Prologue: Olympic Surveillance as a Prelude to Securitization

The modern Olympic Games were founded in the late 19th century with values of egalitarianism, brotherhood, and competition foremost in mind, in some ways close to those of the 18th-century French revolutionaries yet intended officially as utterly apolitical in their application. The Olympic authorities established regulations with which to govern the management of Olympic organization and the rules whereby athletes competed in the Games. In effect, the Olympic authorities began to shape a bureaucracy for Olympic sport and manned this assemblage with officials, just as other officials supervised and adjudicated the competitions themselves. Bureaucracies manage and control by receiving, creating, and modifying classifications by which to order, organize, and surveil realities. The Olympics are no exception. Though the values of the Olympics are given pride of place in discussions of the significance of the Games in the modern era, the bureaucratic ethos of surveillance is no less central to the existence of the Games, indeed is “native” to the Games, to their selections and competitions. I emphasize this point because surveillance is the closest of kin to securitization.