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Drawing upon historical, cultural, economic and socio-demographic perspectives, this book examines the role of London's hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a means to promote urban regeneration and social renewal in East London and the Thames
As the only American in the senior management team of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, Jeff Ruffolo takes you behind the scenes and into a world no one has ever before witnessed. This remarkable, first-person account of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games is a riveting narrative taking you inside the greatest Olympics ever! This true story recounts the author's effort to perfect the broadcasting of NCAA Volleyball on the fledgling Internet and commercial radio stations throughout the Western USA and how he parlayed that experience into becoming America's voice of Olympic Volleyball at the 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Summer Olympics and then finally securing a position with the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee. Follow the author as he maneuvers alone through unchartered and perilous waters in The People's Republic of China to become the Senior Expert of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and the personal challenges he faced as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Media Center managed one global media crisis after another. Be captivated by this fascinating tale of political intrigue, mystery and magic as you too will be transported ... Inside the Beijing Olympics.
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.
Women in the Olympics traces the history of women in the Olympic Games. This pocket book offers details about important milestones in Olympic history and illustrates the salient themes that have shaped women’s involvement in the Games. From ancient times to today, women have always had a tenuous position in the Olympics. When Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympic Movement at the end of the nineteenth century, he did not include women in his vision. He viewed the Olympics as a way for boys to cultivate manliness and men to demonstrate masculinity. Women eventually overcame such prejudices and competed at 1900 Olympics. Despite their inclusion, they remained beset by roadblocks. Sports that Olympic officials considered too grueling, taxing, or physical remained off limits to women. Leaders introduced sex tests to remove muscular female Olympians who breached gender norms from the Games. The Olympics were inaccessible for women in certain countries. And women remained severely underrepresented in the Olympic governance structure. Women in the Olympics shows how women have continuously fought for increased opportunities as athletes, equal access to elite sports, and a place in the decision-making process.
Global sporting events involve the creation, management and mediation of cultural meanings for consumption by massive media audiences. The apotheosis of this cultural form is the Olympic Games. This challenging and provocative new book explores the Olympic spectacle, from the multi-media bidding process and the branding and imaging of the Games, to security, surveillance and control of the Olympic product across all of its levels. The book argues that the process of commercialization, directed by the IOC itself, has enabled audiences to interpret its traditional objects in non-reverential ways and to develop oppositional interpretations of Olympism. The Olympics have become multi-voiced and many themed, and the spectacle of the contemporary Games raises important questions about institutionalization, the doctrine of individualism, the advance of market capitalism, performance, consumption and the consolidation of global society. With particular focus on the London Games in 2012, the book casts a critical eye over the bidding process, Olympic finance, promises of legacy and development, and the consequences of hosting the Games for the civil rights and liberties of those living in their shadow. Few studies have offered such close scrutiny of the inner workings of Olympism’s political and economic network, and, therefore, this book is indispensible reading for any student or researcher with an interest in the Olympics, sport's multiple impacts, or sporting mega-events.
History records that the Olympic Games originated in ancient Greece nearly three thousand years ago, died out around 393 AD, and were triumphantly reborn in 1896, in the Greek capital of Athens. Rather less well known is how, during the intervening centuries, an assortment of British writers, romantics, sportsmen and visionaries helped nurture that revival. Indeed, as sports historian Dr Martin Polley argues in this, the 12th book in the acclaimed Played in Britain series, our nation's fascination with all things Olympian has played a pivotal role in shaping the Games as we know them today, culminating in London becoming in 2012 the first city ever to stage a third modern Olympiad. Consider, for example, that the first published use of the word 'Olympian' in the English language dates from around 1590. Its author? William Shakespeare. And that the first games of the post-classical era to adopt the formal title 'Olympick' took place in the Cotswolds village of Chipping Campden in 1612. It was an English traveller, Richard Chandler, who rediscovered the lost site of Olympia in 1766, and a Shropshire doctor, William Penny Brookes, who, in 1850, founded the Much Wenlock Olympian Games, an annual community festival that inspired Pierre de Coubertin to revive the Games at an international level. Other Olympic festivals surfaced in London (to celebrate Queen Victoria's accession), in Liverpool, and in the north-east town of Morpeth, while the words 'Olympic' and 'Olympian' became steadily more ingrained in the popular imagination throughout the Victorian era. Britain's Olympic heritage gained added momentum in the 20th century. At White City in 1908, London built the world's first modern, purpose-built Olympic stadium, while in 1948 London stepped in to save the Games by offering Wembley Stadium. Also in the late 1940s, at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, the modern Paralympics were born when sporting contests were organised for injured servicemen. Thus the 2012 Games represent the culmination of over four hundred years of British enthusiasm and ingenuity; an attachment that has left in its wake a trail of fascinating stories, characters, sites, buildings and artefacts. Leading the reader on a marathon journey, The British Olympics charts them all, making this a vital and entertaining source for anyone with an interest in the Games, in sport, and in the wider narrative of Britain's social and cultural heritage.
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.
This book examines Russia's 2013 anti-gay laws and their implications for the Sochi 2014 Olympics. Lenskyj argues that Putin's Russia and the International Olympic Committee wield power in similar ways, as evident in undemocratic governance, fraudulent voting processes, hypocrisy and absence of accountability.
The summer Olympic Games are renowned for producing the world’s biggest single-city cultural event. While the Olympics and other sport mega-events have received growing levels of academic investigation from a variety of disciplinary approaches, relatively little is known about how such occasions are experienced directly by local host communities and publics. This ethnography examines the everyday policing of the London Borough of Newham in relation to the London 2012 Olympics. It explains how police defined, monitored, prioritized, contained and investigated ‘Olympic-related’ crime, and how ‘Olympic-related’ policing connected to the policing of Newham. The authors examine how the threat of terrorism impacted on the everyday policing of the 2012 Olympics, as well as the exaggeration of other threats to the Games – such as youth gangs – for political reasons. The book also explores local resistance to Olympic policing, and the legacy of the Games with regard to policing, local housing, demographics and social exclusion. Discussing the lessons that can be learned for the future staging of sporting mega-events, this book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in sport, policing, crime and criminology, mega-events, event management, urban studies, global studies and sociology.
