The Apolitical Sportive Stance, or the Spectre of Pierre de Coubertin

I write these words as the Montréal Canadiens play and win the Stanley Cup Semi-Final for the first time in twenty-eight years. My writing is punctuated by cheering hockey fans gathered at neighbouring bars. My indifference toward competitive sports then gives way to a more active interest in people’s reactions, and I start following the score to the rhythm of the shouting and uproar. I even find myself peering through hockey analyses and archives to better understand the stakes of the game. For example, I learn that the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl (Western Conference), exceptionally given to the Canadiens (Eastern Conference) for this victory, is named after the NHL president who suspended Maurice Richard from the playoffs in 1955, causing a riot at the Montréal Forum that historians consider to be one the sources of the Quiet Revolution. Spectator sports have always been a source of strong emotions (and certainly of violence), but also vectors of more fundamental social uprisings at times.

Sports institutions still perpetuate the idea conveyed by Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympic Games, regarding the so-called apolitical and universal nature of sport. Yet in reality, this “principle of political neutrality” conceals a form of erasure of the various narrative identities borne by athletes and their fans. Reflecting on the Olympic Games, philosopher Alain Deneault writes that “sport was set up as a social model because it can neutralize any semblance of collective engagement while taking on an egalitarian external appearance. The pre-existence of rules gives the sports disciplines the fantasy of being fair playing fields in which the best team wins. At the same time, this pre-existence normalizes, in a subtle, underlying manner, a necessary lack of political deliberation.”¹ 1 - Alain Deneault, “Vendre les Jeux olympiques,” Faire l’économie de la haine: Essais sur la censure (Montréal: Écosociété, 2018), 168 (our translation). In another chapter, Deneault adds that the spectacle of sport “is designed to reinforce the authority of ideological structures that contribute to people’s suffering rather than reducing them for a time.”² 2 - Alain Deneault, “Qu’entendre par ‘Du pain et des jeux’? ”, op. cit., 184 (our translation).