(Nationalities Papers) Given that Russia is due to host the largest and most popular (by a wide margin) global sporting – the FIFA World Cup – next year, now would seem an appropriate time to reflect on the last Sporting Mega Event held in Putin’s Russia – the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. That event will live in infamy mainly because it holds the record for the fastest ever squandering of an Olympic legacy. One hopes this is not a record that will be broken. However, the annexation of Crimea that began even before the end of the Sochi Games may cause people to forget some of the important lessons of Sochi. Robert Orttung and Sufian Zhemukhov’s book is thus an excellent and timely guide to some of the most interesting features of the Sochi event before Crimea. The connections between Sochi and Crimea are fascinating and even more so as the authors see the common origins of these events, saying that “the nature of the Putin regime led to both the Sochi games in the corrupt, authoritarian manner they occurred and the subsequent invasion of Ukraine.” […]
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