The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are the newest addition to the Olympic Movement and, in light of recent discussions of the education of high-performance athletes, represent a change within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from a philosophy of 'winning by all means' to a philosophy much more informed by education. Therefore, this paper analyses the YOG through the experiences of participating athletes and puts their perception of the event in contrast to the policies of the IOC. Through the centring of the agents within the hermeneutic analysis, along with the use of Critical Discourse Analysis, a more relevant image of the YOG is constructed and it shows that that the perceptions of the athletes are in contrast to the policy documents. Whereas the organisation claims that the content of the Culture and Education Programme of the YOG was very successful and enhanced the educational experience of the athletes, the subjects of this study were in a way dissatisfied with the programme. Thus, their perceptions helped to deconstruct the political claims in a very valuable way and future, athlete-centred research is needed in order to enhance the educational and cultural effects of the YOG.
This paper traces the history of two of the most important policies in sport: rules against drugs and 'ambiguous' athletes in women's events. Following the first twenty years of the two most important organizations in the creation of doping and sex teststhe IOC and the IAAFwe identify three distinct phases in the work of each organization's medical committee: (1) from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, the medical grounding of the committees and the influence of members' worldviews encouraged the groups to unquestioningly enlist scientific techniques to solve the problem of drug use and sex ambiguity; (2) from the early 1970s to 1980, administrative confusion underscored both committees, but scientific personnel gained legitimacy and furthered their own personal agendas; and (3) from 1980 to the mid-1980s, the seeds of diversion in sex and drug tests were sown. The central finding of this study is that the key stakeholders who shaped anti-doping and sex testing policies took for granted concerns regarding ethics and instead increasingly relied upon medical, scientific, and technical practices to define and control fairness in sport.
Gender discrimination has been strongly related to the suppression of women's participation in sport. Accordingly, gender (in)equality has proven to be an important determinant for the participation and the success of countries in international women's elite sport. Hence, differences in gender (in)equalitity, such as women's participation in the labor force, fertility rates, tradition of women suffrage or socio-economic status of women, could be linked to success in international women's elite sports. While major international sport governing bodies have created programs to subsidize the development of women's sports in member countries, gender equality has figured rather low within the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) (now World Athletics). Therefore, the paper examines the impact of gender (in)equality on country participation in international athletics on the base of a unique dataset on season's bests. The results provide further support that gender inequality matters and is associated with participation in women's elite sports. Whereas, women's participation in athletics has made considerable progress in the past two decades as a side-effect of the IAAF's decentralization strategy, the analyses illustrate the need for better targeted and better resourced development programs for increasing participation of less gender equal countries. Moreover, the analyses indicate the limitations of a pure macro-social approach as there are some rather unexpected dynamic developments, such as, the substantial progress of women's athletics in the Islamic Republic of Iran as a country with strong Muslim religious affiliation. The results from this analysis were used to provide practical implications.
This paper explores the awareness of the young German and Norwegian participants in the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) of the additional educational mission of this new event,implemented by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Among the questions considered are whether the nature of the event contradicts its claimed intention to focus on both competition and education. Data were collected through a set of interviews with young German and Norwegian athletes at the Singapore YOG in the summer of 2010 and the Innsbruck YOG in the winter of 2012. The findings revealed (1) a focus on elite sport by athletes and their coaches, while the educational aims were considered secondary; (2) that it was problematic for the young participants to focus on education in a high-performance event.The overall conclusion was that the YOG have had only limited success in achieveing the educational ambitions of the Olympic Movement.
International sport federations' (IFs) dealing with challenging issues such as corruption and manipulation in sport has recently gained prominence in terms of policy, practice and as a subject of academic interest. Researchers stress the significance of implementing governance standards in order to raise ethical standards in sport organizations, specifically the federations and points towards past failures. However, there is only a limited body of research that has outlined the historical development of structural changes within IFs. To address this limitation, this paper reviews the history of key policy changes within the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in an attempt to contextualize its newest organizational changes, implemented by an extensive governance structure reform. The findings suggest that the Federation´s past organizational structures offer an explanation for recent allegations of corruption and manipulation within the IAAF.
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