The rare Saturday post here coincides with the second and final day of the International Association of Communication and Sport’s summit in Dublin, Ireland. I spent almost the entire night finishing up the slides and notes for my presentation today.
I did get about two hours of sleep, and arrived at the conference just in time to see a morning session that included a presentation by one of our former professors, and also her daughter, who is a law student at Syracuse. I have photos of that young woman as a very little girl, and have now watched her give research for a few years. She’s been studying Name, Image, and Likeness in the NCAA and I’ve been trying to make the case that she could graduate from law school and carve herself a substantial niche in that brand new area. Whatever she does, she’ll be brilliant at it, just like her mother.
Later I gave my last presentation of the conference. This was actually inspired by someone else’s paper from last year. I sat in a conference room in Chicago and jotted notes last March and thinking I could do a similar, but different work. I had a topic that no one researches, one only barely discussed in the popular media.
And, then, last September, la Vuelta a España took place. There, and in the months to follow, we had an instance where sportswashing most decidedly did not work. So I talked to one of our friends and Sports CaM colleagues, Dr. Julia Richmond. I knew the story, but she knows propaganda. We batted it around, and she figured out precisely the way we should frame the work.
This version of the research was titled “Propaganda peloton: Sportswashing in professional cycling.”
If you need a citation: Smith, K.D. & Richmond, J. C. (2026, March 13-14). “Propaganda peloton: Sportswashing in professional cycling. [Conference presentation].” IACS 2026 Summit, Dublin, Ireland.
So today I gave our little example of how and when and why sportswashing didn’t actually work. (It usually does.) All it took was the specific circumstances of the sport of road cycling, like the lack of liminal space between fans and athletes, a history of protest, a route through the Basque country and one other thing …
I’m presenting this paper at #IACS26 in a few moments on behalf of @rowanuniversity.bsky.social and The Center for Sports Communication and Social Impact.
If you were here you could hear how the story turns out.
If you are here, it’s in room E206.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 14, 2026 at 9:43 AM
Usually, sportswashing can be successful in road cycling. There are a lot of multinational petrochemical sponsors now. There are nation-states sponsoring teams. (Indeed, I used one of those to make a point in this presentation about budget disparities.) And while it can work in those other cases it didn’t work here because of genocide. By November, the Israel Premier Tech team was being denied entry into other races, riders were breaking contracts or outright retiring, IPT stepped away as the sponsor of the team in question a year early. Their owner also parted ways with the team.
And wouldn’t you know it, in the audience for this presentation was someone who knows all about this, and another scholar who has a friend that, until last year, drove for Premier Tech. But it’s interesting, and it worked because of what Richmond did to make it happen. I hope someone in the room knows her and tells her how I was bragging on her. She couldn’t be there, because she had to attend a wedding in the Caribbean.
He said jealously, in Dublin.
That’s two years in a row I’ve presented cycling research at this conference. I’m going to develop a reputation for doing that if I keep this up.
The IACS conference ended today. I attended a bunch of great sessions, met some lovely new people and saw some friends for all too short a period of time. Some of them we’ll see at next year’s conference. Others we won’t see until the conference goes abroad once again.
My lovely bride, who is the executive director of IACS, helped put on a great conference. Their largest ever attendance, despite this dumb new war in the Middle East keeping about four percent of the participants from attending. It was also their first hybrid conference with the people from Sport and Discrimination. And everyone seemed to have a good conference. Some of the board members celebrated at Il Corvo, a little four-star Italian restaurant just across the street. Because I know people, I was invited for this little dinner. I had the carbonara, which is a good litmus test for an Italian restaurant. If it’s good, you can be comfortable ordering other things on the menu. The carbonara was good. I guess we’ll have to come back again.
Poor me.
More on Monday, when we’ll be spring breaking.
