We are not elected. We are self-recruiting, and our terms of office are unlimited. Is there anything else that could irritate the public more?”

So spoke Baron Pierre de Coubertin, French patrician and president of the International Olympic Committee (1896–1925) in a 1908 address to his IOC colleagues. Over a century later, the disconnect between the Olympic Movement and civil society is even greater and the lack of accountability all the more glaring.

Public resistance to the games is nothing new: the Depression-hit residents of Sacramento held up placards in 1932 demanding “Groceries Not Games!” And in 1968, Mexican security forces massacred scores of protesters in the Tlatelolco Plaza.