Aspirations of Olympism : a framework for considering the athlete's experience in the Olympic Movement at the close of the twentieth century

Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience in the Olympic Movement at the close of the twentieth century Bruce Kidd The Centre d’Estudis Olímpics publishes works aimed to facilitate their scientific discussion. The inclusion of this text in this series does no limit future publication by its author who reserves the integrity of his rights. This publication may not be reproduced, neither partially nor totally, without the author’s permission. The text corresponds to the lecture given by Prof. Kidd as part the programme of activities during his stay in Barcelona in 1996 as invited professor of the International Chair in Olympism (IOC-UAB). Ref. WP056 Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 2 To refer to this document you can use the following reference: Kidd, Bruce (1996):The Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience in the Olympic Movement at the close of the twentieth century [online article]. Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpics UAB. [Consulted: dd/mm/yy] <http://olympicstudies.uab.es/pdf/wp056_eng.pdf> [Date of publication: 1996] Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 3 Introduction Thank you very much for the opportunity of joining you at the Centre for Olympic Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The Centre is known throughout the world for its innovative scholarship on the mass media and the Olympics, and its thoughtful advocacy and sponsorship of social science research into the problems and prospects of the Olympic Movement. It is therefore a great honour for me to have been chose the 1996 International Professor. I hope to make the most of it, and to be worthy of your trust in me. The subject of my lectures this week is “The Athlete and the Olympic Movement at the close of the 20th Century”. My approach will be to outline a normative position on what the athlete’s experience ought to be in the Olympic sports and then discuss the social, economic and political conditions which either facilitate the realization of such an approach or undermine it. I will then focus on the various efforts by athletes, including those in the professional sports, to organize collectively to improve the conditions of their lives and discuss the likely outcomes. The idea is to stimulate analysis on what actually occurs in the Olympic sports from the athlete’s point of view. I should day at the outset that my perspective is at once personal, didactic and analytical. I bring to this task the experience of a former Olympic athlete and Olympic arts and culture program participant who continues to believe in the validity of Olympism as a guiding philosophy. As you will hear, I am convinced that if we do not take the aspirations of Olympism seriously, the Olympic Movement will collapse under the weight of its contradictions. At the same time, I have been trained as a historian and political economist, so I know both the possibilities and limitations of “human agency”. I call myself a “critical supporter” of the Olympic Movement. Tonight in this first presentation, I will outline my understanding of the Olympic ideals, the major tenets of the philosophy we know as “Olympism”, and to share some of the questions and challenges that philosophy poses for us as we consider the condition of the athlete. First, let me remind you of the history. For Pierre de Coubertin and those who helped him establish the International Olympic Committee and the modern Olympic cycle, the Olympic Games were not simply to be an athletic event, but the focal point of a broadly based social movement which, through the activity of sport and culture, would enhance human development and generally make the world a better place. Coubertin developed his proposals for the Olympic Games in response to deep-seated political and social crises in his native France, after years of study and field research1. He was particularly concerned about the immiseration and exploitation which accompanied rapid industrialization and urbanization, and the rising class conflict, poverty, disease and despair. Despite the chauvinist tendencies of his youth, he also become troubled by the imperialist rivalries of the European powers, and the growing likelihood of war. Like many of his contemporaries2, Coubertin concluded that the solution was educational reform, so he travelled to Germany, England, the United States and Canada to inspect the leading approaches firsthand. In Germany, it was the ambitious gymnastics pioneered by GutsMuth and spread by the turners. In Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 4 the United States and Canada, he visited the early programs of intercollegiate athletics. But he was most impressed by the character education claimed for the games curriculum of the elite male British public schools, such as rugby, made famous by Thomas Hughes’ best selling Tom Brown’s School Days. He came to believe that a system of highly competitive sport could inspire and invigorate the youth of France and thereby shake that country out of its lethargy. As he began to develop sports clubs, Coubertin also became aware of the classical Greek festival of the Olympic Games and modern attempts to emulate them – such as Robert Dover’s Cotsworld Games of the 17th Century, Dr. Penny Brookes’ Much Wenlock Games, which he visited (and observed their elaborate opening and closing ceremonies, competitions and medal presentations); and the Greek Olympic Games begun by Evangelos Zappas in 1870. Public interest in the Olympic tradition grew space with the successful excavations at Olympia, which confirmed longstanding local rumours that the ruins of the stadium and temple of the ancient Games were buried there. A re-creation of the ancient site was displayed at the 1890 Paris World’s Fair. In this milieu, Coubertin was inspired to apply his educational aspirations to the entire world. He dreamed that the share pursuit of excellence would build an international movement which could contribute to human progress and the peaceful resolution of international conflict3. It was this internationalist aspiration which distinguished Coubertin’s games from their modern predecessors. In 1894 at a conference at the Sorbonne, Coubertin won international support for these ideas and modern Olympic Games. He created the International Olympic Committee which helped him staged the first Games in Athens in 1896. There are two points I would like to draw from this brief account. Rather than “revive” the Olympics of classical Greece, as he liked to claim, Coubertin creatively appropriated the symbols of antiquity for a particularly modern project, in response to a modern complex of conditions. We must reject the transhistorical and universal claims for sports, and place their development, and the remarkable growth of Coubertin’s Games, in the social specificity of our own times. Secondly, we must understand that Coubertin started the Games as a strategy for social change. He was a reformer, albeit a small-c conservative one, calling his philosophy of reform “Olympism”4. While the Games were to demonstrate these ideas in action, Olympism was to be pursued every day, not just every four years. In the century which followed the Sorbonne conference, the Olympic Movement won the support of every major national community in the world, both gender and all classes. No other project in human history has enjoyed such universal visibility. I am convinced that a major reason for this is the Movement’s explicit pursuit of social values – in its official statements, its inspiring ceremonies, its debates over eligibility and fair play, its cultural and technical aid programs, and its briefs to government. No other major sports event was designed primarily as a vehicle for social improvement. Both scholars and pollsters tell us that it is the pursuit of ethical values, as much as the dazzling performances it encourages, which has won the Olympic Movement such a popular following. Yet today, the Olympic Movement stands at an important crossroads. Despite – or perhaps because of – its commercial success, it risks losing its connection to the broad humanitarian values which attract the Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 5 allegiance of so many. The Aspirations of Olympism So what are the aspirations of Olympism? How can we retain the integrity of Coubertin’s project, while paring away the aristocratic, patriarchal and Eurocentric biases with which he imbued his work? What follows constitutes the synthesis I have developed and applied to my work in the Canadian Olympic Association and elsewhere. Others may well interpret the Coubertin legacy with different emphasis. But these aspirations are all integral to the Olympic project. For excellence Against what he perceived to be the mediocrity and complacency of his age, Coubertin sought to encourage the pursuit of the very best. “Effort is the greatest joy. Success is not a goal in itself but a means of aiming higher”, he wrote. For the classical ideal of a “sound mind in a sound body”, he substituted “an impassioned mind a vigorous body”. As you know, this spirit is captures in the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius”, and dramatized by the records and “Perfect” scores which seem to explode like fireworks over every games. While this aspiration is most closely associated with athletic training and competition, it applies to all aspects of the Olympic project – from officiating to facility design to the arts and culture program to the communications systems which bring the Games to billions – and beyond to all aspects of life. We all support “excellence” as a goal, but there is increasing debate about what it actually should mean. Should it focus on the athlete’s performance or the underlying conditions? I believe the latter, for most athletes take the striving for the best as a given – it’s the circumstances of their lives which are often problematic. In many countries throughout the world, while governments boast about their champions as symbols of national pride, they are slashing the very public programs which enable boys and girls to enter sports and to train and compete at the top level. Is this “excellence”? Moreover, a number of participants and observers have begun to question the values which underlie what has been the most dominant use of the term, the single-minded pursuit of the podium. The pressure to win and the tremendous financial bonanzas available to those who do have led to a relentless technologizing and dehumanizing of training, and athletes themselves. Although during the two Olympiads since the Ben Johnson’s disqualification from Seoul, the incidence of steroid abuse has clearly declined, there is still a widespread fear that other, less easily detectable performance-enhancing drugs are commonly used5. Another urgent concern is that the uncritical pursuit of victory encourages a disregard for athletes’ rights to education, health and well-being, and an environment free from sexual harassment and exploitation. At the 1992 annual general meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, a general practitioner claimed that high performance sport for children was producing the same injuries as child labour in the Industrial Revolution6. Many in Canada feel that Bela Karoli’s insistence that Kerry Shugg take a second, final vault in Atlanta, Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 6 despite her badly injured ankle, was a particularly exploitive example. Instead of “metre, second and gram”, I would like to develop a measure of “excellence” for the material and social conditions within which athletes pursue their sports. How can we ensure that athletes have the necessary facilities, leadership and financial support to develop their talents to the full? How can we guarantee that these opportunities are “excellent” in the development and protection of athletes’ rights and health and well-being as well? For education “That which is most important in the lives of modern people (is) education”, Coubertin wrote a century ago, after a fact-finding trip to the United States and Canada. Sport, he believed, would provide the essential moral part of that education: “if it develops muscles, it also forms character and will… sport seeks out fear to dominate it, exhaustion to triumph over it”. This aspiration is embodied in a number of familiar Olympic traditions, from the expectation that training and competition be regarded as preparation for a subsequent career, to the motto: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well”. Above all, Coubertin stressed the intrinsic valuing and testing of the sporting quest as essential to self-learning and growth. Those of us who have experienced it would agree: much of our important knowledge about ourselves and others was gained through the engrossing challenges of sports. Olympic leaders also encourage other forms of educational development. One is through the provision of coaching which recognizes the complete physical and moral development of the athlete – not just her/his athletic experience. Another is through institutions like the International and National Olympic Academies, the Olympic Solidarity Commission, and the Olympic scientific congresses. Many NOCs prepare curricular materials about the Olympic Movement and the Olympic sports and distribute them to schools and libraries. For example, the Canadian Olympic Association’s Olympic Resource Kits have been distributed to 14,500 schools across Canada, in two languages. Yet this aspiration, too, raises thorny questions. There is no guarantee that the provision of difficult challenges in sport on or any other activity is by itself educational in a humane, beneficial way. In fact, growing scholarly evidence suggests that high performance sport has been pathological, not educational7. In the case of young athletes, the principal concerns are that children: - Are not permitted to be children; - Are denied important social contacts and experiences; - Are victims of disrupted family life; - Are exposed to excessive psychological and physiological stress; - May experience impaired intellectual development; - May become so involved with the sport that they become detached from the larger society, and - Face a type of abandonment on completion of their careers. Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 7 It is also clear that sports teach some athletes to cheat and lie. Most of us are familiar with this critique. The question is: what should and can we do about it? Moreover, most of the humanitarian educational activity carried out in the name of the Olympic Movement are directed at school children and members of the public, not the athletes and coaches directly involved. From my perspective, the ultimate test of the Olympic Movement should be the extent to which the opportunities athletes experience are genuinely educational and developmental in the ways Coubertin espoused. Yet I fear that very little attention is paid by the IOC, NOCs and Ifs to the actual pedagogy of sports. How can we ensure that athletes can learn in desirable ways? What measures can we develop to test the actual outcomes? Any attempt to come to grips with the athlete’s condition at the close of the 20th century must address these questions. For equal opportunity A corollary to the aspiration for education is the commitment to equalizing and/or spreading opportunity. If participation in sport is a beneficial form of education, then it must be extended to all to create what Coubertin called “a democracy of youth”. Coubertin considered opportunities for the whole population indissoluble linked to opportunities for the gifted. The Olympic Movement makes the greatest contribution to this objective through the “demonstration effect” of the Games and the events leading up to the Games. In Canada, although a direct causal relationship is difficult to prove, it would appear that the 1976 Olympics in Montreal provided a heady stimulus to sport and fitness participation and the provision of opportunity8. The 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary added significantly to the public facilities for sport and recreation and generated a large surplus to be used for sport development after the Games. Calgary organisers made the whole country eligible for the Olympic Torch Relay and symbolically affirmed the inclusion of women with both male and female mascots. Seoul, Barcelona and Atlanta gave prominence to the Paralympics. In addition, through the IOC’s Olympic Solidarity and its Working Group on Mass Sport, Olympic Days and Junior Olympics Programs, the Olympic Movement encourages participation in other ways. Despite these attempts, national and international sporting competition has not been free of the enormous inequalities inherent in the societies which support it. A pressing issue continues to be equal opportunity for females. Although the IOC no longer endorses Coubertin’s extreme patriarchal bias, its own membership and the Olympic Program are still heavily weighted in favour of males9. Even in those countries like my own with a vigorous feminist movement, the record is not significantly better. While opportunities for women as athletes are steadily increasing, women are still significantly under-represented in positions of leadership10. For example, only 11 of the 76 Canadian coaches in Barcelona were female. Continuing gender inequality threatens the very legitimacy of the Olympic project. Some scholarship suggests that the Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 8 very nature of sports needs to be re-examined11. There are other forms of inequality, too. In most countries, while there is no overt discrimination, national teams are monopolized by native-born children from the upper middle class. In Canada, for example, there is less lower-class participation today than 30 years ago. In Northe-South terms, the disparities are now greater that ever before12. If we are striving to create a “level playing field” in sport, is inequality an even more pressing issue that performance-enhancing drugs? This challenge must be addressed in any consideration of the contemporary athlete. For fair play competition Two expectations are integral to the Olympic ideal of fair competition: - That athletes abide by the rules and not seek unfair advantage; - That athletes treat each other not as enemies but as co-players who, while competing fiercely against each other, afford each other the respect due to comrades in the same endeavour. The first of these expectations is spelled out formally in the rules governing the Games and other international and national competitions. The second is implicit in the Athletes’ Oath at the Opening Ceremonies, that handshake of congratulation and friendship in competition, and the collective nature of life in the Olympic Village. No athletic organization in the world has made as persistent an effort to administer its rules evenly, to penalize violations, and to encourage a high ethical standard among participants as the IOC. The IOC Medical Commission has always been in the vanguard of development in drug testing. In Canada, we take pride and comfort in the creation of the Centre for Drug Free Sport, and the example of Lawrence Lemieux, who jumped overboard in Seoul while he was holding second place to save the life of a fellow sailor. But recent events allow no room for complacency. It is not just the continuing evidence that performanceenhancing drugs are still being used, if not tacitly encouraged13. Other practices, such as the “good” penalty or foul in football and basketball, undermine the integrity of “fair play”. The strategy of deterrents and penalties only works so far. It does little to encourage participants to embrace and affirm the values of “fair play” as their own. - How can we ensure that the day-to-day activities in the Olympic sports actually affirm “fair play”? - How can participants be encouraged to internalize the responsibility for “fair play”? These issues also affect the quality of life for the Olympic athlete. Bruce Kidd – Aspirations of Olympism: a framework for considering the athlete’s experience 9 For international understanding One of the Olympic Movement’s most fervent hopes is that international sport will enhance international understanding: that in the process of playing together, the peoples of the world will learn to understand each other and as a result, will less frequently support the use of force to settle international conflicts. This ideal is symbolized by the fire of the Olympic Torch and Flame, which is shared by every culture around the globe and reminds us of our common struggles as a species. It has been dramatically evoked by the Opening Ceremonies of recent Games. In keeping with this aspiration, the IOC requires host countries to give entry to all eligible Olympic participants, regardless of citizenship. It is also evoked by many Olympic traditions: the exchange of athlete’s pins, uniforms and gifts in the Olympic Village; the mingling of athletes and officials together in the closing ceremonies; and the spontaneous applause given by spectators to athletes from competing political systems. Given the conflicts of recent years, the IOC has done a commendable job of bringing together people. In the face of dire prediction of boycotts and violence, the Seoul Games represented a signal triumph for Olympic internationalism. A record 161 National Olympic Committees, many of whose governments did not recognize the South Korean regime, joined together in the moving “Beyond all barriers” opening ceremonies. Several major diplomatic and trade agreements were signed. At the same time, the international spotlight and the Olympic message of peace gave powerful stimulus to the movements for democratization and reunification within Korea, and the end of the cold war14. In 1992, by facilitating the participation of South Africa’s first non-racial Olympic Team in Barcelona, the IOC encouraged the creation of a democratic state in that country and the spirit of reconciliation which has inspired the world. In Lillehammer, participants and spectators provided emotional and financial support to the beleaguered inhabitants of Sarajevo. Still, there is considerable debate about whether the Olympics contribute as much as they could to intercultural understanding and a respect for differences, especially among athletes. Critics claim that the well-publicized togetherness at the time of the Games is superficial, if not hypocritical, as this famous Canadian cartoon suggests. (It depicts the Penticton Vees hockey team, which fought its way to the world championship which sticks and fists, only then to proclaim the importance of “international understanding”)15. In Atlanta, many felt that the American crowd’s partisanship at several venues was distinctly unhospitable. Certainly, the Olympic spirit – and even the declaration of an Olympic Truce during the Games – cannot prevent all armed conflict. Moreover, as John MacAloon suggests, the very practices of high performance sport may militate against the achievement of this inspiration: Pierre de Coubertin argued that recreating the habits and conditions of one’s own country in foreign ones is a major barrier against learning anything. Yet this is exactly what “good” delegation heads, team managers, and coaches seek to accomplish these days. On the folk