Author Topic: AP: Europe’s rising diversity is not reflected at the Winter Olympics.  (Read 97 times)

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Offline mountaineer

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What's going on here, where actual Swedes are on Swedish teams? It's an outrage there aren't more Haitians or Nigerians on the Swedish team! The comments posted to the AP's tweet are pretty good.

The U.S. is not alone in grappling with diversity in winter sports. In Europe, immigration from Africa and the Middle East has rapidly changed the demographics of the top winter sports countries. That won't be reflected in their rosters for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/2016920628708692028
« Last Edit: January 29, 2026, 06:20:57 pm by mountaineer »

Offline mountaineer

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Re: AP: Europe’s rising diversity is not reflected at the Winter Olympics
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2026, 06:17:27 pm »
Here's the print story:
Quote
Europe’s rising diversity is not reflected at the Winter Olympics. Culture plays a big role
By  STEVE DOUGLAS
Updated 11:27 AM EST, January 26, 2026
Associated Press

VASTERAS, Sweden (AP) — Maryan Hashi remembers the thoughts running through her mind when she began hitting the ski slopes in northern Sweden. As a Black woman from Somalia, she felt like an “alien.”

“Am I wearing the correct clothing for this? Does it fit? Do I look weird? Am I snowboarding correctly? Do they think it’s weird I’m on the slope?” she said. “But I carried on — I felt if I didn’t, I was never going to commit to anything in my life.”

A few years later, snowboarding is the 30-year-old student’s big passion and it is helping her integrate into her adopted country’s society better than she could ever have imagined.

What she’d love now is to see other migrants experiencing the same joy.

Immigration from Africa and the Middle East has transformed the demographics of Europe in recent decades. And while the growing diversity is reflected in many sports such as soccer — Sweden’s men’s national team has several Black players including Liverpool striker Alexander Isak — it hasn’t made a dent in winter sports. ...

The Olympic rosters of France, Germany, Switzerland and other European winter sports nations look a lot like Sweden’s: overwhelmingly white and lacking the immigrant representation seen in their soccer or basketball teams.  ...
I cannot believe an editor actually approved the publication of this nonsense. But it is the AP, after all.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2026, 06:21:20 pm by mountaineer »

Offline Kamaji

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Diversity is a false idol; another golden calf.
Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy

Socialism is a crime against humanity

Offline The_Reader_David

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Other than football (or as we Yanks call it, soccer) Muslims don't seem to be much into sports at all (well, leaving aside those whose homeland had been part of the British Empire, who will play cricket with enthusiasm), and arrivals from Africa and the Middle East of whatever religion hardly hail from places with a tradition of winter sports.
And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know what this was all about.

Offline IsailedawayfromFR

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To embrace diversity in sports is to guarantee mediocre performance.

Show me the last NBA team that reflected the diversity of the spectators.
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” Thomas Sowell