The Refugee Olympic Team at Rio 2016. David J. Phillip / AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.
At Rio, the media were eager to define the refugee team as a 'great Olympic story' but it is quite the opposite.
The first edition of the modern Olympic Games, held in Athens in 1896, was a competition between individual athletes rather than nations or countries. Over the years, however, the Olympics has become the most spectacular projection and representation of ‘nation states’ on the global stage. Despite the inclusive and egalitarian claims of the Olympic project, stateless athletes, and even those holding more than one nationality, soon became an oxymoron. They could not fit the traditional mould and were not allowed to compete.
