ABSTRACT
Sport has been a regular feature of diplomatic relations since the Olympic Games were resurrected in Athens, 1896. This area of theory and practice was, however, neglected well into the twentieth century. Sports scholars focused on the domestic contribution of games and physical exercise to society while for mandarins of international relations sport was irrelevant to the haute poltique. Compared to the Great Wars, the advent of nuclear weapons and the rise and fall of empires, international sport was visible but hardly important. Despite the ‘profound connections between sport and international affairs’, the area of theory and practice was a ‘mere backwater’, a ‘peripheral’ or ‘perfunctory aside’ (Keys 2013a, 348).
