Several leaders of Western countries have vowed or threatened a boycott of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing as a protest of China’s track record of human rights abuses. Some nations, such as Germany and Poland, are already committed to boycotting at least the Games’ opening ceremonies. In the United States, all three major presidential candidates have implied support for boycotting the ceremonies, though not the Games themselves.
Are the Olympics even about sports at all anymore? Originally, the purpose of the Games was to unite independent and sometimes antagonistic nations together through healthy athletic competition. However, the Games have often been more about divisive political posturing than anything else. The U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980 might be the most famous example of this. But playing politics with the Olympics tends to open up more diplomatic wounds than it heals, and this erases the Games’ ultimate reason for existence. Boycotting all or part of the Beijing Olympics will probably solve nothing, just like the 1980 boycott solved nothing. The ones hurt most of all would be the athletes who will have trained their whole lives for the chance to compete on the world stage, only to get this opportunity snatched away by their high-minded, stubborn governments.
Are the Olympics even about sports at all anymore? Originally, the purpose of the Games was to unite independent and sometimes antagonistic nations together through healthy athletic competition. However, the Games have often been more about divisive political posturing than anything else. The U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980 might be the most famous example of this. But playing politics with the Olympics tends to open up more diplomatic wounds than it heals, and this erases the Games’ ultimate reason for existence. Boycotting all or part of the Beijing Olympics will probably solve nothing, just like the 1980 boycott solved nothing. The ones hurt most of all would be the athletes who will have trained their whole lives for the chance to compete on the world stage, only to get this opportunity snatched away by their high-minded, stubborn governments.
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