Historic games

There’s certainly a lot of flapdoodle around the games of the XXXI Olympiad officially starting today in Rio.

Between vast swaths of the Russian team being banned for doping, outdoor water sports venues awash in raw sewage and other health and safety hazards, worries that visitors could be victims of fatal crimes before they can pay their bar bills, and, of course, wondering how long it will take for NBC’s coverage to top their last outing in fatuousness and jingoism—well, you know, it’s two weeks of crass melodrama occasionally interrupted by some actual athletic achievement.

And that’s before we start considering the Zika virus.

(The upside is that at least it takes our minds off the elections for a bit.)

But I was reminded recently how much of this quadrennial exercise in nationalism, politics and vainglorious waste of billions of dollars owes to the Berlin Olympics that took place 80 years ago. It’s only really since the 1936 games that every host city has gone absolutely insane trying to showcase a Potemkin Village—building obscenely expensive stadia and other venues for which there is no long-term use, transporting undesirables beyond municipal limits so visitors won’t be annoyed by the non-voting poor, and repeated rounds of self-congratulatory galas attended by politicians and corporate sponsors, while (as The Washington Post reported on Sunday) many of the athletes live in poverty).

Most of this infrastructure capital expense is off the backs of local taxpayers; the froofy stuff like the hospitality suites comes from tax-deductible corporate sponsorship.

All that display of rah-rah pretense started with the Nazis—from the torch relay through the grandiose purpose-built venues to the ceremonial panoply at the opening and closing: all cooked up to showcase German supremacy, both individual and national. 

If you’d like to refresh your memory on that one, I recommend watching Olympia, the iconic Leni Riefenstahl film of the Berlin Games. It’s interesting to compare the business, the style and the technology of international athletics then with now. (Plus, it has better production values than anything NBC-Comcast is going to shove down viewers’ throats.)

You know all about Jesse Owens poking holes in Nazi super-race theories, but there are several other interesting things about the events that Riefenstahl presented.

Diving standards have changed in the intervening 80 years: many of the divers went into the water feet first, and they hardly did more than one somersault or twist before hitting the water. They seemed almost leisurely. Plus—way more splash when they struck than is allowed now.  Today, you’d better barely make a ripple, or you’re outta the pool.

Athletic clothes were considerably lower tech than what you find these days. Runners, vaulters, jumpers, shot-putters and throwers frequently wore what we’d call warm-up gear (sweatshirts and pants) to compete. And the shoes—my dear, the shoes! Everything these men and women accomplished seemed to be in spite of their apparel.

Forty-nine nations competed in that Olympiad—so the parade of athletes went a lot faster than the one in Rio will be. And the athletes marched sharpish, all of them; they didn’t swarm about like weirdly-dressed paramecia equipped with photographic devices. Most of them gave the Nazi salute as they marched past Hitler and Olympic officials. (Or possibly the Olympic salute, which was remarkably similar to the Nazi one; it went out of fashion shortly after the beginning of the Second World War.) The Bulgarians got extra style points for goose-stepping and throwing the salute.

The only nations from the entire continent of Africa were South Africa, part of the British Empire, and Egypt, also under British rule. Asia was represented by India (likewise British), Afghanistan, the Philippines, Japan and China.

The marathon is a story all in itself. Riefenstahl devoted more than ten minutes to that ultimate Olympic event, and the first thing that strikes you is the lack of Africans. We’re so used to seeing Kenyans and Ethiopians dominating distance running—that’s when you learn that the only blacks appearing in 1936 mostly came from the US. And they seem to have concentrated on the sprint events.

But when I watched the film I thought it very odd that a couple of runners from the Japanese team were out front from the beginning. The Argentinian winner from the 1932 Olympics took the lead and held it; but he was trailed pretty closely by the two from Japan and a Brit.

Well, it was an incredibly exciting race. I mean, there is something about the punishment of the long-distance runner that you have to admire. These days, you wouldn’t see Olympic marathoners stopping for water, or walking for stretches, but you can still see these athletes from 80 years ago focused on what their bodies have to give in order to take the next stride, and the next.

The Argentine dropped out at mile 19, and the race belonged to “Son Kitei”, Ernest Harper and “Nan Shoryu”. And that’s how they finished.

In 1936 the winning athletes got laurel crowns, and Son was also given a small oak tree in a pot, which he held in front of his uniform, while the national anthem of Japan was played.

I looked at the names on the board and thought to myself, “Self—‘Son’ just does not sound Japanese to me. What’s up with that?”

And that’s where I discovered the real drama of that race.

Son Kitei and Nan Shoryu were Koreans; real names Sohn Kee-chung and Nam Sung-yong, respectively. Korea had been under Japanese occupation since 1910, and the marathoners were forced to represent their imperial overlords under the required Japanese names.

Son was able to obscure the Japanese flag on the front of his uniform with that little oak tree; Nam had no such protection. But both had to endure listening to the Japanese national anthem, and you can see their shame in the way they hold their heads in the photo. Their extraordinary achievement was subverted to the glorification of their oppressors.

And no one knew, because the Koreans’ translators were Japanese and they refused to translate any of their disclaimers.

(If you want to destroy a culture, first go after the language. Outlaw the indigenous speech, require that your language only be used. Make people take names in your language; destroy native news media; substitute your place names for theirs. The Japanese did that in Korea; the English did it in Ireland.)

The record books now show Sohn and Nam with asterisks next to their names, recognizing their nationality, but I had no clue about it until I watched Riefenstahl’s remarkable film—which covered all sorts of events, including ones the Germans tanked at.

Like Rio’s (and Sochi’s and a lot of others), the Berlin Olympics were awash in shady doings. The Games had been awarded before Hitler became Chancellor, but by 1936 the Nazis had already codified anti-Semitism in their legal structure for a year. There were rumblings in participating countries of boycotts if Jews were kept from competing, but the International Olympics Committee and the head of the US Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, made deals with the Germans that papered over the policies. (Brundage’s anti-Semitism made him an ideal partner for Hitler et al.) The Nazis took down the anti-Jewish signs in Berlin, said that no Jew had had the athletic ability to compete and everyone pretended that honor was salved.

Brundage did very well out of the games; in fact, you could say that he was one of its successes. He was elected to the IOC shortly afterward and became its president in 1952. No one on the IOC has ever struggled financially.

The Germans didn’t have multimedia, so they couldn’t put on the kind of opening ceremony that so far has culminated in the hours-long extravaganza four years ago in London. You can expect the Brazilians to up the stakes tonight, with no expense spared, just a few kilometers from favelas where thousands live without clean water. That, too, is an Olympic tradition dating back to Berlin.

No doubt the Rio games will have their entertainment value. Records will be broken, triumphs and agonies will be reported, and perhaps even some athletic contests will be decided. It will all be very colorful, the best spectacle that money can buy. Pretty much like the Games of 80 years ago.