The Modern Olympic Games

This new student textbook explores the history and meaning of the modern Olympic Games, providing a comprehensive overview of 'Olympism' from the Ancient Greeks origins through to the beginnings of the International Olympic Committee.

Which Winter Games were held on imported snow? Which golfer walked to the medal ceremony on his hands? Will BMX biking ever be an Olympic sport? Find the answers to these questions and more as you read about the Games as we know them today, including the Paralympics and the difficult process of choosing host cities.

Traces the history of the modern Olympics from 1896 to 2000, contrasting the ideal of the game with the often politicized reality.

This student textbook explores the history and meaning of the modern Olympic Games, providing a comprehensive overview of 'Olympism' from the Ancient Greeks origins through to the beginnings of the International Olympic Committee.

A rich and entertaining work of history, Olympics in Athens 1896 brings together the following intriguing strands: the rise of amateur athletics in competing countries, each with its own particular stamp; the enormous interest aroused by the excavation of ancient Olympia, the site of the ancient Games; the determination of the eccentric French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin to embody the amateur athletic ideal in a revival of the Games; and a perception by politicians and the Greek royal family that hosting Coubertin's Games could help to put the young Greek state on the European map.

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.

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.