In sharp contrast to the celebratory atmosphere that prevailed in China for the Summer Olympics two years ago, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver have from the start had an embattled air. As soon as the Olympic torch was lit in Victoria, British Colombia, just across from where it would come to rest almost four months later, Olympic officials knew they were in for a fight.
Indeed, the torch relay seemed in many of the cities it passed through like a funeral procession for jobs, indigenous rights and the environment.
In Kitimat, a small town in western B.C., the torch came through the day after one of the town’s biggest employers, Eurocan paper mill, shut its doors, laying off about 550 people. Three days earlier, a crowd of parents and children protested the torch in Prince George, angry over a recent announcement that 14 schools in their district would be closed. A similar situation prevails in Vancouver, where the city has again and again come to the financial rescue of the Olympics, at the same time as it lays off city teachers.
Elsewhere, community members from Six Nations Indian Reserve in Ontario declared their land unconquered, and sought to prevent the torch from passing through it. To no avail—the torch came and went, though not without protest. In spite of this blatant disregard for the rights or interests of indigenous people, of course, the Olympic committee had no problem basing its logo on indigenous cultural traditions.
Finally, since 2001, the Liberal Party in power in B.C. has systematically auctioned off the province’s natural resources, many times not even to the highest bidder, all the while throwing money at the Olympic committee to bring the Winter Games to Vancouver. In their scramble to profit off the natural environment they temporarily administer, they’ve shown they will leave no stone undrilled, no river undammed, no forest unclear-cut.
But to conclude our analysis with a moribund survey of what’s wrong with the Olympics would be a disservice to what makes these biennial corporate circuses, at bottom, so worth watching.
Who but the most reactionary imperialist could not feel a smile creep across their face in 1956, when the Hungarian water polo team crushed the Soviet juggernaut, less than a month after Soviet troops and tanks violently crushed the Hungarian Revolution, in what would come to be known as the “Blood in the Water” match?
Is there a heart beating blood that didn’t almost burst with joy in 1960 when Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila ran barefoot past the Obelisk of Axum, which fascist Italian troops had looted from Ethiopia in the 1930s during their colonial invasion of the country, on his way to Olympic gold in the marathon?
At their best, then, the Olympics tell us profoundly human stories.
The most exciting story of these Olympics has perhaps been the pursuit of the quad jump in men’s figure skating. Although Evan Lysacek won gold in the men’s individual competition without attempting one, the quad jump is the future of the sport, and it will come to be its mark of excellence, like the four-minute mile in track.
Such milestones occur only once in a generation, sometimes less. They represent the coming together of a gradual accumulation of the hard work of generations of competitors and individual, exceptional athletes, genuinely “new” talents that change the game forever. “No poet, no artist of any art,” T.S. Eliot once said, “has his complete meaning alone.”
In the same way, no athletes are the product simply of their own hard work, but they embody the whole history of their sport. Each move is informed by the work of generations of previous athletes, while at the same time dependent in the decisive moment of execution on the individual’s preparation and will, their commitment over time.
But how do these athletes’ performances relate to the protestors’ actions throughout Canada?
The athletes at the Winter Olympics have dedicated themselves not to guaranteed success, but to a vision only dimly visible, a vision of perfection whose realization depends on their hard work and commitment. Many of them will never experience firsthand the joy of what they’re working so hard for. Still, they lay the groundwork for others.
In a similar way, many of these protestors are partisans of a future implicit in our society today. The world they dedicate themselves to fighting for is informed by the struggles of workers and indigenous people, and the need to live in a sustainable, ecological manner. It builds on their past at the same time as it posits a vision of the future only dimly visible today.
In this way, there is nothing new under the sun, only new shadows cast, themselves inseparable from seeds sown in earlier days.
Michael Stauch is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in history. His column runs every other Friday.
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