Editor’s note for Thursday, February 3, 2022

My thoughts today:

What is politics in sport? When I was a kid growing up in apartheid South Africa, there were plenty of white rugby and cricket players and sports administrators who said the international community should not “politicize” sport. They said this even though they worked for organizations that were organized along racial lines, as everything was under apartheid: They were themselves deeply invested in the politics of that time and place.

Official pleas from China not to “politicize” sport seem equally absurd. Today’s top story about China picking a Chinese military commander from the recent India-China border clash to be an Olympic torchbearer shows that the international sports hypocrisy is still going strong.

Our word of the day is torchbearer (火炬手 huǒjù shǒu).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief