The Sporting Spirit

"The Sporting Spirit" is an essay by George Orwell published in the magazine Tribune on 14 December 1945, and later in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, a collection of Orwell's essays published in 1950.[1][2] The essay was written on the heels of the 1945 tour of Great Britain by the Soviet football team FC Dynamo Moscow. The essay became famous for Orwell's description of international sporting competitions as "war minus the shooting", a phrase that has since been used as a metaphor for sports when referred to in popular media and for actions evoking hyper-nationalism and national pride.[1][3]

Orwell uses the examples of football, cricket, and boxing to argue that sport, while never intended to generate bonds of friendship, generates politicized and hyper-nationalistic emotions that can only stoke ill-will between nations.[4]

  1. ^ a b Beck, Peter J. (1 March 2013). "'War Minus the Shooting': George Orwell on International Sport and the Olympics". Sport in History. 33 (1): 72–94. doi:10.1080/17460263.2012.761150. ISSN 1746-0263. S2CID 153811578. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  2. ^ Orwell, George (9 January 2021). Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays. epubli. ISBN 978-3-7531-4517-4. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  3. ^ Kavetsos, Georgios (2012). "National Pride: War Minus the Shooting". Social Indicators Research. 106 (1): 173–185. doi:10.1007/s11205-011-9801-1. ISSN 0303-8300. JSTOR 41409381. S2CID 154576660. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
  4. ^ "The Sporting Spirit | The Orwell Foundation". www.orwellfoundation.com. 20 October 2010. Archived from the original on 6 December 2021. Retrieved 22 December 2021.