Tag: olympics

Fire on Ice (30th Anniversary Edition)

Posted on Posted in SportTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Let’s start with Clive Lloyd.

Big C, The Guyanan leader, who in 1976 took his team of Caribbean cricketers to a scorching England. Tony Greig wanted to “make them grovel,” put them in their place, expecting to be met with the flamboyant, futile “Calypso cricket” caricature of the Windies team. Instead came Lloyd, Viv Richards, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Gordon Greenidge, a drilled athleticism and an anti-colonial fire. They dominated the world.

Let’s now talk about Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff. The reggae stars who strummed and wailed the soundtrack of ’76. Marley and Richards ran into each other in London that year, and were in awe of one another, united by their mission to show the planet the fire and the passion and the brilliance of the Caribbean.

There are countless others, in music, sport and elsewhere, who have taken Caribbean culture across the globe and forced people to stop, take note – take it seriously – and be moved. Grace Jones, Arthur Lewis, Usain Bolt, Merlene Ottey, Brian Lara, Stafanie Taylor.

Let’s now talk about the Jamaican Bobsled team. Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, Chris Stokes, Michael White. They are part of this. This is their story. It is not “the real Cool Runnings,” because the story is so much bigger than that, and because the film itself plays a big role in this tale.

This is Fire on Ice.

The Stakes

We all know this story. At least we think we do – of the Winter Olympians who’d never even been on ice before. The bobsled team had more to avoid the embarrassment and subsequent misery risked by the Olympic underdog – the fate suffered by that other Calgary hero, Eddie the Eagle, who was banned from competing again after the Games. The Jamaicans, however, had also to fight the aged, libellous “Calypso” portrayal of Caribbean people as fun-loving and casual, incapable of brilliance and with a culture borrowed from elsewhere.

This attitude was centuries old. It was rooted in the white masters who saw their slaves as docile, in the blackfaced Uncle Toms of the American theatres past, in Songs of the South, and in the academic dismissal of Caribbean culture as inauthentic, impure. Marley and Lloyd fought constantly against the tame (unthreatening) Caribbean marketed to white tourists and consumers, reminding the world that the islands were full of rebels, innovators and freedom fighters – no sideshow. So too did this task fall to the bobsledders, vulnerable to ridicule just for daring to slide.

The stakes were high. It was not the taking part that mattered, it was the competing.

Calgary 

The Jamaican Bobsleigh Federation was founded by two US businessmen in Jamaica, George Fitch and William Maloney. They saw the talent of the Jamaican sprinters and the skill of the drivers in the pushcart derby, and envisaged the whole thing on ice. They got a team together. Helicopter pilot Dudley Stokes was to drive the sled, with Michael White as brakeman. Devon Harris and Chris Stokes made up the four-man, with electrician Frederick Powell in reserve.

Image

Unlike in Cool Runnings, the team were able to practice on ice before the Games, training at Lake Placid. However, they arrived in Canada with dreadful equipment, no money, and no confidence – three very important things in bobsleigh.

The team got fundraising quickly, selling t-shirts, merch, and even an official song. Hobbin’ and a Bobbin’, sung by Powell, and hit Canada hard. The track skidded hard into the herby stereotypes of Jamaica, subversive as hell, selling the lie to fund the fire. But it was a risky ploy, as it gave their onlookers too much credit.

The team started in the two-man, with Stokes and White taking to the track under the strict gaze of media mockery. The (more-sympathetic) LA Times aptly summed up the attitude.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Jamaicans do not belong on bobsleds, they belong on the beach. At least that’s the common perception.”

The attention, the reggae and the flamboyant PR overlooked the achievements of reaching Calgary and competing. Fastforward to day 1 of the four-man, 27th February 1988, and Stokes, White, Harris and Chris Stokes slid down the track without a hitch, remaining focused amidst the media storm.

Cool Runnings gave the team a nemesis – the nasty East Germans (communist, formerly-Nazi and no longer existing – the perfect Hollywood bad guys). However, the other athletes supported the team, knowing as they did the difficulties and dangers of bobsleigh. Jamaica’s biggest threat came from the Fédération International de Bobsleigh et de Tabogganing (FITB), who feared the team would embarrass the sport.

And it seemed that the FITB would get their wish, after Dudley Stokes lost control and crashed the sled on day 2. Forget the Hollywood finale for a second – the applause was sporadic, the sled was carried off by some anonymous maintenance staff, and the media consumed their perfect Calypso Conclusion to their side show.

Lillehammer

That was that, then, it seemed. The team, broke, were not done yet. Nor was Fitch, who continued working with them for four more years.

“The team members saw themselves as athletes; not as showmen”

They continued to work hard, and proved to fundraisers and the Jamaican Bobsleigh Federation that they were worth supporting to Albertville 1992 and beyond. As Lillehammer 1994 approached, they were a force to be reckoned with.

The year before, Cool Runnings came out – the film that shaped how most of us remember Calgary. Sure, it’s full of Calypso imagery – sprinters running on a dirt track in the National Championships (remember this is Jamaica, world leaders in track and field), and all the fish-out-of-water antics.

That, however, is not the point of the film, and nor is it why it is significant. Cool Runnings is a story of four highly-trained sprinters who learn how to slide the bobsleigh, and slide it well, by “feelin’ the rhythm” of Jamaica, by being true to themselves. And they proved everybody wrong.

Nor does it matter that the four-man crashed due to pilot error (and not mechanical failure as in the film), and it doesn’t matter that they were not on world record pace when it happened. What mattered is that it changed completely how Calgary was remembered – the team was no longer seen as a freak show, an anomaly, like Eddie the Eagle (who had to wait another 20 years for his film), but they were that team from the tropics that could conquer the ice with the fire in their bellies and the skill in their bones.

Image

Oh, and in Lillehammer they were the equal of anyone. As Bob Marley sits on nearly every playlist in the West, and as modern cricket mourns the loss of the uncompromising brilliance of Lloyd and Richards’ dominators, so too is Jamaican bobsleigh known for pioneering, and overachievement.

In Lillehammer they came 14th – the 14th best sled in the world, and they beat the USA.

“If we were the jokers, and we had beaten America, what was America?”

21st Century Pioneers

The Jamaican bobsleigh team, had persevered, survived, and flourished. In Salt Lake City, 2002, Winston Watt and Lascelles Brown broke the start record for the two-man bob.

Sadly, it took twelve years for the Jamaican team to return to the ice – now crowdfunded by everybody who feels the Winter Games needs the Jamaican bobsleigh team. Yes, the media once again went wild with Calypso imagery, and were not without disparaging voices. A BBC commentator at Sochi spectacularly missed the point, moodily noting that “they weren’t even the highest placed Caribbean team in Calgary” (that was in the two man, beaten by the Netherlands Antilles. In the four they crashed).

Who cares, they qualified by right to Sochi, slid, and competed in the two man, piloted once more by Winston Watt. His old partner in crime, Lascelles Brown, is now a two-time medallist, having taken Canadian citizenship in 2005.

Antonette Gorman and Captain Judith Blackwood then took the baton and started a women’s team. Portia Morgan and Jennifer Cole went further and took a sled to the World Cup Series, and in 2018, Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian arrived to Pyeongchang to drive the sled in the two-woman bob, backed by brakewoman Carrie Russell.

The first Jamaican women’s sled at the Games was dogged by familiar problems of funding and equipment. Their coach, Sandra Kiriasis, quit a week before the competition started, and took her sled with her! The women were now in Korea without equipment, before beer company Red Stipe stepped in and bought it off Kiriasis for the team to use. “Cool Runnings II” everybody shouted. But Red Stripe know something (and aim to profit heavily off it) – the world needs the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

Why?

It’s about representation. The Jamaican bobsleigh team is about, in the words of Fenlator-Victorian, “breaking barriers.”

“It’s important to me that little girls and boys see someone that looks like them – talks like them, has the same culture as them, has crazy curly hair and wears it natural, has brown skin – included in different things in this world.”

They finished 19th. Sliding alongside them were the Nigerian team – the first African bobsled team. On the top of the roster stood American Vonetta Flowers, the first black gold medallist at the Winter Olympics, sliding down the hill with Jill Bakken.

This is the legacy of the Calgary sliders, and all those who have followed them over the last thirty years. The Jamaican Bobsleigh Team are audacious representatives of black ability in unfamiliar territory, and undoubtedly part of the lineage of Marley and Lloyd, and beyond to Toussaint and Dessalines. People who get the world to stop, look up, and take the Caribbean very seriously. They are trailblazers – they are fire on ice – and in 2018, that fire is spreading.

This is an updated post of my 2014 post Fire on Ice: The Jamaican Bobsleigh Team and the Art of Being Taken Seriously

Skeleton Women (2018)

Posted on Posted in Britain, SportTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

skeletors

Skeleton – that gentle pastime, wherein you throw yourself down a claustrophobic strip of ice, head first (of course), steering yourself past 80mph with intricate wiggles and taps of your feet.

At some point it became a British pastime. The ice mountain has become a modern-day medal mine, starting with Alex Coomber’s bronze at Salt Lake City in 2002, in the first ever Olympic women’s skeleton.

Coomber had started something. Shelley Rudman claimed silver four years later in Turin, before Amy Williams took the big prize, dominating the ice at Vancouver 2010. Then Lizzy Yarnold turned up, matching Williams’ achievement with gold in Sochi. Fast forward to Pyeongchang, she’s at it again, now with Laura Deas for company. Yarnold defended her title with a mighty final slide, joined on the podium by Deas who took bronze. Britain’s skeleton women are world beaters.

Not bad for a nation that is seemingly allergic to winter, where a patch of snow shuts everything down. Yet the British sliding tradition goes back way beyond Coomber, to the very origins of the sport.

It all started with a wager, in the Swiss resort town of St. Moritz. In 1864, St. Moritz was a spa town, popular with wealthy Victorians who headed to the alps to replenish themselves in summer. Then September came, and the British packed up and headed to London with their riches in tow, much to the chagrin of the hotelier Johannes Badrutt. So that year, he convinced his guests to return for winter. If you are bored, cold, or unhappy, he said, I will pay for everything. It is said that the British frolicked in glee at the newfound Alpine winter, gasping in amazement of the sunshine (of all things) and the frosted scenery. Badrutt won his bet, of course, but unleashed a can of worms upon the Swiss hills. The British came back every winter and, like the British tourists of today, decided to take over the town and unleash mayhem.

st moritz
St Moritz. Source: stmoritz.ch

The legend goes that one group of tourists got hold of a delivery sled, and got on it, sliding through the icy, precarious, and dangerously downhill narrow streets of St. Moritz, terrifying all who crossed their path. Their (slightly) more sophisticated successors decided that a lowly delivery sled would just not do – they would not travel in anything less than a carriage – and so the first bobsleds were built.

The Swiss hoteliers had to face the monster they had created – the townspeople had grown weary of the troublesome tourists and so the hoteliers built purpose-built toboggan tracks to get the British off their streets. One of these became the Cresta Run, built by Major John Bulpett in 1884/5, and soon became the spiritual home of the sport and the base of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club (SMTC). In 1885, they held their first “Grand National” race and, five years later, an “erratic” member called Mr Cornish decided to slide the Cresta head first. Skeleton was born.

Sadly, like many sports, sledding grew very exclusive very quickly, once codified. It’s always been a sport for the wealthy, but in those early days there were no rules or limits as to who could grab a sled atop an icy hill and throw themselves down it. In the 1920s, the SMTC saw it fit to ban women from their course.

“Mrs J.M. Bagueley was the last lady to ride the Cresta in a race on 13th January 1925. Ladies rode in practice after that date, but were banned from riding on 6th January 1929.”

The ban remains. The Cresta’s terms and conditions simply state “women are not permitted to ride the Cresta run.” I wonder what changed their minds. In the early 20th century, there was a global backlash against women in sports, based on some preposterous notion of physical inferiority. In the Olympics, women were not allowed to run further than 200m until 1960. In the USA, women were banned from running the marathon for fifty years. In England, a similar ban existed for women in football, deemed “too much for a woman’s physical frame.”

Women have campaigned for decades to turn things around, and in recent years the situation has improved. The marathon ban was lifted in 1972, in part thanks to Kathrine Switzer, who ran the Boston Marathon in 1967 – entering as K.V. Switzer – and finished in good time despite attempts to remove her from the course. Each Olympics sees an increased number of women participants, and gets ever closer to event parity – the last male-only event in the Winter Games remains the Nordic Combined.

Switzer
Katrine Switzer accosted at Boston, ’67. Source: Chicago Tribune

Yet the birthplace of skeleton remains closed to Shelley Rudman, Amy Williams, and Lizzy Yarnold. Perhaps the embargo endures because of the Old Boy tradition that surrounds the Cresta. Visitors, like Matt Dawson and Ian Cowie, note the mess hall atmosphere of the place and even spot a few descendants of the Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop, but largely seem untroubled by the complete absence of women. Are they afraid of a little competition? Four years ago I thought this was a shame, but now I think it pitiful. Britain’s skeleton women are unstoppable – they are the headline acts of every Winter Games. Inspired by the “marginal gains” of British cycling, with less of the institutional misogyny, the skeleton set-up in Bath is the very model of a modern sporting powerhouse – professional, competitive and smooth as ice. If the SMTC doesn’t want to share their ice with such athletes, then that is their loss.

This is a dynasty whose queens are great symbols and great advocates of women in sport. Upon winning in Sochi, Yarnold came home determined to go into “as many schools as possible” and encourage girls to take up sport, and “not [to worry] about what the media image is of the perfect woman, it’s about being you and being proud of what you are.”

They are even inspiring the men (how could they not?). Dom Parsons followed in their footsteps on Friday, taking skeleton bronze. The Times connected his success to the Cresta Run “crazy aristocrat” pioneers, but he follows in different footsteps. This tradition, crowned by Lizzy Yarnold, started in 2002 with RAF officer Alex Coomber. She who slid the course at Salt Lake City with a broken wrist, which she’d injured just ten days earlier in training, and took the bronze.

This post is an updated version of my very first blogpost, Skeleton Women: The British Habit of Sliding Head-First down Icy Slopes

Yes, They Could! The Paralympic Pioneers

Posted on Posted in SportTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Halassy et al.jpg

The 2016 Paralympics begin tonight. The “Parallel Olympics” began in 1960, sprouting from a movement that used sport to physically and mentally rehabilitate soldiers maimed or disabled in the Second World War. The story of Dr Ludwig Guttmann and the Games inaugurated at Stoke Mandeville Hospital is well-known, and is largely remembered as a common ancestor to the subsequent successes of disability sport.

Disabled athletes have however competed at the very top of elite sport for almost as long as the Modern Olympics. In an era where disabled people were often hidden from view, these pioneers demonstrated that paralysis, amputation or illness were not to stop them reaching the peaks of their fields, and in some cases the athletes’ disability served to harness their potential. Some, like Lis Hartel, built a legacy that inspired future athletic and therapeutic achievements. Others, such as George Eyser, are more enigmatic. Yet all of these stories remind us that disabled people have long resisted the societal imposition of limits upon themselves, and they still hold the power to challenge this notion today, as new stories are told in Rio over the coming weeks.

 

Ray Ewry – “The Frog Man”

frog-man
Ray Ewry, The Frog Man. Source: npr.

“Ray Ewry wasn’t even supposed to walk,” writes Eric Adleson, but this American, born with Polio, won (at least) eight gold medals, a record that stood until Michael Phelps came to town. In fact, he never lost. Ewry competed in standing jump events, which sadly have long since fallen off the Olympic Roster. He leapt 1.66m in the standing high jump in Paris 1900, whilst also winning the standing long and triple jumps, leading Parisians to christen him “L’Homme Grenouille” – The Frog Man.

Aged eight, the orphan Ewry was wheelchair bound with ascending paralysis, and in an attempt to regain proper leg function, his therapist prescribed a series of exercises that extended and contracted the leg muscles. In this way Ewry learned to walk again, and year after year his legs grew stronger. By the time he had graduated from high school he had moved to crutches, which he was able to abandon the following year. The therapy he was prescribed holds many similarities to the modern elite training technique called plyometrics that increases explosive power in the legs. Ewry set out solely to walk again, but became stronger than everybody else.

 

George Eyser – Amputee Turner

worlds-fair
Source: wulibraries.typad.com. Courtesy of Smithsonian Image Collection

The 1904 Olympics were held amidst the “Louisiana Purchase Exposition” World’s Fair in St. Louis. A commemoration of this great leap toward Manifest Destiny unsurprisingly became a disturbing parade of all that had driven United States expansion over the previous century. Amerindian, Filipino, African and Islander peoples were paid to “perform” their expected backwardness, exhibited like living artifacts to give lip-service to white American exceptionalism.

Central to the Expo was the “Philippine village,” wherein residents of the (US) occupied territory were made to live out – on display – a day-in-the-life of a rural Filipino. The great Haitian Jean Price-Mars, attending the festival, recalled seeing “two young [Filipino] Blacks…surrounded by an excited crowd that was subjecting them to all sorts of indignities.” James E. Sullivan’s Olympic showcase mimicked these proceedings, hosting a duet of “Anthropology Days” at St. Louis 2014, that took untrained, unsuspecting participants from the fair and made them compete in a series of events, and they inevitably struggled, even at so-called “savage-friendly” events like the javelin.

Sullivan proclaimed this farce to be evidence of white supremacy, whilst the massive medal haul achieved by the US (no wonder, when they provided 523 of the 630 Olympians, and were only challenged in 42 events) was heralded as proof that the USA represented the ideal of civilisation. Only six women competed, as the Olympics continued to clamp down on women in sport, and the sporting disaster drew on for over three months. It was crowned by the Marathon when the first man, Frederick Lorz, travelled by car for eleven miles, and competitors were deliberately denied water on the course because the organisers wished to test the limits of the dehydrated human body.

george-eyeser-leg
Eyser’s Prosthesis. Source: theolympians.co

Amidst the chaos, German-American gymnast George Eyser won three golds, two silvers and a bronze. He had one leg; legend has it that as a child, he lost it after a run-in with a train. However Eyser, born in Danisch-Nienhof, was entrenched in the German “turnverein” culture of the 19th Century that encouraged gymnastic practice (or “turning”) as a means of achieving Germanic physical potential, and cemented itself in US society thanks to the millions of German migrants that arrived in the USA after 1848. Eyser was not a rich man – he worked as a bookmaker for his entire life – but had acquired an advanced prosthesis that enabled him to perform his craft. He competed in these Olympics as a member of the Concordia Turnverein, run out of St. Louis, and won the Rope Climbing and Parallel Bars outright, and tied for gold in the Horse Vault.

Eyser’s achievements are often forgotten among the trainwreck that was the “strangest” Olympics. A Wall Street Journal article even subsumed him within it, using the fact that a one-legged gymnast won three titles to suggest the entire Olympiad was as illegitimate as the Marathon. Although nearly all of Eyser’s rivals were based in the USA, the competition was not weak, and he collected his haul of medals by defeating some of the finest gymnasts of his generation. Eyser was the first amputee to compete in the games, but his actions after 1910 are barely known.

turnverein
The Concordia Turnveirein. George Eyser is in the centre. Source: theatlantic.com

 

Olivér Halassy – The Greatest Halfback

halassy
Olivér Halassy. Source: waterpololegends.com

Hungarian water polo halfback Olivér Halassy also ended up on the wrong side of public transport, losing his left foot in a streetcar accident, but came to be considered as the greatest halfback of his era, winning a silver and two golds as part of the fabled Hungarian water polo team of the 1930s, and scoring twenty goals along the way. These mighty Magyars also won three European titles, and in 1931, hours after their victory, Halassy jumped back in the pool and won the 1500m freestyle. The foot is an important tool in water polo to help stay afloat, to quickly change direction and to launch out of the water.

His final gold came in Berlin 1936, where Hungary, complete with a disabled swimmer, overcame the much-fancied, regime-backed German outfit who aimed to demonstrate able-bodied Aryan superiority. These performances posthumously earned Halassy a place in the Swimming Hall of Fame, but unfortunately his life was cut short in 1946. Late one evening, on the way back to his Budapest home, Halassy was shot dead by a Soviet soldier, leaving bereft his heavily-pregnant wife.

 

Karoly Takács

karoly
Karoly Takacs. Source: Wikipedia

Two years after Halassy’s death, Károly Takács followed in his countryman’s footsteps and won gold in London 1948. In the 1930s, Takács was a world-champion pistol shooter and a sergeant in the Hungarian Army. However, in 1938, a defective grenade exploded in his pistol hand rendering it useless. Takács was hospitalised for a month, during which his hand was amputated up to the middle of his forearm. Upon release, he secretly began to train his remaining left hand in the art of pistol shooting, and a year later, he unexpectedly appeared at the World Championships. Legend has it that there he proclaimed “I didn’t come to watch, I came to compete.” He won. Nine years later, at the first Olympics held after the Second World War, Takács won gold with a world record in the 25-metre rapid fire pistol, and retained the title four years later in Helsinki.

 

Lis Hartel

lis-hartel
Lis Hartel and Jubilee. Source: Horse Nation.

The Danish equestrian Lis Hartel came from a family of hippophiles – she was a horsey person. In the early-1940s, Hartel became twice Danish dressage champion upon her unfortunately-named steed Gigolo. In 1944, whilst pregnant with her second child, Hartel contracted polio. The child, Anna, was born healthy but Hartel, aged 23, was left paralysed below the knee for the rest of her life, and also suffered damage to her thighs, arms and hands. After gaining enough strength to walk with arm crutches, Lis Hartel learned to ride again with the family horse, Jubilee, chosen for the task by her parents for her quiet temperament.

“They told her she would be lucky if she improves to walk on crutches again,” recalled her daughter Pernille Siesbye on Eurodressage. “She was lifted in the saddle and first guided in walk for her to get a feeling for the movement again. Step by step my Mum became more independent and finally rode on her own.” Horse riding requires strong leg and core strength for balance, and Hartel fell badly on many occasions as she struggled to adapt to her disability. Jubilee learned “that she had to react only to weight and back aids,” because Hartel now “rode with her back and by-gently shifting weight, because she was unable to use her legs in any way.” Hartel commanded Jubilee with very soft, subtle arm and leg movements. She did not have the strength for further force, but it suited the tasks of dressage and the gentle nature of Jubilee.

Soon they were competing again, but Hartel had to wait until 1952 to reach the Olympics. Before then, equestrian was only open to male military officers; a prohibition that was lifted for Helsinki for dressage, but not for jumping or eventing, which the Olympic committee still deemed too dangerous for women and civilians. Hartel entered the arena as one of the first four women to ever compete in Olympic equestrian. Her routine captivated the crowd, who were unaware of Hartel’s paralysis until she finished her routine and had to be carried off her horse by the gold medallist Henri St. Cyr. Hartel claimed the silver, becoming the first ever woman to medal in equestrian. She repeated the feat in Stockholm four years later.

Her greatest achievement (in her own eyes) was yet to come. Upon retirement, she founded the first Therapeutic Riding Centre in Europe, and through her advocacy work with the Polio Foundation, she is now “widely credited with inspiring a worldwide effort to better peoples’ lives through horses.” Hippotherapy has since been accepted as a highly effective therapeutic treatment for those with muscular afflictions such as cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis, and has also been used for psychotherapy. The rhythm of horse riding replicates pelvic movements when walking, strengthening posture and thighs. Hartel died in 2009, but left a legacy that includes the rehabilitation of thousands, the demolition of equestrian’s glass ceiling, and the growth of dressage as a Paralympic sport. Her efforts live on also through the actions of the Lis Hartel Foundation.

lis-hartel-1952-olympic-podium-1952
Lis Hartel receives her silver medal. Helsinki 1952. Source: simplymarvellous.wordpress.com

Yes, They Could

The greatest Olympic moments – Jessie Owens, Ali, Carlos and Smith, de Lima in the Marathon, Kathy Freeman – they were not only sporting conquests but also triumphs over personal and societal pressures that stifled them. The wonder of the Paralympics is that every moment forms a public challenge against a world that denies the abilities of the disabled. Channel 4 calls them the Superhumans, but this article isn’t just to celebrate the remarkable individuals discussed above. Rather, the stories of Ewry, Eyser, Halassy, Takács, and Hartel demonstrate that people with physical disabilities have countered the derision of ableism for a very long time – long before the worthy events at Stoke Mandeville took place – and the Paralympic movement owes much to these pioneers.

“Her Name Hail Far and Wide:” Fiji at the Olympic Games, 1956-2016

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Small islands are much maligned. They are often of poor resource and sparse population, vulnerable to the forces of a hurricane, or an aggressive, expansive Great Power. The Pacific Islands are especially exposed. Distant and shallow, they have since their “discovery” played the role of the exotic paradise – servants of literary profits, Australian tans, and anthropological careers. Their residents have often been cast as the very model of primitivism, images to be exploited to proclaim their supposed racial inferiority, or the “purity” of a simple existence.

In reality these islands are none of the above – instead they are home to sophisticated societies with rich cultures that can nod to multiple ancestors. Fiji, the most populous of these islands, is home to a myriad of indigenous communities, as well as the descendants of those who came to Fiji as a consequence of British and Antipodean colonialism; indentured servants, missionaries, and agents of empire. But the colonial imagination of Fiji as a backwater, backward paradise continues to hang over its head.

Throughout the 20th Century global sport has created an arena in which the dominant narratives of international relations have been reinforced, and challenged. Nowhere is that more true than the Olympic Games, despite its thin pretense of being “above politics.” The Cold War carved itself onto the Olympic movement in 1980 and 1984, as the USA and USSR boycotted each other’s Games. Yet the African boycott of Montreal 1976 helped to challenge the appeasement of South African Apartheid in global affairs, and strengthen the anti-Apartheid movement worldwide. The Berlin Games of 1936 infamously served as Hitler’s great advertisement to the world of the superiority of Nazi Germany and the Aryan Race, but the Führer’s grand plan was upended by the great African-American Jesse Owens, whose four gold medals, as well as his friendship with his German rival Luz Long, formed a powerful and public challenge to white supremacy and racial separation.

jessie and luz
Jesse Owens and Luz Long. Source: npr

For small nations, the Olympics provides an opportunity to demonstrate that they are not an afterthought in world affairs and should not be treated as such. The Jamaicans, as they are wont to do, have led the way in this regard. The dominance of Jamaican sprinting in the 21st century have returned this island nation of two million people to the forefront of the world’s attention. Usain Bolt adorns our billboards and TV screens – he is now the first sprinter to win three Olympic 100m golds in succession, the sporting equivalent of a superhero. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was unable to match this feat, but the great sprinter was felled by a new Jamaican sensation, Elaine Thompson. Jamaica has built a sprinting dynasty – belying its size and resources, the Caribbean country is feared as a world-beater. Jamaica, often portrayed as an easy-going, fun-loving place – not to be taken seriously – is recast in these moments as the pinnacle of strength, power and potential.

In rugby, the small(er) nation of Fiji has played a similar hand. Rugby was brought to the Pacific Islands by antipodean missionaries, and the colonial administration initially hampered the game by insisting on racially-segregated matches. Once this was lifted, the islanders took the game, and in their unique style of dynamic, jolting, running rugby, made it their own – their spirit embodied in the challenge of the Cibi, that connected this imperial sport to ancient island traditions.

sport360
Source: Sport360.com

In men’s rugby sevens, Fiji has been at the top for decades – and the Fijian women, late arrivals to the game, are gaining strength, finishing 8th at this year’s Olympics, beating the USA along the way. The Rio Olympics provided a massive opportunity for Fiji’s men’s team to win gold, and become champions with the world’s eyes glued to the games. Once again, this year’s games reflect the dominant mores of global society. In 2016, that means an Olympics backboned by ubiquitous sponsorship (from peddlers of heart disease and diabetes) and poorly-paid, transient labour. An Olympics shadowed by political protests and state-sponsored doping scandals and the silencing of a Zika epidemic. A global society that renders small islands “open for business,” sold to the highest bidder, told that their only hope for ‘uplift’ is in the welcoming of foreign capital and the suppression of wages. But as in 1936, the Games gives such nations the window to challenge those narratives that would keep them down. The athletes of the Refugee Olympic team, as Shireen Ahmed has so gracefully explained, are not there for our consumption, but so that the ten competitors can “run, jump, kick and swin alongside other world class athletes,” whilst “their sheer presence can bring attention to stories that seem so far away.”

Fiji’s men, in their demolition of Great Britain in the Sevens final, won the country’s first ever medal. In this moment, their team – close-knit, powerful, and creative – carved their names into the history books, and loudly demonstrated that this small nation could overcome the most-talented and well-resourced teams the world has to offer. Fiji has been through it recently. Their country is reeling from the devastation of Cyclone Winston, that killed 42, left over 50 000 homeless and without water, and caused an estimated $460m worth of damage. Ten years ago, Fiji was rocked by a military coup – the coup leader turned elected president, JV Bainimarama, was present at Deodoro on Thursday night, back home pursued by the charge that he has imprisoned opponents without trial, and that his Fijifirst party is working to marginalise indigenous communities and culture.

At the final whistle, the team banded together in a circle, and sang (rather beautifully) the Pentecostal Hymn “We Have Overcome” (from Revelation 12:11, for those who are interested). For a brief moment, Fiji’s team provided not only solace from these issues, but embodied the continued strength of the Fijian people – Stronger Than Winston – showing the world that they will not be cast as just another small island, only of beaches, hurricanes and political instability. Like Jamaica, Fiji is much more than that.

See it here – http://bbc.in/2aOt477

Its Olympic tradition too is richer than solely this victory. To ignore Fiji’s other achievements reduces this success to an exception to a rule, and patronises not only the victorious team but Fiji’s previous competitors, framed instead as amateurish invitees, there only to make up the numbers – just small-time competitors from small islands. This is flawed. Fiji, although without medals, in fact have a distinguished record in the Olympics dating back to 1956.

*

tony philp
Tony Philp. Source: Wikipedia

Fiji sent five competitors to their first Olympics in Melbourne 1956, fourteen years before it gained independence from the UK. Their first athlete, Mesulame Rakuro, qualified for the final of the men’s discus, where he finished 15th. Prior to 2016, Fiji’s greatest Olympian was the windsurfer Tony Philp. He competed at five Games, beginning at Los Angeles in 1984, aged just 15, becoming the longest sailor to compete at the Olympics. Philp was from a sailing family – his father Colin and his brothers Colin (Jr) and David also representing Fiji at Olympic level. In Barcelona and Sydney he finished tenth, the best ever result by a Fijian prior to Rio, but was also a four-time World Champion in windsurfing, and one of only two Fijians (alongside Vijay Singh) to top the world rankings in his sport. A recipient of Fiji’s highest honour (Member of the Order of Fiji), and flag bearer at Sydney 2000, Tony Philp was no also ran.

probert
Carl Probert at Sydney 2000. Source: Olympians.com

makalesi
Makalesi Bulikiobo Batimala. Source: fijivillage.com

Carl Probert matched Philp’s achievement in 2008, when he swam in his fifth Olympic Games in Beijing. His best result was in the 100m freestyle at Sydney (the event where Eric the Eel found fame) – Probert registering 36th place (out of 73). This year Probert joined the World Olympians Association Board, in recognition of his “proud Olympic history and his commitment to the Olympic movement.” Fiji’s “Sprint Queen” Makelesi Bulikiobo Batimala qualified by right for the 400m in Beijing, and carried the flag in the opening ceremony. She is also a seven-time gold medallist at the South Pacific Games. Leslie Copeland became the first Fijian to throw over 80m in the men’s javelin, and missed out on the 2012 Olympic final by just 20cm. Keep an eye out for him in Rio. (***UPDATE*** – It didn’t go so well for Copeland in Rio)

In fact, the men’s sevens team are Fiji’s first able-bodied gold medallists, but four years ago Fiji gained Paralympic precious metal. In the 2012 Paralympics in London, Iliesa Delana was entered into the F42 High Jump competition, for athletes with above-knee amputations or comparable lower limb impairment. He was Fiji’s eighteenth Paralympian, and the only Fijian present at the games. Delana took gold with a National Record of 1.74m. Watch below.

Delana won the Paralympic gold for any South Pacific nation. He was welcomed back to Suva a hero. Iriarte, MoConkey and Gilligan describe the homecoming.

A big event was hosted in Suva, with a grand parade through the city by people of all ethnicities, school students, women and men, young and old. Iliesa Delana was accorded the highest traditional welcome only accorded to a Fijian high chief and honoured with 50 gun salutes by the military government… Iliesa Delana’s gold medal leap at the Paralympic Games was worth $90 000 and counting [2013] – the biggest payout to any individual in the history of amateur sports in Fiji. Furthermore, for his great achievement, his winning jump is engraved on Fiji’s 50 cents coin.

Delana’s achievement was a huge moment for this nation. An example that a man from a rural village in a supposedly inconsequential country, who lost his leg in a bus accident when he was three years old, could rise to become the very best in his field. The grandeur of such an achievement was not lost on the military government. President Nailaikau proclaimed that Delana had brought “a sense of unity and pride…greatly needed at this point in time and in pursuit towards democratic governance.” The following year, Delana stood for the ruling FijiFirst party, becoming an MP before being appointed to Bainimarama’s cabinet as Assistant Minister for Youth and Sports, and supporting the impressive Fiji team at the recent Australian Deaf Games.

50-Cents-Iliesa-Delana-back
Source: Colnect.net

Both Delana and Bainimarama travelled to Rio to witness the achievements of the Sevens teams, and to ensure Fijifirst could share in the victory. Fiji’s proud Olympic tradition is a story of overcoming a lack of resources and opportunities, to challenge, and now defeat, the world’s best. Like Jamaica (and many others) alongside them, Fiji’s athletes demonstrate through sporting prowess that small islands can mould and shape global narratives. But Delana’s rise through the ranks of the controversial Fijifirst party indicates that as sport can influence politics, so too politicians can recruit athletes in the quest for power. The presence of the cabinet officials in Deodoro that night, as well as Delana’s very rise to office, highlight that the prominence Fiji’s athletes have achieved is not lost on its politicians, who hope to command the achievements of their sports stars to cement their nation-building projects, alongside their own position in office.

In the cauldron of the Olympic Games, sport and power inevitably entwine.

***UPDATE*** Yesterday Frank Bainimarama announced that, following the victory of the men’s sevens team, he was to abandon his plans to alter the Fijian flag. This effort, announced in February last year, had proved deeply unpopular among many Fijians, and according to Opposition leader Mick Beddoes, protests against Bainimarama’s designs had been organised by young Fijians. Bainimarama’s plan, ostensibly to form a break from Fiji’s colonial past by removing the union flag from its own banner, has been criticised as a  hollow distraction from Fiji’s problems, and a nation-building project that aims to undermine the power of Fiji’s indigenous communities. The blue of the flag, the shield and peace are nods to the Supreme Chief Ratu Cakobau, who flew this banner in 1870 before the British arrived. Fans adorning sky blue, wrapped in flags, were commonplace in the Deodoro as the Fijian teams took to the field, and in the celebrations of the gold medallists and their fans both in Rio and in Suva, the flag took centre stage. The eternal relationship between sport and power is not one-way traffic: as politics can influence sport, so too sport can temper and mould the actions of agents of power.