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This paper proposes the London Olympics 2012 as a clear example of Stephen Graham’s military urbanism in action. Using the structure of a visual essay with an accompanying introductory text, this p...

An issue commonly identified with the vast and costly developments that cities produce to host the Olympic Games is that they are prone to becoming ‘white elephants’ – obsolete or underused constructions that become cost burdens for cities. White elephants are particularly associated with some of the most recent Games of the twenty-first century, as reflected in accounts of ‘limping’ or obsolete venues in Sydney, Athens, Beijing, Rio and Sochi. This paper begins with a review of issues associated with spatial planning, architecture and planning process in the production of white elephants in Olympic history. It goes on to provide an historical account of London’s efforts from 2002 to 2012 avoid attracting a repetition of the critique that followed earlier Olympics. Finally, it assesses its ongoing efforts and record over the six-year period from 2012 to 2018.

This paper explores the construction of Russia as the Other in a major Western media source. For its theoretical framework, it draws on Stuart Hall’s conception of the representation of the Other through splitting. The study is based on the comparative analysis of the portrayal of Russia and the UK as host nations for two different Olympic Games inThe New York Times. In order to reduce researcher bias, the analysis is conducted using methods of corpus linguistics. Two specialized corpora were compiled: one on the run-up to the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the other to the 2012 London Olympics. Three topics of the typical pre-Olympic discourse are compared: security, construction, and protests. It is observed that these aspects are constructed in binary opposition in the coverage of the two Games, presenting Russia as the West’s constituting Other. The issue of the negative implications of such discourse is raised.

At the beginning of 2013 two independent cases made the headlines of Japanese newspapers. The first case involved the suicide of a high school student that was allegedly triggered after he received several beatings from his basketball coach for failing to perform well enough. The second case involved fifteen female judoka, including competitors in the London Olympics, who filed a letter with the Japanese Olympic Committee complaining of violence by two coaches, including the head coach of the women's team. Both these cases caused a national debate about the practice of taibatsu (corporal punishment) in sport in Japan. This article is based on the outcomes of focus groups that were conducted with students at ten universities from across Japan in 2013. In particular, we examine the ways in which students’ normalised acts of violence from coaches, accepting them as necessary forms of discipline and, in many cases interpreting such acts as indicative of caring coaching and kindness. Further, we consid...

The study compared and analyzed the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics, representing Asia and Europe, respectively. In the aspect of the national identity, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics was a cluster of the “Imperial China” which proposed the image of China as a powerhouse in the future world. The 2012 London Olympics showed the concept of value-oriented populism with the analog methods to express the British society. From the viewpoint of artistic expression, both opening ceremonies are characterized by post-modernism. China pursued eclecticism with the proposal of new science and technologies and high modernistic elements for elegant art with new, serious, and future-oriented concepts. The United Kingdom followed the traditional features of post-modernism including value-orientation, polymorphism, generality, populism, happening, eclecticism, and carefree.

With the 2012 London Olympics now firmly part of the movement’s history, publications that analyse and reflect upon the 30th Olympiad are being issued. Stephen Wagg’s work forms part of Palgrave Ma...

The Olympic sporting context of 1908, with its tension between nationalistic competition and high-minded amateurism, provides insight as well into the transatlantic relationship between Great Britain and the United States during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and in the years following the prime ministerial tenure of Britain's Arthur Balfour. The article explores this relationship through two high-profile sports events—the 1908 London Olympic Games and its predecessor games in St. Louis in 1904—to consider how governing political and social networks in the two countries viewed themselves and one another and related to one another. The positions and values of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour are reevaluated in this context. The article concludes that the 1908 Olympics in many ways typified Anglo-American relations during the opening decade of the twentieth century. Strenuous competition between the two nations was accepted by both parties as a means to achieve a measure of superiority over the other for the broader audience in each nation and also across the globe.

During the Peronist regime (1946–1955), the Argentine government encouraged and financed a wide variety of sports activities. This investment bore fruit internationally and Juan Peron tried to make political capital out of the achievements of Argentine individual athletes or national teams in international competitions. Such achievements were presented as a collective victory of Argentine society, transcending the divisions of social class, ethnic origins, place of residence, or political affiliation. Argentine participation in the London Olympics in 1948, the hosting of the world basketball championship in Buenos Aires in 1950, and above all the organization of the first Pan-American games in the Argentine in March 1951, all, served to promote patriotism and national unity at home and improve the country’s image in the international scene. This paper focuses on an analysis of a 250-page book published by the sports magazine Mundo Deportivo, sponsored by the Peronist government, on the eve of the ...

A short time before the 2012 London Olympics, the President of the International Olympic Committee declared: ‘Women have the right to practice sport … [W]e must make sure that barriers are broken down.’ Although such words would have greatly troubled Pierre de Coubertin, they would be lauded by his contemporary la Duchesse d’Uzes, who had written in the preface to Pour Bien Fair du Sport (1912): ‘Oh my sisters … have hands that are capable of grasping a rifle or leading a horse … Courage! And above all perseverance.’ Pour Bien Faire du Sport was in many ways a precursor to recent popular books such as Coming on Strong (1994) and Heroines of Sport (2000); however, it has been grossly overlooked. This paper sheds much-needed light upon the book and its messages – and also upon la Duchesse d’Uzes and Pierre Lafitte, whose interests had made its publication possible.

London is the only city to have hosted three Summer Olympic Games. It is widely credited with having re-launched the Olympic project in 1908, after a pretty low-level affair in 1904 in St Louis, US...

The dust-jackets of Iain Sinclair’s books are laden with endorsements describing him as the preeminent metropolitan writer of London. Yet those same texts often re-inscribe specifically local and regional practices. A walk around the perimeter of the borough of Hackney, for example, is described, in terms invoking ancient parochial rituals, as “beating the bounds.” This article, focusing on one of London’s most prominent literary spokesmen as a regional or local writer, challenges the conventional binary relationship between metropolis and region. Sinclair’s work does not function under the aegis of this model but overlays competing mappings of the same space on top of one another. Drawing on the idea that London is only knowable as a series of villages, his texts focalize the specificity of particular locales and emphasize first-hand experience of their textures, chiefly through the practices of walking and interviewing locals. For Sinclair, the implications of this regionalism are to be found in defending the “obscurity” of locally-used places, and guarding against their being “overwhelmed by great public schemes.” I draw on examples from a number of Sinclair’s texts that rail against government-endorsed grand projects – the Docklands redevelopment, the Millennium Dome, the London Olympics – to assess their reassertion of regional concerns in the face of centralised (and commercially minded) planning. I argue that these texts oppose the view from central London that adjacent regions are blank spaces ripe for top-down rejuvenation, offering instead a more complex and detailed mapping of their status as regional places in their own right.

After the South Korean men’s soccer team beat its Japanese counterpart in the bronze-medal match at the 2012 London Olympics, South Korean player Park Jung-Woo celebrated with a banner that displayed Dokdo is our land. Dokdo is called the Liancourt Rocks in English, the sovereignty over which has been an ongoing point of contention between South Korea and Japan. This study conducts a critical discourse analysis to examine media representations of Park’s banner celebration, as well as the ensuing discussion in major Korean and Japanese newspapers. The analysis reveals a contrastive picture: The Korean media vocally approached Park’s behavior as an emotional response of self-righteous indignation and quickly enacted memories of Korea’s victimhood in World War II to make justifications, whereas the Japanese media participated in a relatively disengaged absence. Japan’s silence disclosed a glimpse into its rich postwar history of social conflict and political resistance. Such contrast is also indicative of how sport media can be engaged in nuanced social contexts, generating representations that serve nation-state regimes situated in different political dynamics.

In June of 2012, Ray Davies, leader of the Kinks, performed ‘Waterloo Sunset’ at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. The song, released in 1967, celebrates the ‘paradise’ of Waterloo Stati...

If it was the riots across English cities that defined the British summer of 2011, then the summer of 2012 – featuring a Royal Jubilee and the London Olympics – was meant to showcase a thoroughly more stable and law-abiding Britain. Yet by June it seemed as if the Great British Summer of 2012 would be remembered for a remarkable and seemingly unending series of cases that exposed the corruption rotting at the core of the British establishment.

1948 was South Korea's first ever appearance in the Olympics – a poor country, forced to adjust to division on the peninsula, with a limited athletic presence. But South Korea won its first medals and contributed to the tortuous process of securing its international standing. Sixty-four years later, by the time of its second appearance in a London Olympics South Korea had become a powerful economy with a high international profile and a strong athletic representation – coming 5th in the final medal table. This study compares and contrasts not just the two London Olympics in terms of athletic performances but also the changed roles for South Korea within both the global sporting community and broader international society. Despite the continuing division on the peninsula, the two London Olympics provide symbols and markers of the aspirations, achievements and failures of South Korean policy-makers and their people.

This essay draws the contours of the Japanese response to the 2012 London Olympics and the Games' perceived relevance to Japan's sports administration in the coming decades. The analysis is based on Japanese mass media reports and press commentaries that appeared in Japan's four leading national dailies (Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri and Sankei) and the Nippon Keizai Shinbun (Nikkei; the Japanese equivalent of the Wall Street Journal) before, during and in the aftermath of the London Olympic Games.

London 2012 was a contradiction of Kipling's meretricious couplet about East and West. What was the response of the East, specifically the South Korean media, to London's selection as the host city of the 2012 Olympics? Furthermore, what were the various viewpoints of the South Korean media regarding the significance of London hosting the Olympic Games hard on the heels of the Beijing Olympics? Answers to these questions can provide insights into the geopolitics and politics of modern South Korea, which has very different relationships with China and Britain. An analysis, macroscopic and microscopic, in terms of politics, economics and culture, of media reactions in South Korea to the Olympics of the two nations can provide illuminating insights into a sports mega-event as an instrument of soft power.

South Korea has often been considered a successful host nation after the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and their apparent positive economic, cultural, social and environmental legacies. The purpose of this essay is to offer an analysis of economic growth as a consequence of earlier Olympic Games and to extrapolate to the 2012 London Olympic Games and beyond to the forthcoming 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. It is the intention of this essay to examine previous studies, economic indices of world banks and reports of each Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (OCOG). The hypothesis is that the Olympic Games have not positively influenced the economic growth of the host nations. The essay explores this conclusion with reference to London 2012. The essay will reveal past negative influences of the Olympic Games and ask the International Olympic Committee (IOC): ‘What is the IOC's responsibility to the host city after the Games?’ Finally, the essay will propose and recommend an economic tool to the IOC to ens...

Sport and politics have a close relationship. Political conflicts are re-enacted, reflected and reinforced on international sports stages. In East Asia, the past casts a long shadow! It darkened the London 2012 stage. Controversy followed a South Korean football player's celebration at the London Olympics semi-final match between South Korea and Japan. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned the player, Park, Jong-woo, from participating in the bronze medal ceremony. He was accused by the IOC of a political act that violated IOC and FIFA regulations. Park's celebration included holding up and carrying around a sign which was interpreted by the IOC as a political message about a South Korean territorial dispute with Japan. The incident became a lead story in the South Korean media. The IOC's decision caused intense nationwide indignation and an outpouring of anti-Japanese sentiment. It was not a unique incident. This essay examines media representations of the incident and how political controvers...

Amusement, diversion, fun. This was the definition of sport offered by the first dictionary I consulted in preparation for this lecture, and if we accept it then there is at least a sporting chance that we will all be able to agree: mountaineering is a sport. But it is not a definition that sits easily with much of what sport is currently thought to be. This talk is part of a series on Philosophy and Sport timed to mark the London Olympics, and amusement and fun are probably not the first words to spring to mind there, certainly not for the competitors. They may be a part of it, but I don't think it unreasonable to think more immediately of commerce, competition, achievement. So this evening I need to consider mountaineering within that context. I also want to make clear at the outset that I shall take mountaineering to mean not just the climbing of high snow-covered peaks, but mountain travel and exploration, and simply recreational mountain walking. There doesn't need to be anything technical involved. At the same time, I must include rock-climbing within my brief, and for at least two reasons. One is that rock-climbing and mountaineering are closely connected historically. In it's early years, alpine climbing often led to rock climbing, the latter being seen as geographically convenient training for ‘the real thing’ – namely, the annual alpine holiday. When I was a teenager in the 1970s the influence went the other way: I began with rock-climbing in the Lake District, and proceeded to alpine climbing. And secondly, rock-climbing and mountaineering are administratively and politically connected. I suspect that the former, which in Britain as often as not doesn't take place in mountains at all, now absorbs the major part of the public funds devoted to these matters. And it is predominantly on the British experience that I want to draw.

Television coverage of the Beijing Olympics was estimated to reach 70% of the world's population; London reached even more. The Olympic Games – in particular the opening ceremonies and the national medal contest – are providing global citizens with a common talking point about political systems, and the Internet is increasingly opening up a space for discussion across national borders. The London Olympic opening ceremony provided a forum for comparisons with the Beijing Olympic ceremony, with each representing a political system. East Asia as a region has been rising in the medal count, which has also sparked comparisons of Japanese, Chinese and North and South Korean political systems. The result is a more sophisticated understanding of political systems and a surprising number of shared viewpoints about the obligations of governments to their people, how they should spend their money and their future orientations. In today's increasingly connected world, the Olympics may be bringing us closer than we th...

This article studies similarities and disparities between the two nations England and Norway as they could be observed before and during the London 2012 Olympics, and discuss them in the historical perspective of geopolitical and sportive relations. The main perspective is how these relations have been seen and experienced from Norway. The article also studies whether the London Olympics of 2012 did present new forms of relationships between the two geographical neighbours. The article discusses the role of ball games, preferably team handball at the 2012 Games, as one example of where sporting interests differ. The article reflects upon these matters in a historical context. It builds upon traditional historical methods, document and media analysis. It also looks at the 2012 London Olympics against the background of the former London Games of 1908 and 1948, and the overall historical sports relations between England, ‘land of sport’ and a small country like Norway, who generally has been on the receiving end of these interchanges. Such asymmetric relationships invite to a critical use of perspectives like cultural imperialism and post-colonialism. The article discusses whether such perspectives can be fruitful also when one discusses matters between the so-called First World nations. As the title of the article indicates, Norway and England are both close, politically and culturally, while also being strangers to one another, e.g. in parts of the sports culture. The 2012 Olympics seemed to reinforce this impression.

Olympic sport is a double-edged sword. It has the potential to bring nations together and to transmit values, but it can also demonstrate international political tensions and conflicting national structural characteristics. As part of the International Olympic Movement from the very beginning, Hungary is one of the few nations to have taken part in the (Summer) Olympic Games in London for the third time. The Olympic presence of Hungary has been almost continuous in spite of the significant transformations of its state ideology, sport structures and political background. In 1908, within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Hungarian Kingdom endeavoured to demonstrate its autonomy and courage with its memorable Olympic successes in London. A People's Republic was being formed in Hungary at the time of the second London Olympic Games in 1948. The socialist ideology and the self-display of socialist–communist ambitions characterised the preparation and the participation of the Hungarian athlete...

This chapter reflects on the potent combination of melancholy and nostalgia that can be associated with the cinematic presentation of change in cities. Opening with a discussion of two versions of Lionel Bart’s song, ‘Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be’, the chapter argues against a generalised nostalgia for the vanished city. Instead it seeks to demonstrate the importance of attention to the particularity of what has been lost, its formal presentation and its contexts. This argument is developed through the analysis of filmic responses to the particular, planned development of two East London places at two different periods: Hessel Street (as part of mid-twentieth-century slum clearance) and the Lower Lea Valley (as preparation for the 2012 London Olympics). The discussion of two films, The Vanishing Street (1962) and What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? (2005), which have as their topic these locations, explores the complicated meshing of time and place produced within each, and the different kinds of loss anticipated and explored. This study is concerned with the peculiar ability of film to offer its audiences images of what was once part of the material city and is now gone, and with both the tense and tone of these meditations. The ghostly cities preserved on film are always the product of particular circumstances, and should be attended to as such.

The global media spotlight was switched onto Great Britain for at least 17 days during the 2012 London Olympics. Media debates on Britain's identity raged on from the first minute of the opening ceremony. On the basis of the notions of nation branding, competitive identity and public diplomacy, this study examined reactions of the mainstream media in China to the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, with specific focus given to the amount of media coverage, particular attitudes expressed by news reporters and interpretations or themes emphasised. A content analysis was conducted of 100 news stories sampled from six major Chinese media outlets. Results and implications were discussed.

As a metaphor for the London Olympics, it could hardly be more stark. 1 The much-derided ‘Wenlock’ Olympic mascot is now available in London Olympic stores dressed, no less, as a Metropolitan polic...

Rodanthi Tzanelli's volume offers an intricate and perceptive analysis of the multi-layered messages communicated through Olympic Ceremonies, focusing on the 2012 London Olympics. The publication i...

The 1948 United States Olympic basketball team has largely been forgotten in the annals of American history despite taking a major step toward racial integration in American sports. Don Barksdale, the first African American to represent the US on the hardwood in the Olympics, joined nine players from the American South and legendary University of Kentucky coach, Adolph Rupp - a man notoriously identified as a racist. While Barksdale experienced very little racial mistreatment during the London Olympics, the lead-up to the Games reveals America's ambiguous views on race relations. During training in the segregated states of Oklahoma and Kentucky, Barksdale experienced varying levels of treatment from his teammates, coaches, and citizens of the two southern states. His experiences paralleled those of another racial pioneer, Jackie Robinson, who mentored Barksdale throughout his basketball journeys. Today, Robinson stands as a household name for breaking baseball's color barrier while Barksdale, whose feat o...

During the Labour Party's preparation for the 1948 London Olympic Games, which were held from 29 July to 16 August and were, although only three years after the Yalta Agreement of 11 February 1945, an attempt to point the United Kingdom resolutely into the future, the French press did not hesitate to criticize the resourcefulness and relaxed attitude of the British. France's ambivalent perception was, moreover, further magnified by the absence of Germany, Japan and the USSR, which reopened the question of politics in sport and its use for propaganda purposes, 12 years after the nationalist excesses of the Berlin Games. Analysis of coverage concerning the ‘Reconciliation Games’ in the main French papers highlights the contrasted effect of the London Olympics and illustrates the predominant weight of political ideologies in the construction of national identities. Finally, it underlines the recurrent difficulties encountered in bringing together the French and the British who were, immediately after the Sec...

In 1948, Spain, under the regime of the General Franco, participated in its first summer Olympics since 1932, following the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. Sixty-seven Spanish athletes competed in nine different sports and the reasons why these sports were selected will be analysed here. Focusing upon Spanish participation, this article explores the historical importance of the London Olympics for Spain as an international showcase. In order to achieve a balanced view of the attitude of Spain on this Olympiad, it is necessary to analyse both the official documents and the national press, controlled by the state by means of an iron censorship with some signs of a slight openness. Historical analysis of these documents will result in a comprehensive and rigorous study on the Spaniards' perception of the Olympic Games, the athletes' achievements, the attitude of the press and the political use of the event by Franco to gain international acceptance.

In terms of the genealogy of soccer as a modern sport, India certainly ranks as a giant. So long as she was a colony, her true potential as a soccer power remained undetermined. After Independence, however, India emerged as a formidable Asian force on the international stage. The story of India's tryst with Olympic football offers an interesting repertoire of stunning performances including decent success, appalling defeat and long absence, ranging from India's modest start in the London Olympics of 1948 through a huge defeat in the Helsinki Olympics of 1952 to a stirring performance in 1956. And when India's spirited display in the Rome Olympics of 1960 was followed by the startling victory in the Jakarta Asian Games in 1962, the nation seemed ready to have a crack at the international level. But the momentum was lost quite astonishingly within a decade. The decline set in and the giant had fallen asleep again. Yet the slumber has been mostly dreamy with intermittent magic spells of insomnia, albeit with...

The London 2012 bid was based on the promise to use the Olympic Games to promote sports participation for all groups across the UK. This is the most ambitious project in the history of the Olympic Games in terms of both its scope and level of change, as, in order to be implemented successfully, it has to address not only people's behaviour but also deeply rooted social structures and relations. This paper addresses the little explored issue of the link between hosting the Olympic Games and sports participation in the host country within the framework of sustainable sports legacy. It takes a process-oriented approach, suggesting that Olympic legacies are constructed and not given, and explores the role of the International Olympic Committee and the UK government in framing sports legacy. The paper draws from relevant literature and two original case studies, and analyses five main processes involved in legacy construction. It is argued that the role of sports participation legacy has been to compensate for...

It sometimes seems as if all the world is on the move.1 The early retired, international students, terrorists, holidaymakers, business people, slaves, sports stars, asylum seekers, backpackers and ...

This symposium arises from a public event held on 14 March 2008 by the Academy of Social Sciences, in cooperation with the University of East London, as part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 2008 Festival of Social Sciences. The purpose of the symposium is to explore the contribution which social scientists can make to the understanding of the London Olympics, and to clarify issues of public benefit of different kinds which arise from the hosting of the 2012 Games in London.

Despite being the first Summer Olympics held after the Second World War, the 1948 London Olympics have failed to attract the historical interest accorded to subsequent Olympiads. Focusing upon the British government, this article explores the historical significance of the XIV Olympiad. Quite apart from helping to re-launch the Olympic movement following the lengthy gap since the 1936 Berlin games, the 1948 London Olympics offer useful insights into the development of both the Olympic movement and the policy of British governments towards the Olympics. Firstly, the event reaffirmed recent trends qualifying the Olympic movement's enduring attempt to stress that the Olympics really were ‘games’ rising above political and commercial issues; secondly, it prompted yet another chapter in the long-running controversy about sport's impact upon international relations; thirdly, despite marking substantial advances in the policy of British governments towards international sport, the Olympiad failed to usher in a s...

In this paper we consider the many intangible criteria that influence the outcome of the Summer Olympics by using the Analytic Network Process, and apply the ideas to evaluate the medals won and the country scores in the 2012 London Olympics. Both the categories of games and the events in each game are considered in this weighting process. Different events of the same category game could have different properties. This work shows that the current way of counting the total number of medals is not a bad way of ranking countries. With minor modifications, this systematic approach for ranking countries can be used for any Summer Olympics.

The title sequence of Chariots of Fire – filmed on the West Sands beach of St Andrews, Scotland – has become one of the most reworked and reinterpreted moments of British cinema, transposed across a variety of places, politics and times. In exploring these moves – from the period of its setting in 1924, through its production in 1980, and to its most recent reworkings in the London 2012 Olympics – the article examines the constantly evolving legacies of the sequence and the cultural capital which it has accrued via these various contexts. By considering the original production and its subsequent multiple receptions, the article positions the sequence at the vanguard of shifts in film production and cultural heritage. Viewed from the vantage point of the 2012 Olympics, the film provides an integral source of cultural capital not just for national but also for local and regional economies as they increasingly target new sources of revenue in a post-industrial age. Postprint

Published in 2012, the year of the London Olympics, this edited volume presents a valuable contribution to the study of sport, heritage and society. Consisting of 17 chapters and an afterword by Ri...

Eddie Cottle, South Africa, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011, xvii +335 pp., index, £29.95 (pbk), ISBN 978-1-86914-216-2 At the time of writing, the London Olympics and Paralympics have just...

I write this as the London Olympics come to a close and I touch down in Hong Kong airport, having spent two memorable weeks in the UK. Four years after Beijing handed the Olympic torch to London – ...

The research aimed to examine the androcentric nature of South Korea's nationhood. South Korea's former heavyweight weightlifter Jang Mi-ran and her sporting career exhibit the difficulties and possibilities that South Korean women are faced with. On the one hand she displays the stronghold of conservative gender order, and on the other hand she has rewritten a script for women and positioned them differently in the national imaginary. As an emphatic gender symbol, Jang compelled many participants to rethink what it means to be a woman in South Korea today, which could alter the character of the nation. A number of group interviews took place during the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics, featuring ethnically-Korean female participants exclusively - 42 in total. 22 women in 6 groups were interviewed during the Beijing Olympics and 20 in 4 groups during the London event. Their ages varied from 19 to 39, most of them had an undergraduate or post graduate degree and they were all professionals. \ud \ud Key words: Gender, Nation, Sport, Confucianism, South Korea

The fourth Olympic Games took place in London, England, between 27 April and 31 October 1908, a period of just over six months, making these the longest of the 30 modern Olympic Games. Twenty-two nations sent athletes to compete, and in total just over 2000 athletes participated. Twenty of these nations had competed in at least one of the three previous Olympics, although there were two nations competing for the first time; Finland and Turkey. Athletes from New Zealand were also competing for the first time since they were part of an Australasian team. The athletes competed across 23 sports and 110 events, which ‘not only made the 1908 Games the largest Olympics to date, but also the largest international sports gathering ever staged.’1

A year on from the London Olympics Nick Bannister revisits a Cornish school to find out how the leadership is not only keeping the Games' legacy alive, but is spreading it far and wide

It is the summer of the London Olympics and Paralympics. On the walk up to the campus, I meet a feminist colleague coming the other way. I haven’t seen since the end of term. ‘Been watching the Olympics?’ she asks. ‘Yeah, right,’ I reply with what I think is a sardonic tone (I actually don’t have a television and I haven’t watched any of it, so it’s a true response). ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ she continues. I look at her to quickly see if she actually means what she is saying — she looks like she means it, and there were no tell-tale signs in the intonation. ‘Really?’ I ask, somewhat perturbed. ‘Yes, it’s been really exciting watching it all, I’ve got hooked’ she says as she heads past me. At that point I carry on walking, too. About a month later I am out on the hills with one of my closest friends. He’s an artist, quite famous in the world of fantasy art and comics — not a natural sports person. When we’re out walking or drinking together we talk about all sorts of rubbish, but never sport. And yet, when we’re struggling up a boggy path he says to me: ‘Did you watch the Olympics? It was incredible!’. ‘It was a big waste of money and a way for people to make money,’I reply. ‘Yeah, I know, but it was great, though, how it brought people together. And watching athletes from Britain do well. I liked the way we got to see sports that aren’t normally on TV. Made a change from football all the bloody time’. ‘It was a distraction,’ I reply, ‘just like the Queen’s jubilee. Make people happy, keep them in chains’.