Lecture by Dr. Peter Donnelly, Professor with the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto

Abstract: In 2000, Sunder Katwala wrote: "It is difficult to think of anything that is so badly governed as international sport." The situation has not improved in the last dozen years and governance problems are also evident in national sporting organizations, professional sport, and interuniversity sport. These include problems with the integrity of sport (doping, gambling and match-fixing); corruption and problems with financial transparency and accountability in sporting organizations; lack of equitable representation and democratized governance in sport organizations; problems with athlete health and safety, and violence control; problems with labour relations, team selection, and other aspects of due process for athletes; and problems of athlete maltreatment and child protection in sport. Donnelly coined the term "prolympism" in the 1990s to reflect the convergence of the two major ideologies of sport participation--Olympic amateur ideals, and professional ideals. The spreading crises of governance appears to be an unintended consequence of that convergence and the emergence of a global sport monoculture. When this is combined with a tendency to not take sport seriously, and the fact that "sports???. take place in a separate [autonomous] sphere, detached from normal rules and regulations in society" (Bruyninckx, 2011), there is a clear need for regulation. Donnelly will suggest some of the governance achievements of sport--especially in moving towards gender and racial equity; note what needs to be done to resolve the crises of governance and make a special case for child protection as an ongoing crisis that needs to be resolved.