Whatever you think about the sporting events themselves, there’s one thing about the Olympics which always draws the crowds and that’s the opening ceremony. These events have been increasing exponentially in scale and razzle-dazzle over the years, and one of the main problems for each host city these days is the question of how to improve on the previous city’s efforts. Beijing really upped the ante in 2008 and one could easily imagine the good souls at LOCOG getting glummer and glummer as they watched each mind-boggling set piece unfold. No chance of trumping that approach, so what other extreme can we opt for: something whimsically cack-handed perhaps; something charmingly rustic and spontaneous; Sooty and Sweep? Well, your guess is as good as mine, and the actual event will for some time be as deep and dark a secret as the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress was. What we do know now though, is that LOCOG have started on the process of choosing the participants in the ceremony and have called for 10,000 volunteers. (http://bit.ly/oOOPuu )

Of course opening and closing ceremonies weren’t always like this. The opening ceremony at the 1948 London Games involved some massed bands, some marching and the usual IOC rituals of the singing of the Olympic hymn, the taking of the Olympic oath and the lighting of the Olympic flame (all of which must be included, whatever flights of fancy the host city has in mind for the rest of the occasion). However, it is inevitable that such globally consumed events take on a significance which is to some extent disassociated from the sport to follow. The host city and the nation to which it belongs are on show. Much depends – in terms of reputation and other more convoluted attributes – on impressing the world audience in some way or another, depending on what impression you actually wish to leave them with.

For those with a sociological turn of mind, the subtext to these ceremonies is by far the most interesting aspect of the whole thing. What are these host cities really trying to put across, we ask ourselves: how inclusive they are, how democratic, how disciplined, how efficient, how inventive, how colourful? Or even how pragmatic they are, perhaps. Will London 2012 opt to say to the world ‘it’s all very exciting, but isn’t this opening ceremony thing getting just a bit too much?’ For sure, if we do manage to lower the ante, generations of host cities can only thank us for it.

See our mega events bibliography for books and journal articles on ceremonies: http://bit.ly/mVPqfS

 

 

 

 If you asked someone to reveal his or her Olympic heroes, you would normally expect them to name famous athletes like Jesse Owens, Emile Zatopek or Kelly Holmes. We naturally expect Games heroes to be athlete-centred because that is where all the drama and the spectacle is. But in some ways the unsung heroes are just as interesting, and by these I mean those people who make the thing happen, and who sometimes pay the price.

 Round the corner from where I live is a congregational chapel (now in use as a nursery). It is popularly supposed to contain the grave of a workman who was one of the several casualties during the erection of the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, which is (or rather was in the Palace’s case) just up the hill. One can picture that sad scene as a navvy – which he probably was- was laid to rest in the dark green shade of the chapel’s small burial ground. He may have been one of those who died in a scaffolding accident at the Crystal Palace in 1853. The Times says of the accident that it was  "...an example of the risks to which the working classes are exposed in the course of their employment” and observes that the men concerned “ have perished while engaged upon the construction of a building unparalleled for its magnitude”

Now, lest you think I have turned into Charles Dickens or am about to embark on a gothic horror story let me hasten to add that there’s actually a sunny side to these reflections, and that’s the occasion of the recent awarding to ODA and its delivery partner CLM of a RoSPA award for health & safety in the construction of the Olympic site at Stratford. According to the British Safety Council, “The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) announced that the Park and Village workforce had achieved 3 million hours worked without a single reportable injury. Despite being the largest construction site in Europe, with more than 12,000 workers…the Big Build is also the first Olympic project of its kind in the world to have been completed without an accident-related fatality”.

This is no mean feat in a dangerous industry such as construction, and it deserves to be given prominence as one of the most important legacies to come out of the Games. Tom Mullarkey, RoSPA’s Chief Executive is clearly aware of this aspect, claiming that “the lessons the project has generated for health and safety form an important part of the overall Olympic legacy – with enormous potential to influence health and safety in the UK as well as globally and to demonstrate further the contribution which high standards in this area make to overall business success.” To celebrate, the British Safety Council has created a five minute video (available on Youtube at http://bit.ly/qtGXJn ) which is well worth a look.

The IOC’s aim is that the idea of legacy should be central to the Olympic Games – for a variety of reasons, but obviously to disarm the inevitable criticism about the costs and logistics of staging what is virtually a one-off event for a host city. It is incumbent on OCOGs to furnish information on all aspects of their planning and carry out – in order to provide a textbook on how to do it – for future host cities, and indeed for others not involved in the Games at all. Each of the Olympic reports give detailed information about the construction of the stadiums and the rest of the Olympic infrastructure and lessons are clearly intended to be learned from past experience. They have to be. London’s Olympic build will be able to pass on some extremely valuable lessons for the planning and carrying out of huge works which actually centre on the well being and safety of those involved in these complex projects. Our experience will save lives. What could be better!

References

RoSPA . ‘A legacy for safety’

http://bit.ly/pSleK2

The big build: structures: milestones to 27 July 2010. London: Olympic Delivery Authority, 2009.

DS shelfmark OPA.2010.x.1380

 

 

 

 

 

Simone Bacchini writes:

 If someone had said to me that one day I’d be writing about sport and the Olympics, I simply wouldn’t have believed them. Even now, when my friends hear about it, their reactions vary from the slightly bemused to the totally incredulous. That’s not surprising. As a child and teenager, my very curious mind just seemed to be programmed not to care about sports. And my body followed suit. In school, I remember the torture of PE classes; the humiliation of being picked last for the football team – ironic, considering I never wanted to be involved in the first place – and the boredom of having to watch matches. Maybe an Olympics would have helped; but Italy had had its one already, so no chance for me to be “inspired”.

 Then came the British Library; and the Sport and Society website. Looking at sport “through the lens of social science” did it for me: there was a way in which I could be interested in sport after all. (Ok, I still can’t play it, but that’s another story). Gender, discourse, social exclusion and inclusion, personal narratives, and even – hold your breath – spirituality. I mention spirituality because I’ve recently come across two most interesting edited volumes; both deal with the subject in relation to sport.

 The first, “Sport and Spirituality”, by Parry et al. (eds.), looks at the “spiritual” dimension of the sport experience: its transcendent, metaphorical, and ethical values. This may surprise us today: in the run-up to London 2012, I’ve heard many things mentioned but spirituality was not among them.

 But it shouldn’t. As Parry reminds us, for Coubertin, the man who revived the Olympics at the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of a ‘religion of athletics’ was central. We may not wish to dwell on it (especially in the West, in these secular, post-religious, and politically correct times), but the entire Olympic spectacle mirrors a religious ceremony. There are rites, symbols, “priests”, and a congregation. And isn’t all the discourse of the Olympics - especially the forthcoming one, with all its talk of “inspiration”, “transformation”, “bravery”, and “triumph over hardship” – reminiscent of religious language?

 The second volume I’ve been enjoying is again edited by Parry et al. “Theology, Ethics and Transcendence in Sports” has an ambitious aim: to look at some of society’s ethical dilemmas as reflected in sports, and to discuss possible solutions which are grounded in a theistic understanding. Sounds all very complicated and abstruse, I know; but in reality the papers collected in this volume offer interesting insights – and yes, possible solutions – to problems that anybody perusing current reporting on sports and the Olympics will have come across. For example: why doping? What do we do about it? Is the competitive nature of sport at the root of all of its problems? And is competitiveness a bad thing?

 I’m not sure how your average sport enthusiast would react to this, but I must admit that I was fascinated by Mark Hamilton’s use of St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), the great theologian. He basically argued that there are no evil things in creation, but that one can give something (sports, for example) too much importance and that this will result in evil. Ergo: athletes and fans, you can enjoy sports but, at the end of the day, it’s only sports. And winning shouldn’t be all (I can’t believe it: I’ve just reduced Augustine’s thought to a few words!).

 So, in conclusion, there are many ways to look at sport and the Olympics. A “social” approach may just be what some need to be reconciled with it. It did me. Keep an eye on our website!

 References:

 Parry, J., Robinson, S., Watson, N.J., and Nesti, M. (eds.)Sport and Spirituality: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2007.

Lending collections shelfmark: m07/32223.

 Parry, J., Nesti, M., and Watson, N. (eds.) (2011). Theology, Ethics and Transcendence in Sports. London: Routledge, 2011

London reference collections shelfmark: SPIS796.01

Lending collections shelfmark:8026.515780 no. 4.

Dire warnings about the logistical problems proceeding from the staging of the Olympics and Paralympics in a congested city like London are doing the rounds in the press at the moment. The Department for Transport’s claim is that London 2012 will provide “the most accessible Games ever” and huge efforts have been made to improve public access to the events, with new rail links, provision of walking and cycling paths and so on. However the DfT has already published some startling facts and figures about what will happen during the Games, claiming that “up to 500,000 spectators each day are expected to travel across London for the… sporting events, plus 170,000 workforce and 55,000 members of the Games Family.“

 Most controversial of all the preparations is the Olympic Route Network which consists of a set of roads linking key competition and non-competition venues within and around London. These are intended to provide “safe, reliable journeys for athletes and other members of the Games Family while keeping London and the rest of the UK moving”. The roads within this network were designated as early as 2009, and the DfT has put maps online which set out exactly where they are. http://bit.ly/oK4GYu

 These fast lane access routes have had numerous detractors in the Press, most notably Simon Jenkins, whose polemic in the Evening Standard http://bit.ly/pgs906 raises the spectre of an inner London network of some 60 miles of roads being kept free for the Olympic athletes, officials, and VIPs, enabling them to whizz past Londoners foaming at the mouth in traffic jams. And he has a point: nothing infuriates Londoners more after a hard day’s work than to take 2 hours getting home instead of 1.

 So will the Olympic and Paralympic Games strike a wrong note right from the start for the indigenous population? That partly depends on whether the optimistic forecasts for a money-spinning influx of tourists to London 2012 actually happens. And there are doubts about this, particularly since the publication of a report by the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) which suggests that there may be a fall of up to 50% in visitor numbers in London during the Games, the effect also being felt in Britain as a whole. The report is here: http://bit.ly/rucM9j

 The question of the net result on tourism of an Olympic Games has long been a topic of discussion amongst academics. Claims are commonly made for a rapid influx of visitors during and after the Games thanks to the world-wide exposure that a city receives at Games time, with Barcelona being held up as an example. However, things are often not as straightforward as this. Sometimes the Games act as a disincentive, with potential tourists being put off by the prospect of all the commotion. From London’s point of view, do we actually need more tourists, and can we accommodate them?

 These are the sort of dilemmas that every Olympic host city experiences. Only time will tell if the scare-mongering is justified.

 Reference

Weed, Mike. Olympic tourism. Amsterdam; London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008.

London reference collections shelfmark SPIS338.4791

Lending collections shelfmark m07/.36920

The possession (or not) of tickets for the 2012 Olympics continues to be an on-going topic of Games-related conversations, news reports, tweets and blogs. Do people who have failed to get tickets now feel alienated from the whole 2012 process; and have questions about who has ‘rights’ to see the Olympics become dangerously controversial? One can put a more positive spin on the situation by looking at what is going to be free and available for all at Games time. For example, there will be opportunities to watch some events without actually having to pay, most notably the triathlon, marathon, race walking and road cycling events (from some vantage points at least). The journal Triathlete has already identified a number of ‘top spectator points’ including the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner and Buckingham Palace, so if people get to the venues early enough, they stand a chance of getting an excellent view of proceedings and sampling the atmosphere of a world class event. There are also the Live Sites – screens which will be set up in over 20 locations in large towns to show not only local news and events but the Olympic & Paralympics as they happen. A long list of venues appears on the LOCOG website: http://www.london2012.com/live-sites

 The big screens concept was employed in Canada for the Winter Games of 2010 in Vancouver and met with enormous success. People flocked to the venues, queued for best vantage points and created an atmosphere that was not unlike that of a cup final crowd. Will that happen here? I posed this question a few weeks ago, and I’m genuinely interested to find out what ‘people power’ will do to these Games, and whether a kind of subculture of informal consumption of the Games will spring up which takes on its own momentum and creates its own rules of engagement.

The rise of a more democratic ownership of sport is discernable in several different areas. One only has to look at  cricket’s Barmy Army and various ‘unofficial’ football supporters groups, all of which have created and then institutionalised procedures and and structures external to the establishment. Football fans in particular are increasingly expressing a form of ownership of their teams which stands in opposition to the legal ownership of the clubs themselves.

The Olympic Games have certainly seen spontaneous movements turn into loosely regulated ones. At one point the IOC allowed only a closely regulated form of media participation at Games time, with the perhaps inevitable result that an ‘unaccredited’ media presence grew up which soon began to take on a more flexible, less regimented and more dynamic life of its own. So will we see ‘unaccredited’ consumers of the Games creating structures of this kind? Already there are websites, bloggers and tweeters who have established a form of ownership of the Games process - helped greatly by new technology.

 Such developments are intriguing for archives and libraries. We want as much of the Games to be documented as possible, and for those documents to be collected and preserved. But if there’s stuff happening that’s off the radar, how do we find out about it and capture it?

 

 

Simone Bacchini writes:

Isn’t one supposed to switch off completely while on holiday? Shouldn’t work be left entirely behind when you’ve gone to all the trouble of paying to be flown to a faraway island to bask in the sun, enjoy your favourite book, and feast on delicious, exotic food? If that’s the case, then my holiday has not been entirely successful.

I’ve just come back from Santorini, a marvellous Greek island in the midst of the Aegean. A massive volcanic eruption around 1600 BC left behind a geological structure whose beauty is simply breathtaking. A warm sea, amazing food, and friendly locals do the rest, and make it the perfect place for rest.

So how did I come to think about work, and this blog in particular? Well, on 25 June I turned on the TV to find that one of the Greek channels was broadcasting an Olympics opening ceremony. I thought perhaps, with all the cuts and austerity measures the Greek Government has had to impose, that maybe the broadcaster believed that the population needed some cheering up and that a repeat of the 2004 Games would do the trick.

But that wasn’t the case. An opening ceremony it most certainly was, but for the 2011 Special Olympics. Special Olympics is a non-profit organisation, founded in the United States by Eunice Kennedy-Shriver, sister of U.S President John F. Kennedy. In 1971, it was granted the privilege of using the title “Olympics” by the U.S. Olympic Committee, only one of two organisations to be so fortunate. The Special Olympics is for athletes with intellectual disabilities and some of its stated aims are “to change attitudes”, and to “encourage through sports.”

I certainly didn’t know it, but the British team was the largest delegation at this year’s event (157 athletes). One of its stars was 23-year old Joel Fitzpatrick, from Seamer in the Northeast of England, who has dyspraxia, He did very well (winning two medals) and so did the British Team, which won 33.

Coverage of the Special Olympics was extensive in Greece: TV, radio, and newspapers all carried news about it. None of this was perfunctory; you could tell there was real excitement. It showed admiration for the athletes as well as for an event that took the country’s mind off the difficult times it is experiencing, and the ones that undoubtedly lie ahead.

To me, it seemed appropriate that the competition should be held in Greece, for the Olympics, in all its incarnations, such as the Paralympics and the Special Olympics, is steeped in myth. Myth is not about truth but about meaning, symbolism, and transcendence. And isn’t Greece the land of myth?

So, of course the Country will still be faced with years of hardship once the lights have been turned off in the Olympic venues; of course it takes more than a few days of competing in front of TV cameras to remove the stigma and the difficulties of living with intellectual disabilities; and world peace – one of the stated aims of the Special Olympics – will be far from achieved. But the myth will endure, and so will its power to guide, inspire, perhaps even heal.

Well done team Britain, well done Special Olympics athletes, well done Greece. And come to think of it, my holiday wasn’t a failure in any respect. Far from it.

The Olympic controversy du jour is all about ticketing, but that – one supposes – is hardly surprising given the complexity and magnitude of the process. I have not been disappointed myself because I haven’t actually applied for any events: part of my cunning plan is to pick up leftovers at the last minute. At least I’m hoping that will be possible. If it isn’t, I shall just have to trudge over to the Olympic Park and press my nose wistfully to the railings.

 It’s clear that – controversy notwithstanding – a mad scramble for tickets is preferable, as far as LOCOG is concerned, to no interest at all. Nothing destroys the atmosphere at an event so much as a stadium of empty seats, and there will be no danger of that at London 2012. Indeed, Sebastian Coe is reported as saying that “no event in world history has sold so many tickets so quickly”. However, this success poses problems of its own, the most notable being how to control the sale of tickets so that profiteering by ticket touts – and others - is eliminated. In March this year, BBC Radio 4’s ‘Money box’ programme discovered that foreign websites already existed which were selling tickets at inflated prices – and this was before any tickets had been officially released.

 A law is in place now to make Olympic ticket touting illegal. It forms section 31 of the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 which makes it an offence to sell tickets without a license to do so from LOCOG. This includes re-selling the tickets for a profit, so that also puts paid to any private enterprise on Ebay! The Metropolitan Police even have a squad called Operation Podium which aims to enforce the provisions of the law, and have already made arrests (there’s a fine of £20,000 if convicted).

 We’re fortunate in the developed countries to have media coverage which will satisfy the most exacting spectator, and those who want to celebrate en masse can presumably go to the public screens or indeed to the pubs, which will be broadcasting the events and encouraging clients to create their own ‘micro-atmosphere’ of support  - as takes place with important football matches. I’ll be very interested in fact to see if this happens. The British love of football and a pint surpasses that of all other, and whether this tradition will translate to other sports is debatable. We’ll see…

 References

 Read (& hear) about the passing of the Olympics legislation on the Sport & Society website

http://bit.ly/jtx2O3

 Money Box on Olympic tickets. BBC iplayer

http://bbc.in/gvUPKu

 

 

 

Simone Bacchini writes:

I was in Trafalgar Square last week, having left St. Martin in the Fields where I’d been attending a nice concert: Handel, Vivaldi, and Mozart were bound to put me in a good mood. The air was pleasantly fresh, only a few clouds in the sky and not too many people around. Perfect.

 As I stepped onto the area outside the National Gallery, now thankfully fully pedestrianised, I turned my head to take in the whole of the Square in all  its glory. And there I saw it, for the first time, standing by one of the two fountains and only a few yards from the famous Fourth Plinth, which now hosts an impressive ship in a glass bottle, by the Anglo-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE. It’s not just a ship by the way: it represents HMS Victory.

 Behind me, something else I hadn’t seen before. A large panel has been installed outside the Gallery and on it, hundreds of plants have been arranged to create a “living painting” which forms a detail of Van Gogh’s A Wheatfield, with Cypresses, painted in 1889. People seemed to love it, judging by the number of photos of it being taken. I must admit the effect was remarkable.

 But I’m digressing here; it’s the Olympic clock I wanted to talk about. With its zigzagged lines and awkward colour-scheme, I’m not sure it’s much competition for the surrounding architectural grandeur. But it’s certainly eye-catching and it attracted a good share of photographers too, myself included.

 It seems appropriate to have placed the clock where it stands. After all, Trafalgar Square is one the city’s - and even the nation’s - big stages. From political protests to mass jubilation, this vast area in the middle of our capital has hosted the hopes, the joys, the anger and the frustrations of generations of Londoners. So three cheers for the Olympic clock – technical glitches notwithstanding.

 And one last thought. The world-famous gallery a few yards away is host to many paintings which depict, among other things, ticking clocks or sand glasses to remind the viewer that life is fleeting and it must end, the memento mori being a common trope in Western art (one of my favourites being van Steenwick’s An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life, painted around 1640). So, whatever you may think of the Olympic Circus coming to town, it’s certainly refreshing to have gigantic ticking clock to remind us there are things in life to look forward to, a memento vita. Whether the Olympics will count as one of those is down to individuals’ preferences.. To use the words of the Italian Romantic poet Alessandro Manzoni: Ai posteri l’ardua sentenza; “let posterity judge”.

 References:

 

Houseal, E.W.W.G. Poetical Pearls, Translated by E.W.W.G. Houseal.

London: printed for the author, 1849

London reference collections shelfmark: RB.23.b.6661.

 

Koozin, Kristine (1990). The Vanitas Still Lifes of Harmen Steenwyck: Metamorphic Realism.

Lewiston; Lampeter: Mellen, 1990.

London reference collections shelfmark: YC.1990.b.7615

Lending collections shelfmark: 7356.866470 vol 1