Rio Olympic Research Articles

The FIFA World Cup, Human Rights Goals and the Gulf Between

With Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 on the horizon, the process for selecting hosts for the World Cup of men’s football has been plagued by charges of corruption and human rights abuses. FIFA celebrated key developing economies with South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014. But amid the aftermath of the global financial crisis, those sittings surfaced grave and persistent criticism of the social and economic efficacy of sporting mega-events. Meanwhile new norms emerged in global governance, embodied in instruments such as the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) and the Sustainable Development Goals. These norms posit that commercial aims can be harmonized with socioeconomic good. FIFA seized on the chance to restore public confidence and recommit itself to human exultation in sport, adopting sustainability strategies and engaging the architect of the UNGP to develop a human rights policy. But a vast gulf stands between FIFA today and its stated intentions for a new model of World Cup 2026. Idle stadiums and civil unrest in Brazil prolong scepticism of mega-event hosting, even as that country readies for the Rio Olympics. The Russian World Cup recalls that country’s anti-LGBT law, not to mention the Crimea invasion on the heels of the Sochi Olympics. The vast construction projects upending Qatari cityscapes have spotlighted an alarming human toll in that country’s immigration and labour practices, not to mention escalating angst over rampant spending in a depressed oil market. Can FIFA leave behind its money-soaked track record and embrace a new agenda that puts people before profit? This chapter examines a growing incompatibility between World Cup hosting and FIFA sustainability and human rights strategies. This incompatibility illustrates the difficult course that FIFA will have to navigate to make good on its promise to reform.

The Climate Spiral Demonstrates the Power of Sharing Creative Ideas

AbstractGraphical visualizations have the potential to engage diverse audiences in understanding the changes to our climate, especially when spread worldwide using both traditional and social media. The animated global temperature spiral was one of the first climate graphics to “go viral,” being viewed by millions of people online and by more than a billion people when it was used in the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics. The idea, design, and communication aspects that led to the successes of this animated graphic are discussed, highlighting the benefits to scientists of engaging actively online and openly sharing their creative ideas.

Association of Frequency of Milk or Dairy Product Consumption with Subjective Sleep Quality during Training Periods in Japanese Elite Athletes: A Cross-Sectional Study.

The purpose of the study was to examine the association of the frequencies of milk and dairy product consumption with subjective sleep quality during the training period in Japanese elite athletes. In this cross-sectional study, 682 Japanese elite athletes who were candidates for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games underwent medical evaluations at the medical center of The Japan Institute of Sports Sciences. Self-reported questionnaires were used to collect information on demographics and lifestyle (age, height, weight, sports, presence of milk allergy, smoking and drinking habits), subjective sleep quality (good, normal, or poor), bedtime, waking time, sleep duration, and frequencies of milk and dairy product consumption. Data from 679 athletes (379 men, 300 women) without milk allergy, were analyzed. Based on the frequencies of both milk and dairy product consumption, the athletes were divided into three groups: low (0-2 d/wk), middle (3-5 d/wk), and high (6-7 d/wk). Multiple logistic regression models showed that in comparison with the low milk consumption group, the middle [OR (95% CI): 0.48 (0.26-0.91)] and high groups [0.38 (0.21-0.71)] were significantly associated with a lower risk of decrease in subjective sleep quality (0: good, 1: normal or poor) only in women, after adjusting for possible confounders, such as smoking, drinking habits, and sleep duration. Accordingly, the present study elucidated that a greater frequency of milk consumption was significantly associated with a lower risk of decrease in subjective sleep quality, during training periods in women.

#SELFIES at the 2016 Rio Olympics: Comparing Self-Representations of Male and Female Athletes from the U.S. And China

Social media provides athletes an efficient platform on which to build and maintain their online image. Applying the self-representation theory of Goffman (1959), this study explored the gendered differences between the self-portrayals of U.S. and Chinese athletes. Findings suggest that hegemonic gender norms still had a strong hold on Chinese athletes’ self-disclosure, whereas minimal gender differences emerged between male and female U.S. athletes. Results suggested that cultural background had a substantial impact on self-representation for all participants. Although athletes might claim agency when presenting themselves on social media, the practice of self-portrayal should be examined within specific cultural contexts.

Biologically effective solar ultraviolet exposures and the potential skin cancer risk for individual gold medalists of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games

ABSTRACTPersonal solar ultraviolet radiation exposure models were developed for 144 Olympic events scheduled outdoors from across the 33 sport disciplines that will compete in Tokyo between 24 July and 9 August 2020. Ambient exposure models were developed from existing atmospheric parameters measured over Tokyo (35.7°N 139.7°E) and were used to weight erythemally effective solar ultraviolet exposure to gold medalists, taking into account body posture and expected protection by competitor’s clothing which was assessed in comparison to respective medalists of the 2016 Rio Olympics. Individual exposure models consider the ultraviolet surface albedo (lawn, concrete, water or sand) and timing of daily events held within Olympic venues. Exposure assessments are presented, including assessments of all preliminary rounds and qualifiers. Within scheduled outdoor events, we award first place (representing the highest and most harmful UV exposure) to the women’s tennis singles (1680 J/m2), second to men’s golf (1530 J/m2) and third to the men’s cycling road race (941 J/m2) for the highest expected erythemally effective solar ultraviolet radiation exposures of the 2020 Tokyo Games. The highest expected solar ultraviolet exposures for nations expected to win greater than three gold medals among the outdoor events were found to occur in athletes from Kenya followed closely by the United States and Hungary. Gold medalists from South Korea were found to demonstrate the highest level of sun protection due to clothing at the 2016 Rio Games, and are thus expected to receive the greatest relative reduction in erythemally effective exposure during the 2020 Tokyo Games.

An ‘Olympics without Apartheid’: Brazilian-Palestinian solidarity against Israeli securitisation

It was at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games that, for the first time, activists mobilised against the Israeli securitisation of sport. Brazilian-Palestinian solidarity action, calling for Rio to be an ‘Olympics without Apartheid’, led the then Brazilian government to distance itself from a $2 billion agreement with an Israeli security company. The authors discuss the way in which the solidarity movement emerged and how Israeli companies use Gaza as a ‘lab’ to develop weapons, policing techniques and security technologies for sale on the world market. They point to the parallels between Israel’s securocratic war of pacification and Brazil’s immense security measures against the favelas during a decade of sport mega-events. They trace the flow of securitisation between Israel and Brazil in terms of racial apartheid and settler colonialism to show the impacts on people in occupied Palestine and the favelas of Rio.

Reenacting mathematical concepts found in large-scale dance performance can provide both material and method for ensemble learning

We present exploratory analyses of three cases in which groups of four (quartets) worked with video recordings of choreographed performances from the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. We asked quartets to view the recordings, explain what performers were doing by reenacting what they noticed in the video, and create their own performances using props akin to those in the recording. In response, participants explored symmetries and transformations of quadrilaterals and triangles. We contribute to research on distributed, embodied mathematical learning at four levels. First, we argue for design research that engages in creative re-use by foraging in public media for performances with mathematical potential, then designing activities that invite learners to dissect and reenact these performances to explore that potential. Second, we analyze quartets’ work as a form of ensemble learning that hybridizes dance and mathematics. Third, we describe interactions that produced intercorporeality in the material work of quartets. Finally, we argue for reenactment as a supplement to methods of Interaction Analysis, using our own analysis as an illustration of this novel approach.

Samba, sun and social issues: How the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics changed perceptions of Germans about Brazil

The host countries for mega-sporting events aim to become more visible and to be perceived positively by the global audience because of the media coverage around the event. The media’s influence on people’s perceptions is expected to be particularly high if the audience has no direct experience and little prior knowledge of the hosting nation, and thus depends on the media for information. Using a panel survey ( N = 76) with three rounds of data collection, this longitudinal study explores how television viewers’ perceptions of Brazil changed from before the 2014 FIFA World Cup to after this event, and after the 2016 Olympic Games hosted by Brazil. The results indicate that perceptions about topics related to Brazil (e.g. crime risk, standard of living, economic situation) have generally become more negative over time. Further, although associations with Brazil were very positive before the FIFA World Cup, respondents tended to associate more negative ideas with Brazil over time. Surprisingly, the intention to travel to Brazil increased after Brazil hosted the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics. Broader international significance of the findings for both host countries of mega-sporting events and broadcasting countries are discussed.

Variability of competition results during one season in swimming

The purpose of this study was to investigate how performance of elite swimmers develop during one season from competition to competition. A small variability of performance has been suggested to correlate with superior competition results, which is why understanding the connection between performance and its variability is interesting for sports science researchers, coaches, and athletes alike. We analysed all competitions of ten European Olympic medallists and nine German Olympic swimmers in an eight-month competition period culminating in the Rio Olympics in 2016. We analysed the variability in performance using the coefficient of variation (CV). We estimated CVs for German (0.68%) and European (0.52%) athletes, as well as for certain subgroups (sprinters [0.60%], middle distance athletes [0.45%], males [0.57%], females [0.40%]). The variability decreased from the first section of the measurement to its end period by 71%. We conclude that a small performance variability is an important indicator for peaking performance at the season’s major event.

Automatic Generation of Audio Descriptions for Sports Programs

The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) has developed a means of automatically generating auxiliary audio descriptions from metadata for use in live TV sports programs. Audio description services are important for helping visually impaired persons enjoy TV programs, but such services are currently available for only a handful of programs because many studio resources and personnel are required to create audio descriptions, and it is especially difficult to produce such descriptions during live broadcasts. The method described in this paper has the potential to overcome these obstacles. The system that we constructed for the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games consists of commentary text generation and text-to-speech (TTS) processes. The commentary text generation process generates commentary appropriate to the situation for each piece of event data accepted by the system, and the TTS part converts it into natural speech. We ran the system during the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games, and it provided both caption and audio descriptions for more than 2,000 sporting contests.

Gender differences in sleep patterns and sleep complaints of elite athletes.

Objective:The present study aimed to investigate the gender differences for sleep complaints, patterns and disorders of elite athletes during preparation for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.Methods:The study included 146 athletes from the Brazilian Olympic Team (male: n=86; 59%; female: n=60; 41%). The assessment of the Olympic athletes’ sleep took place in 2015, during the preparation period for the Rio Olympic Games. The athletes underwent a single polysomnography (PSG) evaluation. Sleep specialists evaluated the athletes and asked about their sleep complaints during a clinical consultation. In this evaluation week, the athletes did not take part in any training or competitions.Results:The prevalence of sleep complaints was 53% of the athletes during the medical consultation, the most prevalent being insufficient sleep/waking up tired (32%), followed by snoring (21%) and insomnia (19.2%). In relation to the sleep pattern findings, the men had significantly higher sleep latency and wake after sleep onset than the women (p=0.004 and p=0.002, respectively). The sleep efficiency and sleep stages revealed that men had a lower percentage of sleep efficiency and slow wave sleep than the women (p=0.001 and p=0.05, respectively).Conclusion:Most athletes reported some sleep complaints, with men reporting more sleep complaints than women in the clinical evaluation. The PSG showed that 36% of all athletes had a sleep disorder with a greater reduction in sleep quality in men than in women.

국가대표 복싱선수들의 리우올림픽출전 실패원인에 대한 내러티브 탐구

The stories from the two coaches of the National Boxing Teams who have experiences planning and coaching the 2016 National Boxer selection process as well as observing their participation in the first half of first half of the Asian Qualification Tournament in order to secure the Rio Olympic tickets were selected as narratives to be analyzed as a part of a qualitative research method in which in depth 1:1 interviews are conducted five to six times and the corresponding recordings are presented and reconstructed to fit the research topic. A former national boxer participated in the study and drew findings based on the research journals and self-narrative analysis. First, there were limitations in improving the performance in matches with limited domestic athletes and insufficient off-season training and little experience. Second, a lack of experts who can resolve diplomatic conflicts at the Asian competition sites resulted in receiving an unfair verdict from AIBA(Amateur International Boxing Association) judges. Third, with insufficient budget support from the national boxing team to participate in the Rio Olympics, the team lacked opportunities to gain hands-on experience with foreign players through overseas training.

Tradition vs. Pop Culture: Attracting Tourists with the Cool Japan Campaign

In 2008 the Japanese government set a goal of attracting 20 million foreign tourists by the Olympics in 2020. The country managed to achieve that goal by last year and has since revised their goal to 40 million tourists by 2020. A big part of the drive to increase tourist numbers has been the government led Cool Japan campaign. Attracting foreign tourists remains one of the mainstays of the Cool Japan campaign, as can be seen in the tourist-focused events and advertising witnessed overseas. One of the key aspects of the Cool Japan campaign has been to promote creative cultural industries, in particular businesses associated with anime, manga and gaming. This can be seen in such promotional activities as the closing ceremony for the Rio Olympics and the appointment of anime characters such as Doraemon, Atom Boy and Sailor Moon as ambassadors for Japan. However, the campaign has been accused of lacking focus as it tries to simultaneously promote aspects of both traditional and modern Japanese culture. This can be seen in the Japan National Tourism Organisation’s promotional campaigns featuring more traditional aspects of Japanese culture such as temples and festivals. In addition, there have been accusations that the Cool Japan campaign has done little to understand what foreign visitors are actually interested in and how best to promote the country. This paper investigates the success of the Cool Japan campaign and looks at the extent to which this fractured focus is actually attracting tourists. The research draws on data collected in Japan with those experiencing Japan as part of their vacation and interviews with tourists. The focus of this paper is on how the Cool Japan campaign influences potential tourists, and how effective the use of anime characters to promote Japan actually is.

The Medal War in Peacetime: Examining Nationalistic Notions Embedded in CCTV’s Coverage of Gymnastics in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics

The development of modern sports in China, to a large extent, has been motivated by nationalism. This study examines the Chinese Central Television’s (CCTV) full gymnastics broadcast (over 14 hours) of the 2016 Rio Olympics by content analysis, uncovering that CCTV held clear favoritism toward home athletes, particularly in a context in which Chinese gymnasts were largely unsuccessful. CCTV’s evident preference toward home athletes echoes an “us vs. them” dichotomy in which the network is inclined to seek superiority over other countries by enthusiastically complimenting in-group members. This study sheds light on sports nationalism in Chinese sports cultures, with theoretical and practical implications provided.

Wrestling women: Caste and neoliberalism in rural Haryana

In the 2016 blockbuster film Dangal, a young wrestler by the name of Geeta Phogat is taken by her father to Rohtak, in the western Indian state of Haryana, to participate in her first wrestling match. He is ridiculed for attempting to enroll his daughter into the hyper male domain and sent on his way. But the organizers soon relent when they see the potential for a salacious scandal of a girl fighting a boy. The scene establishes rural Haryana as a space of hyper misogyny and public space dominated by men who enjoy crude entertainment. But when the young Geeta takes on the toughest of contestants and defeats him, the victory symbolizes something larger – vindication against routine humiliation girls are made to feel. The year 2016 brought unprecedented publicity to women wrestlers in India. Sakshi Malik won the Bronze medal in wrestling for India at the Rio Olympics, and film audiences were treated to two blockbuster films on women wrestlers from Haryana. In this essay, I suggest that the celebratory story of wrestling women both elides and is made possible by Haryana’s, and the larger Indian state’s, neoliberal agenda. I argue that neoliberalism is able to accommodate the contradictions of Haryana’s skewed sex ratio while at the same time produce and celebrate successful women athletes. Second, the story of wrestling women cannot be understood without caste as a fundamentally structuring dimension of success. I make these arguments at three different scales – body and household, village and district, the state.

The Effects of Zika Virus Risk Coverage on Familiarity, Knowledge and Behavior in the U.S. – A Time Series Analysis Combining Content Analysis and a Nationally Representative Survey

ABSTRACTThis study assessed the effects of the February through September 2016 American news media’s coverage of Zika Virus (ZIKV) risk on the U.S. public’s familiarity, knowledge and behavior in the form of interpersonal discussions. A content analysis (N = 2,782 pieces) revealed that the Rio Olympic Games elicited a spike in coverage of Zika. We also found that newsworthy and easy- to- depict aspects of the disease, specifically its transmission by mosquitoes and its relation to microcephaly were covered more extensively than its sexual transmission and transmissibility from an infected person who is asymptomatic. Nevertheless, survey data over the same period of time (N = 37,180 respondents) revealed that the general amount of coverage, rather than the specifics about Zika transmission and its consequences, influenced the public’s familiarity, knowledge, and behavior.

Social responsibility and global health: lessons from the Rio Olympics Zika controversy.

The outbreak of Zika virus infection in the Americas and its possible association with microcephaly raised several concerns among global health authorities regarding the organisation of the Olympic and Paralympic Games scheduled for August and September 2016, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It generated an international controversy over the continuation of the Games with debates on the ethical principle of social responsibility. Based on the principles of social responsibility and health in the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, the present comment ponders on the application of such principles in the context of mega-events and global health.

Twitter, Team GB and the Australian Olympic Team: representations of gender in social media spaces

Twitter is used by athletes, sporting teams and sports media to provide updates on the results of sporting events as they happen. Unlike traditional forms of sports media, online sports media offers the potential for diverse representations of athletes. The current study examined gender in social media coverage of the 2016 Olympic Games using a third wave feminist lens. The analysis focused on the Twitter pages of ‘Team GB’ and the ‘Australian Olympic team’ and the sports stories and images posted during the Rio Olympic Games. Despite a number of traditional differences in the ways that male and females were represented being present, such as the presence of ‘active’ images of male athletes accompanying sports stories and the presence of infantalization in the language used to represent female performers, this analysis demonstrated significant strides forward in terms of the quantity of coverage received by women in online spaces. It further highlights virtual platforms as dynamic spaces for the representation of women athletes.

How persuasive is phishing email? The role of authentic design, influence and current events in email judgements

ABSTRACTFraudulent emails, otherwise known as phishing emails, use a range of influence techniques to persuade individuals to respond, such as promising a monetary reward or invoking a sense of urgency. The current study explored a number of factors that may impact the persuasiveness and trustworthiness of emails by examining participant judgements of 20 pre-designed emails that varied according to (a) whether they used loss or reward-based influence techniques, (b) whether they contained particular authentic design cues, (c) whether they referenced a salient current event (the Rio Olympics), and (d) whether participants had been previously exposed to information regarding online scams in general. Results suggest that the presence of authentic design cues and the type of influence technique used significantly impacted participant judgements. Findings are discussed in relation to theoretical models of phishing susceptibility.

Sponsorship of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games: An Empirical Examination of the Reactions to Local Sponsors and Rival Brands

Sponsorship of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games: An Empirical Examination of the Reactions to Local Sponsors and Rival Brands