The Olympic System: Toward a Geopolitical Approach

Articles

The Olympic System: Toward a Geopolitical Approach 

• XXIII

Governments have used sport and the Olympics whenever they could because 

the media sounding board allows them to convey and manipulate key images 

essential to their public relations and thus to their international relations in gene-

ral. Their use of sports thus perfectly illustrates the principles of recognition and 

soft power.

However, this paper would be incomplete without reporting a recent evo-

lution in the use of sport. Since the early 2000s, new actors have been out to 

hijack sport for their own ends. First Greenpeace at the Sydney Games and then 

Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders (RWB) at the Beijing 

Games took advantage of the event to convey their own messages. These NGOs, 

representing a new form of governance (?) also know how to play the PR game, 

and in Beijing we saw the boycott argument reappear. For the IOC, this evolu-

tion is a new challenge because it has had to face attacks coming not from states 

but from adversaries over whom it does not necessarily have a hold. Interestingly, 

these adversaries simply took advantage of the IOC’s own internal contradiction: 

professing universal, humanist values while holding its event in a country that 

does not offer all the “guarantees” was a risky bet, but also an important one 

in terms of “market share” . . . Another catastrophic factor in terms of image 

for China, more than for the IOC, was the fact that the Olympic torch was run 

through Europe. Here, we can only highlight the professionalism of the commu-

nication strategy of the NGOs that created the event. Incidentally, the IOC drew 

its own conclusions, deciding that future Games should return to “tradition,” 

that is to say, a Torch Run in the host country.

49

Pascal Gillon

Université de Franche-Comté 

32 rue Mégevand – 25030 Besançon Cedex 

[e-mail]

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49  Decision of the executive commission meeting in Denver in March 2009.

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