’Team GB’ and London 2012: The Paradox of National and Global Identities

This article explores the problems associated with ’national identity’ in the UK and examines the tensions arising between the international and local dimensions of the games through examples of domestic (UK) and international (Brazil, Chicago) media coverage of the key debates relating to London’s period of preparation. The chapter proposes a conception of London 2012 as exemplar of an event poised to generate insights and experiences connected to a new politics of ’cosmopolitan’ identity; insights central to grasping the cultural politics of contemporary urban development-and the paradoxes of national identity in current discourses of Olympism. Properly speaking, cosmopolitanism suits those people who have no country, while internationalism should be the state of mind of those who love their country above all, who seek to draw to it the friendship of foreigners by professing for the countries of those foreigners an intelligent and enlightened sympathy. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Pierre de Coubertin. Il progetto politico dell'olimpismo

Se gli sport inglesi affermatisi nel XIX secolo, sono segnati da un tratto privatistico, espressione come sono della naturale evoluzione della morfologia sociale, del protagonismo della società civile, l’olimpismo teorizzato da Pierre de Coubertin, segnato dall’ansia di coinvolgere le strutture dello Stato, di inserire l’atletismo come punto qualificante di una nuova concezione degli equilibri sociali, si affermerà, e la sua diffusione sarà travolgente, grazie alla sua caratteristica più innovativa, quella di presentarsi come un vero e proprio, complessivo, progetto politico

Modern Pentathlon and the First World War: When Athletes and Soldiers Met to Practise Martial Manliness

In the nationalistic atmosphere of the early 20th Century, a nurturing medium for sports practising martial manliness abounded throughout Europe. This framework supported the invention of a new multi-disciplinary sport, aided by Baron Pierre de Coubertin himself: Modern Pentathlon. Though the idea of a new form of pentathlon was already born in 1894, it took thirty years, until Paris 1924 to establish Modern Pentathlon within the Olympic Games. This study is concerned with the reasons for that delay. It shall be investigated whether the active military preparations around World War I and the contemporary image of masculinity had a decisive influence on the early history of Modern Pentathlon. By including historical documents of the IOC archives in Lausanne/Switzerland, the research office for military history in Potsdam/Germany and the LA84 Foundation in Los Angeles/USA as well as literature on gender, military sport and Olympic history this study offers an entirely new view on the early history of a sport which was born in an atmosphere of glorifying manliness and apparent militarism. The history of Modern Pentathlon thereby provides a particular appropriate area for the analysis of connections between sport, militarism and masculinity. It was not by chance that the implementation of a combined sport, which included besides swimming and running the three cavalry disciplines of shooting, fencing and horse-riding, arose in a pre-war context. Though in 1912 the Great War had not yet begun, the awareness for an upcoming battle was rising and led to a higher attention to Coubertin’s almost forgotten assumption of a new sport. In 1924 the advantages were finally admitted on two sides: the army recruited modern pentathletes as future military officers; the sports community appointed skilled officers as successful competitors. Thus, the lobby for an Olympic recognition of Modern Pentathlon was found

Olympic rings of peace? The Olympic movement, peacemaking and intercultural understanding

This article examines the historical and contemporary links between Olympism and peacemaking. It traces the development of thought and praxis in relation to the Olympic movement's aim and capacity to promote peaceful coexistence and intercultural understanding from the ancient Olympic Truce to the revival of the modern Olympic Games by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, to the current relationship between the Olympic movement and the United Nations peace agenda. The article highlights the perceived discrepancy between rhetoric and reality, and between theory and practice, as well as the persistent criticisms that have been levelled at the Olympic movement with regard to its peacemaking achievements. In so doing, it draws together the key issues and debates addressed in this collection of papers