The Olympics’ Rule 50 Banning Athlete Protest Is Insulting and Outdated

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in April that after much research and deliberation they would continue upholding Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which prohibits Olympic athletes from engaging in protest while on the field of play or on the awards podium. The policy forbids any form of “demonstration or political, religious, or racial propaganda.” This decision came after 11 months of soul-searching led by the IOC Athletes’ Commission, including a survey of 3,547 elite athletes.

What exactly counts as a demonstration or propaganda can be defined broadly, although the examples provided by the Athletes’ Commission are very specific: “Examples of what would constitute a protest include displaying any political messaging, including signs or armbands; gestures of a political nature, like a hand gesture or kneeling; and refusal to follow the Ceremonies protocol.”

The Commission’s guidelines clarify that “The focus at the Olympic Games must remain on athletes’ performances, sport and the international unity and harmony that the Olympic Movement seeks to advance.” The Olympics and the philosophy of Olympism have long been upheld as an ideal of friendly, neutral competition that fosters peaceful international relations. According to the Olympic Charter, the games are competitions between individual athletes, not countries. Under Olympism, enemies can set aside their political differences and pull together in the name of sport.

Unfortunately, this ideal is just that. Athletes, like all of us, live fundamentally political lives and sports are imbued with politics. Politics determine which youth athletes can afford the equipment or fees they need to get started. Politics determine which athletes are more likely to suffer traumatic brain injuries and receive compensation or necessary medical care afterward. Politics determine how a stadium will be built and who will be displaced in the process. Politics determine who can play with dignity. Even the Olympic opening ceremonies, in which host countries produce a spectacle of nationalism, are a perfect example of how politics are front and center at the Games themselves.

The neutrality of sport is a myth that obscures the injustices that affect athletes and their communities while punishing those who dare to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

The origins and enforcement of Rule 50 itself are hardly apolitical. It’s impossible to discuss the rule without mentioning Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the Black sprinters who raised their fists at the 1968 Mexico City Games, and became an iconic symbol of protest against racial injustice in the U.S. Less well known are Vince Matthews and Wayne Collett, who expressed dissent against discriminatory coaching practices four years later at the Munich Olympics; their protest involved nonchalantly ignoring the formality of their awards ceremony while twirling their medals through the air. Both incidents spurred then-IOC president Avery Brundage, renowned racist and antisemite, to eject the athletes from the Olympic Village and, in the case of Matthews and Collett, ban them from future Games. Conveniently, Smith and Jones also happened to have been members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a group that had petitioned the IOC for several demands, including the removal of Brundage from the presidency. By 1974, the Olympic Charter included a new clause requiring that “No political meetings or demonstrations will be held in the stadium.” Updates in 1975 included the language that would become Rule 50: “Every kind of demonstration or propaganda, whether political, religious, or racial, in the Olympic areas, is forbidden.” While Smith and Carlos eventually became national heroes, all four athletes witnessed the end of their Olympic careers from atop the podium.