I’ve heard of Play the Game, of course, because most of my critical sports friends and colleagues have participated at one time or another. I also contributed a commentary for a series on Protest and the Games organized by Dennis Pauschinger and John Lauermann, where I wrote about the challenges of protesting mega-events in Russia. But until now, I’d never attended the actual conference.

This time, I spoke about the uncomfortable intersections between sport and war, in a talk called “The hard edge of soft power: Russian mega-events as the groundwork for a great nation at war.” This is an article that I’m preparing for submission, and hopefully I’ll have good news to share about that soon.

The talk was sober, of course, but it went well. And I was very happy to meet so many critically-minded people involved in ethical sport! There’s so much work to be done, at so many levels, but super inspiring to see how many people truly care – at every scale, from the individual to the international. For me, it was a bit of a challenge at the beginning to rid myself of the heavy theory that I’ve been accustomed to in more rigidly academic conferences, but once I got used to the different pace, it was quite refreshing.

Play the Game recorded our session, so take a look at it here. My talk starts at 21:00, but the whole session was interesting and I’d absolutely recommend watching the entire thing. And I’m definitely eager to participate again.