As the Winter Olympics & Paralympics take place in Italy this month, David Rowe considers the history of sports diplomacy surrounding mega sporting events like the Olympics, and whether their social licence is running thin.
The hands of the global sport mega event clock have turned to the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Hosted by the cities of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo at venues across northern Italy, around two billion people across the globe are looking at the Luge and sussing out the Skeleton on their screens.
Many from warmer climes will try to unravel the mysteries of sports they barely know, tutored by commercial media in attracting and sustaining their attention. But sporting competition is only part of the spectacle. Behind the scenes, manoeuvres no less contested than the Bobsleigh and the Ski Jump are in play. These involve the expansive game of sports diplomacy.
Sport: Making diplomatic history
In the 21st century, sport emerged with renewed force as a key arena of public diplomacy. For those who still propose the ‘sport and politics don’t mix’ shibboleth, there is a simple rejoinder. Without the cooperation and support of nation-states, there could be no sport events of comparable scale. National governments, no less than corporations, expect a return on investment in sport. It is substantially measured by soft power success in burnishing national image and through smoothing diplomatic tensions, the most egregious expressions of which have attracted the neologism sportswashing.
So, what is at stake at Milano Cortina 2026 in sports diplomatic terms? These Games mark a return to Europe after the previous three were held in Eurasia and East Asia, all of which were geopolitically problematic. At Sochi 2014 there were considerable reservations about Russia’s fitness as host given its repression of opposition politicians and LGBTQI+ people, among others. In an apparent diplomatic concession to the Olympic Truce, Russia delayed its invasion of Crimea until the gap between the Olympics and Paralympics.
Pyeongchang 2018 is probably remembered by many for attempts during the first Trump presidency to broker a reconciliation between North and South Korea, rather than for the Curling and Figure Skating. Extraordinary world media coverage was devoted to reading the sports diplomatic runes. The last-minute admission of North Korea to the Games did at least deter North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un from authorising military attacks on his southern neighbour before or during the Games, as the U.S. and South Korea had feared. So far during the second Trump presidency there has seemingly been a supreme lack of interest in peace on the Korean peninsula.
Beijing 2022 contrasts sharply with its Beijing 2008 Summer equivalent following the marked deterioration in the intervening years of the relationship between the West (broadly conceived) and the People’s Republic of China. The diplomatic term “deep freeze” was peculiarly apt for an event based on snow and ice. A partial diplomatic boycott prompted by China’s treatment of its Uyghur people turned the event into something of a public relations liability.
However, it has been suggested that at China’s request Russia again delayed an invasion – this time of Ukraine – until the Olympics-Paralympics interval. Russian and Belarusian athletes were then banned from the 2022 Beijing Paralympics. At Milano Cortina 2026, they can only compete as neutral individuals as punishment for their countries’ treatment of Ukraine. This denial of national flag waving limits without eliminating the benefit of mega sport event participation for rogue nation-states.
Milano Cortina 2026: The sports diplomacy drift
It seems unlikely that Milano Cortina 2026 will experience such dramatic political and military events, but there are many reputational obstacles for the right-wing Giorgia Meloni government, the International Olympic Committee, and others to evade on the ski slopes. Apart from predictable construction delays and budget overruns, so far the main bones of contention involve environmental impacts. These include the unprecedented dispersal of venues, removal of hundreds of trees to make a new Bobsleigh track, and the high demands on energy and water, and soil degradation, involved in producing artificial snow.
With customary diplomatic insensitivity, the Trump regime is deploying agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Italy for security purposes—“to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organisations”. Ordinarily, this would not be controversial, but it is inevitably the case after the deadly deployment of ICE in targeted Democrat cities. U.S. sports diplomacy is squarely in the spotlight given that the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, 2028 Summer Olympics, and 2034 Winter Olympics will all be hosted in North America.
Moving into Australia’s “Green & Gold Decade”
Such issues are of keen relevance to Australia in its ‘Green and Gold Decade’ between the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games. There will need to be sustained work on reducing the environmental footprint of sport events and in using sports diplomacy to manage geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Australia’s Sports Diplomacy Strategy 2032+ is subtitled ‘Strengthening Australia’s national power through sport’, which rather gives the game away regarding self-interested motivation. Far from the land-locked mountains of Milano Cortina 2026, the Strategy is focused on the Indo-Pacific (an imprecise entity) and on building Australia’s economic and political influence in the region. It is also in part designed to counter China’s sports diplomacy initiatives in Oceania, not least through Australian expenditure of AU$600m on Papua New Guinean rugby league.
Meanwhile, Australia has sent a team of 53 winter sport athletes to Italy in the quest for medals, personal bests, and enhanced spectator patriotism. The country’s sports diplomacy performance will be less easily quantified but still closely scrutinised in summertime Canberra.
This piece was originally published by the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Copyright © David Rowe 2026
Email: d.rowe@westernsydney.edu.au
Bluesky: @davidroweics.bsky.social
Website: https://westernsydney.edu.au/ics/people/researchers/david_rowe
