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.

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.

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.

In 1951 the University of San Francisco football team (The Dons) went undefeated and untied. Yet, despite being among the best college football teams of all time, the squad was not invited to play in a post season bowl game because two of its players were African-American. The team was offered the chance to compete without the players, but they unanimously refused on principle.

They were the 'magnificent eleven' that no one had ever heard of. The team exhibited a roster of players and personnel that read like a 'who's who' of gridiron heroes. This '51 team produced nine future NFL players; five made it to the Pro Bowl and three of those five were inducted into the Hall of Fame; the most ever from a single college team. Undefeated, Untied, and Uninvited goes behind the scenes to explore the successes and challenges as well as the unpredictable events that faced the Dons.

Modern Olympism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as a philosophy of social reform that sought to use sport for the betterment of the world. It drew on a number of intellectual and material sources, including the ancient Greek heritage, philosophical ideas of Enlightenment, the English educational system, and the emerging spirit of industrial capitalism and internationalism. It is an eclectic and non-systematic body of knowledge, and has always been a controversial project. Indeed, in the words of its founder, Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), Olympism is an 'unfinished symphony'. Interpretations of the fundamental tenets of Olympism concerning universalism, education, eligibility, independence from political and commercial interference, and fair play have been constantly negotiated and renegotiated through political, cultural, social, economic, and sporting struggles. These interpretations are reflected in various editions of the Olympic Charter and in a multitude of academic studies.Edited and introduced by Vassil Girginov, this new four-volume collection from Routledge brings together key primary-source materials and the very best scholarship and commentary to elucidate and explore the evolution and interpretations of Olympism and its practical manifestation in the modern Olympic Games. The collection includes archive materials (some of which are reproduced in facsimile to give users a strong sense of immediacy to the original texts), personal accounts of major figures, as well as critical scholarship. Olympic Studies will also make readily accessible the best research produced under the auspices of Routledge's ambitious 2012 Olympic Collection whereby over forty Olympic-focused journal special issues from a wide range of disciplines will appear during 2012 and 2013. Fully indexed and with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Olympic Studies is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be welcomed as a vital one-stop research tool.

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.

London hosted the Olympic Games for the third time in 2012, a mega-event where the political, economic and social expectations could hardly be compared with the previous London Games of 1908 and 1948. In addition, the Olympic Games went back to Europe in 2012 after a long period where (apart from Athens in 2004) they were held by cities in other continents. In London, the world watched the Games. Continental Europe, however, generated a particular attitude based on the special relations it had developed historically with England. At the crossing point of history, cultural studies and geopolitics, this book provides new insights on the significance of the Olympic Games. It considers that the Games are the right window to look at both the past and the current relations between England and its closest continental neighbours. It will be ideal for students and academics working in sport sciences, cultural history, political science and European studies; amateur and professional sports historians; Olympic followers and experts in Olympic studies. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

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.

In recent decades, five to ten times as many persons have turned out for the Olympic flame relay as have watched Olympic sports contests live. Flame Relays and the Struggle for the Olympic Movement: Bearing Light, the first anthropological analysis of the contemporary torch relay, exposes and interprets the transformation of the ritual across a 25-year period, from Los Angeles 1984 through the IOC's 2009 announcement that, in the aftermath of the politically contentious Beijing performance, there will be no more global relays. This volume offers a rare case study of continuity and change in a leading transnational and trans-cultural ritual form. Through data publicly revealed for the first time, the reader is carried fully backstage and into the conflicts and negotiations among Olympic organizing committees, the Greek Olympic movement, national governments, and transnational actors like the IOC, commercial sponsors, and operations management firms. Readers will come to know the leading flame relay authorities and practitioners, gaining a deeper understanding of the Olympic managerial revolution with its characteristic 'world's best practice' language. Analysis of the transnational flow of Olympic operations management offers important corrections to much existing globalization theory by demonstrating both how powerful and how culturally and politically parochial world's best practices can turn out to be. The dialectic between the cultural performance genres of ritual and spectacle provides a further intellectual architecture for these studies posing the question of whether the Olympic Movement will be able to survive the successes of the Olympic Sports Industry. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

For more than a century, the Olympics have been the modern world's most significant sporting event. Indeed, they deserve much credit for globalizing sport beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American universe, where it originated, into broader global realms. By the 1930s, the Olympics had become a global mega-event that occupied the attention of the media, the interest of the public and the energies of nation-states. Since then, projected by television, funded by global capital and fattened by the desires of nations to garner international prestige, the Olympics have grown to gargantuan dimensions. In the course of its epic history, the Olympics have left numerous legacies, from unforgettable feats to monumental stadiums, from shining triumphs to searing tragedies, from the dazzling debuts on the world's stage of new cities and nations to notorious campaigns of national propaganda. The Olympics represent an essential component of modern global history. The Olympic movement itself has, since the 1990s, recognized and sought to shape its numerous legacies with mixed success as this book makes clear. It offers ground-breaking analyses of the power of Olympic legacies, positive and negative, and surveys the subject from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008, and indeed beyond. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

The book aims to outline the progress, problems and challenges of delivering a safe and secure Olympics in the context of the contemporary serious and enduring terrorist threat. The enormous media profile and symbolic significance of the Olympic Games, the history of terrorists aiming to use such high-profile events to advance their cause, and Al Qaeda's aim to cause mass casualties, all have major implications for the security of London 2012. Drawing on contributions from leading academics and practitioners in the field the book will assess the current terrorist threat, particularly focusing on terrorist targeting and how the Olympics might feature in this, before addressing particular response themes such as transport security, the role of surveillance, resilient designing of Olympic sites, the role of private security, and the challenge of inter-agency coordination. The book will conclude by providing an assessment of the legacy of Olympic security to date and will discuss the anticipated issues and dilemmas of the future. This book will be of interest to students of terrorism studies, security studies, counter-terrorism and sports studies.

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.

The book aims to outline the progress, problems and challenges of delivering a safe and secure Olympics in the context of the contemporary serious and enduring terrorist threat. The enormous media profile and symbolic significance of the Olympic Games, the history of terrorists aiming to use such high-profile events to advance their cause, and Al Qaeda's aim to cause mass casualties, all have major implications for the security of London 2012. Drawing on contributions from leading academics and practitioners in the field the book will assess the current terrorist threat, particularly focusing on terrorist targeting and how the Olympics might feature in this, before addressing particular response themes such as transport security, the role of surveillance, resilient designing of Olympic sites, the role of private security, and the challenge of inter-agency coordination. The book will conclude by providing an assessment of the legacy of Olympic security to date and will discuss the anticipated issues and dilemmas of the future. This book will be of interest to students of terrorism studies, security studies, counter-terrorism and sports studies.

Beijing 2008: Preparing for Glory - Chinese Challenge in the 'Chinese Century' brings together international scholars with an interest in sport and politics and sinologists with an interest in China - past, present and future - to explore global reaction to the Beijing Olympics - China's anticipated moment of glory on the world stage. The Beijing Olympics is, first and foremost, a political act and assertion. It is also a statement of national intent, the culmination of ideological effort going back to 1949 and the outcome of political, social, cultural and economic change. From the moment of the birth of the 'New China' sport has been viewed as a means of internal and external projection illustrating the capacity of the system and people to more than hold their own with those of other nations. In short, sport has been the chosen 'stage' on which the Chinese perform in pursuit of world recognition, respect and esteem. This assertion is not hard to understand. China's 'century of humiliation' at the hands of first the West and then Japan remains a traumatic experience. Beijing 2008 is to assist the restoration of China's national self-esteem. He Zhenliang, Chairman of the IOC Commission for the Culture of Olympic Education, has remarked pointedly that the most significant outcome of the Beijing Games will be the elevation of the self-confidence and sense of pride of the Chinese people. Beijing 2008 will be an act of political self-renewal on the world stage. This Collection demonstrates that sport is inseparable from politics. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Drawing upon historical, cultural, economic and socio-demographic perspectives, this book examines the role of a sporting mega-event in promoting urban regeneration and social renewal. Comparing cities that have or will be hosting the event, it explores the political economy of the games and the changing role of the state in creating post-industrial metropolitan spaces. It evaluates the changing perceptions of the Olympic Games and the role of sport in the global media age in general and assesses the implication of 'mega-event' regeneration policies for local communities and their cultural, social and economic identities, with specific reference to east London and the Thames Gateway.

The collection starts from the premise that Olympism and the Olympic Games make sense only when they are placed within the broader national, colonial and post colonial contexts and argues that sport not only influences politics and vice-versa, but that the two are inseparable. Sport is not only political; it is politics. It is also culture and art. This collaboration is a first in global publishing, a mine of information for scholars, students and analysts. It demonstrates that Olympism and the Olympic movement in the modern context has been, and continues to be, socially relevant and politically important. Studies focus on national encounters with Olympism and the Olympic movement, with equal attention paid to document the growing nexus between sports and the media; sports reportage; as well as women and sports. Olympism asserts that the Olympic movement was, and is, of central importance to twentieth and twenty-first century societies. Finally, the collection demonstrates that the essence of Olympism and the Olympic movement is important only in so far as it affects societies surrounding it.

In the early 1900s, the Olympic Games track and field throwing events were dominated by a group of Irish-born weight throwers representing the United States. These athletes came to be known as the "Irish Whales"-primarily because of their immense size and larger-than-life presence. The Irish Whales: Olympians of Old New York shares the untold story of these Irish American athletes who competed with unparalleled distinction for the United States. James Mitchell, John Flanagan, Martin Sheridan, Pat McDonald, Paddy Ryan, and Con Walsh won a total of eighteen medals in the Olympic Games between 1900 and 1924 and completely dominated the world stage in their chosen athletic disciplines. They were lionized in the American and Irish press and became folk heroes among Irish-American immigrant communities. Almost all of these men were further distinguished by their membership in the fabled Irish American Athletic Club of New York and careers with the New York Police Department. The story of the Irish Whales is the very embodiment of the American Dream and exemplifies the triumph of many Irish emigrants in the New World. Featuring a wonderful collection of original photographs, The Irish Whales tells the dramatic stories of these international athletes and their extraordinary sporting successes.

This handbook provides a critical assessment of contemporary issues that define the contours of the Paralympic Movement generally and the Paralympic Games more specifically. It addresses conceptualisations of disability sport, explores the structure of the Paralympic Movement and considers key political strategic and governance issues which have shaped its development. The Palgrave Handbook of Paralympic Studies is written by a range of international authors, a number of whom are senior strategists as well as academics, and explores legacy themes through case studies of recent Paralympic games. Written in the wake of the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, it provides an assessment of contemporary challenges faced by the International Paralympic Committee and other key stakeholders in the Paralympic Movement. Its critical assessment of approaches to branding, classification, social inclusion and technological advances makes this handbook a valuable resource for undergraduate study across a range of sport and disability related programmes, as well as a point of reference for researchers and policy makers.

For the record-breaking third time London will be hosting the Olympic Games in 2012. From the inception of Baron Pierre de Courbetin' s crusade to revive the Games of the ancient Greeks, in the 1890s, through the triumphs and disasters of twenty-nine Olympiads, The Daily Telegraph has been there to provide eye-witness accounts of the greatest sporting moments in history with characteristic authority. This comprehensive and colourful review of the summer Olympics takes you back to 1908, the first time London held the Games, with Dorando Pietri' s infamous disqualification in the marathon. Then to Fanny Blankers-Koen and Emil Zatopek lifeting the War-scarred capital in the Austerity Games of 1948. With more recent record-breaking moments from the Olympics of Sydney, Athens and Beijing, this is the perfect scene-setter for the Games' return to London. From Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett to Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, Kelly Holmes, Steve Redgrave, Ian Thorpe and Daley Thompson, the tears and the glory of all the heroes and villains from 116 years of Olympic history are collected here in this wonderful anthology of the greatest show on earth.

The Olympics: The Basics is an accessible, contemporary introduction to the Olympic movement and Games. Chapters explain how the Olympics transcend sports, engaging us with a range of contemporary philosophical, social, cultural and political matters, including:

peace development and diplomacy

management and economics

corruption, terror and activism

the rise of human enhancement

ethics and environmentalism.

This book explores the controversy and the legacy of the Olympics, drawing attention to the deeper values of Olympism, as the Olympic movement’s most valuable intellectual property. This engaging, lively, and often challenging book, is essential reading for newcomers to Olympic studies and offers new insights for Olympic scholars.

Table of Contents

Preface 1. History and Philosophy 2. Society and Identity 3. Culture and Education 4. Politics and Diplomacy 5. Ethics and Values 6. Management and Economics 7. Media and Communication 8. Impact and Legacy Conclusion: The Future

The Beijing 2008 Olympic ceremonies were spectacular performances and technological accomplishments by the People's Republic of China. However, the audience in Beijing was only the most overt element of a global audience receiving the message of the Games. For this global audience, the Beijing performances were a harbinger of wider regional and international ambitions; a message of intent that pointed to a larger Chinese plan to a degree not seen since the Ming dynasty. New Chinese ambitions embrace both soft power and hard power. The actor in this political drama of international scope is the Chinese state and its political ambitions on the world stage. The Beijing Olympics can be seen as its opening act, and the audience as global. Rather than the kind of "morality" play that is typically used in China to educate the people in politics, this new production - a production on many levels - was one aimed at audiences all around the world, and one that was a calculated expression of realpolitik. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

"My Hidden Race" is the story of Olympic medallist Anyika Onuora, who stood on the podium at every major championship in athletics. This book won't go into detail about the technicalities of her sport or the beauty of the Olympic spirit however. In the era of the Black Lives Matter and Me Too, this is an unflinching testimony of what it takes to pursue your dreams as a Black British woman against all odds. This three-time Olympian will lift the lid on the reality of life as a black female athlete in Britain in a way that nobody else has done before her. Nothing is off the record. She is revealing her life for the first time in this book with complete fearlessness. There have been far too many years of silence caught in a system. Now Anyika is determined to make up for lost time and use her story to inspire and heal others. "My Hidden Race" will take you into a world that often takes place far from the spotlight of the Olympic torch and shines an intense light on the brutal reality of professional sport for many black females.

This book critically examines the planning, management, and operations of the world's premier event for Para sport athletes. Noting a lack of research into how these games are planned and managed, the authors of this contributed volume discuss how the Paralympics are essentially different to the Olympics and what this means for their management. Managing the Paralympics explores how the organizers and connected stakeholders effectively organize and deliver the Paralympics, taking into account what has been learned from previous events. Including emergent models of best practice from event management, project management and sport management literature, the book gives an insight into the planning of one of the world's biggest sporting events that encompasses ten impairment types and multiple sport classes within sports.

For Olympic athletes, fans, and media alike, the Games often bring out the best that sport has to offer: unity, nationalism, friendly competition - and the potential for an upset. However, wherever international competition occurs, politics are never far from the front lines. Perhaps this was never truer than during the early Cold War, during which all interactions between the United States and the Soviet Union were treated as matters of life and death. This not only affected the Games themselves but each side tried to manipulate the International Olympic Committee behind the scenes. Despite the IOC's best efforts to keep the Olympics apolitical, they were drawn very quickly into this all-encompassing battle for supremacy, this time with the medal count as the ultimate prize. Both the Olympic Movement and the superpowers, as the Games gained greater social/political relevance from the shared fixation on the medal count while Moscow and Washington an exciting new arena for staging their battles for hearts and minds. Based on IOC, US government, and contemporary media sources, this book looks at six consecutive Olympiads to show just how high the stakes became once the Soviets began competing - and threatening America's traditional athletic supremacy - in 1952.