Giochi diplomatici
Sport e politica estera nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra
by Nicola Sbetti
cover price 30 euros
Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche-Viella
Treviso-Rome 2020
464 pages
ISBN 978-88-3313-287-7
(Ludica, 15)
The book is available in bookstores and in e-book
Immediately after Liberation Italy was still considered a defeated country and this had inevitable repercussions in the field of sport. Italian athletes were not at first involved in the resumption of activities and some international federations even went so far as to exclude or suspend Italy.
This study sets out to provide answers to a series of questions, starting from the assumption that though sport may be a peripheral and non-essential phenomenon in the international political system, its exceptional visibility nevertheless makes it a variable and an instrument of foreign policy. Why, unlike Germany and Japan, was Italy able to take part in the 1948 Olympic Games? To what extent did the heritage of Fascism and the Cold War respectively influence the revival of Italian sports? How did the early Republican governments use sport as an instrument of foreign policy? And how did Italian sporting institutions respond?
The volume is further enhanced by a number of case studies which on the one hand highlight how international policy influenced the projection of Italian sport on the international stage and on the other how certain “sporting crises” (beginning with the withdrawal of all Italian riders from the 1950 Tour de France) also had consequences at government and diplomatic levels.
Nicola Sbetti, for his book Giochi diplomatici. Sport e politica estera nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra, co-published by Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche and Viella, has been awarded in Rome on 29 November 2021 with the first prize in the non-fiction section of the 55th CONI Literary Prize.
Contents
List of abbreviations, 6
Introduction, 11
I. Gli attori della politica (estera) sportiva
1. Le istituzioni e gli attori del sistema sportivo internazionale, 33
2. Gli attori istituzional-sportivi, 57
3. Le istituzioni, gli attori politici e lo sport, 88
4. Gli attori sportivi, 116
II. Lo sport italiano alla ricerca del consenso e della legittimazione internazionale
1. Lo sport occupato (1943-1945), 151
2. La strana quarantena dello sport italiano (1945-1946), 165
3. Il pieno rientro nel consesso sportivo internazionale (1946-1948), 225
4. Verso l’Olimpo (1948-1953), 259
III. “Crisi politiche” e “crisi sportive”
1. L’impatto delle tensioni politiche sullo sport: la guerra fredda, 303
2. Lo sport, la questione di Trieste e i rapporti con la Jugoslavia, 331
3. Crisi sportive: il Tour del 1950 e i rapporti italo-francesi, 376
4. Il MAE alla prova delle “crisi sportive”, 414
Conclusions, 425
