What the 2024 Olympics tells us about global geopolitics

Originally published on The Conversation

By Paul Widdop, Associate Professor of Sport Business at Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport, and Simon Chadwick, Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at SKEMA Business School.

Since the Olympic Games in Paris began, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has posted the statement “This is France!” several times on his social media platforms.

Macron has been implicitly asserting that he is delivering on his personal vision of the event, and of France. Since his election in 2017, he has sought to project a diverse, cosmopolitan and outward-facing France while at the same time strengthening existing preconceptions of its style, culture and history.

The opening ceremony was therefore the embodiment of Macron’s ambitions. It combined landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and key figures from French history, such as Marie Antoinette, with cultural, musical and fashion representations of modern France. These included surfers, rappers and members of LGBTQ+ communities.

However, as recent events in French domestic politics have demonstrated, many among the country’s population do not like their president’s vision. Those from the extreme left balk at what they see as Macron’s globalist tendencies, which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is sharing and accentuating by staging the Games.

Meanwhile, those from the extreme right have long resented and resisted Macron’s Parisian-centric and urban-led vision of diversity and modernity. This was evident in reactions to the opening ceremony’s depiction of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, in which drag queens, a transgender model and a naked singer appeared. France’s Catholic church condemned the sketch as a “mockery of Christianity”.

Paris Olympic organisers have since issued an apology, though this is unlikely to have placated Muslim communities around the world. Some among them labelled parts of the opening ceremony “absurd”, “disgusting” and a “promotion of satanic forms”. Others saw it as an attempt by the west to impose its values on them.

This sentiment was apparently shared by the Chinese state broadcaster, China Central Television, whose event commentators went quiet during the segments in which members of LGBTQ+ communities appeared. China has a record of seeking to suppress these communities.

For some French Muslims, there may also have been dismay at the depiction of a religious scene at an event being staged by a French state entity. After all, it was announced late last year that Muslim women would not be allowed to wear their hijabs when competing for France at the Olympics. The justification for this decision was that it would breach the country’s secularist principles, which create a clear separation between religion and state.

That decision came at an especially sensitive time, following the Hamas-led October 7 attacks and Macron’s invitation to France’s chief Rabbi to light Hannukah candles at the Élysée Palace. The war in Gaza continues to cast a shadow over the Games. Indeed, there are rumours of some athletes being prepared to withdraw from the event if they are required to compete directly against an Israeli athlete.

The simmering threat of such direct action has already manifested itself at the Games. During a football match between Mali and Israel on July 24, members of the crowd unfurled banners condemning the latter country and waved flags in support of Palestine. The vast majority (95%) of Malians are Muslim, and there are 120,000 people from Mali living in France.

Limited Russian presence

Israel is not the only country where there is some disquiet. Following recent doping scandals and the invasion of Ukraine, most Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from participating in Paris. A few athletes are competing as neutrals, but national flags, anthems and other national symbols are banned, and no government or state officials have been invited.

The exclusion of Russia has led to speculation that its agents may have been responsible for a series of railway sabotages that caused significant travel disruption on the opening day of the Games. Though nobody was hurt or killed, such attacks undermine public confidence, impose economic and social costs on people, and were clearly an attempt to tarnish the image of France.

France has a long-held reputation for successfully delivering numerous major events each year. However, there was also disruption at the Uefa Champions League final in 2022, which was being staged at the Stade de France (the main Olympic venue this summer). Many Liverpool supporters were put through a traumatising experience when entering the stadium, and riot police teargassed spectators while failing to protect them from being attacked by local thugs.

This followed Paris quickly stepping in to stage the match after Uefa removed St Petersburg’s right to host the game following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Whether these events were another deliberate attempt to diminish France or just a coincidence remains debatable.

Some have suggested that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has wanted to undermine the IOC for much of the past decade. He sees it as a western institution governed by values and rules that maintain a dominance he resents.

As such, Russia has been planning to host the World Friendship Games a little more than a month after the Paris Olympics finishes. While there is some confusion over whether the event will be postponed to 2025, there are claims that more than 100 nations have already committed to participating in what may ultimately come to pose an existential threat to the modern Olympic movement.

The IOC normally does its utmost to control the places and spaces that it selects to host Olympic events, whether that means suppressing displays of activism, preventing acts of terrorism, or even minimising the commercial intrusion of brands that have no legal right to associate with the event.

However, such is the currently fractious nature of local and global geopolitics that we should expect more controversy before the Olympic flame in Paris is finally extinguished.