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The Gold in the Rings

The People and Events That Transformed the Olympic Games
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Once a showcase for amateur athletics, the Olympic Games have become a global entertainment colossus powered by corporate sponsorship and professional participation. Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney offer the inside story of this transformation by examining the far-sighted leadership and decision-making acumen of four International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidents: Avery Brundage, Lord Killanin, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Jacques Rogge. Blending biography with historical storytelling, the authors explore the evolution of Olympic commercialism from Brundage's uneasy acceptance of television rights fees through the revenue generation strategies that followed the Salt Lake City bid scandal to the present day. Throughout, Wenn and Barney draw on their decades of studying Olympic history to dissect the personalities, conflicts, and controversies behind the Games' embrace of the business of spectacle.
 
Entertaining and expert, The Gold in the Rings maps the Olympics' course from paragon of purity to billion-dollar profits.
Wenn and Barney have produced another foundational text in Olympic history, this one exploring the deepening ties between the International Olympic Committee and the generation of commercial revenue. Utilizing exclusive access to previously undisclosed IOC documents, along with interviews with many high-ranking Olympic officials, the authors not only shed new light on IOC presidents such as Brundage, Killanin, Samaranch and Rogge, but also a diverse and colorful supporting cast whose importance is only now revealed. This book instantly becomes essential reading for anyone interested in the modern Olympic movement.--Kevin Witherspoon, author of Before the Eyes of the World: Mexico and the 1968 Olympic Games
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