This book deals with the events leading up to the 1936 Popular Olympics which would have united the Popular Front in opposition to the Berlin Olympics. It also discusses the days after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War which began on the same day the games were due to start. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, the book traces the biographies of several Popular Olympians who would go on to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. The book also examines the planned events and locations for the Popular Olympics as well as the international funding that the games secured. The book argues that the events were a departure from Workers' Sport as well as the IOC's Olympic games and represented an important cultural manifestation of the Popular Front.

The first edition of Olympic Cities, published in 2007, provided a pioneering overview of the changing relationship between cities and the modern Olympic Games. This substantially revised and enlarged third edition builds on the success of its predecessors. The first of its three parts provides overviews of the urban legacy of the four component Olympic festivals: the Summer Games; Winter Games; Cultural Olympiads; and the Paralympics. The second part comprisessystematic surveys of seven key aspects of activity involved in staging the Olympics: finance; place promotion; the creation of Olympic Villages; security; urban regeneration; tourism; and transport. The final part consists of nine chronologically arranged portraits of host cities, from 1936 to 2020, with particular emphasis on the six Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games of the twenty-first century. As controversy over the growing size and expense of the Olympics, with associated issues of accountability and legacy, continues unabated, this book's incisive and timely assessment of the Games' development and the complex agendas that host cities attach to the event will be essential reading for a wide audience. This will include not just urban and sports historians, urban geographers, event managers and planners, but also anyone with an interest in the staging of mega-events and concerned with building a better understanding of the relationship between cities, sport and culture.

Sports are the opiate of the people, particularly in the United States, Europe, and parts of South America. Globally, billions of fans feverishly focus on the summer and winter Olympics. In theory, international fraternalism is boosted by these "friendly competitions," but often national rivalries eclipse the theoretical amity. How the Olympics have dealt with racism over the years offers a window to better understanding these dynamics. Since their revival in 1896, the modern Olympics were periodically agitated by political and moral conundrums. Racial tensions, the topic of this volume, reached their apex under the polarizing presidency of Avery Brundage. Race in sports cannot be disentangled from societal problems, nor can race or sports be fully understood separately. Racial conflict must be contextualized. Racism and the Olympics explores the racial landscape against which a number of major disputes evolved. The book covers various topics and events in history that portray discrimination within Olympic games, such as the Nazi games of 1936, the black American protest on the victory stand in Mexico City's Olympics, as well as international political forces that removed South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics. Robert G. Weisbord considers the role of international politics and the criteria that should be used to determine nations that are selected to take part in and serve as venues for the Olympic Games.

Olympic Games are sold to host city populations on the basis of legacy commitments that incorporate aid for the young and the poor. Yet little is known about the realities of marginalized young people living in host cities. Do they benefit from social housing and employment opportunities? Or do they fall victim to increased policing and evaporating social assistance? This book answers these questions through an original ethnographic study of young people living in the shadow of Vancouver 2010 and London 2012. Setting qualitative research alongside critical analysis of policy documents, bidding reports and media accounts, this study explores the tension between promises made and lived reality. Its eight chapters offer a rich and complex account of marginalized young people's experiences as they navigate the possibilities and contradictions of living in an Olympic host city. Their stories illustrate the limits to the promises made by Olympic bidding and organizing committees and raise important questions about the ethics of public funding for such mega-events. This book will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Olympics, sport and social exclusion, and sport and politics, as well as for those working in the fields of youth studies, social policy and urban studies.

As the Olympic spectacle grows, broadcast coverage becomes bigger, more complex, and more sophisticated. Part sporting event, part reality show, and part global festival, the Olympics can be seen as both intensely nationalistic and a celebration of a shared sense of international community. This book sheds new light on how the Olympic experience has been shaped by television and expanded across multiple platforms and formats. Combining a multitude of approaches ranging from interviews to content analyses to audience surveys, the book explores the production, influence, and significance of Olympic media in contemporary society. Built on a central case study of NBC's coverage of the Rio Games in 2016, which is then placed within 20 years of content analyses, the book focuses on the entire Olympic television process from production to content to effects. Touching on key themes such as race, gender, history, consumerism, identity, nationalism, and storytelling, Olympic Television: Broadcasting the Biggest Show on Earth is fascinating reading for any student or scholar with an interest in sport, media, and the global impact of mega-events.

As the Olympic spectacle grows, broadcast coverage becomes bigger, more complex, and more sophisticated. Part sporting event, part reality show, and part global festival, the Olympics can be seen as both intensely nationalistic and a celebration of a shared sense of international community. This book sheds new light on how the Olympic experience has been shaped by television and expanded across multiple platforms and formats. Combining a multitude of approaches ranging from interviews to content analyses to audience surveys, the book explores the production, influence, and significance of Olympic media in contemporary society. Built on a central case study of NBC's coverage of the Rio Games in 2016, which is then placed within 20 years of content analyses, the book focuses on the entire Olympic television process from production to content to effects. Touching on key themes such as race, gender, history, consumerism, identity, nationalism, and storytelling, Olympic Television: Broadcasting the Biggest Show on Earth is fascinating reading for any student or scholar with an interest in sport, media, and the global impact of mega-events.

A fundamental component of the Olympic ideal is the concept of Olympic education . This is the notion that sport can help children and young people develop essential life skills; that the development of motor abilities, social behaviour and a moral sense are vital parts of a balanced education and can be developed through the teaching of sport and Olympic values. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey and analysis of the diffusion, implementation and delivery of these important Olympic education programmes around the world.

The book includes national case studies of countries on every major continent, including the US, the UK, China, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Germany. Each chapter examines the cultural, pedagogical, political and societal challenges of teaching Olympic education and the national, individual and institutional programmes that have emerged. The book explores key practical and conceptual issues, such as the incorporation of Olympic values in PE curricula, coach education programmes and the coaching of sports, and the structure and collaborative efforts of the governmental bodies, sport federations and Olympic institutions responsible for policy and implementation. This is important reading for all students, researchers and professionals with an interest in physical education, sport education, sports coaching, sport policy or Olympic studies. "

LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE CROSS SPORTS BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR The definitive biography of one of the greatest, most extraordinary runners and Olympic heroes of all time, from the author of running classic Feet in the Clouds. Emil Zatopek won five Olympic medals, set 18 world records, and went undefeated over 10,000 metres for six years. He redefined the boundaries of endurance, training in Army boots, in snow, in sand, in darkness. But his toughness was matched by a spirit of friendship and a joie de vivre that transcended the darkest days of the Cold War. His triumphs put his country on the map, yet when Soviet tanks moved in to crush Czechoslovakia's new freedoms in 1968, Zatopek paid a heavy personal price for his brave defence of 'socialism with a human face'. Rehabilitated two decades later, he was a shadow of the man he had been - and the world had all but forgotten him. Today We Die A Little strips away the myths to tell the complex and deeply moving story of the most inspiring Olympic hero of them all.

The Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games is the first authoritative and comprehensive account of the world s greatest sporting and cultural event. It tells the complete story of the 2012 Games from inception, through the successful bidding process and the planning and preparation phase, to delivery, the post-Games period and legacy. Written by a world-class team of international Olympic scholars, the book offers critical analysis of the social, cultural, political, historical, economic and sporting context of the Games. From the political, commercial and structural complexities of organising an event on such a scale, to the sporting action that holds the attention of the world, this book illuminates the key aspects of the 2012 Games, helping us to better understand the vital role that sport and culture play in contemporary global society.

The book is divided into two volumes: Volume Two - Celebrating the Games, examines the period of competition and immediately afterwards, covering key topics such as:

• London welcomes the world - hospitality and the look of the games
• Experiencing the games -spectators, tourists, volunteers, shoppers, viewers
• Media and communications
• Running the games
• Creating Olympic celebrities
• Protesting the games
• Commerce, retail and consumption
• Documenting London 2012 in films and books
• The legacy of the 2012 Games for London, the UK and the Olympic Movement

Richly illustrated with the personal accounts of key stakeholders, from sports administrators and politicians to athletes and spectators, and including essential data and evocative visual material, this book is essential reading for anybody with a personal or professional interest in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, global culture or the development of sport.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the British presided over the largest Empire in world history, a vast transoceanic and transcontinental realm of dominions, colonies, protectorates and mandates that covered over one-quarter of the world's land mass and comprised a population of over 450-million subjects. Spanning Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania, over fifty modern nations-currently recognized by the International Olympic Committee-were governed and controlled by the British crown at some stage prior to the gradual dissolution of the Empire. The British World and the Five Rings seeks to explore the relationship between the former British Empire and the Olympic Movement. It pays due regard to the settler dominions, but it also addresses those territories who were less willing partners in the British imperial project. In doing so, the tendency of so-called 'British World' histories to promote an apologia for Empire is rejected in favour of a critical approach to imperialism. Combining thorough research with engaging and accessible writing, The British World and the Five Rings is applicable to many fields of Olympic scholarship making it a central work in the growing field of sports studies. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The African American struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century is one of the most important stories in American history. With all the information available, however, it is easy for even the most enthusiastic reader to be overwhelmed. In Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement, Yohuru Williams has synthesized the complex history of this period into a clear and compelling narrative. Considering both the Civil Rights and Black Power movements as distinct but overlapping elements of the Black Freedom struggle, Williams looks at the impact of the struggle for Black civil rights on housing, transportation, education, labor, voting rights, culture, and more, and places the activism of the 1950s and 60s within the context of a much longer tradition reaching from Reconstruction to the present day. Exploring the different strands within the movement, key figures and leaders, and its ongoing legacy, Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement is the perfect introduction for anyone seeking to understand the struggle for Black civil rights in America.

Research on Indigenous participation in sport offers many opportunities to better understand the political issues of equality, empowerment, self-determination and protection of culture and identity. This volume compares and conceptualises the sociological significance of Indigenous sports in different international contexts. The contributions, all written by Indigenous scholars and those working directly in Indigenous/Native Studies units, provide unique studies of contemporary experiences of Indigenous sports participation. The papers investigate current understandings of Indigeneity found to circulate throughout sports, sports organisations and Indigenous communities. by (1): situating attitudes to racial and cultural difference within the broader sociological processes of post colonial Indigenous worlds (2): interrogating perceptions of Indigenous identity with reference to contemporary theories of identity drawn from Indigenous Studies and (3): providing insight to increased Indigenous participation, empowerment and personal development through sport with reference to sociological theory.

5 September, 1972. 4.30 a.m. The Munich Olympic Village. Black September, a group of Palestinian terrorists, break into the Israeli team's apartments. It is the beginning of the most tragic event in Olympic history and, after twenty hours, the day will end in a massacre, with the deaths of eleven Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman. This is the story of the race-walker Shaul Ladany: a survivor. But more than just a member of the Israeli team from those terrible events in Munich, Ladany was a survivor of the darkest period in twentieth century history, having been interred as a child at the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne Frank died. For the second time in his life, Ladany has survived history. Ladany, the world record holder in the fifty-mile walk and a professor of industrial engineering, is one of Israel's most successful athletes, having won dozens of national championships and competed at both the 1968 and 1972 Olympics; he was a student at Columbia University in New York, a soldier in the Six Days War and the Yom Kippur War. From Eichmann to Sharon, from Bikila to All Blacks, from Nixon to Thatcher: they are all a part of Ladany's walk through the twentieth century. Award-winning author and journalist Andrea Schiavon tells Ladany's extraordinary life and, walking with him, chronicles a whole century of events in this astonishing, touching and epic biography.

The first summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG) were held in Singapore in 2010 and the first winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 2012. The IOC hopes that the YOG will encourage young people to be more active and that they will bring the Olympic movement closer to its original founding values. This is the first book to be published on the Youth Olympic Games. It critically examines the origins of the Games and the motives of the Games organisers, as well as the organisation and management of the Games and their wider impact and significance. The first part of the book discusses the relationship between the YOG and the ideology of Olympism, in the context of broader developments in youth sport competitions. The second part investigates a wide range of managerial aspects including the bidding process, finance, the prominent role of young people on the organising committees and as volunteers, the role of media and sponsors, and the distinctive competition structure. The final part of the book assesses the current and likely future impact of the YOG on the host cities and countries, the IOC and on national youth sport policies. The Youth Olympic Games is essential reading for any researcher, advanced student or policy maker with an interest in Olympic Studies, sports development, sport policy, youth sport or event management.

The book focuses on the Irish and Irish diasporal involvement in the Olympic Games. It discusses in detail the sporting involvement but, even more so, the political and national battles which accompanied the Irish Olympic journey prior to independence. It challenges our traditional perceptions of sporting nationalism and places the Irish story in a quite unique international context, showing how decisions made in London, Lausanne and New York had a profound impact on the Irish sporting, and national, destiny. This book is the product of six years of research across Ireland, London, New York and Switzerland. It seeks to shed light on the half-known story of Irish involvement in the Olympic Games prior to independence. The research has unearthed a huge amount of information, most of it previously unpublished. Few people will have known that hurling and Gaelic football formed part of an Olympic Games, or that Ireland competed as a separate nation in events like bicycle polo and hockey long before independence. The author traces the story of Irish and Irish American Olympic involvement from its accidental beginnings in 1896 through to the very significant political issues which dominated Irish sports, and our Olympic aspirations in the early 20th century. He has traced the role played by the Olympic Games in the evolution of a national identity in Ireland, and in the emergence of Irish America as a major sporting and political force in the USA. Political figures from Arthur Griffith, Roger Casement and John Devoy are all entwined in the Irish Olympic story. The work highlights the divisions and complexities within Irish sport, as well as the significant influence of the British Olympic Association as a barrier to Irish recognition at the Games. It charts the political intrigue behind the scenes in London and Lausanne as Ireland sought Olympic recognition after the 1921 Treaty. Most of all, this work highlights the magnificent achievements of the sportsmen, and one woman, who originated in the main from rural Ireland and won substantial Olympic success in throwing and jumping events, the Marathon, tennis, and other events.

How did the Olympics evolve into a multi-national phenomenon? How can the Olympics help us to understand the relationship between sport and society? What will be the impact and legacy of the Olympics after Tokyo in 2020? Understanding the Olympics answers all these questions by exploring the social, cultural, political, historical, and economic context of the Games. This thoroughly revised and updated edition discusses recent attempts at future proofing by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the face of growing global anti-Olympic activism, the changing geo-political context within which the Olympics take place, and the Olympic histories of the next three cities to host the Games - Tokyo (2020), Paris (2024), and Los Angeles (2028) - as well as the legacy of the London (2012) Olympics. For the first time, this new edition introduces the reader to the emergence of 'other Games' associated with the IOC - the Winter Olympics, the Paralympics, and the Youth Olympics. It also features a full Olympic history timeline, many new photographs, refreshed suggestions for further reading, and revised illustrations. The most up-to-date and authoritative textbook available on the Olympic Games, Understanding the Olympics is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the Olympics or the wider relationship between sport and society.

This book offers different insights into the study of the Olympic movement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It seeks to capture how political and cultural nation-state building and economic transformations are impacting the region's engagement (and disengagement) with the Olympic movement and the Olympic Games, as well as Paralympic sports. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Once a showcase for amateur athletics, the Olympic Games have become a global entertainment colossus powered by corporate sponsorship and professional participation. Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney offer the inside story of this transformation by examining the far-sighted leadership and decision-making acumen of four International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidents: Avery Brundage, Lord Killanin, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Jacques Rogge. Blending biography with historical storytelling, the authors explore the evolution of Olympic commercialism from Brundage's uneasy acceptance of television rights fees through the revenue generation strategies that followed the Salt Lake City bid scandal to the present day. Throughout, Wenn and Barney draw on their decades of studying Olympic history to dissect the personalities, conflicts, and controversies behind the Games' embrace of the business of spectacle. Entertaining and expert, The Gold in the Rings maps the Olympics' course from paragon of purity to billion-dollar profits.

President Vladimir Putin's Olympic venture put the workings of contemporary Russia on vivid display. The Sochi Olympics were designed to symbolize Russia's return to great power status, but subsequent aggression against Ukraine, large-scale corruption, and the doping scandal have become the true legacies of the games. The Kremlin's style of governance through mega-projects has had deleterious consequences for the country's development. Placing the Sochi games into the larger context of Olympic history, this book examines the political, security, business, ethnic, societal, and international ramifications of Putin's system.

For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit" and "Unbroken," the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics
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"Daniel James Brown's robust book tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.
The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together--a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.
Drawing on the boys' own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, "The Boys in the Boat "is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times--the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's "The Amateurs."

A Cultural History of Sport in the Modern Age covers the period 1920 to today. Over this time, world-wide participation in sport has been shaped by economic developments, communication and transportation innovations, declining racism, diplomacy, political ideologies, feminization, democratization, as well as increasing professionalization and commercialization. Sport has now become both a global cultural force and one of the deepest ways in which individual nations express their myths, beliefs, values, traditions and realities. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Sport presents the first comprehensive history from classical antiquity to today, covering all forms and aspects of sport and its ever-changing social, cultural, political, and economic context and impact. The themes covered in each volume are the purpose of sport; sporting time and sporting space; products, training and technology; rules and order; conflict and accommodation; inclusion, exclusion and segregation; minds, bodies and identities; representation. Steven A. Riess is Professor Emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University, USA. Volume 6 in the Cultural History of Sport set General Editors: Wray Vamplew, Mark Dyreson, and John McClelland

The summer Olympic Games are renowned for producing the world's biggest single-city cultural event. While the Olympics and other sport mega-events have received growing levels of academic investigation from a variety of disciplinary approaches, relatively little is known about how such occasions are experienced directly by local host communities and publics. This ethnography examines the everyday policing of the London Borough of Newham in relation to the London 2012 Olympics. It explains how police defined, monitored, prioritized, contained and investigated 'Olympic-related' crime, and how 'Olympic-related' policing connected to the policing of Newham. The authors examine how the threat of terrorism impacted on the everyday policing of the 2012 Olympics, as well as the exaggeration of other threats to the Games - such as youth gangs - for political reasons. The book also explores local resistance to Olympic policing, and the legacy of the Games with regard to policing, local housing, demographics and social exclusion. Discussing the lessons that can be learned for the future staging of sporting mega-events, this book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in sport, policing, crime and criminology, mega-events, event management, urban studies, global studies and sociology.