Peking host for rival Games?

Press, 27 July 1976, Page 16

Peking host for rival Games?

By

JOHN RODDA,

in the “Guardian,” London

The New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa and Taiwan’s non-recognition by Canada could in themselves produce an apartheid in sport and the games of the Third World. Jean-Claude Ganga, general secretary of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa and the man behind the boycott of the Olympics here admitted in Montreal when asked about the possibility of another Games: “Not yet, but in the future.” His friends in Peking though may decide that sooner rather than later, would be better and there are those in sport, opponents of apartheid in South Africa, who are tired of the tactics of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa and the South African non-racial open committee in their attacks on sporting contests. The two factors could bring a division. The tears and anger among the African athletes in the Olympic village and the repeated remarks, “Don’t quote me, but why should I train for four years and come here only to be told I can’t compete,” bring a reaction of sympathy but also one of hopelessness. The Africans already have a safety valve—the Commonwealth Games at Edmonton in two years’ time, where

their absence would be felt far more than it will be here. The African Games have also been arranged for July when the Commonwealth celebration is being held. There are meetings going on with the Commonwealth Games Federation to get them to move their dates in Edmonton so that African athletes can compete there as well as in Algiers but the negotiations depend at this point upon New Zealand’s expulsion. In sporting terms and particularly athletics New Zealand’s expulsion would be a blow to the Commonwealth meeting and almost as damaging as the loss of Africa. If the Federation says no to this pressure then Africans at least have something to offer their athletes elsewhere. While there are moves for Lord Killanin, the President of the International Olympic Committee, to visit Peking to talk about their application to compete in the Olympic Games, the Chinese may find it far more worth while for their relationships in Africa to start another movement.

Having been divorced from world sport for so long they could not hope to make the impact against their two big brothers United States and Russia in the way a country of 800 million people ought to do. Perhaps this is why their recent relationships with the Olympic Movement have returned almost to the vitriolic days of Avery Brundage —“that lackey of American Imperialism.” Would Peking in fact want to present its sporting face in four years’ time? Unless they can achieve in that period in sporting terms what the East Germans have been doing over the past 20 then there would be a succession of Chinese defeats. That attitude could motivate Peking to profit from the African boycott in Montreal. On the other side of the question there is likely to be a backlash among some white sportsmen and their administrators who may prefer to turn their backs on Africa and get on with the Games as in the old days before independence swept the African continent.