Olympics with reduced national emphasis

[hzn5pk]

What would the effects (positive and negative) be if there was less of a national emphasis at the Olympics?

There would be:
No national anthems on the podiums for the medal ceremony
No medal counts per country
The possibility that teams of mixed nationalities could exist.
Instead of making national teams, contestants would attend pre-qualifition tournaments hosted in the countries.

This would make a purer competition but the Olympics might not be as popular, might not be as commercially viable.

But then on the positive side, there might not have been a boycott of the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, which was a tragedy for the athletes who trained for four years to be told that they could not compete.

Any other thoughts?

 

[wilcoxchar]

There would probably be more international sporting events along the lines of the FIFA and Rugby World Cups to replace the void in competition in those areas. I could see a world tournament in basketball being set up as the sport spreads around the world.

 

[MacCaulay]

But then they wouldn't be Olympics, would they? That's the whole point: you're going and representing your country in competition.

 

[Alex Richards]

But then they wouldn't be Olympics, would they? That's the whole point: you're going and representing your country in competition.

Seconded. Even in the Ancient Olympics which were more invidually biased, it was seen as an alternative to war between competing cities (hence the Olympic Truce).

 

[Dialga]

I think people would quickly lose interest in the Olympics. One of the great pleasures of the Olympic Games (or other international competitions) is rooting for your home country.

 

[Hörnla]

With the prevalent attitudes of the 19th/20th century, I can hardly see how a "nationalization" of the Games could be avoided. Newspapers will always calculate the medals per country. People will always cheer for their kind, as well as in some cases of spectacular sportsmanship, for foreigners.

Also, the situation of the Cold War, when the Games were (ab?)used to testify the superiority of ideology, is hard to get around.

I agree that the Olympic Games would be far less prestigious. It migt be a lot harder to find cities which host the games. IIRC, this was already the case in some decades, very different from what we see nowadays. Thus, we would see a wholly different string of cities hosting the Games. They would have to be smaller and less expensive. Worst case scenario would reduce them to an appendix of World Fairs (as the Paris and St Louis Olympics).

If, under these circumstances, the Olympics survive until the 1980s or 1990s you will see a development which I find rather more disturbing than Olympia which teams by nations:

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATE TEAMS

Coca-Cola etc....

 

[Alex Richards]

Another thought:

The 1908 London Olympics pretty much saved the games after the disasters of Paris 1900 and particularly St. Louis 1904. Might this not happen without the national aspect?

 

[Brancaleone]

That's kinda the issue here; baron de Coubertin(hope I'm getting the name right in the latin alphabet) was a staunch nationalist and militarist, who would not even allow germans to participate in the 1896 olympics . So, the mood for intra-national competition had already been set from the beginning, to culminate in today's drug and genetics labs race . But even in "hollowed" antiquity, the olympics were all about national pride (the greek speaking world itself comprising of numerous city-states) and the olive laurel came with hefty material rewards for the winners from their home authorities