The mission of the IOC is to bring people of all nations together in harmony and fellowship through what has become known as the Olympic spirit. This requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
The Olympic spirit can be traced back to the ancient Greek ideal of excellence, called arete. Aristocratic men who attained this ideal won permanent glory and fame in the ancient Olympic Games, part of a major religious festival honouring Zeus, the supreme ruler of Mount Olympus.
The ancient Greeks also believed that holding the Olympic Games would bring them blessings from their gods. They even believed that the Games originated with gods at Olympia. One myth says that the guardians of the infant god Zeus held the first foot race, while an alternative maintains that Zeus himself started the Games to celebrate his triumph over his father Cronus for control of the world.
Another tradition states that the Greek hero Pelops established the Games after winning a chariot race against King Oenomaus, for which the prize was the hand of Oenomaus's daughter Hippodamia in marriage.
Nowadays, the ancient Olympic stadium is little more than a dusty pit. However, just outside the stadium are the remains of the Temples of Zeus and Hera, where the "disc of the sacred truce" symbolised the halting of all warfare for the duration of the ancient Games.
"It is what the Olympics are about," says Adam Nelson, an elite American shot-putter. "The stadium at Olympia was home for all these warriors to come and compete and show all their skills. It transcended all their problems; political, religious or anything else of the time."
The Greek gods inspired the ancient Greeks, through the Games, to win permanent glory for themselves and their city of origin without resorting to warfare. This ideal provides the origin of the famous Olympic Spirit, which is esteemed by modern society for its goal of winning glory through fair play, of strengthening understanding and friendship amongst all people and of building a peaceful world without discrimination, persecution or wars.
Nowadays, in the dusty pit of the Games' birth, visitors can feel the Olympic energy present on the sporting grounds of the gods. "Thinking about the Olympic Spirit... there's something special about this place," said Mr Nelson. "It brings out a certain emotion in me as an Olympic athlete, and it's pretty powerful. You feed off it and let it take you to the next level."
Since its foundation in 1896, the modern Olympics have experienced all the contemporary crimes, follies and tragedies of humanity, including world wars, ethnic discrimination and genocide, as well as political and religious persecution. However, just as the beautiful lotus flower grows unsoiled out of mud and filth, the Olympic spirit constantly maintains its essence of friendship and fair play. It has been impressed deeply and indelibly upon the mind of everyone. Moreover, the flame of the modern Olympic torch relay is lit in front of the Temple of Hera, based on an ancient ritual.
Perhaps the Olympic spirit has been blessed by the ancient gods of Olympus. But, history has shown that on numerous occasions the Olympic Spirit has been flouted by hosting nations, thus tarnishing the Olympic values.
In the modern Olympics, the most notorious example of flouting the Olympic Spirit was the 1936 Berlin Olympics hosted by Nazi-controlled Germany. In 1933, Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and quickly turned the nation's fragile democracy into a one-party dictatorship that persecuted Jews, Romanys (Gypsies), all political opponents, and many others. The Nazi pretensions to control all aspects of German life also extended to sports.
Movements to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics surfaced in the United States, Great Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. Debate over participation in the 1936 Olympics was most intense in the United States, which traditionally sent one of the largest teams to the Games.
However, the boycott movement failed and the United States and other western Western democracies sent their teams to Berlin. Following the conclusion of the Games, Germany's expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust.
Hitler and his followers paid with their lives after flouting the Olympic Spirit. However, the United States and other western Western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand—that as some observers at the time claimed—might have bolstered international resistance to Hitler and Nazi tyranny. The world paid a high price for supporting Hitler's flouting of the Olympic Spirit.
Another example of flagrant disregard for the Olympic spirit Spirit was the XII Olympiad of 1940, originally scheduled to be held in Tokyo. In 1936 when the IOC voted for the city to host the 1940 Olympics, fourteen cities from around the world had sent in their bids for the Games. By that time the Japanese army had already occupied China's Manchuria and was preparing a further invasion of China. But the IOC still voted for Tokyo to host the 1940 Games.
A few months after the vote, the Japanese army launched a full-scale offensive against China, occupied many parts of that country and slaughtered millions of Chinese people. Eventually the Games were cancelled due to World War II.
The IOC, which represented most countries of the world, ignored the protests of the suffering Chinese people and defended Japan's right to host the Games. It had whet the ambitions of the aggressors to extend the war to many other countries, including the Unites States.
The third example of flouting the Olympic Spirit was the 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, held in Moscow. It was the first Games ever held in a communist country. The Soviet authorities spent $US9 billion ($A10.7 billion) in preparing and staging the Games, which was the highest expenditure on record.
But no amount of money can buy the Olympic Spirit.
The Games were diminished by a boycott of some 64 countries led by the United States in protest against the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that deeply violated the Olympic Spirit. As a form of protest against the USSR's war in Afghanistan, fifteen countries marched in the Opening Ceremony with the Olympic Flag instead of their national flags, and the Olympic Flag and Olympic Hymn were used at Medal Ceremonies when athletes from these countries won medals.
The Soviets predictably initiated a tit-for-tat boycott when the Games were held in Los Angeles four years later, but even some of its communist allies, such as Romania and Yugoslavia, refused to join that boycott. The Los Angeles Olympics still managed to make a profit of over $200 million with a relatively low investment of $500 million. One could argue that the Soviet Union ultimately paid the price for violating the Olympic Spirit, as the communist regime fell just seven years later.
In the modern Olympics, there are a number of examples of the promotion of human rights. At a medal ceremony in Mexico, black Americans wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, and raised a gloved fist in the black power salute for adding fuel to the flames of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. South Africa was barred from the Olympics until Barcelona in 1992—following the repeal of all apartheid laws the previous year. The 1988 Olympic Games provided a catalyst for democratic reform in South Korea.
China is home to a quarter of the world's population and boasts a five thousand 5000-year-old culture. However, the Middle-Kingdom has never had the opportunity to host the Olympics. In fact, for almost a century the country has never even submitted a bid due to poverty, the chaos of wars and domestic turmoil.
It was in 1993 that Beijing submitted its first bid for the 2000 Olympics. The Chinese Communist authorities had no idea about what the Olympic Spirit meant and sent as its representative one of the perpetrators of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, the then Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong for promoting Beijing. The Beijing bid predictably floundered over the terrible human rights record.
The Chinese Communist authorities promised to improve their human rights situation, and in 2001, the IOC duly awarded Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games. There was a somewhat naïve optimism among IOC delegates and international governments that the Communist regime could, under the inspiration of the Olympic Spirit, improve its human rights record, end the tyranny and peacefully move to democracy like South Korea did. However, in the past seven years, the Chinese authorities have shown no indications whatsoever for doing anything of the kind.
In fact, the exact opposite has occurred. They have further intensified the persecution of dissidents and religious believers. The regime even dared to abduct American permanent resident and popular Chinese dissident, Mr Wang Bin Zhang from Vietnam to China and sentence him to life imprisonment. They have used Falun Gong practitioners as a live organ bank for the highly profitable billion-dollar-a-year organ transplant business. In addition, they have sent many spies and informers to Western countries in an attempt to undermine the democratic rights and freedoms of residents of those countries.
China's excessive military spending is also of great concern to democratic nations. There have been average increases of 15 per cent per year in military expenditure, belying the regime's assurances of "no aggressive intent." They have also played the role of chief accomplice to the Darfur Genocide by supplying large amounts of weapons and other support to the Sudanese Government.
For this godless regime, the Olympic Spirit is nothing but a golden opportunity for a massive propaganda exercise. Being awarded the Olympics has been used to try and convince the populace that the rest of the world actually supports the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) policies. This has consequently been used as a good excuse for further intensifying the oppression of the Chinese people and violating human rights.
In the process of building the Olympic facilities, hundreds of thousands of unfortunate people have been thrown out of their homes onto the street. Most have yet to receive any of their promised compensation. Construction workers involved in erecting the stadiums have been denied adequate wages and conditions. A leaked regime document lists no less than 43 categories of undesirables who the regime believes must not be allowed anywhere near the Olympics.
Most of these categories are perfectly peaceful, law-abiding groups that the Party simply doesn't happen to like, such as Catholics loyal to the Pope, democracy activists, and human rights advocates. Falun Gong practitioners, predictably, are at the top of the list.
As it can be seen, the Olympic spirit has been flouted on a number of occasions in the past, but the Chinese Communist Party appears to be setting a new standard in this regard. This state of affairs begs the question: "Should the Olympic Games be held in China at all while the Communist Party remains in power?" The Chinese people deserve to have the Olympic Games, and everyone should wish for the Games to go ahead—but only in a free and democratic China.