A tale of two Olympic cities - Barcelona and Beijing are poles apart (page 1 of 2)

And so it was in 1992 when the great Catalan capital of Barcelona hosted one of the most memorable Games in history. I was lucky enough to be there at the opening ceremony, as well at many of the events, and I will never forget it. But I won't be going to Beijing in 2008 for a Games that seems to me to be wholly contrary to the Olympic spirit and ideals.

Barcelona '92 was joyous - and not just for the sport

Under Generalissimo Franco Catalunya was repressed for forty years. The language was suppressed and the Catalan people were forced to kowtow to Madrid and even to deny their own history and nationhood. But within ten years of Franco's death in 1975 Catalan identity had reasserted itself and in 1986 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave a huge boost to this movement by selecting the Catalan capital as the host city for the 1992 Olympic Games. The hosts did not let the IOC down. Barcelona was rejuvenated with huge new infrastructure projects, a magnificent stadium on Montjuic and excellent organisation throughout. It was a joy and a privilege to be part of it. Of course politics played their part as well - the very location was resonant with recent and terrible history, but here was a time and a place to expunge the past and look to a bright future for a Catalunya which was to be proud and autonomous, but confidently Spanish as well. It worked and modern Barcelona owes much to the 1992 Games and to the vision of the IOC in choosing the city to host them.

Beijing '89 has enduring memories as well

Whilst Barcelona '92 was a celebration of the spirit of man, Beijing '89 was its antithesis. There were not, of course, any Olympics in Beijing in 1989 but there was, briefly, a similar flowering of hope and a similar expression of the optimism, courage and idealism of youth. Again I have very personal memories of the time and again, like three years later in Barcelona, the images are powerful - but these are memories of darkness and evil not of light and joy. I was a frequent visitor to the Chinese capital in the late 1980s from my then home in Hong Kong. It was an exciting time because the people that I worked with in Beijing were, mostly, young and hungry for change. China was opening up economically and along with these changes there was a huge inquisitiveness about the West - not least about the freedoms we enjoyed. The paradigm that economic change would be accompanied by political liberalisation was generally accepted by the people that I met. The peaceful demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in the late spring of 1989 were meant to give impetus to change and to be symbolic of a belief that the time was right for China to embrace not just a rush for wealth but also greater personal freedoms. A week before these hopes were violently crushed I was in the Square and like all Westerners, I was welcomed and questioned by these idealistic and engagingly naïve young people. I wonder how many survived the terrors of the weekend of June 3rd?

Beijing 2008 is about power and money - the most overtly political Games since Berlin 1936

In Germany in the 1930s Adolf Hitler had a bit of an image problem with the rest of the world. True Germany was creating an economic miracle and the country was at last (and rapidly) recovering from the Great War and its long aftermath. But Hitler felt that he needed a symbolic representation that this renaissance was real - and the Olympic Games were an ideal opportunity to do this. The Games became a spectacle which promoted Fascist symbols and ideology and were amongst the darkest days of Olympic history.

In Beijing in 2008 many of the imperatives which drove the Nazis to use the Berlin Games for their own ends are to be seen in the use that the Communist Party of China is intending to make of their Chinese Olympics.