Competitors should be able to “take the knee” on the podium at the postponed Tokyo Olympics, following an outcry over moves to ban protests, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said yesterday.
Coe, who was inspecting the national stadium where Olympic track and field is to be contested next year, said that any protests must be carried out with “respect” for other competitors.
A ban on demonstrations at the Olympics, issued in January, has come under extra scrutiny since the Black Lives Matter movement flooded sports following George Floyd’s death in US police custody in May.
Photo: AFP
“I’ve been very clear that if an athlete wishes to take the knee on a podium then I’m supportive of that,” Coe told reporters in Tokyo.
“The athletes are a part of the world and they want to reflect the world they live in,” he added. “And that is for me perfectly acceptable, as long as it is done with complete respect for other competitors, which I think most athletes properly understand.”
The comments by Coe, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member and touted as a potential future leader of the body, echo his remarks last month to the Times, when he also supported respectful protest and said it was impossible to “separate sport from social and cultural issues.”
The IOC issued updated guidelines on athlete activism in January, outlawing any kind of demonstration on the medal podium or field of play.
It has hinted it might be willing to soften its stance, and is backing discussions led by the Olympic Athletes Commission to consider ways of allowing “dignified” support for anti-racism initiatives.
IOC president Thomas Bach in June said that the commission was exploring different ways “Olympic athletes can express their support for the principles enshrined in the Olympic charter.”
The act of placing one knee on the ground in protest was made famous by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during pre-game renditions of the US national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality against blacks and other minorities.
He was ostracized by the league and even criticized by US President Donald Trump, but in June the NFL sanctioned “peaceful protests” and world football’s governing body FIFA has urged leagues to use “common sense” when deciding whether to discipline political activism.
In June, US athletes and 1968 Mexico Games icon John Carlos, who was famously kicked out of the event for raising his fist in a black power salute, called on the IOC to scrap the ban on protests.
“Athletes will no longer be silenced,” they wrote.
The issue of competitor activism is among the many thorny questions facing organizers of the Games, which are now set to open a year late on July 23 next year after the unprecedented postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As questions hover about holding the Olympics during a pandemic, organizers are working on countermeasures they hope will convince athletes, spectators and the Japanese public that the Games can go on.
Coe said that he was confident the event would be possible.
“There may have to be some adaptations, there may need to be some differences, but I’m absolutely convinced that even under those circumstances they will still be a fantastic Games,” he said.
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