Tag: Olympics
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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…
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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…
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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…
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New article: Building a better host city? Reforming and contesting the Olympics in Paris 2024
I’m very happy with this article. It came out a while ago but I haven’t written about it until now, except for this Twitter thread. The general idea is to explore the implications of the New Norm Olympic reforms as played out on the ground in Paris. This is one of the publications I promised…
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Five days working for a better Olympics in Paris
With Covid seemingly diminished for the time being, I was finally able to get on the ground in Paris. Long overdue! I spoke at a days-long transnational anti-Olympics summit, at an academic event with more standard scholarly presentations, and at something like a philosophical salon devoted to exploring the nuances of Paris 2024. Vive la…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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A Soviet interpretation on the quintessential American mega-event
This booklet is a rarity. Shipped all the way to Zurich from a legendary leftist bookstore in San Francisco (“fighting commodity fetishism with commodity fetishism since 1981”), this is a Soviet broadside against Reagan’s America, seen through the lens of the 1984 Summer Olympics. Back when I was living in Russia, a good friend once…