And everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History at Sport Washing. Sport Washing, the term

is all the rage at the moment. What does it mean? What's the history of sport washing?

What's the history of regimes trying to show off to their own populations and the rest

of the world how great they are by hosting mega tournaments? What's its relationship

with state power and prestige and war? We've seen the term a lot kicking around the

moment because the World Cup has kicked off in Qatar, a country with the Pauline Human

Rights Record, but given the last World Cup was in Russia, after it had invaded the Crimea,

was engaged in a proxy war in eastern Ukraine and had poisoned a former spy in Britain,

quite sure why we're getting so excited about Qatar, not even mentioning the recent Winter

Olympics in China. But still, we are talking about sport washing now, and depending on who

wins the next few Olympics and World Cups, we're going to be talking about it a lot more.

The practice of using sport to improve your reputation, you'll be surprised to learn,

is not new. There's some great examples coming up in this podcast because I've got a

scholar athlete on the pod now. Jules Boykoff, he's an American professor of politics and

government at Pacific University, Oregon. He's an author, he's a poet, and he's a former

pro soccer player, a pro football player, he played for Milwaukee Wave. It's pretty cool.

He's just written a new book about the Berlin Olympics, one of the sport washing events

in world history. It's fascinating stuff, but as you'll hear, sport washing goes back a lot

further than that. Enjoy.

Jules, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure, thanks for having

me. Well, first of all, just define what is sports washing, how do you find that?

Absolutely, great place to start. For me, sports washing is when political leaders use

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