Download or read book The Olympic Torch Relay Its Origins and Significance written by Ansgar Molzberger and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, an Olympic torch relay was organised for the first time in history. The idea for the torch relay is attributed to the German Secretary General of the 1936 Olympic Games, Carl Diem. Previously, Pierre de Coubertin, the founding father of the modern Olympic Movement, had used the image of the Olympic torch in several speeches right from the early days of the Olympic Games. After its premiere, the Olympic torch relay became an indispensable part of the Olympic Games. After a lighting ceremony in Ancient Olympia under the responsibility of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, and the handing over of the Olympic flame in Athens to the respective Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, the Olympic flame has since been transported to the Olympic host city with the help of several thousand torchbearers. At the opening ceremony of the Games, the last runner then lights the Olympic flame in a cauldron that burns until the end of the Games. For the Olympic Winter Games, the first torch relay was held in 1952. However, there were "alternative" starting locations initially. For the Olympic torch relay at the 1964 Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck, the Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia for the first time. In 2009, the International Olympic Committee decided that, in the future, the Olympic torch relay should again be held primarily in Greece and in the country of the upcoming Olympic host. This article examines the origins, signification and development of the Olympic torch relay.
Download or read book The Naked Olympics written by Tony Perrottet and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2004-06-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was it like to attend the ancient Olympic Games? With the summer Olympics’ return to Athens, Tony Perrottet delves into the ancient world and lets the Greek Games begin again. The acclaimed author of Pagan Holiday brings attitude, erudition, and humor to the fascinating story of the original Olympic festival, tracking the event day by day to re-create the experience in all its compelling spectacle. Using firsthand reports and little-known sources—including an actual Handbook for a Sports Coach used by the Greeks—The Naked Olympics creates a vivid picture of an extravaganza performed before as many as forty thousand people, featuring contests as timeless as the javelin throw and as exotic as the chariot race. Peeling away the layers of myth, Perrottet lays bare the ancient sporting experience—including the round-the-clock bacchanal inside the tents of the Olympic Village, the all-male nude workouts under the statue of Eros, and history’s first corruption scandals involving athletes. Featuring sometimes scandalous cameos by sports enthusiasts Plato, Socrates, and Herodotus, The Naked Olympics offers essential insight into today’s Games and an unforgettable guide to the world’s first and most influential athletic festival. "Just in time for the modern Olympic games to return to Greece this summer for the first time in more than a century, Tony Perrottet offers up a diverting primer on the Olympics of the ancient kind….Well researched; his sources are as solid as sources come. It's also well writen….Perhaps no book of the season will show us so briefly and entertainingly just how complete is our inheritance from the Greeks, vulgarity and all." --The Washington Post
Download or read book Share the Flame written by Alan Hobson and published by Whitecap Books Limited. This book was released on 1988 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bearing Light Flame Relays and the Struggle for the Olympic Movement written by John J. Macaloon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, five to ten times as many persons have turned out for the Olympic flame relay as have watched Olympic sports contests live. Flame Relays and the Struggle for the Olympic Movement: Bearing Light, the first anthropological analysis of the contemporary torch relay, exposes and interprets the transformation of the ritual across a 25-year period, from Los Angeles 1984 through the IOC’s 2009 announcement that, in the aftermath of the politically contentious Beijing performance, there will be no more global relays. This volume offers a rare case study of continuity and change in a leading transnational and trans-cultural ritual form. Through data publicly revealed for the first time, the reader is carried fully backstage and into the conflicts and negotiations among Olympic organizing committees, the Greek Olympic movement, national governments, and transnational actors like the IOC, commercial sponsors, and operations management firms. Readers will come to know the leading flame relay authorities and practitioners, gaining a deeper understanding of the Olympic managerial revolution with its characteristic ‘world’s best practice’ language. Analysis of the transnational flow of Olympic operations management offers important corrections to much existing globalization theory by demonstrating both how powerful and how culturally and politically parochial world’s best practices can turn out to be. The dialectic between the cultural performance genres of ritual and spectacle provides a further intellectual architecture for these studies posing the question of whether the Olympic Movement will be able to survive the successes of the Olympic Sports Industry. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
Download or read book The Story of the Olympic Torch written by Philip Barker and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the development of the run, the lighting of the cauldron and other symbolic elements of the Olympic Games
Download or read book The Games A Global History of the Olympics written by David Goldblatt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A people’s history of the Olympics.”—New York Times Book Review A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year The Games is best-selling sportswriter David Goldblatt’s sweeping, definitive history of the modern Olympics. Goldblatt brilliantly traces their history from the reinvention of the Games in Athens in 1896 to Rio in 2016, revealing how the Olympics developed into a global colossus and highlighting how they have been buffeted by (and affected by) domestic and international conflicts. Along the way, Goldblatt reveals the origins of beloved Olympic traditions (winners’ medals, the torch relay, the eternal flame) and popular events (gymnastics, alpine skiing, the marathon). And he delivers memorable portraits of Olympic icons from Jesse Owens to Nadia Comaneci, the Dream Team to Usain Bolt.
Download or read book Nazi Games written by David Clay Large and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nazi Games" recounts how the Olympic festival was a crucial part of the Nazi regime's mobilization of power. The narrative also includes a stirring account of the international effort to boycott the games, which was ultimately derailed by the American Olympic Committee.
Download or read book Onward to the Olympics written by Gerald P. Schaus and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2009-08-02 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Greeks Romans Germans written by Johann Chapoutot and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about the conditions that made possible Hitler's rise and the Nazi takeover of Germany, but when we tell the story of the National Socialist Party, should we not also speak of Julius Caesar and Pericles? Greeks, Romans, Germans argues that to fully understand the racist, violent end of the Nazi regime, we must examine its appropriation of the heroes and lessons of the ancient world. When Hitler told the assembled masses that they were a people with no past, he meant that they had no past following their humiliation in World War I of which to be proud. The Nazis' constant use of classical antiquity—in official speeches, film, state architecture, the press, and state-sponsored festivities—conferred on them the prestige and heritage of Greece and Rome that the modern German people so desperately needed. At the same time, the lessons of antiquity served as a warning: Greece and Rome fell because they were incapable of protecting the purity of their blood against mixing and infiltration. To regain their rightful place in the world, the Nazis had to make all-out war on Germany's enemies, within and without.
Download or read book A Brief History of the Olympic Games written by David C. Young and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a millennium, the ancient Olympics captured the imaginations of the Greeks, until a Christianized Rome terminated the competitions in the fourth century AD. But the Olympic ideal did not die and this book is a succinct history of the ancient Olympics and their modern resurgence. Classics professor David Young, who has researched the subject for over 25 years, reveals how the ancient Olympics evolved from modest beginnings into a grand festival, attracting hundreds of highly trained athletes, tens of thousands of spectators, and the finest artists and poets.
Download or read book The Olympic Glow written by Barbara Birenbaum and published by Peartree (FL). This book was released on 1994 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Story of the Olympic torch as told by modern torchbearers to Kindl, a walking, talking symbol of light, who eventually becomes a torchbearer to the Games. Back to 776 BC, he meets Zeus, and learns about ancient torch run. Traveling forward in time, he meets the inventor of the Olympic torch, its significance, its design, motto, formal protocol of passing the torch, routes and Olympic oath. In Curriculum Guide for Teachers, vol. II, (ACOG) Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games. Research provided by (USOC) United States Olympic Committee. Considered for UNICEF and Peace awards due to cultural diversity. AN INFORMATIVE AND EDUCATIONAL approach to the history of the Olympic torch. I am pleased to see such an effective method of explaining the importance of the Olympic Games to the Youths of today. Buddy MacKay, Lieutenant Governor, Office of the Governor, State of FloridaINCLUDED AS AN ADDITIONAL RESOURCE in the Curriculum Guide for Teachers. Marilyn Arrington, Director Youth and Education, Atlanta (ACOG).WELL WRITTEN AND INFORMATIVE. Mary E Boland, Special Olympics International HeadquartersTHE MISSOURI READER, The Cultural Connection (IRA)The search for quality children's literature about holidays and symbols and trademarks of our American heritage can end with this series of books Barbara Birenbaum. Kindl's adventures result in new understandings. The stories satisfy the teacher's desire to provide multicultural literature that appeals to children and provides information cleverly woven into each story.
Download or read book China s Great Leap written by Minky Worden and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from some of the most well respected and experienced Chinese writers, journalists, and organizers, China’s Great Leap examines the People’s Republic of China as its government and 1.3 billion people prepare for the 2008 Olympic Games. When Beijing first sought the Games, China was still recovering from the upheavals of Maoist rule and adapting to a market revolution. Today, China wants to engage with the outside world—while fully controlling the engagement. How will the new leaders in Beijing manage the Olympic process and the internal and external pressures for reform it creates? China’s Great Leap will illuminate China’s recent history and outline how domestic and international pressures in the context of the Olympics could achieve human rights change. Learn about key areas for human rights reform and how the Olympics could represent a possible great leap forward for the people of China and for the world.
Download or read book Owning the Olympics written by Monroe Price and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2009-12-10 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of 'media events' by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover." —Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People's Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the "New China"---a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China's maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities---including the Chinese Communist Party itself---seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.
Download or read book Space Stations written by Gary Kitmacher and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich visual history of real and fictional space stations, illustrating pop culture's influence on the development of actual space stations and vice versa Space stations represent both the summit of space technology and, possibly, the future of humanity beyond Earth. Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space takes the reader deep into the heart of past, present, and future space stations, both real ones and those dreamed up in popular culture. This lavishly illustrated book explains the development of space stations from the earliest fictional visions through historical and current programs--including Skylab, Mir, and the International Space Station--and on to the dawning possibilities of large-scale space colonization. Engrossing narrative and striking images explore not only the spacecraft themselves but also how humans experience life aboard them, addressing everything from the development of efficient meal preparation methods to experiments in space-based botany. The book examines cutting-edge developments in government and commercial space stations, including NASA's Deep Space Habitats, the Russian Orbital Technologies Commercial Space Station, and China's Tiangong program. Throughout, Space Stations also charts the fascinating depiction of space stations in popular culture, whether in the form of children's toys, comic-book spacecraft, settings in science-fiction novels, or the backdrop to TV series and Hollywood movies. Space Stations is a beautiful and captivating history of the idea and the reality of the space station from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Download or read book Online Chinese Nationalism and China s Bilateral Relations written by Simon Shen and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Chinese were officially plugged into the virtual community in 1994, the usage of the internet in the country has developed at an incredible rate. By the end of 2008, there were approximately 298 million netizens in China, a number which surpasses that of the U.S. and ranks China the highest user in the world. The rapid development of the online Chinese community has not only boosted the information flow among citizens across the territory, but has also created a new form of social interaction between the state, the media, various professionals and intellectuals, as well as China's ordinary citizens. Although the subject of this book is online Chinese nationalism, which to a certain extent is seen as a pro-regime phenomenon, the emergence of an online civil society in China intrinsically provides some form of supervision of state power-perhaps even a check on it. The fact that the party-state has made use of this social interaction, while at the same time remaining worried about the negative impact of the same netizens, is a fundamental characteristic of the nature of the relationship between the state and the internet community. Many questions arise when considering the internet and Chinese nationalism. Which are the most important internet sites carrying online discussion of nationalism related to the author's particular area of study? What are the differences between online nationalism and the conventional form of nationalism, and why do these differences exist? Has nationalist online expression influenced actual foreign policy making? Has nationalist online expression influenced discourse in the mainstream mass media in China? Have there been any counter reactions towards online nationalism? Where do they come from? Online Chinese Nationalism and China's Bilateral Relations seeks to address these questions.
Download or read book Power Games written by Jules Boykoff and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely, no-holds barred, critical political history of the modern Olympic Games 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.
Download or read book NOlympians written by Jules Boykoff and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-08T00:00:00Z with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond investigates the intersection of the global rise of anti-Olympics activism and the declining popularity of hosting of the Games. The Olympics were once buoyed by myths of luminous prosperity and upticks in tourism and jobs, but in recent years these assurances have been debunked. Now more than ever, it’s clear that the Olympics have transmogrified into a political-economic juggernaut that arrives with displacement, expanded policing, and anti-democratic backroom deals. Jules Boykoff – a former professional soccer player who represented the US Olympic soccer team – zooms in on Los Angeles, where the Democratic Socialists of America have launched the NOlympics LA campaign ahead of the 2028 Summer Games. Boykoff shows how DSA-LA’s anti-Olympics activism fits with the resurgence of socialism in the US and beyond. Boykoff’s research, based on more than 100 interviews with anti-Olympics activists, personal experiences at protests in Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Tokyo, academic research, mass- and alternative-media coverage, and Olympic archives, is the backbone for this story of activists fighting against the odds and embracing the transformative politics of democratic socialism.
