WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #3-25 - The important thing is not to win but to participate. Or not? Reasons and tools for an opposition to the 2026 Olympic Games (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Thirty-five years ago Alex Langer detoured the Olympic motto citius,

altius, fortius with clarity: "today these three words could well be
taken as the quintessence of our civilization and of the competition of
our civilization: strive to be faster, to reach higher and to be
stronger. This is a bit of the key message that is given to us today. I
propose the opposite: I propose lentius, profundius and suavius, that
is, to reverse each of these terms, slower instead of faster, deeper,
instead of higher and more gently or more suavely instead of stronger".
In the wake of his reflection, I believe that the moment is excellent
for a counter-history of the second and certainly more well-known maxim
of the Games, the important thing is to participate, starting from its
original formulation.

On July 24, 1908, Dorando Pietri, exhausted by fatigue and by unlikely
cocktails of brandy and strychnine, crossed the finish line of the most
physically demanding race of the fourth edition of the modern Olympics.
Supporting the Italian baker in an evident state of confusion were some
of the judges, which is why he was first disqualified and then (on the
proposal of the famous correspondent of the Daily Mail Arthur Conan
Doyle) awarded by the Queen herself with a reparative medal. A few hours
later, attention shifted to the closing banquet of the Games. Here,
Baron De Coubertin, godfather of the modern Olympic Games, paraphrased
and immortalized a phrase uttered by Bishop Talbot in a London cathedral
only five days earlier: the important thing is not to win, but to
participate. Assuming that the concept was not his paternity, what
exactly did De Coubertin say at the closing ceremony held at the Grafton
Galleries? And above all, what did he mean to say? The first answer is
easy: in these games, the important thing is to take part and not to
win, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the
fight. To answer the second question we must remember that the friction
between the Americans and the English, although sublimated by the
sporting practice, was sky-high in the middle of the Games and De
Coubertin probably intended to make it clear that only through
participation in the competition would it be possible to win the top
title, thus encouraging people not to boycott the challenge, for reasons
of hatred and chauvinism. Despite his prose and noble charisma, on the
morning of July 25, 1908, the Scotsman Wyndham Halswelle won the
400-meter race for the first and only time in the entire history of the
Olympics, completely alone: and it was a gold medal. The race had in
fact already been held a few days earlier and had to be repeated that
morning because of a suspected foul, a repetition that ended with the
boycott of three out of three US athletes accredited for the final.
Wikipedia summarizes the epilogue of the morning as follows: it is the
only occasion in the history of the Olympics in which a final of
athletics was run by a single athlete. The reverend and the baron could
not imagine that the maxim would become so iconic in the century to
come, nor that it would be disavowed just the day after it was pronounced.

Exactly one year to go until the opening of Milan-Cortina 2026: Olympic
Games that come 130 years after the birth of the modern games, a century
after the invention of the Winter Olympics and that for the first time
propose a metro-mountain ticket along 450 kilometers of Alpine arc. The
implementation of the new norm (the reform launched by the International
Olympic Committee in the name of sustainability), the obvious legacy of
Expo 2015, the positioning in the heart of an ecosystem made even more
fragile by the climate crisis and, last but not least, the declared
undesirability of the Olympic proposal contribute to signaling the
uniqueness of the event. In this regard, it is important to note that
the Games immediately preceding and following (Paris 2024, Los Angeles
2028) were both assigned by default due to the total absence of competitors.

On February 6, 2026, the San Siro stadium in Milan, the public one and
subject to a constraint procedure (but which is wanted to be demolished
to make a private and smaller one 150 meters away) will host the
inaugural ceremony. If during the years of construction of the Games,
politics chose to sacrifice two other publicly owned sports halls in the
city, including paradoxically the last ice rink, at the former Porta
Romana railway yard work is in full swing for the disputed and very
expensive student residence that will host the delegations in the guise
of an Olympic village. Outside the city gates, several works have
already been rescheduled for 2028, 2029, 2031. Others, among the many we
can remember the Trippi overpass in Sondrio or the Alute ring road (both
in Valtellina) are on the agenda despite the construction sites being
under attack by popular protest for their manifest uselessness and
harmfulness. In Bormio, Livigno and especially Cortina the most
important construction sites are underway, as well as in Anterselva and
in Val di Fiemme, but it would be short-sighted to reiterate the refrain
of the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026, according to which the Games are
limited to what happens within the perimeter of the clusters, the
villages and the ceremonial venues. The modern Olympics are first and
foremost a tourist event, and only secondarily a sporting event: an
event that relies on television exploitation rights and sponsorships
rather than on ticketing, an event that accelerates and legitimizes the
construction of major works, rather than the promotion of sports
practice and its accessibility to the youngest, to the lower classes, to
those who live outside of urban contexts. Olympic spending is
approaching by leaps and bounds to 6 billion euros, of which "only" 1.6
are spent on the realization of the Games. 70% of all other resources
are drained by road infrastructures. 50% of the cost of these works and
50% of the works are in Lombardy.

On February 9, 2025, one year after the start of the chronometers, about
fifty environmental associations, committees for the defense of the high
lands, social centers, popular sports groups, will meet, recognizing in
the Olympic model a device for governing the territory common to many
harmful things that threaten the high lands, and at the same time the
protagonism of each territorial dispute. This convergence rejects the
concentrationist logic of the meeting in Milan (or Cortina) to embrace a
synchronicity spread along the Apennine ridge and the Alpine arc. At
least fifteen excursions, ascents, ski mountaineering, demonstrations of
dissent and alternative that from Molise to Friuli will animate the day
of mobilization entitled The mountain does not surrender.

The tam tam started in November with a call from the Associazione
Proletaria Escursionisti (ape-alveare.it), which already in its early
phase had shared the aspirations (and fate) of the popular sports
movement and the criticism of a class escape from sports undermined by
tricks, doping, commerce and nationalism. The golden years of
internationalist popular sports were between 1918 and 1936. When
hundreds of athletes who flocked to the Olimpiada popular formed the
first international anti-fascist brigade in Barcelona, the historic Ape
experience had already ended a decade earlier under the regime. In the
last twelve years that forgotten story has pierced the blanket of snow
and something unprecedented has happened precisely around the proposal
of A.P.E.. The fight against new quarries and mines stands alongside
that against another form of extractivism, of a tourist nature. The
resistance to industrial wind farms is in dialogue with that against
fossil, oversized, harmful and imposed works. The collectives of popular
sport reason with those who practice "choral viandanza" in a mountain
environment that, by definition, is irreducible to the domestication of
controlled environments in which sports practice takes place, they bring
the emphasis not only on amateurism and professionalism, but on
responsibility, care, risk management, promotion of the self-management
process.

This, in short, is the challenge of the mountain that does not give up:

thinking about the future of the high lands starting from habitability
and traversability, in an environment that is the result of continuous
negotiation between the human community and the ecosystem, rather than
starting from experiential monoculture and hit-and-run
putting in relation the curious and available social realities to the
construction of a common intervention front, reconvening the next day
for a balance and relaunch
consolidating the path of the Insustainable Olympics Committee
(cio2026.org) and other active networks for a social opposition to the
extractivist logic of major events
Around the proposal of The mountain does not give up and the peculiar
path of A.P.E., a network of self-management, social movements and
popular sports realities is active in the Milan area and has promoted
countless activities in the last two years, including a three-day event
entitled Utopiadi last autumn. In the last few days the Off Topic
collective (network node) has published an effective photographic
representation of the snowfall on the Lombard ski lifts
(offtopiclab.org/tracce/) while a cartographic laboratory is mapping
Olympic works and facilities in relation to the environmental
fragilities and protected areas in the territories involved. There has
been no shortage of opportunities in the streets with marches, critical
pedaling, moments of self-training and meeting with other itineraries of
resistance. The ambition is certainly not to interrupt this edition of
the Games. Highlighting today the level of undesirability of the great
event, doing a daily underground work of information,
counter-information, denunciation, is rather the key to bringing home
some small and large battles suitable for instilling confidence in the
opposition, but also to highlight the need to question the very
existence of Olympic Games conceived in this way. Not participating in
the competition, the wait, the Olympic discursiveness, but welcoming the
opportunity for a radical rethinking of these great events. There is
explicit talk from many sides of defining its dimensions, of choosing a
location to maintain over time, of expanding its periodicity, of
stopping at the zero option to rethink the meaning, the past, and the
current relevance of the games.

Fighting today, from Cortina and Milan and in defense of a hundred
peaks, to learn to go more slowly, more deeply, more gently. The
important thing is not to win, today it is important not to participate.

Alberto "abo" Di Monte

https://umanitanova.org/l-importante-non-e-vincere-ma-partecipare-o-no-ragioni-e-strumenti-per-unopposizione-ai-giochi-olimpici-2026/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca