Is the wearing of colours that represent you culture or race within a society necessarily "political" or a celebration of  cultural identity with cultural diversity that is Australia?

 My first realisation that politics and sport were interrelated was when the South African Spring Rugby team called the Springboks toured in Australia in the early 70's. The politics of that country denied basic human rights to black south Africans, so when Australia or New Zealand toured that country, they could not have "coloured" players in their teams. Naturally there were no black south African in their teams either.

If you agree that the definition of politics is a set of social relationships and the method of enforcing these social relationships is through government and/or  those in power, then politics in all pervasive. Politics and sport are already together the arena.

In any society there are areas of overlap and friction between different ethnic, cultural and social groups. but they are "seen " to be under the one umbrella,of cultural identity. This is, of course, defined by the dominant power group. If it is determined by certain power groups that something is not reflective of their values then actions become political.

An Australian runner who supported a Human Rights action at the 1968 Olympics was never selected for another Olympic Games even though he qualified on a number of occasions.

 We have food festivals, cultural events art exhibitions, musicals etc. that all celebrate cultural diversity within Australia. Why is sport different?

Maybe it is because of the passion that can be sparked at sporting matches, especially fast contact sports. We have seen the racist actions of people in soccer matches in Europe, and this may be used as a reason to  stop expressions of different "tribes" in our society. But the dominant tribes are already there, and they can bring the police onto the scene to stop any "tribal warfare" . Thats heavy politics