The most important thing about the Olympic Games is sporting achievement. It inspires, entertains and rallies people together. Even politicians know that. However, on the side there are some interesting points to observe, especially for politicians.
Politicians often wrap themselves in flags, as though the flag’s uncompromising colours are a symbol of non-negotiable identity. In the Olympics, however, identities often prove to be more flexible.
For example, only this week, Cyprus was bursting with celebration when one of its athletes, Pavlos Kontides, came in second for sailing. As the hero of the day put it, he may have won silver but it was in gold letters that he wrote his name in Cypriot sporting history.
However, I was intrigued to learn from the sporting write-ups that Cyprus has only been sending athletes to the Olympics since the Moscow edition of 1980. A historical check showed that the first athlete from Cyprus, Anastasios Andreou, participated in 1896. But that was under the Greek flag.
If I am not mistaken, it would seem that Cyprus participated under the Greek flag throughout its years as a British colony and even through its first two decades of independence! It may have been Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974 that crystallised the sense of Cypriot identity enough to lead the nation to compete under its own flag.
But, then, politicians are used to being indebted to their enemies!
My attention was drawn to flags when I noticed, not for the first time, the participation of athletes from “Great Britain”. They participate under the Union Jack and although Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) generally should not be confused with the United Kingdom, which includes Northern Ireland, the Olympic team represents the full UK.
At first I thought this was odd, given that England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales participate under their own separate flags in football competitions like the World Cup. Then I found that it was more common for the UK to be represented as a whole in international team events.
Cricket is one exception because it is largely an English obsession. Football is another exception since, being “home nations”, they have one vote each at the FIFA congress. Some commentators also suspect that the smaller football associations are afraid that fielding one team for the UK would mean that they might often not have a single player in the team.
At the Olympic Games, the Union Jack also represents all the crown dependencies and most of the overseas territories. However, at the Commonwealth Games, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and Sark compete as separate teams. Presumably, in that setting, the prestige lies in the former power of the Empire fielding as many teams as possible.
In other words, national identity never goes away but there is variety in how national honour and advantage is calculated. Sometimes, the flag of honour represents an international union; sometimes it is happy to divide up into something sub-national.
Does this say something about all nations? I spotted an athlete flying under the flag of Guam, which is a territory of the US but sends its own team. However, the French overseas territories do not compete under any flag other than that of France. Martinique, Guadaloupe, French Guyana and the rest of those territories are not permitted to send their own teams. Their athletes, like the Olympians from Martinique, who won a handful of medals during the last two editions, win and lose for France.
Does flexibility about flags confirm the old stereotypes about the pragmatic Americans, undogmatic Brits and unbending French republicans? Maybe, although it’s difficult to see the French attitude as unpragmatic, whether on the field or off. What I see, at any rate, is that even pragmatism is coloured by national character.
The flags we do not see, the flags that are not there and that, moreover, we cannot imagine being there, bear an important message too.
It is evident that the larger the country, the greater the chance of bagging medals. There is a bigger pool of talent to choose from. There are greater economies of scale in investing in sporting achievement. It is no coincidence that the largest, most prosperous nations tend to win most medals.
If we added up the medals of the individual member states of the European Union we would come up with a decent number of medals. But could Europeans countenance competing under one flag for the sake of sharing more medals between themselves?
Somehow, I doubt the time is ripe enough for a team competing under an EU flag to win as much enthusiastic support as a smaller national team with a much lower probability of winning anything.
That is another “flag lesson” for us politicians to absorb.
Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.