Sport is fashion and fashion is sport. Not only in the Euro 2024 the teams make a big fuzz about the design of their sportswear, but certainly the Olympic games in Paris 2024 will demonstrate the close links between the 2 worlds. We might say playing football is a bit like a fashion catwalk. Keep going right on target, despite obstacles, when thousands of people are watching your performance and potential failures very closely. Making a “bella figura” is a must in both spheres. There is also a strong tendency for “the winner takes all”, that s/he takes the trophy and the jackpot.
Both worlds are also big business in their own right. It is at least 100 years old that sport and fashion got married. The “Musée des arts décoratifs” in Paris had an excellent exhibition on the combination of sport and fashion (booklet link). According to the curators both spheres have always been interlaced. High-level performance and specialized fashion just made for a splendid combination. As the rich and wealthy had more than a penny or two to spend on their leisure activities the combination of sport and fashion soon became itself a big business, beside the visible beauty of the bodies, movements and dresses. Just watch the breakdance fashion as the latest addition to the repertoire of olympic disciplines. In a recent article in “Le Monde” (2024-7-11) the value of the market of sports including its fashionable merchandising is estimated to reach a turnover of € 500 billion in 2022.
The competition of sports has been turned into a competition of the best images and videos. Fashionable as well as functional clothing can assist in climbing the podium. In the Euro 2024 Football Final the teams equipped with Adidas (Spain) and with Nike (England) compete for the trophy. Changing equipment sponsorship from one to the other can raise substantial amounts for a team (€ 100 million/year for the German national team). Big business seems to take over sports and fashion after the century-old marriage of sport and fashion. Since then, they have jointly been on an extended honeymoon. (Image from www.emptyspacetm.com 2024-7)
Olympic Games 1924
100 years after the Olympic games were held in Paris, they will take place there again. Each time for the Olympic games new locations (Colombe) were built. For the 1924 games for example the first 50m swimming pool was built (Stade nautique des Tourelles, Porte des Lilas, Paris 20th), but a new one will host the 2024 competitions. However, the old pool will still serve in 2024 for the preparation of the competitions. The successors of Johnny Weissmuller (5 gold medals in swimming 1924) and star in many Hollywood films, the access to the stadium has become much more secured these days. In fact, security has turned into a crucial issue to host the “peaceful games”. In 1924 Germany was still not allowed to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris as the security of participants could not be guaranteed. Some competitions at the time turned rather violent as the example of the rugby competition, in which the converted American football team as rugby players had beaten the Fench rugby team.
The idea of alternative games has also been around for decades. There were already in the 1920s international competitions of worker associations (for example Frankfurt 1925) and the Olympic idea had to defend itself against the accusation of a Western countries’ domination. The set of disciplines in the competitions is always up for discussion and negotiations. We shall see interesting new additions in 2024, like break dance, to broaden the understanding of Olympic disciplines.
Even 100 years after Pierre de Coubertin steered the modern Olympic games the idea is to bring more to the games than “Faster, higher, stronger”, notably to be together. To be together in a peaceful way remains the biggest challenge for humanity. The inclusive turn is, however, a challenge to host the games, particularly to host paralympic games in inner cities that have abundant barriers of access for impaired persons. Inclusiveness for many countries is another challenge that goes beyond the simple participation in the games, but consists in training facilities and equipment for many disciplines.
(Image: BNF Gallica) 
Overwork
In a country where most people subscribe to the “protestant work ethic” it is not easy to raise the issue of overwork. Yet, overwork needs to be become an issue of concern. In combination with overwork comes too little rest. Particularly the lack of rest and sleep is likely to cause serious medium and/or long-term effects. Burn-out is only one of the more obvious and drastic experience of exhaustion. The lifestyle of overwork has direct causal links to malnutrition and cardio-vascular risk factors. Once triggered these processes are even harder to control. The run on meditation exercises is only reiterating the huge difficulties to find a balance or antidote to overwork.
The Pew Research Center in Washington has published results from a survey in 2023 that shows that only about half of American people take the full vacation they are entitled to. The evidence of pervasive overwork in the U.S., not limited to the higher executive branches of employees, is hugely unhealthy. Physical and mental health is endangered and the cost to individuals and society are immense. Who cares? Well, we should care. (1) Documentation and monitoring this trend are the first elements of a strategy to counter these effects. Keep spreading the message that overwork is not without serious risks and mostly is followed by huge costs, someone will have to pay. (2) Start to analyse why we glorify overwork and keep doing so for centuries. The strive for higher pay, more money, higher profits, wealth or social prestige is a powerful driving force, of course. Legal measures or taxation to curb extra benefits of overtime have apparently had only marginal effects as they are circumvented, if people are too much focused on the immediate earnings effects. (3) Examine the question, why we glorify overwork? The Harvard Business Review published an article on this on 28th of August (just after the vacation period) to blame the culture of “workaholic” behaviour. In short, if your self-concept is defined exclusively through work, you will be doomed for overwork and its consequences. The next shot of overwork satisfies the urge for self-esteem and most likely also recognition from peers, colleagues and supervisors. This is an unbelievably heavy drug and addiction terribly hard to resist. (4) Who keeps pushing the agenda of overwork? We know for sure that it is not your children. If you have none, you will be at a higher risk to overwork and to push the overwork agenda compared to others, just because compared to families your time budget leaves more reserve capacity for time to rest. Employers set powerful incentives to reward any form of overtime and thereby overwork not only in pecuniary form, but also more rapid career advancement. Strongest and most addictive is your very own behaviour not to respect limits to working time. (5) Remedies to overwork are only partly in your own command. Of course, getting more sleep, doing more exercise, walk instead of drive to work are all fine. However, we need to address the danger of addiction, especially when we do not want to admit our dependency on overwork for self-esteem and recognition by others. Getting together with like-minded persons, for example, in trade unions, will make it easier to get collective solutions to isolated overwork. Higher wages should allow you to get more rest as you earn the same absolute amount with less input of hours. The danger of working even more, because the incentive to put in an extra hour of work has risen at the same time. Be aware of this “duality of higher pay”. Societies have lots of reasons to redistribute work. Between women and men, young and old as well as the “overworked” and “underworked”. 
Special HK
The Special Olympics World Games are special in many respects. The broad range of people with special abilities is only one of them. I had the chance to ask permission to take a photo of the athletes from the team from Hong Kong when the took their team photo at Berlin Alexanderplatz. This is indeed special as the all wore proudly their team dress showing in big letters Hong Kong on the back (participant example). Hong Kong is the unfortunate island that was passed on from Imperial phase from the United Kingdom time to the Chinese rule. Despite an official 1 China, 2 political systems promise, Hong Kong’s democratic movements were soon threated and imprisoned. It was a special moment to me to witness the spirit of the Hong Kong athletes at the beginning of the special games in Berlin.
Other athletes whom I congratulated on the way to the competition were proudly asking me, whether I had seen them on TV yesterday. Beyond the 2 weeks of competition, special athletes are part of our public images of sports persons. This enlarges our perspective of what a sport’s person presumably has to look like. The SOWG question our traditional stereotypes and put inclusion and integration into practice. At least some of the disciplines should go mainstream and be part of the next Olympic games in Paris 2024. But, as we all know the official, not so special, Olympic games are primarily about big business and merchandising rather than inclusion and diversity. Hong Kong athletes remain a unique experience reserved to the special Olympics. 