Representing Churandy: The Making of a Black Dutch Caribbean Sporting Celebrity in Dutch Media

This study examines the mediatized (self-)representations in Dutch media of Churandy Martina, a sprint athlete from the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao and a prominent figure in Dutch Olympic delegations between 2012 and 2024. Within this period, Martina was ostensibly embraced by European Dutch audiences to an unprecedented level for Black Dutch Caribbean athletes, whose presence in Dutch Olympic delegations has risen in recent years due to constitutional changes in the Kingdom of The Netherlands. Drawing on cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies, this article analyzes how Martina's identity as a Black Curaçaoan athlete was constructed and made legible to European Dutch media audiences and through which discursive frames his celebrity status was constructed. Through a textual analysis of Dutch newspaper and television coverage across four Olympic Games, complemented by interviews with Martina and a member of his media team, the study identifies four dominant representational regimes: racialized infantilization, echoes of the dangerous Black Antillean male, a healer of innocent Dutch Whiteness, and Black athletic commodification. Ultimately, the article argues that Martina's media (self-)representation illustrates how Black sporting celebrities can be both celebrated and commodified through representational frames which simultaneously reinforce enduring racialized power structures within postimperial national contexts.