Champions, Refugees and activists

While the politicization of sport has been the subject of extensive research in the social sciences, few studies have examined the political expression of elite athletes. This article explores this issue through the case of three Afghan female athletes who had aspired to participate in and/or competed in the Paris 2024 Olympic or Paralympic Games, and who have sought refuge in France. The article examines how the athletes’ political expressions on Instagram are structured according to strategies of visibility that reconcile their sporting performances with the constraints of the norm of apoliticism imposed by the Olympic institutions. Based on an analysis of the content of posts on their Instagram accounts over an eight-month period, it highlights three distinct regimes of political expression characterized by contrasting strategies for achieving online visibility: an institutionalized regime, a heroized regime, and a polemical regime.