ABSTRACT

Sport, arguably, has its greatest social and political impact in relation to the processes by which individual and national identities are constructed. The majority of the top sporting events are associated directly or indirectly with national contestation. The representations of sport reproduce national stereotypes of others, whilst offering celebratory, patriotic and often xenophobic ideas of who ‘we’ are. This is complex, because some are or feel or choose to be excluded; some are internationalist by inclination or multinational by background; localist and regionalist sympathies divide nations; and national identities are always constructed from a complex combination of elements. Sport has also become a significant representational source for images of fit, sexualised bodies. It is noteworthy that a current slang phrase for sexually attractive is ‘she looks fit’. So the representation of sport is an element in our senses of who we are, who other people are, and what sort of identities constitute our countries and nations and other people’s countries and nations.