In the presence of many friends of sport, on the 17th December 2019, the IOA’s Development Projects Consultant, Dr Dionyssis Gangas presented his new book entitled “Olympic Movement and International Politics” in the Conference Hall of the Hellenic Olympic Committee.The book, printed by “I. SIDERIS” publications, was presented in detail by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of the Greek Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, member of New Democracy, Mrs Dora Bakoyannis, the Emeritus Professor of International and European Studies of Panteion University Dr Stelios Perrakis, who actually prefaces the book, the Professor in Modern and Contemporary History of the same University Dr Christina Koulouri and the Director of the Institute of International Relations and Director of the International Olympic Truce Centre, pollical scientist Dr Constantinos Filis.

The presentation was coordinated by the journalist Ms Kleio Nikolaou.This book, in addition to being a valuable assistance for the students of the Master’s Degree Programme of the IOA and the University of Peloponnese, is also a useful tool in the hands of all people of sport, who have the desire to learn about the various aspects of the relation between the Olympic Movement and International Politics, as these have beenformed over time until today.As the reader of this documented study will find, the relation between sport and politics has gone through many fluctuations and many levels of conflict, since these two social actions have different origins and different goals. On the one hand, the Games are based on a warm and strong co-existence of different peoples, religions, ideologies and cultures, aiming at brotherhood, solidarity, humanity and the consolidation of world peace. On the other hand, the pursuit of politics seeks to exploit every suitable ground offered to it by the promotion of sport in order to gain an advantage, capable of helping it to impose any idea it expresses each time.In the first part of the book, an attempt it made to analyse the relation of the Olympic Movement with politics, which went through three major, completely distinct historical phases. The first begins with the noble idea of the revival of the Olympic Games by Coubertin and ends shortly before World War II.

The second phase of conflict between sport and politics begins dramatically at the end of World War II and ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is the most difficult period of the Olympic Movement and the IOC itself as during this phase the conflict between sport and politics reaches its peak. The third phase is the past thirty years, with political intervention having almost disappeared from Olympic events and the IOC reversing the circumstances of the previous years and now imposing its own terms in this relation between sport and politics.The second part of the study presents the various forms of political intervention in all the summer Olympic Games, from the first ones in 1896 to those in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. –