This special issue examines the realized and unrealized Olympic aspirations. The first paper examines problems and challenges in the Olympic Games in Beijing and afterwards. The second paper examines the Olympic challenges in Beijing. The third article explores the shift from international...

Baseball and sumo were Japan's twentieth-century centre sports, but soccer is likely to replace them in the new century. This article outlines several reasons for Japan's embrace of the sport, focusing on how ethnicity and nationality are expressed and confirmed in the world of soccer. It proposes...

This article provides an overview of Chinese sports policy and practice, the origin, the challenge and continuity, from the 1920s to the 2000s with particular emphasis on the post Beijing Olympics. It states that the development of Chinese sports policy has always been shaped by political,...

Chinese political ambitions and Chinese sporting ambitions for the twenty-first century are two sides of the same coin. The Chinese have their own logic to pursue - a nation once at 'the centre of the world' now seeks to be the same again. The Beijing Olympics is a harbinger of sporting and...

It has been contended that sports in the USA (as well as other areas in American life such as economics and politics) substantively differs from its post-industrial European counterparts. This has been broadly labelled as 'American exceptionalism'. With specific regard to sport, this has been...

Sport and politics have a close relationship. Political conflicts are re-enacted, reflected and reinforced on international sports stages. In East Asia, the past casts a long shadow! It darkened the London 2012 stage. Controversy followed a South Korean football player's celebration at the London...

Sport and politics have a close relationship. Political conflicts are re-enacted, reflected and reinforced on international sports stages. In East Asia, the past casts a long shadow! It darkened the London 2012 stage. Controversy followed a South Korean football player's celebration at the London...

This issue is concerned with sports' arrival, spread and advance in colonial and post-colonial South Asia. It view critical issues of nationalism, communalism, commercialism and gender through the lens of sport. Specific sports covered include cricket, boxing, and tennis, particularly in the Indian ...

The London 2012 bid was based on the promise to use the Olympic Games to promote sports participation for all groups across the UK. This is the most ambitious project in the history of the Olympic Games in terms of both its scope and level of change, as, in order to be implemented successfully, it ...

This collection of essays explores the symbolic meanings that have been attached to sport in Europe by considering some of the mythical heroes who have dominated the sporting landscapes of their own countries. Examples from Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and Austria cover a range of sports...