This winter’s Olympic video games is not going to be a traditional worldwide sporting occasion. A cloud of geopolitical pressure looms over the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, in addition to the upcoming FIFA Men’s World Cup.
The pressure escalated after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum, where he spelled out his vision for a new world order for middle powers. It stood out starkly in opposition to United States President Donald Trump’s personal speech at Davos, the place he continued expressing his interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark.
As a end result, the 2026 Winter Olympics will probably disrupt the International Olympic Committee’s stated goal of sport bringing the world together under one banner in distinctive methods. Rather than muting political battle, the Games might amplify it.
The politics behind Olympic host nations
The unifying mission of the Olympics already sits uneasily alongside earlier debates over the morality of internet hosting the Games in repressive states. For many years, critics have argued that such regimes use the Games to improve their global image and advance their political and economic goals.
International sports activities occasions present widespread media protection and model publicity. That highlight is especially engaging for authoritarian and repressive regimes looking for legitimacy on the world stage.
Access to a western viewers supplies these states with the chance to “sportswash” their professional authority by a rigorously curated picture.
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How repressive regimes are utilizing worldwide sporting occasions for nation-building
Repressive regimes have more and more pursued this technique. Research shows that the share of international sporting events hosted by autocracies fell from 36 per cent in 1945-88 to fifteen per cent in 1989-2012, however has rebounded to 37 per cent since 2012.
Sportswashing and the Olympic cut price
Sportswashing includes using sport to redirect public consideration away from unethical conduct. In the case of worldwide sporting occasions, the intention is usually to enhance the status of the host nation by using the immense popularity of sport to “wash” away scrutiny linked to human rights abuses or democratic backsliding.
Sportswashing can even work to determine broader world acceptance of repressive regimes, significantly when western establishments settle for their wealth and acquiesce to their objectives.
(AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
International sporting organizations additionally stand to achieve from this association as nicely. Authoritarian hosts usually tend to acquiesce to demands to build costly, single-use sport facilities, as they don’t face the type of democratic backlash that could arise after using public funds for an event that carries little public benefit.
In some circumstances, these regimes have even been willing to bribe officials to gain the votes necessary to win bids to host these sporting events.
From sportswashing to nationalism
There is usually a symbiotic relationship between repressive regimes and worldwide sporting organizations. However, the Milan Cortina Games are unlikely to serve up the sportswashing narratives we’ve got seen not too long ago. Instead, the political tales of the 2026 Winter Olympics are more likely to be extra explicitly nationalist.
Sport is a robust automobile for nationwide rhetoric. It can reinforce an individual’s social identity or how they see themselves in relation to others by encouraging individuals to see themselves as a member of a group or nation, and celebrating victory as a collective success or decoding defeat as a symbolic loss.
Sport additionally possesses powerful symbolism that can be exploited to great affect in forming a coherent national identity. In this fashion, sporting occasions can reinforce nationwide id as an goal image that connects to primitive types of nationwide ideology.
Political tensions heading into Milan Cortina
In the lead-up to the 2026 Winter Olympics, a collection of geopolitical flashpoints has intensified political tensions surrounding the Games. These embody the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, Trump’s need to annex both Greenland and Canada and his ongoing trade disputes with traditional allies.
Whether it’s pressure between the European Union and the U.S. or between Canada and the U.S., there are a lot of story strains that may function galvanizing moments for nationalist rhetoric.
The 4 Nations Face-Off, gained by Canada a 12 months in the past, demonstrated how shortly Canada and the U.S. can mobilize Canadian nationalism amid tense trade negotiations. Any Olympic ice hockey matchup between the 2 nations will feed into the nationwide creativeness of each nations and their political leaders.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Charles Krupa
Denmark and the U.S. are additionally in the same group in the men’s ice hockey tournament, which means they’re assured to play one another within the round-robin section.
The males’s ice hockey match on the 1980 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, served as a pivotal second within the Cold War. When the underdog U.S. beat the favoured Soviet Union Red Army group, it was deemed the “Miracle on Ice.”
Given Trump’s threats in opposition to Greenland, a Danish territory, the Olympics matchup between the 2 groups might function Denmark’s personal “miracle on ice” second.
A medal desk ripe for political spin
Beyond ice hockey, that is shaping as much as be a Winter Olympics the U.S. is more likely to carry out fairly nicely in. Traditional winter powerhouses Norway and Russia are each going through scandals or exclusion.
Norway, the all-time chief in medals in Winter Olympics historical past, is facing a massive cheating scandal in ski jumping but is generally a powerhouse in the nordic sports and skiing events. Russian athletes remain barred from competing under their national flag due to the war in Ukraine and are solely permitted to take part as vetted Individual Neutral Athletes.
(AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Trump is more likely to make an enormous deal about any robust American efficiency, framing any success in distinction to each the EU and Canada.
During his second time period in workplace, Trump has welcomed numerous athletes to the White House and publicly linked sporting success to nationwide energy. He celebrated American participation at the Ryder Cup golf tournament and the 4 Nations Face-off, even when these contests resulted in U.S. defeats.
A profitable Winter Olympics might due to this fact present political capital at a delicate second. Amid his assault on Venezuela and said objective of buying Greenland, main soccer nations and EU powerbrokers — together with France and Germany — have began to tentatively rethink their participation within the 2026 Men’s World Cup, hosted largely by the U.S.
But first, the 2026 Winter Olympics will serve up a menu of matchups that stand to serve the nationalist objectives of Trump, Carney and leaders throughout the European Union.