• World. The sequels of the marathon: "It ran beyond the limit"
  • Athletics. The 50 km march also gets hot: "It was a walk"

Everything that surrounds this World Cup has been and is a nonsense, a distortion and a shame. Everything from the dark designation of the headquarters, now in the French courts, to the development of the competition in the longest and toughest tests: the marathon and march.

Everything is artificial, against nature: the place, the dates, the schedules ... A stadium converted into a monument to hollow luxury, to superfluous technological exhibitionism, to the dispensary without modesty or moderation. An imposing oasis of freshness of foreign engineering, embedded between an inclement sky and a scorched earth. A heated bubble out of which the body is shriveled and the lungs gasp in the moist viscous atmosphere.

Unlike the previous World Cup, held in London in 2017, the venue shows in its stands a devastating nudity. It is only concealed by enthusiastic ways of life represented by the workers, many of them African, who lift these real estate, energy and road empires out of nowhere, and turn to the athletes of their countries. In contrast to the intimate magnificence of the best possible athletics, of the most universal sport, that daily cement skeleton (or whatever) hurts, that grandstand in pure bones, without people and without soul.

There is no criticism, there is no opposition, there is no preserve, there is no condemnation, there is no purpose of amendment by the top sports powers (let alone the politicians). They nod, consent, genuflexes, sold among servile smiles and satisfied declarations of forced universality, to money without ideology that buys votes, gagged mouths and anesthesia consciences.

Sport in general is prostituting itself, subjected to a wild mercantilism, without borders or pause or brake, which is rotting its roots and souring its fruits. We are not naive accomplices or redeeming paladins. The world is what it is and sport is as it is. But for a long time this has been overflowing balancing channels and crossing, stepping on them, ethical boundaries.

This stadium is also one of those that will host the 2022 World Cup . Another spotted designation, another proven ludibrio, another spoiled opprobrium, another shot waste. Football, too many times, does not use its strength and influence to champion a moral crusade and lead other sports with it, but to contribute to muddying them.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • World Athletics Championship
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