Contenu du sommaire : Les Jeux olympiques

Nowadays, the Olympic Games represent an event on an international scale or a mega-event. The article presents the context of their origin at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, and shows that two mythical narrative should be put aside: the first one refers to an obvious link with the Panhellenic Games of Olympia, the second presents Pierre de Coubertin as a quasi-prophet of modern sports. The Olympics are the outcome of a specific context that saw the development of sport internationalism with a humanist objective, and the result of a circular construction linking the interests of a host of actors who shape the sporting show.

This exchange between a great judo champion and a law professor is the result of a meeting within the Ethics Committee of the French National Olympic and Sport Committee to which both belong. From the perspective of her experience as a former European and world champion and Olympic vice-champion, Brigitte Deydier looks at the evolution of sporting ethics. Besides the obvious observation of the changes that have affected the Olympic and sporting world, she adds the need for a reinforced monitoring of the defence of ethical values.

The Olympic Games exist in a particular legal environment mostly fixed by a private organisation, namely the International Olympic Committee. The resulting prevalence of private normativity is apparent in many ways when one examines the Olympic Games from a legal perspective. Incidentally, such an examination shows how state-centred legal conceptions fail the test of the Games. Yet the autonomy of sports claimed by the ioc shows its limits as testified by the demand for the respect of human rights in the Olympic context.

The article details first the costs incurred by the cities that organise the Games by looking, in particular, at the share of these costs sustained by tax-payers, so as to put into perspective the validity of the statement: “The games are self-financing”, abundantly used by the organisers of Paris 2024. Second, the study of the economic impact of the Games, on the short and the long term, leads to the conclusion that they do bring sizable benefits but that it is vain to hope that the citizens will not be asked to contribute in order to complement the financing of the event.

What does world sport tell us? A mega sporting event such as the Olympic Games bring together more than half of humanity connected to the internet. Besides this unparalleled media exposure, the sporting movement generates a record 2% of the yearly world gdp. In such a context, sport has become an instrument of geopolitical power. At a time when international relations are being “dewesternized” and a multipolar world is emerging, have we entered a new era of the geopolitics of sport? The article tries to answer this question in particular by using the concept of “sportocracy”.

The neo-Olympism that Coubertin and his disciples conceived as a “religious” movement (“the athletic religion”) was not only a sort of mystical vision of the world, but also a conservative — and on many points reactionary — political ideology : it was nationalist, colonialist, antisocialist, misogynist. At the time of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in the name of the “Olympic ideal” and its “flame”, Coubertin was totally aligned on Third Reich propaganda, going as far as “to congratulate heartily Mr. Hitler”, in whom he saluted “one of the great building spirits of the time”.

Despite the relentless propaganda aiming to gain support for the Paris 2024 Games, French citizens are looking elsewhere. They are looking with anxiety at the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, at the tensions between China and Taiwan and the two Koreas, which heighten the paradox of Games organised under the banner of the three main Olympic values: “excellency”, “friendship”, and “respect”. Whereas the ioc has finally allowed the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes under a neutral banner, the question of a boycott is still being raised by Ukraine. And without a late change of mind, the river Seine will be transformed into a stage for a kitsch spectacle that will be monumental, dangerous, and old-fashioned.

The Olympic Games ceremonies are structured around a single rite common to all humanity. This exceptional singularity owes a lot to its creator, Pierre de Coubertin, who understood from the outset the stake the ceremonies represented for his Olympic oeuvre. Over more than a century of existence, although perennial in their symbolic ritual, the Olympic ceremonies have reflected many other issues, depending on the periods and on whether one looks at them from the perspective of the ioc or of the organising country. Paris 2024 is no exception, with many unprecedented issues that clash like never before with geopolitical constraints.

It is impossible to analyse the Olympics, in their renewed version, without considering the two fields of activity from which they are inseparable since their origin and that recent history has always linked to the point of making them inseparable: the field of political power on the one hand, and the field of mass sporting spectacles on the other. It is essential to examine this articulation in order to understand what, at the crossroads between sport and politics, renews the axiological field of a leisure activity that, over more than a century, has taken a considerable place in the life of individuals and the organisation of societies.

After the failure of Paris 2012, the political, administrative, and sporting decision-makers identified a “problem” with the French Olympic candidatures. They established a common action framework and a special administration for the great international sporting event in order to produce an institutional environment and networks conductive to the construction of a new application. Once the Paris 2024 application had been officially launched, the work of these Olympic entrepreneurs has been to avoid a politicisation that would have endangered the project.

The French state is playing a particular role in the organisation of the Paris 2024 Games. At the outset of the application procedure, it offered financial guarantees to the organizing committee and assured that it would be in charge of security, but the role it has taken since 2017 in the preparation of this exceptional event goes well beyond its early commitments. Apart from its financial support that remains under control, the entire state administration is being mobilised for the success of the Games, both at the central administrative level and at the prefecture level, in particular in the Île-de-France.