More than just games: the global politics of the Olympic Movement

In the wake of the extravagant spectacle of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games – which

unfolded before a record global audience who revelled in the virtuosic accomplishments of

the likes of American swimmer Michael Phelps and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt – and

the acclaimed success of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games – whose jubilant and

welcoming atmosphere was widely praised by the global media,

and which also reached a

record number of global viewers

– the assertion that the Olympic Games represent ‘the

pre-eminent cultural movement in global society’ in the early years of the twenty-first

century appears compelling.