BY XENIA SANUT

As the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games came to a close, historians reflected on whether or not the Games had a place in history for uniting countries and delivering peace.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it aimed to use the Olympics to “place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace”.

However, sport education researcher and Monash University professor Richard Pringle said, based on the IOC’s history, there was an unfounded idea that athletes participating in sport together could create peace. 

“Pierre de Coubertin, who was the founder of the modern Olympics, was actually a French nationalist and he was concerned that the French nation didn’t have an empire like the British,” Prof. Pringle said.

“[Mr Coubertin] thought that if he could invigorate French boys to participate in sport, that would help build the French Empire.”

Prof. Pringle said Mr Coubertin also had ties with fascism and Nazism.

“The 1936 Berlin Olympics which was hosted by Nazi Germany was, in many respects, the pinnacle of what [Mr Coubertin] had hoped for the Olympics,” he said.

Monash University sports studies professor and historian Dr Thomas Heenan said the IOC’s statement of peace “begins to fragment” when examining the Olympic Committee’s actions with the Tokyo games.

“You get a pandemic and the IOC just takes no notice of public opinion, the Games go ahead and the Japanese government sides with the IOC,” Dr Heenan said.

“The IOC are excellent window dressers - they will create the facade whilst the main venture is to get the show on the road, and the money rolling in.”

However, Bond University sports diplomacy researcher, Stuart Murray, said the Olympics was “aspirational”, “provides hope” and is “100%” peaceful.

“[The Olympics have] caused a lot of tension and boycotts and withdrawals, but has never directly caused a war or politically motivated violence,” Dr Murray said.

“It allows enemies to come together and compete without actually fighting, so it sublimates conflict and a great pressure release in the system.”

Dr Murray said the world needed sport to create peace.

“That's exactly what Nelson Mandela meant when he said ‘Sport has the power to change the world’,” he said.