As the 2024 Olympics open in Paris, many viewers of the Games may well share the perspective of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne:

Most of us who love sports want to forget about politics when we watch games.

However, to expect the Olympics to be apolitical is to ignore the history of the Games.

Weren’t the Olympics founded on the principle of using sports competitions to help people transcend politics?

That was exactly the sentiment of former International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Avery Brundage. As IOC president from 1952 to 1972, Brundage fought zealously to keep politics out of the Olympics. He noted, not incorrectly:

In an imperfect world, if participation in sport is to be stopped every time the politicians violate the laws of humanity, there will never be any international contests.

Indeed, the ancient Greek games included an “Olympic truce,” to ensure peace throughout the competition. And in founding the modern Olympics in 1896, French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin emphasized the power of friendly athletic competition to promote peace and understanding across cultures. 

Still, even from the beginning, politics were never far from the Games. In ancient Greece, city-states used competitions to demonstrate their dominance over rivals. And Coubertin’s obsession with athletics and physical education grew out of France’s loss in the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War. Coubertin hoped that increased participation in sport would help strengthen the youth of France … and make them less likely to be defeated by the Germans in future wars.

And don’t forget how Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Berlin Games as a propaganda tool. His goal was to boost the country’s image in the face of worldwide fears about the Nazi regime.

To what extent do athletes actually engage in political expression at the Olympics?

The Games are filled with competitors’ open expressions of love for their countries, but there have also been striking protests by athletes.

Perhaps the most iconic image from any Games is that of 200-meter dash gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. To call attention to issues of racial discrimination, the two Black American athletes each thrust a black glove- covered fist into the air as they stood on the medal podium. Under pressure from Brundage and the IOC, the U.S. Olympic Committee sent both sprinters home, where they were widely lambasted by white Americans.

Another protest at those very same Games received far less global attention. Just weeks before the Olympics, the Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia, the home country of superstar gymnast Vera Caslavska. When forced to share the medal podium with USSR gymnasts – as the Soviet national anthem played – Caslavska turned her head to the right and down, away from the raised Soviet flag. For her brilliant gymnastic performance, Caslavska became the female star of the 1968 Olympic Games. Opinion polls at the time showed her to be among the most popular women in the world.

It seemed for a time that the Olympics might see more Smith/Carlos/Caslavska moments as larger numbers of athletes made political expressions at their sporting events in the late 2010s and in 2020. But the IOC quickly made clear it would not permit such actions at the Olympics. In 2020 the IOC stated that it would punish athletes who violated the restrictions on political demonstrations. Athletes in the covid-delayed 2020 Tokyo Games and 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing made few political protests, it turns out.

What about international conflict – how does that play out in the Olympics?

It’s not uncommon to see countries boycott the Games to make a political statement about other countries. In 1936, the U.S. nearly chose not to send athletes to Berlin in protest of the Nazi’s antisemitic policies. Brundage, the head of the American Olympic Committee at the time, played a key role by pushing hard for U.S. participation.

For the 1956 Melbourne Games, boycotts began in earnest. Four countries sat out in protest of Israeli-U.K.-French actions in the Suez Crisis. Four others boycotted to show their displeasure at the Soviet Union’s military actions that ended the Hungarian Revolution. And China refused to participate when the IOC invited Taiwan to compete.

Most famously, the U.S. led a large number of countries in boycotting the 1980 Moscow Games because of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. Four years later – most likely in response to the U.S. boycott – the Soviet Union led more than a dozen Eastern Bloc countries in sitting out the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

What to expect in 2024, then?

In multiple ways, international conflict has again been part of the lead-up to the 2024 Olympics. For months, Palestinian and Arab countries’ sports organizations have called for the IOC to ban Israel from the Games because of its military actions in Gaza in the Israel-Hamas war. The IOC has rejected such demands.

Some pro-Palestinian activists now argue that if Israel attends the Games, other countries should sit them out. There is historical precedent for boycotts of this kind. Over the years, athletes from Muslim countries have forfeited matches rather than face Israelis. In the previous summer Olympics, held in Tokyo in July 2021, an Algerian judo competitor withdrew from the Games to avoid squaring off against an Israeli competitor.

The IOC’s unwillingness to sanction certain countries has at times also led others to skip the Games. In 1976, New Zealand’s rugby team ignored a U.N. ban on participating in sporting events in apartheid South Africa. But the IOC refused to remove New Zealand from that year’s Olympics. In response, some two dozen African countries boycotted the 1976 Montreal Games.

However, to Israel, threats of banning and boycotts are nothing compared to what it faced 52 years ago in the “Munich massacre.” This was the most tragic event in Olympic history. In the Olympic Village at the 1972 Games in Munich, a Palestinian terrorist organization killed two Israeli athletes and took nine more hostage. A rescue attempt by West German authorities failed, and all the hostages died in the process.

What gets countries banned from the Olympics?

In years past, the IOC has kept countries out of the Olympics for a variety of political reasons. For example, the IOC banned South Africa from 1964 to 1988 because of its apartheid policies. And Afghanistan was excluded from the 2000 Games because of the Taliban’s discrimination against women.

Countries have also been left off the participant list because of their role in international aggression. Most notably, Germany was not allowed to participate from 1916-1920 because of its involvement in World War I. Both Germany and Japan were banned in 1948 because of their actions in World War II.

Similarly, the IOC did not invite Russia and Belarus to the 2024 Paris Games because of Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. However, this ban is only a partial one. Individual Russian and Belarusian athletes may participate in the Games, although they cannot march in the opening ceremonies, use their countries’ national flags/anthems, or compete in team events. This arrangement is broadly similar to those that governed the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games, and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, when the IOC suspended Russia because of the country’s systemic doping program, but still allowed many Russian athletes to compete.

But does international conflict find its way into Olympic competitions?

Absolutely. George Orwell once wrote that serious sport is “war minus the shooting.” When it comes to some of the most significant competitions in Olympic history, Orwell was not exaggerating.

Few American hockey fans can forget the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.” At the height of the Cold War, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. men’s hockey team defeated the Soviet Union, the world’s dominant international team, at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. However, unknown to most Americans, the U.S. also found itself on the losing side of a miracle Olympic game. That was in 1972, when the Soviet men’s basketball team claimed a highly controversial win over the U.S. team.

One attractive feature of such battles is that they offered superpowers a way to directly take each other on – but not risk nuclear war in the process. At the same time, hot international conflicts have escalated into major sporting battles.

The 1969 World Ice Hockey Championship matches between Czechoslovakia and the USSR, just seven months after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, serves as a clear example. As I detail in my book Freedom to Win: A Cold War Story of the Courageous Hockey Team That Fought the Soviets for the Soul of Its People – And Olympic Gold, Czechoslovak citizens and hockey players alike used those games as a rare opportunity to channel their rage against the Soviets. The West celebrated Czechoslovakia’s opportunity to gain some measure of revenge. Tensions between the two countries had actually been mounting on and off the ice for two years. While celebrating a goal in the 1968 Winter Olympics, a Czechoslovak laid his head on the ice. The press conjectured he was trying to hear if the Soviets had shut off the oil and natural gas pipelines to his country.

The December 1956 water polo match between Hungary and the USSR provides perhaps the starkest image of real-world military action spilling over into Olympic competition. Soviet tanks had just crushed the Hungarian Revolution and play between the two water polo teams grew violent. Late in the game, a Soviet player’s punch opened a huge gash in the face of one of the Hungarian players. Ultimately immortalized as the “Blood in the Water” match, the game helped draw global attention to the Hungarian people’s plight.

Athletes from war-torn countries hope to use the 2024 Games to similar effect. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has produced major tensions between athletes from the two countries. The media coverage from Paris will undoubtedly highlight the geopolitical backdrop to any contests between Ukrainian and Russian competitors.

For athletes from countries under siege, that is precisely the point of their participation in this year’s Olympics. Ukrainian hurdler Anna Ryzhykova, for instance, made it clear that “our victories are to draw attention to Ukraine.”

Ethan Scheiner is a professor of political science and co-chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Freedom to Win: A Cold War Story of the Courageous Hockey Team That Fought the Soviets for the Soul of Its People – And Olympic Gold (Pegasus Books, 2023). This piece originally appeared in Good Authority.