Olympic Turnaround

Olympic Turnaround
Author: Michael Payne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2006-01-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0313080496

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.

Turnaround

Turnaround
Author: Mitt Romney
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2012-02-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1596982128

The head of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics organizing committee describes how he assumed the leadership of the troubled organization and turned it around to present one of the most successful Olympic Games ever.

Bearing Light: Flame Relays and the Struggle for the Olympic Movement

Bearing Light: Flame Relays and the Struggle for the Olympic Movement
Author: John J. Macaloon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2020-07-24
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1000159396

The Flame Relay and the Olympic Movement is the first book-length scholarly study in English of the contemporary Olympic flame relay. Reporting for the first time on years of intensive ethnographic research and organizational intervention, MacAloon literally follows the Olympic flame through twenty years of intercultural encounter, conflict, and negotiation. Focusing on the frequently harmonious, sometimes perilous encounters among Greek flame relay officials, cultural agents, and discourses, foreign Olympic Games organizing committees, and such transnational actors as the IOC and its corporate sponsors since 1984, a context is created for understanding the significance for the Olympic movement and for globalization studies of the 2004 Athens flame relay, the first to travel the entire world. Through intensive interviews and co-participations with leading Greek and American actors and the contributions of young Greek researchers who worked backstage on the relay, Bearing Light demonstrates how culturally parochial the managerial regime of "world’s best practices" often turns out to be and yet how inescapable it has become for those who wish to communicate across cultural and political boundaries. This dilemma, the contributors argue, constitutes the practical form in which the struggle to preserve a sense of "Olympism" and "the Olympic Movement" against the demands and prerogatives of today’s Olympic sports industry is being chiefly fought out. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society

Olympic Legacies: Intended and Unintended

Olympic Legacies: Intended and Unintended
Author: J A Mangan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1317966619

For more than a century, the Olympics have been the modern world's most significant sporting event. Indeed, they deserve much credit for globalizing sport beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American universe, where it originated, into broader global realms. By the 1930s, the Olympics had become a global mega-event that occupied the attention of the media, the interest of the public and the energies of nation-states. Since then, projected by television, funded by global capital and fattened by the desires of nations to garner international prestige, the Olympics have grown to gargantuan dimensions. In the course of its epic history, the Olympics have left numerous legacies, from unforgettable feats to monumental stadiums, from shining triumphs to searing tragedies, from the dazzling debuts on the world's stage of new cities and nations to notorious campaigns of national propaganda. The Olympics represent an essential component of modern global history. The Olympic movement itself has, since the 1990s, recognized and sought to shape its numerous legacies with mixed success as this book makes clear. It offers ground-breaking analyses of the power of Olympic legacies, positive and negative, and surveys the subject from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008, and indeed beyond. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

The Gold in the Rings

The Gold in the Rings
Author: Stephen R Wenn
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 025205153X

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.

Routledge Handbook of the Olympic and Paralympic Games

Routledge Handbook of the Olympic and Paralympic Games
Author: Dikaia Chatziefstathiou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 586
Release: 2020-07-12
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0429802641

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.

Power Games

Power Games
Author: Jules Boykoff
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2016-05-17
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 178478074X

The Olympics have a checkered, sometimes scandalous, political history. Jules Boykoff, a former US Olympic team member, takes readers from the event's nineteenth-century origins, through the Games' flirtation with Fascism, and into the contemporary era of corporate control. Along the way he recounts vibrant alt-Olympic movements, such as the Workers' Games and Women's Games of the 1920s and 1930s as well as athlete-activists and political movements that stood up to challenge the Olympic machine.

Korea’s Olympic Icon

Korea’s Olympic Icon
Author: David Miller
Publisher: Seoul Selection
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 162412125X

Korea’s Olympic Icon - Kim Un-yong’s Resolute Odyssey is a critical biography of the late Dr. Kim Un-yong, the founder president of the World Taekwondo and of the Kukkiwon World Taekwondo Headquarters, and the former Korean Olympic Committee (KOC) president and International Olympic Committee (IOC) vice-president. This biography is of special significance as a work by David Miller, veteran sports journalist and awards winning author from Great Britain. The book provides profound insights into the exhilarating life of Kim Un-yong, a man whose light shone brightest on the international stage, leaving a huge footprint on sports history not only in South Korea and Asia but across the world. Whilst the focus of the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee (KSOC) publication in 2017, A Big Man Who Embraced the World, Kim Un-Yong, recounted primarily Kim's life and career as national sports hero, this latest work delves into his international impact. Miller and Kim interacted over many years and enjoyed a particular closeness; the author has stated that "there would never have been an Olympics in Seoul had it not been for Kim". Kim Un-yong's global influence was individually responsible for major events being hosted by South Korea, most notably the Seoul Olympics of 1988 and the FIFA World Cup of 2002 jointly with Japan. Further historic moments included the opening and closing ceremonies of Sydney's 2000 Olympics with joint marches of the North and South teams of the Peninsular arranged by Kim. It was also in the 2000 Sydney Olympics that Kim achieved Taekwondo’s inclusion as an Olympic sport for the first time: a hitherto little known domestic leisure sport. As IOC President Samaranch's privately intended successor, Kim's mounting fame and senior appointments, as IOC vice-president and as president of the General Assembly of International Sports Federations (GAISF), attracted envy, both within sport and domestically within politics. Lamentable political revenge at home in the aftermath of Pyeongchang’s unsuccessful first of three Winter Olympic bids in 2003, resulting in a contrived prison sentence challenged by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, but symbiotically mirrored by the IOC Ethics Commission, found Kim toppled from authority, forced to resign his IOC vice-presidency just months after being elected by a substantial majority. Kim would go on to resume his outside activities and sharing his sports administration acumen through a 2006 advisory role on the organising committee for the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon and a 2010 advisory role on the organising committee for the 2015 Universiade in Gwangju and taking on positions as an advisor to the KSOC and honorary chairman of the Korea Taekwondo Association. He would also share his ideas through lectures and talks at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and various universities, whilst contributing columns to online and printed media. In 2016 he founded the Kimunyong Sport Committee (KUYSC) and launched the Kimunyong Cup International Open Taekwondo Championships (G1) shortly before his unexpected passing in October 2017. Detailing the passionate life story of Kim Un-yong as someone who represented South Korea’s face in the world of global sports - taking on multiple roles over history as a soldier, diplomat, sports administrator, and politician - this critical biography is rich in messages of courage and hope that are worthy of sharing with younger readers. It also offers a practical guide to thinking people of all generations in fields beyond sports administration and marketing, including diplomacy and international business. The book consists of eight chapters: 1. Emergent Phenomenon, 2. Seoul Spectacular, 3. Asian Leadership, 4. Salt Lake Subterfuge, 5. Presidential Turmoil, 6. Pyeongchang Reversal, 7. Symbiotic Convergence, and 8. Squandered Icon. It also includes a foreword and a preface by the IOC Finance Commission chairman, Ng Ser Miang and Honorary IOC member, Vitali Smirnov, respectively. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD PREFACE | CHAPTER 1 EMERGENT PHENOMENON | CHAPTER 2 SEOUL SPECTACULAR | CHAPTER 3 ASIAN LEADERSHIP | CHAPTER 4 SALT LAKE SUBTERFUGE | CHAPTER 5 PRESIDENTIAL TURMOIL | CHAPTER 6 PYEONGCHANG REVERSAL | CHAPTER 7 SYMBIOTIC CONVERGENCE | CHAPTER 8 SQUANDERED ICON POSTSCRIPT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

The Olympics

The Olympics
Author: Vassil Girginov
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 663
Release: 2023-05-09
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1000938611

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.

The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies

The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies
Author: H. Lenskyj
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2012-04-11
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0230367461

A comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference collection, bringing together an authoritative and international line-up of scholars to examine key social and political issues related to the Olympics. An essential, 'one-stop' volume for a wide range of academics, students and researchers.