⁍ International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said the Olympic Games are not about politics.

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⁍ Calls have increased this year for a change to Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which bans any form political protest during the Games.

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⁍ Bach said he experienced the ‘political impotence’ of sport when West Germany was among several countries to boycott the 1980 Moscow Games.

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– The president of the International Olympic Committee thinks athletes should be able to stage political protests during the Olympics. In an op-ed in the Guardian, Thomas Bach says the Games should not become a “marketplace of demonstrations.” “The unifying power of the Games can only unfold if everyone shows respect for and solidarity to one another,” Bach writes. “Otherwise, the Games will descend into a marketplace of demonstrations of all kinds, dividing and not uniting the world.” Bach cites the example of West Germany boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets. “As chair of the West German athletes’ commission I strongly opposed this boycott because it punished us for something we had nothing to do with—the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet army,” Bach writes. “It’s no consolation that we were ultimately proven right that this boycott not only punished the wrong ones, but that it also had no political effect. The Soviet army stayed nine more years in Afghanistan.” Bach says the IOC is “strictly politically neutral at all times.” Reuters notes that Sebastian Coe, chief of the World Athletics Association, has called for athletes to be allowed to make political gestures at the Olympics.