ABSTRACT
This chapter examines issues of access and equity at the Olympic Games. It considers: the composition of the IOC; the relationship between affluent and poor countries; social class and the exclusion of professionals; the involvement of women in the Olympics; ‘race’ and racism; and disability sport and the Paralympic Games. It examines the contrast between the rhetoric and the practice of Olympism. The governance of the Olympics is still dominated by a European male aristocracy. The commitment to amateurism, only abandoned since the early 1980s, gave the Games a distinct social class character. The first black member of the IOC was invited to join in 1963; the first women members were accepted in 1981. Women were excluded entirely from the early Games, and only since the 1980s has the full programme of events begun to be opened to them. Even here there remain areas of contestation and controversy, such as ski jumping. The Paralympic Games, even after a long struggle for inclusion, are still staged as a separate event. Through ‘The Olympic Programme’ (TOP) major corporations, most notably NBC and its parent company General Electric, are in a position to exercise a shaping influence on the development of the Games. This chapter asks the question: ‘Who are the Games for?’
