{"id":409218,"date":"2019-12-31T07:50:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T14:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=409218"},"modified":"2019-12-31T12:22:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T19:22:31","slug":"athlete-voice-how-it-influences-sports-governance-a-big-issue-in-decade-ahead-says-play-the-game-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/athlete-voice-how-it-influences-sports-governance-a-big-issue-in-decade-ahead-says-play-the-game-boss\/","title":{"rendered":"Athlete Voice & How It Influences Sports Governance A Big Issue In decade Ahead, Says Play The Game Boss"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athlete Voice in the coming decade<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

“One of the most important challenges of the next decade will be to develop the forms in which athletes can best express their individual and collective visions, negotiate their disagreements, and influence the decisions that decide the future course of sport.”<\/p>\n

That’s the conclusion of Jens Sejer Andersen<\/strong>, International director of Play the Game<\/strong>, in his decade-ending note on the state of world sport.<\/p>\n

Play the Game is an initiative run by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies (Idan)<\/strong><\/a>, “aiming at raising the ethical standards of sport and promoting democracy, transparency and freedom of expression in world sport”.<\/p>\n

The International head ends 2019 predicting what will happen next as the appetite for influence in the way sports are governed in a trillion-dollar-a-year business grows apace.<\/p>\n

“It was not primarily the athletes that drove the radical change of the sports agenda in the past decade,” says Andersen.<\/p>\n

“But there are many recent signs that professional athletes have a growing appetite for influencing their own arena and society at large. Sporting icons like NFL player Colin Kaepernick<\/strong>, and football players like Megan Rapinoe<\/strong> and Mesut \u00d6zil<\/strong> have spoken up against racism, discrimination and persecution of minorities. At the bottom of the competitive pyramid, athletes have voted with their feet for more than a generation, seeking health, fun, and good company far well outside the classic sports system. Athletes of all kinds will likely be at the heart of the sports political agenda of the 2020s, and their working range may stretch well beyond sport itself.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“It was not primarily the athletes that drove the radical change of the sports agenda in the decade we leave. But there are signs that athletes will be at the heart of the agenda of the 2020\u2019ies”, writes Anderson as he recalls “ten turbulent years in world sport”.<\/p>\n

\"FINA\"

Photo Courtesy: PlayTheGame.org<\/p><\/div>\n

In the article in full, Andersen asks the reader to think ten years back<\/a> and ask what you would have concluded ‘If someone had told you, at the doorstep of 2010, that the following decade would:<\/p>\n