Was the Giro d'Italia in your opinion significant for Italy?
Yes, it's a very clear project to build a nation through a sporting event, so you go all over the country with the race, it's annual, it's got this kind of ritual aspect to it. So it is a way of building national identity, and they very clearly had that idea and still do in some ways, when they run that race. And it has, I think much less now, but in certain periods of Italy, it kind of stopped the country, everybody was transfixed by this race. Unfortunately, in the last twenty-five to thirty years, the sport has gone through quite a lot of deep crisis, doping and various things. It's much less important than it was then. But at certain points, it really did build Italy through a sporting event, just as the Tour de France does for France. It's the second greatest cycling race in the world and Italy also has fantastic mountains so it's good for cycling.
So moving onto football, you wrote the book Calcio during the “calciopoli” scandals. Do you think there is still a corruption problem in Italian football, even after the scandals of 2006?
Yes, I mean we have just had these betting scandals which have been massive and that's a huge crisis that's going on. I mean the chapter on scandals is getting bigger and bigger - I'd have to redo it! But it's not necessarily a football problem, I mean sport is part of and reflects society. So if a society is corrupt it's very unlikely that sport will be clean and vice versa. A very good way of talking about Italy, in terms of corruption, is also to talk about the way that sport works and the mentality. The American version of the book is called Winning at all Costs, and that is what part of the mentality of Italian sport is: it doesn't matter how you win as long as you win. There isn't really a concept of 'fair-play' in Italy, it doesn't really translate. It's an interesting way of seeing how people understand authority, understand the referee, and things like that.
Are you a keen sportsman yourself? Do you cycle or play football?
I cycle and play football. I used to play cricket. I used to play basketball. I cycle to work. So yes! And as well as studying these things, I'm a fan of them, so those two things go together. However, you have to be careful because if you write a book as a fan it's going to be a very different book than if you write it as an academic. Often I get accused because people know I support a certain team. They accuse me of bias but I've tried very hard in the book not to be. People sometimes can't see beyond that. The fan mentality is something I'm very interested in, to understand it from the inside and the outside.”