The controversy over gay-bashing in Russia and the Sochi Games will be just the latest example of the real world clashing with sports’ greatest gathering.
Via: Evgeny Feldman / AP
The Olympics Games, being the longest-running regularly scheduled gathering of athletes and nations in the world, have often been a stage for political theater of all kind, from blatant propagandizing to moments of inspirational progress. Right now, the Russian government's crackdown on gay rights is the backdrop for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi. And while Russian authorities might wish otherwise, history indicates that the Olympics don't distract from real-world issues so much as amplify them to the nth degree. If history is any lesson, though, it seems that both the International Olympic Committee and participating nations and athletes will end up being much more concilliatory — or cowardly, depending on which way you look at it — now than they might have been in the confrontational era between the 1960s and 1980s.
1936: Jesse Owens Wins Four Gold Medals In Nazi Germany
What the Third Reich was hoping would be a massive Aryan propaganda boost turned into a historic embarrassment for Hitler and his cronies as African-American Jesse Owens decimated his track and field opponents, winning four gold medals. Seen here leading German Erich Borchmeyer in the 100-meter final by a margin of about, let's say, 50 meters, Owens' victories have stood for decades as a lesson in confronting, rather than sidestepping, prejudice.
(Another African-American, Ralph Metcalfe, actually took silver, finishing close behind Owens. He's out of frame in the picture above. Borchmeyer finished fifth.)
Via: Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
1964: South Africa Banned From Olympics Over Apartheid
The Summer Olympics came to Tokyo in October 1964, some 24 years after they were originally scheduled to arrive there, but South Africa was not one of the countries in attendance. The IOC gave the nation an August deadline by which it had to sufficiently renounce its discriminatory apartheid policies or else be banned. The deadline came and went, and South Africa did not participate in another Olympics until the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona. Out of a 62-member delegation, South African had selected seven non-white athletes, but the IOC didn't budge and stood its ground for the next 28 years, until the policies were officially repealed.
Via: Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
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