The aim of this special issue is to address some of the most salient questions currently at the junction between international sport and politics.

Questo numero speciale della rivista Eracle si propone di riflettere sugli studi e le ricerche che esaminano il nesso tra il corpo e l’attività fisica come espressione di fatti sociali, offrendo un punto di vista caleidoscopico che permetta di sviluppare uno sguardo critico. Il ruolo dello sport e dell’attività fisica in questo numero sono analizzati insieme per mettere in luce quei meccanismi che si innescano nel momento in cui ci si confronta con tecniche, modelli, performance tipici dello sport, ma applicati anche da coloro che svolgono la loro pratica per fini non esclusivamente sportivi ovvero competitivi, codificati e che rispettano regole ben precise.

Mediatization and platformization have profoundly transformed contemporary cycling cultures. This issue of ERACLE offers readers a series of interdisciplinary contributions that illuminate the complexity, layering, and multiplicity of the phenomena, actors and processes of cycling cultures, sporting and otherwise. Datafication, gender issues, the impact of Covid-19, the work of riders, the role of audiovisuals, social networks and platforms, and the evolution of the sport/tourism nexus are some of the topics addressed, according to various scientific and methodological approaches, by the authors of the papers. In addition, this issue ensures a transnational perspective, crossing the analysis of local cases with broader global processes.

The FUNES and ERACLE journals joint special issue aims to investigate, along a comparative spectrum, the global and local extent of the Maradona phenomenon.

It is hard to find, in the champions pantheon of the sport history, a person who has experienced the same public consideration as the one for Diego Armando Maradona. Always on the stage, always drawing everyone’s attention, never an ordinary man.

If both in Argentina and in Naples the “pibe de oro” has easily become a significant icon of popular culture and tradition, on an international scale the resonance of his figure and the planetary roar generated by his death, lead us to reflect upon a global cultural phenomenon full of facets, interpretations and multiple considerations.

Il numero di Eracle dedicato agli eSports può sembrare una provocazione in un momento storico in cui si dibatte sia sul piano istituzionale che su quello teorico sull'appartenenza o meno degli eSports all’interno del novero degli sport tradizionali. Questa scelta è legata al fatto che una grossa parte delle competizioni videoludiche, siano esse simulazioni sportive o meno, si inseriscono all’interno di una dialettica per cui sport e mediatizzazione giocano una partita fondamentale per il riconoscimento di nuovi modelli di fruizione e produzione sportiva oltre che per determinare un nuovo modello di atleta e di audience. In questa direzione, gli eSports rappresenterebbero un'evoluzione dello sport tradizionale alla luce degli enormi cambiamenti determinati dai media digitali e dalla loro diffusione di massa.

The third volume of Eracle Journal aims to look at the sports universe through a gender perspective. We think it is useful to define the intersection between gender and sport and, at the same time, underline the considerations, paths and challenges that led us at this intersection.

This monograph intends to deepen the state of the issue of sport and tourism in today’s society and its positive and negative implications. More specifically, the volume contains a collection of scientific papers, which investigate different aspects all linked by a desire to emphasize on the relationship between sports practices, events and their overlap with the phenomenon of tourism, which require the participation of many travelers who combine in various ways the tourist experience with the sport.

A heterogeneous set of meanings, interests, passions, activities, rituals that manifest themselves at both the micro and macro levels revolve around sport. The contributions of the first issue of this magazine are placed within this broad cognitive framework with the aim of thinking about the plurality of social, cultural and economic processes that link sport to the social sciences. As we shall see, these are very varied study perspectives but which, taken together, have allowed for fruitful interdisciplinary discussions and comparisons.