Is sport a substitution for war? An enlightened gladiatorial fight where teams (and individuals) stand in for a nation's military. Defeating another's team represents the defeat of another's country, a show of superiority. The Olympics demonstrates this by making the athletes identify with a nation. Sport is supposed to eliminate war by celebrating the greatness of an individual or national team and that we can beat you without shedding blood and killing each other, though if you look at some Olympic sports, their roots are in combat skills. Biathlon where you cross-country ski and snipe at targets. Javelin throw where you throw pointy sticks as far as you can. Then there's the obvious archery, shooting sports, fencing, and hand-to-hand combat sports. There's no mystery as to why Nordic countries excel in the biathlon, they trained to kill Germans in WW2 and later Russians in case of WW3.
If a country goes to war, then does entering sports contests become moot? Are you allowed to compete, showing good sportsmanship, when your country is killing people? And what if it is an unjust war or where a country is murdering innocent civilians, bombing hospitals, schools, train stations, and religious places of worship? Should someone who represents their country compete, win, and bring glory to their country?
Should a country's citizens be punished if their country goes to war? My country has entered numerous wars which I didn't agree with. If someone seized my property just because my country went to war or prevented me from spending money or participating in a sport, I would be furious. If I or my family were placed in a concentration camp, I would be livid. This has happened in my country before, the Japanese Internment camps, and only many decades after the fact was there finally an apology issued to the survivors. Those people lost their homes, their farms, their businesses, their livelihoods, and 3 years of their lives. The formal apology came with $20,000. If you were wrongly incarcerated for a crime, the federal standard is $50,000 per year.
Is it fair to punish an athlete by preventing them from competing? This came up when the Wimbledon banned Russian and Belarusians from competing and started a controversy.
Communist countries have used sports as propaganda to show how superior Communism is to the Free World. Russia has cheated by systematically doping their athletes. And I mean Russia, the country, not individuals doping themselves.
The punishment for doping put some restrictions on Russia and for the 2022 Winter Olympics, they had to use the name Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) instead of Russia, which was a farce as everyone still referred to them as the Russian athletes. So, ersatz stripping them of their nationality didn't work. And there were still doping scandals by Russians during that Olympics.
Russia controls their media and all forms of news, making reports about the Ukraine war not consistent with their view, fake news and punishable by up to 15 years in prison. During the invasion of Ukraine, some Russian athletes showed their support for their country's military action. After this display, IOC finally banned all Russian and Belarusians from future gymnastic competitions.
Critics of Putin, a large number of them journalists, have died in suspicious circumstances.
65% of Russia approved of the Special Operations in Ukraine. With Putin controlling the news in Russia, that's probably not a surprise.
Any type of sports win by a Russian will be used for propaganda purposes in Russia.
I assume Russian and Belarusian athletes must pay taxes to their home country, so a percent of any prize money will be sent home, and that money funds the war.
So, is this fair? In a sense, no, but for the sake of argument, what if the athlete renounces their citizenship and takes a different country's citizenship? (I assume a number of them have dual citizenships also. Valued athletes and wealthy individuals easily get citizen exceptions from numerous countries.) If they did that, I assume they can play. But if they don't, then they are declaring that they value their Russian or Belarusian citizenship and they are ok with what their country is doing. (or they're afraid of dying in suspicious circumstances, but then why would you want to be a citizen of such a country?)
So, let me ask again. Is it fair?
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p.s. Maybe Wimbledon should have just done a blanket condemnation of Russian's invasion of Ukraine and let the Russians play. Put signs in English and Russian condemning the war everywhere where a camera can see. Then see who shows up.
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