I read the article «Why sport is always political» republished on our web site after sportanddev.org and I had a great desire to respond to the publication.

Even the title of the article provoked my negative reaction. It (the article) was clearly written by a person unfamiliar with the fundamentals of the doctrines of the great philosophers, economists, and politicians. Let me remind you: if politics, according to the figurative expression of one of the politicians, is a concentrated expression of the economy, and the economy determines its own political superstructure, which includes culture, sports, and much more, then sport is an essential element of politics. Forgive my lapidarity (simplification), but this is exactly so. So, I'll start with this.

By the way, I want to remind my potential opponents: I express only my opinion, with which you may not be agreed. And this will be good, because, as they say, truth is born in a dispute.

The published article is presented as a review. And this review continues to amaze. It would seem that such a solid organization — U.S. The Department of State's Sports Diplomacy Division — works as part of the World Learning's International Sports Programming Initiative should take this event as seriously as possible — a seminar of leading specialists, therefore, not just leading specialists, but specialists who are well versed in terms of both sports and politics. This means that the seminar had to be not just prepared (I mean the speeches of invited experts, their agreed with the organizers abstracts), but had a moderator, a person who will be capable of directing the discussion of the problem in the required direction.

Apparently, both the preparation and the course of the event were not just superficial, but also completely unprofessional. What the speakers wanted to say remained a mystery to me personally. In any case, none of the speakers revealed the topic of the relationship between sports and politics. I would like to draw special attention to the representatives of France. The first of them, presented as a historian of the relationship between sports and politics, moreover, a high-quality specialist with many years of practice, showed a complete unpreparedness for analysis of any kind. And the professor from Lille generally struck me with his judgments. Not only he did choose as an example a not entirely appropriate country — Yugoslavia — which was not an example of a "communist country", but in addition he used into his speech such concepts as "communist regime". What does the “communist regime” have to do with it, isn't the relationship between sports and politics observed under the conditions of capitalism? Professor, you were taught poorly or you studied poorly. It's not the same thing, but equally sad.

Examples from their own lives, characterizing the relationship between sports and politics, testified that the speakers either never left their offices or were completely unaware of the mass media.

In conclusion, I can say one thing:
the topic "Sport and Politics" is multifaceted, wide, interesting for discussion. It is a pity that the participants could not understand this. Or they didn't want to. But again, this is my point of view. And yours?