The Olympics that Never Happened

The Olympics that Never Happened

Author: Adam Berg

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2023-02-14

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1477326456

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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.


The Games: A Global History of the Olympics

The Games: A Global History of the Olympics

Author: David Goldblatt

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-07-26

Total Pages: 755

ISBN-13: 0393254119

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“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.


Dream Fights - Great Boxing Matches Which Never Happened

Dream Fights - Great Boxing Matches Which Never Happened

Author: Sam Dalton

Publisher: BookRix

Published: 2022-11-26

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 3755426005

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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...


What Are the Summer Olympics?

What Are the Summer Olympics?

Author: Gail Herman

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-03-22

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 0399542906

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Back in 775 BC, athletes from all over Ancient Greece came together to compete in various games. The contests were held every four years and winning athletes brought honor and respect to their homelands. The tradition of the Olympic Games faded over time until 1896, when they were brought back to life. The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, with over two hundred athletes from fourteen countries. Today, nearly three thousand years after the first Games, the Summer Olympics attract one hundred thousand top athletes from over two hundred countries. Billions of fans around the world cheer on their national teams to bring back the gold.


Racism and the Olympics

Racism and the Olympics

Author: Robert G. Weisbord

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1351494945

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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.


Inside the Beijing Olympics

Inside the Beijing Olympics

Author: Jeff Ruffolo

Publisher: eBookIt.com

Published: 2012-08-01

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1456609424

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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.


Strength Coaching in America

Strength Coaching in America

Author: Jason P. Shurley

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2019-12-13

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1477319794

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It’s hard to imagine, but as late as the 1950s, athletes could get kicked off a team if they were caught lifting weights. Coaches had long believed that strength training would slow down a player. Muscle was perceived as a bulky burden; training emphasized speed and strategy, not “brute” strength. Fast forward to today: the highest-paid strength and conditioning coaches can now earn $700,000 a year. Strength Coaching in America delivers the fascinating history behind this revolutionary shift. College football represents a key turning point in this story, and the authors provide vivid details of strength training’s impact on the gridiron, most significantly when University of Nebraska football coach Bob Devaney hired Boyd Epley as a strength coach in 1969. National championships for the Huskers soon followed, leading Epley to launch the game-changing National Strength Coaches Association. Dozens of other influences are explored with equal verve, from the iconic Milo Barbell Company to the wildly popular fitness magazines that challenged physicians’ warnings against strenuous exercise. Charting the rise of a new athletic profession, Strength Coaching in America captures an important transformation in the culture of American sport.


No Boston Olympics

No Boston Olympics

Author: Chris Dempsey

Publisher: University Press of New England

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1512600709

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In 2013 and 2014, some of Massachusetts' wealthiest and most powerful individuals hatched an audacious plan to bring the 2024 Summer Olympics to Boston. Like their counterparts in cities around the world, Boston's Olympic boosters promised political leaders, taxpayers, and the media that the Games would deliver incalculable benefits and require little financial support from the public. Yet these advocates refused to share the details of their bid and only grudgingly admitted, when pressed, that their plan called for billions of dollars in construction of unneeded venues. To win the bid, the public would have to guarantee taxpayer funds to cover cost overruns, which have plagued all modern Olympic Games. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) chose Boston 2024's bid over that of other American cities in January 2015-and for a time it seemed inevitable that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would award the Games to Boston 2024. No Boston Olympics is the story of how an ad hoc, underfunded group of diverse and engaged citizens joined together to challenge and ultimately derail Boston's boosters, the USOC, and the IOC. Chris Dempsey was cochair of No Boston Olympics, the group that first voiced skepticism, demanded accountability, and catalyzed dissent. Andrew Zimbalist is a world expert on the economics of sports, and the leading researcher on the hidden costs of hosting mega-events such as the Olympics and the World Cup. Together, they tell Boston's story, while providing a blueprint for citizens who seek to challenge costly, wasteful, disruptive, and risky Olympic bids in their own cities.


Olympic Collision

Olympic Collision

Author: Ilai Rowner

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 0803296509

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It remains one of the most memorable moments in modern Olympic history. At the 1984 summer games in Los Angeles, a raucous crowd of ninety thousand saw their favorite in the women's 3,000-meter race, Mary Decker, go down. An audience of two billion around the world witnessed the mishap and listened to the instantaneous accusations against the suspected culprit, Zola Budd. Just seventeen, the South African Budd had already been the target of a vicious and vocal campaign by the antiapartheid lobby after she transferred to the British team in order to compete at the games. Decker, at twenty-six, was America's golden girl, ready to overcome years of bad luck and injuries to rightfully take the Olympic gold for which she had waited so long. With three laps to go, Decker and Budd's feet became tangled. Decker went down and didn't get up, wailing in primal agony as her gold medal hopes vanished. Decker's stumbles continued in the race's aftermath when she refused Budd's apology and race officials found her, not Budd, at fault for the collision. Although both women found success after the Olympics, neither could escape the long shadow of the infamous event that forever changed both of their lives and defines them in popular culture to this day. Olympic Collision follows Decker and Budd through their lives and careers, telling the story behind the controversy; the account that emerges is certain to revise the view Americans, in particular, have held since that fateful day in Los Angeles more than thirty years ago. Olympic Collision relives one of the most famous incidents in Olympic history, its legacy, and what has happened to both athletes since.


Post-Beijing 2008: Geopolitics, Sport and the Pacific Rim

Post-Beijing 2008: Geopolitics, Sport and the Pacific Rim

Author: J. A. Mangan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1317966082

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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.