Boycotts are effective threat in the shady world of sport

Challenges to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and apartheid prove that they remain a forceful protest

Anotion beloved of sporting suits is that boycotts never work. Sebastian Coe, who won both his gold medals during an episode of Cold War tit-for-tat, as the United States and Soviet Union withheld patronage from each other’s Olympics, once said: “They are absurd. They fly in the face of any sensible political judgment.”

A similar sentiment was expressed by Sepp Blatter as he realised that his 2018 World Cup in Russia might risk a few diplomatic cold shoulders. “In sport, a boycott has never had any benefit,” he declared.

There was a lurch to the same language this week, within moments of Boris Johnson hinting that the government might reconsider its approach to the World Cup if the poisoning of a Russian spy in Salisbury was shown to be state-sanctioned. While he later clarified that he was referring to Foreign Office emissaries, rather than the England team itself, the damage was done. “Why bring football into it?” asked Gary Neville, who branded Johnson a “useless idiot”. It was classic kneejerkery, opening the dam for England fans to reheat all the hoary old tropes that sport and politics should never mix and to tell those dastardly ministers to keep their noses out of our game.

The reaction to Johnson’s slip of the tongue has been dismally unimaginative. “Boycott” has, within the lexicon of sport, warped into a dirty word. Where a boycott is accepted in most other spheres of life as a peaceful, legitimate, often powerful form of protest, it is too often dismissed at the highest levels of sport as a futile exercise.

And yet it has seldom been more necessary, as more dark truths about Russia’s mafia state become clear, from the spectre of institutionalised doping to that of a spy targeted with a nerve agent on the quiet streets of Wiltshire. There is a boycott happening this month in biathlon, where the United States team has chosen to give the World Cup in Tyumen, western Siberia, the swerve, citing the country’s lack of commitment to anti-doping and concerns for their safety. As if to prove the point, Sebastian Samuelsson, a Swedish biathlete, urged his national federation to follow suit but promptly received threats of violence from affronted Russians.

Ideally, there would be clarity and leadership on what to do about Russia from the parliaments of global sport. What about Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, for example? Forget it. On the evidence of his spineless reinstatement of Russia to the Olympic family, just three days after a Winter Games in which two more of their athletes tested positive, you would elicit more ethical guidelines from Thomas the Tank Engine. It was difficult not to be affected by the rage of Bryan Fogel, director of Icarus, the finest document yet of Russia’s apparatus of deceit, who described Bach after his Oscars win as a “crook”.

One waits in vain, too, for any semblance of moral authority at