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Interview with SWI Swissinfo: Can Switzerland host a “sustainable” Olympics?

Interview with SWI Swissinfo: Can Switzerland host a “sustainable” Olympics?

I gave a quick interview to SWI swissinfo.ch on the feasibility of hosting a sustainable Winter Olympics here in Switzerland. The basic idea is to ditch the idea of a host city and go towards something like a host country. One advantage of this would be that you could use only existing infrastructures and eliminate new constructions, which is a great idea. This could only work in smaller and highly developed countries, and especially those with existing, reliable, and high…

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New Op-Ed: Updating the Olympic Charter is a dangerous game

New Op-Ed: Updating the Olympic Charter is a dangerous game

I feel weird about posting anything on Ex-Twitter nowadays. Truthfully I’m not overly comfortable with most of the self-promotion game, but I’m always grateful when someone else shares their work and even better if they share a bit of the self behind the name. So that’s what I try to do too, even though it feels unnecessarily egotistical. But now, in the death spiral of what used to be Twitter… god. I find it problematic to say the least. I…

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Interview: the (un)sustainability of the Olympic Games

Interview: the (un)sustainability of the Olympic Games

I had the opportunity to talk about mega-events and (un)sustainability, particularly in context with the upcoming Paris 2024 Games. The journalist, Théo Nepipvoda, gave me plenty of time and space, which is always a nice feeling. I thought that I would be a small contribution to an article, and didn’t know that it would end up as such a large interview, so that’s a pleasant surprise. Click here for the article. Merci Théo pour l’opportunité !

Russian athletes and sports during a time of war

Russian athletes and sports during a time of war

I really enjoy speaking with Sportschau, which I think is the most influential sports program on German television. To their credit, they feature the work of Robert Kempe, who does great work on sports and politics, and who pursues difficult stories with nuance and integrity. It’s a hard combo but I think he does it admirably. In this segment, he investigates the impossible situation of having Russian and Belarusian athletes participating in global sport while the Russian state pursues its…

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German sport TV is amazing: Talking about Russian sport, authoritarian politics, and western complicity on Sportschau

German sport TV is amazing: Talking about Russian sport, authoritarian politics, and western complicity on Sportschau

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…

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Talking about sustainable Olympics on Deutsche Welle television

Talking about sustainable Olympics on Deutsche Welle television

This was fun. I really appreciated the fact that Biresh Banerjee – a very good and thoughtful host – gave a lot of time to the issues. This stuff is nuanced and it takes time to get it right. And I was stunned that DW left my whole segment uncut. Every other interview I’ve done (whether print, radio, or TV), the majority gets cut from the final production. Once, I gave a 20 minute interview for a TV station that…

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A rather ridiculous amount of media attention

A rather ridiculous amount of media attention

As I mentioned before, one of the advantages of working on a popular topic like mega-events is that your work periodically attracts outsized media attention. It was no different this year during the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics. Even though I don’t specifically work on Tokyo – and always recommend speaking to experts with direct experience – there are enough similarities between mega-events overall that I got to do a lot of interviews in the past weeks. It’s strange, getting…

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Cancel the summer of super-spreader mega-events

Cancel the summer of super-spreader mega-events

This being a personal academic blog, obviously I tend to share more of my successes rather than setbacks or failures. That said, I think it’s important to share some of the more challenging moments too, so that’s what this one will be about. Back in 2015, I was fortunate enough to have a commentary on mega-events and public health published in The Lancet – certainly a highlight for any early career academic. With a number of high profile mega-events back…

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Olympics, sustainability, Tokyo, and the media

Olympics, sustainability, Tokyo, and the media

Our team at the University of Lausanne has been getting some attention since we published a rather large paper on the sustainability of the Olympic Games from 1992 to 2020. Martin Müller, our team leader, was on Swiss television recently, and as I write, my colleague David Gogishvili is being interviewed by an influential architecture and design magazine (link to follow, when it’s out). Partly this attention is due to the controversial nature of our findings, but I think the…

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What is objective information? Robert Orttung in Zurich

What is objective information? Robert Orttung in Zurich

“At some point you have to take a moral stance and say that undermining authoritarian governments is better than undermining democratic ones.” This is how Robert Orttung, from the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington, answered my question today. Robert, together with Sufian Zhemukhov, have written enough about the Sochi Olympics that you pretty much have to cite them if you do any work at all in this area (see, for example, this article in East European Politics,…

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