International Sports Community Research Articles

Translation, Cross-Cultural Adaptation, and Validation of the Croatian Version of the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire (APSQ).

The aim of this study is to translate, cross-culturally adapt, and validate the Croatian Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire (APSQ-Cro) as part of the Sport Mental Health Assessment Tool 1 (SMHAT-1) validation. We assessed the reliability and applicability of the APSQ-Cro among Croatian athletes. The international sports community is increasingly focused on mental health issues in athletes, highlighting the need for early detection tools like the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire (APSQ) and SMHAT-1. We included 869 Croatian competing athletes across 54 sports who received a link to access the WEB-based questionnaire. The Croatian Olympic Board helped in distributing the questionnaires, aiming to reach as many and as diverse a group of registered competing athletes in Croatia as possible. Results showed a Cronbach's alpha of 0.75 for the entire questionnaire, indicating acceptable reliability. An exploratory strategy of factor analysis was used to determine the underlying structure of the APSQ-Cro. For this purpose, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and Bartlett's test for sphericity were performed to ensure the suitability of the data. The KMO test ensured sampling adequacy, with a measure of 0.77 indicating suitability for factor analysis, while Bartlett's test confirmed significant correlations among variables (χ2 = 2779.155, df = 45, p < 0.001), validating the dataset's appropriateness for data reduction techniques. The factor analysis, together with the Cattell scree test and varimax rotation, resulted in a two-factor structure for the APSQ-Cro. Factor 1 included items related to internal psychological struggles, while Factor 2 included items related to external pressures from the athletic environment. These two factors explained 53% of the variability, with Cronbach's alphas of 0.75 and 0.88 for the respective factors. The APSQ-Cro is a valid and reliable tool for assessing distress in Croatian athletes. Croatian athletes' sporting experience will be improved with the broad adoption of the APSQ-Cro, which can help detect early signs of psychological distress and subsequently improve mental health outcomes.

Who Is to Blame and What Is to Be Done? The Rise and Fall of Russian Authority in the Olympics

Who Is to Blame and What Is to Be Done? The Rise and Fall of Russian Authority in the Olympics

Translation and Validation of the Arabic Version of the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire.

The international sports community is becoming more proactive in clinical mental health practice and research. An athlete-specific psychological distress screening tool can identify potential mental health illness. The Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire (APSQ) is a simple screening tool for detecting early signs of athlete-specific strain and related mental health concerns. We evaluated the internal consistency and reliability of the translated and culturally adjusted Arabic version of the APSQ (APSQ-Ar) with Arabic-speaking elite athletes. The final translation underwent standard forward and backward translation, an inspection by a team of experts, and then preliminary testing. The APSQ-Ar was cross-culturally validated and then assessed for internal consistency and reliability among (n = 98) Arabic-speaking athletes. There were no problems with the patients' understanding or interpretation of the items on the APSQ-Ar translation. The intraclass correlation value was .93 (95% confidence interval, .89-.95), and the mean difference was 2.4 with a minimal detectable change of 5.12, demonstrating strong test-retest reliability. Moreover, Cronbach alpha showed excellent internal consistency (.76). The APSQ-Ar was demonstrated to be good, reliable, and internally consistent. With APSQ-Ar, sports medicine professionals in Arabic-speaking countries will be able to identify psychological distress and symptoms in athletes and, as a result, provide them with mental health support.

The Impact of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on China and the Olympic Movement: The Legacy

This paper aims to explore the impact of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on Chinese sport and Chinese society as well as the international Olympic Movement and Games. It asks three questions: What have been the purported impacts of the Beijing Games on China’s sport culture and practice? Did the 2008 Beijing Games contribute to the development of the Olympic movement? What, if any, social progress has been achieved through the Beijing Games? In answer to the first question, the paper explores how the Games sought to bring Olympic ideals and spirit to China and the Chinese sports authority used the Games to popularize Olympic ideals within the country. Olympic education programmes played an important role in spreading and popularizing Olympic knowledge and culture during the Beijing Games as well as during the post-Beijing Olympics era. The Games also provided a platform for the development of a volunteer programme which gave direct support to the hosting of the Beijing Games, but also developed a voluntary workforce which has continued to serve China’s social and cultural development. In answer to the second question, China used the opportunity to help the world to understand China, its history, its people, its cultures, and its ambition, and future direction. China’s promotion of an Olympic slogan and the three themes: One World and One Dream, the Green Olympics, and the Technological Olympics and Humanistic Olympics took the Olympic Movement and the Games to foster an intercultural Olympism, of ‘One World’ a twenty-first century phenomenon. Thirdly, the Games reflected economic and cultural changes since the 1980s when China opened its door to the outside world. However, the Games did not bring changes to the political system or to social structures in Chinese society. Nevertheless, it did give China the confidence to join the international sports community and gain rich experience to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. Beijing, therefore, will become the first city to have hosted Summer and Winter Games in Olympic history, but the hosting of the 2022 Games will take place with China having grown in confidence and strength since the 2008 Games. The country is sufficiently confident to stage a successful Games despite the context of dealing with the Covid pandemic, the diplomatic boycott instigated by the USA, the objections of the sporting world to the treatment of the Chinese tennis star, Peng Shuai, and the environmental problems resulting from having to manufacture artificial snow.

Integration of eSports in the structure of Ifs: disruption or continuity?

With increasing popularity and growing financial stakes, the gaming industry caught the attention of the international sporting community, notably to know whether eSports would be suited to integrate the already existing structures of International Federations (“IFs") and whether competitive video gaming could incorporate medal events, such as the Olympics. On 8 December 2018, through its “Communique of the 7th Olympic Summit”, the IOC considered premature the inclusion of eSports as medal event on the Olympic program. However, it did recognize their importance and encouraged IFs to consider the benefits of integrating the “electronic and virtual” version of their sports within their structure. With the continued professionalization of the FIFA eWorld Cup, notably with the offering of a USD 400,000 prize for the winner of the eWorld Cup Grand Final 2018, FIFA introduced for the first time integrity and Anti-Doping standards for said tournament. Specifically, pre-match betting activities were monitored and Anti-Doping tests were conducted on the participants of the FIFA eWorld Cup 2018. As such, FIFA required from the participants and coaches of the FIFA eWorld Cup 2018 to comply with an adequate yet already established regulatory framework. Indeed, all participants were required to accept FIFA’s regulations and give jurisdiction to its judicial bodies, notably the FIFA Ethics and Disciplinary Committees. By doing so, FIFA has paved the way for other IFs to integrate eSports in their structures. The most important question that remains, which will determine the future of eSports as a potential new discipline, is whether such a favourable environment will cause video game producers and IFs to seize this business opportunity and create innovative synergies between themselves. With the present paper, the author will identify some of the current legal issues surrounding the integration of eSports into already existing sporting structures.

The Geopolitics of Gulf Sport Sponsorship

ABSTRACT The names of two major Gulf airlines, Qatar Airways and Emirates, have saturated the European football scene for many years, sponsoring some of the most prominent European teams and FIFA itself. These state-backed airlines are also active in motorsports, rugby, cycling, tennis, golf, cricket, and equestrian sport, while several prominent Gulf elites and royal family members have recently taken over major sports franchises in Europe and elsewhere. How should we understand these far-reaching sponsorship agendas in the Gulf? What can they tell us about the politics and ethics of international sport on the Arabian Peninsula? Moving beyond the general readings of Gulf sport sponsorship as an exercise in ‘soft power,’ this article shows how these deals are strategic nodes for diverse actors in the Gulf and in the international sporting community to advance various interests: personal, political, financial, and otherwise. Informed by a critical geopolitics lens that questions the coherence of the ‘state’ as an actor, I ask what it means to say that ‘the Gulf’ sponsors sport, and more specifically investigate the relevant actors behind these sponsorship deals. To do so, this article examines regional and global political economy through a focus on three Gulf airline sponsors, Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways, and three elite sports sponsors—the UAE’s Sheik Mansour, Qatar’s Nasser bin Ghanim Al-Khelaïfi, and Sheikh Nasser of Bahrain. By decentering ‘soft power’ approaches to sport that unduly emphasize the ‘state’ as an actor, this article suggests a more grounded approach to the geopolitics of sport in the Arabian Peninsula, which simultaneously acknowledges the complicity of Western actors and institutions in the rise of Gulf sports sponsorship deals in the past decade.

Editorial

Editorial

Update on Zika Virus: Considerations for the Traveling Athlete.

As public health experts work to contain the outbreak of Zika virus in South America and minimize the devastating prenatal complications, the international sports community prepares for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Athletes have publicly expressed concern regarding the health risks of competition in Zika-endemic areas.33 Ensuring the safety of the athletes during training and competition is the primary role of the team physician. Special consideration is needed for sports teams preparing for travel to areas affected by Zika virus.

Can Hong Kong Chinese football players represent their ‘Fatherland’? The Cold War, FIFA and the 1966 Asian Games

During the Cold War years, both the Chinese regimes in Beijing (PRC) and Taipei (ROC) claimed to be the sole representative of the Chinese nation, thus giving rise to a battle over which regime should be recognized by the international sporting community. The issue of recognition, however, was not the only source of contention among supporters of the two regimes during the Cold War years. This paper documents how pro-PRC forces and members of the British expat community in Hong Kong, despite their different political allegiances, formed an alliance to stop Hong Kong football players from representing the ROC in the 1966 Asian Games. This attempt was not successful, partly because of the role played by then-FIFA President Stanley Rous, and the saga eventually offered the pro-ROC forces in Hong Kong the opportunity to strengthen the identification of the Chinese population in Hong Kong with the regime.

Multi-tiered sports arbitrations in the Republic of Serbia

Contrary to popular perception of the legal profession, multi-tier arbitrations are neither new, nor uncommon phenomenon. With growing need of the community to arbitration becomes real, not just theoretical, alternative to judicial resolution of disputes, arbitration accepts more judicial characteristics, among which is one of the most important and at the same time controversial - multi-tiered dispute resolution. Multi-tiered arbitration proceeding is traditionally present in commercial and investment arbitrations. However, in recent decades, significant international arbitration institutions introduced the option for consensual review of arbitration awards. Sports law is an area where, by the end of the twentieth century, the phenomenon was unnoticed present. The international sports community, as a precondition for the survival of autonomous settlement of disputes, choose dispute settlement by arbitration, but with a number of significant modifications. One of the most specific is multi-tiered arbitration, especially regarding the most important cases. The main reason for such behaviour is the aspiration of the international sports community, following the example of national courts, to organize efficient, quality and final way of resolving disputes within its jurisdiction. Permanent Court of arbitration of the Olympic Committee of Serbia follows the mentioned logic, thanks to the provisions of the Sports Act and contrary to the Arbitration act, and introduces the possibility of reviewing its decision in front of the Court of arbitration for sport based in Lausanne.

What is a Sports Injury?

Current sports injury reporting systems lack a common conceptual basis. We propose a conceptual foundation as a basis for the recording of health problems associated with participation in sports, based on the notion of impairment used by the World Health Organization. We provide definitions of sports impairment concepts to represent the perspectives of health services, the participants in sports and physical exercise themselves, and sports institutions. For each perspective, the duration of the causative event is used as the norm for separating concepts into those denoting impairment conditions sustained instantly and those developing gradually over time. Regarding sports impairment sustained in isolated events, 'sports injury' denotes the loss of bodily function or structure that is the object of observations in clinical examinations; 'sports trauma' is defined as an immediate sensation of pain, discomfort or loss of functioning that is the object of athlete self-evaluations; and 'sports incapacity' is the sidelining of an athlete because of a health evaluation made by a legitimate sports authority that is the object of time loss observations. Correspondingly, sports impairment caused by excessive bouts of physical exercise is denoted as 'sports disease' (overuse syndrome) when observed by health service professionals during clinical examinations, 'sports illness' when observed by the athlete in self-evaluations, and 'sports sickness' when recorded as time loss from sports participation by a sports body representative. We propose a concerted development effort in this area that takes advantage of concurrent ontology management resources and involves the international sporting community in building terminology systems that have broad relevance.

Shenzhen's bid for the 2011 Summer Universiade and its implications for Taiwan in the international sports community

Holding international multi-sport events has been a means for Taiwan to tackle marginalization in the international sports community. Its cities usually obtained the hosting rights through international bids. The Chinese authorities, however, deemed that Taiwan was very likely to promote ‘Two Chinas’ and/or ‘One China One Taiwan’ policies in staging the events during the Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian eras; any Chinese bidder therefore was required to foil its Taiwanese competitor. To achieve the objective of eliminating Kaohsiung of Taiwan in the 2011 World Universiade bid, Shenzhen of China not only played the financial card to demonstrate its ambition to become the host city, but also adopted a number of strategies that rarely used in China's other bids to lobby the voters. Its success resulted in Taiwan losing an opportunity to strengthen its connection with, and escalate its status in, the international sports community and eventually hampered Taiwan's progress in tackling marginalization.

London 2012: A Chinese Charm Offensive – A Reputation Rebuilt and An Impression Changed?

Displaying amiability (qinheli) was one of the duties of the Chinese athletes involved in the London 2012 Olympics. Why did the Chinese government ask them to behave in this way? How did the athletes carry out the mandate? Was their amiable performance intended to arouse nationalist sentiment among the Chinese? In response to these questions, two key political preoccupations of the Chinese authorities in the post-London Olympics era are identified: remedying foreigners' negative impressions of China, and gaining a greater input into the decision-making of the International Olympic Committee and its affiliated international sports federations. These objectives are shown to illustrate China's intention to rebuild its international reputation and challenge the status quo of the international sporting community.

Amateurism, Imperialism, Internationalism and the First British Empire Games

The intersections between sport and empire, and between sport and the emergence of internationalism in the early twentieth century, have attracted much recent attention from historians. Less attention has been paid to how these relationships became intertwined. This article suggests that the interrelationship between imperialism and internationalism had a profound impact on sport in the interwar years, challenging Victorian and Edwardian ideals of amateurism. This argument is tested through a study of a signature imperial event founded in 1930, the British Empire Games. The first British Empire Games, held in Hamilton, Ontario, are often portrayed as a display of popular imperialism. This article suggests that while imperialism was certainly one aspect of the event, it was not the only one. The article examines the various meanings which organizers, participants and supporters attached to the Games. Local and national organizers in Canada used the Games to convey civic and national identities to the rest of the Empire. The athletes themselves were ambivalent about imperialism, placing the Games instead within the emerging international sporting community.

Regulatory Features and Administrative Law Dimensions of the Olympic Movement's Anti-doping Regime

This paper examines, from a global administrative law standpoint, the crafting and administration of the anti-doping regime by the non-governmental international sports governing bodies, grouped in the Olympic Movement. It explores the inroads made by public actors (governments and courts) in the Olympic Movement's self-constructed monopoly on norms for the international sports community. Courts are playing an important role on the margin: while they rightly defer on substantive issues to the expertise and shared understanding of the sport governing bodies ('lex sportiva'), they are willing to interfere when the latter's decisions run counter to fundamental human rights and classic administrative law protections of due process. This has pressed private bodies such as the Olympic Movement to introduce new governance structures (especially the independent Court of Arbitration for Sport), mirroring those found in more strictly public international administration. There has also been a remarkable outreach to national governments, leading to hybrid public-private bodies such as the World Anti-Doping Agency. This interaction appears to be yielding satisfactory results so far.

The South African council on sport and the political antinomies of the sports boycott

In the 1970s and 1980s the anti‐apartheid movement recognised the South African Council on Sport (SACOS) as its domestic sports wing. This article analyses and evaluates SACOS's politics in the context of apartheid, the international sports boycott and moves by the National Party to deracialise sport. In the belief that sport transcended race and politics, SACOS pursued negotiations with white sports officials to integrate and democratise South African sports. Failed negotiations, state harassment of SACOS leaders and a thorough analysis of the relationship between apartheid and sport, convinced SACOS that black sports people would continue to experience discrimination while apartheid existed. The international sports community and foreign governments agreed, and in the late 1970s the sports boycott became a strategy against apartheid per se. But SACOS assumed too much of the sports boycott; non‐collaboration became a principle rather than a strategy. SACOS refused to acknowledge government reforms, negotiate with white sports officials, or even enter political alliances with other resistance groups; members who dissented faced expulsion and isolation. In the late 1980s negotiation supplanted non‐collaboration and a group of SACOS members formed a rival anti‐apartheid sports organisation. It eventually brokered a new sports order in South Africa. SACOS, however, refused to negotiate and effectively denied itself the means of struggle.