Extending gloved hands skyward in racial protest, U.S. athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos stare downward during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner after Smith received the gold and Carlos the bronze for the 200 meter run at the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City on Oct. 16, 1968. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman is at left.
U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos stoop atop on the 1968 Olympic medal stand in Mexico City, heads bowed and black-gloved hands defiantly thrusted skyward. It remains a seminal Olympic moment, showing how the world's premiere athletic competition in an instant can be thrust into the political realm.
Olympic history is rife with political moments, with individual athletes and governments using the games to deliver their messages of protest and activism to a global audience. During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow took turns skipping games hosted on their rivals turf. Jesse Owens, an African-American athlete, dominated in Berlin in 1936, in front of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime.
And with the United Kingdom and Argentina again squabbling over the Falkland Islands, the upcoming London games could become another memorable political Olympic statement.
Asked if the British are worried about a statement from an Argentine athlete over the Falklands issue, a senior U.K. official says matter-of-factly "that's certainly a possibility."
The Argentine government already has used the coming London games in its Falklands campaign, raising the odds of a statement when the Olympics begin later this summer. A television ad that appeared on the islands featuring an Olympic athlete frowning at the British flag before his training regimen takes him to a memorial honoring dead WWI British soldiers. The ad, at one point, states: "To compete on English soil, we train Argentinian soil."
The senior British official calls the ad "inappropriate," and adds "the Olympics are not for political issues."
Political statements during the Olympics "absolutely do resonate with people, especially ones made in the mainstream sports," says Andy Pollin, an afternoon drive-time radio host on WTEM-980 AM in Washington, where he is considered an encyclopedic sports historian.
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"There have been many years of discussion surrounding the Olympics, about whether it is sports or politics," Pollin says. "People wonder where it stands on that scale."
Original post:
Could Falkland Islands Dispute Trigger Another Memorable Olympic Moment?
