Politics and Sports
Pierre De Couberton's ideas of revitalizing the Olympic games was for "sport", he visioned sports without the infliction of politics. Through the years the reality of his vision has died out and inevitably political issues and ideas began surfacing in the Olympic games just as much as they began appearing in the ordinary sports world. It seemed that the Olympic games got hit with most of the political back draft, mainly do to the large scale involvement of other countries and as such they became a podium for countries. In Martin Barry Vinokur's book "More Than a Game" he explains the involvement of politics and sports, he distinguishes two countries which have had incredible amounts of political resurgence through sports. It was my belief before reading this book that sports in America has always been effected somewhat by politics, but it came to a total surprise to hear that sports dictated politics and vise versa in other countries. In a world where some people believe sports take as much precedents as education, it seems no wonder that sports could not live without political issues. Vinokur takes Romania and East Germany and begins dissecting how politics have affected sports. One of the most startling facts to me was
The boycott served one major purpose in my opinion; it showed that to the Eastern countries that the United States could use sport for political goals. Vinokur throughout his book turns to education and how athletes are trained to show that sport has a political atmosphere. This caused the United States to boycott the games. East Germany on the other hand used sports to get recognition of the German Democratic Republic(GDR). In fact the "type of government is a very significant intervening variable for the control of sport. Germany was split up between East and West, with the West gaining worldwide diplomatic reorganization, the GDR knowingly used sports as a way to force international diplomatic recognition. " Western countries mainly America have only recently begun to use sports as a mean for political goals. In light the type of government fosters how the country will control sport to get whatever political means they need. Both countries interest between foreign policy and sports was so large, it seems like they care more about athletics then education. There are 255,000 sports instructors; 10, 414 sports clubs; 157,000 judges, umpires and referees; and 200,000 sports organizers in shop trade union groups in the GDR. No matter how little the implication, politics will use sport from now till the end of time. One of the most major sport and politic crossover came about before the 1980 Olympic games. The political stance was helped by the American media, who supported the boycott, mainly suggesting the ban would punish the Soviet Union more than anything other then war.
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Acceptance Essays
