By: Steve Georgakis, Senior Lecturer of Pedagogy and Sports Studies at the University of Sydney

Despite a political climate hellbent on tearing communities apart, the Olympics still holds the potential to bring disparate nations together.

The success of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games will strangely rely on the convergence of two opposing forces: nationalism and internationalism.

Since the first modern Olympics in 1896, the games have successfully promoted both simultaneously.

However, that success has a scattered history across the decades. There has been a success at bringing nations together, through the unifying power of sport, such as athletes from the two Koreas marching together at Sydney 2000, or the Olympic team consisting entirely of refugees from across the globe debuting at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Yet weighing on these moments are the just as iconic images of the games being hijacked by politics. From Adolf Hitler's Nazi political machine at Berlin in 1936, the 2018 Winter Olympic Opening ceremony being hijacked by Donald Trump's overtures to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, or the tit-for-tat Cold War boycotts of 1980 (Moscow) and 1984 (Los Angeles).

The games show that sports and politics will always mix.

Currently, France is wading through its own political turmoil following a bruising election that saw the anticipated far-right National Rally group lose the chance to form a government, losing out to the far-left New Popular Front.

The global geopolitical machinations are far more grim, with multiple conflicts across the globe well underway as the Olympics attempt to steal focus.

Despite this, the French will likely host the successful game embraced by most of the world. This is because the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has cleverly molded the movement into concurrently promoting nationalism and internationalism.

The global games

The IOC is not a "perfect" institution but from its origins positioned itself as promoting internationalism.

Of course, there were no games during World War One and World War Two and there were also the well publicised boycotts during the Cold War and African nations boycotting over New Zealand's sporting links with South Africa in 1976. In the games' formative years, representation was limited to the world's richest countries and mostly middle and upper class men.

The institution itself has been embroiled in significant corruption and controversies. But even the harshest of critics will acknowledge its rise as a global phenomenon. The move to internationalism was clearly assisted by the interest demonstrated by commercial influences.

The games have been beamed around the world on television since 1964 and have since assumed the role of an international unifying force. Sporting competitions such as the Olympics and to a lesser extent the FIFA men's World Cup were positioned as mega global events and this was cemented with the arrival of globalism in the 1990s.

The 21st-century Olympic Games have been broadcast to billions around the world. The 2016 Rio Olympics were viewed by more than 3.2 billion people.

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There are very powerful commercial interests supporting the games because they are central to commercialized international broadcasting and sponsorship. These commercial interests will push to keep the games global.

As an indicator local sponsorship for the Paris Games is said to have hit 99 percent of the anticipated level of $US1.34 billion, with French companies such as luxury brand LVMH, Accor hotels, and others reportedly chipping in an estimated $US100 million.

In 2014, US broadcast network NBC paid $US7.75 billion for the broadcast rights from 2022 to 2032. Some have criticized the network for how it has attempted to recoup that eye-watering price tag, with advertisers being offered free slots in broadcasts as well as its much-maligned coverage of the 2021 Games in Tokyo.

But money and commercialism are not why the games are international. It is what it offers many nations of the world.

At the 2024 Paris Olympic Games there will be 206 countries competing with almost 40 percent of these countries predicted to win at least one medal.

Developing nations such as Kenya and Jamaica will dominate some of the track events. The Games have been taken to Asia and South America. Most countries invest significant moral and monetary support. Most importantly, the games promote both diversity and inclusion.

There will be more female than male athletes at Paris, and the Olympics will be followed by the Paralympics. We all marvel at the athleticism demonstrated by the fastest men and women in the world to the best football team. Most of us have bought into the privilege of this institution as uniting the world. There is no other unifying force like the Olympics. Nothing comes close to it.

National pride worldwide

While the games have promoted internationalism they also succeeded because they indulge precisely what they claim to transcend, the instinct for nationalism.

The two richest countries in the world (USA and China) are passionate about the games and they will probably finish first and second in the total medal count.

Countries such as the former colonies of the British Empire have used success at the Olympics to bring its citizens together. Two high points in Australian history have been the 1956 Melbourne and the 2000 Sydney Olympics. So, for many countries around the world, there is considerable pressure to do well at the games, because of the benefits bestowed.

At the Tokyo Olympics, more than 60 nations won at least one gold medal which generates significant goodwill in these countries. One of the world's newest countries, Kosovo, won two gold medals.

There is no doubt success at the Games promotes nationalism. But the IOC has been clever in attempting to broaden success. It is not like the FIFA World Cup where ultimately only a handful of countries have won the title.

The IOC has always awarded games to nations who have used the games to generate nationalism. The French have provided significant support to their athletes and will feature high up in the medal count.

The host nation doing well at the Olympics is very important for the success of the games. Japan finished third on the medal tally at the Tokyo Games.

Leading up to the games, French society is clearly not united behind the Paris Olympics as it has been dealing with the rise of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally party and protests on the streets from New Popular Front left-wing supporters.

But some suspect all the problems before the Games will now fade into the background after the opening ceremony. Most French politicians will try and link themselves to French success stories. Paris and France will be inundated with tourists trying to take part in history.

The games will survive

While there is a push against globalization, the Olympic Games will survive.

The IOC has always made it clear that it neither has the mandate, nor the capability to solve political conflicts that politicians have been unable to solve.

While the IOC has focused on promoting sport around the world, it has aligned its strategies on sustainability, gender equality, and inclusion with human rights.

The Paris Olympics will be about strengthening the areas of cooperation for peace between nations.

As we have already witnessed in the 21st century, the Olympics is the only international institution that can serve as a model where people, nations, athletes, and teams take part without discrimination of any kind, be it race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, birth or other status.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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