Since its creation the British Olympic Association (BOA) has been one of the most important institutions in sports governance. In spite of its prominence there has hitherto been no single-volume history of the Association. This scholarly yet accessible study fills that gap, assessing the origins, evolution, strengths and shortcomings of the BOA.

History records that the Olympic Games originated in ancient Greece nearly three thousand years ago, died out around 393 AD, and were triumphantly reborn in 1896, in the Greek capital of Athens. Rather less well known is how, during the intervening centuries, an assortment of British writers, romantics, sportsmen and visionaries helped nurture that revival. Indeed, as sports historian Dr Martin Polley argues in this, the 12th book in the acclaimed Played in Britain series, our nation's fascination with all things Olympian has played a pivotal role in shaping the Games as we know them today, culminating in London becoming in 2012 the first city ever to stage a third modern Olympiad. Consider, for example, that the first published use of the word 'Olympian' in the English language dates from around 1590. Its author? William Shakespeare. And that the first games of the post-classical era to adopt the formal title 'Olympick' took place in the Cotswolds village of Chipping Campden in 1612. It was an English traveller, Richard Chandler, who rediscovered the lost site of Olympia in 1766, and a Shropshire doctor, William Penny Brookes, who, in 1850, founded the Much Wenlock Olympian Games, an annual community festival that inspired Pierre de Coubertin to revive the Games at an international level. Other Olympic festivals surfaced in London (to celebrate Queen Victoria's accession), in Liverpool, and in the north-east town of Morpeth, while the words 'Olympic' and 'Olympian' became steadily more ingrained in the popular imagination throughout the Victorian era. Britain's Olympic heritage gained added momentum in the 20th century. At White City in 1908, London built the world's first modern, purpose-built Olympic stadium, while in 1948 London stepped in to save the Games by offering Wembley Stadium. Also in the late 1940s, at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, the modern Paralympics were born when sporting contests were organised for injured servicemen. Thus the 2012 Games represent the culmination of over four hundred years of British enthusiasm and ingenuity; an attachment that has left in its wake a trail of fascinating stories, characters, sites, buildings and artefacts. Leading the reader on a marathon journey, The British Olympics charts them all, making this a vital and entertaining source for anyone with an interest in the Games, in sport, and in the wider narrative of Britain's social and cultural heritage.

This book is an historical survey of women’s sport from 1850-1960. It looks at some of the more recent methodological approaches to writing sports history and raises questions about how the history of women’s sport has so far been shaped by academic writers. Questions explored in this text include: What are the fresh perspectives and newly available sources for the historian of women’s sport? How do these take forward established debates on women’s place in sporting culture and what novel approaches do they suggest? How can our appreciation of fashion, travel, food and medical history be advanced by looking at women’s involvement in sport? How can we use some of the current ideas and methodologies in the recent literature on the history and sociology of sport in order to look afresh at women’s participation? Jean Williams’s original research on these topics and more will be a useful resource for scholars in the fields of sports, women’s studies, history and sociology.

The Olympic Movement began with the Ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Greece on the Peloponnesus peninsula at Olympia, Greece. It is not clear why the Greeks instituted this quadrennial celebration in the form of an athletic festival. The recorded history of the Ancient Olympic Games begins in 776 B.C., although it is suspected that the Games had been held for several centuries by that time. The Games were conducted as religious celebrations in honor of the god Zeus, and it is known that Olympia was a shrine to Zeus from about 1000 B.C. In modern time The Olympic Movement attempts to bring all the nations of the world together in a series of multisport festivals, the Olympic Games, seeking to use sport as a means to promote internationalism and peace. This fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of The Olympic Movement covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on the history, philosophy, and politics of the Olympics, major organizations, the various sports, the participating countries, and especially the athletes. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about The Olympic Movement.

At the London Olympics in 2012 Team GB achieved a third place finish in the medals table. A key factor in this achievement was the high standard of contemporary British sports coaching. But how has British sports coaching transitioned from the amateur to the professional, and what can the hitherto under-explored history of sports coaching in Britain tell us about both the early history of sport and about contemporary coaching practice? A History of Sports Coaching in Britain is the first book to attempt to examine the history of British sports coaching, from its amateur roots in the deep nineteenth century to the high performance, high status professional coaching cultures of today. The book draws on original primary source material, including the lost coaching lives of key individuals in British coaching, to trace the development of coaching in Britain. It assesses the continuing impact of the nineteenth-century amateur ethos throughout the twentieth century, and includes important comparisons with developments in international coaching, particularly in North America and the Eastern Bloc. The book also explores the politicisation of sport and the complicated interplay between politics and coaching practice, and illuminates the origins of the structures, organisations and philosophies that surround performance sport in Britain today. This book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the history of sport, sports coaching, sports development, or the relationships between sport and wider society.

This book explores the historical development of coaching traditions across Europe, placing national approaches to coaching within their cultural and political context. Sports coaching is a social practice that has been shaped by its cultural context, resulting in different countries being characterized by different coaching traditions. By helping us to understand the history of coaching across Europe, this book allows us to better understand both the history of sport and the cultural and social history of Western European nations. Drawing on cutting-edge historical research by international scholars, the book presents studies of coaching cultures in France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom. It explores how sporting histories, cultural attitudes, and social contexts resulted in distinctive coaching heritages, which were further shaped through coach migration and the adoption of elements of other countries’ coaching structures. This book explores these phenomena to provide critical evidence of the historical impact of culture on the development of sports coaching. The book offers insight into the characteristics of European coaching traditions. It will be fascinating reading for academics in sports history, sports and coaching studies, gender studies, and transnational studies, as well as those with an interest in British or European history and social and cultural history.

On 6 July 2005, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 summer Olympic Games to the city of London, opening a new chapter in Great Britain’s rich Olympic history. Despite the prospect of hosting the summer Games for the third time since Pierre de Coubertin’s 1894 revival of the Olympic movement, the historical roots of British Olympism have received limited scholarly attention. With the conclusion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the passing of the baton to London, Rule Britannia remedies that oversight. This book uncovers Britain’s early Olympic involvement, revealing how the British public, media, and leading governmental officials were strongly opposed to international Olympic competition. It explores how the British Olympic Association focused on three main factors in the midst of widespread national opposition: it embraced early Olympian spectacles as a platform for maintaining a sporting union with Ireland, it fostered a greater sense of imperial identity with Britain’s white dominions, and it undertook an ambitious policy of athletic specialization designed to reverse the nation’s waning fortunes in international sport. This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the History of Sport.

The pressures and demands of professionalism and commercialization have transformed Britain's sports. At the end of the 20th century sports have been packaged and marketed as mass entertainment for a national or even international audience. This volume explores different facets of this phenomenon.

What role does sports medicine play in today's society? This book analyzes the relationship between sport, medicine and health from the mid-19th century to today. It looks at both history of medicine and the history of sport to give a balanced view of the role of medicine in sport and how this has evolved over the past two centuries.

Britain and the Olympic Games, 1908-1920 focuses upon the presentation and descriptions of identity that are presented through the depictions of the Olympics in the national press. This book breaks Britain down into its four nations and presents the debates that were present within their national press.