Ideas of nationality and competing for your country are outmoded

Christine Ohuruogu will, I suspect, be the best-loved Brit at the upcoming World Athletics Championships in Osaka, regardless of how she performs. It's not the way the 400 metres runner would want to have made her name, but her return after a 12-month ban for missing drugs tests has at least given Britain a recognisable face to cheer on. Let's face it, most of us would be hard-pushed to name any of our top athletes, and with several of our best medal hopes injured, Ohuruogu gives us a cause to rally around - for a while, at least.

Ohuruogu still has to await the outcome of her appeal against the British Olympic Association's life ban if she wants to run at Beijing next year, or in east London, where she grew up, in the 2012 Games. But if she loses her appeal, she is unlikely to mope around. "The Olympics is what you train for," she said this month. "I would probably just run for another country."

Running the 400 metres is Ohuruogu's life's work. It's both a passion and a job, and we would normally agree that she should be able to make her living wherever and however she can. But it's fascinating that a woman who has said publicly that she dreads people's perception of her as a drugs cheat - and there's no evidence at all that she is - has no fear of being labelled a turncoat even though sports fans, with their tribal instincts, have always reserved their cruellest loathing for those who swap sides.

Something is shifting. Globalisation is eroding the national boundaries that used to define international sport, and which country you represent is becoming little more than a convenience. It is, for instance, one of the great ironies of the post-Soviet era that many of the US's finest gymnasts and tennis players have Russian surnames or birthplaces. Or take Mushir Salem Jawher, the Kenyan-born runner who defected to Bahrain, only to get himself into trouble by running a marathon in Israel and finding himself temporarily stateless. He's one of a large number of African athletes whose services have been secured by Middle Eastern states offering lucrative contracts.

In an individual discipline it doesn't really matter whom you represent; the professionalisation of sport means that athletes compete for themselves, not some notion of sovereignty. That's becoming true of team sports, too. In Rugby Union, there are many cases of frustrated players - New Zealanders especially - turning to the family tree to make their claim as a Scot or a Welshman. (Cricket is way ahead. When Test matches began in the late 19th century, some players represented England and Australia, and one of our greatest batsmen, K S Ranjitsinhji, was a prince of the Indian Raj. It would be hard to name an England team of the past two decades that didn't include someone born in South Africa or Australia.)

Concepts of nationality are increasingly fluid. New Zealand supporters at this year's America's Cup chanted the name of a Middle Eastern airline. Where are we heading? Will team identities need to be drawn along other lines? Will we have to rethink the term "international"? I welcome the coming chaos. It can only help us to see what sport has been telling us all along: that running faster, jumping higher, or throwing further isn't just about beating someone else. It's about having a common goal that transcends geographical boundaries. It's a celebration of our likeness, not our difference.

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