Power Games. Jules BoykoffЧитать онлайн книгу.
As Parezo notes, he “absolutely believed that Caucasians were the best natural as well as the best-trained athletes in the world. Whites (especially those of Northern European heritage) were the superior race and America, because of its racial heritage, was a peerless culture, which would only progress further if it adopted his programs.”119 Both McGee and Sullivan arrived in St. Louis with fully formed conclusions in search of data that would “prove” they were right. If they came across findings in friction with their beliefs, they simply explained them away.120
McGee and Sullivan’s efforts were thwarted in part by Native Americans like the Ojibwe and Osage, who refused to submit to anthropometric measuring. Others, like the Cocopas, Moros, and Visayans, refused to be photographed. Negritos refused to climb trees on demand or to have their feet measured. Unlike other athletic competitors at the World’s Fair, Anthropology Days participants were not offered cash prizes, so many indigenous people just said no. Others declined the invitation because they did not understand the rules for these totally foreign sports. Organizers tried to persuade potential participants by bringing them to witness Olympic trials so they could learn the rules by watching athletes in action. After watching swimming trials, there were no takers, aside from the Samal Moros. It didn’t help that the rules were never explicitly explained—organizers opted not to hop the language hurdles. Further, indigenous athletes were not allowed to practice. The game was rigged; some Native Americans, like the Arapahos and Wichitas, departed en masse instead of playing along with the racial experiment.121
McGee and Sullivan were undeterred—they had theories to prove. Heats for running events were arranged, one for each individual group. As Sullivan reported, there were heats for “Africans, Moros (Philippines), Patagonians, and the Ainu (Japanese), Cocopa (Mexican), and Sioux Indian tribes.”122 A St. Louis University professor explained the rules in English and without interpreters. The goal was to collect the fastest person from each group and place each one in the final. Sullivan was to compare their times with those of his prized athletes from the United States and Northern Europe. But cultural differences wrecked the master plan. Instead of plunging through the finish-line ribbon, indigenous runners would wait for their colleagues or duck under the tape. As Parezo notes, “Cooperation was more important than ‘victory’… waiting for friends was a sign of graciousness and a symbol of respect in many cultures.”123 To Sullivan, these breaches of the rules were unforgiveable; rule-breakers were unceremoniously disqualified.
Even by the standards of the day, many found the Anthropology Days absurd and shameful. Stephen Simms, of the Field Museum in Chicago, was taken aback by the charade of racism masquerading as scientific method.124 McGee himself initially downplayed the results of Anthropology Days over concerns that not enough data were obtained. Such quibbles did not faze Sullivan, who made capacious generalizations about the “utter lack of athletic ability on the part of the savages.”125 He compared indigenous participants to Olympic medal-winners like track star Ray Ewry and pronounced that the comparison “proves conclusively that the savage is not the natural athlete we have been led to believe.”126
Parezo demonstrates how such conclusions carried wide-ranging ramifications: “To Sullivan the Anthropology Days proved that his opinions about sports as a medium for shaping the moral and cognitive development of young people were correct but that Native peoples were intellectually, socially, cognitively, and morally inferior by nature.” As such, “they were not as good prospects for assimilation as European immigrants.”127 McGee apparently agreed. In his final report on Anthropology Days he asserted “the lesson” of their Special Olympics was that “primitive men are far inferior to modern Caucasians in both physical and mental development.”128 Sullivan concurred: “The whole meeting proves conclusively that the savage has been a very much overrated man from an athletic point of view.”129
Although Sullivan deemed his “Special Olympics” a “brilliant success,” Coubertin did not agree. He called Anthropology Days “a mistake,” “inhuman,” and “flawed”130 and feared that they marked the “beginnings of exotic athleticism” that were “hardly flattering.”131 Although the Anthropology Days were “the only original feature offered by the program,” they were “a particularly embarrassing one.”132 Other commentators agreed. Writing more than a quarter-century later, Hugh Harlan declared that featuring athletes “from various backwards nations” created “confusion and mis-direction,” a “sad spectacle” that meant the “St. Louis games could not be anything except a failure as far as an international sport festival is concerned.”133
Some of the racialist assumptions that underpinned the Anthropology Days arguably persist today. Historian Mark Dyreson writes, “The contemplation of racial and national difference remains a central feature of Olympic sport in the twenty-first century. Rather than discrediting scientific and popular measurements of the ‘physical value’ of human populations, Anthropology Days embedded that practice in modern discourse.”134 The episode also helps us better understand modern-day indigenous resistance to the Olympics, a theme I will take up later.
Despite the religious rhetoric that pervades Coubertin’s writings, Sigmund Loland asserts, “we can characterize Olympism as a secular, vitalistic ‘humanism of the muscles’.”135 At the 1904 Games in St. Louis “humanism” was scarce. But the Olympics could also provide a platform for athletes to challenge colonialism, if through the lever of nationalism. That is what happened at the 1906 intercalary Games in Athens.
Olympian Dissent in 1906
After the debacle in St. Louis, the Olympics verged on imminent fizzle. Coubertin’s control of the Olympics was slipping, and it wasn’t entirely clear who was running the show.
According to the Baron’s original vision, the Games would rotate through the major cities of the world, touching down every four years in a new location to spread the Olympic gospel. But Greek boosters and their German allies had other plans, which they hatched at the 1901 IOC meeting in Paris. They proposed holding the Olympics every two years, alternating between Athens and “other large cities of the civilized countries.”136 This would ensure that the Olympics landed in the Greek capital every four years, beginning in 1906.
Coubertin’s grip on the Games was far from ironclad. Many Olympics boosters in Greece saw him as a trespasser stealing their historical birthright. The American James Sullivan undermined his authority at every opportunity. The IOC was wracked with internal turbulence as members threatened to defect.137 Under these circumstances, Coubertin grudgingly pledged the IOC’s support for the 1906 Athens Olympics, which eventually became known as the “intercalary” Games.138 However, the Baron refused to attend the 1906 Games, and later did everything he could to undercut their historical importance, stopping just short of plugging his ears with his index fingers and ululating, la-la-la-la-la, whenever someone broached the topic.139
The 1906 Games opened with a grand procession of the aristocracy. More than 60,000 raucous spectators watched the arrival of a carriage chock full of royalty, including King George of Greece, his sister Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, King Edward VII of Britain, Queen Olga of Greece, the Prince of Wales and his spouse, Princess Mary. The royal box seats were packed with delegates from various European courts as well as members of the Greek royal family, including the Duke and Duchess of Sparta.140 Sullivan, then US commissioner to the Olympics, described the scene: “Flags were waved in a frantic manner. The fringe of soldiers around the top row of seats stood saluting, the naval officers stood back of the throne in salute. The cheers grew louder and louder—not only the people in the Stadium were cheering, but all Athens was cheering.”141
But the most memorable moment from the 1906 Olympics was not the regal cavalcade at the opening ceremony but the audacious act of dissent carried out by the son of an Irish shipbuilder: track athlete Peter O’Connor. O’Connor was not only one of the most accomplished Irish tracksters in history, but also an ardent Irish nationalist who abhorred the idea of having to compete as a British athlete. The English Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) tried to induce O’Connor and his fellow Irishman Con Leahy to compete for Great Britain at the Athens Games. At