The most recent version of the Olympic Charter, in force from January 30th, 2025, is not for the faint hearted. The first sentence of the first paragraph under the subheading Fundamentals of Olympism sets out the charter’s otherworldly vibe.
“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind,” it says. Continuing, it speaks of “the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for internationally recognised human rights and universal fundamental ethical principles”.
The Olympic Charter is a bubble bath of goodness, possibly one of the most aspirational documents ever written.
“The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind,” it says. It is wokeness in gold leaf. You get the picture.
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Of course, it also talks of race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political and other opinion, national and social origins and birth.
It ends by saying that belonging to the Olympic movement requires compliance with its doctrine.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) takes the charter extremely seriously. It is their sporting bible, their sacred scripture.
That leads to the question – whither the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games in Maga (Make America Great Again) land?
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Three years away and already the Trump administration has trashed any pretence that it respects or cares about the Olympic Charter. The alarm bells have been ringing with Maga’s accelerated and carefree way of banging all things right out of shape.
The increasingly belligerent rhetoric and behaviour of the administration, and the recent rounding up of unidentified men in the US and their deportation to a jail in El Salvador without due process, is likely to send a shiver down the spine of new IOC president Kirsty Coventry, the first woman and African to hold the office in 130 years.
Kirsty Coventry delivers her acceptance speech after being elected as the 10th President of the International Olympic Committee, and the first female President in IOC history. pic.twitter.com/3BXf9kK0dI
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) March 20, 2025
It will especially resonate with the “s**thole” countries US president Donald Trump spoke about in 2018, referring to Haiti and African nations. Coventry might reflect on whether her country, Zimbabwe, was in his thoughts at the time.
Another red flag went up last week when the New York Times reported on a draft list of countries the state department was proposing to ban from travelling to the United States. The list was, noted the newspaper, in circulation and in three sections: red, orange and yellow.
The “red” list included 11 countries whose citizens would be forbidden entirely from entering the US: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
If ratified, that would deny entry into the country of two IOC members, Afghan Samira Asghari and Cuban Maria de la Caridad Colon Ruenes as well as honorary IOC member Samih Moudallal from Syria.
This week French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline, “Trump’s shadow looms over world sport.”
Last month in the Los Angeles Times a letter to the editor was printed beneath the headline, “Will the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles become the ‘dictator games’?”
In it, the author, from Boston, noted the extent of alienation and threat the administration has directed at US allies Canada, Denmark, Mexico, Ukraine and Panama and suggested that a boycott would be a reasonable response.
History has shown that the Olympic movement has a strong stomach for unsavoury characters. It ran the games in Hitler’s 1936 Berlin despite the threat of a boycott. Then IOC president Avery Brundage (American) was a Nazi sympathiser and stated publicly that Jewish athletes were being treated fairly and that the games should proceed as planned. In the end, 49 teams from around the world competed, more than in any previous Olympics.
In that, there is a lesson about the durability of the Olympic movement as much as the stance of athletes and nations. Also, that the old Olympics carapace has not changed much across 90 years. The message has not changed either.
On Tuesday, outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach spoke to CNN and advocated for the Olympics as a unifying force. Deploying his diplomatic skills, he praised Trump as “an outspoken supporter and promoter” of Los Angeles.
Too astute for controversy over the proposed visa changes or that Trump had wrongly asserted that Paris gold medal-winning boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting had “transitioned”, Bach knew those issues were at the mercy of a fractured American political landscape and a White House that prides itself on being a disruptive force.
This is an administration where nothing is too small and cruelty is sometimes the point. On Thursday French officials expressed dismay after one of their space research scientists was denied entry to the country. Immigration officers had found text messages containing a “personal opinion” about the Trump administration and its policies on scientific research. It begs the question of what chance a Palestinian athlete might have.
If there was one thing that may have dampened the spirits of Coventry as she walked from the luxury Greek resort of Cota Navarino on Thursday afternoon, it was the certainty that the next Olympic Games and its athletes will not be immune from the clash of cultures.
Los Angeles 2028 is where Project 2025, the hard-right playbook for American government and society, meets the Olympic Charter’s mission statement of inclusivity and hope. It is a car crash in the making.
