In 2017 the Olympic Studies Centre of the German Sport University organized a workshop on Sport Development and Olympic Studies. This book resulted from the presentations and discussions they engendered around identifying new international collaborative research fields and deepening research on the Olympics, the Olympic Movement and sport development. The effective application of the hermeneutical method unifies the chapters. The interpretive strengths of this method sharpen the analytical perspective of the chapters, with the strict requirements for the use of primary sources meaning that the contributors have conducted extensive archival research. Assuring thematic coherence, the studies assembled for this book focus on the analysis of processes of continuity, transformation, and development across four areas: sport institutions and their policies; commissions within and policies of governing bodies of sports; legacy discussions; and sport events within the summer and winter Olympic Games transformed into political and cultural spectacles. Bringing together experts in the field, Sport Development and Olympic Studies will be of great use to scholars of Sport Development, Sport History, The Olympics and Sport Sociology. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

An awesome festival of sporting excellence and competition, the Olympic Games have now evolved into a major international event with great cultural, political, economic and social importance.

The Olympic Games Explained is an introductory guide to the history and meaning of the four-yearly phenomenon that is the modern Olympic Games. The book provides a comprehensive overview of 'Olympism' from its Ancient Greek origins through the beginnings of the International Olympic Committee to the global Olympic Movement in the twenty-first century.

Each chapter offers a range of study tasks and review questions to help students develop their understanding of key concepts in Olympic studies.

Despite International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samarach's proclaiming the Sydney 2000 Olympics as the "best ever, " the truth of the matter is much less one-sided. In The Best Olympics Ever? Helen Jefferson Lenskyj discloses what the Sydney 2000 Olympic industry suppressed: the real costs and impacts.

In a startling expose of the Olympic industry, Helen Jefferson Lenskyj goes beyond the media hype of international goodwill and spirited competition to uncover a darker side of the global games. She reports on the pre- and post-Olympic impacts from recent host cities, bribery investigations and their outcomes, grassroots resistance movements, and the role of the mass media in the controversy. A highly accessible book about a complex subject that touches the hearts of sports fan everywhere, Inside the Olympic Industry is a must-read, behind-the-scenes look at the politics surrounding the choice of Sydney, Australia as host city of the 2000 Summer Olympic games.

Longlisted for Autobiography of the Year, Sports Book Awards 2022 The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller A deeply personal and inspiring memoir from one of the most celebrated and influential names in British sport. Tom Daley captured the hearts of the nation with his unforgettable medal-winning performance in the London 2012 Olympics. At this year's Games in Tokyo, he triumphed to win gold and became the most decorated British diver of all time. In this deeply personal book, Tom explores the experiences that have shaped him and the qualities to which he owes his contentment and success; from the resilience he developed competing at world-class level, to the courage he discovered while reclaiming the narrative around his sexuality, and the perspective that family life has brought him. Candid and perceptive, Coming Up for Air offers a unique insight into the life and mindset of one our greatest and most-loved athletes.

This book explores how the Olympic industry has shaped hegemonic concepts of sporting masculinities and femininities for its own profit and image-making ends, examining its continuing marginalization of athletes on account of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class.

Historical research on the Olympic Movement is highly valuable as it displays processes of continuity and transformation by which knowledge building processes on the Olympic Movement, its structure and on Olympic sport can be expanded. The Olympic Movement can be addressed from multidisciplinary perspectives, including management, sociology, education, philosophy and history. This comprehensive collection examines the multifaceted profile of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement and presents new insights drawn from a variety of research projects. Historical and political dimensions of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement are addressed, along with educational, ethical, commercial and sociological perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

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. Olympic Education: An international review is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey of the diffusion and implementation of Olympic education programmes around the world. The book includes 28 chapters with 21 national case studies of countries on every major continent, including Australia, Brasil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK, the US and Zambia. Each chapter examines the cultural, pedagogical, political and societal challenges of teaching Olympic education, as well as the national, individual and institutional programmes that have emerged. It explores key practical and conceptual issues, such as the incorporation of Olympic values in PE curricula, sport coaching and coach education programmes, while also taking into account the 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 the Olympics, sport education, sports coaching, sport policy or physical education.

Realpolitik as a component of the Olympic Games held in East Asia has been largely ignored by historians. However, sport was an integral part of cultural diplomacy and the expression of national prowess for the three Games held in East Asia: 1964 Tokyo, 1988 Seoul and 2008 Beijing. It is time this was recorded. The Olympic Games had transformational political, economic and cultural effects for the host cities and countries. This also is a neglected topic. The Triple Asian Olympics: Asia Rising explores the realities of global transformation, regional ascendancy and metaphorical modernity of the East Asian Olympics and, by extension, East Asia. As the axis of global geo-political and economic power shifts to the East, analyzing the significance of the Olympic Games in East Asia becomes significant to an understanding the shifting nature of the nations of East Asia. The Triple Asian Games are harbingers of dramatic geopolitical change. This is the first study to record, confront and examine this contemporary phenomenon. For this reason, this unique collection promises to attract a wide readership. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games stand as the most profitable and arguably the most important event in the history of the modern Olympic movement. Fresh off the back of the financially disastrous Montreal Games of 1976 and the politically controversial Moscow Games of 1980, the Olympic movement returned to the United States for the sixth time in an attempt to salvage the economic viability and global prestige of the Olympics. The Los Angeles Olympics proved to be both provocative and polarizing. On the one hand they have been heralded as an overwhelming, transformative success, ushering the Olympic movement into the modern commercial age. On the other hand, critics have repudiated the Games as a manifestation of commercial excess and a platform for western political and cultural propaganda. In conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles Olympics, this volume examines their legacy. With an international collection of contributing scholars, this volume will span a range of global legacies, including the increasing commercialization of the Games, the changing participation of women, the Communist boycott movement, nationalism and sporting identity, and the modernization and California-cation of the Games. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

United States Army Olympic equestrian competitions have been largely overlooked in historical writings. This book tells the stories of the triumphs, the contributions, and the failures of the U.S. Army Olympians, and also captures the humor and good times as well as the drama and disappointments of the U.S. Army Olympians from the 1912 Games in Stockholm, to the 1948 Games in London. The stories are rich in detail, and include the controversial 1936 Summer Games held in Berlin, Germany. Many personal vignettes as told by team members enhance the story.

This open access book brings together oral histories that record the experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities in Shanghai as they participate in their careers. Employees with intellectual disabilities describe their experiences seeking, attaining, and maintaining employment. Their managers, colleagues, and family members also provide keen insight into the challenges and opportunities these individuals have encountered in the process of securing employment. An appendix provides a compilation of employment policies related to people with intellectual disabilities, particularly with respect to Shanghai.

When Great Britain failed to qualify for the women's hockey competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the sport was at its lowest point. Sliding down the world rankings, in-fighting and discord within the squad, no funding and very little prospect of a bright future. Three players - Crista Cullen, Helen Richardson and Kate Walsh - were junior members of that team, and would have been forgiven for walking away at that point. Fast forward 12 years and the same three players were at the heart of the greatest moment in Great Britain women's hockey, standing on the podium in Rio de Janeiro with Olympic gold medals proudly hanging around their necks. During those intervening years, the team had undergone a transformation. It was no easy journey, but a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows, triumphs and disasters - with casualties along the way. The History Makers is more than an account of a famous victory. It is the story of how a team changed its culture and its attitude and transformed a sport barely worth a mention in the press into the provider of an Olympic moment that gripped the nation.

The Olympic Games is unquestionably the largest and most important sporting event in the world. Yet who exactly is accountable for its successes and failures? This book examines the legitimacy and accountability of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This non-governmental organisation wields extraordinary power, but there is no democratic basis for its authority. This study questions the supremacy of the IOC, arguing that there is a significant accountability deficit. Investigating the conduct of the IOC from an international legal perspective, the book moves beyond a critique of the IOC to explore potential avenues for reform, means of improving democratic procedures and increasing accountability. If the Olympics are to continue to be our most celebrated sporting event, those who organise them must be answerable to the citizens that they can potentially harm as well as benefit. Full of original insights into the inner workings of the IOC, this book is essential reading for all those interested in the Olympics, sport policy, sport management, sport mega-events, and the law.

When UK Sport removed funding for women's BMX, Bethany Shriever's dream of Olympic glory seemed shattered. Throw in the impact of a broken leg sustained in childhood, plus an untimely arm injury weeks before the final Olympic qualification event, and few would have thought the 22-year-old would be on the plane to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, let alone the podium. And with the uncertainty caused by a global pandemic, the external pressures on Beth were intense and pervasive. However, the BMX racer from Essex is made of stern stuff and, perhaps just as importantly, so are the team around her. From her deeply involved family, to her dedicated coaching team, to her friends within the BMX community, Beth's story recognises the team behind an athlete. This compelling tale of triumph over adversity reveals how the power of belief overcame the obstacles that threatened to derail Bethany's dreams of becoming the best ever female BMX racer.

The Flame Relay and the Olympic Movement is the first book-length scholarly study in English of the contemporary Olympic flame relay. Reporting for the first time on years of intensive ethnographic research and organizational intervention, MacAloon literally follows the Olympic flame through twenty years of intercultural encounter, conflict, and negotiation. Focusing on the frequently harmonious, sometimes perilous encounters among Greek flame relay officials, cultural agents, and discourses, foreign Olympic Games organizing committees, and such transnational actors as the IOC and its corporate sponsors since 1984, a context is created for understanding the significance for the Olympic movement and for globalization studies of the 2004 Athens flame relay, the first to travel the entire world. Through intensive interviews and co-participations with leading Greek and American actors and the contributions of young Greek researchers who worked backstage on the relay, Bearing Light demonstrates how culturally parochial the managerial regime of "world's best practices" often turns out to be and yet how inescapable it has become for those who wish to communicate across cultural and political boundaries. This dilemma, the contributors argue, constitutes the practical form in which the struggle to preserve a sense of "Olympism" and "the Olympic Movement" against the demands and prerogatives of today's Olympic sports industry is being chiefly fought out. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society

The Pan-American Games, begun officially in 1951 in Buenos Aires and held in every region of the western hemisphere, have become one of the largest multi-sport games in the world. 6,132 athletes from 41 countries competed in 48 sports in the 2015 Games in Toronto, Canada. The Games are simultaneously an avenue for the spread of the Olympic Movement across the Americas, a stage for competing ideologies of Pan-American unity, and an occasion for host city infrastructural stimulus and economic development. And yet until this volume, the Games have never been studied as a single entity from a scholarly viewpoint. Historicizing the Pan-American Games presents 12 original articles on the Games. Topics range from the origins of the Games in the period between the world wars, to their urban, hemispheric and cultural legacies, to the policy implications of specific Games for international sport. The entire collection is set against the shifting economic, social, political, cultural, sporting and artistic contexts of the turbulent western hemisphere. Historicizing the Pan-American Games makes a significant contribution to the literature on major games, Olympic sport and sport in the western hemisphere. This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

The Olympic Games is undoubtedly the greatest sporting event in the world, with over 200 countries competing for success. This important new study of the Olympics investigates why some countries are more successful than others. Which factors determine their failure or success? What is the relationship between these factors? And how can these factors be manipulated to influence a country's performance in sport? This book addresses these questions and discusses the theoretical concepts that explain why national sporting success has become a policy priority around the globe. Danyel Reiche reassesses our understanding of success in sport and challenges the conventional explanations that population size and economic strength are the main determinants for a country's Olympic achievements. He presents a theory of countries' success and failure, based on detailed investigations of the relationships between a wide variety of factors that influence a country's position in the Olympic medals table, including geography, ideology, policies such as focusing on medal promising sports, home advantage and the promotion of women. This book fills a long-standing gap in literature on the Olympics and will provide valuable insights for all students, scholars, policy makers and journalists interested in the Olympic Games and the wider relationship between sport, politics, and nationalism.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This comprehensive collection provides an overview of social scientific perspectives on Olympic legacy, using specialist analyses and selected cases to illuminate the recurring anthropological, political, and sociological dimensions of the legacy debate. Drawing upon research conducted on the Beijing, Vancouver, Athens, London and Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, it identifies the recurrent rhetoric that has characterised the legacy debate, alongside the harsh realities that contradict many legacies and aspirations. Fifteen researchers from six countries contribute a range of critical analytical studies which explore macro-perspectives on the shifting political economy symbolized at Beijing or in an over-reaching Greece, the soft power benefits perceived by the Rio 2016 organizers, the anthropological study of neighbourhood spaces threatened by corporate branding, and the apparatus of surveillance surrounding an Olympic Games. The symbolic importance of the Games is also captured in studies of volunteer motivations, labour and work initiatives, and the introduction of women's boxing at London 2012. In a comprehensive overview, Alan Tomlinson illuminates the rhetoric of successive Olympic cycles and the rise to prominence of the legacy question in that debate. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science.

The Olympic Games have evolved into the most prestigious sport event on the planet. As a consequence, each Games generates more and more interest from the academic community. Sociology, politics, geography and history have all played a part in helping to understand the meanings and implications of the Games. Heritage, too, offers invaluable insights into what we value about the Games, and what we would like to pass on to future generations. Each Olympic Games unquestionably represents key life-markers to a broad audience across the world, and the great events that take place within them become worthy of remembrance, celebration and protection. The more tangible heritage features are also evident; from the myriad artefacts and ephemera found in museums to the celebratory symbolism of past Olympic venues and sites that have become visitor attractions in their own right. This edited collection offers detailed and thought-provoking examples of these heritage components, and illustrates powerfully the breadth, passion and cultural significance that the Olympics engender. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.

This book focuses on the processes of documenting the Beijing Olympics - ranging from the visual (television and film) to radio and the written word - and the meanings generated by such representations. What were the 'key' stories and how were they chosen? What was dramatised? Who were the heroes? Which 'clashes' were highlighted and how? What sorts of stories did the notion of 'human interest' generate? Did politics take a backseat or was the topic highlighted repeatedly? Thus, the focus was not on the success or failure of this event, but on the ways in which the Olympics Games, as international and historic events, are memorialised by observers. The key question that this book addresses is: How far would the Olympic coverage fall into the patterns of representation that have come to dominate Olympic reporting and what would China, as a discursive subject, bring to these patterns? This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games stand as the most profitable and arguably the most important event in the history of the modern Olympic movement. Fresh off the back of the financially disastrous Montreal Games of 1976 and the politically controversial Moscow Games of 1980, the Olympic movement returned to the United States for the sixth time in an attempt to salvage the economic viability and global prestige of the Olympics. The Los Angeles Olympics proved to be both provocative and polarizing. On the one hand they have been heralded as an overwhelming, transformative success, ushering the Olympic movement into the modern commercial age. On the other hand, critics have repudiated the Games as a manifestation of commercial excess and a platform for western political and cultural propaganda. In conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles Olympics, this volume examines their legacy. With an international collection of contributing scholars, this volume will span a range of global legacies, including the increasing commercialization of the Games, the changing participation of women, the Communist boycott movement, nationalism and sporting identity, and the modernization and California-cation of the Games. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

The London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were seen as a success and the hosts were praised for the promotion of equality, tolerance and unity as well as inspiring a legacy to continue these values. This volume contains a collection of sociological case studies which critically assess the diverse impacts of London 2012 and its key controversies.

This book explores the biggest sporting event in the world through the lens in which most people witness it: the media. Traversing nations and media formats, contributors offer insights into the manner in which the Olympics is conveyed to the masses and the impact arising from the mass consumption of Olympic media in its plethora of dimensions. The book gleans insight from past Olympic media analyses, but focuses on the role media played within the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Using a variety of methodologies, the book underscores how the Olympic Games are more than just a sporting event but should be understood a vast mosaic of images and events that shape public understandings of nations, society, and the values that undergird such renderings. This book was published as a special section in Mass Communication & Society.