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INsport and politics belong together. It has been a known fact for a long time. Throughout history, sport has been used in various ways, such as propaganda or symbolism, to strengthen power or show strength and action. The bread and spectacle of Roman times – where the rulers of the empire offered the Romans gladiatorial games and other entertainment combined with bread rations – worked to keep the populace in check and not protest. For the past 100 years, sport has been similarly exploited by power-hungry dictators and states to promote their own excellence. We have seen it in everything from Hitler’s Nazi Germany, with the Summer Games in Berlin in 1936 as the clearest symbol, to Putin’s Winter Games in Sochi in 2014, where state-manipulated doping was behind the Russian successes.
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