For an event that claims to exist in the rarefied air far above politics, it’s remarkable how often the Olympics is used as a political pawn. In recent years Beijing used the 2008 Games as a curtain raiser for their new era of global domination, while Vladimir Putin used the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi as the curtain-raiser for his invasion of the Crimea, among various other Corinthian enchantments.
Every Games is a hotbed of political activity of varying sorts, with the VIP seats filled by power players making every kind of deal. When the FBI wanted the late, far-from-great Fifa official Chuck Blazer to provide them with some primo evidence for their corruption investigation of Fifa, they sent him to the London Games, where the key fob he threw casually down on the table at a series of meetings recorded all manner of interesting and incriminating conversations with big hitters.
Related: Strong case to ban all Russians from Winter Olympics, says chair of UK Sport
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