With chaos surrounding the Bahrain Grand Prix here are half a dozen examples of governing bodies ignoring the outside world
1) Italy's first World Cup (1934)
Say what you like about Fifa; it's been a consistent shower. These days quite happy to select World Cup hosts with questionable human-rights records – try being a LGBT supporter in Qatar at the 2022 tournament – it was equally content to make morally dubious picks back in the day. The infant Fifa's first choice as a World Cup host, in 1928 for the 1930 staging, had been a progressive one: the up-and-coming port of Montevideo in briskly developing Uruguay. So it came as something of a depressing blow when, as a result of eight uneasy meetings between Fifa delegates, the second World Cup was eventually awarded to Italy.
Italy had been under Benito Mussolini's fascist yoke for more than a decade, the brownshirts running wild, the state picking off anyone whose face didn't fit. It therefore came as no surprise when Fifa was rewarded for its choice with an exceptionally grim tournament. Setting the tone, the opening match was played in the Stadio Nazionale del Partito Nazionale Fascista. Italy's 7-1 victory over the US was celebrated with a series of stiff-arm salutes in the direction of Mussolini, sitting in the stands, his bulbous head crammed into a ludicrous white sailing cap.
The hosts were permitted to pick four Argentinians and a Brazilian, previously capped by the countries of their birth, Fifa turning a blind eye to the dubious legitimacy of the selection. Italy – their shirts resplendent with the fasces, Mussolini's fascist symbol of choice – were also allowed to hoof the opposition hither and yon, thanks to some laughably lenient refereeing. Spain were reduced to seven men through injury during the quarter-final, while fellow finalists Czechoslovakia were subject to a barrage of waist-high tackles and punches to the gut. Italy prevailed, and were rewarded with a gold championship cup "so big that it took four men to carry it and its pedestal on to the field". Mussolini handed out the prizes to his fellow countrymen – and a special cup to the German team, who prominently joined the celebrations-stroke-rally despite coming third.
2) The Berlin Olympic Games (1936)
In fairness to the International Olympic Committee, nobody knew that Germany – who were awarded the 1936 Games in 1931 – would fall into the hands of fascist dictator Adolf Hitler two years later. However, that's about as much leniency as it deserves. The IOC had three years to make other plans upon Hitler seizing control, but elected to sit on its hands instead. Ostentatiously so: in 1934, the IOC president, Henri de Baillet-Latour, and the future president Avery 'Female Athletes Are Ineffective And Unpleasing' Brundage, went to Germany to sniff out alleged anti-Semitic racism. The evidence presented was deemed insufficient for this pair of clowns, who further argued that even if Jews were being discriminated against, it was a matter for Germany to address behind closed doors, and not one that should concern the IOC.
With Hitler later brazenly making it clear that no Jewish athletes would be part of the German team, the US seriously considered boycotting the event. Only disingenuous campaigning by the wretched Brundage – who having cosied up to the Führer, contended that each nation had the right to pick whoever they wanted, and that the IOC should not get involved in a piffling "Jew-Nazi altercation" – ensured the States agreed to send over a team. Even then, Brundage could not find the strength within himself to keep his neck from yakking: during the Games, he put pressure on the US coaches to remove two Jewish runners from the 4x100m team, ensuring Hitler would not be embarrassed should they win.
Pleasingly, the Games proved to be a thundering PR disaster for Hitler, with Brundage inadvertently doing his bit to kibosh Adolf's gig. One of the men ordered to replace his Jewish team-mates in the US 4x100m team was Jesse Owens; his gold in that event would be one of four meaty slaps in Hitler's supposedly superior Aryan face. Though that's not how the IOC saw it. As the world skidded towards war, erstwhile president Pierre de Coubertin spoke of the "imposing success of the Berlin Games", which were, he argued, "illuminated by a Hitlerian force and discipline". The IOC, populated by some out-and-proud Nazis, then awarded the 1940 Games to a similarly belligerent Japan – whose government later withdrew, considering the whole affair a bit internationalist for their liking.
3) The Mexico Olympic Games (1968)
On the morning of Thursday 3 October 1968, the Guardian ran a front-page story concerning some worrying news ahead of the Mexico Olympics, scheduled to start 10 days later. The Mexican government had ratcheted up the charges for satellite links, forcing the European Broadcasting Union to pull out of their TV contract. It looked like there would be no pictures for the 350m viewers across the continent. Bah. But also, at the very bottom of the column, there was a snap of late news: "Troops opened fire and moved in with fixed bayonets on 15,000 students as they staged an anti-government rally in Mexico City tonight. Although most shots were fired in the air, at least two people fell to the ground."
The following day's paper put things into proper perspective, with the order of the two stories flipped around. The Mexicans had dropped their demand for higher transmission fees, coming to an agreement with Europe's broadcasters. But that was now an afterthought, tucked away at the bottom of the page. Because would they have a Games to cover? Most of the shots at the anti-government rally had not been fired into the air; up to 500 students and trade unionists were feared dead, slain by troops acting on orders from the government. Surely the Olympics could not go ahead? "None of the demonstrations or violence has at any time been directed against the Olympic Games," insisted our old pal Avery Brundage, now president of the IOC. The Olympics were, he said, "a veritable oasis in a troubled world". The massacre, he opined, plucking an old favourite from the bag, was "an internal affair".
The Guardian's legendary correspondent John Rodda, who had been caught up in the crossfire and was lucky to escape with his life, considered the reaction "extraordinary". He noted that a statement swallowed whole by the IOC from the Mexican president, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, blaming "agitators" for events and denying any machine-gun fire had taken place, was simply untrue, and that "extremists could well look to the Games" as a result. Not for the first time, the IOC looked the other way, declaring itself an apolitical organisation. Another barefaced lie: two weeks later, it was quick enough to encourage Tommie Smith and John Carlos to leave the Games, and the country, in the wake of their famous black power podium salute.
4) Argentina's World Cup (1978)
While there had been 10 days between the Tlatelolco massacre and the 1968 Olympics, Fifa had nearly two years to work out whether to reallocate the 1970 World Cup, which had been awarded to Mexico in 1964. Doing what comes naturally, they did bugger all, other than avert their eyes. It proved to be a trial run for events in Argentina eight years later.
Fifa had awarded Argentina the World Cup in 1966, so can hardly be expected to have foreseen the military coup that led to General Jorge Videla deposing Isabel Perón in March 1976. Even so, when Amnesty International publicised the new junta's predilection for making dissidents disappear by pushing them out of planes into the River Plate, there was still more than a year in which Fifa could act by moving the tournament to a democracy. It didn't bother.
"It is quite impossible," ran an editorial in the Buenos Aires Herald just before the World Cup began, "to pretend human rights are respected in this country … In many cases, after two years without a single clue as to the whereabouts of a missing son, daughter, husband or wife, relatives have given up hope. They are simply asking whether the person they seek is alive or dead. It is not too much to ask." In football's corridors of power, it clearly was.
5) The Springboks in New Zealand (1981)
The New Zealand prime minister, Robert Muldoon, had helped to draft the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement, when all Commonwealth countries pledged their commitment to opposing apartheid in South Africa by discouraging all sporting contact. But – as the Conservative premier went on national television in 1981 to point out, with the all-white Springboks on their way to visit the All Blacks at the invitation of the New Zealand Rugby Union – it was up to each government to work out how best to fulfil this commitment. Muldoon's position of choice was on the fence: his government weren't in the business of withholding visas and passports of sportsmen for political reasons. He'd ask the rugby administrators nicely if the tour could possibly be scrapped, but that was all.
The request was denied and the tour went ahead. "The New Zealand Rugby Union council is behaving in an irresponsible way and will cause quite unnecessary trouble," opined a leader in the Guardian, who had it pretty much spot on. The entire tour was played against the backdrop of attritional battles between anti-apartheid demonstrators and riot police. Two matches were abandoned, one after 200 protestors staged an on-pitch sit-in, having liberally scattered tacks over the turf. The three Tests between New Zealand and South Africa went ahead, though, and a tight series was only settled in time added on for stoppages at the end of the third match, New Zealand's Allan Hewson kicking a long-range penalty to settle the affair.
Despite the sporting drama, that final game, at Auckland's Eden Park, is chiefly remembered for elements of bleak farce. The match was interrupted by a lone aircraft dispatching flour bombs, leaflets and flares on to the pitch, the All Black prop Gary Knight being felled by bag of self-raising. Outside the stadium, where protests had escalated into a full-blown brouhaha, police waded into a group of peaceful demonstrators dressed as clowns and bumblebees. Law was enforced by the vicious swinging of truncheons; the clowns, in grim juxtaposition, had previously been jauntily waving baguettes.
Muldoon's government, picking through the wreckage after the Springboks had left, opted to clutch at straws. As the Guardian reported: "Within the government there have been some hopes that the abhorrence of racial discrimination that so many New Zealanders displayed during the tour … must make any country wary of having South African teams as visitors."
6) Gatting's rebel tour of South Africa (1990)
English cricket has suffered plenty of dark days over the years, but Tuesday 2 August 1989 is probably the pick of them. That was when England relinquished the Ashes on home soil for the first time since 1934, David Boon crashing the winning runs in the fourth Ashes Test to give the supposed "worst Australian side to tour England" an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series. But this was not the root cause of the nadir. That came later in the day, when the South African Cricket Union announced that a rebel 16-man English squad would tour the following year.
The mercenary squad would be led by the former captain Mike Gatting, and included two more ex-skippers in John Emburey and Chris Cowdrey. "This is the most shameful day for English cricket," said Bob Hughes MP, chairman of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, of players prepared to sacrifice their morals for juicy £100,000 contracts. "They are taking blood money."
A bullish Gatting responded that he knew "very little about apartheid", an unconvincing and unreconstructed justification for a sorry betrayal. "I do believe there shouldn't be politics in sport. As far as I'm concerned, I should be allowed to play cricket to earn my living wherever I want."
Happily, karma intervened. The tour, held the following February, was a risible farce, and a financial disaster, dogged by controversy at every stage. Thousands of demonstrators, as well as the local trade-union movement, mobilised, getting up in the touring party's grill at every opportunity. At one hotel, Gatting was forced to get his pinny on to cook, the kitchen staff having walked out at the team's presence.
South Africa was on the cusp of seismic change, with Nelson Mandela due to be finally released from prison – although with Gatting's tour causing security concerns, the ANC leader's release was delayed. Mandela's patience was being tested to the very end: 27 long years in the jug, and yet forced to wait another week because of the English tourists.
Mandela's eventual release meant the tour was scrapped midway, Gatting and his men returning home "stunned" and, unsurprisingly, "confused". Read More
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