[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]

Ron Krabill: Hello, and welcome to the podcast of the Global Sport Lab. I’m Ron Krabill and I’m your host, as well as the director of the Global Sport Lab and a professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.

The Global Sport Lab is a new collaboration based in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. The lab uses the lens of sport to explore the big challenges of our global world, including inequity, politics and justice, human rights, popular culture, democracy and the economy, to name just a few.

We are particularly focused on the sport of football, better known as soccer in the United States, during the run-up to Seattle’s hosting of the FIFA Men’s World Cup in 2026. But we’re interested in a wide range of sports, well-known and less well-known, from the grassroots to the professional levels, and how they help us make meaning of the world.

Special thanks to musician and scholar of global football, Laurent Dubois, and Woti Production for the use of our theme music, “Merci Kylian,” available on Spotify and Apple Music and at wotiproduction.com.

Ron: Today’s episode features a conversation with Professor Markku Jokisipilä.

Markku is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Turku in Finland, where he focuses on Finland’s parliamentary and political history and foreign policy. This focus led to a particular interest in the Soviet Union’s mobilization of hockey as a tool of diplomacy during the Cold War, and through to Putin’s regime, which we’ll be discussing today.

He also holds more than 40 championship titles in Finland as a rower, has competed in the World Rowing Championships, and has served as the vice president of the Finnish Canoeing and Rowing Federation. Welcome, Markku.

Markku Jokisipilä: Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Ron: Joining us today also is Professor Danny Hoffman, director of the Jackson School of International Studies. Danny, please introduce yourself.

Danny Hoffman: Hi, thanks. Danny Hoffman, and as Ron said, I’m the director of the Jackson School, an anthropologist, and helping to try to get the Global Sport Lab up and running.

Ron: Great, thanks.

Markku, I’d like to begin with a question about whether the Soviet Union, and now Russia, represents a kind of early adopter of sportswashing and state-run enterprises involved in sport. You write a lot about the Soviet Union’s conscious adoption of hockey as another form of ideological warfare in the 1940s and 1950s.

I’m wondering, what parallels do you see between what they did then, and what they’ve done more recently with hosting the Olympics and the ensuing doping scandals? And what they are doing now with the efforts in comparison to, say, the Gulf states, to influence the sporting world through FIFA, buying up aging stars in the soccer world, et cetera?

Markku: Mm. A very good question. And I see that one of the remarkable features of Russian and Soviet sports was, and is, that the connection to the state power is very tight. And it has been a state-run operation from the beginning. When they became part of the international sports world in 1952, in Helsinki Olympics, and ever since. Well, we all know about Putin’s state-run doping program, then, which led to sanctions on the part of the International Olympic Committee.

But especially ice hockey is very interesting in this context because in 1945, when the Soviet government decided that they will take part in the international sporting world, they gave this exact political order that now you have to take up Canadian hockey, which was not played at the time. And then they developed that sport to be, truly, globally, they were one of the best countries in the world to play that besides Canadians.

Markku: In the 1970s, one of the individuals in the stands was Vladimir Putin, as a young KGB officer at that time. And then he has reminisced these games between the Soviet national team and NHL professional, North American professional. Somewhere in the first years of his reign, he told that he wants to recreate this Cold War tension and Cold War battle between two different styles of playing hockey. And he ended up giving a political order of creating a new Hockey League in 2008.

And then this led to the establishment of Kontinental Hockey League, KHL. And their original goal was to challenge the position of NHL as the number one professional hockey league in the world. But now, with the invasion of Ukraine going on, I think that currently Vladimir Putin has some other things in his mind besides professional sport, at least for the time being.

Ron: Fair enough.

Danny: Actually, if I could follow up on that. You visited a class I’m teaching on sports and diplomacy yesterday, and did a fantastic look at the history of Soviets and the Canadians and the Cold War, and the kind of ideological differences and how that was manifested in sport. A lot of rich material there, and the students were very interested in it.

One of the questions that I had, which is, I think connected to what you were just saying is, what was it about hockey in ’45 that made that part of the vision of Soviet, building the Soviet infrastructure? Because you told some really interesting stories about the lack of infrastructure. It’s not a natural… I mean, there weren’t indoor facilities. And hockey is a fairly intensive sport to develop.

Now, I know we’ve also, we hear about the sending the Soviet team, the football team, to England to tour around the same time. And it seems like as far as infrastructure goes, soccer is one thing. But why hockey? Why build a hockey infrastructure if your goal is national greatness? It doesn’t seem like the most intuitive place to start.

Markku: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. And one would think that, for example, trying to excel in soccer would have been a more wise choice to do. Well, the Soviets tried to do that as well, but they weren’t quite as successful as soccer players as they were in hockey. They tried basketball as well, and in basketball, they ended up being in Olympic championships, I think at least once, in 1972.

But it’s an interesting question, why they decided to take up exactly hockey. And there were some people who had previous experience of Canadian hockey, having seen that in the 1930s played somewhere in Europe.

And there’s an interesting link to the top of the Soviet power, to Joseph Stalin, because his son, Vasiliy Stalin, for some reason—I don’t know Vasiliy Stalin’s biography or personal history that much, but he was a fan of hockey, and he actually ended up running one of these teams in 1940s, 1950s.

Markku: But I think that the Soviets were looking for a global, big team sport where they could quickly become one of the top contenders in the world. And in soccer, there were so many other nations that were already very good at that.

Although, this visit to London that you mentioned, they were very good in playing soccer as well. And that was a shock to the British people that all of a sudden there was one more nation in soccer that could compete on a global level.

Markku: But I think that this was the original motivation. That they were thinking that, ‘okay, in which sport we can build a program in 10 years where we can then compete in World Championships and in Olympics?’ And it was a huge success in the sense that they participated for the first time in the World Championships in 1954 and immediately won the title.

And then two years later, they participated in the Olympics for the first time and won that as well. And that was a shock for the Canadians, of course, who at the time they couldn’t send their best professional teams. But even the best Canadian amateur players in the 1920s, 1930s, they had completely overwhelmed the international world of hockey.

Danny: Can I follow that up real quick? Because one of the questions that I had posed to the students prior to your arrival—and I thought a lot of what you said touched on what I hope they were thinking about already, but I put to the students the question of, are there some sports that lend themselves, just by nature of the kind of sport they are, to these kind of interesting global engagements, right?

Markku: Mm.

Danny: And I would say the students were about half split. It really matters or it doesn’t matter. And in a lot of your talk, you talked about the warlike vocabulary of hockey.

Markku: Yeah, yeah.

Danny: And so I wondered also, is there something about hockey that as a sport, right, its rules, its culture, its ethos that lent itself? Or does that come later? Does that materialize out of the Cold War conflict, that we have this kind of vision of hockey as you put it so nicely, hockey as warfare?

Markku: Yeah, yeah. Cold War on ice, as they say. I think that hockey is, or was, a perfect metaphor for war in the Cold War because of the physical nature of the game. There’s so much hitting and checking, and even physical violence in the form of fist fights that happen there.

But then, from the political mobilization point of view, also the land, or the country compilation that took part in international hockey was suitable in the sense that the United States were there, and then Canada was there, and then it was a North American trademark. The certain style of play that the Soviets wanted to challenge.

Markku: And it was, from the sporting point of view, it was really an interesting endeavor that the Soviets took. That they wanted to create this competing style of play, completely different style of playing hockey, and they wanted to prove that they can do it better than the Canadians, who had been doing that since the 1870s already. So, the level of ambition was quite high there as well.

But somehow, I think that it all boils down to the very physical nature of hockey. Maybe American football, as we say in Europe, would have been even better for that. But then, geographically, that is mostly taken seriously only in North America and Europe. Well, it’s not nonexistent, but it’s on a very modest level compared to North America. So that leaves you hockey, basically.

Ron: Yeah, this question of style is a really interesting one. One of the things I learned from you that I hadn’t heard of before was the sport called bandy. And this idea that the Russian style in part developed because it was adopting players from bandy and from soccer. And I’d love if you could say a little more about that, and specifically this idea in soccer, there’s a lot of talk that sort of says, ‘oh, this style reflects the national character or the national identity.’

And most scholars of football take that with a pretty hefty grain of salt.

Markku: [laughing] Yeah.

Ron: And so I’d love to hear you talk a little more about that sort of conscious development of a unique style and what we can learn from the Soviet case of that, and particular bandy.

Markku: Yeah, yeah. The Soviets started to play bandy, I think, in 1890s already. And it’s a sport that is quite similar to hockey in some senses and similar to soccer as well. It has 11 players assigned and then played on a soccer-sized field with a tennis-sized ball. But compared to hockey, it’s much less physical. There are no checks and hits, and no fixed boards, which then leads to that the whole outlook of the game is different. And it looks like soccer on ice, basically.

And this was a sport where the Soviets truly excelled. And it’s a sport that is still played, basically in four countries. Russians are the best in the world still. Then Swedes are quite good at that. They can occasionally challenge the Russians in the World Championships. Then Finland, I think, has been able to win the world title once or twice, and the Norwegians are playing that as well.

Markku: But then that is that and—this is what then affected Soviet hockey very much because the first generation of player came from that bandy background. They were fast skaters, had very good condition because they played 90 minutes, like they play in soccer there. So to be able to skate around this big playing field for 90 minutes, that means that you have to be in good condition compared to hockey, where you spend like from 30 seconds to one minute there in a shift, and then you get back to the bench and you can breathe and recuperate from your efforts.

So, it is different. But bandy is an interesting side chapter of sports history, and it’s still played. For example, if you as tourists visit Helsinki, Helsinki is one of the few world capitals where there is a bandy field right in the city center. So, you can still spectate it in Finland.

Ron: Fantastic. Thank you. I’m interested in the ways that Putin has aligned himself with sport generally. And also with hockey stars. Like yesterday, you talked about him aligning himself with Alexander Ovechkin and trying to have some of the power of sport culturally sort of rub off on him in certain ways.

And I wonder if you see any parallels to the ways in which Trump has also aligned himself with leaders of various sports federations, in particular the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and also more recently related to the U.S. and Canada and Mexico hosting the World Cup, sort of a developing relationship between him and Gianni Infantino and FIFA.

Markku: Yeah.

Ron: So, I’m just curious if you see parallels there, or how you would think about that.

Markku: Well, it’s basically the same phenomenon. And whenever there is something happening which attracts a lot of people’s attention, for example, some event when where 10,000 people are spectating, you can be sure that the politicians will be there as well because they want to have part of that glory as well.

And that is, of course, a great trick if you do it successfully, to visit the game by a successful sports team and then get to the same pictures with the athletes. And then people start to think, that ‘okay, well, I’m a fan of this team, and it seems to me that this politician is also. He understands this team and supports the same team. Maybe I will vote for him.’

This is, of course, the basic motivation, what the politicians are trying to do. And then people tend to think about positive things when they are thinking about sports, health, fair play, and things like this. And politicians want to be linked to these good things as well.

Markku: So, this is happening all over the world. It’s not only Putin or Trump. In Finland, the state presidents have been doing this for a long, long, long time. And I think that as long as we will have this global entertainment or sports as a global entertainment, this will be the case. For example, the openings of the Summer Olympics will gather a huge amount of state heads to be there and trying to have their moment in the limelight also, in the sports context.

Ron: I think it’s interesting because, in some ways, the United States might be a little bit of an outlier in that sense. It hasn’t been as common in the United States as the rest of the world. Certainly, it happens. Teddy Roosevelt was a big proponent of American football because of its manliness. It would build the American character.

Markku: Yeah.

Ron: So, a lot of the same kinds of claims. And of course, the ritualistic visit to the White House after winning a championship for teams in domestic leagues. But at the same time, you don’t quite have the same alignment between politicians and sports in the U.S. historically, as you see in other parts of the world. It’ll be interesting to see how that develops.

Markku: Yeah, yeah. I think in Russia this has been the case since the Soviet days already. For example, when the Soviet Olympic team, when they came back a victorious Olympic team. There was always this reception ceremony at the Kremlin, and they got to meet the state leadership. This is something that Putin has continued as well. And Putin has publicized on these meetings with the victorious Russian athletes, and the athletes have been happy to participate in this because that gives them more popularity as well.

A funny thing about the history of my own country, Finland, is that the long-time President Urho Kekkonen, who was president from 1956 to 1981, he actually built his career through sport. He was the leader of the Finnish Track and Field Association in 1920s, 1930s, then also later Finnish Olympic Committee. And he created his political support base through being known to people through sports. And actually, he won the Finnish championships in 100-meter dash and then high jump as well.

Ron: Interesting. Fantastic.

Danny: That’s great. Actually, that’s a nice segue into a question that I had. You mentioned the invasion of Ukraine put an end to Putin’s larger ambitions for an international hockey league and presumably, a lot of his efforts in sporting engagements globally. But I was kind of curious, from your position as a scholar in Finland.

You had mentioned yesterday that there really was no debate about Finnish athletes, or really any of the frontline states around Russia, participating in Russian engagements after the invasion. There was a state-level mandate basically saying, ‘we’re not going to do this.’ And you can imagine a very different scenario. In fact, I think we see a somewhat different scenario. You mentioned that there are still Canadians and Americans playing hockey in Russia, and there’s not an infrastructure in the U.S. for a state-level mandate that says athletes will not participate.

Danny: But I guess I’d like to hear a little bit more about that moment after the Ukraine invasion. I mean, was there any internal discussion about Finnish athletes continuing to play sports in Russia, or teams engaging with Russian teams? Or was that just an overnight decision?

Markku: No, actually, there had been a lot of critical discussion about the participation of Finnish team, Helsinki Jokerit team, which I think it went to play in the KHL in 2013 or so. It was heavily criticized, this decision, because it’s one of the most successful and most traditional Finnish hockey clubs. To move that from the domestic competition to a Russian league, that was heavily, heavily criticized at the time.

And then also many of these players who went there to play. Many people didn’t like that at all. Some of the biggest stars in Finnish National Hockey team, for example, went to play for Moscow Dynamo, or CSKA in Moscow or then SKA in St. Petersburg. Or, then, the Finnish hockey coaches. There were some five or six very high-level Finnish hockey coaches who went there as well.

Markku: So, there was originally already this critical discussion. And then this joining of Jokerit to the KHL happened simultaneously with the occupation of Crimean Peninsula. And then at that point in time, already the critical discussion had started. But then, in a way, it reached the point in February 2022 when there was no other alternatives left for the Finnish hockey players, or coaches, or the team Jokerit, than to come back from Russia because it was a huge event in Finland.

Generally, because the idea that Finland should become a member in NATO had been a minority opinion for 30 years. Then it only took a couple of weeks when we saw that, okay, Russia is going to invade Ukraine. So the support for the NATO membership went from being around 25%, it first went to 70, and then it was, I think beginning of March 2022, it was 90%.

Ron: Mm.

Markuu: In this kind of atmosphere, I know people in their right minds wouldn’t have stayed together with the Russians because the general atmosphere had changed so radically.

Ron: Interesting.

Danny: And you had mentioned, again, just to unpack this a little bit too, that currently in the NHL, there are Russian players who don’t necessarily do anything to hide their affiliations or appreciation with Putin. But that would be completely off the table in a European context, whereas here it sort of flies under the radar, if you will.

Is that—I know it’s kind of a gross characterization, but I am curious. And we’ll ask you about this in a second, but you spent some time watching NHL hockey here. I mean, is that a noticeable difference between the two spaces?

Markuu: Yeah, definitely. Because yesterday, Washington Capitals was playing here against the Seattle Kraken. And the biggest star in Washington Capitals’ team is the captain, Alexander Ovechkin.

And Alexander Ovechkin still in his Instagram profile he has a picture of him together with Vladimir Putin. And then there are several other high-profile NHL players as well, like Evgeni Malkin, who is known to be a friend of Putin. And they haven’t been hiding it, and they are not ashamed of that.

Markuu: And somehow, the general atmosphere here is so different compared to Europe, that here it’s okay. And people are seeing that, okay, this is sports business. This has nothing to do with politics. And Alexander Ovechkin didn’t invade Crimea, didn’t invade Ukraine. That is something that Vladimir Putin did. And completely another kind of thing, because I would think that for example, if one of the Finnish NHL stars, for example, Aleksander Barkov, would publish in some social media account a picture of him and Vladimir Putin, there would be a huge reaction against that.

And if some player in Finland or Finnish league would start to, for example, give out that kind of opinions, that ‘okay, maybe it’s okay what Russia is doing in Ukraine,’ he would be boycotted. He would be kicked out of the team immediately.

Ron: It’s an interesting thought exercise to think about who, for U.S. sports stars, would be that sort of poisoned chalice or that kiss of death to put on your Insta. Who would you lose all your supporters for? Is it a state leader, or is it a business leader, or is it someone else?

When it also begs the question for everyone because politics in the United States is so polarized, you would be as likely to have someone like you for posting that as dislike you for posting that. So, the question is, is there anyone who would be across-the-board unacceptable to have that image with, or is it always going to be one side or the other?

Markuu: Yeah, I guess Donald Trump is a very divisive figure in this sense that there are many, many, many sports people who, even if they were paid money, would not go in the same pictures with Donald Trump.

Ron: Mm. Right.

Markuu: But then there are other athletes who are willing to do that and are considering him as some kind of friend also.

Ron: And if it makes a difference which sport they’re playing in, what the fan base of that sport is, and those sorts of questions as well. Yeah.

Ron: So, shifting gears a little bit, this month has seen record-breaking crowds turning out for the professional Women’s Hockey League here in North America. There’s been a sort of tour of teams in towns outside of where they normally play. So, for instance, there was a match here in Seattle, even though we don’t have a professional women’s hockey team on the top level yet.

I’m curious, how do you see women’s hockey fitting into the kinds of questions you ask around hockey and diplomacy? Especially given the kinds of histories you tell around it, which we’ve discussed today around the machismo and war metaphors and the idea of the masculinism of hockey. And what does that say about the future of women’s hockey, either here in North America, or in Scandinavia or in Russia?

Markuu: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I have been following this development of women’s hockey in Finland. It started in the 1970s, then 1980s. The first medals, international medals came, I think, in the 1990s Nagano Olympics. The Finnish ladies’ team was getting a bit old; they got a bronze medal out of there.

But in Finnish publicity, they are two completely different worlds, men’s hockey and women’s hockey. And the amount of people who go to the games, men’s hockey is the most popular spectator sport in Finland. You usually get 10,000 people per game to see the games by the men’s team. Then when the women’s team play, it’s like 200, 300. And the amount of television publicity is, well, it’s almost completely nonexistent for women’s hockey.

And it’s a little bit different when we are talking about the nature of the sport, because hitting or tackling is not allowed in women’s hockey. So, it’s a different kind of spectator experience as well. I would say that if there’s a technical player, she can excel a lot more easily in women’s hockey because there is not that much, this physical intimidation which is the integral part of men’s hockey.

Markuu: But at least from my Finish experience, it has been steadily growing, and more and more young girls are taking up the sport. And because of the high visibility that the sport has nationally, mostly because of the men’s national team, it is helping them as well. And I believe that in international comparison, we were so close one time to win the World Championship against the United States, but then ended up losing. But this will come. They will win the world title, and then hopefully also Olympic title. And after that, then when you get this level of international success, then there will be new followers to the sport as well and it will be growing.

But I think that the International Ice Hockey Federation, there’s quite a huge task for them. It is problematic also already on the men’s side because it’s only a couple of countries where the sport is taken seriously. And when you have this good amount of players in women’s hockey, it’s more restricted geographically. Only I would say USA, Canada, then Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic. That starts to be it. It has to continue, but they have the Olympic, it’s played in the Olympics. And I think that’s a good starting point and I hope that it will grow, too.

Ron: Great, thanks.

Danny: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your life as a scholar. In addition to the work that you’ve done on sports, you’re an expert in European parliamentary politics, Finnish foreign relations. I think for many of us that are involved in this project of the Global Sport Lab, one of the big questions is, how do you put—very few of us are just strictly scholars of sport—how do you put the pieces together? And in some careers, it makes more sense organically than in others.

I guess I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about how you see the different hats that you wear as a scholar fit together. And I should add to that, as Ron indicated, you’re also an athlete yourself. And so, I was struck by the fact that you’ve been out with our UW rowing team during your visit here. You went to see a Kraken game yesterday.

And for some of our visitors, that might be a fun side project, but for you, it’s actually part of the reason you’re here as a scholar. So how do you think about the different ways in which your interests overlap as in the intellectual project that you’re engaged in?

Markuu: Yeah, yeah. To begin with, I have to say that it was fun for me as well, especially the rowing, because University of Washington rowing, it’s world-famous for its athletic level. And I really enjoyed seeing Yasmin Farooq coaching the ladies team. And there were seven women’s eight simultaneously on water. That is something that in Finland, where the sport is considerably smaller compared to the United States, you don’t get to witness that very often. So I really enjoyed that.

Of course, hockey, that is a more familiar thing to Finns, but I haven’t been to too many NHL games in my life, so I really enjoyed that. And there were even a couple of Finnish players, Kaapo Kakko and Eeli Tolvanen, there.

Markuu: But this is how I’m combining these different elements of my academic work. I have to say that this more academic interest towards sports, it started as a hobby. And I remember when I did my doctoral dissertation some 20 years ago, already then I had the idea that I would like to write an academic journal article, at least about the political exploitation of sport during Cold War, and especially hockey, because that was the one thing that I knew best.

But it was a slow process because I had to do it in my free time and summer holidays. But then, after 10 years, I was able to put a book out of the topic, and after that, I have had the opportunity of writing a couple of more articles about that.

And then also at some point in time, the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation realized that, okay, we have academic scholars who have been working with the history of Finnish ice hockey. And then when the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation turned 90 years, we had a book project about that as well.

Markuu: But it has been a little bit of a struggle to convince my academic colleagues about the seriousness of looking into sports like this. And then I have tried to convince them that almost all of us have some kind of relationship to sport. Some of us are fans, and do it even ourselves.

But then, even those academics, scholars, or colleagues that I have come across quite a lot who say that they hate sport. That’s a relationship as well. There are some reasons for that, so it’s significant for them in some sense.

And I think in academic world, there has been this breakthrough in thinking that people are realizing now that sports is a perfect way to look at the society and look at the culture more largely as well. And it’s not only about the athletic performance, but it’s about the surrounding community. And on an international level, about the nations that participate. Like you said, the national character.

Markuu: For example, in different styles of playing soccer, there are so many different fascinating perspectives that you can take when you are writing about and researching from an academic point of view, researching sport, that I’m almost surprised that I think many more people should do it. Not only us, but to convince the surrounding academic world. It took some time and effort that I have to say.

Ron: I really appreciate that insight, that sort of gut negative reaction is also speaking to the way sport makes meaning in our lives, right?

Markuu: Yeah.

Ron: There’s a reason many people have that reaction, and acting as if that’s somehow outside sport or outside the analysis is missing part of the story.

Markuu: Yeah, yeah. And I would say that— yeah, I would say that even I have this love-hate relationship with the high-performance sport. Because I used to do it myself in the 1990s when I was part of the Finnish National Team in rowing. Then I have been in these administrative positions as a vice director, or vice chairman, of the Finnish Rowing Federation and Finnish Canoe and Rowing Federation.

And in Finland, these small sports like rowing and canoeing, they are very dependent on government money. And I have been telling the government bureaucrats these stories about, if you give us money, then we will give you back these general health benefits that are good for the whole of the society. And then we have used all that money to run the National Team operation.

Ron: Right.

Markuu: So basically, we have been lying, and I have become allergic to these stories about how putting money into these high-level, high-performance sports would somehow benefit the society as a whole, because the evidence simply is not there. It’s anecdotal at best.

But at the same time, I’m an avid fan of many— not only rowing, but rowing and hockey—many other sports as well. And I think that it really enriches my life as an individual to be able to spectate these sports. But I can see where the negative reactions come from as well. And especially when we think about international organizations like International Olympic Committee or FIFA, and all the corruption and all the bad news that have been coming out of these organizations, I can very well understand the criticism towards international high-level competitive sports as well.

Ron: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think one of the projects we’re tackling with the Lab is to think about grassroots soccer in the run-up to the World Cup. And how do you tell those stories? We have a media project called Home Fields, which is trying to map what grassroots soccer looks like and how community gets built among immigrant communities, among gender-nonconforming folks, among folks who aren’t normally who you hear the stories about, when you talk about soccer in Seattle. Usually, that’s the Seattle Reign, the Seattle Sounders, the players who go on to the National Team.

But thinking about what sport looks like on the grassroots and on the everyday level is so important and also really fascinating to get a different sense of why people care about it so much and why people stay engaged.

Ron: We’ve so enjoyed talking with you. We’ve enjoyed your visit here. It’s been fantastic to have you here and really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

Markuu: Yeah, I enjoyed it very much. Thank you for having me.

[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]

GSL Ep. 2_Markku Jokisipilä_Feb2025

[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]

Ron: Today’s episode features a conversation with Professor Markku Jokisipilä.

Markku Jokisipilä: Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Ron: Joining us today also is Professor Danny Hoffman, director of the Jackson School of International Studies. Danny, please introduce yourself.

Danny Hoffman: Hi, thanks. Danny Hoffman, and as Ron said, I’m the director of the Jackson School, an anthropologist, and helping to try to get the Global Sport Lab up and running.

Ron: Great, thanks.

Ron: Fair enough.

Markku: Mm.

Danny: And I would say the students were about half split. It really matters or it doesn’t matter. And in a lot of your talk, you talked about the warlike vocabulary of hockey.

Markku: Yeah, yeah.

And most scholars of football take that with a pretty hefty grain of salt.

Markku: [laughing] Yeah.

Ron: And so I’d love to hear you talk a little more about that sort of conscious development of a unique style and what we can learn from the Soviet case of that, and particular bandy.

Markku: Yeah.

Ron: So, I’m just curious if you see parallels there, or how you would think about that.

Markku: Yeah.

Ron: Interesting. Fantastic.

Ron: Mm.

Markuu: In this kind of atmosphere, I know people in their right minds wouldn’t have stayed together with the Russians because the general atmosphere had changed so radically.

Ron: Interesting.

Ron: Mm. Right.

Markuu: But then there are other athletes who are willing to do that and are considering him as some kind of friend also.

Ron: And if it makes a difference which sport they’re playing in, what the fan base of that sport is, and those sorts of questions as well. Yeah.

Ron: Great, thanks.

Ron: I really appreciate that insight, that sort of gut negative reaction is also speaking to the way sport makes meaning in our lives, right?

Markuu: Yeah.

Ron: There’s a reason many people have that reaction, and acting as if that’s somehow outside sport or outside the analysis is missing part of the story.

Ron: Right.

Ron: We’ve so enjoyed talking with you. We’ve enjoyed your visit here. It’s been fantastic to have you here and really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

Markuu: Yeah, I enjoyed it very much. Thank you for having me.

[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]

Transcript: Hockey Diplomacy from the Cold War to Today (Ep. 2)

GSL Ep. 2_Markku Jokisipilä_Feb2025

Latest News