The Olympics as a global affair

The 2012 Olympic Games sees London become the first country in the event’s rich history to host the games for a record breaking third time. To some of you this news may be just as interesting as Channel 9’s broadcast of the games, albeit a little more clearer and without all the repeats.

Another interesting fact lies within an ideological icon of the games themselves – the rings. Each of the five colours represented within the Olympic rings symbolise the five original continents including Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Furthermore, each color of the five rings is included to encompass one color of every national flag in the world. This in a sense is globalisation.

However with this in mind I think it is appropriate to trace the history of the games, particularly its economic infrastructure. This year’s Olympics are the 30^th event since first commencing in Greece in 1896, some 116 years ago.

It’s not surprising to see that the United States have hosted the game on eight separate occasions cementing their reputation as an economic powerhouse. Amongst the remaining four original contents Europe has hosted the games 28 times, Asia five times and Australia twice (Top End Sports 2012). Even if you weren’t of Australian background I’m sure you could make an educated guess as to which two capitals hosted those games based on the themes relevant to this discussion.

The point here is that Africa, a nation home to 1 billion people and 14% of the entire human population has never hosted what is labelled as a ‘global’ and ‘international’ event. They are even set to be overtaken by South America as Brazil is set to host its first Olympic games in 2016. Now do you think the Olympics are global games?

References

Image sourced from ‘Google > Images’ search engine, retrieved August 10, 2012, http://www.google.com.au/imgres?start=104&num=10&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=622&tbm=isch&tbnid=gMUaeUSQROebyM:&imgrefurl=http://memegenerator.net/instance/24319856&docid=KHmqImHkM5vRJM&imgurl=http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250x250/24319867.jpg&w=250&h=250&ei=ocMkUMXkIqeviQf68IDIBA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=318&vpy=16&dur=7776&hovh=200&hovw=200&tx=87&ty=100&sig=111687787434019018409&page=5&tbnh=142&tbnw=137&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:104,i:100

 ‘Olympic Games’, Top End Sports, retrieved August 10^th, 2012 http://www.topendsports.com/events/summer/hosts/list.htm