The International Olympic Committee boasted that the games of the XXV Olympiad would be the most inclusive ever. 171 countries fielded teams in Barcelona, with South Africa, Cuba, Albania, North Korea, and Ethiopia all returning to competition after noticeable absences during previous Olympic contests. One noticeable challenge to the IOC’s principle of inclusion, however, was the war in Yugoslavia. The story of the former Yugoslav republics at the Barcelona Olympics demonstrates the interdependence of international sport and international politics that manifested in so many volatile ways in 1992.

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Yugoslavia’s 1988 Olympic Men’s Basketball Team

Yugoslavia had a storied Olympic history. The country had participated in every summer Olympics since the state was founded, beginning in 1920. Yugoslavia hosted the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo and had two representatives to the International Olympic Committee in 1992.[1] In the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, the Yugoslav team took home twelve medals, including Gold in Men’s Water Polo and Silver in Men’s Basketball.[2] This was a state deeply ingrained in international sporting structures that had achieved a large amount of success in international competition.

Resolution 757 and the Olympic Ban

The Wars of Yugoslav Succession, which began in 1991, marred Yugoslavia’s international image and jeopardized the country’s participation in the 1992 Olympic Games. Two breakaway republics, Croatia and Slovenia, which both declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 citing severe oppression at the hands of the central Serb-controlled government, were officially recognized by the IOC in January 1992 and allowed to participate already in the Winter Games in Albertville, France.[3] This severely weakened the Yugoslav team, which finished without a single medal. Sports commentators noted that the Yugoslav Summer Olympic team might be similarly impaired.

In fact, the summer team faced an even greater challenge than a potential poor showing. As fighting in Yugoslavia worsened, the United Nations passed Resolution 757 in May 1992, less than two months before the opening of the Barcelona games. The resolution prohibited UN members from allowing “persons or groups representing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” to participate in sporting events on their territory.[4] As a member of the United Nations, Spain was obligated to uphold this ban. This meant that the Yugoslav team (athletes from former Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro) might not be allowed to participate at all in Barcelona.

The IOC quickly devised a work-around, permitting athletes from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to compete as “independent participants” under the Olympic flag. This was without a doubt a compromise solution; only individual athletes could compete and Yugoslav athletes were disqualified from team competitions. Caslav Veljic, secretary general of the Yugoslav Olympic Committee, suggested that they might decline to participate at all rather than comply with the IOC’s conditions. “It is my opinion, that we say, ‘Thank you very much for the invitation, but rather than be present with no name, no country, no flag, we will not come.’”[5] Ultimately, the Yugoslav Olympic Committee did accept the IOC’s conditions and  52 athletes from former Yugoslavia competed in thirteen individual sports under the Olympic flag.[6]

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UN delegates vote on Resolution 757

The Yugoslav teams that had qualified for the Barcelona Games – men’s and women’s handball, men’s water polo, and women’s basketball – were banned and replaced by teams from Iceland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Italy, respectively.[7] Basketball player Vlade Divac, a member of the 1988 Silver Medal team and Yugoslavia’s most internationally recognizable athlete, complained that the decision was not fair. “We’re not politicians and warriors,” he said. “We are only sportsmen and sports should not mix with politics.”[8] Divac failed to acknowledge, of course, the many examples from Yugoslavia’s recent history where sports had been used as a mobilizer for identity politics and as a spark for violent conflict.

Bosnia-Herzegovina

The partial ban on Yugoslav athletes was not the end of the drama concerning former Yugoslavia at the 1992 Olympics. Around the same time, representatives from two more former Yugoslav Republics, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, also approached the International Olympic Committee for official recognition. Bosnia-Herzegovina, the republic that saw the worst fighting in 1992, was able to quickly form a National Olympic Committee and received an invitation to the Barcelona Games.[9]

Gaining IOC recognition and invitation turned out to be the easy part for the Bosnian team. The story of Mirsada Buric, a 3000-meter runner on the Bosnian Olympic team, demonstrates the many difficulties athletes from Bosnia-Herzegovina faced in the lead-up to the Barcelona Olympics. Buric, a Bosnian Muslim from the small village of Bojnik just outside Sarajevo, was captured by Bosnian Serb forces and held in a concentration camp before being released in a prisoner exchange just weeks before the Summer Games began. She trained by running through the streets of Sarajevo, even as it was being shelled by heavy artillery. “I had no coach, almost no food,” she later recalled.[10]

Buric almost never made it to Barcelona. Three days before the Olympics opened, the United Nations canceled the flight scheduled to take her and most of the other Bosnian athletes to Spain because of a dispute over an alleged breach of a cease-fire in the city of Sarajevo.[11] The IOC intervened and chartered two planes to carry Buric and the rest of the Bosnian delegation to Barcelona in time for the opening ceremonies.[12]

The wars in Yugoslavia undoubtedly impacted the 1992 Summer Olympic Games and vice versa. From the struggles of individual athletes to train for and travel to Barcelona in the midst of war to the intervention of international bodies like the UN and the IOC to influence participation, the various complications serve as a reminder of just how embedded sports and politics are.

-Leslie M. Waters

Works Cited

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/22/sports/olympics-yugoslavia-may-snub-invitation-to-the-games.html

[2] https://www.olympic.org/yugoslavia

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/18/sports/olympics-slovenia-and-croatia-are-invited.html

[4] U.N. Security Council, 3088th Meeting. “Resolution 757 (1992)” (S/RES/24188). 30 May 1992.

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/22/sports/olympics-yugoslavia-may-snub-invitation-to-the-games.html

[6] http://www.oks.org.rs/takmicenja/olimpijske-igre/letnje-olimpijske-igre/xxv-igre-barselona-1992/jugoslavija-1992/

[7] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/20/sports/olympics-task-in-92-getting-to-barcelona.html

[8] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/04/sports/sports-of-the-times-sarajevo-s-olympic-connection.html

[9] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/24/sports/barcelona-bosnian-delegation-certified.html

[10] http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-28/news/vw-6152_1_mirsada-buric

[11] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/23/world/what-is-a-team-un-delays-bosnia-s-olympians.html

[12] Robert J. Donia, Sarajevo: A Biography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 304.