There is simply no way to argue that politics and sport don’t mix
Putin prizes sport and wants Russia to be seen as a nation of champions
NOW, SURELY, the tired old pose must be forever abandoned. It has been a long time since the claim that sport and politics do not mix commanded anything close to mainstream respect, but it has persisted in pockets.
It is still parroted by soccer fans driven to blabbering mouthpieces by partisanship and there is the occasional journalist, blinded by their own prejudices, who will try and argue that what happens on the pitch should stay there.
Generally, though, the contention that the business of sport – worth tens of billions and providing the kind of access and platform that makes politicians swoon – can be separated from the grubby, ruthless and sometimes murderous realpolitik as practised in some corners of the world – has been understood as nonsense for generations.
For the hold-outs and those who take that little bit longer to catch on, the ripples from Russia’s barbaric actions in Ukraine must wash away any remaining defences against the truth.
It is not, in fact, an issue of whether sport and politics mix, but rather a question now of how deeply entwined the two can become before fans and those charged with governing sport, call a halt.
Politics, in this interpretation, goes beyond the world of elections and parliaments, and its meaning should be stretched to include the various ways power is taken and then utilised.
Vladimir Putin, after all, is not a man who has ever been greatly burdened by the stresses of reelection. Not for him the pitfalls of the canvass, or the risk of exposure to angry voters on the doorstep.
The same goes for the owners of Manchester City and Newcastle United, absolute monarchies with detestable records in human rights, imposing crushing limits on the freedoms of citizens.
None of these places are parliamentary democracies in the meaning of the term as we understand it, but the enthusiasm of their leaders for sports teams and, in particular, for sport as a means of buttressing their regimes, is about power, and using that power in the realm of geopolitics.
That is why the current discussion about Russian teams and sportspeople and their access to tournaments, is so important.
And it is why banning them is the right thing to do.
The current expression of this debate centres on the brilliant tennis player, Daniil Medvedev, and whether he should be allowed to compete at Wimbledon.
He shouldn’t, and nor should any other Russian.
Tennis authorities have taken a recognisably limp-wristed approach so far, one dismally familiar to the groping for a solution that didn’t offend Russia, followed by the International Olympic Committee and other bodies in the past.
Players from Russia and Belarus are banned from team competitions but they are allowed to compete as individuals in tournaments, just not under the flags of their countries.
Given what we know of how powerful sport is in whitewashing a wretched reputation – the reason Manchester City and Newcastle were bought – this is deeply unsatisfactory.
But there is a particularly Russian twist on this.
Putin prizes sporting achievement not just for the popular image it projects of his country, but because of its macho connotations: he loves winners, and wants Russia to be seen as a land of champions.
It’s why the country had an extensive state-run doping programme for athletes.
Putin, as was observed by Angela Merkel, is a 21st-century politician driven by 19th-century impulses.
His passion for sport as a way of making the world understand Russia’s greatness has uncanny echoes of the blood-and-soil nationalism of Nazi Germany, too.
There may well be Russian sporting heroes who find Putin and his war repulsive, but as long as they are able to compete and command attention, they are, albeit unwittingly, serving his poisonous project.
This is so obvious that even laggards like UEFA eventually grasped it and banned Russia.
Those sports still holding out will surely follow, and if this is not a victimless approach, its positives greatly outweigh any negatives.
Russian musicians have had concerts cancelled, and works of art composed by Russians have also been shunned.
There has even been talk of banning sales of some colossal works of Russian writing.
This is manifestly daft, given many of them were conceived and written as protests against previous forms of authoritarianism in their country.
But sport is different because sport is, patently, an instrument of Vladimir Putin’s power.
The banishment of Russian athletes for as long as it takes manages to dent, even in a modest way, his wicked planning.
And it allows those running sport to sound, in a minor key, their support for Ukraine.