Impossible Moments
“Impossible Moments, our new original series…features some of the most breathtaking, inspiring and unforgettable stories from the Olympic Winter Games—where the impossible happens.” This promotion for the newest series on the Olympic Channel in 2018 highlights the spirit of the world’s premier sporting event, the Olympic Games.
The modern Olympics has recorded a series of impossible moments. Some amaze, some inspire. In its entirety, the 125-year history of the modern Olympics has shown the world how to achieve new records and overcome old challenges.
Dutch road cycling racer Annemiek van Vleuten suffered a concussion and three cracks in her spine following a crash at the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics women’s road race. The injuries landed the 33-year-old in intensive care. One year later, van Vleuten won the UCI world champion title in the same event and won again in 2018. She continued to compete to qualify for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. The strength that she had built through two decades of training and the dedication she shared with many fellow Olympians enabled a spectacular recovery.
At the time of van Vleuten’s tragic injury, the Olympics faced many challenges on its own course to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Several of the international sports federations which manage Olympic qualifying events faced complex financial scandals which distracted from quality sports event management. The Olympics’ “Zero Tolerance” policy against drug-based cheating in sports appeared almost unachievable as over 300 Olympic athletes were disciplined and medals were reallocated in a process that severely tested the ideals of the Olympic Movement.
At the same time, the Rio 2016 Olympics wrestled with a weak local economy and the dramatic impeachment of Brazil’s former president. These issues made its ultimate success in presenting a traditional Olympics seem almost like a miracle. More and more cities, from Hamburg to Rome to Boston, considered hosting the Olympics and then backed away.
Two years later, the same strength and dedication that helped Annemiek van Vleuten get back on course to become a world champion had reinvigorated the Olympics with new optimism. FIFA contained the damage of financial scandals and presented a highly professional 2018 World Cup. Perseverance in holding drug-testing programs to higher standards began to rebuild trust. The Tokyo 2020 team was setting records of its own in building a stronger financial foundation for hosting the Olympic Games.
Olympic legend Andy Murray became a symbol for Olympic resilience with another inspirational recovery story. The Olympic gold medal winner of men’s singles tennis tournaments in both 2012 and 2016 had announced in January 2019 that painful hip injuries had convinced him to stop competing in professional tennis. Just five months later, following a rigorous combination of surgery and physical rehabilitation, Murray was back in form and won the men’s doubles tennis tournament with Feliciano Lopez at the prestigious Queen’s Club tournament.
The resilience of the Olympic Games continues to impress people around the world and inspire many to pursue their own impossible moments. This strength makes the story of how the Olympics operate from day to day and year to year a set of valuable lessons about how to manage global enterprises and individual efforts.
The modern Olympics is not perfect. Its most dedicated followers know that all too well. But just like the ancient Olympics which inspired it, the Olympic community has literally changed the world for the better and become a showcase for the resilience and talent of the human race.
Numbers Count
A race from Marathon to Athens concluded the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. This “Marathon Race” became a brand name in the world of sports and emerged as a powerful symbol of what both the modern Olympics and individual athletes could achieve. In 1896, 25 men from five nations started the race. The winner, Spiridon Louys of Greece, completed the 40-kilometer course in 178 minutes and 50 seconds.
In 2016, 155 men from 82 nations competed in the marathon race that concluded the Rio Summer Olympic Games. Of them, 140 finished the race and the winner, Eluid Rotich of Kenya, completed the 42.2-kilometer course in just 128 minutes and 44 seconds.
That 50-minute leap in performance equaled a 28 percent increase in speed in this grueling test of endurance. It made the iconic Olympic motto of “Faster! Higher! Stronger!” a reality and inspired millions of men and women to make these goals an important part of their personal lives. Over 1,000 community marathon races open to runners from around the world also took place in 2016. The largest, the New York City Marathon, reported that over 50,000 runners completed the rigorous race. Over 80,000 who met selective accreditation criteria applied for the New York City Marathon alone. London reported 247,000 applicants and Tokyo over 300,000.
The 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games also featured a women’s marathon that reinforced the Olympic community’s commitment to sport for all with global participation and impressive results. Increasing participation by women in Olympic events has reinforced goals that appeal to spectators around the globe and keep the Olympic Games relevant. Engaging women in sports, a rarity 125 years ago, has been accompanied by physical fitness regimens and an increase in life expectancy.
In just one century from the Paris Olympics of 1900 to the Sydney Olympics of 2000, global life expectancy more than doubled to reach 66 years. Promotion of active, healthy living by Olympic sports was just one important factor in this success, but the status of the Olympic Games as the world’s most watched event made it influential.
The iconic marathon races have also demonstrated the ability of the Olympic Games to include athletes from all nations and give all a good chance to excel. The 2016 medalists in the women’s marathon represented Kenya, Bahrain, and Ethiopia, while the 2016 men’s marathon concluded with medal victories for runners from Kenya, Ethiopia and the United States. Altogether, the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro brought together 11,237 athletes from 207 countries spanning the globe. And 3.5 billion broadcast spectators watched them.
Both the 2016 men’s and women’s Olympic marathons shared an interesting distinction. All six medalists wore “Zoom Vaporfly” running shoes designed by Nike. This success added to timely discussions about the role of the Olympics as a human race following the ideal that victory must be based entirely on human effort. Over time, this ideal has become synonymous with the expression “level playing field,” and given international sports organizations the challenging task of maintaining precise standards to define fair play for all.
For the business community, the impressive success of the “Zoom Vaporfly” runners at the 2016 Olympics highlighted other opportunities. This became one more visible way that elite sports promoted technological innovation and profitability. When the “Zoom Vaporfly” began sales to retail customers, its price of $250 commanded a large premium over average running shoes. This success story also showed sponsors adding expertise and not just money in sports projects. The success also contributed to Nike’s goals for a related marketing communications campaign, branded as the “Breaking 2 Project.” Its goal of enabling marathon runners to complete races in under two hours represents a 33 percent improvement in performance over the first Olympic Marathon victory in 1896. Not every advance of the human race reaches this level, but it is inspiring.
Another achievement of the marathon fitness culture inspired by the Olympic movement cannot be measured in minutes or dollars or percents. That is the inspiration and vision provided to individuals with chronic diseases who find rigorous athletic training regimens can improve their health and well-being. A frequent standout at the Chicago, New York, and London marathons is “Team Boomer.” This is a charity founded to provide athletic scholarships to youth diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a lung disorder which used to be fatal in many cases. Fitness regimens are now helping many individuals with cystic fibrosis live longer, healthier lives. In September 2018, a 31-year-old Welshman with cystic fibrosis named Josh Llewellyn-Jones set a world record in another Olympic sport, weightlifting. He lifted a total of 1 million kilograms of weights in one day.
Research by the University of Sydney in Australia has highlighted the value of sports regimens for good health. The cornerstone study of 80,000 adults began in 1994, when Sydney began planning for the 2000 Summer Olympics, and concluded 15 years later. The results presented very substantial reductions in the risk of death from any cause when subjects regularly exercised with one of these tested programs:
- 47 percent reductions for players of racquet sports—tennis, squash, and badminton
- 28 percent reductions for swimmers
- 27 percent reductions for aerobic exercise participants
- 15 percent reductions for cyclists
The conditioning of athletic training has other valuable health benefits. Regular exercise improves bone density and reduces the risk of fractures or chronic conditions that weaken bones. Studies at the University of West Australia School of Sport Science demonstrated that regular swimming regimens benefitted both the circulatory system and brain functions. The expanding field of sports science continues to find more ways that sports and exercise can improve health.
The Ten Billion Dollar Good Deed
The month before the 2016 Summer Olympics took place in Rio de Janeiro, a private investor group reached an agreement to pay $4 billion for the global UFC franchise in mixed martial arts. The price set a new record as the highest amount ever paid to acquire a sports franchise. That record did not last long. The month after the 2016 Summer Olympics, an even more staggering price level for sports franchises entered the record books at $4.6 billion, when Liberty Media agreed to buy the Formula One organization from entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone.
The Olympics are produced by not-for-profit foundations and are not for sale. But premium prices paid for two successful global sports giants confirmed that the value created by international sports event producers is exceptional. This value is built on a foundation of a robust international sports industry with good growth prospects. The UFC deal set seven times gross revenues as an accepted premium for a successful international sports franchise, matching similar transactions in professional sports leagues. These benchmarks would make the commercial value created by the International Olympic Committee alone worth over $10 billion, based on forecast revenues of $1.5 billion a year.
New sponsorship agreements have reinforced the financial value of the Olympic Games. The combined value of two new multiyear agreements in the “The Olympic Partners” TOP global sponsorship program announced in January 2017 was $1 billion.
Highly sophisticated investors have validated multibillion dollar valuations for sports organizations. Computer billionaire Michael Dell joined the UFC acquisition syndicate. The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund purchased 9 percent ownership of Formula One. The Olympics matches the success formula of Formula One and UFC: a valued franchise linked to a premium global brand. It is now benefitting from the value created.
The Olympic brand has earned gold medal status. A 2013 study by marketing experts at Sponsorship Intelligence, recruited by the IOC to conduct consumer research, showed that the Olympic Rings are the world’s most recognized and admired trademark and that the positive brand image of the Olympics has a solid foundation. The 2013 study reported that the Olympic Games achieved the highest appeal and awareness ratings among 12,000 respondents surveyed in 16 countries.
The Sponsorship Intelligence study also underscored another important factor in creating a premium brand for which the Olympics ranks first worldwide. That is the scale of its global audience. This reached 3.7 billion viewers during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. While that figure was almost half the world’s total population in 2012, new ways to reach viewers on mobile devices are adding upside potential to the live viewing audience while new digital channels and social media are growing the capacity to rebroadcast Olympic events for viewing on demand. The forecast global audience for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games is over 4 billion.
Gold medal championship status requires extraordinary effort to maintain and the 2016 Rio Olympics put this status to the test. A Spring 2016 study by Global Language Monitor observed the brand strength of the Olympics and its sponsors trending lower as media attention drifted toward the negative aspects of construction delays, budget woes, disciplinary challenges, and strained health care resources.
The success of new sponsorship deals agreed to after the 2016 Rio Olympics demonstrated that the Olympics had the resilience to maintain premium global brand status. The 12-year strategic partnership between the IOC with Alibaba Corporation of China announced in January 2017 was valued at $600 million in services and funding. That figure put a $400 million value on the eight-year global partnership concluded with Bridgestone Corporation of Japan a few weeks earlier.
This positive momentum helped the IOC to add another global titan to the Olympic Partners sponsorship program in June 2017. Intel, a pillar of the Silicon Valley technology community, signed an agreement to support the Olympic Games through 2024. The agreement illustrated important ways that this type of sponsorship agreement leverages the expertise of corporate partners to build unique competitive advantages for the management of the Olympic Games. These advantages, in turn, help the Olympics achieve goals of excellence and achievement that resonate with key audiences.
Organizing the modern Olympics has been a complex undertaking with complex challenges. Paying careful attention to fundamental values and promoting an idealistic vision has ultimately created billions of dollars in financial value. This has built a platform for creating more value in the future.
Traditionally, the fundamental Olympic values promoted have been excellence, respect, and friendship. As the Olympic Games have evolved and added new initiatives such as the Youth Olympic Games and the Olympic Channel, the values of fair play, sustainable growth, and promoting education have also grown in importance. These values are embodied in the Olympic Charter. It has served as a point of reference for thousands of Olympic community and sports organizations. Collectively, these initiatives and institutions have come to be known as the “Olympic Movement.”
In practice, over a century, the network of organizations that has clustered around the Olympics has achieved admired success with a common strategy:
- Building on tradition
- Adapting to a changing world
- Providing leadership for the future
From Ancient to Modern, From Dream to Reality
The recreation of the ancient Olympic Games in the 19th and 20th centuries was so noteworthy that entire books have been written on the subject. The title of one, The Idealist, epitomizes the driving force behind it. This is a biography of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French fencer who organized the first Olympic Congress in 1894 and presided over the International Olympic Committee from 1896 to 1925. As the title suggests, this personal tribute portrays de Coubertin as a visionary idealist who inspired thousands of others to support his vision.
An important common foundation of both the ancient and modern Olympics was the principle of “sound mind, sound body.” Originally popularized by the Greek thinker Thales of Miletus two centuries after the ancient Olympics commenced in 776 BC, the concept became a pillar of the Roman Empire hundreds of years later and helped the Romans structure institutions that functioned effectively across the many different regions which they ruled. The Latin phrase “mens sana in corpore sano” ultimately became a global ideal.
By the time Pierre de Coubertin realized his goal of gathering supporters at the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1894, this idealistic vision of promoting sound bodies and sound minds around the globe faced serious challenges. Farm laborers migrated to large cities with few facilities for staying active, imperialism had divided many regions, and sporting contests were often violent, raucous events. At the same time, for the first time, advances in transportation and communication had made it possible to organize international sports events as envisioned by de Coubertin and fellow founders of the modern Olympics.
Excavation of the ancient site of Olympia in Greece during the late 19th century fascinated millions with the legends of the ancient Olympic Games. Many texts describing the events, monuments, and history of the ancient Olympic Games made it possible to envision a revival.
Traditions of the ancient Olympics have encouraged success in the modern Olympics. Institutions, values, symbols, ceremonies, technological innovation, infrastructure, honors, and monuments all played an important role in the ancient Olympics. These inspired many aspects of the modern Olympics. And the modern Olympics has also followed the established practice of the ancient Olympics to adapt to changes in both the sporting world and international diplomacy to strengthen its status as the most prestigious sporting event.
Discoveries from the site of the ancient Olympic Games in Olympia, Greece, as well as hundreds of detailed written accounts of the ancient Olympic Games, created a valuable legacy for leaders engaged in the modern Olympic Games. Understanding how foundations of the ancient Games contributed to their extraordinary longevity has provided a frame of reference for impressive growth of the modern Olympics. In the ancient period, 293 Olympiads took place over a time span of 1,168 years. That is comparable to the longevity of the Byzantine Empire, the longest lasting institution in history.
Many institutions that supported the ancient Olympic Games have also become time-tested success factors for the modern Olympic Games. First and foremost have been universally agreed rules of competition. These have gone hand in hand with explicit prohibitions. Accepted practices and designated officials for adjudication strengthened the integrity of official rules and prohibitions. These were complemented by an accepted leadership body, the Hellanaki of Elea, the host region. These leaders also managed treasuries to pay for the Games and exercised authority comparable to the International Olympic Committee today.
The ancient Olympic Games found ways to balance tradition and the evolution of sports. Popular classical sporting contests took place again at each Olympiad: running races, long jump competitions, discus and javelin throws, wrestling, boxing, and the pentathlon. Other events were added or retired from the program in a way that appealed to spectators and made each Olympiad unique.
In addition, the ancient Olympics made a concerted effort to engage youth in sports and managed a series of separate contests for promising athletes aged under 18. The regular scheduling of the games every four years made it a milestone for each generation of aspiring youth.
The ancient Olympics incorporated many communal experiences which strengthened their appeal. Olympic hopefuls arrived from city-states throughout the Greek territories a month before the opening ceremonies. They lived together in shared accommodations akin to the Olympic Villages of today and trained together in the purpose-built Gymnasium of Olympia. Pre-Olympic trial events were held to select the best athletes. This preparation also provided an opportunity for organizers to effectively communicate the rules, ceremonial protocols, and values of fair play they sought to promote throughout the Olympic Games.
The preeminent value promoted by the ancient Olympics was a dedication to continuous improvement. The ancient Olympic Games also promoted the values of inclusiveness as a foundation for high-performance competition. Originally, only male citizens from Greek territories could participate. After Greece was annexed by the Roman Empire, the community expanded to include citizens from throughout the Roman Empire. The Olympic values of fair play were reinforced by sacred oaths.
Preserving the history and achievements of the Games became both a value and a communications tool for enhancing the prestige of the Games. The disc of Iphitos, founder of the ancient Games, documented the Olympic Truce and other foundations of the Olympic Games and became the nucleus of a collection which ultimately filled an entire museum.
Athlete health and safety were high priorities in the values of the ancient Olympics. Very few athletes died in over 1,000 years of competitions and competition related injuries were rare. Athletes benefitted from a traditional diet of barley bread, oats, fresh cheese, dried figs, nuts, and lean meats rich in protein and vitamins. Modern sport dieticians continue to improve this facet of high-performance athletics.
Other scientific and technological innovations strengthened the ancient Olympic Games over time. Precision distance measurement devices and scales were refined for construction of the most advanced athletic facilities in the ancient world. A sophisticated measurement tool called a hysplex was invented to alert officials to false starts in races. Construction and renovation of stadia and amphitheaters employed sophisticated acoustical engineering so that thousands of spectators could hear announcements and competition results. This was just one dimension of the way that the demanding requirements of the Olympic Games became a stimulus to innovation and knowledge sharing. Today, innovation and knowledge sharing remain pillars of Olympic success.
A Universal Language and Dynamic Network
The impetus for the modern Olympics began with high ideals. The extraordinary effectiveness of sports in strengthening communications across borders and networking communities of talented people demonstrated many advantages. This helped to establish international sports as a universal language. Rapid advances in media from newsreels to television to omnipresent digital media made international sports images iconic. Ways the Olympics has highlighted the visual impact with dazzling imagery elevated international sports to a class of its own in reaching global audiences.
The trademark “Five Rings” logo of the Olympic Games is a case in point. Modern Olympics’ founder Pierre de Coubertin sought to emphasize the universality of the Olympics and reinforce this value with a universally recognized symbol. Five interlocked rings, symbolizing five continents, stand out in color against a white background. Today, this iconic image of the modern Olympic Games is the single most recognized image in the world.
Universality has become much more than an Olympic ideal and has enabled a degree of global coordination that few organizations could rival on their best days. As in most Olympic endeavors, “perfect tens” are rare, but the efforts enable relatively smooth interactions within a network that has become a constellation of thousands of work units—national governing bodies, international sports federations, commissions, official broadcasters, local organizing committees, commercial subcontractors, volunteer groups, and many other support organizations.
This universal communication has been strengthened by the Olympics’ ability to establish its icons as models for influential organizations around the world. The modern Olympics went a step beyond the olive wreath crowns awarded to victors in the ancient Olympic Games and began awarding silver medals to victors and copper medals to second place finishers at the Summer Olympics in Athens in 1896. Eight years later, the International Olympic Committee began the tradition of awarding gold, silver, and bronze medals for first, second, and third places. These awards became widely used symbols for excellence and achievement, adopted by most other international sports competitions and emulated throughout the communications profession.
While de Coubertin and fellow founders of the modern Olympics wanted to promote universality and universal symbols to promote Olympic values and human values, over time these created substantial commercial value. This has helped achieve the benefit of adding resources to support management of the Olympic Games and other programs in the Olympic Movement. Broadcasters, sponsors and communities make very large financial commitments to promote the Olympic Games in exchange for the valuable benefits of association with universal symbols, expertise, and excellence.
In the business world, the standards set by the Olympics have often become accepted as best practices. Teamwork, coaching, judging, and evaluation management systems frequently rely on expertise that demonstrated universal acceptance in the Olympics beforehand. This achievement makes a good understanding of the Olympics—how Olympic organizations work today and the vision of the Olympics for the future—valuable knowledge for business managers.
Testing Limits
Three-time Olympic skiing medalist Mikaela Shiffrin described her pursuit of Olympic goals as simply “I know no limits.” Olympic legend Usain Bolt reinforced the view with his motto “I don’t think limits.” These aspirations are shared by hundreds of others who have reached new heights at the Olympic Games. But the impressive records achieved by Olympic athletes and their colleagues throughout the elite sporting world have not been easy and some impossible moments have been tragic or even fatal.
Only 10 athletes have died from sports-related causes during the Olympics over 120 years of competitions. But the frequency of death and injury in training or after competitions is a painful reminder that limits do exist and challenge the best intentions of sports advocates whose goals include promoting a healthier human race.
In late 2017, Olympic hopefuls David Poisson of France and Max Burkhardt of Germany died competing in the Skiing World Cup. While Mikaela Shiffrin was training for another successful gold medal victory at the 2018 Winter Olympics, English rugby player Ian Williams collapsed and died at training. And just after the 2018 Winter Olympics, boxer Scott Westgarth died from concussions sustained in a victory.
Four-time U.S. champion in open water swimming Fran Crippen never made it to the Olympics. He died from heat exhaustion in October 2010 following a competition in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. The water temperature had been three degrees Celsius over the maximum allowed for competitions in swimming pools. The circumstances spotlighted the scale of challenges to promoting sports and fitness around a world that has many different environments for sporting events.
Noble, but tragic, death was also a theme in the athletic achievements of the ancient Olympic era. While the Marathon race has become the signature event of the modern Olympics, the heroic runner Philippides, who immortalized the original course, collapsed and died after finishing.
The strength and ambition of hundreds of Olympic champions has created margins of victory measured in hundredths of a second. And the controversies surrounding hundreds who risked their own health and the integrity of the Olympic Games with performance enhancing drugs to somehow gain that winning edge crossed more lines. This is testing the limits of the Olympics’ own resilience as an admired global institution.
More sophisticated testing of doping control samples from the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics and 2014 Winter Olympics showed that a disturbing number of Olympic athletes had initially managed to hide prohibited levels of performance enhancing drugs. And more disclosures showed ongoing use of otherwise banned drugs by elite athletes who had successfully obtained waivers for therapeutic use. As of January 2019, retests using more sophisticated technology documented 86 drug code violations from Beijing 2008 and 116 additional violations from London 2012. Over 10 percent of the weightlifters competing at London 2012 ultimately failed more rigorous drug screening tests.
The drug retest reports did not include athletes such as Bradley Wiggins, who won a gold medal in men’s cycling at London 2012 after exercising a therapeutic use exception for triamcinolone earlier that summer.
The complete dimensions of performance enhancing drug abuse related to Olympic competitions may never be known with precision. But the dozens of medals reallocated following more rigorous examinations and reviews could not avoid tarnishing the image of the Olympic community. Since six of the eight competitors in the men’s heavyweight weightlifting event at London 2012 ultimately tested positive for doping violations, it became impossible to award three medals in line with Olympic traditions, an “impossible moment” far from the ideals of the Olympics’ founders. And no solution appeared adequate to match the best Olympic ideals.
In addition to the many organizational crises that emerged in the sporting world, many athletes found themselves managing personal health challenges that were far from Olympic ideals, far from inspiring, and far from the goal of encouraging greater participation in sports and physical fitness. Fencers trained to lunge forward often developed muscle imbalances and strained tendons. A 2017 medical study showed measurably higher risk of death from cardiac arrest for triathlon competitors. Another medical study of NBA professional basketball players showed that 8.8 percent had missed games due to lateral ankle sprains over a 17-year period.
A decline in the number of cities making the effort to bid to host the Olympic Games sent a signal that Olympic organizations would need to address the root causes of negative perceptions in order to restore a strong foundation for the future of the Olympic movement. The race to host the 2016 Summer Olympics was the last to be rigorously contested. Four finalists were selected from a group of seven qualified candidates, with Rio de Janeiro ultimately winning over Madrid by a margin of 66 votes to 34.
The field of bidders to host the 2018 Winter Olympics and 2020 Summer Olympics narrowed to just three candidate cities. The competition to host the 2022 Winter Olympics saw one potential bidder after another withdraw from the race. Voters in St. Moritz, Switzerland; Munich, Germany; and Krakow, Poland, all opposed bidding in referenda. A parliamentary vote in Norway forced Oslo to withdraw.
Building Value by Building a Community
Collectively, the Olympic community is very large and creates exceptional value. The 105 voting members of the International Olympic Committee who lead the community and the over 13,000 athletes who compete in each four-year Olympiad cycle are literally the leading edge. Thousands of coaches, judges, referees, technicians, media professionals, medical experts, and other support staff are essential to presenting the games. On average, there are seven of these professionals for each athlete who qualifies to compete at an Olympics.
In addition, tens of thousands of volunteers make it possible to scale up for the logistical challenge of day-to-day operations when the games take place. Tokyo 2020 is trying to recruit 80,000, which would set a new Olympic record in another dimension. These kinds of efforts are matched by over 200 independent National Olympic Committees. Sponsors share their expertise by lending staff experts who also become integrated into the Olympic community. And many more talented individuals participate at hundreds of qualifying competitions leading up to the Olympic Games.
Then there are the spectators, social media followers, program participants, and global television audience. Over 2 million individual fans watched the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and Paralympics in person, purchasing 6 million tickets. The German Olympic Sports Federation serves 27 million dues paying members, and 43 million spectators viewed the London 2012 Olympic torch relay and Cultural Olympiad events. Hundreds of millions follow Olympic organizations and individual athletes on social media. And most adults in the world watch the Olympic Games as part of a global television audience.
The most engaged participants in the Olympic movement also attend related events such as sports demonstrations and ceremonies at Olympic gatherings or complete formal Olympic studies programs at universities and the International Olympic Academy. Olympic education strengthens the foundation of the Olympic movement and its values.
Education has also become a valuable factor in continuous improvement of athlete performance. Athletes and coaches observe top competitors and adapt their best practices. Olympic athletes train together in the Athletes Village. In addition, many Olympic athletes train together before Olympic competitions in global centers of excellence such as Hungary for water polo, Spain for cycling, and Canada for figure skating.
Video archives and additional educational programs organized by sports federations add to the choices for ongoing education. Massive online courses have extended the ability of Olympic organizations to prepare officials and provided a means to prepare large teams of volunteers to work together effectively. This kind of communication, in turn, reinforces the value of sports as a universal language.
The talent pool developed by this strong network of communication and participation programs has created a distinct competitive advantage for Olympic organizations to organize international sporting events. This kind of sustainable unique competitive advantage sets the Olympics apart and builds a foundation for future success.
No community this large can exist in a utopian paradise where problems never arise and no challenges exist. The talent pool that the Olympic movement has developed is a valuable resource for managing current and future challenges. The shared values of the talent pool contribute to frequent success. And the resilience that Olympic athletes demonstrate when they confront defeat or pursue an impossible moment also reinvigorates the Olympic community with new energy.
Illustration 1.1 The heritage of the ancient Olympics in Greece built a foundation for the modern Olympics and inspired its values.
Key Sources and References
Information and observations in this text were compiled from interviews and conference participation as an accredited journalist as well as related news and sports publications. Results from Olympic competitions and IOC events are based on information published on the official IOC website, www.olympic.org. Other key sources are listed for each chapter. Where possible, financial figures originally reported in foreign currencies have been converted to U.S. dollars using prevailing exchange rates around the time period of the event or project discussed. The author recommends the sports industry trade publication, Inside the Games, for more detailed information about individual topics.
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