For better and very much for worse, 2022 has been an apogee for sportswashing. The year began with the Winter Olympics in Beijing, as the International Olympic Committee insisted on its position of “political neutrality” about crimes against humanity faced by Uyghur people. The war in Ukraine then forced the IOC and Fifa to backflip, all-but conceding – many years too late – that allowing Russia to host the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 World Cup was ill-advised.
In the subsequent months, any lessons to be learnt from the Russian experience have been promptly forgotten by the global sporting elite. The International Cricket Council sold its soul to Aramco, the Saudi oil giant controlled by a brutal regime renowned for dismembering dissidents with bone-saws. There’s also the small matter of Aramco single-handedly causing 4% of global greenhouse emissions in recent decades.
