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Do the Olympics actually promote sport – or are they just a circus for the rich and powerful?
STEVEN WALKER says most of the claims made about the Olympics turn out to be false on further study – the Games do nothing for the working class or global South
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NOW that the Olympic circus of money and power has moved on it’s a good time to reflect on what it achieved and remind ourselves that at its heart the Olympic “movement” is nothing to do with fairness, sporting equality or opportunity.
It’s about rich countries competing against other rich countries to gain most medals and use the Olympics to project power and prestige. In the Soviet era the Olympics became a proxy Cold War fight between the USSR and the United States. Tokyo reflected geopolitical shifts so that China now replaces Russia as the US’s sporting enemy.
The motto of the Olympics is Faster, Higher, Stronger, underpinned by the values of Excellence, Respect and Friendship, yet its troubled history shows how capital has eroded and tarnished all those high-minded concepts.
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