The Olympic Games, held every four years in a different city of the world are supposed to symbolize the coming together of nations in a spirit of peace, for two weeks at least, putting aside all political or racial division. The five rings on the Olympic flag, as well as symbolizing the five continents, stand for the sporting friendship of all peoples. The belief that in Ancient Greece wars stopped for the period of the Games has reinforced the widely-held idea that the Olympics-and thus, sport itself-should somehow be ‘above’ political considerations.

This belief took a serious knock in Munich in 1972 when Palestinian gunmen killed 2 Israeli athletes and took others hostage, demanding the release of 200 Palestinian guerillas held in Israel. The incident ended with 17 deaths, including all the hostages. Politics had well and truly reared its ugly head, and the world was deeply shocked.

In the same year, under pressure from black African nations and black American athletes, the team from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) then ruled by a white minority government, was disqualified from participating.

The 1976 Games in Montreal were upset by friction over the participation of Taiwan. Canada had diplomatic (and trade) relations with the Republic of China-and Taiwan withdrew… In addition many African nations withdrew to protest against New Zealand’s participation in the Games, as their rugby team had recently toured apartheid-ridden South Africa.

But the biggest boycott came in 1980, when the USA opted out of the Moscow games to mark its condemnation of the Soviet Union’s military intervention in Afghanistan. Many other nations followed the USA and the Games, as a result, lacked the usual thrill of top-level competition. In 1984 the USSR retaliated with its own boycott of the Los Angeles Games.

It was by now all too clear that sport could not be idealized and kept in a ‘separate compartment’-racism, nationalism, the Cold War, the Middle East conflict-so many problems that intruded on the world of sport.

These events seemed at times to come close to destroying the Olympic ideal but the games continued and grew in importance. Today they seem to be threatened less by overt political interference (although terrorist attacks are much feared) than by a more insidious form of erosion: that of doping. The old saying ‘May the best (wo)man win’ has little meaning today as more and more athletes, including world champions, are disqualified for using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. And as experts develop more sophisticated tests, someone else is developing new drugs which are more difficult to detect… In this game of hide-and-seek what has happened to the honest effort of the true athlete? What satisfaction can ‘champions’ get from winning dishonestly?

We can already envisage a not-too-distant future when it will be possible to genetically programme an individual to be a top-level athlete-in other words it will be possible to ‘breed’ champions-and even to clone them! What effect will such a development have on the ‘sporting spirit’, or what is left of it…?

In the mean time continue to enjoy the magic of the Games!