How Sports Unite the World

On December 18, 2022, Argentina and France met in the World Cup final in Qatar, and FIFA estimated that close to 1.5 billion people watched it. Few events in history have held the attention of so many people at once. Sports can say things that are hard to put into words: a packed stadium roaring as one, a goal in the last minute or a record-breaking race means the same in Buenos Aires, Paris or Tokyo.

2022年12月18日，阿根廷和法国在卡塔尔世界杯决赛中相遇。据国际足联估计，近15亿人观看了这场比赛。历史上很少有事件能同时吸引这么多人的目光。体育能表达难以用语言说清的东西：满场观众齐声呐喊，最后一分钟的进球，一次打破纪录的冲刺，在布宜诺斯艾利斯、巴黎和东京都意味着同样的东西。

But sports are more than a show. They are big business, a stage for politics and a source of national pride. Again and again, the playing field has reflected what was happening in the wider world: rivalries between countries, the fight for civil rights, even the birth of new nations. To understand sports is to understand a good deal about how societies work.

但体育不只是一场表演。它是一门大生意，是政治的舞台，也是民族自豪感的来源。赛场一次又一次地映照出外面世界发生的事：国家之间的较量，争取民权的斗争，甚至新国家的诞生。理解体育，就能在很大程度上理解社会是如何运转的。

The ancient Olympic Games were held at Olympia, in southern Greece. By tradition they began in 776 BCE, and they lasted for more than a thousand years. According to the usual account, the last games took place around 393 CE, after the Christian Roman emperor Theodosius I banned pagan festivals. The Olympics were never just a sports meeting. Held every four years, they were a religious festival in honor of Zeus, the king of the gods, and the races took place next to his great temple.

古代奥林匹克运动会在希腊南部的奥林匹亚举行。按照传统说法，它始于公元前776年，延续了一千多年。根据通常的说法，最后一届大约在公元393年举行，此前信奉基督教的罗马皇帝狄奥多西一世禁止了异教节庆。奥运会从来不只是体育比赛。它每四年举行一次，是祭祀众神之王宙斯的宗教节日，赛跑就在他的大神庙旁边进行。

The games mattered in politics, too. Before each festival, messengers announced a sacred truce, the ekecheiria. It did not end the wars between Greek city-states, but it protected athletes and visitors on their way to Olympia and back. Only free Greek men could compete, yet they came from Greek cities all around the Mediterranean, from Sicily to Asia Minor. When the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin organized the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, he hoped the games would once again bring nations together and help keep the peace.

奥运会在政治上也很重要。每次节庆之前，使者会宣布一项神圣休战，称为“埃克赫伊里亚”。它并不能结束希腊城邦之间的战争，但能保护运动员和观众往返奥林匹亚的安全。只有自由的希腊男子才能参赛，但他们来自地中海各地的希腊城市，从西西里一直到小亚细亚。1896年，法国人皮埃尔·德·顾拜旦在雅典举办了第一届现代奥运会，他希望奥运会能再次拉近各国之间的距离，帮助维护和平。

Football, which Americans call soccer, is the most popular sport on the planet. FIFA, the sport's world governing body, has 211 member associations, more than the 193 member states of the United Nations. This is possible because some places that are not independent countries, such as England, Scotland and Hong Kong, have their own national teams. Billions of people around the world follow the game.

足球，美国人称之为“soccer”，是地球上最受欢迎的运动。足球的世界管理机构国际足联有211个会员协会，比联合国的193个会员国还多。之所以如此，是因为一些不是独立国家的地区，比如英格兰、苏格兰和香港，也有自己的代表队。全世界有数十亿人关注这项运动。

Football spread around the world with the British in the 19th and early 20th centuries. British sailors, merchants, engineers and teachers took it to ports and cities from Montevideo to Moscow. Local people quickly made the game their own, and many countries developed a style they are proud of: the Brazilian jogo bonito, the Dutch total football of the 1970s, the Spanish tiki-taka. The first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930. Today it is the most-watched tournament of any single sport, and every four years it puts much of the planet in front of the same screens.

19世纪和20世纪初，足球随着英国人传遍了世界。英国的水手、商人、工程师和教师把它带到了从蒙得维的亚到莫斯科的众多港口和城市。当地人很快就把这项运动变成了自己的东西，许多国家形成了引以为豪的踢法：巴西的“美丽足球”、20世纪70年代荷兰的“全攻全守”、西班牙的“tiki-taka”。第一届世界杯于1930年在乌拉圭举行。如今，它是所有运动项目中收视最高的赛事，每四年就让地球上很大一部分人坐到同样的屏幕前。

In the 20th century, sports became an important stage in the fight for equal rights. At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals: in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump and the 4×100-meter relay. His success, in front of a Nazi regime that preached the superiority of the “Aryan race,” made headlines around the world.

20世纪，体育成为争取平等权利的重要舞台。在1936年柏林奥运会上，非裔美国运动员杰西·欧文斯赢得了四枚金牌，分别是100米、200米、跳远和4×100米接力。纳粹政权宣扬“雅利安人种”的优越，而他就在这个政权眼前取得了胜利，这一消息登上了世界各地的头条。

In 1947 Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and became the first Black player in modern Major League Baseball, breaking a color line that had kept Black players out since the 1880s. He faced insults and death threats, and his calm courage changed how many Americans thought about integration. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists on the medal podium, a protest against racism that is still remembered today. South Africa was shut out of most international sports for decades because of apartheid. After apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela wore the jersey of the Springboks, the national rugby team, when South Africa won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, a gesture that helped bring the country together.

1947年，杰基·罗宾逊加入布鲁克林道奇队，成为现代美国职业棒球大联盟的第一位黑人球员，打破了自19世纪80年代以来将黑人球员拒之门外的肤色界限。他遭受辱骂和死亡威胁，而他沉着的勇气改变了许多美国人对种族融合的看法。在1968年墨西哥城奥运会上，短跑运动员汤米·史密斯和约翰·卡洛斯在领奖台上举起戴着黑手套的拳头，这次反对种族主义的抗议至今仍被人们铭记。由于种族隔离制度，南非几十年来被排斥在大多数国际比赛之外。种族隔离结束后，1995年南非赢得橄榄球世界杯时，纳尔逊·曼德拉穿上了国家橄榄球队“跳羚队”的球衣，这一举动帮助了这个国家走向团结。

Cricket was first recorded in rural England in the late 16th century, and it spread with the British Empire. Today it is the leading sport in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and it is hugely popular in Australia, the Caribbean and parts of Africa. Most of the world's cricket fans live in South Asia, a region of about two billion people. The game's reach is a direct legacy of the empire.

板球最早见于16世纪末英格兰乡村的记载，后来随着大英帝国传播开来。如今它是印度、巴基斯坦、孟加拉国和斯里兰卡的头号运动，在澳大利亚、加勒比地区和非洲部分地区也非常流行。世界上大多数板球迷生活在南亚，这个地区约有20亿人口。板球的传播范围是大英帝国的直接遗产。

For many former colonies, cricket also became a way to stand up to their old rulers. In 1950 the West Indies, a team made up of players from several Caribbean countries, won a Test series in England for the first time, and a calypso about their victory at Lord's became famous across the Caribbean. The Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James argued in his book Beyond a Boundary (1963) that West Indian cricket was closely tied to the struggle for self-government. In the late 1970s and the 1980s the West Indies were the best team in the world, India won the World Cup in 1983 and Pakistan in 1992. The colonizers' game had been mastered by the people they once ruled.

对许多前殖民地来说，板球也成了与昔日统治者抗衡的一种方式。1950年，由几个加勒比国家的球员组成的西印度群岛队首次在英格兰赢得了一个对抗赛系列，一首讲述他们在罗德板球场获胜的卡利普索歌曲在整个加勒比地区流传开来。特立尼达作家C. L. R. 詹姆斯在《越过边界》（1963年）一书中提出，西印度群岛的板球与争取自治的斗争紧密相连。20世纪70年代末和80年代，西印度群岛队是世界最强的队伍，印度在1983年、巴基斯坦在1992年先后夺得世界杯。殖民者的游戏，如今已被他们曾经统治的民族所掌握。

In April 1971, during the world table tennis championships in Japan, the American team received a surprise invitation to visit China. Americans had hardly been able to travel there since the Communists took power in 1949. The players' trip helped prepare the way for President Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing in February 1972, which shifted the balance of the Cold War. Journalists called the episode “ping-pong diplomacy,” and the phrase is still used whenever sports open a door that politicians cannot.

1971年4月，在日本举行的世界乒乓球锦标赛期间，美国队意外收到访问中国的邀请。自1949年共产党执政以来，美国人几乎无法前往中国。球员们的这次访问为美国总统理查德·尼克松1972年2月访问北京铺平了道路，那次访问改变了冷战的力量格局。记者们把这段经历称为“乒乓外交”，如今每当体育打开一扇政治家打不开的门时，人们仍会用这个词。

Sports and politics have met many times since. At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Palestinian terrorists killed eleven members of the Israeli team. In September of the same year, millions followed the Summit Series, an ice hockey contest between Canada and the Soviet Union that many saw as a clash between two political systems. The United States and dozens of other countries boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and the Soviet Union and most of its allies stayed away from Los Angeles in 1984. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, athletes from North and South Korea marched together under one flag. In times of high tension, sports have sometimes created human contact where diplomats could not.

此后，体育和政治多次交汇。在1972年慕尼黑奥运会上，巴勒斯坦恐怖分子杀害了以色列代表团的十一名成员。同年9月，数百万人关注了加拿大与苏联之间的冰球“巅峰系列赛”，许多人把它看作两种政治制度的较量。美国和其他几十个国家抵制了1980年莫斯科奥运会，而苏联及其大多数盟友则缺席了1984年洛杉矶奥运会。在2018年平昌冬奥会上，朝鲜和韩国运动员在同一面旗帜下共同入场。在局势高度紧张的时刻，体育有时能在外交官无能为力的地方建立起人与人之间的联系。

Why are people so happy when a team of strangers scores a goal? And why do fans feel real stress during a match, with a racing heart, rising stress hormones and tense muscles, as if they were playing themselves? Researchers who study the brain and group identity have found some answers.

一群素不相识的人进了一个球，我们为什么会那么高兴？球迷在比赛中为什么会感到真正的紧张，心跳加速，压力激素上升，肌肉紧绷，就好像自己在场上比赛一样？研究大脑和群体认同的学者找到了一些答案。

For many fans, a team becomes part of who they are. Psychologists call this social identity: we see the groups we belong to as part of ourselves. Brain scans of fans watching their own team show activity in areas linked to reward and to thinking about the self, and studies have found that fans' hormone levels can rise and fall with their team's results. This is why a win feels like a personal success and a defeat can hurt for days. Supporting a team answers a very old human need: to belong to a group, to share its fortunes and to celebrate together.

对许多球迷来说，球队成了自我的一部分。心理学家称之为社会认同：我们把自己所属的群体看作自身的一部分。对观看自己球队比赛的球迷进行的脑部扫描显示，与奖赏和自我思考相关的脑区会变得活跃。还有研究发现，球迷的激素水平会随着球队的成绩起伏。所以胜利让人觉得像是个人的成功，而失败可能让人难过好几天。支持一支球队，满足的是人类一种非常古老的需要：属于一个群体，与它同甘共苦，一起庆祝。

Sports can bring people together, but they also reflect the inequalities of society. Women's sports have long received far less funding, media coverage and prize money than men's, although the gap is slowly closing. Many LGBTQ+ athletes have faced discrimination, and some countries that host major events still punish same-sex relationships by law. When the Olympics or the World Cup go to countries with poor human rights records, critics ask whether sport is simply helping those governments look good.

体育能把人们团结在一起，但也反映出社会的不平等。长期以来，女子体育获得的资金、媒体关注和奖金都远少于男子体育，不过差距正在慢慢缩小。许多LGBTQ+运动员遭受过歧视，而一些举办大型赛事的国家至今仍在法律上惩罚同性关系。当奥运会或世界杯被交给人权记录不佳的国家时，批评者会质疑，体育是否只是在帮助这些政府美化形象。

There is also the environment. Mega-events like the Olympics need new stadiums, roads and hotels, and millions of fans fly in from around the world. Some venues, such as several stadiums built for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, are hardly used once the event is over. Organizers now promise greener games, but critics say much more needs to change.

环境也是一个问题。奥运会这样的大型赛事需要新建体育场、道路和酒店，数百万球迷还要从世界各地乘飞机赶来。一些场馆，例如为2014年巴西世界杯修建的几座体育场，在赛事结束后几乎无人使用。如今主办方承诺举办更环保的赛事，但批评者认为还需要做出大得多的改变。

Few things can make a billion people hold their breath at the same moment. Sports work like a language without words: a goal, a fall or a world record is understood everywhere. They show people at their best and sometimes at their worst, and once in a while an athlete or a team does something that seemed impossible until that day.

很少有什么事情能让十亿人在同一时刻屏住呼吸。体育就像一种没有文字的语言：一个进球、一次摔倒或一项世界纪录，在任何地方都能被理解。它展现人们最好的一面，有时也展现最坏的一面；偶尔还会有一名运动员或一支队伍做到在那天之前看似不可能的事。

People follow sports for many reasons: the wish to belong, pride in a team or a country, the beauty of a perfect movement and the drama of a close contest. These needs are as old as the games at Olympia, and they explain why, every four years, a large part of humanity sits down to watch the same match.

人们关注体育的原因有很多：渴望归属，为一支球队或一个国家骄傲，欣赏完美动作之美，感受势均力敌的较量带来的紧张刺激。这些需要和奥林匹亚的古代赛会一样古老，也正是它们解释了为什么每隔四年，人类中有很大一部分人会坐下来观看同一场比赛。