Politics and sports will always mix.

Or, at least, that’s one view Indonesia’s Sukarno stood behind at all costs. “Let us declare frankly that sport has something to do with politics,” the former President said in 1962, when the Southeast Asian country was expelled from the Olympic movement after Israeli and Taipei athletes were refused travel visas to the Jakarta Asiad. A fervent Sukarno would later go on to create his own games, which “sent shockwaves through international sport”, Susan Brownell describes in East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War (2007).

Sport, arguably, did start out with ties to warfare. Researchers posit that early sports served two uses: entertainment and military training.