Living Lula’s Passion?: The Politics of Rio 2016

Abstract

Rio has a lot to win from the Games … And the Olympic movement has a lot to win from Rio as well.¹ According to Tomlinson, ‘the allegedly pure Olympic ideal has always been moulded into the image of the time and place of the particular Olympiad or Games’.² The contextuality of the Olympic Games, to which Tomlinson referred, is particularly evident in the way that virtually every modern games has been immersed within, and simultaneously an agent of, the domestic and international politics of the moment. Despite masquerading behind a veneer of political neutrality - originally advanced by Coubertin et al. as a cornerstone of the Olympic movement - the politically motivated actions of the national organising committees, and at times the events which enveloped succeeding Olympic Games, have rendered apoliticism little more than an anachronistic part of the Olympics’ brand identity.³ While discussions of the politicisation of the contemporary Olympics routinely default to the monumentally politicised Olympic spectacles - such as Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980, Salt Lake City 2002 and Beijing 2008, to name but a few - it is our contention that analysis of less overtly politicised games is equally instructive. It is this assumption that drew us to the phenomenon of Rio 2016.