The 2026 Fifa World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are set to become the political playthings of US president Donald Trump. Plenty of public figures are in discombobulation because of US President Donald Trump, but the two most important people in international sports – Fifa President Gianni Infantino and Olympics’ boss Kirsty Coventry – are bricking it more than most right now. Trump’s chaotic second term in office coincides with the US hosting both this year’s Fifa World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.
The Los Angeles Olympics are still 30 months away, which is about a million Trump years because his news world moves tectonically on an hourly basis. So, for now, the five-ringed circus is relatively under the radar, and Coventry, a Zimbabwean swimming gold medallist who is the new head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is preoccupied with getting the tardy Italians to finish the showpiece skating rink in Milan in time for the Winter Olympics, which start in less than two weeks. But Coventry must already know that she’s going to have her hands full holding attendance in LA together if the US president continues to bomb, ban and abuse with abandon.
A total of 204 nations sent competitors to the brilliant Paris games 18 months ago. How many of them will be in Trump’s black book when we are due to go round the track again? There are plenty of Olympic precedents for turmoil; Nazi policies caused great angst among many nations before the 1936 Berlin games; Finland welcomed the Soviet Union team to Helsinki in 1952 even though Stalin had invaded their country in 1940 and sliced off some territory; the Mexico City games of 1968 went ahead in spite of more than 400 protestors being gunned down in the city’s streets 10 days before the games started; Black September terrorists killed 11 Israeli team members in Munich in 1972; the 1976, 1980 and 1984 games were all hit by substantial boycotts; and Russia has been banned in recent times.
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Somehow the games have always survived and thrived, but what we are experiencing with Trump now is next level for volatile unpredictability. Coventry, who must be used to political dysfunction having served for seven years in Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government as minister of sport, is probably just hanging on to the hope that Typhoon Trump in some way blows itself out before July 2028 comes around. Fifa’s Infantino doesn’t have the IOC’s luxury of time.
His showpiece kicks off in less than 150 days. He assumed that becoming Trumps’ No 1 Global Sycophant (Exhibit A being the farcical Fifa Peace Prize he gave him) would guarantee him a smooth ride, but that was as futile as it was sickening. To start with, Trump does nothing but threaten his co-hosts. He is openly speculating about American ground force intervention in Mexico, and routinely insults and tariff-loads Canada while postulating that it should become his 51st state.
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