The International Olympic Committee’s Failures Cannot Be Ignored
24 DATE 2024: When Paris 2024 kicks off this week, the polished television broadcasts, cheering crowds, and inspirational athletic accomplishments will mask, but not abate, a dark truth about the Olympic Games: they fail to serve the interests of athletes and fail to promote peace, a central goal of the Olympic Movement. Instead, the Games serve the interests of the few powerbrokers behind the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and legitimize geopolitical aggression.
The Olympics are failing to serve the interests of athletes and failing to promote peace because the IOC, which wields complete control over all things Games related, operates without accountability. The multi-billion-dollar “non-profit” organization has no shareholders and lacks meaningful political oversight. The Olympic Movement is so diverse that no single set of stakeholders—not athletes, not sponsors, not host cities—has been able to exercise significant power over the IOC. And the special place sport holds in the public psyche partially immunizes the IOC from scrutiny.
Unsurprisingly, the lack of accountability has allowed those who control the IOC to enrich and empower themselves at the expense of athletes and host cities. Moreover, the lack of accountability has allowed warmongering autocratic leaders to use the Olympic Games to further their geopolitical interests.
Below are just some of the ways that the IOC serves its own interests and the interests of autocratic leaders while failing to serve the interests of athletes or the global community.
Financial
The IOC brings in, on average, nearly 2 billion USD in annual revenue, and yet athletes, whose labor generates the value realized by the IOC,
do not receive any direct compensation and receive vanishingly little indirect compensation for competing at the Games,
are severely restricted by IOC rules from profiting off their name, image, and likeness during the Games, and
must bear 100% of the risk of competing in the Games.
At the same time, IOC “Members” and executives:
receive “per diem” payments of up to 900 USD for each day of the Games or for all other IOC events,
receive annual “administrative support” stipends,
receive five-star accommodations for the duration of the Games and at all other IOC events, and
receive first-class airfare to and from the Olympics and all other IOC events.
Safety and Security
The IOC has condoned:
dangerous living conditions for athletes in the Olympic Village because rooms are not equipped with air conditioning, despite July temperatures in Paris that can exceed 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), and
an open-air public opening ceremony on the Seine River without proper security screening, thereby creating a high-risk environment for both athletes and spectators.
Human Rights
The IOC claims to “recognize and uphold” human rights, but the organization:
restricts athletes’ fundamental right to free expression at the Games, and
fails to protect athletes who wish to compete in hijabs from discriminatory French laws.
fails to suspend the Afghan Olympic Committee for their violation of the Olympic Charter restricting women to compete in sport. Instead, the IOC has permitted three Afghan women to compete at the Games none of which live or train in the country, nor could they visit without risking their lives.
Geopolitics
The IOC has once again permitted the Olympic Games to be used as a geopolitical tool of autocratic leaders by allowing Russian and Belarussian athletes to compete despite the ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine that has killed hundreds of Ukrainian athletes and decimated Ukraine’s sporting infrastructure. It is further telling that the IOC has breached its own eligibility rules by permitting Russian athletes to compete in Paris who have violated those rules by expressing support for the invasion of Ukraine or by their links to the military. This kowtowing to Russia follows:
Russia’s use of the 2022 Olympics, from which the country was nominally banned, to strengthen ties between Russia and China in advance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and
Russia’s use of the 2014 Olympics and a state-sponsored doping program to build domestic and international goodwill ahead of the annexation of Crimea.
On both occasions, Russia’s aggression was a violation of the Olympic Truce.
Doping and Fair Competition
The IOC has failed to ensure that athletes in Paris will compete on a level playing field because the organization:
refused to hold Russia to account for a state-sponsored doping program from 2010 to 2015 that involved more than a thousand athletes and corrupted multiple Olympic Games,
remained silent about 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for TMZ in 2021 but were not provisionally suspended as required under the World Anti-Doping Code, and
took no action to address alleged match-fixing in the sport of fencing, specifically in the USA but not limited to one nation, that has potentially allowed the wrong athletes to compete in Paris.
As the Paris Games commence, all the above shortcomings of the Olympic Movement will be overshadowed by pomp and human triumph. While it is right that athletes and their achievements be centered and celebrated, stakeholders must remember that a safer and more equitable Olympic Games—one that promotes peace and serves the interests of the Movement’s most important stakeholders—is possible. Political leaders, host cities, sponsors, and athletes must push to create a structure wherein the IOC is accountable to all actors within the Olympic Movement. At a minimum, athletes must have the right to organize, to independent and professional representation, and to collectively bargain. Additionally, democratically accountable political leaders must require, as a condition of the IOC’s tax-exempt status, that the Olympic Movement protect and promote human rights and prevent the Games from being used as a tool of war and authoritarianism.
Global Athlete is an international athlete-led movement guiding positive change in world sport to collectively address the balance of power between athletes and administrators. We aim to help athletes gain a more representative voice in world sport, recognising that the neglect and suppression of the athlete voice has gone on for too long.