Whose Olympics Is It Anyway?

It has begun. No, the torch has not yet been lit, and NBC has not yet commenced its features on inspiring athletes, but the buzz around this year’s winter Olympics in Vancouver has already started. Just last week, Sports Illustrated came under fire for running a controversial cover featuring American skier Lindsey Vonn in what many are calling a sexually provocative pose. While that story will most likely fade from the public’s consciousness as Vonn’s actual skiing begins, there will inevitably still be plenty of controversy surrounding many of the other events taking place this year, most of it probably revolving around the question of whether or not this or that is actually a sport. This query may be directed toward the biathalon, the strange combination of cross-country skiing and riflery, or perhaps it will be directed toward everyone’s favorite winter Olympic oddity: curling.

No matter what sport may cause you to think twice about tuning in this February, the rules mandating which sports are allowed and which are disallowed in the Olympics have little to do with the merits of the sports themselves. Like everything else in the Olympics, they are about two things and two things only—politics and the worldwide desire to win. This unpleasant reality is made most clear not by the sports that are played in Olympics but by those that are left out.

Two of the most notable absences from the 2012 summer games in London will be baseball and softball, both of which were voted out by the International Olympic Committee in 2005. The reason that was given for these omissions was that neither sport figured largely enough in the international sporting world. However, baseball and softball are two of the most played sports in the world, with huge followings in North America, the Caribbean, and Asia. Although there would have been many flags represented on the field had these sports been offered in the 2012 games, it was the specter of the stars and stripes that got baseball and softball kicked out of the Olympics.

Ever since softball had first been introduced into the Olympics in 1996, the US had won three of the first four gold medals, leading many to believe that a sport so dominated by one country had no place in an international competition. This logic represents a flaw in the management of Olympic sports. The goal of the games is to bring the world and its greatest athletes together, not to remove sports that have been won almost exclusively by a single country. In the 2008 games, China swept all three medals of the table tennis tournaments, and yet no action will be taken to rectify this—nor should any action be taken. Furthermore, much of the world is physically incapable of playing or training for many winter sports, but that does not mean these events should be ruled out. The excellence of one country’s team—or any group for that matter—should allow that team to compete at the highest level, not facilitate its exit. In fact, it is the domination of certain sports that often garner the most fanfare. For example, no story loomed larger in Beijing than Michael Phelps, the American swimmer who won the gold in all eight of his events. Removing him from the competition would rightly appear ludicrous, but it is the same logic that would mandate such a farce that results in the removal of whole sports.

We all naturally want our country and our athletes to win. It is hard not to root for the American athlete in any event, even when one has never heard of him or her. All that matters is that they are wearing the American uniform. Paramount to this sentiment, however, is the sport itself. We should never let our patriotic desire to win the most medals—a count that proves little—alter the way we permit or prohibit certain sports.

Conversely, the Olympics can play a positive role by serving as an introduction of many foreign sports to the rest of the world, highlighting games that other countries can adopt, learn, and come to cherish. Even though handball may not be the next big craze in your hometown gym, the Olympics should still keep it on its roster.  Like other, far more obscure, sports, it is popular in many countries, and the best of its ranks deserve to play for a medal as much as the best biathletes and curlers do.

Marcel E. Moran ’11, a former Crimson associate editorial editor, is a human evolutionary biology concentrator in Eliot House.