had a history of using sport as a tool for assimilation, this idea of putting Africans on a similar stage, competing in the same events, and creating situations where their white dominance of sport could be challenged, was a bridge too far.

France’s reluctance to allow their colonial subjects access to elite sport reveals that besides ‘civilizing’ the athlete into accepting and embracing European-style rules and bureaucracy, sport also has the potential for empowerment and resistance. In the current day, professional sport can provide a lucrative career that can lift athletes and their families out of poverty, though they often pay for it with the long-term health of their bodies and minds. Sporting environments and achievements can also boost self-esteem, help build social and leadership skills, and help athletes find strong communities. Only a few years after Coubertin’s final comment dismissing concerns about the rebellious potential of Africans in international sport competition, African-American track and field athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals In the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, infamously known as the Hitler Olympics. His victories were a rallying cry for those who opposed Hitler’s racist and eugenicist policies. They also reportedly “highly annoyed” Hitler, according to his minister Albert Speer, who wrote, “People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games” (Anspach). The 1936 Olympics were a huge production, often discussed as the first real ‘big’ Olympic Games, with a custom-build stadium and a lavish choreographed opening ceremony, and were overall a huge public relations win for the Nazi Party (Llewellyn & Gleaves). Hitler’s dismissal of Owens’ success, his attribution of his athletic achievement to his ‘primitive’ African physique, and his argument that he, and people like him, should therefore be excluded from the Olympics, drive home the subversive and destabilizing potential of seeing a black man atop the Olympic podium.

And when one moves away from the individual to look at broader groups, the Olympic stage can be even more powerful. Lincoln and Monnington discuss the prestige of the Olympics as a useful tool for “legitimizing both individual regimes or nation-states, as well as [a] perceived value as a cohesive force in domestic politics” (126). Post-colonial African states strove to gain international recognition, and saw a presence at the Olympics as one way to achieve that goal. On the flip side, abstaining from the event could also make a statement. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, numerous African countries cut sporting ties with South Africa and boycotted any international sporting event that the country was invited to, including the Olympics. Though the full situation is far too complex to explore here, the boycotts are “generally attributed with a direct effect in bringing down the apartheid regime” (ibid. 108). As a regularly held sports mega-event, the Olympics were a powerful platform through which resistance and protest against racial injustice could be amplified across the world.

Countermeasures and Built-in Dependence

This near revolutionary potential makes Coubertin and the IOC’s treatment of Africa in the interwar period all the more egregious. Though the French had their fears, Coubertin dismissed them because the structures he proposed would not have allowed for this potential to bloom. The Africa Games would have been strictly segregated from the rest of the Olympics, and therefore would have been a much smaller and less publicized event. And Coubertin’s other plan, the ‘African medal,’ only serves to reinforce the colonial hierarchies already in place. The medal was to depict on one side an image of an African man throwing a javelin, and on the other an inscription legible through a stand of bamboo that reads, “Athletaeproprium est se ipsum noscere, ducere et vincere,” which can be translated as “lt is the duty and the essence of the athlete to know, to lead and to conquer himself” (Chatziefstathiou, Dikaia280). The visual of Latin text partially obscured by jungle foliage reinforces again the way that Coubertin saw sport as a civilizing force, used to beat back the jungle (wild, untamed, primitive) and reveal the higher good of civilized sport (self-disciplined, orderly, regulated). Coubertin discusses the decision to write the inscription in Latin at length:

There was no possibility of using African dialects, which are infinitely varied. In Africa, English, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese are regional languages, depending on the nature of local colonization. Why would we use one rather than another? Latin, if you will, is not understood by anyone in Africa, but the officers and missionaries know the language and can translate the inscription on the medal into whatever language their subordinates understand. Then there is the matter of the prestige of ancient example. There was no hesitation. We chose Latin and a whole system of education was carved into the exotic foliage, in just a few words. (ibid. 280)

African languages, due to their variability and complexity, are immediately dismissed in favor of the most prestigious European standard. Just like Coubertin’s sports civilization dismisses casual and folk sports as frivolous entertainment due to their regional, cultural, and even situational malleability, the language of sporting achievement must also be governed by thefirm and standardized rules and regulations of Latin. Furthermore, Coubertin recognizes that the athletes who would receive the medal would not be able to read it, but suggests that they turn to “officers and missionaries” who could translate it for them. The African athletes’ sporting success is not only measured within European colonial regulatory and bureaucratic systems, but even in their victories they are still reliant on colonial masters to read the text on their medals. Submission and dependence are built into every step of the process, ensuring that all potentialities of empowerment or rebellion are snuffed out in the African athlete of Coubertin’s mind.

Conclusion

Modern sport, as practiced by the Olympic movement, reproduces the structural components of the late 19th century European society within which it emerged: bureaucracy, recordkeeping, moral codes, strict hierarchies, and of course, white supremacy. For adults already integrated within the broader system, it was a rationalized form of entertainment that maintained continuity with the rest of the world. For children or colonial subjects who were not yet familiar, it was a miniaturized model of governance with lower stakes in which to learn the rules. Similar to European schools, it taught them certain life skills, but beyond that, taught them the shapes of the hierarchies and structures that they would encounter throughout the rest of their lives in European societies. These ideological constructs are made easier to accept, and eventually ignore, when one has already embraced them in sport. Though there was, and is, still room for dissent and protest, these expressions are usually limited, even if unconsciously, by the very structures they aim to resist.

Bibliography

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