Maybe it was in that moment we should have realized that the Olympics have a dire future. As nominally democratic nations come to grips with the abundant reasons to avoid hosting the games—which TNR’s Natalie Shure deftly enumerated back in July—and opt out, autocracies and corrupt states will naturally fill the void. These nations, lacking the scruples that might otherwise prevent them from abusing their own people, will only entrench the abuses of the games themselves.
But if you think that the Olympics’ august governing body might pull itself out of this trajectory, think again. The IOC, which TNR editor-at-large Chris Lehmann described as a “mobbed up oligarchy” for The New York Observer in 2012, has long been a haven for scoundrels. And while they might have preferred these Winter Games to go to a stylish Nordic democracy, they knew exactly what they were getting with China as host: In the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, China demonstrated its commitment to the IOC’s aims by forcibly displacing 1.5 million residents of Beijing to make room for the games, as Reuters’ Lindsay Beck reported back in 2007. This is the kind of can-do attitude that the IOC either treats as a kindness or, at the very least, endeavors to forget. One extreme example of this tendency to look the other way occurred in 2019, when two Japanese women were displaced from their homes to make way for the 2020 Tokyo Games, 55 years after being evicted to make way for the 1964 edition.
The IOC rather consistently treats the residents of host nations as dispensable, happily uprooting their lives for the enjoyment of the committee’s top brass. Vice sports reporter Aaron Gordon spent his time at the Rio Games in 2016 observing the sacrifices residents were forced to make for the committee’s grandees. “It was the way that nothing else in Rio worked as it was supposed to, except the things that touched the IOC, then everything seemed like clockwork,” he told authors Kavitha Davidson and Jessica Luther in their book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back. “The [IOC] and its members feel no remorse, no obligation, and no dedication to improving the lives of the people in the city that they profit off,” he added.
The Olympics are in a doom loop: Their governing body essentially treats the abuses and impositions meted out to the residents of host cities as a given. As those residents wise up and keep the games from their homes, the only places left will be nations that don’t let principles get in the way of a massive cash grab.
Come 2028, the Olympics will head to Los Angeles. And despite the U.S. registering its displeasure with China, at least symbolically, I have little faith that our leaders won’t indulge in the same abuses that have become synonymous with the games in recent decades. I am eager to be proven wrong, however. We certainly have it in our power to break this terrible cycle and help plot the future of a more just Olympics. Having thrown down a gauntlet in the form of a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games, we are, in fact, obligated to try.
—Jason Linkins, deputy editor
Power Mad will be on hiatus for the Thanksgiving holiday but will return on December 2.
