This is the first work to go beyond the popular myths of stock car racing to fully examine the sport's true history. NASCAR Nation: A History of Stock Car Racing in the United States details the ongoing saga of this quintessentially American pastime. Looking at the drivers, events, and teams, it positions NASCAR racing within larger social, economic, and cultural trends in an attempt to address the sport's phenomenal growth and popularity. This chronological examination of the evolution of stock car racing is the first history to go beyond the widely held myth that it was "invented" by Prohibition-era moonshiners. The book traces stock car racing history from its beginnings, to the formation of The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) in 1948, through today. Of course, readers will meet the sport's many colorful personalities, including the Earnhardts, Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon (who has raked in more than $70 million in career winnings), "Fireball" Roberts, Darrell Waltrip, Daytona pioneer Bill France, and women drivers like Janet Guthrie, Louise Smith, and Jennifer Jo Cobb. While the focus is on NASCAR, the book also examines other prominent stock car racing organizations to round out its comprehensive portrait.

In recent decades ceremonies stood in Olympiads as both vehicles of cultural values and shows embracing the banal and the everyday. But how much do we understand them as forms of public art? This book examines the London 2012 opening and closing ceremonies and the handover event to Rio for the 2016 Olympics as articulations of national and cosmopolitan belonging. It is argued that embodied and projected performances of Britishness and Brazilianness embraced both artistic styles and the contemporary digital turn, refinement and banality. Combinations of art and technology reflected a vision of humanity in motion complying with the Olympic values of fairness, beauty and embodied well-being. The three ceremonial performances supported imaginative travel on stage, on big screens and in musical genres. This travel, at once mediated, embodied and experiential, created an ideal form of 'human': a tornadoros. A creative worker and a tourist, the tornadoros manipulates audio-visual narratives of culture and identity for global Olympic audiences. Spanning Sociology, Sports Studies, Culture and Media Studies, Performance Studies and Tourism Studies, this is a highly interdisciplinary and original perspective on the Olympics.

This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the different environmental strategies adopted in the football world to foster sustainability. The authors lay out useful insights, both for scholars and practitioners, to improve good governance in football organisations by empowering environmental organisational and operational actions. As well as examining practical methods of implementing green initiatives, the book discusses their added value from different perspectives including football fans, football managers and policymakers. By identifying the most important green actions for the dissemination of environmentally friendly behaviours at both individual and organisational levels, the book demonstrates how football organisations can use operational and organisational methods to develop an environmental sustainability strategy. The book contributes to developing the role of the football world by covering different facets of sustainability such as the circular economy, climate change, green marketing, fans engagement and more. It will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of environmental management, sustainable business and corporate social responsibility, as well as professionals working in the football industry.

The word legend is thrown around all too easily these days, but there can be no doubt that the NBA players featured in this book are the very best to have ever graced a basketball court. They are true legends of the game. Spanning the decades and covering all the league's most iconic eras, this book uncovers the fascinating stories and incredible accomplishments of the greatest basketball players. From the game's first superstars, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Jerry West, to the modern-day greats of the late Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Garnett. There are also in-depth features on Lakers legends Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Shaquille O'Neal, as well as Celtics great Larry Bird, while it also explores 23 reasons why Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time. It's not just about great players, though. Without great coaches there would be no great players, legendary teams, or memorable matchups. That's why this book also runs down the 10 most successful and influential coaches from NBA history, looks back at the 10 greatest championship-winning teams, and relives 10 of the best ever games. It also includes a review of the 50 most iconic NBA players of all time.

This book explores the organisation and structure of sport in and beyond Europe. Drawing upon up-to-date data, the collection's main focus lies on the relationship between public sport policy structures and sport (con)federations. The authors present thirteen country-specific contexts wherein sport policy systems are embedded. This evidence provides in-depth descriptions and analyses within a solid academic and theoretical framework. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Sociology of Sport, Sport Management and Sport Policy.

This book utilizes a wealth of case studies to demonstrate the importance of using depth sport psychology to explore and understand athletes’ unconscious feelings and fears, and provides the knowledge needed to help athletes deal with pressures faced throughout their sporting career. Applying the theories of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Margaret Mahler, Melanie Klein, Heinz Kohut, Donald Winnicott, and Christopher Bollas to explain the dynamics within the athlete’s mind, this useful resource will help develop a better understanding of athlete’s repressed feelings and psychological states. It looks past the cognitive behavioural techniques currently used to aid athletes, and instead focuses on the many ways the unconscious subtly influences athletes, offering an important a paradigm shift. Covering a range of different athletes within various sports, each chapter demonstrates how the psychoanalytic techniques of free association, the working alliance, analytic interpretations, confrontation, dream analysis, transference/counter transference and resistance analysis are used with athletes. Case studies cover such topics as the treatment of anxiety, yips, anger, guilt and perfectionism in the athlete, the influence of birth order, psychological defences used by athletes including gamesmanship, dissociation and humor, and the psychology of injury. Unpacking Depth Sport Psychology is the ideal resource for students, the educated athlete, parents, professors, sport psychologists, and coaches who hope to improve the athletes’ performance.

Contemporary sport is shaped by wider society. Today those managing sport must be aware of the broader social and cultural context within which it exists if their effectiveness is to be established and their careers defined. This book is the first of its kind to contextualise the wider social and cultural environment of sport management and explain the key issues and practical implications of this for those working, or intending to find employment, in the field. Written by a team of leading international experts on sport management, the book explores important topics such as corporate social responsibility in sport, race, gender and sexuality, sport and the media, globalisation, populations with individual needs, social class, social capital social exclusion. As part of a comprehensive coverage of these and many other social issues, the reader is reminded of the fundamental requirement to properly appreciate the cultural sensitivities of the managerial environment in which they intend to operate. Each issue is examined from the perspective of the manager or sport practitioner, and each chapter includes a range of useful features, such as case-studies and self-test questions, to encourage the reader to think critically about the role of sport in society and about their own professional practice. This is the first sports management textbook to be based on the thesis that a more socially aware manager is a more effective manager and thus should be regarded as essential reading for all sport management students.

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 "Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games" is an 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 analysis of the full 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 every aspect 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 One: Making the Games, " examines the build-up to London 2012, covering key topics such as:

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.

In the first forty or so years following its revival at the end of the nineteenth century, the burdens placed on cities hosting a modern Olympic Games were relatively modest. However, as the Games have grown in size and stature, morphing from a small-scale summer festival into an intensively mediated global lollapalooza, demands on host cities have massively increased, resulting in the construction of vast and expensive new stadia, Olympic villages, and associated infrastructure. Moreover, after the Second World War, host cities have increasingly used the Olympics as a means to achieve ambitious non-sporting policy goals.

Edited and introduced by two leading scholars, this new four-volume collection from Routledge brings together key primary-source materials and the best scholarship and serious commentary to elucidate and explore the planning, making, and generation of Olympic cities. The gathered materials (some of which are reproduced in facsimile to give users a strong sense of immediacy to the original texts) cover topics such as how cities have embraced the Olympics into their town-planning strategies; built new stadia and sports facilities; and constructed new transport and other communications networks. From what is widely seen as the paradigm of Olympics-led urban regeneration (Barcelona, 1992) to the planning disaster of Montreal, 1976, issues around the short-term impact, and longer-term legacy, of the Olympics on various cities are also closely interrogated.

Fully indexed and with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, The Making of Olympic Cities is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be welcomed as a vital one-stop research tool.

Combining theory with practical application, this collection of real-life, provocative case studies on social issues in sports provides students with the opportunity to make the call on ethical and professional dilemmas faced by a variety of sport and communication professionals. The case studies examine the successes and failures of communication in the corporate culture of sport intersecting with social issues including race, gender, religion, social media, mass media, public health, and LGBTQ+ issues. Topics include the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, sexual abuse scandals, domestic violence, cultural appropriation, and mental health. Each chapter contextualizes a specific issue, presents relevant theory and practical communication principles, and leads into discussion questions to prompt critical reflection. The book encourages students to view the evidence themselves, consider competing ethical and professional claims, and formulate practical responses. This collection serves as a scholarly text for courses in sport communication, business, intercultural communication, public relations, journalism, media studies, and sport management.

On 6 July 2005, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 summer Olympic Games to the city of London, opening a new chapter in Great Britain 's rich Olympic history. Despite the prospect of hosting the summer Games for the third time since Pierre de Coubertin 's 1894 revival of the Olympic movement, the historical roots of British Olympism have received limited scholarly attention. With the conclusion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the passing of the baton to London, Rule Britannia remedies that oversight.

This book uncovers Britain 's early Olympic involvement, revealing how the British public, media, and leading governmental officials were strongly opposed to international Olympic competition. It explores how the British Olympic Association focused on three main factors in the midst of widespread national opposition: it embraced early Olympian spectacles as a platform for maintaining a sporting union with Ireland, it fostered a greater sense of imperial identity with Britain 's white dominions, and it undertook an ambitious policy of athletic specialization designed to reverse the nation 's waning fortunes in international sport.

This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the History of Sport.

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.

This book examines the evolution of motor sport from its creation in central Europe, throughout the rest of the continent and elsewhere, including in both North and South America.

It was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Over the past decade, European football has seen tremendous changes impacting upon its international framework as well as local traditions and national institutions. Processes of Europeanization in the fields of economy and politics provided the background for transformations of the production and consumption of football on a transnational scale. In the course of such rearrangements, football tournaments like the UEFA Championship or the European Champions League turned into mega-events and media spectacles attracting ever-growing audiences. The experience of participating in these events offers some of the very few occasions for the display and embodiment of identities within a European context. This volume takes the 2008 EUROs hosted by Austria and Switzerland as a case study to analyze the political and cultural significance of the tournament from a multidisciplinary angle. What are the special features and spatial arrangements of a UEFAesque Europe, in comparison to alternative possibilities of a Europe? Situating the sport tournament between interpretations of collective European ritual and European spectacle, the key research question will ask what kind of Europe was represented in the cultural, political and economic manifestations of the 2008 EUROs. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

This is the first book to address the link between culture and sport management. The aim is to demonstrate that culture profoundly affects how we research, teach and practice sport management. The book engages with the concept of culture both as an abstract analytical category and specific beliefs and practices. It recognizes that a single best way of managing does not exist; that the applicability of management theories may stop at national boundaries; and that fundamental cultural values act as a strong determinant to managerial ideology and practice. Culture makes the study of sport management interesting because it challenges many taken-for-granted assumptions about management, yet it reinforces our belief in the existence of common management problems.

The book offers a comprehensive review of the conceptualisations of culture and its relation with sport management by examining a range of issues: the emergence of multiculturalism as a policy issue; the impact of commonly shared cultural values within the fitness industry on managers and organisations behaviour; building cultural bridges in community sport organisations; cultural meanings attached to the consumption of Olympic merchandise, and culturally-informed interpretation through a reflective analysis of sport management texts.

This book was published as a special issue of European Sport Management Quarterly.

An illustrated exploration of the design, meaning and symbolism of world football club crests.

Why is there a devil shown on the crest of Manchester United? Which club's crest motto is 'To Dare Is To Do'? And whose emblem depicts a bear and a strawberry tree?

From the seahorses of Newcastle United to the royal crown of Real Madrid, via the riveting hammers of West Ham United, Valencia's famous bat design and German club St Pauli's unofficial skull-and-crossbones emblem, there is a story behind every crest, a tale of identity.

Covering more than 200 clubs from 20 different leagues, World Football Club Crests explores the design, meaning and symbolism of the game's most famous club crests to reveal why the badges look as they do.

This carefully curated collection charts the continuing evolution of the designs and describes the changing styles, varied influences and remarkable controversies that have shaped football's most iconic crests. These important symbols of football heraldry will never be viewed in the same way again.

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 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.

The commercialization of sport since the 1990s has had a number of consequences. The market forces that have defined commercialization, notably pay-per-view television, whilst initially welcomed as important new sources of revenue, have also had the unanticipated consequences of de-stabilizing many sporting competitions and institutions, undermining the financial future of clubs in their traditional role as key social and cultural institutions. This has been manifested in the paradox of chronic financial loss-making amongst professional sports' clubs in an era of exponential revenue growth, a trend exemplified by the experience of Italy's Series A and the English Premier League - both cases examined in detail in this book. But, at the same time, some traditional sporting organizations have sought with some success, to chart a middle way, retaining traditional sporting movement objectives whilst also embracing a form of commercialism. The Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, the supporter-owned FC Barcelona football club, and New Zealand rugby union, offer illustrative examples of such strategies examined in detail. This book explores the background to this clash of commercial and traditional sporting objectives, and debates the consequences for wider sports governance. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Mexico City's staging of the 1968 Olympic Games should have been a pinnacle in Mexico's post-revolutionary development: a moment when a nation at ease with itself played proud host to a global celebration of youthful vigour. Representing the Nation argues, however, that from the moment that the city won the bid, the Mexican elite displayed an innate lack of trust in their countrymen. Beautification of the capital city went beyond that expected of a host. It included the removal of undesirables from sight and the sponsorship of public information campaigns designed to teach citizens basic standards of civility and decency.

The book's contention is that these and other measures exposed a chasm between what decades of post-revolutionary socio-cultural reforms had sought to produce, and what members of the elite believed their nation to be. While members of the Organising Committee deeply resented international scepticism of Mexico's ability to stage the Games, they shared a fear that with the eyes of the world upon them, their compatriots would reveal Mexico's aspirations to first world status to be a fraud. Using a detailed analysis of Mexico City's preparations for the Olympic Games, we show how these tensions manifested themselves in the actions of the Organising Committee and government authorities.

This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Analyzing football as a cultural practice, this book investigates the connection between the sport and its built environment. Four thematic sections bring together an international multi-disciplinary range of perspectives with particular focus on the stadium.

Examples from architectural design, media studies and archaeology are used while studying advertising, economics, migration, fandom, local identities, emotions, gender, and the sociology of space. Texts and case-studies build up this useful book for lecturers and researchers in sociology, cultural studies, geography, architecture, sport and environment.

The Olympics: A Critical Reader represents a unique, critical guide to the definitive sporting mega-event and the wider phenomenon it represents ? Olympism. Combining classic texts and thoughtful editorial discussion with challenging new pieces, including previously unseen material, the book systematically addresses the key questions in modern Olympism, including:

• what does studying Olympism entail?
• how do historical accounts create and challenge Olympic myths?
• how do different theoretical perspectives inform our understanding of Olympism?
• which socio-political processes influence personal, collective and imagined Olympic identities?
• how do we experience and make sense of Olympism?
• who owns Olympism and why does it matter?
• how do cities compete for and celebrate the Olympics?
• How are the Olympic values promoted?
• why is it important to protect the ethical principles and properties of Olympism?
• what are the grounds for contesting Olympism?
• how can Olympism be taught?
• how can the principles and practices of Olympism be sustained in the future?

Each thematic part has been designed to include a range of views, including background treatment of an issue as well as critical scholarship, to ensure that students develop a well-rounded understanding of the Olympic phenomenon. The Olympics: A Critical Reader is essential reading for students of the Olympics and Olympism, the sociology of sport, sport management and cultural studies.

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."

The most up-to-date and in-depth book on the business of professional team sports Pro team sports are the biggest and most important sector of international sport business Strong focus on applied analysis and performance measurement, invaluable real-world skills Covers sports, teams and leagues all over the world from the EPL to the NFL Addresses key themes from ownership and competitive balance to media revenue and the role of agents