On September 24, 1988, at around 2pm, Ben Johnson received a phone call.

It was from Brian Mulroney, the Canadian Prime Minister: Johnson had just blown away the field in the Olympic 100 metres final in Seoul and been given the gold medal, and the Canadian leader was phoning to congratulate him.

"You were just marvellous," Mulroney said. "There is an explosion of joy here in Ottawa."*

A few days later and, with Johnson disqualified in circumstances we all know about, Mulroney was left to reflect on "a moment of great sorrow for all Canadians".

In the spin-conscious age that we inhabit, I am repeatedly amazed at how often politicians mess up when it comes to sport.

In fairness to Mulroney, Johnson's win appeared initially to be one of the two greatest moments in Canadian sporting history, on a par with the cold war-era ice-hockey win over the Soviet Union in 1972.

I should also mention that he won a general election less than two months later.


Even so, that phone call seems a prime example of how sport can catch politicians out.

Even when the victory you are celebrating stands, it is nearly always a bad idea to appear to be basking too explicitly, or precipitately, in the reflected glory of sporting champions.

That would be one golden rule I would inscribe in my spin-doctors' handbook on how to utilise sport for political ends effectively and without faux pas.

A second golden rule would be that it is nearly always a bad idea to try too hard to act, or allow yourself to be roped into acting, like a regular spectator or fan.

Along with indelible memories of great athletic feats from London 2012, I cannot escape the image of British Prime Minister David Cameron playing some weird bongo drum device at Eton Dorney, as we waited for Team GB sprint canoeist Ed McKeever to do his thing.

Yes, I can be curmudgeonly, but let's just say it didn't raise his political stock in my particular book.

Time can also be the enemy of efforts to turn sport to political advantage.

I suppose the recent protests in Brazil are one example of this; London 2012 was another.

This started out as a classic New Labour project, a natural sequel to "Cool Britannia", which showcased former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's international networking skills and charisma.

By the time the Games actually pitched up in London, however, Labour's chief political rivals were in power and the main beneficiary, if accumulation of domestic political capital is the yardstick, was Boris Johnson, the bicycling Tory Mayor.

My last golden rule would be to ask what Nelson Mandela would have done in similar circumstances.


The former South African President's decision to don the green and gold Springbok rugby jersey at the 1995 World Cup rugby final in Johannesburg transformed a sporting occasion that the home team was widely expected to lose into a resonant forum of national reconciliation.

Without needing to utter a sentence, the former prisoner showed Afrikaners, in front of an international television audience, that, no matter what he had suffered, he would treat their traditions with respect; he simultaneously sent an unmistakable signal to the non-white majority that he expected them to do the same.

When you think that a petty-minded politician might have been tempted to stay away from the team's expected humbling and then gloat about it afterwards, this was a gesture in every way worthy of the greatest statesman of our age.

It is one of the moments he is destined to be best remembered for.

* Details taken from The Dirtiest Race in History by Richard Moore

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. To follow him on Twitter click here.