How not to boycott the Olympic Games

Human rights groups and gay activists began calling for a boycott of the February Olympic Winter Games in Sochi shortly after Russia enacted a new law in July that discriminates against gays or anyone speaking in favour of what the law calls "non-traditional sexual relations."

Petitions at the website Change.org (over 100,000 signatures) and the White House website are being signed, and pro-boycott op-eds are appearing in influential newspapersandpoliticians and celebritiesareadding their voices.

Although there hasnever been a boycott of a Winter Games, boycotts are nothing new for the Olympics itself, and the gatherings haveoften become a prime target forpolitical protest.

• Find out about what's driving Russia's anti-gay laws
• Check out CBC's website for the Sochi Games

As Dick Pound, a Canadian International Olympic Committee member, wrote in 2004 inInside the Olympics, "From the very beginning, the Olympic movement has embraced two elements: ethics and internationalism."

The ethics, Pound went on, are based on universal principles of fair play and a prohibition against discrimination.

Of course, the IOC has had difficulty living up to theseideals,which Pound concedes, while claiming the Olympic record is still very good by comparison with what else goes on in the world.Pound has spoken outagainst the Russian law and a boycott.

Still,those ideals do offer a rationale to call for a boycott undercertain circumstances, and today it may also matter that the whole world is watching live, raising the bar for those who might want to join in.

The first boycott

The ancient Greek Olympics experienced boycotts, historians say. But in the modernera, which began in 1896, there are different opinions about which Olympics experienced the first boycott.

The BBC and some others claim it was London in 1908, "when Irish athletes, angered at the refusal of Britain to give Ireland its independence, boycotted the Games in London."

However, there was no Irish team per sethat could boycott those games, so it was really individual athletes, members of the host team,who did not participate.

Others say the first modern boycott wasthe Berlin Games in 1936,but it is remembered more for thedebate about boycotting thanthe boycott that, arguably, took place.

Berlin was awarded those Olympics before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. At the time there was little enthusiasm for the Games, outside of Germany, Italy and Japan. But the Olympics movement "just took the position that you take part in the Olympics, period," David Wallechinsky, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians told CBC News.

Wallechinsky is known for his books The Complete Book of the Olympics and The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics, with editions published every four years. The next edition on the Winter Games comes out in November.

In 1936, the debate about a boycott was most intense in the United States, but their Olympic movement was divided. The issue then, as it is now, was discrimination, in particular on Nazi Germany's discriminatory policy towards Jewish athletes.

Working in Hitler's favour was the presence of certain individuals who were somewhat sympathetic to Germany within the leadership of the U.S. Olympic Committee. "You had people like Avery Brundage who were kind of sympathetic to the Nazis and didn't see it as a problem," Wallechinsky said.

Brundage was the president of the U.S. Olympic Committee from 1928 to 1953, and then president of the IOC until 1972.

American sports organizations divided over the boycott issue. Hundreds of thousands signed petitions. When it came time for the executive committee of the American Athletic Union to decide the issue, Brundage's anti-boycott side won by justa couple of votes.

Brundage even wrote that what he called "the active boycott by Jews and Communists" was beneficial in some ways, especially for fundraising.

Jeremiah T. Mahoney, the AAU president who lead the campaign in favour of a boycott, resigned after the vote and thenwent on to support holding a People's Olympiad in Barcelona, along with Spain's Republican government, which said it would boycott. (Barcelona had competed with Berlin to host the 1936 Games.)

Athletes from 22 nations registered to attend, butjust before the games were to begin, the military coup that started the Spanish Civil War took place. The games were hastily cancelled.

Threeboycotts in 1956

For Wallechinsky, the first Olympic boycotts were in 1956, when the games were in Melbourne, Australia. (He says the chaos in Spain at the time the Berlin Games began, two weeks into the Spanish Civil War, makes it uncertainthat Spain did indeed boycott. The Soviet Union didn't begin to participate in the Olympics until 1952.)

In 1956, thethreeboycotts were not aimed at the host country.

Spain, The Netherlands and Switzerland boycotted the eventbecause of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, while Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted because of the Suez crisis. China boycotted because Taiwan was allowed to compete.

What Olympic historians call "the boycott era" began in 1976 with the Montreal Games. This time Taiwan and China both boycotted. Even the U.S. threatened to boycott over Canada's initial decision to refuse entry to the Taiwaneseteam, in violation of IOC policy.The IOC brokered a deal with Canada that satisfied other countries, but not the two Chinas.

The biggest boycott of the 1976 games was by African nations, upset that New Zealand was allowed to compete afterits rugby team had played in South Africa, a countrybarred from the Olympics since 1962 because of apartheid.

Although the IOC takes issue with boycotts, they do have a history of barring teams from their Games.

The losing sides in both world wars were not allowed to compete in the games that immediately followed both wars, and Indonesia was barred in 1964 becauseit had barred Taiwan and Israel from competing in the 1962 Asian Games, whichit had hosted.

1980: the biggest boycott

Soon after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, then U.S. president Jimmy Carter threatened aU.S.boycott of the Games scheduled for the followingsummer in Moscow, if the Soviets didn't withdraw their troops.

Allies like the governments of Canada, the U.K. and Australia quicklyfell in line, but Wallechinsky says Carter "bullied" other nations into supporting his boycott, andU.S. athleteswere thrown "under the bus." British and Australian athletes did end up competing in Moscow but Canada's Olympic Committee was persuaded to observe the boycott after initial reluctance.

During this era, it was uncertain who was actually boycotting an event and who just wasn't showing up, usually because of the cost, Wallechinsky argues.

The IOC eventually created a program that funds at least two athletes froma country in need.

In 1980, he says, some countries told the U.S. that they were boycotting the Games. Meanwhile, theytold the Soviets that they wouldn't be able to show up because they didn't have the money.

Joe Clark, then Canada's prime minister, wrote in January 1980 to then Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau to ask if would be feasible to move the games from Moscow to Montreal. Clark's request and Drapeau's response only became public this year.

Drapeau's reply invoked the lofty language of Olympic idealism. "I therefore venture to state that such an ideal ... is incompatible with any proposal to boycott the Games in any way or anywhere."

He also told Clark it would be possible to stage a games, but "absolutely impossible to organize and hold properly the Olympic Games" in Montreal at an acceptable level.

Are boycotts effective?

Wallechinsky argues that the 1980 boycott, like all the Olympic boycotts before and after, was not effective.

If the goal in 1980 was to humiliate the host country, he says, it didn't work. "The Soviet government controlled the media so they were able to spin it so that it wasn't a humiliation, it was just typical American belligerence."

He asks rhetorically, "Did the Soviets feel humiliated in front of their people? No!"

The Soviet Union and its allies responded in 1984 with a boycott of the Los Angeles Summer Games. Iran, Libya and Albania boycotted for their own reasons. (Iran and Albania have the distinction of being the only two countries that boycotted both the 1980 and 1984 Games.)

By the time of theSouth Korea Games in 1988, the boycott era was winding down.

North Korea boycotted because the IOC refusedits demands to be a co-host, and Cuba, Ethiopia and possibly a few other countries boycotted in solidarity.

In 1992, Barcelona finally got to host an Olympics and there were no boycotts, and there have been no major boycotts since.

By 1992 ithad becomeclear whether a country was boycotting or just staying away. The IOC funding program was now in place and nations were expected to attend the Summer Games.

For Wallechinsky, "I don't see these boycotts as ever having worked, as much as I've appreciated the point of view of some of them, they just don't work."

Rather than boycott, he advises, "If you want to make a political statement, you go to the Olympics and you hold up signs, you don't not go, particularly in a tyrannical regime that's going to control all media coverage."

Although a human rights advocate, he considers boycotting Sochi useless but advocates going there and making a statement. And he notes gay athletes want to compete in the Sochi.

"Imagine what would happen if they [LGBT groups or athletes] smuggled banners into one of the stadiums" and held it up, he asks. "What are the Russian authorities going to do, arrest people right in the middle of the Olympics?"

In 1968, at the Mexico City Games, two American medallists, Tommie Smith and John Carlos made a gloved Black Power salute on the podium to protest racism.

The Mexican authorities took no action, but Brundage ordered the athletessuspended by the U.S.organization or he would suspend the entire team. They were suspended and Brundage banned them from the Olympic Village. In 1936 Brundage had defended athletes giving the Nazi salute from the podium.