by Carissa Johnson

Created on: February 10, 2010

In the 20th century, a new athletic competition that surpassed all other games and athletic events of the time emerged from the history books. A modernization of the ancient Greek traditions from 776 B.C.E. to 393 B.C.E., the modern Olympics spurred many attitudes and ideas that formed the Olympics we know today. These factors played a large role in shaping the movement of the events from the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

The founders and leaders of the Games believed that world peace would be acquired sooner and friendly competition was what the world needed to begin their climb to peace. In other countries, especially the Soviet Union, who hosted the Games in 1980, informational guides boasted of peace and solid foreign policy so other countries would see them in a less harsh political light. From 1892 to 2002, political tensions between competitors and rivaling countries, economic interests and battles to gain the upper hand, and strong women’s rights activists helped to shape the modern Olympic movement.

The political tensions between countries which had just finished a war with each other were evident in the way they wrote about it later as well as their statements to the reporters in interviews. Bob Matthias, a United States competitor in the 1952 Finland games, believed that the Soviets were the enemy and he had to beat them because of the very recent political and social rivalries. He mentioned that in every event, the athletes had to prove something to themselves and their country. The Olympics were turned almost into a bloodless and unspoken battle, and the prizes were more than just medals if they won.

Other ways the racial and political tensions were evident was in the attitudes of the athletes towards the Germans, because soon the Nazis began not representing Germany as they did Nazism, according to some sources. While the negative and angry attitude remained in some countries, the Japanese got a large reward from it. Ryotaro Azuma, the mayor of Tokyo and chairman of the committee that organized the 1964 games in Japan, believed that the Olympics were the saving grace of Japan because without them they would have been forgotten and written off as a failure. This affected and shaped the modern Olympic movement by providing a strong precedent of competitiveness and political involvement in the social and athletic event, which still lingered at the end of the movement in 2002.

Economically, the introduction of a modern Olympic tradition

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>