Ben Madilynn
Now that the bronze, silver and gold dust has settled, we can perhaps reflect on the Paris Olympics 2024.
The Olympic games are a gift to us all from the ancient Greeks. These athletes competed for the glory of their city and winners were seen as being touched by the gods. The Paris Olympics issued 987 medals which elevated the winners, albeit briefly, into gods in our eyes.
Cypriots have been lucky at the Olympics this time. Twelve years after he became the first Cypriot Olympic medallist, Pavlos Kontides came back, again, with a silver medal for men’s dinghy sailing to a rapturous reception by the Greek Cypriot community. Buse Savaşkan, competing under the Turkish flag became the first Turkish Cypriot to make it to the finals of an Olympic event – the high-jump. In Turkey, and in northern Cyprus spectators watched the final on giant outdoor screens and were overjoyed to see their hero on the world’s biggest sporting stage. By some strange twist of fate, Elena Kulichenko, a recent Cypriot citizen, also qualified for the final of the high-jump event and won the ovation of many Greek Cypriots.
But was there a ”dark side” to this glitzy, self-aggrandising Olympic extravaganza?
Personally, I was struck by the anxious and sorrowful faces of some of the tiny Chinese girls and women in the diving competitions. Some of the gymnasts in the floor exercises, and figure skating athletes from a number of nationalities didn’t look much happier either.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that child athletes in many countries suffer physical, sexual and verbal abuse when training for sport, with depression, suicides, physical disabilities, and lifelong trauma resulting from the abuse. Several countries have been identified as taking some children as young as five from their families, and training them day and night in factory-like centres to achieve world and Olympic “perfection”.
It seems that humans are not only abusing other vulnerable humans, but extend this to animals, and in particular, horses. A former British equestrian medallist withdrew from the Paris Games after a video emerged of her repeatedly whipping a horse’s legs, more than 20 times over a minute-long clip. Some Olympic horses are also reported to be showing signs of being deprived of oxygen and subjected to pain as their nosebands are pulled too tight.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which has long protested against horse racing, called for equestrian events to be removed from the Olympics. It’s difficult to see how making a horse act in a completely unnatural way to provide satisfaction to humans is any different to what circuses used to do with lions, tigers, bears, chimpanzees and elephants. This is inhumane. Hopefully, all equestrian events, which hark back to old days of the cavalry will be replaced by alternative sporting events at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
The International Olympics Committee (IOC) banned Russia and Belarus from all competition four days after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. However, asked about banning Israel, its highly perplexing official response was “We are not in the political business, we are there to accomplish our mission to get the athletes together”. I wrote about the monumental carnage taking place in Gaza, and it beggars belief that what’s happening before everyone’s eyes, coupled with the formal judgements of the International Court of Justice have been invisible and inaudible to the IOC.
In Cyprus, there has been a lot of support and affection for Elena Kulichenko for making a difficult journey from Russia to gain her second citizenship as a Cypriot and her choice to represent Cyprus, following the suspension of the Russian Athletic Federation from World Athletics. At the time of her decision, she was bullied by some Russians on social media for being a “traitor”, which must have been deeply hurtful to her.
But this does beg the question about how a person from Russia can become a citizen and have the right to compete in the Olympics as a Cypriot as a consequence of her parents buying “golden passports”, but the Turkish Cypriot Buse Savaşkan, who was born in Lefke (Lefka) in Cyprus, cannot. This must, surely, be a clear case of racial discrimination.
I have already written in some detail about the 60 year old embargoes on Turkish Cypriots which pre-date the events of 1974 when the island was split into north and south, and pre-date 1983 when the Turkish Cypriots unilaterally declared independence. Their exclusion from the Olympics flies in the face of any kind of rationale – why can states of similar status in terms of UN “non-recognition” such as Taiwan and Palestine compete internationally, but not northern Cyprus?
The other points of controversy at the Paris Games were about gender and women’s rights.
Many French sporting authorities restrict women and girl players from wearing head coverings. As a result, thousands of women and girls in France, mostly Muslims, are prevented from playing many sports, including football, basketball, judo, boxing, volleyball and badminton. An ironic faux-pas for France which used the slogan “Ouvrons Grand les Jeux” (Games Wide Open) for the Paris Olympics.
We have also evidenced the ugly spectacle of two boxers who were born as females, and were brought up and boxed as women all their lives being told that they may not be women after all. The attitude against these women is undoubtedly tinged with racism in that no country complains about their own women who naturally possess high levels of testosterone and become muscular and strong, but complain bitterly about women in other countries with the same attributes.
The IOC and all other international sporting bodies use a plethora of lofty platitudes to persuade us that they are being super-ethical. These are just a few of them: “putting athletes at the heart of our movement”, “fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination”, “building a better world through sport”, “excellence, respect, friendship”, “solidarity”, “unity in diversity” and “autonomy and good governance”.
Fewer words, IOC and all the international sports governing bodies, please. More actions.
Fahri Zihni is former chair of Council of Turkish Cypriot Associations (UK), a former policy advisor at the UK’s Cabinet Office and a former president of the Society of IT Management, UK
