Munich, Moscow, now Beijing - to boycott or not

While many Olympic Games sports also have a regular world championship and annual circuits with significant prizemoney, they often still depend on public funding that is inspired by global medals, particularly Olympic Games which drives funding models in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Even in the US, where the government plays a much lesser role, the chair of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee rightfully points out that pressure on corporate sponsors can affect athletes and related programs given companies provide the bulk of financial support in the longer term, not just for specific events.

In the end, however, all Western actors, whether they be governments, corporations, federations, participants and spectators, do have the option of recognising that sport and politics can mix when the issues warrant such action.

Of course, some decisions may require political leadership. With a recent US poll finding that 49% supported a potential boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics because of China's human rights abuses, with 46% opposing it, it could be that the US President leads a boycott as it did in 1980 when 61 other countries supported President Carter's decision, said to be one of the least popular decisions he ever made.

With the Biden administration during April 2021 talking with allies about a joint approach to address complaints of China's human rights abuses, with the US State Department not ruling out an Olympic boycott, a CCP Foreign Ministry spokesperson warned of an unspecified "robust Chinese response" to a potential Olympics boycott.

Given the seriousness of the CCP question, however, I argue that Western societies have to decide one way or another whether they want to participate in sporting events run by the CCP which is only too happy to repeat the age-old argument that sport and politics should not mix.

My personal position is that the separation of democracies from authoritarian regimes should include sport, along with economics, despite the short-term pain.