ABSTRACT
Modern Olympic Games have always attracted significant public attention, but the level of social, political and economic mobilization generated by the 2012 London Olympics, even before the games in Beijing in 2008 had taken place, has been truly unprecedented. There are a number of reasons for this, and two of those will be the subject of the present study. First, in 2002, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) began framing the concept of ‘legacy’, which, together with the concept of ‘sustainable sports development’, has become an essential part of the IOC and the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (OCOG) vocabulary. As a result, the IOC, among other things, amended the Olympic Charter to include a particular reference to the creation of positive legacies from the games and the promotion of sports for all in the host country. [1] In addition, the IOC developed the Olympic Games Impact (OGI) project, which requires host cities to undertake a comprehensive longitudinal study designed to measure the economic, social and environmental impact of the games. [2] Second, a central plank of the London 2012 bid was that the games will be used to promote sports participation across the country and for all groups. Both the bid committee and the UK government, as a major stakeholder in this project, promised to use the games to inspire the country's people to become more physically active. [3 – 4] 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 has to address not only people's behaviour but also deeply rooted social structures and relations. The conceptual, political, economic and logistical challenges which this undertaking presents are enormous and have already created a number of tensions.
