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Once a showcase for amateur athletics, the Olympic Games have become a global entertainment colossus powered by corporate sponsorship and professional participation. Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney offer the inside story of this transformation by examining the far-sighted leadership and decision-making acumen of four International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidents: Avery Brundage, Lord Killanin, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Jacques Rogge. Blending biography with historical storytelling, the authors explore the evolution of Olympic commercialism from Brundage's uneasy acceptance of television rights fees through the revenue generation strategies that followed the Salt Lake City bid scandal to the present day. Throughout, Wenn and Barney draw on their decades of studying Olympic history to dissect the personalities, conflicts, and controversies behind the Games' embrace of the business of spectacle. Entertaining and expert, The Gold in the Rings maps the Olympics' course from paragon of purity to billion-dollar profits.
The Olympic Games have had two lives—the first lasted for a millennium with celebrations every four years at Olympia to honour the god Zeus. The second has blossomed over the past century, from a simple start in Athens in 1896 to a dazzling return to Greece in 2004. Onward to the Olympics provides both an overview and an array of insights into aspects of the Games’ history. Leading North American archaeologists and historians of sport explore the origins of the Games, compare the ancient and the modern, discuss the organization and financing of such massive athletic festivals, and examine the participation ,or the troubling lack of it, by women. Onward to the Olympics bridges the historical divide between the ancient and the modern and concludes with a thought-provoking final essay that attempts to predict the future of the Olympics over the twenty-first century.
The only volume available that explores the winter games as a whole, The Winter Olympics is invaluable reading for understanding the movement's roots as well as the contemporary issues surrounding the Games. The 2002 Olympic Winter Games were an extravaganza of global proportions, yet the winter games have not always enjoyed such favor or prominence. Dating retroactively to 1924 but not officially part of the Olympic program until 1928, the winter games have had an uneasy history. For the first fifty years controversies raged continually over whether the commercialism and professionalism in skiing, ice skating, and hockey were compatible with the Olympic ideal of amateurism and even whether winter sports should continue to be part of the Olympic program of international sport. Avery Brundage, president of the IOC from 1952 to 1972, was an outspoken critic of what he called the "Frostbite Follies." Opposition to the Winter Olympics was so great that the IOC Executive Board in 1964 considered eliminating the Games but eventually voted to continue them only through 1972.
In late 1998 and the early months of 1999, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was an organization in crisis. Revelations of a slush fund employed by Salt Lake City officials to secure votes from a number of IOC members in support of the city’s bid for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games invited intense scrutiny of the organization by the international media. The IOC and its president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, staggered through the opening weeks of the scandal, but ultimately Samaranch and key actors such as IOC vice president Richard Pound, marketing director Michael Payne, and director-general François Carrard weathered the storm. They also safeguarded the IOC’s autonomy and subsequent...
The original scheme for the modern Olympic Games was hatched at an international sports conference at the Sorbonne in June 1894. At the time, few provisions were made for the financial underwriting of the project--providence and the beneficence of host cities would somehow take care of the costs. For much of the first century of modern Olympic history, this was the case, until the advent of television and corporate sponsorship transformed that idealism. Now, linking with the five-ring logo is good business. Advertising during the Olympic Games guarantees a global audience unmatched in size by any other sports audience in the world. However, if the image begins to tarnish and the corporate se...
Details the role of sports in the classical world from early Greece through the late Roman and early Byzantine empires.
In late 1998 and the early months of 1999, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was an organization in crisis. Revelations of a slush fund employed by Salt Lake City officials to secure votes from a number of IOC members in support of the city’s bid for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games invited intense scrutiny of the organization by the international media. The IOC and its president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, staggered through the opening weeks of the scandal, but ultimately Samaranch and key actors such as IOC vice president Richard Pound, marketing director Michael Payne, and director-general François Carrard weathered the storm. They also safeguarded the IOC’s autonomy and subsequent...
If you’ve thought of programmers as elite intelligentsia who possess expertise (and perhaps genes) the rest of us will never have, think again. C++ For Dummies, 5th Edition, debunks the myths, blasts the barriers, shares the secrets, and gets you started. In fact, by the end of Chapter 1, you’ll be able to create a C++ program. OK, it won’t be newest, flashiest video game, but it might be a practical, customized inventory control or record-keeping program. Most people catch on faster when they actually DO something, so C++ For Dummies includes a CD-ROM that gives you all you need to start programming (except the guidance in the book, of course), including: Dev-C, a full-featured, integ...
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.
'The suddenness of the punch had caught me off guard ... I knew then that something was definitely wrong.' On 31 July 1975, members of The Miami Showband were returning to Dublin after a gig in Banbridge when they were stopped at a border checkpoint. For Stephen Travers, the band's new bass player, it was an unusual experience but he wasn't too worried. However, as his band mates were lined up beside their vehicle Stephen noticed that the atmosphere had suddenly changed... something more sinister was happening. In a flash their lives were dramatically altered when a bomb that was being placed in the back of their van suddenly exploded prematurely. The events of that night would never leave S...