I presume this is not a global sports summit. After Seattle, after Quebec city, any congregation, of whatever intent, that dares bill itself as global is issuing an invitation to the righteous, the idle, or the barbaric to come and try their wily arts. A sports summit will probably escape the frissons and fibrillations of Quebec city, if only because sport is seen by the serious classes, inside of politics and outside, as intrinsically unserious, An activity that depends on muscle, determination, reflex and personal industry, does not offer much fertility for class warfare. Sport and its rivalries are, at their most fundamental, not so much above politics, as in a sphere to which politics does not belong. And when sports is genuinely amateur, even when the amateurs wear the banners of their countries as at the Olympics, there is something that resolutely remains purely with the individuals involved, as individuals, in the honours achieved and the distinctions earned.
Nations applaud their star athletes.
Vicariously, they borrow some of the glory and dignity of those atheletes. And they borrow both the honour and the glory to strut before other nations. But for every superlative athletic performer who achieves a success at the highest level of competition there is something truly private, something that pertains only to that individual, which is the deepest reward of his or her race to excellence. All trips to the podium are solitary. That Canada didn't harvest a shoal of medals at the Australian games is reputed to be a shame and a national dishonour.