As I write, World Cup 2022 fever is gradually taking hold. We don’t yet know what the lasting legacies of the debates and controversies of this event might be, but as a senior lecturer in teacher education in Physical Education and School Sport (PESS) I am always interested in an international focus on sport. The World Cup today brings us all together in a shared history of all the World Cups, stretching back to the first in 1930.
These histories matter. I remember my delight in 2012 when London was awarded the XXX Olympiad, believing the rhetoric of the time that a world-class education would be achieved as a legacy of those games (DCMS, 2007). Ten years on, has the promised focus on sport and physical education in the UK been realised? Do any of us even remember that the official mascot of those games was called ‘Wenlock’, let alone know why that name was chosen? And are we any closer to honouring the promises that were implicit in that naming?
