Olympic Dream Research Articles

Chasing an Olympic dream: a holistic approach to how youth athletes narrate injuries, performance, and the value of being seen

ABSTRACT This article explores how athletes experience injuries and performance pressures when striving for an “Olympic dream”, and focuses on how ten young women, aged 19–22, understand present and past experiences with injuries. Through a narrative analysis, we found that female players striving to become elite athletes often talk about injuries as something that made them feel invisible in a culture where visibility is key. “Being seen” emerged as a parallel narrative to that of injuries and the elite athlete as the players often looked back with regrets about how young and naïve they had been. This holistic take on injuries as a cultural construct is important for any coach to consider when working with young aspiring athletes. We conclude that this process is contingent on social processes and is a matter of when, how, and on what or whose terms young athletes are seen.

Winter Olympic Dreams and Foreign Friends

Winter Olympic Dreams and Foreign Friends

Fighting for Olympic dreams and life beyond: Olympian judokas on striving for glory and tackling post-athletic challenges.

This study explores the experiences of Olympian judokas, examining both their pursuit of excellence to compete at the Olympics and their subsequent transition out of judo. The aim is to offer empirical evidence regarding the challenges they face in realizing their Olympic dreams, and to shed light on the transitional challenges, available resources, and needs they face as they move toward post-athletic lives. We conducted semi-structured interviews with eight Olympian judokas: five males and three females, all of whom have retired from competitive judo. These participants are from Portugal (n = 1), Republic of Korea (n = 2), and the United Kingdom (n = 5). We employed thematic analysis, which led to the identification of five main themes: (a) From Dreams to Olympic Reality, (b) Facing the Void: Loss of Goals and Identity, (c) The Crucial Role of Social Support, (d) Dual Aspects of Pre-Retirement Planning, and (e) The Double Edge of Organizational Support. The findings highlight the significant challenges faced by Olympian judokas, including goal and identity loss post-retirement, and the need for comprehensive and accessible organizational support, particularly psychological assistance, to assist in their transition to post-athletic life. The findings not only enhance our understanding of judokas' experiences during transition but also offer insights that could guide the development of tailored support programs. It is critical for sport governing bodies and practitioners to apply these insights in creating comprehensive and easily accessible support systems, which will ensure a smoother transition to post-athletic life for high-performance athletes.

Who Is to Blame and What Is to Be Done? The Rise and Fall of Russian Authority in the Olympics

Who Is to Blame and What Is to Be Done? The Rise and Fall of Russian Authority in the Olympics

Tokyo Olympics 2020: Between dream and contention

ABSTRACT What was and what will remain of the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympic and Paralympic Games? This special issue brings together assessments from different perspectives regarding diverse aspects of the impact and legacy of Tokyo’s second Summer Olympics. It is safe to say that Tokyo 2020/2021, as the COVID-19 games, did not fully achieve what the Japanese organizers had hoped it would. On the contrary, the Olympic dream of 2020 was postponed and met quite substantial opposition. This introduction discusses the main findings of the contributions and places them in the larger context. The focus is on four aspects of Tokyo 2020/2021: 1) the Olympics as a political project of the conservative establishment and former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō; 2) critical perspectives on the Olympics as a mega event; 3) social movements and protests against the Olympics; 4) impact of the Olympics on technological innovation and city infrastructure.

Abandoned to manage the post-Olympic blues: Olympians reflect on their experiences and the need for a change

ABSTRACT The post-Olympic period is complex and distressing for many Olympic athletes; preparing for the likely impacts of the Olympic Games amongst returning athletes is fundamental in managing the negative responses articulated as the post-Olympic blues. Mindful of the need for the development of interventions that can support athletes, this study engaged Olympic athletes in: (a) discussing their experiences relating to the Olympic and post-Olympic periods and, (b) informing the researchers on Olympians’ opinions on the management of the post-Olympic blues. Fourteen Olympic athletes from the United Kingdom took part in focus groups which were analysed using Thematic Analysis. The analysis produced six mutually exclusive themes, The Olympic Dream, The Olympic Nightmare, Commodification, Perceptions of Social Support, Limited Preparation, and Managing and Overcoming. Through these themes the Olympians provided suggestions into how the content and potential facilitation of future interventions could better support athletes through their experiences. The findings were clear, Olympic athletes irrespective of whether they had previously competed in an Olympic Games expressed a desire for support in preparing for the post-Olympic experience. They expressed that this should be delivered primarily after the Olympic Games, with several athletes highlighting the value of an awareness raising session beforehand. Athletes proposed a shift away from expert sport psychology delivery of interventions in favour of a programme which was pragmatic in terms of content and delivered by former Olympians.

The smartphone aesthetics of mobility in Kate Evans’s Threads and Reinhard Kleist’s An Olympic Dream

In the last decade, comics and graphic novels on migration have become an essential forum for representing refugee experience. This emergent genre of graphic narration not only offers the representation of migrant hardships from the subjective perspective of refugees, artists and volunteers working in the community, comics on the refugee crisis also develop empathy and awareness for the plight of migrants internationally by giving a voice to countless nameless – and often faceless – migrants, whose images circulate widely in the media. Moreover, comic artists working on refugee and migrant subjects are inventing new visual languages to express these individuals’ perilous journeys from war-torn regions of the Middle East, Africa and Asia to European soil, incorporating the very media technologies essential for migration – and its representation – into the comics form. Looking at the smartphone and social media aesthetics of two comics on global forced migration, Kate Evans’s Threads: From the Refugee Crisis and Reinhard Kleist’s An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar, this article assesses the significance of incorporating the technologies of migration into its representation.

Going that Extra Mile

Dr. Jack Taunton’s diligence and total commitment allowed a young athlete to pursue his Olympic dream.

Assembling the sense of home in emigrant elite athletes: Cultural transitions, narrative and materiality

ObjectiveDespite a growing body of literature on cultural transitions, little is known regarding how emigrant elite athletes experience and intra-act with the non-human environment in the host country, and how this affects their sense of home. This study explores the relationships between the material world and the embodied narratives, both personal and socio-cultural, regarding the process of assembling a new sense of home. Design and MethodsSeven Colombian emigrant elite athletes (4 female and 3 male), that emigrated pursuing the Olympic Dream, participated in this study. The philosophical concept of assemblage, from New Materialism approach, was used as a companion and extension of narrative dialogical analysis to analyse life-story interviews. ResultsEmigrant athletes define home as a place of refuge where they can express emotions, behave, and communicate in ways that ‘feel natural’. During cultural transitions, these athletes assembled a sense of home in two environments: the housing and the sport facilities. The relationships with (a) architectural spaces, (b) objects, (c) food, (d) technological apparels and (d) sport materiality facilitated or hindered the process of assembling a new sense of home in the host country. ConclusionsThe transformation of housing and the sport facilities into Home is a crucial process to improve the quality of emigrant athlete’s cultural transition. A deeper appreciation of materiality in research and applied practice is needed.

“¡Somos escaladoras!” Historias de vida de mujeres ciclistas en equipos internacionales

Recientemente, la psicología del deporte ha centrado su atención en la carrera de deportistas mi-grantes transnacionales, quienes transitan entre diversos contextos culturales y experimentan transi-ciones culturales. Sin embargo, son pocos los estudios sobre esta transición con mujeres deportistas. Por ello, mediante la metodología de historias de vida, este artículo explora las experiencias de dos mujeres ciclistas latinoamericanas al transitar hacia equipos profesionales internacionales. El análi-sis temático permitió construir cuatro temas: (a) “el sueño olímpico”, (b) “enfrentándose a lo des-conocido”, (c) “redes que sostienen” y (d) “mujeres y escaladoras”. Se identificó que uno de los motivos para migrar es ayudar a mejorar la calidad de vida de sus familias. Además, durante esta transición, las ciclistas relataron experimentar cambios en las dinámicas de comunicación con su familia y el papel significativo de sus parejas como fuentes de apoyo emocional. En la Discusión, proponemos estrategias para asesorar a ciclistas transnacionales latinoamericanas durante esta tran-sición.

Beyond tabulated utopias: Action and contradiction in urban environments

In this commentary I reflect upon the possibilities for action to deliver sustainable and just urban environments. I depart from the questions that inspire this special issue: what is it about cities that enables them to make a substantial contribution to environmental dilemmas? And how did cities become the darling trope of the international environmental policy regime? I use the metaphor of ‘the Crystal Palace’ to situate proposals for sustainable urbanism in a spectrum of options between naïve idealism and full-fledged cynicism. I argue that between those two extremes there are multiple alternatives to advance sustainable futures. Urban political ecology (UPE) is in a privileged position to reveal the contradictions inherent in the current incarnation of sustainable urbanism. That is why UPE scholars cannot miss the opportunity to produce context-relevant research to change urban sustainability policies and beliefs. In the second part of this commentary, I explore a case study already presented elsewhere in the special issue. The case of the successive unsuccessful projects for Olympic candidacy in Jaca (Spain) shows the impact of a series of speculative design exercises to build a technocratic eco-city. However, Jaca’s Olympic dreams have historical and cultural roots in the town. Its inhabitants have both propelled and contested the Olympic project at different moments over the evolution of the project. Progressive forms of environmentalism also emerge from the encounter between urban history and utopian thinking.

Olympic Dreams or Broken Promises: Evaluation of the XXII Olympic Winter Games’ Vision and Impact on Infrastructure, Environment, Athletic Venues, and Tourism

Olympic Dreams or Broken Promises: Evaluation of the XXII Olympic Winter Games’ Vision and Impact on Infrastructure, Environment, Athletic Venues, and Tourism

Technologies of National Narration, Erasure, and Invisibility in the Chinese Science-Fiction Short Story, “The Olympic Dream”

Technologies of National Narration, Erasure, and Invisibility in the Chinese Science-Fiction Short Story, “The Olympic Dream”

TOWARD A THANATOLOGYOF OLYMPIC STADIUMS

The sociology of sport has over a 30-year history of developing a deeper understanding of urban life by conceptualizing the ways in which sport, both as a dominant cultural form, and as the infrastructure that houses it, is connected to the construct of community and identity. Olympic stadiums, for example, are projected as symbols of global urban status, focal points for local collective identity, and as verification of urban regeneration success –that is, in a sense, as the concrete embodiment of the Olympic Dream. So what happens when an Olympic stadium is abandoned or destroyed? What happens when an Olympic stadium dies? The purpose of this essay is to provoke thought about the role and meaning of Olympic stadium death. We draw upon media studies, gerontological, and thanatological literature to explore how former Olympic stadiums are presented in global media reports. Situated in the notion that cultural objects have a biography of a life span much as individuals do (Kopytoff, 1986), we ultimately call for a thanatology of sports stadiums.

Paving the Olympic Dream: The Politics of the 2007 Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro

The making of the 2007 Pan-American Games, held in the city of Rio de Janeiro, marked the beginning of the long transformation that this city would undergo in connection to sports mega-events. This paper revisits how the 2007 Pan-American Games were largely produced under the promise that its legacies, particularly the infrastructural ones, could be effectively mobilized in order to strengthen the chances of bringing the Olympics to Brazil for the first time. Whereas this rhetoric has proven somewhat successful in helping the city to secure the right to host the 2016 Olympics, the alleged connection between both events has shown to be much more limited than its proponents had initially advertized. In reality, most of the venues constructed for the Pan-American Games had to be thoroughly renovated for the Olympics, while some of them presented structural problems and/or failed to meet the standards imposed by international sports federations.

From the Olympic dream to a down to earth approach: Lausanne’s sports events hosting strategy

In the context of globalized competition among territories, cities, regions and countries have to find new ways to be attractive to companies, investors, tourists and residents. In that perspective, major sports events (such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup) are often seen as a lever for territorial development. Based on that idea, many sports events hosting strategies have emerged in the eighties and nineties. However, the growing competition in the sports events’ market and the gigantism of those major events, forced some territories to turn to smaller events. This necessary resize of their strategy raises the question of their capacity to meet the initial objectives, which aim usually at developing the economy and promoting the image of the host destination. This essay sketches out the evolution of a sports events hosting strategy in a city that does not have the resources (either financial, human or in terms of infrastructures) to attract major international sports events. The challenges they have to face and a possible solution based on the event portfolio perspective are discussed through the article.

The Healthy Asthmatic

The Healthy Asthmatic

Olympic Dreams and Social Realities: A Foucauldian Analysis of Legacy and Mass Participation

Focussing on the London 2012 legacy claim relating to increased activity levels and sports participation, the paper discusses a range of factors which appear to militate against its achievement. Utilising a Foucauldian theoretical framework, we discuss how some of these operate at the conceptual and linguistic level, while others relate to governmental processes, and still another to the distinction between active engagement with the Games as carnival/festival and passive consumption as spectacle. Closest attention is paid to the negative effects on mass participation of a mind-set and collateral social practices, amplified in sport, which prioritise the avoidance of all risk, and particularly the risk of abuse. Drawing on data from a recent ESRC-funded research project, we demonstrate how this has resulted in a culture of fear and corrosive mistrust, which can only reduce grassroots willingness to take up sports, and the effectiveness and commitment of the coaches required to support it. The social context of discourse is considered, and Foucault's conceptual ‘toolbox’ is deployed, to encapsulate the interrelationship of risk society, moral panic, and governmentality.

China's Olympic Dream and the Legacies of the Beijing Olympics

This paper aims to present a historical overview of the transformation of the modern Olympic Games in China and highlight the legacies of the Beijing Olympics. The authors first clarify the context and the specific date on which the modern Olympic Games was introduced to China. The next section highlights the ‘Three Questions’ on China's engagement with the Olympics. Answering these questions paves the way for the Chinese to participate in the Olympics with great enthusiasm. During the past hundred years, the Chinese undertook a number of Olympic-like sports practices to adapt the Olympic model, including the organisation of a National Games and the establishment of nationwide sport organisations. The country has been actively in bidding to host the Olympic Games since 1990 and finally won a chance to host the 2008 Olympics. The last section of this paper seeks to evaluate the heritages of the Beijing Olympics to the Chinese society.

Christian Inspiration in Descartes' Olympic Dreams

The Heythrop JournalVolume 54, Issue 3 p. 371-384 ARTICLE Christian Inspiration in Descartes' Olympic Dreams Paul O'Mahoney, Paul O'Mahoney Dublin, IrelandSearch for more papers by this author Paul O'Mahoney, Paul O'Mahoney Dublin, IrelandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 14 December 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2012.00791.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume54, Issue3May 2013Pages 371-384 RelatedInformation