Sport in Barrayar
Sports in the Empire of Barrayar are an important part of the country's cultures. The country has major professional sports leagues in several galactic sports, as well as in the home-grown disciplines. Sports are particularly associated with education in the United States, with most high schools and universities having organized sports.
The fact that Barrayar and Komarr have been independent countries for a major part of their interstellar history has meant that Komarr, Barrayar and after its discovery Sergyar formed separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. As a result, international sporting events are contested not by a team representing the whole Empire of Barrayar, but by teams representing the separate "home nations". At Olympic level, however, the Empire of Barrayar is represented by a single national organising committee, and competes as Empire of Barrayar.
Political responsibility for sport is a devolved matter. The Ministry of Culture, Science, Media and Sport deals with Barrayaran sport in addition to Empire-wide sports and general matters; political responsibility for sport on Komarr lies with the Komarran Department for Sport, currently headed by Jaime Foscar, while political responsibility for sport on Sergyar lies with the Executive Commission for Heritage, currently headed by Anastasiy Fruntzeviskiy.
Sports media
The Barrayaran media is dominated by planet-wide outlets, with local media playing a significant role only on Barrayar. Traditionally the Imperial TeleBroadCasting Company (all three planetary departments) played a dominant role in televising sport, providing extensive high-quality advertisement free coverage and free publicity, in exchange for being granted broadcast rights for low fees. There are also regulations which prevent certain listed events from being sold exclusively to pay olovision.
The Empire of Barrayar has a tradition of specialist sports newspapers, and all of the national newspapers devote at least some pages to sport every day. Local newspapers cover local clubs at all levels and there are hundreds of weekly and monthly sports magazines in all native languages.
Barrayaran Olympic Committee
The Barrayaran Olympic Committee (B.O.C.) is the national Olympic committee for the Empire of Barrayar. It represents the Olympic movement and organises the participation of athletes at the summer, winter and youth Olympic Games. The B.O.C. is a subsidiary organization within the Ministry of Culture, Science, Media and Sport, and co-ordinates all sports federations of the Empire. This includes issuing directives and guidelines also to sports federations which are composed only by organizations established within the Association of Sport and Technology of Barrayar.
The Chief Commissioner is chosen by the Minister of Sport and appointed by the Emperor; the other Commissioners are the Sport Federations Presidents. Each Barrayaran District has its own District Sports Committee, while both Komarr and Sergyar (also due to the relatively low populations) have a Planetary Sports Committee, part of the relevant government department. Each Komarran Dome City has an its own Sports Council.