The 2026 Winter Olympics kick off next Friday in northern Italy, with nearly 3,000 athletes from more than 90 countries vying for a medal in events ranging from figure skating to curling. Twelve athletes from Oregon and Washington have qualified for Team USA’s roster competing in Milan, Cortina D’Ampezzo and a handful of other sites where skiing and snowboarding events will be held.
Yoav Dubinsky, an associate teaching professor of marketing at University of Oregon, will also be there to attend matches, do research and help organize an Olympic studies symposium in Naples. Dubinsky is also the operational director of the Olympic Studies Hub, which he helped launch within the UO’s business college in December 2024. It’s part of a network of more than 80 Olympic Studies and Research Centers recognized by the International Olympic Committee.
Although this is the sixth Olympics Dubinsky will attend, which he first did as a former sports journalist, it will be his first Winter Olympics. We’ll talk to him about what events he plans to attend and his research interests, including the marketing and branding opportunities host nations seize on to promote their culture and polish their image with visitors and viewers worldwide.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The 2026 Winter Olympics will kick off a week from today in Northern Italy. 12 athletes from Oregon and Washington will be competing. Yoav Dubinsky will be on hand as well. He is an associate teaching professor of marketing at the University of Oregon and the operational director of the university’s Olympic Studies Hub. He joins us now to talk about what we can learn by studying the Olympics. It’s great to have you on the show.
Yoav Dubinsky: Thank you, Dave. Great to be here.
Miller: What was your path to becoming an academic who focuses on the Olympics?
Dubinsky: Oh, that was a very nonlinear path, to be honest. I’m originally from Tel Aviv, Israel. I was a journalist back in Israel in 2008. I was sent to cover the Beijing 2008 Olympics. That opened my mind to how a country is using sports to change its image. Because China in 2008 used these games, the Beijing 2008 Olympics, as a way to open itself to the world and to showcase the world, basically to come out of the world and use it as a power move to showcase the world the capabilities of China, and we can see the significant rise of China in the decades since.
That was a monumental moment in my career of realizing how sports can be used to change an image of a country, and gradually, along with other factors that led me to shift my career from the academy to studying the Olympics and the impact of the Olympics. I’ve covered the results of the last five Summer Olympic Games from Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic, and Paris 2024, and Milano Cortina will be my first Winter Olympics.
Miller: When you went to Beijing in 2008 and became fascinated by what was talked about then, too, as China’s sort of coming out. Were you going there to cover track and field and swimming and gymnastics or whatever and then became interested in the geopolitics, or did you go there thinking first and foremost about geopolitics?
Dubinsky: I would say both. But I would say I was then the chief sports editor of the sports website of Keshet Broadcasting that is the largest broadcasting company in Israel, and I was the chief editor of the website, and then they sent me to Beijing predominantly to cover the games. But the Olympics are never just the competitions, and never only what is around the competitions. The way that I see the Olympic movement is that there’s a story about humanity that is told through athletes running and jumping and throwing a ball and etc., etc. So I was looking at both.
What I did see is that prior to Beijing, these were my first Olympics, and my first time and so far the only time that I’ve been to China, most of what I read was negative coverage of China, human rights violation, air pollution, public spending, the government, and so forth. And then you come to the Olympics and you see the investment and you see the infrastructure and you see a sport event in a capacity that you’ve never seen in the past. And you see, OK, there is more to it, and also you can definitely respect the history, the culture, the food, the music, the historic and touristic sites, and you get this mixed view of a country that you don’t get just by listening to the media or reading framed coverage, and as a result, you frame the coverage yourself and provide a more complex and nuanced image as well in the way that you see it.
It doesn’t mean that you agree with the government, it doesn’t mean that you don’t criticize, but you do dive deeper and see more complexities in a country that led me to a research line on sports, nation branding and public diplomacy. I’ve been publishing quite a lot on it. I published a book about it. And that led me to a research line and to a PhD at the University of Tennessee and now eight years of teaching at the University of Oregon in a place that calls itself Tracktown USA.
Miller: What is the idea behind an Olympics hub?
Dubinsky: The Olympic Studies Hub, that’s an Olympic studies and research center that is recognized by the International Olympic Committee, Olympic Studies Center. The International Olympic Committee, they sit in Lausanne, Switzerland, they are the ones that are responsible for the Olympic movement to choose the host cities and so forth, and they have a section as part of the IOC, the International Olympic Committee umbrella, of Olympics and of an Olympic Study Center that sits in the premises of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, and they recognize academic institutions that do studies and research on the Olympics.
We, last in December 2024, after 2.5 years or so of application process or going through this process, got recognized as a university of work that we are doing around the Olympic movement. And the Olympic studies have reflected that it sits in the Warsaw Sports Business Center in the Lundquist College of Business, but it is a university-wide recognition for everything that is being done around the Olympics. The University of Oregon plays a role in the Olympic ecosystem, predominantly through track and field, over 100 years of experience of our University of Oregon athletes competing. Athletes and alumni competing in the Olympic Games, over 100 athletes, over 20 countries representing over 20 countries. Olympic trials happening on campus, the pre-classic with dozens of Olympians and Olympic medalists take place on campus every year. Of course, NCAA and conference competitions which also have Olympians.
So, the University of Oregon is very much rooted in the track and field ecosystem, in the Olympic ecosystem in the US, in around the world. The World Athletic Championships, the only ones that took place in the US, happened on our campus, and there’s also a hands-on approach at the University of Oregon and in the Lundquist College of Business of connection to the industry and not just being ivory tower faculty and connecting students to engagement with the industry, with sports organizations, with the Olympic ecosystem. So all of that led us to apply for this recognition, and this recognition we finally got that in December 2024.
Miller: One of the pillars of your hub’s work is to study the business and the philosophy of Olympism. I want to hear about both of those, but let’s start with the philosophy first. What is the philosophy of Olympism?
Dubinsky: So the philosophy of Olympism, that’s basically the ideal of the IOC, of the International Olympic Committee, coined by Pierre de Coubertin, the revival of the Olympic movement that basically looks at sport and physical activity as part of a harmonious development of a person’s body, will, and mind. Connecting that to the values of the athletic competition in ancient Greece, where body culture was part of what ancient Greece was as part of a major city-state and country, if we can call it that, that set the milestones and some of the brakes of philosophy and democracy and science and art and sport as well that has built the society today or that the society today has been building on. So that’s basically the idea of Olympism. Of a holistic perception of a person, of bringing people to compete peacefully regardless of international politics, of focusing on humanity, focusing on what what unites us, on fair play, of competing, doing our best while respecting the opponents and the referees and so forth, and overall using sports for the betterment of society.
Miller: Do you think that the Olympics do that right now?
Dubinsky: I think that the Olympics are both, in the sense of there are two things that are happening at the same time. The Olympic Games are the biggest event humanity holds at this point when it comes to global participation of every country in the world, and more than that, there are more delegations marching with their flags in the opening ceremonies than states recognized by the United Nations. They are broadcasted all around the world globally. They are watched by billions, so they are popular people and countries see value in them in terms of being part of something larger and bringing the world together.
With that said, the Olympic movement is also more resistant than ever, that there are more protests and more criticism about lack of sustainability, about public spending. Geopolitics plays a role, as though so many countries participating, they try to push to achieve their social, political, economic goals, and sometimes that clouds the participation. So I think it’s a mixed answer. To some extent, yes, they bring the world together. There are no events that do this in this capacity. With that said, they are scrutinized, and they are the Olympic Games and the Olympic movement is run by people, and people are corruptible, and that reflects as well.
Miller: How free do you feel to be critical of the Olympics? I’m wondering specifically about the university’s connection to and reliance on money from Phil Knight and the fact that, as was pointed out in the press release about the Olympics hub, Nike is an official sponsor of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
Dubinsky: 100% free. 100% free with anyone who wants to criticize the Olympic movement can do that. I criticize the Olympic movement regularly, and we don’t get money from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. We don’t get money from the International Olympic Committee in terms of academic freedom, in terms of freedom of speech. Absolutely no interference. I have not seen, in my eight years at Oregon, anyone tell me about what I can write or criticize, or whatnot. I personally think based on my research of the Olympics and covering international sports for about 20 years that the world is a better place with the Olympics rather than without them, that if you take the Olympic out, there will be all kinds of trickle down effects that that will actually prevent some of the opportunities that are happening now.
Miller: I’m curious about that. What do you think a world without the Olympics, how would it be different, aside from the obvious things of, you know, most people in the world not paying attention to figure skating ever or certain sports that are what they are globally because of the Olympics. So aside from that, what do you think would be different?
Dubinsky: I would say that it will be mostly capitalism that will determine which sports will survive or which will not. As a result, a lot of sports will disappear, meaning that a lot of parts of the culture that represented cultures and history around the world will disappear. It will help disenfranchised communities in the way that I see it in the Olympics, because countries see importance in participating in marching with the flags. They invest in grassroots sports to enable to have Olympians. Someone is not born an Olympian. They go through a grassroots level and compete in youth competition and whatnot, and this is an investment in the pyramid, and the pyramid is very significant. And if you don’t have the top of that pyramid of people what they want to aspire to, to dream of, and you don’t have the incentive to invest in the top of the pyramid, I would expect that countries will not invest in the bottom of the pyramid, and that will take a lot of opportunities of engagement in sports. It will have all kinds of impacts on public health and so forth and so forth.
Miller: As you mentioned, you’ve been to five Summer Games, but this is going to be your first Winter Games. What are you most looking forward to?
Dubinsky: So first of all, my first Winter Games, I’ve been to the Winter Youth Olympics, but I am excited to be for the first time in Winter Olympics. I am excited to see the model that Milano Cortina is offering because these games are going to be different in the sense of they’re going to be scattered across the parts of the French Alps. It’s the first time the two cities have been awarded together, Milano and Cortina. They’re not adjacent to each other. They are pretty far, far away. This means that the competitions are not centralized in the sense of past Olympics, but each city or cluster will only have a few events going on.
And on one hand, it reduces the need for permanent infrastructure, it reduces the burden on the host cities, but on the other hand, it will be interesting to see if it takes away something of the Olympic spirit of everyone together as the athletes and delegation will be more spread, and the Winter Olympics are already significantly smaller than the summer ones.
Miller: Do you have a favorite Winter Olympic sport?
Dubinsky: Not necessarily. As I said, I was born and grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel. I’m more of a summer…
Miller: More of a Mediterranean person.
Dubinsky: Yes, exactly, more of a Mediterranean person. But I do love watching people do their thing in the highest level. So, while I might not be the biggest figure skating fan, watching the women’s figure skating final or any figure skating final, or watching Chloe Kim fly, or Mikaela Shiffrin on the slopes, that should be exciting.
Miller: Yoav Dubinsky, thanks very much.
Dubinsky: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Joav Dubinsky is an associate teaching professor of marketing at the University of Oregon, where he is the operational director of the Olympic Studies Hub. He’ll be going to Northern Italy for the start of the Olympics. They start one week from today.
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