The world is getting ready for the 32nd Olympiad. The planet’s greatest sporting event (sorry World Cup Soccer fans) will be held this year in Paris, France from July 26 through August 11. Approximately 10,500 athletes are expected to participate in 329 medal events involving 32 sports.” Breaking”, an activity that was once called breakdancing, is new to the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee added the “sport” to make the games more youthful and urban.

Hercules, the legendary Greek strongman, is said to have begun the games to honor the gods. The religious festival was held every four years in the southern Greek village of Olympia- named after Mt. Olympus, home of the Greek gods. It was intended to be a time when the Greek world participated in peaceful athletic competition rather than engaging in war.

The first recorded Olympics was held in 776 BC, although archaeological finds suggest that the site had been used as a sporting venue centuries before. Coroebus, a local cook, won the games’ only event: a 600 foot dash. A crown, made from the leaves of a sacred olive tree planted by Hercules, was given to the first Olympic champion.

The Olympics over time became the grandest spectacle of the ancient world. More sports were added, some of which are still fan favorites: boxing, wrestling, javelin throwing and the discus. Other sports have faded: chariot racing, foot races of different distances while clothed in full battle armor, and tug of war. The games were shut down by Byzantine Emperor Theodosius in 393 AD after a run of nearly 1200 years.

It would be 1500 years before another Olympic game was held. In 1896, 280 athletes (all men), representing twelve nations gathered in Athens, Greece to compete in the First Modern Olympic Games. Perhaps the favorite of the 43 events was the marathon footrace. The 40km run was not an event in the ancient Olympics. It was created to commemorate the run of a legendary Greek soldier named Pheidippides who fought in the Battle of Marathon against the Persians in 490 BC and then ran back to Athens to announce the news of the Greek’s great victory. Immediately after completing his task, Pheidippides collapsed and died of exhaustion. Fittingly, the winner of the first marathon was a Greek peasant named Spyridon Louis who covered the distance in 2 hours 58 minutes 50 seconds.

Baron Pierre Coubertin, a French educator and historian, organized the modern Olympic movement. He believed that world harmony would be promoted every four years when the youth of the world came together to compete in healthy sports competition. It was a noble, if not naive, vision as politics, violence and war have often infected the Olympics.

The Olympics were cancelled during both World Wars. The Americans boycotted the 1980 Moscow games after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Soviets retaliated by skipping the Las Angeles competition in 1984. During the Cold War years each event became a skirmish in the world wide struggle between communism and capitalism. The world was horrified when Islamic terrorists murdered 10 members of the Israeli team at Munich in 1972.

The 11th Olympiad, held in Berlin, Germany in 1936, was so overtly political that it has been called the “Nazi” Games. Berlin was awarded the bid before the Nazis took power. Hitler, who was opposed to the Olympics on principle, saw the opportunity they offered to showcase his regime’s claims of Aryan racial superiority.

Hitler didn’t count on Jesse Owens. Owens, the black track star from The Ohio State University, wrecked Hitler’s propaganda spectacle. Owens won gold medals in three races: the 100m, 200m, and the 4 x 100m, But it was the long jump event that got the most attention.

Owens had fouled on two jumps in the preliminaries. He stood on the brink of elimination from the event. An unlikely hero arose to help Owens. Luz Long, the favored German jumper, talked with his American competitor- advising on how to register a clean jump. The advice worked. Owens qualified.

The finals quickly became a contest between Luz and Owens. The lead changed several times: first Owens and then Luz. On the last jump, Owens blew past Luz’s measure, winning the gold medal and setting an Olympic record that wasn’t broken until 1960. They shook hands, hugged each other, and arm in arm, walked down the track – much to the consternation of the Nazis, These two men showed how sports could transcend politics.

The controversy surrounding the marathon run remains unresolved. The official Olympic record lists the gold and bronze medal winners as Japanese. However, both of the men were Korean. The Japanese government, which controlled Korea, forced the two men to run as Japanese. Both refused, but relented after the men’s families were threatened.

Sohn Kee-Chung and Nam Sung-yong ( Korean names) bowed their heads when the Japanese Anthem was played. Sohn told a reporter that the bow demonstrated not reverence for Japan, but the shame he felt for his country. For his outspokenness, Sohn was banned from competition. The South Korean government asked the International Olympic Committee to right the wrongs, but it refused. At the 1988 Seoul games, Sohn carried the Olympic torch into the stadium and lit the flame. It was some measure of justice for the patriotic seventy-three-year-old runner.

Can we expect politics to infect the Paris Games? Vladimir Putin is already flooding social media sites with his cyber bots, deep fakes, and other AI nasties to discredit the games as punishment for the West’s support for Ukraine. There will probably be other intrusions.

Let the games begin!