Can sport stay out of politics?

Before every major tournament, the same sentence is repeated: sport and politics should not mix. The history of the Olympic Games suggests otherwise. In 1968, in Mexico City, two American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised black-gloved fists on the podium (1) while their national anthem was played. They were suspended from the American team and sent away from the Olympic village. In 1980, the United States led a boycott (2) of the Moscow Games after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Four years later, the Soviet Union boycotted the Games in Los Angeles in return.

Sports bodies defend neutrality. The Olympic Charter forbids demonstrations and political propaganda at Olympic venues, and the reasoning is easy to understand. Sport is a shared language, a few weeks in which rivals meet under the same rules. Turn the stadium into a platform for protest, officials say, and the competition itself is lost. Athletes, after all, have trained for years to run, swim or play; they did not apply to be diplomats. Some athletes agree that a podium should celebrate effort and talent rather than flags and slogans; others reply that a stage this large cannot be ignored.

Critics reply that neutrality is itself a position. To host a great tournament is to be given a stage (3), and the bigger the event, the greater the prestige it brings to the government of the host country. When that country has a poor record on human rights, silence can look like approval. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar showed how: human rights organisations documented abuses against the migrant workers who had prepared the tournament, and the debate followed the competition from the first match. Players found themselves asked about workers when they would rather have been asked about football.

Boycotts are another matter. A boycott punishes the athletes, who have trained for years, more surely than it punishes governments. The Soviet army remained in Afghanistan long after 1980; many of the athletes who stayed at home never got another chance. If a gesture is to be made, it matters whom it hurts.

Individual protest raises different questions. Smith and Carlos paid a high price for their gesture, and were honoured many years later. What is condemned as political in one decade may be celebrated in another, which suggests that the line between a legitimate gesture and an improper one is drawn by the opinion of the day as much as by principle.

Sport cannot be sealed off from politics, because it uses public money, national symbols and worldwide audiences. The real question is who decides what is acceptable, and on what principle. A rule that bans protests but lets hosts use the Games for prestige is not neutral; it simply favours those who already hold power.