London is Just Around the Corner: Belgium, Britain and Sport

Abstract

Answering the legitimate call for a more transnational approach to the history of sport in Europe, we seize upon the 2012 Olympic Games as an opportunity to look back on Belgo-British contacts in sport since the Middle Ages. Contextualising this history within the wider Belgo-British political, economic and cultural contacts is, indeed, much more revealing than recounting a superficial story about the three medals the Belgian Olympic delegation actually obtained in London. We illustrate that transnational flows and contacts – crucial to the shaping and diffusion of sport – are not always reflected at the level of the Olympic Games. The cases of cycle racing and soccer demonstrate the divergent adoption and adaptation processes of specific sporting disciplines in Belgium and Britain. At the end of the paper, we also reflect on David Cameron's competitive sport policy in primary education, and raise the question whether the dissipation of public funds for elite sport – to the detriment of ‘Sport for All’ – is still defendable in times of government budgetary scarcity.