I was invited to speak on Sportschau Sunday Night, which was a wonderful experience. I was surprised by how political and involved they were. I wish I could link the report, but unfortunately it’s geoblocked to German territory, so unless you live in Germany, I’m afraid I can’t share. I caught it live from Switzerland and it was great. I felt honored to participate in a project that was so incisive and timely. I thought it was really well done overall.

The central thrust was to ask why western sports federations are still involved with Russia, especially after the current devastation in Ukraine – but also, notably, since the Crimean annexation and separatist support in 2014. That’s some depth and context there.

The Sportschau team was great. Friendly, professional, smart. The interviewer was well-prepared and had fascinating questions that pushed in all sorts of important directions. We spoke for an hour and a half, and I wish we could release the entire conversation as a podcast. They featured a lot of me in the broadcast version, which feels flattering, but there were so many other interesting aspects of global politics and economics and sport and civil rights in our talk… It feels a shame not to share all that too. I think it’s an important thing to discuss, but TV time is scarce, and that’s the game.

Overall I remain extremely grateful to be included in this project. I can’t help comparing this experience with my bit on CBC TV. Not CBC Kids, which was lovely and nuanced, but the actual “grownup news” bit. That interview was maybe half an hour and the reporter was interested and involved. But when they broadcast it, it basically was just a broad greenwashing of Tokyo 2020. One mild sentence of warning from me was spliced in between a bunch of hagiographic filler that celebrated Tokyo’s apparent environmental successes. Sportschau was the opposite of that. And that’s good, I think, because these issues are so important to deal with. Immediately in Ukraine, of course, but also worldwide.