2024 marks the 100-year anniversary of the winter sports week festival celebrated in Chamonix in 1924, which is now recognized as the first Olympic Winter Games. As a globally watched quadrennial mega-event, the Winter Olympics is unique from both summer sport festivals and other winter festivals, such as the Winter X Games.
This book explores the impacts, issues, and legacies of the past century of the Olympic Winter Games. Grounded in sport history, the chapters in this volume draw on the disciplines of cultural history, diplomatic history, global history, environmental history, and media history to analyze the continued allure of the Winter Olympics, a century after its origin, and in light of the sustained and significant problems facing the Olympic movement. Host cities’ efforts to create positive and lasting legacies are analyzed to highlight the challenges and complexities that have plagued the Olympic movement throughout the last century.
The Olympic Winter Games at 100 is essential reading for any researcher, advanced student or scholar with an interest in Olympic Studies, sports development, sport policy and history. The chapters in this book were published as two special issues in The International Journal of the History of Sport but now with a revised introduction and conclusion.
Table of Contents:
Introduction - A Century of Olympics on Ice and Snow Part I: Challenges and Complexities of the Olympic Winter Games 1. Olympic Winter Games, ‘Cold Sports’, and Inclusive Values 2. Summer Meets Winter: African Nations Participating at the Winter Olympics, 1960–2018 3. The Cool Runnings Effect: Flexible Citizenship, the Global South, and Transcultural Republics at the Winter Olympic Games 4. Lost in the Vault?: Demonstration Sports at the Winter Olympics and How Digital Media Can Bring Them ‘Back to the Future’ 5. Snowboarding Youth Culture and the Winter Olympics: Co-Evolution in an American-Driven Show 6. Planning for Legacy in the Post-War Era of the Olympic Winter Games Part II: National and Local Aspirations to Host Winter Games 7. The Icy Road towards the First Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix 1924 8. Canadian Government Involvement in Calgary’s Failed 1968 Winter Olympic Bid 9. The Games That Never Happened: Social Reception and Press Coverage of the Kraków Bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics (2012–2014) 10. Winter Olympic Referendums: Reasons for Opposition to the Games Part III: Politics and Diplomacy at the Games 11. The 1928 Olympic Winter Games in St Moritz: Tourism, Diplomacy and Domestic Politics 12. Grenoble 1968, Albertville 1992, and the Establishment of a Strategy to Protect and Market the Winter Olympic Emblems 13. A Tale of Two Medals: The USA, Olympic Ice Hockey and Popular American Views of Détente (1972) and Renewed Cold War (1980) Part IV: Environmental, Physical, and Social Legacies 14. The 1952 and 1994 Olympic Flames: Norway’s Quest for Winter Olympic Identity 15. The Environmental Reimagining of Olympic Sarajevo 16. ‘A Strong, Sustainable Legacy:’ The Environment and Japan’s Winter Olympics 17. Olympic Winter Games in Non-Western Cities: State, Sport and Cultural Diplomacy in Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022 Conclusion - The Future of Olympic Winter Games Research
About the Author :
Heather L. Dichter is Associate Professor of Sport History and Sport Management in the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.
Sarah Teetzel is Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management and Senior Fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.
