Olympic Diplomacy as Contestation: The Legacy of the Beijing Olympics

What Stuart Murray defines as “the dark side” of the relationship between sport and International Relations (IR) – that is, boycotts and protests over Olympic venues, human rights abuses and environmental issues – has often characterised the Olympic Games. Yet, in the last decades, the geopolitics of the Olympics has moved towards the East and different forms of contestation have emerged, becoming both a norm and a tool of contemporary Olympic Diplomacy. Therefore, contestation is not just a potential negative feature of Olympic Diplomacy or its ‘dark side’. Instead, it represents a relevant component of its architecture. The label ‘Olympic Diplomacy as Contestation’ captures the complex mechanisms of the new era of this kind of Sports Diplomacy, which is characterised by non-democratic host countries and clashes between different cultural and political values.
Keywords: Olympics; contestation; sports diplomacy; Olympic diplomacy