Pierre De Couberton's ideas of revitalizing the Olympic games was for "sport", he visioned sports without the infliction of politics. Through the years the reality of his vision has died out and inevitably political issues and ideas began surfacing in the Olympic games just as much as they began appearing in the ordinary sports world. It seemed that the Olympic games got hit with most of the political back draft, mainly do to the large scale involvement of other countries and as such they became a podium for countries. In Martin Barry Vinokur's book "More Than a Game" he explains the involvement of politics and sports, he distinguishes two countries which have had incredible amounts of political resurgence through sports. It was my belief before reading this book that sports in America has always been effected somewhat by politics, but it came to a total surprise to hear that sports dictated politics and vise versa in other countries. In a world where some people believe sports take as much precedents as education, it seems no wonder that sports could not live without political issues.
             Vinokur takes Romania and East Germany and begins dissecting how politics have affected sports. One of the most startling facts to me was that a third world country like Romania had so many incredible accomplishments in the sports world. East Germany on the other hand used sports to get recognition of the German Democratic Republic(GDR). Both countries interest between foreign policy and sports was so large, it seems like they care more about athletics then education. The reason for their grand achievements was that they began looking for stand-out athletes at a young age and began training them almost instantaneously. In the political sense after world war 2 both countries contrasted similarly. Germany was split up between East and West, with the West gaining worldwide diplomatic reorganization, the GDR know...