This book is largely a collection of the papers presented at the symposium Olympism, Olympic Education and Learning Legacies, organised by the Comité Internationale Pierre de Coubertin (CIPC). It was held during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent, United Kingdom. The symposium drew together presenters and audience members from twenty-five nations on four continents to discuss current and future challenges of education and the Olympic Movement. While most books on the Olympics focus on economic issues or on aspects related to the management of the Games (such as legacies and impacts), this book remains faithful to Coubertin’s original vision about youth, sport and education. Olympism as a philosophical and educational idea is analysed in particular detail. Coubertin’s thoughts play a central role in many of the contributions of leading academics in the field, while historical perspectives unveil new insights. Young researchers are given a platform to publish their own accounts in interpreting the Olympics. The different insights of the book have something to offer to anyone with an interest in sport, education, and the Olympic Movement, either as a student, teacher, academic, athlete, coach or spectator.

"Olympic Education" is not only a text book for students and teachers in physical and sport education but also for course instructors and coaches in children's youth sport programmes, as well as for executives in sports federations. It answers the question, what the term "Olympic" really means in the broader context of the Olympic Games movement and as a global purpose and new challenge for a balanced physical, social and moral education. Olympic education has a traditional vision and an important future mission that is relevant for all children and youths, in schools as well as in sport clubs. In five parts and fifteen chapters, the book shows why the Olympic ideals are a modern challenge not only for a new physical and sport education but also for the development of essential life skills for today. It introduces pedagogical and didactical fundamentals for an Olympic education, in order to bring motor abilities, social behaviour and moral actions in sports and everyday life back together again - in the mind, learning and actions of children and youths, but also of grown-ups in the social settings where young people live.

For more than a century, the Olympics have been the modern world's most significant sporting event. Indeed, they deserve much credit for globalizing sport beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American universe, where it originated, into broader global realms. By the 1930s, the Olympics had become a global mega-event that occupied the attention of the media, the interest of the public and the energies of nation-states. Since then, projected by television, funded by global capital and fattened by the desires of nations to garner international prestige, the Olympics have grown to gargantuan dimensions. In the course of its epic history, the Olympics have left numerous legacies, from unforgettable feats to monumental stadiums, from shining triumphs to searing tragedies, from the dazzling debuts on the world's stage of new cities and nations to notorious campaigns of national propaganda. The Olympics represent an essential component of modern global history. The Olympic movement itself has, since the 1990s, recognized and sought to shape its numerous legacies with mixed success as this book makes clear. It offers ground-breaking analyses of the power of Olympic legacies, positive and negative, and surveys the subject from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008, and indeed beyond. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

A fundamental component of the Olympic ideal is the concept of Olympic education. This is the notion that sport can help children and young people develop essential life skills. Olympic Education: An international review is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey of the diffusion and implementation of Olympic education programmes around the world. The book includes 28 chapters with 21 national case studies of countries on every major continent, including Australia, Brasil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK, the US and Zambia. Each chapter examines the cultural, pedagogical, political and societal challenges of teaching Olympic education, as well as the national, individual and institutional programmes that have emerged. It explores key practical and conceptual issues, such as the incorporation of Olympic values in PE curricula, sport coaching and coach education programmes, while also taking into account the collaborative efforts of the governmental bodies, sport federations and Olympic institutions responsible for policy and implementation. This is important reading for all students, researchers and professionals with an interest in the Olympics, sport education, sports coaching, sport policy or physical education.

These Curriculum Guides are instructional guides for teachers of elementary, junior, and high school students. This volume is designed to inform students about the Olympic Games and its traditions, ideals, and events. It is a value-based educational program highlighting the history and philosophy of the Olympic Movement. The lessons have been carefully designed to appeal to students of all grade levels and subject areas. Each unit of the book is divided into several easy-to-use parts that are designed to facilitate learning and quick access of information.

This book examines claims that the Olympic Games are a vehicle to inspire and increase mass sport participation. It focuses on the mass sport participation legacy of the most recent hosts of the summer Olympics, including Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London, Rio, and Tokyo. It is organised by host city/country and applies an analytical framework to each, addressing the socio-political context that shapes sport policy, the key changes in sport policy, the structure and governance of community sport, the Olympic and Paralympic legacy, and the changes in mass sport participation before, during, and after the Games. The book is important reading for students, researchers, and policymakers working in sport governance, sport development or management, and the sport policy sector.

When a city wins the right to hold the Olympics, one of the oft cited advantages to the region is the catalytic effect upon the urban and transport projects of the host cities. However, with unparalleled access to documents and records, Eva Kassens-Noor questions and challenges this fundamental assertion of host cities who claim to have used the Olympic Games as a way to move forward their urban agendas In fact, transport dreams to stage the "perfect games" of the International Olympic Committee and the governments of the host cities have lead to urban realities that significantly differ from the development path the city had set out to accomplish before winning the Olympic bid. Ultimately it is precisely the IOC’s influence – and the city’s foresight and sophistication (or lack thereof) in coping with it – that determines whether years after the Games there are legacies benefitting the former hosts. The text is supported by revealing interviews from lead host city planners and key documents, which highlight striking discrepancies between media broadcasts and the internal communications between the IOC and host city governments. It focuses on the inside story of the urban and transport change process undergone by four cities (Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, and Athens) that staged the Olympics and forecasts London and Rio de Janeiro’s urban trajectories. The final chapter advises cities on how to leverage the Olympic opportunity to advance their long-run urban strategic plans and interests while fulfilling the International Olympic Committee’s fundamental requirements. This is a uniquely positioned look at why Olympic cities have – or do not have – the transport and urban legacies they had wished for. The book will be of interest to planners, government agencies and those involved in organizing future Games.

How do Olympic legacies come about? This book offers an alternative approach to the study of Olympic and mega-sport event legacy, challenging how legacy is conceptualised and practised. It shifts the focus from legacy as a retrospective concept concerned with what has been left behind after the Games, to a prospective one interested in actions and interactions stimulated by the Games. The book argues that creating Olympic legacy is a continuing four-stage process involving ‘investing’ (the accumulated common Olympic cultural capital), ‘interpelling’ (forming a trusteeship relationship where one party undertakes to change the capacity of another), ‘developing’ (ensuring participation in interactions and resource development) and ‘codifying’ (documenting, sharing and remembering legacies so they become cultural capital). It presents a developmental approach to the Olympics which involves vision, trustees and trusteeship and is concerned with capacity building at individual, organisational and societal levels. Thinking of Olympic legacy as capacity building allows seeing the goal of legacy as an embodiment of the aspirations of the Olympic Movement and the Games to introduce radical change in society by transforming its structure. Rethinking Olympic Legacy is essential reading for all students and scholars within an interest in the Olympics, as well as for administrators, policymakers and planners involved with mega-sport events.