The Politics of Perception at the Winter Olympic Games

The Olympic Committee of Israel (OCI) disqualified the national bobsled team for unsportsmanlike conduct. As details emerge, it becomes clear that good intentions, the desire to elevate an alternate teammate, one from a minority background, led to a breakdown in the team’s ethics. As a group, the team elected to fake illness and falsified affidavits, not to medal or even place any higher in competition, but to demonstrate the tapestry of Israeli life in one of the rare opportunities Israel had to do so at the Winter Olympics. Politics seeped into the team’s decision-making process, and in doing so, they have scuttled their chance to complete their event.

This year, Israel qualified to compete in the bobsledding events for the first time ever, a historic achievement in and of itself. At a time when Jewish voices are being pushed off the World stage, taking up that space is an assertion of Zionism. It’s clear from the vocal social media presence of the team captain, AJ Edelman, that he believed so as well.

The team seemingly decided to push the envelope one more time and acted to substitute an athlete who would have been the first Israeli-Druze Olympian to ever compete on the ice. If they could have managed to do this through appropriate channels, it could have made history doubly so, a refutation to antizionists worldwide and a heroic story that would bring pride to Israel’s minority populations. Within the five-man team, it would have also been an opportunity to let every man, regardless of his origin, feel the heat of competition and the glory of the game. We won’t ever know for certain which stake was the overriding one: the national or the personal, but they certainly both existed. What is certain is that their participation in the Games was already a groundbreaking development in any case.

Instead of glory, this has become an embarrassment. In bobsledding, there is no such thing as playing it fast and loose on the ice, but the team decided to do just that off the track, where the stakes are no less heightened. From the burglary of their apartments in the Olympic Village, to the casual, alienating language of the commentators, Israeli athletes at large and the bobsled team in particular have been hounded about the Games. The OCI’s decision to suspend the team is aligned with the spirit and the ethics of the Games. The team’s conduct was not, and worse, will lend credence to the antisemitic beliefs that have hung over them like specters throughout their time in Milan.

When faced with the prospect of a low score, the team decided to go for a different kind of victory, that of narrative and public perception, in effect, politics. The Olympic Games were reestablished in 1896 in the swell of liberalism, internationalism, and the gymnasium movement. The goal of political neutrality, lofty and, admittedly, at times unattainable, is not just a topline commitment, but percolates throughout each discipline and each athlete’s behavior individually. One can wish to be a great Olympian and a great citizen, but there is something of a contradiction between them, especially when gold, silver, and bronze are already off the table. For Israeli athletes on the global stage, we can expect to see the consequences of that wobbling integrity today.