This is one of the reasons I came to dislike following the Olympics: what should be an event to celebrate human achievement in sports becomes grounds for nationalism and chauvinism to fester. I always thought it was nice when anyone would break a world record and be amazed at their achievements, but it’s really jarring to see even people next to me cheering for my country. Idk, just a rant
I honestly think it would be so cool if instead of having national teams, athletes could just choose to associate to international clubs. I don’t know enough about sports or the Olympics to think of how it could be done in a way that makes sense, but it feels really weird that all sporting currently is all about what country is better than others.
There’s literally an option to participate under an international banner, a bunchnof russians did it last time around in the wi ter olympics when they weren’t allowed to represent Russia because of war crimes (weirdly this was the only country that standard has been applied to in the last couple olympics)
The whole Olympics being centered on nations is left over from the fact that the modern games were founded at around the time nationalism was really popping off as an ideology. Honestly we should drop it and just have the athletes compete as themselves.
This is one of the reasons I came to dislike following the Olympics: what should be an event to celebrate human achievement in sports becomes grounds for nationalism and chauvinism to fester. I always thought it was nice when anyone would break a world record and be amazed at their achievements, but it’s really jarring to see even people next to me cheering for my country. Idk, just a rant
I honestly think it would be so cool if instead of having national teams, athletes could just choose to associate to international clubs. I don’t know enough about sports or the Olympics to think of how it could be done in a way that makes sense, but it feels really weird that all sporting currently is all about what country is better than others.
There’s literally an option to participate under an international banner, a bunchnof russians did it last time around in the wi ter olympics when they weren’t allowed to represent Russia because of war crimes (weirdly this was the only country that standard has been applied to in the last couple olympics)
There are some Russians and Belarussians under the neutral banner in these olympics too, and there’s also been a refugee team since 2016 IIRC.
The whole Olympics being centered on nations is left over from the fact that the modern games were founded at around the time nationalism was really popping off as an ideology. Honestly we should drop it and just have the athletes compete as themselves.
They could do it by astrological sign or blood type.