Research shows that hosting the Olympic Games rarely results in the legacy politicians aim for when selling the idea to the public.
Members of the Japanese artist collective Me (meaning “eyes” in Japanese) launch an inflatable artwork entitled Masayume, on the occasion of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Yoshio Tsunoda/AFLO/Alamy Live News
The giant head spotted hovering over the Tokyo skyline in recent weeks is the latest in a long line of Olympic art moments. Debate and controversy are never far behind.
An example of the very first Olympic flag, known as the Antwerp flag.
Marc Tielemans / Alamy
Anti-doping efforts are not stopping cheating in sport. Unless there’s a game changer in technology, we might just have to live with a certain amount of doping in the Olympics.
Great Britain’s Hannah Cockroft after winning a T34 sprinting heat at the 2012 London Paralympics.
Richard/Flikr
Every Paralympics there’s a sense that they will inspire more disabled people’s sport participation. However, eight years since London 2012 and very little has changed
Uzbek wrestler Artur Taymazov (centre) was recently stripped of his gold medal from the 2012 Olympics due to retrospective drug testing. He also lost his gold from the 2008 Olympics for doping.
Dimitris Panagos/AAP
Retrospective drug testing is meant to help deter doping in sport, but will the public become indifferent to drug taking as more and more cheaters are caught?
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has signed off on the Badgerys Creek airport plan. The aim now should be to maximise the benefits of its construction.
AAP
With one of the world’s largest infrastructure pipelines, Australian governments could leverage their procurement spending power to benefit the communities where the work is done.
In some distance events, disabled athletes already outcompete their able-bodied counterparts.
There’s little evidence relevant government bodies are able to leverage hosting the Olympics to develop a sport participation legacy for the wider population.
Reuters/Kevin Coombs
The commonly believed mechanism for increasing sport participation assumes that elite sport performances result in a greater number of people taking up sport.
Looking back on the legacy of London 2012, it’s clear the local artistic community has lost out.
Urban planning was once an Olympic event, although the first gold medal – awarded to Germany’s Alfred Hensel for the Nuremberg stadium – turned out to be an unfortunate choice.
Imagine cities competed to eliminate hunger, poverty, unemployment, crime and greenhouse emissions, and to offer housing and transport for all. Don’t scoff – urban planning was once an Olympic event.
Will the Winning Edge strategy impact sport participation and limit sports’ abilities to develop Olympic champions?
reuters photographer/reuters
Australia has had a good start to the Rio Olympics. But does that mean that the strategy created in response to Australia’s poor Olympic performance in 2012 is working?
It’s possible to predict medal tallies with surprising accuracy.
Reuters
Medal counts for individual countries from the Sydney 2000 to London 2012 Olympics have been predicted relatively accurately, using just a small number of demographic and economic characteristics.
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
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.
Organisers of the World Championship in Athletics will be on their toes after recent revelations of mass doping by endurance athletes. Here’s what you need to know about doping and how to evade it.
Tenpin bowling’s presence in the Olympics can be justified on many grounds.
Ginny/Flickr
Eight sports have presented their case for inclusion in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But it was tenpin bowling’s application that generated the most debate in the media and the wider public.