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Tag: Olympics

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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New article: Building a better host city? Reforming and contesting the Olympics in Paris 2024

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 as part of my postdoc project at the University of Lausanne. That project is now very nearly concluded, so it’s time to take stock of…

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Five days working for a better Olympics in Paris

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 France! It was a very busy week. With the anti-Olympics crowd, I spoke three times: about the declining sustainability of the Olympics over time, about…

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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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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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A Soviet interpretation on the quintessential American mega-event

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 shared his secret for detecting nationalist media bias. I was complaining about the difficulties in writing critically about Russia because I was worried about playing…

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