5 Downright Petty Things the International Olympic Committee Has Done
An organization fueled by bribery, forced labor and carbon emissions still finds time to ruin sports on a grassroots level. You have to admire it.
Paavo Nurmi vs. the World
Paavo Nurmi was an all-star distance runner from Finland. From 1920 to 1928, he raked in nine gold medals, and a handful of silvers for posterity. He was a favorite for the 1932 games, but cross-fjord rival Sweden had a devious plan to completely derail his dynasty. Sigfrid Edström, a bitter Swede and the chairman of the Council of the International Association of Athletics Federations, exploited a series of loopholes in Olympic competition rules — and international politics — to smite one dorky jogger.
The Olympics’ whole thing is that their athletes are amateurs — that’s why you see up-and-comers like Scottie Scheffler and LeBron James getting their day in the sun. Edström’s plan was to paint Nurmi as a professional, thereby removing him from competition at the 11th hour. Edström pressured Karl Ritter von Halt, the Nazis’ top sports guy, to provide “evidence” that Nurmi had been paid a couple hundred bucks when racing in Germany the year prior. The Nazis were hard up for street cred at the time, so Karl managed to come up with this “evidence.”
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Despite a petition signed by every other participant the night before the race, Nurmi was disqualified. The IOC ultimately had the ability to cut through the bureaucratic shenanigans and let him race — and in fact, their own rules stated that such protests needed to be made within 30 days. But the scheming Swede won the day.
Bertil Sandström’s Comeuppance
Another scheming Swede actually did get a taste of justice that year — if the IOC is to be believed. Karl Bertil Sandström was a Swedish military man who took home silver medals for Norway’s Drop Shadow in 1920, 1924 and almost in 1932. Sandström was a dressage guy — that’s the one where they make horses breakdance — and he placed second for the third, excruciating time in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
But before the winners took to the podium, the judges convened and decided something sinister was ahoof. They accused Sandström of communicating with his horse, illegally, by making clicking noises at her. He used the “I didn’t fart, that was the chair” argument, claiming that what they’d heard was his leather saddle squeaking. The judges weren’t buying it, and he was cast down to last place. Oddly, they allowed his score to count toward the team score, and Sweden ended up taking home the silver anyway. That’ll show ‘em.
The ‘Worcester Telegram’ Tattles on Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe was the first Native American athlete to win Olympic gold for the United States, winning both the Pentathlon and the Decathlon in 1912. But the following year, Massachusetts’ embarrassingly pronounced Worcester Telegram decided that Jim Thorpe was “hiding” a “big” “secret.”
In those days, it was standard practice for college athletes to illegally play in professional leagues over the summer to make ends meet, but they would play under pseudonyms to keep it off the record books. Thorpe didn’t think he had anything to hide, so he openly played two seasons with Rocky Mount, North Carolina’s semi-pro team, collecting a paycheck of $2 per game. The AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) was scandalized, and revoked his amateur status. The IOC caught wind of the controversy and decided they had to get in on the action, unanimously voting to strip him of his medals.
Technically, Thorpe broke the rules by making enough money for one quarter of a Happy Meal. Also technically, the IOC broke their own stupid 30-day rule, again, by punishing him almost a year after the games.
To their credit, the IOC was later convinced they had punished him in error, and they reversed their decision. To their everlasting shame, they did it 30 years after Thorpe died, sheepishly handing two replica medals to his children.
The IOC President Says Protest = Terrorism
Leading up to the 1972 Munich Olympics, a bloc of African countries threatened to boycott the games if Rhodesia (previously and currently Zimbabwe) was allowed to compete. The 93 percent Black nation had recently been taken over by a white minority military regime, and declared itself a whole new country.
I’m not an expert on late-20th century geopolitics or African continental race relations, and neither are you. So let’s defer to the contemporary athletes and assume it was a pretty messed up situation. The IOC apparently took the same approach, voting 36-31 to ban Rhodesia from competing.
That whole mess was soon overshadowed by a devastating terror attack on the Olympic Village that left 12 innocent people dead. Shortly after the attack, IOC president Avery Brundage addressed the world. Making it clear that his values and priorities were selected randomly via roulette wheel, he equated the two events, implying that the murder of 11 athletes and one police officer was just as bad as protesting against a racist secessionist regime.
Justice for Eddie the Eagle!
Michael David Edwards was once Britain’s best — and simultaneously, the world’s worst — ski jumper. In the 1988 Winter Olympics, Eddie competed in two different events, finishing extremely last in both. In one event, his score was less than half of the second-to-last place finisher. And yet, somehow, that jump was the best any Brit had ever done (and it still stands as Britain’s sixth-best jump of all time).
Despite his impressively paradoxical performance, Edwards caught international attention and earned the nickname Eddie the Eagle. The guy was a real character: big dude, red hair, cheap equipment and glasses that were constantly fogging up, all of which endeared him to the entire planet. He made an appearance on The Tonight Show before the games were over, and later went on talk shows around the world to discuss his humble lifestyle and love of competition.
This display of sportsmanship, passion and patriotism infuriated the IOC. They instituted a complicated rule designed specifically to keep Eddie out of future games, requiring Olympic hopefuls to place in the top 30 percent in international competition. That bar was simply too high for Eddie, who never qualified for another Olympics.
