Overview

Do the Olympic Games really live up to their glowing reputation? As the biggest global sport mega-event, the Olympics command public attention, while Olympic mythology obscures their underlying function as a profit-making business. Unlike terms such as 'Olympic movement' and 'Olympic family', the concept of 'Olympic industry' focuses on sport as an economic and political enterprise, with its beneficiaries including sponsors, media rights holders, developers, and politicians. Negative impacts on host cities disproportionately threaten the lives and well-being of disadvantaged minorities. Citizens' Olympic resistance campaigns address a range of human rights abuses, while recent athlete activism also focuses on the doping problem and the sexual abuse of girls and women. Female athletes with 'differences of sexual development' face discriminatory gender policies that disqualify them from women's events. All of these issues are analysed through a feminist, anti-racist lens.

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9781838677763

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Lenskyj's contribution to the world of sports is an important, sharp and brave reminder that sport is political, that athletes are humans with rights not instruments for others to (mis)use for the benefit of themselves. We must never forget that as long as sports, in this case the Olympic industry, impacts the lives of its practitioners negatively, it needs to develop in line with the societal demands, regulations and laws and not to construct a sphere of its own. -- Marie Larneby, Malmoe University in European Journal for Sport and Society (2021)

Lenskyj's contribution to the world of sports is an important, sharp and brave reminder that sport is political, that athletes are humans with rights not instruments for others to (mis)use for the benefit of themselves. We must never forget that as long as sports, in this case the Olympic industry, impacts the lives of its practitioners negatively, it needs to develop in line with the societal demands, regulations and laws and not to construct a sphere of its own. -- Marie Larneby, Malmö University in European Journal for Sport and Society (2021) The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach represents the culmination of her [Lenskyj's] career. Her approach of the book is critical, and addresses a wide range of issues regarding the industry and various actors surrounding the Olympics. […] Lenskyj’s contribution to the world of sports is an important, sharp and brave reminder that sport is political, that athletes are humans with rights and not instruments for others to (mis)use for the benefit of themselves. -- Marie Larneby, Department of Sport Science, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

Author Information

Helen Jefferson Lenskyj is Professor Emerita, University of Toronto. Her work as a researcher and activist on gender and sport issues began in the 1980s, and her critiques of the Olympic industry include Inside the Olympic Industry and Olympic Industry Resistance.

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