Do the Olympic Games unite or divide the world?

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Do the Olympic Games unite or divide the world?

The Olympic Games came to an end on Sunday. Ireland is of course proud of its two gold and two bronze medals.

Looking through the medals table it jumped off the page for me to see that of the top five medal winning countries four of them are nuclear power countries. They are USA, China, Great Britain and ROC.

It took me a while to work out where ROC is. It stands for the Russian Olympic Committee. Due to doping controversies, Russia was banned from taking part in these Olympics. So this is the way they got around it. Sounds odd.

Russian athletes did not have the word Russia emblazoned on their clothing and if they did, it also had to include ‘neutral athlete’. When Russians won gold medals the Russian anthem was replaced by music from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number One.

Politics and sport is an old story. A friend of mine, who is a fanatical rugby enthusiast stopped supporting the Irish national team after the Irish Rugby Football Union allowed members to take part in apartheid South Africa in August 1989.

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games took place three years after the Nazis came to power and in spite of all the reassurances Hitler gave to the International Olympic Committee, the Nazis kept few of their promises. On that German team there was only one competitor with Jewish ancestry. It’s worth noting that the Germans won the most medals at those games.

This year there has been the shocking story of the Belarus athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who has taken refuge in Poland. On social media she had criticised the management of the team’s officials and was subsequently told to go home.

We all know the style of leadership of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, so Krystsina decided it was best not to go home.

The IOC always tries to steer a clever path through all the political skulduggery. Maybe it is the Olympics bring home to us the importance of political dialogue and they also highlight to the world those places where dictators and tyrants are in control.

Do the Games bring the world together in some sort of loving embrace or do they simply highlight how the strong and powerful nations in fact control the world, even in sport?

During these games I’ve been asking myself is it a good idea to play the anthems of the winning competitors. And yet when I heard our anthem being played I felt all emotional. I was delighted to see ‘our people’ on the winning podium.

Of course it was sensational to see us win our first gold medals in rowing with Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy and another gold with boxer Kellie Harrington. I’m back thinking of Krystsina Tsimanouskaya afraid to go home. Do we ever realise the good fortune we have to live on this island, no matter how few or many medals we win at the Olympic Games.

It’s easy to criticise our legitimately elected politicians, and it’s probably good that we do, but those same politicians keep us safe from tyrants and dictators. And long may they do so.