ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the associational model of the sporting international non-governmental organisation (SINGO), constructed in a particular time and place, has been routinely and regularly appropriated by and/or moulded to a political or economic realm. It describes the story of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic Games from after the First World War, when the 1924 Summer Games in Paris, following Antwerp 1920, really relaunched the calendar of the quadrennial event. The chapter focuses on the nature of the IOC leadership, the modus operandi of the IOC itself, a selection of its cash cow product the Summer Olympics, and the most pressing moral and ethics issues concerning the IOC and its mission. It explains the three main phases in the growth and expansion of the Summer Olympic Games. The chapter discusses the issues namely gigantism, drugs and ethics, governance and corruption.
