This is an edited-down version of a chapter of the same title, published in Vassil Girginov (ed.),Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Volume Two: Celebrating the Games, London, Routledge, 2013, pp. 239-251. The piece draws upon research supported by the British Academy’s small grants scheme for my personal research on ‘The construction… Continue reading Seizing the Olympic Platform: 6.6 million and counting
Author: alangtomlinson
Behind the Spectacle: On Euro 2012
As Poland’s football team scored to go level with Russia at the Euro 2012 football championship finals, on Tuesday June 12th, President Bronislaw Komorowski, sporting the red and white scarf of the national side, leapt from his seat in joy. The stadium was a cauldron of nationalistic passion and emotion. To the president’s left, UEFA… Continue reading Behind the Spectacle: On Euro 2012
From Crystal Palace to Lunatic Asylum: The Life and Death of a Local Hero
Review of: Tommy Boyle – Broken Hero The Story of a Football Legend by Mike Smith Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd., 2011 [This is an extended version of a book review that appears in When Saturday Comes] Until 2004, when Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ went unbeaten through a full Premier League season, Burnley held the record for the… Continue reading From Crystal Palace to Lunatic Asylum: The Life and Death of a Local Hero
Blatter: FIFA’s Supreme Leader triumphs again
If a week is a long time in politics, 6 months is no time at all in the world of international football politics. FIFA president Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter was trained as a young man by timepiece giant Swiss Longines, pedigree watchmaker since 1842. He must have learned a lot about longevity in business and organisational… Continue reading Blatter: FIFA’s Supreme Leader triumphs again
Lording it: London and the getting of the Games
[This entry comprises extracts from the beginning and the end of the first chapter of Alan Tomlinson and John Sugden (eds), Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power, and Representation (Routledge, publication July 2011)] [i] Introduction In 2012 London will become the only city to have staged the Summer Olympic Games more than twice (the so-called interim… Continue reading Lording it: London and the getting of the Games
The Making – and Unmaking? – of the Olympic Corporate Class
(This entry comprises extracts, from the beginning, a later section, and the conclusion, of a chapter to be included in Helen Lensjky and Stephen Wagg (eds), Handbook of Olympic Studies (Palgrave Macmillan), in 2011.)[i] ‘All these operations take money. You cannot help the developing countries with words. You must help them with money. And that… Continue reading The Making – and Unmaking? – of the Olympic Corporate Class
The International Olympic Committee and the Olympic System
Jean-Loup Chappelet and Brenda Kübler-Mabbott, The International Olympic Committee and the Olympic System: The Governance of World Sport, Routledge, 2008, 208pp. + xiv ISBN 978-0-415-43168-2 (This is an amended version of a book review to be published in the academic journal Sport in History) This is the twenty-fourth book to appear in an ambitious initiative,… Continue reading The International Olympic Committee and the Olympic System
Understanding Sports Culture
Tony Schirato, Understanding Sports Culture, Sage Publications Ltd, 2007. 150 pp. Price not stated. Review by Alan Tomlinson Tony Schirato has written an ambitious book in which we are conducted on a worldwide tour of the history of sport, from the ancient Greeks to the contemporary world of globalized international sport. It is a story… Continue reading Understanding Sports Culture
Beckham on the Bus: Reporting the Beijing Olympics
All Olympic Games raise predictable questions of knowledge control, and generate fiery exchanges among journalists and cultural critics and commentators about access. Things are a far cry from the provision of a few telephone and telegraph lines at the local post office, which was all that Amsterdam needed to provide 60 years before Beijing’s Olympic… Continue reading Beckham on the Bus: Reporting the Beijing Olympics
The Beckham of the Cobbles
Harry Potts – Margaret’s Story, by Margaret Potts and Dave Thomas, Sports Books, Cheltenham, 2006, pp. x + 310, and 64 pages of photographs/documents Review by Alan Tomlinson [This review is a longer version of a review that appears in When Saturday Comes] Harry Potts played for and managed Burnley Football Club in some of… Continue reading The Beckham of the Cobbles
Professor Alan Tomlinson - Research 