{"id":5144,"date":"2026-02-11T16:58:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T15:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=5144"},"modified":"2026-02-11T16:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T15:59:14","slug":"politics-on-the-piste-sports-diplomacy-the-winter-olympics-paralympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/politics-on-the-piste-sports-diplomacy-the-winter-olympics-paralympics\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics on the piste: Sports diplomacy & the Winter Olympics & Paralympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/h4>\n
\"\"
(Shutterstock\/Dmitry Molchanov)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The hands of the global sport mega event clock have turned to the 2026 Winter Olympics<\/a> and Paralympics<\/a>. Hosted by the cities of Milan and Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo at venues across northern Italy, around two billion<\/a> people across the globe are looking at the Luge and sussing out the Skeleton on their screens.<\/p>\n

Many from warmer climes will try to unravel the mysteries of sports they barely know, tutored by commercial media<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sport: Making diplomatic history<\/h3>\n

In the 21st<\/sup> century, sport emerged with renewed force as a key arena of public diplomacy. For those who still propose the \u2018sport and politics don\u2019t mix\u2019 shibboleth, there is a simple rejoinder. Without the cooperation and support of nation-states, there could be no sport events of comparable scale<\/a>. 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<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> there were considerable reservations about Russia\u2019s fitness as host given its repression of opposition politicians and LGBTQI+ people, among others. In an apparent diplomatic concession to the Olympic Truce<\/a>, Russia delayed its invasion of Crimea until the gap between the Olympics and Paralympics.<\/p>\n

Pyeongchang 2018<\/a> is probably remembered by many for attempts during the first Trump presidency to broker a reconciliation between North and South Korea<\/a>, rather than for the Curling and Figure Skating. Extraordinary world media coverage was devoted to reading the sports diplomatic runes<\/a>. 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<\/a>. So far during the second Trump presidency<\/a> there has seemingly been a supreme lack of interest in peace on the Korean peninsula.<\/p>\n

Beijing 2022<\/a> contrasts sharply with its Beijing 2008<\/a> Summer equivalent following the marked deterioration in the intervening years of the relationship between the West (broadly conceived) and the People\u2019s Republic of China. The diplomatic term \u201cdeep freeze<\/a>\u201d was peculiarly apt for an event based on snow and ice. A partial diplomatic boycott<\/a> prompted by China\u2019s treatment of its Uyghur people turned the event into something of a public relations liability.<\/p>\n

However, it has been suggested that at China\u2019s request Russia again delayed an invasion<\/a> \u2013 this time of Ukraine \u2013 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<\/a> as punishment for their countries\u2019 treatment of Ukraine. This denial of national flag waving limits without eliminating the benefit of mega sport event participation for rogue nation-states.<\/p>\n

Milano Cortina 2026: The sports diplomacy drift<\/h3>\n

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<\/a>.\u00a0These 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.<\/p>\n

With customary diplomatic insensitivity, the Trump regime is deploying agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Italy for security purposes\u2014\u201cto vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organisations\u201d<\/a>. 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<\/a> is squarely in the spotlight given that the 2026 FIFA Men\u2019s World Cup, 2028 Summer Olympics, and 2034 Winter Olympics will all be hosted in North America.<\/p>\n

Moving into Australia\u2019s \u201cGreen & Gold Decade\u201d<\/h3>\n

Such issues are of keen relevance to Australia in its \u2018Green and Gold Decade\u2019 between the 2023 FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup and 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games. There will need to be sustained work on reducing the environmental footprint of sport events<\/a> and in using sports diplomacy<\/a> to manage geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Australia\u2019s Sports Diplomacy Strategy 2032+<\/em><\/a> is subtitled \u2018Strengthening Australia\u2019s national power through sport\u2019, 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\u2019s economic and political influence in the region. It is also in part designed to counter China\u2019s sports diplomacy<\/a> initiatives in Oceania<\/a>, not least through Australian expenditure of AU$600m on Papua New Guinean rugby league.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Australia has sent a team of 53 winter sport athletes to Italy in the quest for medals, personal bests, and enhanced spectator patriotism<\/a>. The country\u2019s sports diplomacy performance will be less easily quantified but still closely scrutinised in summertime Canberra.<\/p>\n

\n

This piece<\/a> was originally published by the Australian Academy of the Humanities<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Copyright \u00a9 David Rowe 2026<\/strong>
\nEmail: d.rowe@westernsydney.edu.au<\/a>
\nBluesky: @davidroweics.bsky.social<\/a>
\nWebsite: https:\/\/westernsydney.edu.au\/ics\/people\/researchers\/david_rowe<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":5145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[210,47,111,17],"class_list":["post-5144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-okategoriserade","tag-milano-cortina","tag-olympic-games","tag-sport-diplomacy","tag-winter-olpympics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/wInter-sports.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JbBl-1kY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5148,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5144\/revisions\/5148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}