Rosino
If empty seats and other Olympics are anything to go by, it’s unlikely Brazil will get a tourism boost from Rio 2016.
Mark Mangini (left) and David White hold this year’s Oscar for Sound Editing for Mad Max: Fury Road.
Paul Buck/EPA
Amid the hand-wringing about the price of an Olympic medal, our experts crunched the numbers on the cost of success in the arts. And at A$8 million per international award, it turns out that elite culture is a lot better value than sport.
Brazilian pro skateboarder Luan Olivera performs a switch 360 flip at the Maloof Cup, a skateboarding competition in South Africa.
Neftalie Williams
Can skateboarding – with its anti-establishment ethos and emphasis on individuality – mesh with the corporatized Olympics?
Bolt strides to victory in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
Dave Hunt//EPA
No carb-loading necessary …
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Corporations benefit from using public spaces during the Olympic Games – but Rio made sure local businesses also got a slice of the pie.
Bernd Thissen/EPA
Photographers can’t pay the bills with Instagram likes – but it’s pushing them to capture more spectacular images than ever before.
In a world where few believed in an afterlife, this-worldly glory mattered immensely.
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There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that attempts to manipulate the outcome of the competitions are as old as the Games themselves.
Say goodbye to this old set up.
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Television is dead; long live the Olympics.
The living room TV isn’t the only way to watch the Olympics these days.
Seven West Media
The way we consume sport is changing, and that’s having massive ramifications on the way sport and broadcast television are funded.
Ettore Ferrari/EPA
Athletes need to learn to find and access their ideal emotional state to achieve their best.
Racewalkers turn a corner – keeping one foot on the ground – during the women’s 20-km event at the 2012 London Olympics.
Maureen Barlin/flickr
Racewalking has been part of the Olympic Games since 1904, but gets little respect in the United States. That might change if Americans knew a little more about it.
Let me hear your body talk …
Yurly Rudyy
Working out is always good for you – until it’s not.
Veg loading.
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A look at the diet of an Olympian – from ancient Greece to Rio 2016.
Official Olympics merch.
Pilar Olivares/Reuters
Olympic organizers are known for fiercely protecting their many related trademarks. It helps maintain their value – but to whose advantage?
Diego Azubel/EPA
Unravelling the common assumption that runners from Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have a natural advantage.
The 100m final in Rio will be won in a time that would have seemed impossible to the athletes competing in Athens in 1896.
As the track and field events are about to start in Rio, we look at how some athletic events have changed since the first Olympics in 1896.
duncan c
They’re a global phenomenon – but gangs are so varied that they barely merit the same name.
Jim Thorpe and Ben Johnson were both banned from the Olympics. But if each had played at different points in history, they would have been allowed to compete.
Nick Lehr/The Conversation
In sports, what’s considered fair play has changed throughout history. At one point, even looking ‘too poor’ was grounds for exclusion.
A TV cameraman shoots a Madame Tussauds Museum figure of US Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps at Banneker Pool in Washington, to coincide with the opening of the Rio Olympics on August 5.
Gary Cameron/Reuters
Business Briefing: the big bucks of broadcasting the Olympics
The Conversation 16 MB (download)
The amount broadcasters will pay for the rights to the Olympics keeps going up, but is the value of the rights changing?
Once the pageantry is over, many Olympic athletes have to return to normal life – which means figuring out how to make a living.
Tony Gentile/Reuters
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.