Sport Thought

My name is Jon Hughes and I am an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London (UK). I teach modern German literature and culture and have a particular interest in the history of sport in Germany and the cultural relevance of sport. I'm also a cyclist. Blogging here on sport, culture and modern life.

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Tom Daley' s Announcement / Remembering Gottfried von Cramm

Tom Daley’ s Announcement / Remembering Gottfried von Cramm

The popular British diver Tom Daley’s public announcement, via a Youtube video, that he is in a relationship with a man has caused a stir that is out of all proportion with the true levels of interest in his sport or his ranking within it. Daley is pop icon as much as sports star – known for his prodigious early talent and the close relationship with his father, who died in 2011, that has been…

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Pretty depressing stuff.

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Ed Smith's 'Reading the Game'

Ed Smith’s ‘Reading the Game’

I can strongly recommend Ed Smith’s ‘Reading the Game’ in Intelligent Life. This month he makes an eloquent case for something I have discussed before in my own blog – sports as expression for philosophical ideas and contrasts. He uses the example of the two dominant styles in world football, possession tactics as exemplified by Pep Guardiola’s sides, and defensive counterattacking in the manner…

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Global Sports Events: can they still be justified? As for many sports fans, the cycle of global and continental sports events has always provided me with a comforting and familiar structure to a decade.

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Nicely done, if a little weird. For those of us who like both vinyl and football.

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Hillsborough: An avoidable tragedy and the scandalous response

Hillsborough: An avoidable tragedy and the scandalous response

Hillsborough commemoration at Anfield, 15 April 2014

This week marks 25 years since the Hillsborough Stadium disaster on 15 April 1989, in which 96 fans of Liverpool Football Club died. The facts of the tragedy took a disgracefully long time to emerge, with the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panelin 2012 confirming what the families of the bereaved had for so long known – that the…

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If France expresses itself through cuisine and Italy through art, Brazil does so by kicking a ball

Football in Brazil

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Thoughts after a week of Winter Olympics: Olympism, Parochialism and Marks for Style

A few thoughts on the Sochi Games after the first week of competition.

* The Games seem…

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The art of distraction - the opening ceremony at Sochi

A strangely enjoyable opening ceremony to the 2014 Winter Olympics, which, according to its…

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The Sochi Project - Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen

I can highly recommend a wonderful example of ‘Slow Journalism’, the ‘Sochi Project‘ undertaken by…

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RIP Christopher Chataway (1931-2014). http://news.sky.com/story/1197521/sir-chris-chataway-gb-athlete-dies-aged-82

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Sport and heat - it's not only about fitness and willpower

Tennis players at the Australian Open today faced 42 degree heat (at least – temperatures in the…

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Thomas Hitzlsperger

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Natan Sharansky - the Royal Game as Survival Strategy

The BBC has an interesting feature(along with a radio programme) about Natan Sharansky, nine years…

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Politics, Sport and the Olympic Games

In the run-up to the Berlin Olympics of 1936, Avery Brundage, later to become the President of the…

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Sexism and Women’s Sport

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