Suchergebnisse

Planning & managing the 1984 Olympic Games presented unique financial & intergovernmental challenges for city officials in Los Angeles, Calif, but governmental cooperation & an innovative public/private partnership to finance & run the Games proved to be successful. Under strict restrictions against spending local tax dollars, the City of Los Angeles assigned management of the Games to a nonprofit committee that raised private funds to finance the Games. In cooperation with surrounding jurisdictions & the federal government, the city provided key services (such as police & fire protection, transportation planning, & visitor services) under contract to the Olympic Committee & used two Olympic-related taxes to pay for these services, with the Olympic Committee paying for additional expenses. The 1984 Olympics resulted in an estimated economic impact of $3.3 billion on southern Calif & left Los Angeles with a number of new & refurbished sports & cultural facilities. Moreover, the Olympic Organizing Committee accrued a surplus of over $215 million, 40% of which was targeted to benefit youth sports organizations in southern Calif. 2 Tables. HA

The turmoil surrounding the 1980 Olympic Games, says the author, was nothing new--it was merely the most recent, and most complex, manifestation of the political content of modern sport. Despite the mythology perpetrated by Olympic publicists, the modern Olympic Games were founded with expressly political goals in mind and continue to thrive on tie

Women's participation in sports is a recent phenomenon characterizing changes in F roles in society. Investigated here is whether indicators of F participation in the Olympic Games parallel models & theories of F participation in the LF. Findings indicate a close relationship between the two types of participation; it is argued that the same social conditions that foster social change in one domain also foster change in others. Modified HA.

The aim of this study is to explore the concept of legacy in mega sporting events. More precisely, it examines how one of the smallest cities to host the Olympic Winter Games, Lillehammer in 1994, more than 25 years after the Games, has a rather positive legacy of the investments in sporting facilities, opposite to a majority among the hosts of the Winter Games. The research, which entailed qualitative documentary analysis (e.g. bidding documents, government guarantees, white papers and minutes of meetings in the Parliament, supplemented with interviews), shows how the concept was changed after Lillehammer was awarded the event in 1988. Lillehammer went from an extreme compact Games model to place the venues in five municipalities. Also important was the establishment of government funding to maintain the different arenas. For many hosts of mega/major events, sport facilities end up with a negative legacy because of poor or insufficient planning. Today, the 'after-use fund' has been depleted, which is challenging for Lillehammer because several municipalities in the Olympic region are also responsible for the funding. It remains to be seen if the positive legacy will remain positive in the years to come.

Beijing organized the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, and the main goal of the Chinese government regarding this event was to hold a Green Olympics. A difference-in-differences approach was used to estimate the environmental impact the Olympic Games on air quality improvement in Beijing, compared to improvements in other areas in China. The results indicate that compared to other regions, air quality in Beijing improved for a short period of time. These improvements were largely due to the implementation of several temporary measures, including factory closures and traffic control. However, there is no evidence indicating that the Olympic Games reduced the concentration of sulfur dioxide in Beijing.

Previous studies investigating media coverage of sport in Australia during normal programming indicate that women's sport receives less than 10 percent of the air-time given to men's. This study of the Australian television coverage of the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics found that female events received 32.9 percent and 27.7 percent, respectively, of the Games televised. While it is unfortunate that this is the exception, rather than the rule, it may provide a key to breaking existing patterns of sports programming and thus reduce gender inequities by demonstrating that during the Olympics female sports rank highly in terms of viewer popularity as well as in terms of increased air-time.