In new interview, Professor Chidi Odinkalu explores the Olympics as sport, spectacle, and political arena
In February 2026, athletes and leaders from around the world will gather in northern Italy for the Winter Olympic Games. The games are more than a sporting event. From athlete activism to diplomatic boycotts, the Olympics often reflect broader geopolitical currents and offer opportunities for statements on the world stage.
Fletcher Professor Chidi Odinkalu thinks and writes frequently about the relationship between sports and society. An avid sports fan with a deep knowledge of Olympic history, he spoke to Fletcher for an interview on the meaning of the games. Watch and read below.
The Fletcher School: What makes the Olympic Games so special?
Professor Chidi Odinkalu: Sports, at all levels, capture the imagination. The Olympics test the limits of human attainment. This is reflected in the motto of the Olympic movement: higher, faster, stronger, together.
Human attainment in sports is not limited by race, creed, or gender. Every human stands a chance of competing and winning, given equal opportunities. We can’t say that about many other fields of attainment.
But are the Olympics really a level playing field for all nations?
In sports, magnificent things can happen, notwithstanding some of the disparities that seem apparent. Look at the way the Caribbean islands have taken over the sprint events in athletics, which people assumed was the domain of the United States. Even in basketball, the U.S. has been challenged at the Olympics.
Traditional assumptions can be shattered. The Olympic movement originally excluded women, a policy it ended in the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928. Better controls for doping have equalized performance, after doping clearly did skew results during earlier periods of Olympic history. All things considered, the field is being leveled in ways that were not the case before.
The Winter Games, in particular, seem suited to northern countries.
For obvious reasons, tropical countries are not major competitors in the Winter Olympics. There's a limit to how much snow you can harvest in the middle of the tropics.
I come from Nigeria. I was born and raised in the tropical rainforest. But I’ve followed the Winter Olympics for as long as I can remember. I’m amazed by ski jumping - the ability to defy gravity for that long has me marveling. And everyone I know loves figure skating. The contest between Michelle Kwan, who is a graduate of The Fletcher School, and Nancy Kerrigan held the attention of the world for as long as it lasted.
Many warm weather countries do participate in the Winter Olympics though. Türkiye was the first country in the Middle East to compete, and Israel and Saudi Arabia now compete as well. Kenya famously sent a team to the Winter Olympics to test endurance performance under different weather circumstances. I think it's fair to say that ideas and assumptions about who can participate in the Winter Olympics are beginning to be broken.
Are the Olympics a diplomatic event?
Every contemporary Olympics has been a diplomatic hotbed. If you go back to the first modern Olympiad, it was held in Athens in April of 1896, on the 75th anniversary of the Greek rebellion against the Ottomans.
As you go forward in Olympic history, you see many themes of global peace and diplomacy. After the Second World War, the structures of global governance were designed by the victors, excluding Italy, Japan, and Germany. Each country then used the Olympics to signify their reintegration into the global order.
Italy joined the United Nations in 1955. It bid for the Olympics in 1955 and hosted the Rome Games in 1960. Japan joined the U.N. in 1956, got its Olympic bid approved in 1959, and hosted the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Germany planned for the Munich Olympics of 1972 to be its promenade on the way to joining the U.N. in 1973, though the Munich Games are more remembered today for the tragic massacre by Black September.
The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics were China’s coming out party to the world, while the country was achieving the greatest program of poverty alleviation in history. When Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics in 2022, the focus was on health diplomacy, demonstrating that China could move beyond the COVID pandemic.
Of course, there are also negative examples. Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea only four days after hosting the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Berlin Olympics for the purposes of antisemitism, Aryanism, and Nazi propaganda. The feats of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Games gave lie to all of that. So while countries may set up an Olympic Games with their own objectives, the games present an unpredictable diplomatic circumstance.
What are the diplomatic themes of the 2026 Olympic Games?
The Milano Cortina Olympics have become an opportunity for environmental diplomacy. This is the first time that two cities are co-hosting, which is partly a response to criticism that the Olympics can damage the environment of host cities. The idea that one city, no matter how big, can host an Olympic Games is now outdated, considering the strain on community resources.
Another emerging theme concerns the reaction of Europeans in the aftermath of the dispute between Europe and the United States over Greenland.
If the Olympics are a diplomatic event, are athletes diplomats?
More than 50 years later, the 1968 Summer Olympics are best remembered for Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute. Athletes realize that peak performance and the global spotlight give them a standing to spread messages. Muhammed Ali was one of the first Olympians to articulate this, protesting the Vietnam War draft in the years after winning gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
Another example I like to give is Nadia Comăneci. My generation remembers her for scoring a perfect ten at Olympic gymnastics in 1976. But Comăneci defected from Romania in November 1989. The same month, the Berlin Wall fell. One month later, Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was toppled and executed. Comăneci’s defection was a sign that the communist order was collapsing in Eastern Europe. People may not see these dots at the time they are happening, but in hindsight it becomes very easy to connect them.
Do diplomatic boycotts of the Olympics work?
The boycott of 1976 had far-reaching consequences, because it forced the question of South Africa’s participation in the global order.
South Africa had already been excluded from the Olympics since 1964. But New Zealand was included, and their rugby team had recently played a match against South Africa’s white-only team on a global tour. Many African countries, along with a few Arab neighbors, boycotted the 1976 Montreal Olympics to protest New Zealand’s participation, forcing an international dialogue on South African apartheid. This resulted in the 1979 U.N. Declaration on Apartheid in Sport.
The 1980 Olympic boycott was a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Many commentators framed this in the context of the global ideological and political battles of the Cold War. But it could quite easily be viewed as reflecting a commitment against colonialism, occupation, and aggression. From that perspective, it can be seen as a constructive boycott.
This will be the first games since Kirsty Coventry became President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Is it meaningful for the Olympics to have an African leader?
Kirsty Coventry is not only the first African head of the IOC, but the first woman. She is a woman, African, and white. When you see Kirsty Coventry, you might think she is from North America or Europe, before you realize she is a swimmer from Zimbabwe, who served as a minister in the government of Emmerson Mnangagwa.
This helps make the point that attainment in sport does not have to be unilinear or fit any assumptions we make about humanity. Sports can break barriers that would ordinarily be unbridgeable.
What do you expect to experience at Fletcher during the Olympics?
The global sporting events, from the World Cup to the Olympics, have been among the best moments for me at Fletcher. I’ve met some of my best friends at the communal gatherings around sports. Sports bring out the whole community, whether staff, faculty, or students, with their natural, unconstrained human personalities.
Every one of these events brings excitement to Fletcher. We just had the African Cup of Nations football tournament. It was great to see the Moroccans, Senegalese, Ghanaians, Rwandans, and Nigerians all taking pictures together, celebrating together, and crying together. I’m really looking forward to the Olympics on campus.