Politics
and sports
will always mix.
Te x t Rachel Genevieve Chia
Photos various contributors
Or, at least, that’s one view Indonesia’s
Sukarno stood behind at all costs. “Let us
declare frankly that sport has something to
do with politics,” the former President said in
1962, when the Southeast Asian country was
expelled from the Olympic movement after
Israeli and Taipei athletes were refused travel
visas to the Jakarta Asiad. A fervent Sukarno
would later go on to create his own games,
which “sent shockwaves through international
sport”, Susan Brownell describes in East Plays
West: Sport and the Cold War (2007).
Sport, arguably, did start out with ties to
warfare. Researchers posit that early sports
served two uses: entertainment and military
training. For the latter, individual events could
have been an easy way to determine which
men were in the best fighting shape, while
team sports could have taught our ancestors
the value of cooperation among soldiers in
ancient battles.
Even credit for creating the earliest version
of Asia’s games must go to politics: The
vigorous promotion of muscular Christianity
that fuelled the global rise of the Young Men’s
Christian Association (YMCA) contributed
feature | aSian gameS
right Philippine
President Corazon
Aquino lights the flame
at the Southeast Asian
Games – a regional
sports meet – in 1991