Despite Protest Rules, the Olympics Have Never Been Neutral

In February, when Nadir Yusuf crossed the finish line at the Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando, he placed 25th, missing the chance to qualify for the Games and go to Paris to compete. What was most notable about his race, however, was the last half mile. Yusuf was one of four runners who took a Palestinian flag from a spectator, holding it up as they finished the grueling race. Yusuf and his fellow runners, Julian Heninger, Aidan Reed, and Jesse Joseph, were hardly the first athletes to use the Olympic platform to promote a cause they cared deeply about, nor will they be the last.

Since the 1955 Olympic Charter, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has sought to govern demonstrations and protest at the Games, which is now known as Rule 50 in its bylaws. While the wording, scope, and punishment around protest at the Games has since evolved, athlete protest has recently taken on renewed importance, and in recent years athletes have increasingly pushed the IOC to reevaluate Rule 50.

Their success has been mixed. Despite allowing small changes, the IOC has continued to cling to the idea that the Olympics are “neutral” and transcend politics. Yet, the history of Rule 50 at the Games demonstrates the limits of that myth, which is especially important at the Paris Olympics where contentious geopolitical issues from Ukraine to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are already animating athletes and spectators alike.

The modern Olympics date back to 1896 when Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin played a critical role in reviving the ancient Games. Among other ideas, de Coubertin stressed the Olympics as a means to create cross-cultural understanding and promote peace among nations. This foundational ideology has shaped the ethos of the Olympic Spirit.

However, from the Olympics’ earliest days, these ideals constituted a foundational myth, not a reality. The Games have regularly been used politically by nations and athletes alike. This impulse was evident at the Olympic Games in Berlin 1936, where the Nazis aimed to use the Games to shore up domestic support and end the regime’s isolation. Despite attempts among athletes and Jewish and African American organizations to boycott the Games, Hitler’s regime further used the Olympics to promote his destructive vision of Aryan racial superiority and physical prowess.

Read More: The IOC Wants the Olympics to Be Apolitical. That’s Impossible

At the time, Avery Brundage was the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Brundage had participated at the 1912 Olympics in the pentathlon and then spent his career climbing the ranks of sports administration. He fought strenuously for the ideals of de Coubertin’s vision, including the neutrality myth of the Olympics.

During the 1936 Olympics, Brundage vehemently opposed a U.S. boycott of the event, even labeling Black Americans who considered protesting the Games due to Hitler’s policies as “un-American agitators.” His influence held, and the U.S. sent its delegation to Berlin.

While African American athlete Jesse Owens’ feats on the track are remembered as a symbolic protest against Hitler’s Aryan theories, Brundage helped to block explicit protests so that the Games could remain “neutral.” He bent over backwards to make the U.S. team palatable to Nazi Germany, agreeing to keep Owens away from Hitler and even removing two Jewish sprinters from a relay team. Ironically, by participating in rather than boycotting the Games, Brundage and other administrators promoted their own political cause of Olympics “neutrality.”

When Brundage rose to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee in 1952, his philosophies promised to shape the entire organization. At the time, the Cold War threatened global peace and stability, and Brundage amplified de Coubertin’s vision of the Games as removed from international politics. Media outlets had portrayed the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as a competition between communist and non-communist countries, which the IOC felt threatened the Olympic spirit. Members of the committee debated remedies that even included removing the national flags of winners on the podium, and instead using a special victory flag or the Olympic flag.

Read More: The Dark History of the Olympic Torch Relay

While that proposal never came to pass, the IOC under Brundage did amend the Charter. By 1955, it included a statement against any sort of demonstrations at the Games, requiring host cities to bar political protests throughout the sports grounds. Three years later, the wording was amended to include “political meetings or demonstrations.” By 1966, with the war in Vietnam raging, the IOC required potential host cities bar politics during the Games and in the weeks before and after.

The 1968 athlete protest at the Mexico City Olympics proved to be a pivotal moment. When John Carlos and Tommie Smith staged several protests on the podium after the 200-meter race—most visibly by raising their gloved hands in the Black power salute—they presented a new challenge to the IOC. Brundage, still IOC president, famously led the heavy-handed response to the athletes, requiring that they be suspended from the Games and banned from the Olympic Village.

To the world watching, the athletes’ actions that year may have seemed like an anomaly, controlled and mitigated by firm punishment. But athletes continued to protest years later. At the 1972 Olympics, U.S. runners Vincent Matthews and Wayne Collett, who won gold and silver in the 400-meter race, refused to stand in attention during the medal ceremony. Brundage called the action a “disgusting display” and banned the pair from further Olympic competition, including the upcoming 4x400 relay.

It was this event that compelled the IOC to make a further change to its charter. In the closest forerunner to what we now know as Rule 50, the 1975 Charter stated that “every kind of demonstration or propaganda, whether political, religious or racial, in the Olympic areas is forbidden.” The new language included not just political but also “racial” demonstration, a clear response to the Black athletes who, in 1968 and 1972, boldly used the Olympic platform to amplify their message of racial justice.

In the 45 years since, Rule 50 has remained mostly intact. Yet, the 2020 Olympics—in the context of renewed calls for racial justice as part of the Black Lives Matter movement—offered a changed landscape.

In the lead-up to Tokyo, the IOC launched a global consultation on Rule 50, asking athletes across its 206 National Olympic Committees (NOC) to provide input on the global governing body’s approach to athlete demonstrations. Some, including Russia and China, and the IOC’s own Athletes’ Commission, endorsed the rule.

Read More: Despite IOC Restrictions, Team USA Athletes Are Protesting at the Tokyo Olympics

But others offered harsh criticisms. For example, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s Team USA Council on Racial and Social Justice argued that Rule 50 targets “historically marginalized and minoritized populations within the Olympic and Paralympic community, most notably Black athletes and athletes of color, who have competed…against the backdrop of various social injustices and turmoil.” The Council noted that “the ability to stay neutral in times of oppression is an expression of privilege that is granted only to those in whose image the Games were created.”

The IOC’s vision of Olympic sport as a neutral spectacle wouldn’t hold.

In its published guidelines ahead of the 2020/21 Tokyo Games, the IOC Athletes Commission made concessions regarding athletes’ ability to protest at the Games. It would now allow protest on the field of play prior to the start of competition, while still banning protests in the most contested spaces such as the podium or active field of play. Even so, the IOC took a more moderate approach to the enforcement of those rules. For instance, it did not punish American Raven Saunders, who protested systemic and intersectional oppression from the podium, or German field hockey player Nike Lorenz, who competed wearing a rainbow band in support of LGBTQ+ people around the world.

The IOC’s lax response to breaches of Rule 50 in Tokyo illustrates new ambivalence about athlete protests and demonstrations. Rule 50 still stands in the Charter, but its interpretation continues to evolve. As we turn our attention to the athletic feats in Paris, it remains to be seen how the world’s athletes will choose to express themselves in support of social justice and political causes. What we know, however, is that on and off the field, athletes have, for many decades challenged the founding myths of Olympics neutrality, and seem poised to continue that fight.

Debbie Sharnak is Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Rowan University and the author of Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay. Yannick Kluch is Assistant Professor of Sport Management in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism and Affiliate Faculty at the European Union Center and Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

Correction, July 30: The original version of this story misspelled an author's last name in the byline. It is Kluch, not Kluge.