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The eventual inventor of the behemoth that is the football World Cup, Jules Rimet’s initial plans for how to achieve this lofty aim included setting up Red Star, a sports club for industrial workers in Paris, while still in his 20s. 

According to writer Jonathan Wilson’s excellent history of Rimet’s quadrennial global tournament, the 24-year-old banned political discussion at the football club while also raging against class inequality and the indignities suffered by the proletariat in his native France. 

Given the fact he also arranged poetry and education classes for players, his ban on political chat seems more than a little incongruous. 

‘Hey guys, your lives, our lives, should be better. But don’t use politics to achieve it. Use football.’

Actually, you can kind of see how football got to where it got to despite the well-meaning efforts of the French man. All of this to say, the complicated question of where sport ends and where politics begins – or vice versa – is older than the World Cup itself. 

Ask US figure skating champion Amber Glenn if she thinks Rimet’s actions were apolitical. During her first press conference at the Milan Cortina Olympics last week, her status as an openly queer female figure skater on the circuit led to a question about what she thought about ‘the Trump administration’s approach to the LGBT community’. 

“It’s been a hard time for the [queer] community overall under this administration,” she answered, making clear she wanted to use her voice and platform during the games to represent people like her. 

“I know that a lot of people say that, ‘You’re just an athlete, stick to your job, shut up about politics’,” she continued. “But politics affect us all. It is something that I will not just be quiet about because it is something that affects us in our everyday lives.” 

As she predicted, the ‘shut up’ brigade piled on immediately. 

“When I choose to utilize one of the amazing things about the United States of America (freedom of speech) to convey how I feel as an athlete competing for Team USA in a troubling time for many Americans I am now receiving a scary amount of hate/threats for simply using my voice when asked about how I feel. I did anticipate this but I am disappointed by it,” the 26-year-old Texan wrote on Instagram in the aftermath, and ahead of making her Olympic debut yesterday. 

She wasn’t treading the line between sports and politics alone. The US freestyle skiing team have also drawn ire from the very top of MAGA.

“I love the USA. I would never want to represent a different country in the Olympics,” Chris Lillis proclaimed at a press briefing. “With that being said, a lot of times, athletes are hesitant to talk about political views and how we feel about things.

“I feel heartbroken about what’s happening in the United States… I’m pretty sure you’re referencing ICE and some of the protests and things like that.”

His teammate Hunter Hess chimed in: “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the US.” 

Again predictably, and somewhat tediously, Trump singled Hess out as a ‘real loser’ on the social media platform he founded so he could call people losers. 

Here in Italy, it is noticeable how other athletes haven’t wanted to call out ICE, Trump or the administration directly but have taken time to reference their values, compassion, respect and love for others, or the importance of community, human rights, equality and inclusion when asked the nationalist question.

Those are all words some commenters and commentators have brushed off as nonsense ideals of ‘the woke’, telling the athletes they should stay in Italy, just play/ski/skate, shut up or get off the team.

Many may not be aware that Team USA are one of the rare groups comprising the 93 nations competing in the games which doesn’t get any government funding. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee is a “mission driven non-profit”, relying on donations. 

Plenty of the ‘outspoken’ athletes of the winter sports don’t have their financial futures solidified, a situation that Rimet would have fought against as one of his long-held beliefs was that amateurism prevented participation by working-class men in football. 

Rimet may have been too idealistic and simplistic in his aims – ignoring “politics” gave him permission to ignore fascism – but he likely could not have forseen how his dedication to apolitical football was used to build fiefdoms and exalt strongmen. 

He wanted the little man to have more in life. The politicians, countries and administrators of today, who like to harness the power of these major events, don’t enjoy it when their subjects try to do the same.

Related Reads Comerford seals Olympian status with journey from Kilternan to one of the toughest slopes in the world

Some of the bigger names, like Lindsey Vonn, do have financial stability (the skier has had a long, storied career full of winning, endorsements and sponsorships). But wealth doesn’t shield them all from becoming the subject of fierce debate. 

There is politics with a capital P and then there is all manner of sports politics. 

Depending on who you asked, Vonn was irresponsible and selfish or brave and ambitious to stand at the top of the Cortina downhill slope on Sunday in an attempt to defy an ACL injury and fulfil the Olympic comeback of meticulous corporate planning (or dreams, again, depending on who you ask). 

The room I watched the anticipated run in was full not just of elite skiers and coaches but of goodwill for Vonn. A key trait recognisable among winter athletes is that they want each other to push the limits of their sports successfully. A small rebellion against their individual pursuits. And a hint at why journalists feel they’ll get some meat in the answers to their politically coded questions, a difference from other mega athlete meets. 

Vonn had barely pushed off the start line when groans emerged from those skiers gathered at the site of the male alpine skiing at Stelvio. She immediately looked tentative and it wasn’t long before we were hearing her anguished cries, in pain from a leg fractured in the severe crash. 

Should 41-year-old Vonn have given up her spot for another, younger US woman to take make an Olympic debut? There’s too much politics in that question for me to answer, I’m afraid. 

The capital P and small p politics are everywhere. I met a camera operator at the end of his long shift yesterday and I asked him about the drones (the ones following the athletes down the 2,000m slopes to give TV viewers a sense of the speed and skill). I asked excitedly, not in a journalistic po-faced way. I may even have smiled.

“I don’t like them,” he retorted. 

“They are weapons of war.”

American, he did not want to go on the record. 

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