The Olympics That Never Happened

A look back at how powerful politicians, business leaders, and a diverse cast of activists used a thwarted Olympics to shape the state of Colorado and the city of Denver. If you don’t recall the 1976 Denver Olympic Games, it’s because they never happened. The Mile-High City won the right to host the winter games and then was forced by Colorado citizens to back away from its successful Olympic bid through a statewide ballot initiative. Adam Berg details the powerful Colorado regime that gained the games for Denver and the grassroots activism that brought down its Olympic dreams, and he explores the legacy of this milestone moment for the games and politics in the United States. The ink was hardly dry on Denver’s host agreement when Mexican American and African American urbanites, white middle-class environmentalists, and fiscally concerned local politicians realized opposition to the Olympics provided them new political openings. The Olympics quickly became a platform for taking stands on a range of issues, from conservation to urban livability to the very idea of growth, which for decades had been unquestioned in Colorado. The Olympics That Never Happened argues that hostility to the Olympics galvanized and empowered diverse citizens in a major US city, with long-term ramifications for Colorado and political activism elsewhere. The Olympics themselves were changed forever, compelling organizers to take seriously competing interests from subgroups within their communities.

A look back at how powerful politicians, business leaders, and a diverse cast of activists used a thwarted Olympics to shape the state of Colorado and the city of Denver.

This book is all about dream fights between fighters who fought in the SAME era. The fights that follow (with the exception of our battle between the Klitschko brothers - a fight their mother would never have sanctioned!) COULD have happened and in many cases SHOULD have happened but for some reason or other simply failed to transpire. What would have happened if Lennox Lewis had fought Riddick Bowe or Mike Tyson had battled the comebacking George Foreman? Who would have won if Pernell Whitaker had fought Terry Norris or Salvador Sánchez and Eusebio Pedroza had engaged in a featherweight unification bout? We'll also consider what might have happened if Sugar Ray Leonard had fought Aaron Pryor and Marvin Hagler had fought the great Wilfred Benitez. We'll shall also delve further back in time and speculate on what would have happened if Jack Dempsey fought Harry Wills and how Rocky Marciano would have fared if he'd delayed his retirement to fight the young Floyd Patterson. There's plenty more besides this in the book. We'll also discuss what might have happened if Britain's domestic legends Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank had tangled with - respectively - the American superstars Roy Jones Jr and James Toney and we'll also take a look at the proposed late 1990s/early 2000s fight between Prince Naseem Hamed and Floyd Mayweather Jr which Bob Arum tried to make. We'll also consider what might have happened if Muhammad Ali had fought the Cuban Olympic legend Teófilo Stevenson in the 1970s. All this and much much more awaits in Dream Fights - Great Boxing Matches Which Never Happened...

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.

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.

A riveting behind-the-scenes account of the transformative 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games--an extraordinary story of visionary leadership, love of country and the ability to dream boldly. When John Furlong emigrated from Ireland in 1974, the customs officer greeted him with "Welcome to Canada. Make us better"--an imperative that has defined Furlong's life ever since. A passionate, accomplished athlete with a track record of community service, Furlong was a volunteer for Vancouver's Olympic bid movement when it began in 1996 and then spent the next 14 years living and breathing the Olympics. Furlong and his organizing team, including 25,000 volunteers and many partners, orchestrated a remarkable Winter Games. Patriot Hearts is the story of how they did it. Working with Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason, Furlong recounts the leadup to the Games and describes how he handled seemingly insurmountable setbacks--such as the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, a global recession and the washedout snow at Cypress Bowl--to achieve a runaway success and, ultimately, a pivotal moment of nationhood. Patriot Hearts will be published on February 12, 2011, a year after Canada welcomed the world at the opening ceremony. Furlong will donate part of his book royalties to the Own the Podium program.

In 2008, as few in the world are unaware, China was host to the world via the Beijing Olympics. The world watched the metamorphosis of Beijing from insecure capital to confident metropolis but, aware of it or not, the world was also watching the symbolic assertion, via the Games, of a rising superpower. The Pacific Rim will be the stage on which China initially displays its new hegemonic intentions, aspirations and ambitions. Thus in Post-Beijing 2008, the political, economic and cultural impact of Beijing 2008 on the geopolitical future of the Pacific Rim will be discussed. This perspective, analysed by some of the most distinguished academic commentators from some of the world's leading universities who are closely associated with the Pacific Rim (East and West), is original in focus and the analysis is pregnant with political possibilities. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.