Examining the Olympics

Higher, faster, stronger... The Olympic motto conjures images of heroes whose achievements transcended their athletic prowess, but also of tragedy and disgrace. By 1980, the modern Olympic movement was gasping for breath, bankrupt financially, politically, and culturally. But under the leadership of Juan Antonio Samaranch, and, subsequently, Jacques Rogge, the Olympics began a journey back from the brink. Michael Payne, who served as the International Olympic Committee's top marketer for over twenty years, offers unprecedented access to the people and negotiations behind one of the most dramatic turnarounds in business or sports history. Through a multi-pronged strategy, the IOC managed to secure lucrative broadcasting commitments, entice well-heeled corporate sponsors, and parlay the symbolism of the Olympics into a brand for which cities around the world are willing to invest billions of dollars. Packed with previously untold stories from the high-octane world where business, sports, politics, and media meet, Olympic Turnaround is a remarkable tale of organizational renewal and a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of the world's most iconic brand. The 2008 Games in Beijing, for example, are expected to involve over 10,000 athletes from 200 countries, draw 20,000 media representatives, and generate over $4 billion in sponsorships and broadcasting rights. Packed with previously untold stories from the high-octane world where business, sports, politics, and media meet, Olympic Turnaround is a remarkable tale of organizational renewal and a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of the world's most iconic brand.

The Olympic Games is a unique event centering global interest on its host city. The financing of the Games has changed dramatically since Munich (1972) and economic interests and effects are increasingly paramount. It is therefore an anomaly that accurate economic analysis and comparison is not readily available. This is the most detailed study on the economic implications of recent and future Olympic Games over four decades.Holger Preuss analyses the most important issues surrounding the hosting of the Olympics, and its wider economic effects, including:* financial gigantism of the Olympic Games* commercialisation and its control* problems associated with achieving the Olympic requirements and standards* the economic legacy of Olympic Games * the feasibility of developing countries staging future Olympic Games* detailed post Olympic analysis of financial figures* conclusions on the economic related achievements of respective Organising Committees.Academics and researchers of sports economics, international economics, international business and competition will all find this fascinating book of great value. The rigorous and authoritative analysis ensures valuable information will be available for future bid cities, and in a wider context, any city planning to bid for a major sporting event. It will also appeal to those interested in the broader context of the Olympic Games and concerned by their commercialisation and gigantism.

When the rage of living settles down and age relieves us of blame - then we are ready to look in the mirror. After everything we encounter as human beings, after every trial and joy, everything we have chosen this lifetime for – we eventually answer to the human being staring back at us from the mirror. I have suffered at the hands of others, child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, suicides in three generations of my family. I have also suffered at my own hands, addiction, obesity, depression. Along with the memoirs that talk about "what they did to me" I wanted to write one that said, "These are the people who helped me. These are the memories that I had to go back and revise because I was wrong. These are the things I could not change and here are the things that I could. This is how I found peace." Ultimately, this book is about survival and the grace that time offers us to change our perceptions and move on.

Mexican leaders eagerly anticipated the attention that hosting the world's most visible sporting event would bring, yet they could not have predicted the array of conflicts that would play out before the eyes of the world during the notorious 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Following 20 years of economic growth and political stability--known as the "Mexican miracle"--Mexican policy makers escaped their prior image of being economically underdeveloped to successfully craft an image of a nation that was both modern and cosmopolitan but also steeped in culture and tradition. Buoyed by this new image, they set their sights on the Olympic bid, and they not only won but also prepared impressive facilities. Prior to the opening ceremonies, several controversies emerged, the most glaring of which was a student protest movement that culminated in a public massacre, leaving several hundred students dead. Less dramatic were concerns that athletes would suffer harm in the high elevation and thin air, debates over the nature of amateurism, threats by nations opposing apartheid to boycott if South Africa was allowed to compete, and the introduction of drug and gender testing. Additionally the Olympics provided a forum for the United States and the Soviet Union to carry their Cold War rivalry to the playing field--a way to achieve victory without world destruction at stake. During the Games, one of the most significant controversies occurred when two African American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their fists in the Black Power salute while on the medal stand. This gesture brought worldwide attention to racism within the United States and remains a lasting image of both the Mexico City Olympics and the Civil Rights movement. Although the Olympics are intended to bring athletes of the world together for harmonious competition, the 1968 Games will long be remembered as fraught with discord. This ambitious and comprehensive study will appeal to those interested in U.S. history, Latin American history, sports history, and Olympic history.

This book is unique in that it is the first to provide a comprehensive, critical analysis of the contemporary sporting and cultural phenomenon that is the Olympic Games. It draws on a range of social science perspectives, including sociology, political science, history and economics and highlights the critical issues relating to the Games. The book examines the role of politics and nationalism in the development of the Games, the economics and financing of the Games, roles that the mass media has played, control of performance enhancing drugs, equity and women's participation and other fascinating aspects of one of the rare cultural events that is shared by many nations.

The 1932 Olympic games took place in Los Angeles in the depths of the Great Depression; that they were held at all falls barely short of miraculous. The United States sent thirty-seven women to compete'seventeen swimmers, seventeen track and field athletes, and three fencers. It was not easy, and far from acceptable, for a woman to be an athlete in 1932. As late as April 1931 the International Olympic Committee seriously considered eliminating women's events. The young Americans did their part to capture the imagination of spectators and reporters. Through the sports press they catapulted the Olympic Games and women's athletics into the nation's consciousness as never before. Doris Pieroth creates vivid portraits of the women, including the great Babe Didrikson, the confident and outspoken track and field star; Tidye Pickett, one of only two African American women who represented the United States despite encountering racial discrimination; and Helene Madison, winner of three gold medals in swimming, who returned triumphantly to Seattle's West Green Lake Beach'as a hotdog vendor (park department rules barred women from teaching swimming). The team truly represented America'a democratic cross-section from New York to California, Washington to Florida, Minnesota to Texas and points in between. Drawn from public pools, schools and playgrounds, municipal and industrial recreation programs, and private clubs alike it reflected the country's entire socio-economic spectrum. Their attainments and triumphs went a long way toward insuring that women's events would continue as an integral part of the Olympic Games'a prospect by no means certain in 1932. Pieroth's account is drawn from interviews with eleven of the women athletes, family members, other Olympians of the era, and witnesses of the 1932 games. She also quotes extensively from contemporary journalists such as Paul Gallico, Westbrook Pegler, and Damon Runyon, whose mixture of condescension, fulsome admiration for the ?glamour girl? swimmers, and genuine, if sometimes grudging, admiration for the accomplishments of the athletes provides an intriguing view of the stereotypes these Olympic contestants were challenging. Their Day in the Sun: Women of the 1932 Olympics is the story of those remarkable people'their dedication and their delight in competition. In recounting their Olympic summer and their varied routes to Los Angeles, it adds to the history of sport the identities and details of a specific athletic cohort and their experiences in striving for excellence and acceptance.

The 1968 Mexico City Olympics reflected the spirit of their revolutionary times. Hoffer's work captures the turbulence and offbeat heroism of that historic Olympiad, which was as rich in inspiring moments as it was drenched in political and racial tensions. bw photos.

According to most accounts, the man solely responsible for reviving the modern Olympic Games was Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Now, in The Modern Olympics, David C. Young challenges this view, revealing that Coubertin was only the last and most successful of many contributors to the dream of the modern Olympics. Based on thirteen years of research in previously neglected documents, Young reconstructs the fascinating and almost unknown history of the Olympic revival movement in the nineteenth century, including two long-forgotten Olympiads -- one in London in 1866 and another in Athens in 1870. He traces the idea for the modern Olympics back to an obscure Greek poet in 1833 and follows the sinuous tale to a small village in England, where W. P. Brookes held local Olympiads, founded the British Olympic Committee, and told Coubertin about his vision of an international Olympics. Coubertin's main contribution to the founding of the modern Olympics was the zeal he brought to transforming an idea that had evolved over decades into the reality of Olympiad I and all the Olympic Games held thereafter.

The East Asian Olympiads, 1934-2008: Building Bodies and Nations in Japan, Korea, and China is the first scholarly volume to focus on the collective East Asian experience of the Olympic Games. These twelve essays, from the diverse disciplinary perspectives of anthropology, geography, history, political science, and sports studies, explore how the Asian Olympics were used as patriotic exercises and yardsticks of social progress, shaped ideals of individual health and national strength, and were manipulated by states, interest groups, commercial concerns, and the media. This innovative collection suggests that the Olympics have played an important role in the creation of a modern East Asian identity in a world and a global sporting culture still dominated by the West.

n 1968, Tommie Smith and his teammate John Carlos won the gold and silver medals, respectively, for the 200 meter dash.a Receiving their medals on the dais, they raised their fists and froze a moment in time that will forever be remembered as a powerful day of protest.a In this, his autobiography, Smith tells the story of that moment, and of his life before and after it, to explain what that moment meant to him.a In "Silent Gesture," Smith recounts his life before and after the 1968 Olympics: his life-long commitment to athletics, education, and human rights.a He dispels some of the myths surrounding his and Carlos' act on the dais -- contrary to legend, Smith wasn't a member of the Black Panthers, but a member of the US Olympic Project for Human Rights -- and describes in detail the planning and risks involved in his protest.a Smith also details his many years after Mexico City of devotion to human rights, athletics, and education.a A unique resource for anyone concerned with international sports, history, and the African American experience, "Silent Gesture" contributes a complete picture of one of the most famous moments in sports history, and of a man whose actions always matched his words."

The story of the black American track star whose career involved triumph at Hitler's Olympics.

The original essays in this comprehensive collection examine the lives and sports of famous and not-so- famous African American men and women athletes from the nineteenth century to today. Here are twenty insightful biographies that furnish perspectives on the changing status of these athletes and how the changes mirrored the transformation of sport, American society, and civil rights legislation. ""Out of the Shadows"" shows us athletes struggling to make it in a Jim Crow society - Jimmy Winkfield in horse racing, Marshall Taylor in bicycling, William Henry Lewis in football, and Jack Johnson - and those achieving success on an international stage while suffering segregation at home - Ora Washington (tennis), Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Alice Coachman (track and field), and Jackie Robinson. In the twentieth century athletes saw opportunities to fight for civil rights through their performances as was the case with Althea Gibson (tennis), Wilma Rudolph, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Arthur Ashe. Today's successful African American athletes, such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams, deal with issues of race and celebrity culture. The contributors to this collection are some of today's best authors of sports history, including Gerald Early, Anthony O. Edmonds, Gerald R. Gems, and Donald Spivey. Together, these biographies not only provide insightful analyses of the athletes' careers, they tell a fascinating two-hundred-year-long story about the complex relationship between race and sport in America and how some gifted individuals achieved success on the playing field despite difficult living conditions and economic circumstances.

Sports are the opiate of the people, particularly in the United States, Europe, and parts of South America. Globally, billions of fans feverishly focus on the summer and winter Olympics. In theory, international fraternalism is boosted by these "friendly competitions," but often national rivalries eclipse the theoretical amity. How the Olympics have dealt with racism over the years offers a window to better understanding these dynamics.  Since their revival in 1896, the modern Olympics were periodically agitated by political and moral conundrums. Racial tensions, the topic of this volume, reached their apex under the polarizing presidency of Avery Brundage. Race in sports cannot be disentangled from societal problems, nor can race or sports be fully understood separately. Racial conflict must be contextualized. Racism and the Olympics explores the racial landscape against which a number of major disputes evolved. The book covers various topics and events in history that portray discrimination within Olympic games, such as the Nazi games of 1936, the black American protest on the victory stand in Mexico City's Olympics, as well as international political forces that removed South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics. Robert G. Weisbord considers the role of international politics and the criteria that should be used to determine nations that are selected to take part in and serve as venues for the Olympic Games.

Author Andrew Zimbalist looks beyond the headlines of two of the world's most beloved sporting events: the Olympics and the World Cup. In the expanded and updated edition of his bestselling book, Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup, Zimbalist tackles the bogus claim that the cities chosen to host these high-profile sporting events experience an economic windfall. He now takes aim at the outrageous FIFA scandal, Boston's bid for the 2024 summer Olympics, and the criticism surrounding the 2015 Women's World Cup. Circus Maximus focuses on major cities like London and Barcelona that have previously hosted these sporting events to provide context for cities like Tokyo and Rio de Janerio, which are currently bearing the weight of exploding expenses, corruption, and protests. Zimbalist offers a sobering look at the Olympics and the World Cup outside of the echo chamber.