The Olympics, Ethics, Beauty. And Free Palestine
Everything can be said about the Olympic Games. They are symbols of beauty, the body, honor, discipline, nationalism... Yet, symbols sometimes outlive their original meaning.
Consider, for instance, the poverty and displacement caused in the host city, or the outdated gender tests that involve the “inspection” of genitals and consistently disadvantage women. Then there's the exorbitant cost of hosting the games, which could be better allocated to other needs. All of these issues, however, reflect a broader problem with collective ethics rather than something unique to the Olympics.
Some argue that there is nothing to celebrate when war consumes the best of humanity, families struggle to survive and pay rent, genocides are a living reality, and global warming causes fish to boil in the sea off Kuwait.
(It has profoundly affected me to know that some people survive on Pagpag (recycled garbage meat) and that children rummage through garbage; in Cambodia, some are crushed to death by garbage compactors.)
Then there is the beauty humanity can create through sport. The tamed body that, through discipline, is freed. Then there is the small piece of hope. A beautiful concept: the possibility of gathering to measure ourselves against one another. To measure the bodies given to us by our parents and those we have sculpted ourselves without waging war. We compete for beauty and mastery; when we finish, we shake hands. We haven’t harmed the other but glorified them through the competition.
(What’s bombing hospitals, then lighting a cigarette, calling a loved one to say you’ll be back in two weeks, confusing sex with love, and then receiving a cursed medal from someone worse than the worst part of yourself.)
In my homeland, Colombia, tragedy is statistically more probable than justice. That's why, for me, the Olympics also hold this other meaning, and they always move me to tears. My tears serve to nourish that other land of discontent against injustice against my people and all people of the world. (Capitalism exploits everyone, human beings included. Employers in China jump from windows to escape the hell of making iPhones. The company doesn’t improve conditions but installs nets. US-American children receive iPhones for Christmas.)
The Colombian athlete, Ángel Barajas, wins silver on the horizontal bar in Paris. I don’t know what a horizontal bar is. I know nothing about gymnastics. Yet, I see his routine via a video from X. His hands are covered in chalk. His immense triceps embrace his shoulders. His features seem familiar; they remind me of a friend's.
And other things happen alongside.
Being an athlete also has that other side Andreas mentioned: fans can be incredibly harsh. They love you if you win and scorn you if you fail. For those of us who can't compete at that level, the meaning of such pressure remains elusive (I think of myself: perhaps the most I could aspire to is what Haruki Murakami aimed for when he ran a marathon: to never walk.) Punitive nation, punitive father. Thirty years ago, the Colombian soccer player Andrés Escobar was shot to death for scoring an auto-goal. As we no longer have memory or time to think, and everything from yesterday seems obsolete, I suppose this story is part of prehistory. But the prehistory of one place echoes in the present of another place. Different mobs-groups have fabricated false accusations against the athlete Kipgoche, alleging his involvement in the accident of fellow Kenyan athlete Kiptum. Kipgoche has since received a myriad of threats.
The headlines across numerous newspapers highlight "million-dollar" sums for the winners. It sounds envious, petty. Do you know how much money workers at big tech companies make? Are you aware that part of their job involves finding ways to oppress us?
I still struggle to reconcile the disparity between the victimization of poor countries and the celebration of heroism. Gladys Tejeda, the Peruvian marathon runner, once competed in borrowed shoes. The media framed her story around an ethical virtue: perseverance. In impoverished countries, being an athlete means having the support of your entire family or community; there is often no state funding for athletes. In some cases, athletes may need to train for their sport and then work to make ends meet. It is a common tale in those countries that win few Olympic medals, the ones that don’t appear on the first page of Google results. (We: those from the second and third pages back.)
Everything can be said about the Olympic Games. Fans can also become a mob, and there are few things more terrifying than a mob ("late 17th century: abbreviation of archaic mobile, short for Latin mobile vulgus ‘excitable crowd’".) Will they fire the journalists who wrote that the boxer Imane Khelif was trans? Inciting mobs with misinformation should be considered a crime. Intersexuality exists, just as red-haired people exist. Amnesty International in Spain says the percentage of intersex people in the world is 1.7% With regard to sports and their categories, I don’t know how they calculate what they calculate, and perhaps part of what we need to do is rethink categories altogether. I don't know what that would look like. But what I do know is that the tears of white women have served since slavery to reinforce the patriarchy and oppress the oppressed. Enough of white tears, white damsels! Angela Carini, stop crying and stand up with honor, for your tears and those of many who came before you are part of the patriarchal ruse!
I scan the medal rankings: China. The United States. Australia. France. I know I need to nuance the feeling, but there is something off in so much victory. It reminds me of bodybuilders and power-lifters—yes, they have put in the effort, but there's a sense that their success isn't entirely their own. They know it, and everyone who sees them knows it. (Thank the system, for providing some with running shoes.)
Do we remember that in 1976 female German athletes were deceived into taking performance-enhancing drugs? The Olympics are symbols for many things. (The Soviets knew this a bit more than the US-Americans, and US-Americans excel at this, and the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air/Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.) Of hope, sometimes. Nadia Comaneci gave a struggling Romania a perfect 10.
Israel is competing at the Olympics. Israel! (From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.) The opposite of pride is shame, and the Olympics should be a place where shame doesn’t exist, because losing can also be a source of pride, and sometimes not participating is more honorable than winning any medal. Israel shouldn’t be in the Olympics (nor should any of its supportive nations) because the Olympics shouldn’t host any form of shame.
And then, there is beauty.
Ángel reaches the bar with the help of his coach. He has a broad chest—thumos, for the Greeks, the desire, the blood, the quest for recognition that resides in a well-trained chest. Sports is ethics. The somersault, beyond my rational understanding, it’s clear to my eyes: I’m witnessing something extraordinary. The force he exerts on the bar lowers it—it is high school physics expressed with beauty; I wonder why my physics teacher wasn’t a gymnast. He spins and manifests precision, elegance, strength, finesse. I feel fortunate to watch him and conclude that by creating something beautiful, we give others the gift of feeling fortunate. He lands on a bar that doesn’t embrace him but allows him. With a final twist, he balances on responsive knees. Is it during youth that we start to learn about symbols?
Watching the Olympics is about witnessing the extraordinary, and it is a powerful antidote to the dangerous narcissism of today, "I am, I am, I am", that we must fight against with all our might. We watch the games to marvel at humanity, and exclaim in awe, “I didn’t know humans could do that!” The Olympics help us remember our shared humanity, it allows us to forget ourselves and become, simply, those who clap.
Do I like the Olympics? Something similar happens with soccer, although my rejection is more visceral perhaps because it is somewhat less beautiful than many other sports displayed in the Olympics. What I dislike about soccer is its fanbase, that pack of identity-less men searching for someone to love; the mafia; and because it is not okay to earn so much money just by kicking a ball and having ugly haircuts. Yet, I also know that, for some in my country, soccer and many other disciplines are not sports, they are the illusion of escaping poverty, of bringing food (and pride) to the family. In the Caribbean, beautiful children play beautifully under the scorching sun with torn balls and barefoot. Some play with more hope than others (or, as the media says, without nuance, with perseverance.)
The Olympics are symbols, but they are also enablers. They enable catastrophes and justify the unjustifiable. Installing AI-powered "security" cameras in Paris—and let’s not forget the inherent biases and racism of such technology—is nothing to celebrate. It signals the troubling direction in which our supposed democracies are heading and should serve as a serious warning. We do not want to be under surveillance, especially by artificial intelligence. The list of ethical problems linked to the Olympics is far too extensive to ignore. If we are capable of creating greatness, we are also capable of creating the hideous. Thus, when we cry moved by beauty, we are also crying in despair over catastrophe.