While athletes have provided sports fans with continuous everlasting excitement and happiness through the demonstration of their skills and talent across all sporting disciplines, they have also used the sporting arena to express trenchant and purposeful support for social justice and equality in society throughout 2020 which was more than even than before in the most vivid fashion.
Some of the well-documented examples of athletes' activism include but not limited to are:
*At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, while on the podium to receive their medals Tommie Smith and John Carlos wore black gloves and raised them in a fist to the sky on the playing of the US national anthem in lieu of putting their hands over their hearts. The significance of the fist was to highlight the civil right struggles of African Americans. In 2021, the South African male cricketers opted to use the fist as opposed to taking the knee as a means of highlighting the need to address racial tension in South African in the post-Apartheid period.
*Tennis player Arthur Ashe and 46 other persons were arrested in 1985 for conducting an anti-apartheid protest outside of the South African embassy in Washington.
*“In 1976, Olympic rower Ernst led 18 of her teammates at Yale University in a protest against unequal facilities being provided for female athletes in comparison to their male counterparts. They took the protests into the office of the university president, where they removed their shirts to reveal “Title IX” written across their bodies. The subsequent media coverage of the protest and the details that caused it led to Yale being pressured into the evening up the conditions for all their athletes”.
*The Fierce Five, the US 2012 Olympic women's gold medal gymnastic team all spoke out about sexual abuse at the hands of ex-USA Gymnastic doctor Larry Nassar who was sentenced in 2018 to up to 175 years in prison for abusing more than 140 women and girls. The case of Nassar's abuse contributed to the reinforcement and significance of the #MeToo Movement at addressing sexual abuse globally across all socio-economic and political spheres of life.
*In 2016, Colin Kaepernick took the knee during the playing of the US national anthem in a preseason game against the Green Bay Packers. Kaepernick's action was to demonstrate against police brutality against minority groups across the US. Kaepernick's decision has severely impacted on his career but he continues to stand firmly by his action.
The social and political positions of athletes play an important role in not only raising awareness of social issues such as racism, sexism and gender-based violence but also appeal to sports administrators, fans, politicians and other power holders to take action so as to engender social justice and equality. Two examples of regional action include former Guyana President Forbes Burnham refusing entry of South African born Robin Jackman who was part of the touring England cricket team 1986 and Caribbean governments deeming the West Indies rebel team that tour apartheid South Africa in the early 1980s persona non grata.