Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, the Olympics and Climate Change

The time has come for arguably the sporting world’s most famous mafia organisation to select its new chief.  The various turf-conscious representatives of the International Olympic Committee will be busy with the task of finding a replacement for Thomas Bach when ballots are cast at Costa Navarino, Greece on March 20.

Seven candidates have made the list.  They show little risk of cleaning the body’s spotty image.  Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.’s candidacy is a lovely reminder of his father, who was himself made IOC president in 1980.  That Samaranch was not shy about his fascist sympathies, defending, not infrequently, the rule and legacy of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco.  “I was with many, many Spaniards with Franco,” he stated at a news conference in 1999.  While the father’s sins should not be visited upon the son, the very fact that a bid is being made for the IOC presidency suggests that this apple did not fall so far from the tree.

In a flawed effort to influence the candidates and what might be called their vision for the games, over 400 athletes from 90 countries have added their names to a letter urging the candidates to prioritise climate change in their policies.  That they think their views make the slightest difference is almost charming.  That they pick climate change as the issue suggests they have slumbered in a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

The IOC has certainly shown interest in easily gulled athletes in recent years.  At points, it has been rather cunning and ruthless in using these unsuspecting sorts to spruce an unrecoverably tarnished brand. The organisation, most notably, trumpeted the role played by some 6,000 sporting individuals in laughable anti-corruption education campaigns during the Paris Olympic Games last year, and the Youth Olympic Games held at Gangwon.

The letter itself has also been pushed by athletes who are already in the employ of the IOC apparatus.  Sailor and British Olympian Hannah Mills, one of the document’s key proponents, is called, without any sense of irony, an IOC sustainability ambassador.  With a sense of wonder, she reflects on the devastation caused by the LA wildfires and how it proved something of an epiphany: “the time is now to set a course for a safe, bright future.”

The letter asks the incoming president “that over the years and the course of your presidency one issue be above all others: the care of the planet.”  The rise in temperatures and extreme weather were “already disrupting competition schedules, putting iconic venues at risk and affecting the health of athletes and fans.”  Rising heat levels had also raised “real concerns about whether the Summer Games can be held safely in future years, and Winter Games are becoming harder to organise with reliable snow and ice conditions diminishing annually.”

A few of the IOC candidates, mindful of the letter’s publicity, reacted on cue.  Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan professed being impressed by the “powerful message from Olympians around the world”.  World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe expressed his willingness to meet the signatories to “share ideas and initiatives”.

The letter itself is an exercise in mushy contradiction.  The Olympics, pushed by an organisation that runs on the blood of corruption, must count as an environmental and social welfare calamity.  Staging them entails disruptive construction, the depletion of resources, the alteration of landscape.  Their purpose, far from encouraging good will and the stirrings of the social conscience, lies in a promotion of the relevant city and government often at the expense of the disadvantaged citizenry, a naked, propagandistic display of the regime of the day.

The IOC has unashamedly claimed to be a promoter of green policies.  In 2021, it committed to reducing its direct and indirect emissions in the order of 30 per cent, and 50 per cent by 2030.  It puts much stock in the Olympics Forest project, a shiny enterprise that conceals what has come to be described as “carbon colonialism”, which involves the use of misleading carbon offsets and the exploitation of states in the Global South.  Little wonder that this cynical body has been identified as a greenwashing culprit par excellence, a point utterly missed by the letter’s signatories.

The 2024 Paris Olympics, described by organisers as “historic for climate” and “revolutionary” in nature, proved nothing of the sort.  Jules Boykoff, well versed on the politics of the Olympics, preferred a different view, calling the games a “recycled version of green capitalism that is oblivious in its incrementalism, vague with its methodology and loose with its accountability.”

If care of the planet is what these athletes sincerely want, a swift abolition of the Olympics, along with a virtuous cancellation of the IOC, would achieve their goals.  At the very least, the games should be dramatically shrunk.  Iconic avenues would be spared.  The safety of athletes and fans would not be an issue.  Why wait for extreme weather to either modify or even do away with the games altogether?  Dear incoming IOC president, you can end the whole charade once and for all.

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