THEMA: Separation of State & Sport - Part 2

Take your pick...

• George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” from his 1905 book [The Life of Reason].
• Marcus Tullius Cicero: “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.”
• George Bernard Shaw: “Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time.”
• Paulo Coelho: “A mistake repeated more than once is a decision.”
• Anonymous / Popular Adage: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (Often falsely attributed to Albert Einstein).

Here's the context in which we're about to consider governance insanity and wilful blindness when it comes to any attempt to separate Putin from Russian sport, and why Trump and Infantino have just emboldened every political leader in the world who wants to turn back the clock to a time when Sport was Politics, as a weapon in the Cold War, athletes the pawns in a game of 'my tribe's mightier than your's.'

The question we posted in part 1:

Putin and his sports Pray tell us all Olympic President: how is an athlete with the images of dead teammates on his helmet "too political" but a Russian OC led by Putin's Minister of Sport is "not political enough" to merit exclusion in the interests of protecting athletes at an Olympic Games? ... Part 1:

FORUM: Will Appeasing Russia Send Trust In Kirsty To Coventry?

Pray tell us all Olympic President: how is an athlete with the images of dead teammates on his helmet “too political” but a Russian OC led by Putin’s Minister of Sport is “not political enough” to merit exclusion in the interests of protecting athletes at an Olympic Games?

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

As the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games g0t underway here in Bonny Scotland this morning, the ugly side of sport is never too far away: the IPC, with oversight of the para side of things, is among those sports federations that believes it has the power to deliver sport without politics.

Only the way to do that is something it laughably calls "a democratic vote" that includes no form of direct membership voting, to bring back Russia, its flags, its symbols, its colours, its national identity all welcome, even as Putin's bombs continue to kill Ukrainians, scores of sports people among the dead, continue to flatten infrastructure, alongside the targeting of essential services such as energy facilities, former hospitals, schools and sports facilities in rubble and ruin.

The current USA administration, of course, has not only failed to raise such issues but has markedly been kind to Putin while attacking its allies on a regular basis. Worse still, it has now waged war on a sovereign country (without removing the regime and without an exit strategy, according to many military experts around then world).

You can have whatever argument you like about the merits or otherwise of attempting to deal - at massive cost - with the serious menace of a rogue regime in Iran, but the spill into support was obvious when the host nation barred an accredited referee without evidence or explanation of why it did so, again, with the acceptance of Gianni the go-too poodle.

There's this, too, in Olympic context: Trump has endorsed the Enhanced Games, in which one of his sons is an investor, in which Peter Thiel, one of the most controversial figures on the planet right now, is also an investor. Look up the UK and Palantir and follow the trail.

Glasgow, of course, is a safe haven from all that, the USA having gained its independence 250 years ago, and Russia just about the last country that would be welcome to join the Commonwealth of nations, as Mozambique did in 1995 following its first democratic elections. Russia has a way to go yet, and on the same tilt, a fair few commentators have had reason to note the shift in the wrong direction of Trump's America in this his second - and constitutionally last - term in office as President.

Let's start, then with Trump and Infantino, with awareness of what such behaviour might mean for the Olympic Games in 2028.

Can you imagine Donald making a call to Kirsty and asking her to change the underwater 15m rule because 'it makes no sense'? No? Well, think again.

Here's why and where World Aquatics fits into the story of appeasement to Russia: