Olympic ghosts in a former warzone: what the legacy of 1984 means for Sarajevo today

Walker, Juliet E. K.

doi:10.1080/1472586x.2012.677499

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Cashman (2011) mounts an insider's defence of the transformation of the Sydney Olympic Park into a viable community environment, in effect a new suburb of Sydney. But Mangan refers in this general debate to 'a not insubstantial herd of "Limping White Elephants"' (Mangan, 2008(Mangan, , p. 1870), among which one can certainly include Montreal's Olympic Stadium (Roult & Lefebvre, 2010), and hauntingly captured in a photo-essay by Walker (2012), on the crumbling remnants of Sarajevo's 1984 Winter Olympics, scarred material testimony to the aspirations of the then Yugoslavia. But long before sites fall into disuse and become white elephants, the Olympic moment can fade; even the elation felt towards an event by the diverse elements of a local population peaks within the event (Waitt, 2003), and these less-tangible social dimensions of the moment have no identifiable or sustainable legacy.…”

Section: Legacy Links In Academic Workmentioning

confidence: 96%

Olympic legacies: recurrent rhetoric and harsh realities

Tomlinson

2014

Contemporary Social Science

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This article traces the genesis of the principle of legacy as it has featured in Olympic discourse, and become enshrined in the expressed philosophy of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), so shaping elements in the process of bidding by cities to stage the Olympic Games, in both their winter and summer manifestations. The article shows how Olympic bidders have increasingly mobilised the idea of legacy, and how event by event over the last quarter of a century, evaluation of the significance of an Olympic Games has been centrally shaped by the legacy debate, in a multitude of applications and contexts. Particular aspects of legacy are focused upon, with reference to new studies, from city impacts to volunteers and workers, spatial politics and communities to gender discourse, and protest and publics. The article is flavoured by a running commentary on legacy claims by academics, politicians and IOC careerists concerning the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and considers the bidding rhetoric of cities beyond Rio de Janeiro 2016, through to Tokyo 2020. In conclusion, it is argued that despite the embeddedness of the legacy idea in Olympic discourse, the reality is that legacy will prove elusive without long-term planning before Olympic events, and remain unproven without systematic post-event research over realistically extended periods. Critical social science remains essential to such an understanding of the gap between legacy claims and the realities of the recurring Olympic narratives

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