Best Olympics Ever?, The

The Best Olympics Ever?

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Contents

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pp. v-

Acknowledgments

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pp. vii-

Abbreviations and Websites

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pp. ix-x

Introduction

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pp. 1-11

When Spanish-speaking International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Juan Antonio Samaranch announced in 1993 that Sydney (which he pronounced with three syllables as Syd-en-ee) had won the right to host the 2000 Summer Games, his statement went down in Australian journalism history as the favorite way to begin an article on the Sydney Olympics. ...

1. The Mass Media: Olympic Industry Boosters and Critics

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pp. 13-41

As is the situation in most Western countries, Australia’s mass media reflect and reinforce the role of sport as a key component of popular culture. It would be hard to imagine an Australian newspaper or news broadcast that did not include extensive coverage of sporting events. The Sydney 2000 slogan Share the Spirit exemplified this view of sport...

2. Police, Protest, and Olympic Legislation: “You’ve Got to Keep the Buggers under Control”

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pp. 43-65

Government and police authorities relied heavily on scare-mongering about international terrorism to justify the huge budgets, the enhanced police and security officers’ powers, and the overzealous surveillance efforts that have characterized Olympic security preparations since the terrorist attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics. At the same time, Olympic...

3. Black and White Australia: Reconciliation and Sydney 2000

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pp. 67-87

By the end of the 1990s, Indigenous issues and race relations—specifically, the barriers to reconciliation between Black and White Australians—were commanding attention in many sectors of Australian society. As the Olympics approached, it was in government and Olympic industry interests to downplay White Australia’s long and brutal history of racism toward...

4. “You Can’t Share the Spirit If You Can’t Pay the Rent”: Housing and Homelessness in the Olympic City

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pp. 89-106

The widespread negative social impacts of hallmark events and megaprojects on host cities have been extensively documented and analyzed (Hall, 1989, 1994, 1998; Olds, 1998; Rutheiser, 1996). A study commissioned in 1994 by Shelter NSW, a peak housing body, examined the impact of six international events on local communities—the America’s Cup in Fremantle, the...

5. Olympic Values, Impacts, and Issues: The Real Legacy

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pp. 107-131

Discussing the humane values that Toronto—at that time an Olympic bid city—used to hold as a vision of its future, Toronto Star environment writer Cameron Smith wrote in January 2001, “That was before the phrase ‘world-class city’ became a substitute for imagination, before the Olympic bid and other megaprojects came to be the solitary definition of progress”...

6. Productive Partnerships: Corporatized Universities Meet the Olympic Industry

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pp. 133-149

Trends in universities in Australia, Canada, the United States, Europe, and elsewhere in the last two decades of the twentieth century included partnerships with global corporations and, by extension, with the Olympic industry. The impact of global economic restructuring on universities was marked by changing relationships between the university and the state, ...

7. “I’m Not Against the Olympics, But. . . .”: Local and Global Resistance

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pp. 151-182

Community organizations concerned with housing and homelessness, the environment, human rights, social services, and related issues, faced a formidable challenge when they confronted the Sydney 2000 Olympic industry. Some achieved limited success in raising public awareness of Olympic-related impacts, in influencing decision making at the local and...

8. Bondi Beach Volleyball Stadium: The Battlers Lose the Beach

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pp. 183-202

Bondi is arguably the most famous of Sydney’s beaches, both locally and internationally—a fact that did not escape the notice of NBC’s Olympic head, Dick Ebersol, on his 1996 visit to Sydney. At that time, according to many reports (e.g., M. Moore, 1999b), he insisted that Bondi should be the venue for beach volleyball, thereby setting in motion a series of...

9. September 2000 in Melbourne and Sydney: Democracy at Risk

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pp. 203-226

There were three events of international significance in Australia during September 2000: the protests against the World Economic Forum, the Olympic Games, and the anti-Olympic protests. The links between the three events, and their relationship to the ongoing issue of reconciliation between Black and White Australians, will be examined in this chapter. ...

Conclusion

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pp. 227-231

In their analysis of the ways in which Olympic corporate sponsors socialized children to consume their brand and the “Olympic product,” Schimmel and Chandler (1998, 12) suggested, “Perhaps the Olympics are more capable of naturalizing, even mystifying, capitalist relations than are other forms of collective consumption” (emphasis in original). An example from the...

Appendix

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pp. 233-236

References

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pp. 237-256

Index

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pp. 257-262