SINCE Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens in 1936, American sprinters raised gloved Black Power fists in 1968, and the tit-for-tat boycotts in 1980 and 1984, politics and the Olympic games have been intertwined.
Even as far back as 1920, the decision to host the games in Antwerp was not unrelated to the fact that the city was the German headquarters in occupied Belgium throughout the First World War.
The athletes in the main just say that politics doesn'
t matter and they just want to compete, except that as Chris Hoy has discovered, with symbols of national pride, politics and politicians will never be far away.
And so at this febrile time in Scottish politics it was inevitable that the triumph of a Scottish competitor was bound to assume a wider significance. Chris Hoy's declaration that he was proud to have represented Britain and that the notion of a separate Scottish team at this time was "ridiculous" has sparked a predictable row, as has Gordon Brown's desire to see Great Britain represented at football in the 2012 London games.
The answer to the latter question is relatively easy to solve; don't have football at the Olympics. The Beautiful Game has a jamboree every two years with the World and European nations cups and the vast majority of the world's best players don't play at the Olympics anyway because the competition is restricted to under 23s. In any case the petulant behaviour of players and managers displayed week in week out in the not-so beautiful game hardly fits in with Olympic ideals.
(And while they're at it the IOC could dump tennis which also has its own showpieces – there's no clamour for golf to be included, after all.)
As for a separate Scottish team, the answer is also straightforward – if Scotland isn't an independent nation there's no need for an independent team. If nothing else, athletes are competitive people; the accolade of representing Great Britain at the Olympic Games is the pinnacle of their careers and the ability to train alongside the best sports people in the UK brings out the best in them.
In the world of rugby union, the top players proudly pull on the Scottish jersey every season yet are no less proud if they pull on a Lions shirt every four years. And for that matter, so too are players from the Republic of Ireland. So while Scottish Athletes get to represent Scotland every four years at the Commonwealth games and Great Britain at the Olympics they seem to have the best of both worlds.
Claims that more Scottish athletes would reach the top if only they had their own world class facilities cannot be proved, not if Rangers and Celtic are anything to go by. And can anyone point to a Scot who would have done better in Beijing under the Saltire?
