A (positive) role model is typically described as “an individual who is set as an exemplar for others to study and imitate”². That is, it is someone worthy of emulation. It is possible to differentiate between a role model being worthy of emulation only in some specific context or role (for example as an athlete, physician, or teacher) and being worthy of emulation as a person in respects that extend beyond any specific context or role³. However, it seems that there is an increasing expectation that athletes serve as role models in the broader sense. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a former track and field star who won three Olympic gold medals representing the United States, spoke to this expectation. She claimed that in the current media environment, athletes have to ensure “that the person the public looks up to is also the same person in private” in order to demonstrate that “you are not living a double life”⁴.

Public expectations notwithstanding, do athletes have an obligation to be role models in the broader sense? One position affirms that because of their status in and significant influence on society, athletes are obliged to behave ethically on and off the playing field and to become moral exemplars. A rival position contends that the possession of unique athletic talents does not entail such an obligation. Charles Barkley, a former basketball star who won two Olympic gold medals representing the United States, exemplifies this position. In a famous television commercial, he claimed: “I’m not a role model” and “Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids”⁵. The controversy over whether athletes should be role models –typically known as the “role model debate”– resides between these two different positions.

At the core of the “exemplarist” position is the notion that due to the special place athletes are bestowed in society –which frequently involves revering them as heroes, by, among others, scores of impressionable children– they have not only the capacity to but also the responsibility to exert a positive influence on the life of a large amount of people. Furthermore, due to their inordinate social visibility and sway, athletes can do more harm by behaving immorally than ordinary persons can. For example, athletes who physically abuse opponents, enhance their performance through prohibited means, or make racist or sexist remarks may, albeit inadvertently, convey the message that these actions are fine and, thus, induce others, within and outside sport, to engage in them. The exemplarists contend that this furthers the case that athletes have a responsibility to behave morally⁶.

Several objections could be raised to the exemplarist position from what might be described as its “skeptical” counterpart. One objection advances that it is problematic to confer role model status on athletes irrespective of their consent, especially considering everything that such conferral carries with it. Even if an athlete would accept to be or indeed declare him/herself to be a role model, that would most probably be an indication that he/she is not fit to be a role model. Such a person could be considered too self-centered, self-important, or complacent, all questionable character traits⁷. Another objection contends that role models are unreliable and, hence, not the best way to impart moral lessons. As fallible beings, people would eventually fail to behave in expected manners. Even the best among us would occasionally give in to temptation and, consequently, disappoint. The demands are too taxing to fulfill. This means, according to the skeptical position, that the public ought to be more realistic. No one is purely virtuous nor purely vicious. In addition, why should the public, particularly children, regard athletes as role models that impart moral lessons instead of their parents, teachers, civic leaders, politicians, or entertainers? Athletes could question why they should have greater responsibility to be role models than these other people⁸. A third objection maintains that athletes are not totally responsible if they are emulated⁹.

These are important objections but are open to criticism. That athletes are conferred role model status irrespective of their consent does not mean that they do not have an obligation to behave like one or that they can opt out of such an obligation. Moral life implies many responsibilities that “are not based on consent but on certain contingent facts that are the basis for such responsibilities”¹⁰. For instance, one appears to have an obligation to assist two desperate kids seemingly lost among the crowd in a packed soccer stadium. In some circumstances, one may have a responsibility to do x even if one has not agreed to do x. Likewise, that role models may not be the best way to impart moral lessons does not render them incapable of offering (some) relevant moral lessons. Why should role models be the best or only way to do so? The commitment to excel as an athlete holds potential for education. Even if such commitment involves virtue and sporadic vice, there would be plenty worthy of being studied and imitated in this athletic life. The public then may not be unrealistic in expecting athletes to be role models, and this does not imply that other people, such as parents, teachers, civic leaders, politicians, or entertainers, should not be role models as well. That these people ought to be role models does not let athletes off the hook. Finally, if moral obligation is not always based on consent, arguing that athletes are not totally responsible if they are emulated does not let them off the hook either. They may indeed not be responsible if people look up to them, but they still have a responsibility to behave virtuously. The contingent fact that athletes are indeed bestowed special status and emulated would serve as the basis for such responsibility.

While the criticisms typically advanced by the skeptics are not decisive to abandon the exemplarist position, there may still be arguments to limit its extent and reach. These arguments are related to the logic and demands of sport, and whether it is reasonable to expect athletes to be role models in a sporting context as well as in other areas of life. For the most part, these elements have been ignored in exemplarists’ attempts to build their case. Looking at the logic and demands of sport is especially important because, in going beyond the common appeal to athletes’ status in and significant influence on society, it provides a more fundamental basis to articulate the source of the obligation for athletes to be role models. After all, the case mounted by exemplarists would lose much of its force if society ceases to be enthralled by sport and/or if society no longer bestows special status on athletes.

Sports, as a kind of games, are artificial tests informed and regulated by rules¹¹. The distinguishing rationale behind sports is a “gratuitous logic” that proscribes the use of more efficient physical skills to accomplish the stipulated goal. Sports are structured, paraphrasing Bernard Suits, by the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles through the use of testing skills¹². It is the specificity of each sport’s gratuitous logic that makes a given sport alluring and attractive. In turn, each sport’s gratuitous logic provides the foundation for contesting. As R. Scott Kretchmar explains, a contest involves “doing the same kind of thing [together] in an attempt to show difference in the direction of superiority”¹³. By requiring opponents to compare their aptitude, contests are unavoidably mutual projects –“we” affairs– that introduce a number of competitive skills14. Because contests are “we” affairs, it has been argued that “competition presupposes a cooperative effort by competitors to generate the best possible challenge to each other” and that competitive sport is better defined as “a mutually acceptable quest for excellence through challenge [emphasis in the original]”¹⁵. Without denying the fact that competitive sport possesses zero-sum qualities (i.e., the determination of winners and losers), this view emphasizes sports’ inherent mutuality that facilitates the quest for excellence and the meaningful measurement of relative abilities.

Robert L. Simon, Cesar R. Torres and Peter F. Hager suggest that, when understood as shared and cooperative tests, competitive sport presupposes a set of values. These values “are central to competitive sports in the sense that an individual or team concerned with competitive success would have strong reason to act upon them”¹⁶. Under this view, competitive success is related to excellence, which, in turn, is related to a sport’s specialized testing and contesting skills. Hence, respect for the rules of the game, opponents, and officials; concern for and commitment to excellence; willingness to be evaluated in relation to the game’s standards of excellence; assessment and reflection of one’s strengths and weaknesses; as well as discipline, dedication, resilience, courage, unselfishness, and collaboration; would be among the values intimately connected with competitive sport. Indeed, “some values may be so intimately connected with sport that they are internal to it”¹⁷. This is why Simon, Torres and Hager argue that competitive sport has an inner morality –normative features to guide and evaluate behavior in sport– that all athletes have compelling reason to commend and enact¹⁸. Even those competitors who are chiefly concerned with victory must adopt, if only unwillingly or indirectly, this inner morality, for they must intend to demonstrate superiority over their opponents within the confines of their sport’s established standards of (fair) play.

If the idea of an inner morality of sport makes sense, then athletes would seem to have an obligation to foster the values inherent in it. This indicates that the rationale for athletes to be role models comes from the structure and logic of sport as well as the values presupposed by it rather than only from athletes visibility or society’s attraction to sport. At the very least, then, once individuals decide to participate in competitive sport, they have a responsibility to exemplify –that is, to demonstrate or carry out– its inner morality. The popularity of the sport and/or the size of its practice community or following are irrelevant to this primary responsibility. The attempt to succeed –or even better, excel– in competitive sport requires exemplifying its inner morality. Athletes are expected to behave morally qua athletes. This comes, as the popular saying goes, “with the territory”, with deciding to become an athlete because, as already said, all athletes have good reason, by consenting to participate in competition, to foster the inner morality of sport. In short, athletes should not only avoid discrediting the values inherent to competitive sport, but also, and more positively, dedicate themselves to promote a context in which such values flourish.

Some may accept that athletes should be role models qua athletes but still refuse to extend their sphere of influence beyond sport into other realms of life. Randolph Feezell, for instance, affirms that exemplarism overreaches in its “insistence that celebrated athletes are worthy of imitation as persons whose life as a whole, including ‘real’ life outside of sport, is exemplary”¹⁹. For this reason, he continues, the public would do well to admire the character and exploits of athletes just within the domain of sport. The celebration of their heroism should be limited to playing fields because the “meaning and significance” of their exploits “are internal to the world in which they [athletes] excel”²⁰. Outside the world of sport, the argument goes, athletes’ “heroic efforts[,] would have no meaning or significance”²¹.

But is this argument conclusive? Would it not be sensible to require that athletes foster the inner morality of sport and apply analogous values in other areas of their lives? In this respect, Simon, Torres, and Hager state that “To express such values and benefit from them in a central area of one’s life and then undermine them elsewhere seems wrong or, if not outright wrong, at least morally undesirable”²². For example, it seems morally questionable, if not outright wrong, if an athlete treats teammates with respect but fails to treat opponents respectfully within and outside competition. Consistency is a desirable feature in moral life23. People’s moral standards, values, and actions should not contradict each other if moral life is to cohere and be credible. In addition to moral coherence, one could also point out that if athletes benefit from exhibiting the values inherent in the inner morality of sport, “which are part of their performance as athletes, it is not unreasonable to expect them to respect other similar virtues off the field as well”²⁴.

Even if these arguments are not sufficient to expand the responsibility of athletes to be role models outside sport, a strong case can be made in regards to “Olympic” athletes. The source for this case would be Olympism, a philosophical vision that is the raison d’être of both the Olympic Games and the entire Olympic Movement. Advanced by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the late nineteenth century, and later formalized in the Olympic Charter, Olympism is a “philosophy of life” or “way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”²⁵. Its goal “is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity”26. Indeed, for Olympic authorities, Olympism requires sport to be practiced without discrimination, nurturing “mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play”²⁷. Clearly, the distinguishing feature of Olympism is the dissemination of moral values through the practice of sport. Although its specificity may be hard to identify and interpret, Olympism could be understood as a secular, humanistic, egalitarian, and cosmopolitan vision emphasizing “values such as holistic human development, excellence, peace, fairness, equality, mutual respect, justice, and non-discrimination”²⁸. Most of these values are found in the inner morality of sport, the preferred social practice to advance Olympism’s goals, but seem to apply to many other areas of life²⁹.

If all athletes have the duty to meet the minimum standard to foster the inner morality of sport in their athletic lives, Olympic athletes have to meet not only this minimum standard, which is encompassed by Olympism, but also aspire to reach the more extensive one required by it. Even more, Olympians, and those wishing to become so, must not only avoid contradicting but also try to exemplify Olympic values outside the playing fields. After all, Olympism does not apply only to athletic competition but, as a philosophy of life, to athletes’ whole lives. This is why Jim Parry proposes that Olympism constitutes a philosophical anthropology–an idealized conception of what a person should be and aspire to³⁰. That is, an idealized model of the exemplary person, in sport and beyond. Thus, an Olympic athlete would seek to cultivate Olympic values in and through international sport and, more broadly, materialize them in everything they do. In the philosophical anthropology of Olympism, athletes have a horizon of aspiration, a framework that orients and provides meaning to their actions and experiences while serving as a goal to attain³¹. It is worth noting the expectation that athletes pursue the values of Olympism is proclaimed in the protocol of the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremonies –which according to the IOC, “is fundamental to the correct communication of the Olympic values and ideals”– specifically through the oath taken by athletes, judges, coaches, and officials³². In its latest iteration, the oath reads: “We promise to take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules and in the spirit of fair play. We all commit ourselves to sport without doping and cheating. We do this, for the glory of sport, for the honour of our teams and in respect for the Fundamental Principles of Olympism”³³.

Several scholars have argued that since Olympism require action to advance and materialize the values it propounds, “the Olympic Games and sport become [explicitly] imbued with an educational rationality and purpose”³⁴. In this regard, Nikolaos Nissiotis, a former president of the International Olympic Academy, observes that Olympism “qualifies sport exercise in general as a means for educating the whole of man [and woman] as a conscious citizen of the world... through adherence to ethical principles valid in universal dimension” and that it “expresses the deeper essence of sport as an authentic educative process through a continuous struggle to create healthy and virtuous man [and woman] in the highest possible way”³⁵. Olympic athletes are key to materialize the educational potential of Olympism. It is through their actions–and as Nissiotis remarks, their struggles–that this potential is visibly manifested for all to admire and emulate. Therefore, the importance that Olympic athletes aim to illustrate Olympic values on and off the playing fields and be worthy of emulation.

What this suggests is that Olympic athletes should honor the inner morality of sport and attempt as much as they are capable of to embody the values of Olympism. These normative principles serve as an aspirational horizon they should aim for. In other words, Olympic athletes should attempt to behave in ways that are in concert with the moral standards of Olympism, which as a philosophy of life, extends beyond sport. Olympic athletes have a unique role to play in illustrating and illuminating these moral standards. The emphasis on the moral dimension of the Olympic Movement suggests that athletes could impart important moral lessons. Sport and Olympic authorities, though, should ensure that athletes have educational opportunities that facilitate their efforts to put the moral standards of Olympism into action. The Youth Olympic Games’ “Learn & Share” program is, for instance, one appropriate example of how Olympic athletes could be empowered to do so³⁶. Tellingly, the goal of the program is for young Olympians to become “ambassadors of sport, of Olympic values and advocates of a healthy lifestyle”³⁷.

Coubertin’s words related to winning and the process of contesting that “What counts in life is not the victory, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to conquer, but to fight well”³⁸ resonate here. Following this dictum, it could be argued that Olympic athletes have an obligation not to undermine Olympic values and, more positively, to try their best to promote such values. Even those who are skeptical about Olympic athletes being role models would probably accept that there is much to learn from their struggle to realize the values of Olympism and live Olympic lives. What counts in an Olympic life is the struggle to realize its ideals, through its successes and failures. The main duty is to strive towards the Olympic horizon. Failing to request Olympic athletes, and all who work within the Olympic Movement, to commit to the moral standards of Olympism would amount to failing them and those who still believe that the Olympic Movement has something morally relevant to offer. In a broader sense, Olympism should be an aspirational horizon for all of those who work within the Olympic Movement.

‍

1. The author would like to thank Prof. Douglas W. McLaughlin for thoughtful comments on a previous version of this presentation.

2. Mumford, S.: Watching Sport. Aesthetics, Ethics, and Emotion, London and New York: Routledge, 2012, 100-101. Following Mumford (101), I say “positive” role model because it is possible that there be a “negative” role model, “someone who is bad but admired by those who are also bad”. However, for simplicity’s sake, throughout this presentation, I will use role model to refer to a positive role model.

3. This distinction is articulated in Randolph Feezell, “Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 32, no. 1 (2005), 21-22

4. Joyner-Kersee, J.: “Yes. They Are Whether They Want To Be Or Not”, Ebony 63, 2 (2007): 165.

5. “I’m Not a Role Model,” (1993), Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMzdAZ3TjCA. See also, Charles Barkley, “No. I’ll Say It Again – Athletes/Entertainers Should Not Be Role Models”, Ebony 63, 2 (2007): 164.

6. For details of this argument, see Feezell, “Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects”, 22-24; Robert L. Simon, Cesar R. Torres & Peter F. Hager, Fair Play. The Ethics of Sport, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015), 234; and Christopher Wellman, “Do Celebrated Athletes Have Special Responsibilities to be Good Role Models? An Imagined Dialog between Charles Barkley and Karl Malone”, in Sportsm Ethics: An Anthology, ed. Jan Boxill (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 333-336.

7. For details of this argument, see Mumford, Watching Sport. Aesthetics, Ethics, and Emotion, 103-105.

8. For details of this argument, see Mumford, Watching Sport. Aesthetics, Ethics, and Emotion, 101-103 and 105-106 and Simon, Torres and Hager, Fair Play. The Ethics of Sport, 234.

9. For details of this argument, see Mumford, Watching Sport. Aesthetics, Ethics, and Emotion, 106-108.

10. Feezell, “Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects”, 22. For a pioneering rendition of this argument, see Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 3 (1972): 229-243.

11. Some of the material in this paragraph is borrowed from Cesar R. Torres, “The Danger of Selectively Changing the Rules in Youth Sport: The Case of the Strike Zone,” Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 81, no. 5 (2010): 30.

12. Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper. Games, Life and Utopia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 40-41. See also Cesar R. Torres, “What Counts as Part of a Game? A Look at Skills”, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 27, no. 1 (2000): 81-92 and Cesar R. Torres, “What Counts as Part of a Game? Reconsidering Skills”, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 45, no. 1 (2018): 1-21.

13. R. Scott Kretchmar, “From Test to Contest: An analysis of Two Kinds of Counterpoint in Sport”, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 2, no. 1 (1975): 23-30.

14. See Torres, “What Counts as Part of a Game? Reconsidering Skills” and R. Scott Kretchmar and Tim Elcombe, “In Defense of Competition and Winning: Revisiting Athletic Tests and Contests”, in Ethics in Sport, ed. William J. Morgan, 2nd ed. (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2007), 181-194.

15. Simon, Torres & Hager, Fair Play. The Ethics of Sport, 46 and 47.

16. Ibid., 222.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 222-224.

19. Feezell, “Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects,” 28.

20. Ibid., 32.

21. Ibid.

22. Simon, Torres & Hager, Fair Play. The Ethics of Sport, 236.

23. For an introductory discussion of consistency in moral life, see the relevant chapters in Harry J. Gensler, Ethics. A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2011).

24. Simon, Torres & Hager, Fair Play. The Ethics of Sport, 236.

25. International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee, 2017), 11. See also, for example, Pierre de Coubertin, “The Philosophic Foundation of Modern Olympism”, “The Origins and Limits of Athletic Progress”, and “Olympic Letter IV: Olympism As a State of Mind”, in Olympism: Selected Writings, ed. Norbert Müller (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee, 2000), 580-583, 195- 202, and 548, respectively.

26. International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter, 11.

27. Ibid.

28. Cesar R. Torres, “Results or Participation?: Reconsidering Olympism’s Approach to Competition”, Quest 58, no. 2 (2006): 242

29. For a more detailed discussion of Olympism, see Douglas W. McLaughlin and Cesar R. Torres, “More than Games. Olympism as a Moral Approach to Sport,” in The Olympics and Philosophy, ed. Heather L. Reid and Michael W. Austin (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 101-116. See also, among others, Vassil Girginov and Jim Parry, The Olympic Games Explained. A Student Guide To the Evolution of the Modern Games (London, New York: Routledge, 2005), 1-15; Mike McNamee, “Olympism, Eurocentricity, and Transcultural Values”, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 33, no. 2 (2006): 174-187; Jeffrey O. Segrave, “Towards a Definition of Olympism”, in The Olympic Games in Transition, ed. Jeffrey O. Segrave and Donald Chu (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1988), 149-161; and Jim Parry, “Sport and Olympism: Universals and Multiculturalism”, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 33, no. 2 (2006): 188-204.

30. See Jim Parry, “Physical Education as Olympic Education”, European Physical Education Review 4, n. 2 (1998): 153-167 and Parry, “Sport and Olympism: Universals and Multiculturalism”.

31. For an elaboration of the concept of “horizon” in competitive sport, see Douglas W. McLaughlin and Cesar R. Torres, “Sweet Tension and its Phenomenological Description: Sport, Intersubjectivity and Horizon”, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 5, no. 3 (2011): 270-284.

32. International Olympic Committee, “Athletes to Take the Lead as Oaths at Future Olympic Games Openings Are Unified”, September 11, 2017, https://www.olympic.org/ news/athletes-to-take-the-lead-as-oaths-at-future-olympic-games-openings-are-unified (accessed March 14, 2018).

33. Ibid.

34. McLaughlin and Torres, “More than Games. Olympism as a Moral Approach to Sport,” 104.

35. Nikolaos Nissiotis “Olympism and Today’s Reality”, in International Olympic Academy Twenty-Fourth Session (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee, 1984), 64.

36. International Olympic Committee, The YOG Learn & Share Beyond the Field of Play. Updated – January 2016 (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee, 2016), 1-6. See also Cesar R. Torres, “The Youth Olympic Games, their Programs, and Olympism”, paper written in the framework of the IOC’s OSC Postgraduate Grant Selection Committee (2010). For essays on different aspects of the Youth Olympic Games, see Dag Vidar Hanstad, Milena M. Parent, and Barrie Houlihan, ed., The Youth Olympic Games (London and New York: Routledge, 2014).

37. International Olympic Committee, The YOG Learn & Share Beyond the Field of Play. Updated – January 2016, 1.

38. Pierre de Coubertin, “The Trustees of the Olympic Idea”, in Olympism: Selected Writings, ed. Norbert Müller (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee, 2000), 589.

‍

Torres Cesar R., "The Role Model Debate, Olympism, and Education", in:K. Georgiadis (ed.), Challenges an Olympic Athlete faces as a Role Model, 58th International Session for Young Participants (Ancient Olympia,16-30/6/2018), International Olympic Academy, Athens, 2019, pp.100-110.

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

.

‍

‍