Instead of showcasing a rising global power with a booming economy, the 2014 Games put a spotlight on Brazil’s most serious economic recession since the 1930s, along with a host of social problems.
Brazilian pro skateboarder Luan Olivera performs a switch 360 flip at the Maloof Cup, a skateboarding competition in South Africa.
Neftalie Williams
Looking back on the legacy of London 2012, it’s clear the local artistic community has lost out.
Cathy Freeman was criticised for flying the Aboriginal flag at the 1994 Commonwealth Games but the same act at the Sydney 2000 Olympics was hailed as a moment of reconciliation.
Reuters/Jerry Lampen
A former Olympic gold medalist reflects on his own financial struggles as he trained and competed for the 1984 Games. Decades later, not much has changed for many Olympians.
A protester holds up a sticker reading ‘boycott’ during anti-Olympic protests in Brazil.
Reuters
Protests against the Rio Olympics must be understood in the context of the growing global reaction to both the way these mega-events are organised and the entities promoting them.
Will Rio pull victory out from a shaky run-up to the games?
Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
The mainstream media has knocked Brazil for the Zika virus, doping scandals and safety concerns. But citizen social media users, by revealing an alternate narrative, could even the score for Rio.
There’s little justification for a blanket ban; all Russian Olympic athletes did not collectively commit a wrong.
EPA/YURI KOCHETKOV
The IOC will allow Russian athletes to compete in Rio 2016 if they’ve been cleared by their respective international sporting federation of doping. Should other countries pull out of the games?
Rugby sevens: on the Olympic programme in Rio.
Mai Groves/www.shutterstock.com
As technology becomes fully integrated into our everyday lives, we may see athletes as the last vestiges of our humanity.
National Olympic committees may not be good at explaining what the benefits of the Games are – but the Greeks were.
Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games/Flickr
The Olympic Games are a theatre — sometimes farce, sometimes tragedy, reality TV, morality play or soap opera — where geopolitical, social and technological dramas are played out.
Higher, faster, stronger.
Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
Only a better understanding of what drives doping can improve enforcement. To do so, we must break with the perception of doping as an individual or moral problem.
The countries who regularly top the medal table spend millions on training and developing athletes, money that poorer countries simply can’t afford to spend on their sporting stars.