Too Much Team Spirit

The Sixteenth Olympiad has been underway for less than a week now, and already the Americans and Russians are busily undermining international good will.

Last Tuesday Bob Hoffman, coach of the United States weightlifting team, accused the five man Olympic jury of being pro-Russian and anti-American. He also claimed the Russians cheated in boxing, wrestling, and weight-lifting by holding back their entry lists until they saw where other teams were entering their strongest men. And just yesterday morning, reports filtered out of Australia to the effect that the Americans won the hammer throw through the use of "psychological warfare."

Whether these charges are true or not is impossible to ascertain for the moment. But one thing is certain: these accusations and counter-accusations, and the tendency of both Americans and Russians to regard the Olympics in the light of a political struggle, are seriously jeopardizing whatever good will the Olympics may be able to generate.

The emphasis in this Olympiad by both Russians and Americans has been on the national team, rather than the individual. Unfortunately, this has become normal procedure for the Olympics. In the case of the Russians' state-supported team, this attitude has been fairly obvious. But a similar feeling on the part of the Americans has been mainfested in such statements as "We are going to surprise them here and win more gold medals than we did at Helsinki" by J. Lyman Bingham, executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Attitudes such as these are unfortunate, for they not only turn a potential source of international good will into a political gaming-board, but they also alienate the smaller countries. For when team scores are emphasized, the smaller countries (Russia and the U.S. captured more than two-thirds of the places in the 1952 Olympics) are naturally made to look bad.

The chief cause of the team emphasis is the fear that an Olympic loss is of great propaganda value to the enemy. But the U.S. finished well behind Russia in the winter Olympics without any noticeably ill effects. Indeed, it seems unlikely that many countries would assume from an American Olympic loss that the U.S. is an ineffective world leader. If American officials would take the lead in ignoring the team aspects, the U.S. might even gain a propaganda victory of sorts, for the smaller countries would feel better, and America would be taking a significant step in promoting world brotherhood.