WHEELS OF COURAGE reveals the never-before-told story of the world's first wheelchair athletes: U.S. soldiers, sailors, and Marines who were paralysed on the battlefield during World War II. They organised the first-ever wheelchair basketball teams within V.A. hospitals after the war, which quickly spread across the nation and changed the perception and treatment of disabled people. The book tells this story through the lens of three of these vets, describing their time in the military, their injuries, their recovery, and their role in creating wheelchair basketball. These men changed the narrative of disability, from pity for people whose lives were over to seeing them as capable people who happened to have a disability. Their doctors changed the way the medical community looked at and treated disabled patients by treating the whole patient instead of just trying to make the patient as comfortable as possible in a hopeless situation. And laws started changing to make the world more accessible to the disabled -- things we take for granted today, like sidewalk ramps. For the disabled, for sports fans, for veterans, for history buffs -- this is a narrative of hope, perseverance, and acceptance.

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.

Travel with Olympic gold medalist Jessie Diggins on her compelling journey from America's heartland to international sports history, navigating challenges and triumphs with rugged grit and a splash of glitter Pyeongchang, February 21, 2018. In the nerve-racking final seconds of the women's team sprint freestyle race, Jessie Diggins dug deep. Blowing past two of the best sprinters in the world, she stretched her ski boot across the finish line and lunged straight into Olympic immortality: the first ever cross-country skiing gold medal for the United States at the Winter Games. The 26-year-old Diggins, a four-time World Championship medalist, was literally a world away from the small town of Afton, Minnesota, where she first strapped on skis. Yet, for all her history-making achievements, she had never strayed far from the scrappy 12-year-old who had insisted on portaging her own canoe through the wilderness, yelling happily under the unwieldy weight on her shoulders: "Look! I'm doing it!" In Brave Enough, Jessie Diggins reveals the true story of her journey from the American Midwest into sports history. With candid charm and characteristic grit, she connects the dots from her free-spirited upbringing in the woods of Minnesota to racing in the bright spotlights of the Olympics. Going far beyond stories of races and ribbons, she describes the challenges and frustrations of becoming a serious athlete; learning how to push through and beyond physical and psychological limits; and the intense pressure of competing at the highest levels. She openly shares her harrowing struggle with bulimia, recounting both the adversity and how she healed from it in order to bring hope and understanding to others experiencing eating disorders. Between thrilling accounts of moments of triumph, Diggins shows the determination it takes to get there-the struggles and disappointments, the fun and the hard work, and the importance of listening to that small, fierce voice: I can do it. I am brave enough.

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.

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.

This handbook offers an important and timely contribution to the interdisciplinary field of Olympic studies. It brings together for the first time in a single volume a complete analysis of current and future economic, commercial, socio-political, cultural and governance challenges facing both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, their athletes and institutions. The book presents new research and broad surveys exploring pressing debates, challenges and possible solutions surrounding the modern Olympic and Paralympic Games, across diverse socioeconomic and political contexts. Featuring chapters written by leading scholars, athletes and administrators from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, the handbook is divided into four main areas: athletes, business, governance and socio-cultural issues within the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Examining key themes, theories and new emerging issues within the field, the book offers expert insights into every major topic related to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, including doping, integrity, athletes' rights, culture, nationality, sponsorship, branding, governance, sports policy and law, marketing, social media, technology, e-sports, politics, ethics, international relations, legacy and impact. The only up-to-date handbook to reflect the true breadth and depth of this international field of research, the Routledge Handbook of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is a landmark publication for all students and scholars of sport studies, as well as those working in sport business, media, event management and administration, economics, marketing, management, politics, Olympic studies and cultural studies. It is also an important resource for sport management practitioners and sports officials.

Nile Wilson is known to many as a Great Britain Gymnast who won a Bronze Medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and who is England's most successful ever gymnast at a Commonwealth Games following his 5 medals in 2018\. Yet, Nile is so much more than just a gymnast. A YouTuber with over a million subscribers, a social media influencer, a successful businessman and entrepeneur, Nile is also an advocate for mental health awareness, and who has been very open about his own personal struggles. Nile Wilson - My Story gives an unprecedented look into Nile's true battle to be fit and ready for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics - throughout the Games and the aftermath. The public perception of Nile Wilson is his humour, openness and how down to earth he is, all of which is true. Due to this perception however, people presume they know everything about him. This book will shatter that perception, and reveal the struggles behind the smiles, from the brutal reality of performing at an elite sporting level, to the mental health battles Nile has had to fight - and continues to fight - every day.

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.

This is not just the story of another Holocaust survivor. There is nothing about Ben Helfgott that is usual. After all, very few survivors would, just a few years after liberation, become Olympic athletes. He did exactly that. He was a boy growing up in a small Polish town, Pietrkow, when his whole life changed as the Nazis moved in during the first week of the Second World War. As a small child he was top of his class - everything he did was of a standard beyond that of any of his classmates. He learned languages so that he spoke and understood at least three of them before he was eight years old. He read newspapers and watched films that were beyond his years. His sister, the only other member of his family to survive, says that if she or anyone else needed a protector, Ben was the one to call in. Above all, he excelled in sports. He had a wiry frame and was small in stature, but no one else could match him in any game he played. When the Nazis came to Pietrkow, his mother and a sister were shot. He and his father managed to live a kind of life in the ever shrinking ghetto in the town. Both worked in a glass factory and a woodwork plant. Before long, they would be transported to the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp where his father subsequently died. Taken to Thereisenstadt, a centre that had served as a kind of way station for Jews on the way to death camps, it was there that he was liberated by the Red Army. Before long, he was one of 'The Boys' who came to England, which became his home. His sporting excellence was recognised when he was selected for two Olympic Games in which he represented Britain as a weightlifter. He became a successful businessman and retired early so that he could make a personal crusade of bringing together other survivors. He founded the famous 45 Aid Society, worked with the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Holocaust Educational Trust. On the international scene, he, in his mid 80s, is a prominent figure in the Claims Conference, which has awarded billions of dollars to needy survivors. In a way, it is a controversial book. He is a great believer in reconciliation with both Germany and his native Poland - and both nations have made him awards in recognition of his work. It is a story Michael Freedland tells after dozens of interviews with Ben himself, as well as with members of his family, fellow survivors and residents of his old home town in Poland. [Subject: Biography, Holocaust, Claims Conference, Reconciliation]

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.

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.

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.

Designing the Olympics claims that the Olympic Games provide opportunities to reflect on the relationship between design, national identity, and citizenship. The "Olympic design milieu" fans out from the construction of the Olympic city and the creation of emblems, mascots, and ceremonies, to the consumption, interpretation, and appropriation of Olympic artifacts from their conception to their afterlife. Besides products that try to achieve consensus and induce civic pride, the "Olympic design milieu" also includes processes that oppose the Olympics and their enforcement. The book examines the graphic design program for Tokyo 1964, architecture and urban plans for Athens 2004, brand design for London 2012, and practices of subversive appropriation and sociotechnical action in counter-Olympic movements since the 1960s. It explores how the Olympics shape the physical, legal and emotional contours of a host nation and its position in the world; how the Games are contested by a broader social spectrum within and beyond the nation; and how, throughout these encounters, design plays a crucial role. Recognizing the presence of multiple actors, the book investigates the potential of design in promoting equitable political participation in the Olympic context.

The US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics left German lawyer Thomas Bach unable to defend his fencing title. Instead, he devoted the next 20 years to climbing the sports administrative ladder. His mission was to protect athletes' independent rights, and his ambition to become IOC president. Bach was elected IOC president in 2013, and immediately set about transforming the organisation's century-old constitution. His 40-point agenda launched a radical host city election procedure, while enforcing the International Federations' internal disciplines and introducing new Olympic sports such as skateboarding. New age Olympics had arrived - but it wasn't all smooth sailing. With Russia's institutional cheating marring three consecutive Games, the near financial collapse of Rio '16 and the threatened cancellation of Tokyo 2020, Bach sustained IOC equilibrium through repeated crises. Igniting the Games reveals how Bach transformed the Olympics and saved a ponderous ancient institution from itself.

This book is a comprehensive examination of Olympic victor lists. The origins, development, content, and structure of Olympic victor lists are explored and explained, and a number of important questions, such as the source and reliability of the year of 776 for the first Olympics, are addressed. Olympic victor lists emerge as a clearly defined type of literature that is best understood as a group of closely related texts. This book offers a fresh perspective on works by familiar writers such as Diodorus Siculus and a sense of the potential importance of less-well-known authors such as Phlegon of Tralleis.

Going far beyond being just a mega sport event, the Olympic Games are, and have been in the past, important settings for tourism and cultural change. Hosting the Olympic Games presents a unique opportunity for countries to promote, regenerate, and develop cities and regions, and to firmly locate them within an increasingly competitive global tourism marketplace. From Athens to Rio de Janeiro, Olympic landmark buildings, 'districts', and 'parks' have permanently transformed cities and regions, and gained tremendous material and symbolic value as tourist attractions. On another level, the Olympic Games produce a kaleidoscopic range of intangible and quasi-religious engagements with place and spectacle. They have a tremendous impact on the image of the host country, while invoking collective memories and touching on emotions such as suspense, compassion, togetherness, and pride. Tourism has also become a major watchword in ongoing debates on the 'legacy' of the Olympic Games, and it deeply penetrates discourses on social justice and cultural change on a local, national and global scale. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change.

In this revised and all-colour edition of her indispensable guide to the ancient Games, Judith Swaddling traces their mythological and religious origins, and describes the events, the sacred ceremony and the celebrations that were an essential part of the Olympic festival. A large, detailed model based on modern research and excavation reconstructs the site of ancient Olympia, where alongside religious and civic buildings there grew an elaborate sports complex with a stadium for 40,000 spectators, indoor and outdoor training facilities, hot and cold baths, a swimming pool and a race-course. Later chapters cover the diet and medical treatment of athletes, sponsorship, patronage, propaganda and revivals of the Games and a brand new chapter, based on the latest research discusses the literary sources for the Olympic Games. The expanded final chapter on the modern Games is written in collaboration with Stewart Binns, an expert in this field who has worked closely with the International Olympic Committee over many years, and has been revised to bring the story up to the preparations for the London 2012 Games. Illustrated with gorgeous, full-colour photography and covering thousands of years of Olympic history, this fascinating book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Olympic Games.

In the 1960s, Bruce Kidd was one of Canada's most celebrated athletes. As a teenager, Kidd won races all over the globe, participated in the Olympics, and started a revolution in distance running and a revival in Canadian track and field. He quickly became a symbol of Canadian youth and the subject of endless media coverage. Although most athletes of his generation were cautioned to keep their opinions to themselves, Kidd took it upon himself to speak out on the problems and possibilities of Canadian sport. Encouraged by his parents and teammates, Kidd criticized the racism and sexism of amateur sport in Canada, the treatment of players in the National Hockey League, American control of the Canadian Football League, and the uneven coverage of sports by the media - and he continues to fight for equity to this day. After retiring from his career as an athlete, Kidd became a well-known advocate for gender and racial justice and an academic leader at the University of Toronto. Depicting a Canadian sport legend's journey of joy, discovery, and activism, this memoir bears witness to the remarkable changes Bruce Kidd has lived through in more than seventy years of participation in Canadian and international sports.

This book contains an international collection of essays by leading philosophers of sport on the ethics and philosophy of the Olympic Games. The essays consider a range of topics including critical reflections on nationalism and internationalism within the Olympic movement, sexism in Olympic marketing and sponsorship, the preservation and corruption of Olympism, the underlying ideology of the Olympic Games, the inequalities of perception in ability and disability as it informs our understanding of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and comparisons between ancient and modern interpretations of the meaning and significance of the Olympic Games. This book will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of sports, as well as to the sporting public who simply want to know more about the grounding ideas behind the greatest show on earth. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

This book is a comprehensive examination of Olympic victor lists. The origins, development, content, and structure of Olympic victor lists are explored and explained, and a number of important questions, such as the source and reliability of the year of 776 for the first Olympics, are addressed. Olympic victor lists emerge as a clearly defined type of literature that is best understood as a group of closely related texts. This book offers a fresh perspective on works by familiar writers such as Diodorus Siculus and a sense of the potential importance of less-well-known authors such as Phlegon of Tralleis.

The idea of "Internationalism" has manifested itself not only in the intercultural dialogue within the Olympic Movement, but also at the Olympic Games as the sportive, cultural, and media peak of the four-year-circle. The authors analyze and discuss Internationalism from different professional perspectives, against different cultural backgrounds, as well as in relation to diverse reference groups to widen the understanding of Internationalism as a social interaction in the Olympic Movement. They also aim at establishing the intersections and equal normative principles of "Internationalism" within the different cultural and institutional fields. These common grounds may be useful for the practical implementation and realization of "Internationalism" through Olympic sports and at Olympic Youth Camps.

This text is written as a celebratory publication in the 50th year of Jamaican independence; the manuscript contains fifty, 400 word biographies on the greatest sporting icons Jamaica has to offer.

Celebrating the Sydney Olympic Games, this book is a tribute to the great Olympic athletes past and present. Jason Bell has spent the last three years travelling to meet and photograph the leading sportsmen and women. This has given him unique access to their private worlds enabling him to present a side of them rarely seen by their audience. The photographs from the book will be exhibited at the Olympic Village during the games and at the Commonwealth Institute from September - December 2000. A magnificent work illustrated with 90 full-colour plates.

Travel with Olympic gold medalist Jessie Diggins on her compelling journey from America's heartland to international sports history, navigating challenges and triumphs with rugged grit and a splash of glitter Pyeongchang, February 21, 2018. In the nerve-racking final seconds of the women's team sprint freestyle race, Jessie Diggins dug deep. Blowing past two of the best sprinters in the world, she stretched her ski boot across the finish line and lunged straight into Olympic immortality: the first ever cross-country skiing gold medal for the United States at the Winter Games. The 26-year-old Diggins, a four-time World Championship medalist, was literally a world away from the small town of Afton, Minnesota, where she first strapped on skis. Yet, for all her history-making achievements, she had never strayed far from the scrappy 12-year-old who had insisted on portaging her own canoe through the wilderness, yelling happily under the unwieldy weight on her shoulders: "Look! I'm doing it!" In Brave Enough, Jessie Diggins reveals the true story of her journey from the American Midwest into sports history. With candid charm and characteristic grit, she connects the dots from her free-spirited upbringing in the woods of Minnesota to racing in the bright spotlights of the Olympics. Going far beyond stories of races and ribbons, she describes the challenges and frustrations of becoming a serious athlete; learning how to push through and beyond physical and psychological limits; and the intense pressure of competing at the highest levels. She openly shares her harrowing struggle with bulimia, recounting both the adversity and how she healed from it in order to bring hope and understanding to others experiencing eating disorders. Between thrilling accounts of moments of triumph, Diggins shows the determination it takes to get there-the struggles and disappointments, the fun and the hard work, and the importance of listening to that small, fierce voice: I can do it. I am brave enough.