The IOA

The relationship between the Olympic Movement and politics has gone through many changes and levels of conflict, as both these social forces have a different starting point and different target. On the one hand, the Games are based on a warm and strong co-existence of different peoples, religions, ideologies and cultures, targeting brother-hood, solidarity, humanism and consolidating world peace. On the other hand, politics attempts to take advantage of any fertile ground to flex its muscles and to gain an advantage, able to assist in imposing any idea expressed each time.

Over the 120 years of its lifetime, the Olympic Movement’s relation-ship with politics went through three major historical phases. The first started with Pierre de Coubertin’s noble idea to revive the Olympic Games up until a short time prior to the 2nd World War. The second phase started dramatically before the end of the 2nd World War and spans the years until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Without a doubt this was the most difficult period for the Olympic Movement. The third phase is what we have lived through over the last 30 years, with political interventions in the Olympic Games gradually ebbing and the IOC reversing what had previously been the status quo, to impose its own terms in this relationship between sports and politics.

Today the Movement is autonomous and imposes its might internationally in the pursuit of world peace - in which it is called upon to play an increasingly creative role. This is a new era for the Olympic Movement, with an enhanced role on the international political chessboard, which requires the Movement to impose its autonomy.

An introductory treatise was published by the International Olympic Academy in May 2016, by Professor and IOA Director, Dr Dionyssis Gangas, entailing many features relative to typical and substantive intervention of internal and international politics in Olympic Movement.

One of the most controversial and debatable subjects, which, curiously, only a few analysts of the Olympic Movement have investigated, are the different aspects in which the discipline of domestic and international politics has affected the development of Olympism, both in the content of its very philosophy, as well as in its practical implementation through structured sports and primarily, the Olympic Games. It is possible that this lack of systematic study and promotion of this phenomenon may be attributed to the fact that throughout the course of the Olympic Movement and mainly the development of the Games, the various events that have defined the interaction of sports and politics were dealt with individually and not as branches of the same tree which spread out gradually and covered all facets of the phenomenon of this relation.

The purpose of writing this treatise is to provide the students of the Postgraduate Programme in Olympic Studies, organized by the International Olympic Academy and the Department of Sports Organization and Management of University of Peloponnese, with the potentiality to observe more easily the relation between the Olympic Movement and its political exploitation, a subject that contains, by nature, many distinctive qualities.

This treatise will constitute the core of a textbook of the writer which will be published in 2017.

Dr Petros Synadinos, Architect – Town Planner, Member of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, President of the Hellenic Archery Federation.
Nikos Choutas, Political Scientist - Historian.

‍Editor
‍Dr Vassiliki Tzachrista, Archaeologist, International Olympic Academy
Foreword: Isidoros Kouvelos, President of the International Olympic Academy
Foreword: Adamantios Pepelasis, Economist – Professor at UCLA
cInternational Olympic Academy Athens 2016

Twelve years after the Athens Olympic Games, this study undertakes the first comprehensive assessment of their impact on Greek society, its institutions and the international profile of Greece. The combination of old and new information sheds light on various aspects of the greatest event ever staged in Greece, which (at that time) greatly changed opinions both in Greece and abroad about what Greece can do.

Specifically, the study examines, in detail, the effects of the Games on tourism, employment, on commercial activities of Greek companies and how they contributed to the modernization and improvement of public infrastructure in the sectors of sports, health, transport and telecommunications, culture, water resource management and the improvement of the urban landscape in terms of aesthetics and functional reconstruction. Based on the official announcements of the Olympic Games, it attempts a critical approach and aspires to take stock soberly of their impact and importance for the host city and the country generally.

The publication records the tangible and intangible benefits of the Games and each individual section investigates choices that were harmful and imposed (superfluous sports venues, additional extraordinary security measures, etc.); the defects and inertias in the preparation phase, which contributed to a certain degree in limiting gains from the success of the Games in the post-Olympic period. A detailed table with financial information is provided in an appendix, which lists the three project categories of the overall Olympic budget: mandatory Olympic projects, necessary/nationally chosen projects, parallel projects and classification per body and ministry with payments up to 2010. 

On the occasion of the celebration of the International Olympic Academy's golden jubilee, the IOA issued an anniversary album with the personal reminiscences and stories of 50 friends and fellow travelers from all over the world who are only a symbolic sample of the thousands of friends of the Olympic idea who were involved in the IOA's educational work. The authors were invited to revisit the IOA's activities from a personal approach. Their stories eloquently reflect their sentimental ties to the IOA as they highlight the Academy's contribution to the Olympic Movement and Olympic education.

The publication contains photographs with the authors' memories, from their personal records or from the IOA's photographic archive. It also includes the traditional commemorative pictures of the participants from the IOA's archive, which cover its 50 years of operation and constitute an informal "directory".

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Forty-five years after the creation of the International Olympic Academy, on the initiative of then-President Nikos Filaretos and with funding provided by the IOC's Olympic Solidarity, a review of the IOA's work explores with a critical eye and in depth the character, the history and the activities of a cultural institution with an international presence and scope.

The thematic contents of this edition cover the background of the Academy's creation, the excavations of the German Archaeological School, the role of the IOC's Commission for the IOA, the National Olympic Academies, Ancient Olympia as a symbol of Olympism, the facilities in Ancient Olympia and cumulative information on the lectures and lecturers of its international Sessions. It is published in English and in Greek.

The present study focuses on the relationship between the reconstitution of the Olympic Games and the way in which the political and cultural identity of the modern Greek state was shaped and defined. It is an attempt to shed light on the role of Greek tradition in the revival of the Olympic Games - an aspect hitherto not given the attention it deserves in the literature in various languages. If we look closely at the new sources, we shall find that, so far from being the work of a single individual, Pierre de Coubertin, the reestablishment of the Olympic Games was in fact the result of very various intellectual trends and multiple factors in different countries. This approach, coming from a Greek, is not meant to belittle the part played by Pierre de Coubertin, who, as the bibliography shows, was the main inspiration of the notion of bringing back the Olympic Games in the last decade of the nineteenth century.

The new evidence called in to complement all previous research was located by systematic research among the texts and sources extant in various archives in Greece. The greater and most important part of these new sources comes from the unpublished archive of Demetrios Vikelas, first president of the IOC, which contains many texts relating to the first two operational years of the IOC. Furthermore, a lot of valuable unpublished information included in the archive of the Hellenic Olympic Committee as well as in other archives, was used as a basis in order to highlight unknown aspects of the Athens 1896 Olympic Games.

Special reference is made to the first attempts in Greece, the well-known Zappas Olympics, to revive the Olympic Games, the William Penny Brookes's ideas and efforts to create an Olympic Movement in England through the bodily and spiritual development of the British working class, and their contribution to the creation of a proper substructure for making the Olympic Games truly international. The personalities of Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas, the way in which Greece received the proposal-wish of the 1894 Founding Congress for the first Olympic Games to be held in Athens and the efforts of all Greeks to meet the demands of such a task, as well as the idea of the permanent staging of the Games in Athens, are some of the issues also presented in the current study.

The present volume is a collection of essays attempting to investigate the parameters which relate to the celebration of the Olympic Games by Athens in the past - specifically in 1896 and 1906. The main hypotheses have to do with how Athens hosted the Olympic Games of 1896 and 1906, how it functioned as an Olympic city, how it was seen by foreign visitors and athletes and what were their experiences, what were the consequences of these Olympic events for Greek domestic and foreign policy and for the image of the city itself, and what was the relation between the expectations of local people and foreigners and the reality, between the ideal and the real Athens.

Τhese questions presuppose interdisciplinary approaches which take into account demographic, social, economic, political and cultural parameters of the two Olympic events in Athens. Thus the history written in the chapters of this volume is not an "inside" and "introspective" history of the Games which contents itself with a record of the names of the athletes, athletic achievements, the nature of the events, and, in general, all those features which go to make up what is called the athletic side of the Olympic Games. The emphasis is put on the people (who traveled to Athens, who lived there, who attended or took part in the Games), on the place - real and invented - of the revival of the Games and on the festival (of athletics, but not only) itself.

All essays are based on original research conducted in the archives and the libraries of different countries and mainly in the Archives of the Hellenic Olympic Committee in Athens.

This publication is meant to make known the richness of the Archives of the HOC, which were classified under the direction of Professor Christina Koulouri. An exceptionally analytic database was designed especially for the HOC archives in accordance with its particular needs and the research potential. This database is user-friendly and allows the researcher to pursue many lines of research, as well as the printing of catalogues of every type - thematic, chronological, etc. - in a rough form. For the period 1894-1936, the computer entry was carried out by document, while for the period 1937-1972 by folder.The HOC archives highlight the history of the Committee itself, as the oldest central athletic institution in Greece, on the one hand, and the history of Greek sport in general in combination with the political, social, economic and cultural changes that took place in Greece during the 20th century, on the other. The fact that the HOC was in charge of and managed the main sports grounds in the region of the capital (Panathenean Stadium, Velodrome and the Rifle Range at Kallithea) for many years strengthened the role it played in the organisation of sports events. At the same time, the holding of the Olympic Games every four years bestowed on the HOC an international role that other sports institutions did not have, like SEGAS (Union of Greek Gymnastic and Sports Clubs) and various sports federations, at least during the first half of the 20th century.The quantity and variety of subject matter contained in the Archives - and which go beyond the boundaries of the history of sport - cannot of course be reflected in a publication whose purpose is merely to try and make known an archival collection and shed light on the research avenues it offers. However, instead of the printing of a catalogue of themes that has been recorded during the indexing of documents, folders and boxes, the present publication uses the archives to selectively present some historical themes of the HOC and Greek sport. Consequently, the texts contained in this volume are short studies that combine the primary archival material with the existing bibliography without attempting to offer a complete and exhaustive presentation of themes.The choice of subjects was dictated by the desire to highlight the Greek side of the history of the Olympic Games, according to the availability of the Archives. That does not mean, however, that the approach is entirely Greco-centric. The aim was to gain deeper insight into the connections between Greece and the general history of the Olympic Games and the spread of the specific weight of 'Greekness' in the institutionalisation of the modern international Olympics - beginning with the revival and ending with the torch relay. For various reasons, therefore, it was decided to include a presentation of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens (1896), the Intermediate Olympics of 1906, the Balkan Games, the International Classical Games of 1934, the torch relay, the Berlin Games (1936) and the Greek Delegations to the Olympic Games (1900-1972).

Is a booklet for people who work with children and youth. It builds a framework within any school program for the study of the values and traditions of the Olympic Games in order to give more quality to their lives.

It converts the Olympic message, which is the legacy of Pierre de Coubertin, into meaningful and easy to use activities which emphasize local and cultural background.

Join the hundreds of teachers throughout the world who use Olympic themes to motivate students in mathematics, sciences, writing and reading, the arts and physical education. Organize a mini-Olympic Games in your school or communities and use it to teach fair play and understanding. Build on the enthusiasm to encourage participation by both boys and girls in physical activity and sport. Help students affirm their own identity and diversity.