Where Is the Olympic Spirit Today?

September 10, 2024

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During the Paris Olympics, many events captured global attention. The bold and romantic atmosphere of the opening ceremony drew widespread international commentary. Also, the Chinese delegation's outstanding performance became one of the highlights. Among their achievements, the Chinese swimming team's performance in the men's 4x100m medley relay, which ended the American swimming team's 60-year winning streak, was the most surprising. Yet, this success has been questioned by the Western media.

America's Focus on Olympic Performance

American athletes have dominated the Olympics for years. As early as the bipolar world era, the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for Olympic medals had become an important part of the Cold War. In order to prove superiority, both sides invested heavily in athlete training, sometimes resorting to measures like performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Despite the known risks to health, the allure of becoming a sports champion, along with the lucrative advertising deals that follow, was too strong for many to resist.

The United States is a major country in the research, development, and production of biopharmaceuticals, including PEDs. In the 1960s, Americans discovered that anabolic steroids could quickly improve strength, and the substances became favorites among bodybuilders and weightlifters. However, these substances can cause severe and long-lasting damage, including early onset heart attacks, strokes, tumors, and countless other complications. Though these substances were banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), drug prohibition has struggled to keep pace with biopharmaceutical innovations. A typical example was the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), a private athletics lab caught providing doping programs to Olympic athletes throughout the 1990s-2000s. BALCO represented a troubling "don't ask, don't tell" doping collaboration between bad actors in specialized enterprises and Olympic athletic teams.

The US government established the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) to inspect and penalize US athletes. However, there are concerns that the USADA may or may not enforce these rules with selective leniency or simply be unequipped to deal with new-school doping methods, as it is hard to overlook false negatives of the past. The US is not the only nation with athletes potentially engaging in questionable programs, but they are the loudest voices accusing other athletes of PED use.

The Rise of Chinese Athletes

In recent years, Chinese athletes have set some new records at the Olympic Games. The gold medals they won at the Paris Olympics were the same as those of American athletes. This caught the attention of American political scientist Graham Allison, who compared the rise of Chinese athletes in the Olympics to China's rise on the world stage. He suggested that China has become a peer competitor to the United States, not just in sports, but in global influence as well.

During the Paris Olympics, the results achieved by Chinese athletes were impressive, especially in swimming. This prompted Western athletes and media to suggest that the Chinese athletes might have taken PEDs and call for further investigation. During the Olympic Games, Chinese swimmers were reportedly subjected to more than 600 doping tests. The issue with this is not the concerns over doping, or even the thoroughness of the testing, it is the grossly uneven application of testing.

The motto of the Olympic Games was originally "Faster, Higher, Stronger," and in 2021, "Together" was added. This addition emphasizes the importance of unity and cooperation in overcoming global challenges. However, when Chinese athletes achieve significant success, the West often responds with doping allegations. Chinese athletes consider these accusations at best hypocritical, and at worst outright slander. Intense competition has always been a feature of the Olympics and doping has been a problem for years, but this new transition feels increasingly like a partisan debate colored by geopolitical bias rather than a celebration of international cooperation.

America's Long-Arm Jurisdiction

On November 16, 2020, the US Congress passed the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, named after Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia's anti-doping laboratory who exposed Russia's state-sponsored doping program. This act expanded US jurisdiction, allowing the prosecution of foreign citizens in the US if they were found to be participating in a doping program that affects competitions involving American athletes.

After the US Senate passed the act, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) issued a statement expressing concerns that "some very important elements of the act will have unintended consequences and will disrupt the global legal anti-doping framework recognized to date by 190 nations, including the US, through the UNESCO International Convention Against Doping in Sport." They cautioned that "by unilaterally exerting US criminal jurisdiction over all global doping activity, the act will likely undermine clean sport by jeopardizing critical partnerships and cooperation between nations."

Another issue arose when the United States allowed athletes who had previously doped to continue competing. WADA information shows that USADA permitted several athletes it had caught between 2011 and 2014 violating drug rules to go undercover and keep on competing without prosecution in exchange for information on other offenders. As a result, at least three serious doping incidents were ignored, and USADA did not notify WADA. When WADA exposed these actions, USADA admitted the facts but defended that pursuing appeals could endanger the involved athletes' safety and asked WADA not to make the issue public. Though it is worth noting that these scandals, whilst galvanizing, are a universal problem.

The United States' performance at the Olympics shows some parallels to its attitude on the world stage, which is to refuse to acknowledge shortcomings that all nations struggle with.

The various bizarre phenomena that occurred at the Paris Olympics reflect the changes our world is undergoing. The revival of the Olympic Games, initiated by European powers in their heyday, was, for a long time, a stage for Europeans to showcase their power. As the United States rose, European athletes were forced to share the stage. Now, with Chinese athletes catching up, Western countries, accustomed to dominating for two centuries, feel uneasy with the new situation.

Sports competitions should not be overly politicized. The success of athletes is often bound by time, and no one can dominate the stage forever. No matter how strong an athlete is, retirement is inevitable. The essence of sports competitions lies in the idea that each new generation surpasses the previous one. It would be useful for Western strategists to draw more inspiration from sports competitions when considering the dynamics of great power competition.

 

Please note: The above contents only represent the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of Taihe Institute.

 

This article is from the August issue of TI Observer (TIO), which delves into the mixed messaging evident between the 2024 NATO Summit and the Paris Olympics, exploring the geopolitical implications of NATO's expansionist agenda and the observable tensions during the Olympic Games, while looking ahead at the prospects for international cooperation amidst these growing challenges. If you are interested in knowing more about the August issue, please click here:

http://en.taiheinstitute.org/UpLoadFile/files/2024/8/31/1038537745b0bb03f-1.pdf

 

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