The Olympic Peace Tradition and the 2016 Games Candidate Cities

In a few hours, the International Olympic Committee will announce the host of the 2016 Games chosen from four finalists: Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. The two front runners are Chicago and Rio, with Rio having the significant advantage of the Games never having being held in South America, and Chicago with the star power advantages of President Obama and Oprah Winfrey. However, there is also an unacknowledged impetus bringing Chicago ahead of Rio rooted in the origins of the games themselves. 

The Olympic peace tradition was renewed in 2006 with the U.N.’s Olympic Resolution, by which 179 nations agreed to halt hostilities during the Winter Games in Turin, Italy, that year. Legend has it that late in the 9th century BCE, the king of a Greek city-state visited the famed Delphic Oracle with the aim of ending altogether the seemingly interminable hostilities between his compatriots. The priestesses advised him to establish a special truce between local rulers like himself, a bold and unparalleled venture in which he was ultimately successful. The Ancient Greek Olympics are also the origins of among the longast-lasting peace symbols, olive branches.

The terms of the truce provided that, every four years, all fighting between Greeks would cease from twelve days before until twelve days after a sporting competition celebrating the gods, in which all Greeks could participate and travel safely to and from. On this premise, the first Olympic Games were held in 776 BCE at Olympia, a central city named after gods’ dwelling. In time, the Games included literary competitions, diplomatic meetings and trade summits. The original Olympic Games were one of the few ways Ancient Greeks made and maintained inter-polis peace, substituting war for sport, an integral if often understated component of the modern Olympic movement.

The olive-branch crown given to victors was chosen to represent the wisdom of the goddess Athena in giving the plant to the Greeks, and was uniquely suited to represent peace and social concord because olive trees required one or two generations to bear fruit, which assumes a stable state able to withstand external and internal threats. So the point of retelling the story of the Olympics as a historical guide to the 2016 choice is that picking Chicago would give the U.S. one more reason to end its current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by then (as if it needed any more) so as to create an Olympian future for us all.

For more stories in the history of peace and peacemaking around the world, check out Antony Adolf's Peace: A World History. (Note: Antony Adolf is of Greek heritage and and lives in Chicago, and hopes that whichever city gets the bid will keep up the Olympic peace tradition.)