Dark history of the Olympics

American sprinters began their heats by crouching, while those next to them stood erect. One Italian who lacked funds jogged most of the way from his home country to Greece. Black ties and top hats were worn for medal ceremonies, in which it was the silver medal, not gold, that was the top prize.

The true history of the games is a far cry from the platitude-laden, sepia-toned nostalgia pumped out by the International Olympic Committee and sponsors. But as David Goldblatt tells us, little has changed in what is often a story of absurdity and disconnect from reality. The Games is an exhaustively researched account of the modern Olympics, from Coubertin’s follies to the clouds hanging over this summer’s events in Rio de Janeiro.

In trying to write a narrative of the entire Olympics, Mr Goldblatt has taken on a challenge worthy of a marathoner. A book about scandals alone would risk being biblical in scope. But the greater difficulty is that a thorough history must also be a world history, with tentacles sprawling far beyond the Games themselves.

Like a disciplined distance runner, Mr Goldblatt takes an even-paced approach. The book is based largely on news accounts, academic journals and official reports, all presented with the appropriate whiff of skepticism.

So we learn that volunteers at the 1968 Mexico Games were overwhelmingly light-skinned, upper-middle-class women, chosen over their darkerskinned counterparts. Then there’s the Chinese high jumper at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles; the windows of his Shanghai home were broken and his family was threatened after he failed to win a medal. More recently at the Atlanta Games in 1996, many arenas were built by mostly Hispanic, low-wage labourers, Mr Goldblatt points out, and some homeless Atlantans were offered one-way bus tickets to any place in the country where they said they had family members.

It was far from the first time that officials were blind to the concerns of communities. Mr Goldblatt details worries that Greece was in no economic position to host the 1896 Games (nor 2004). The commercial success of Barcelona in 1992 was because of a combination of factors that are essentially unrepeatable, including a remarkable artistic heritage. Mr Goldblatt writes that those Games were “a crowning achievement, not a catalyst.”

While the Olympics today are a picture of diversity and inclusiveness, Mr Goldblatt presents a much more nuanced narrative of their past. When William DeHart Hubbard won a gold medal in the long jump in 1924 in Paris, the first ever gold to be won by an African-American, it was reported back home only in the black press. Twelve years later, when Jesse Owens captured four gold medals in Hitler’s Berlin, no paper south of the Mason-Dixon line published a picture of him. Nor does it seem that top Olympic officials were particularly kind in matters of religion; the American Avery Brundage, an IOC member and later its president, reportedly told the Germans that his own sports clubs in Chicago excluded Jews.

Coubertin considered women’s sport “the most unaesthetic sight human eyes could contemplate” and in 1912 declared that “the Olympic Games must be reserved for men.” Sometimes the women who did compete, like Fanny Blankers-Koen, a Dutch runner who won four gold medals at the 1948 London Games, received hate mail. More recently, some female athletes have had to undergo invasive and humiliating gender testing.

Mr Goldblatt also describes the perpetual war against doping, reminding readers that the use of performanceenhancing drugs was very much an “open affair” in the early days. The IOC became interested only in the late 1930s, and not because of concerns for the health of the athletes. It was worried that drugs threatened the idea of amateurism. That debate serves as a backdrop that explains some of the hollowness around current drug-testing efforts.

Coubertin’s own end was far from a podium finish. He died widowed and broke, the latter a result of a series of bad investments. Today, while sponsor dollars still pour in, mounting global criticism is undercutting some of the glamour of the Games. Only two cities put themselves forward to host the 2022 Winter Games. Meanwhile, an Olympic sailing hopeful on the waters in Rio crashed his dinghy into a submerged sofa.

Because sports are a religion, it’s difficult to imagine a world without the Olympics. It would be easy to conclude that the Olympic “movement” has lost its way since the Coubertin’s time, but that, as Mr Goldblatt demonstrates, would be to rewrite history, since the idea of a clean and easy way to achieve peace through sport was a benevolent myth in the first place. A Global History of the Olympics David Goldblatt W.W. Norton & Company 516 pages; $29.95