Kristine Margaret Toohey

International Sport Event Participation: Prior Sport Involvement; Destination Image; and Travel Motives

Abstract Research into sport event participation from an international perspective remains underdeveloped. This study utilized the attraction process within the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) to develop and examine five hypothesis related to motives of international participants (N=239) who registered for a hallmark Australian running event. Structural equation modelling revealed registration in the event is motivated by prior running involvement; desire to participate in organized running events, favourable beliefs and feelings toward the host destination and perceived travel benefits of escape, social interaction, prestige, relaxation, culture experience, cultural learning and knowledge exploration. Subsequent MANOVA analyses reveal participants from dissimilar cultures are more likely to perceive travel benefits of relaxation and cultural learning while gender differences emerge as females perceived opportunities of socialization, relaxation cultural experience, knowledge exploration and cultural learning. Results indicated that four broad categories of participants emerged: males of ‘similar culture’; females of ‘similar culture’; males of ‘dissimilar culture’; females of ‘dissimilar culture’. Marketing and event experiences need to cater for each of these variations in order to motivate participants’ registration and then provide the best active sport tourism experience based around the event.

The sport participation legacy of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and other international sporting events hosted in Australia

The legacy of an Olympic Games in a host city or country can take a variety of forms, including non-sporting benefits, such as enhanced urban infrastructure and national and international tourism profile, and sporting benefits, such as improved sporting facilities, strengthened sports organisations and potential increases in grassroots sport participation. This paper concentrates on the last of these, particularly in regard to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. The paper examines claims by the Olympic movement concerning increased sports participation as a legacy and examines available evidence to consider whether the hosting of the Games boosted sports participation in Australia. While some estimates suggest that participation did increase following the hosting of the 2000 Olympics, the failure of relevant organisations to maintain an adequate and consistent data collection regime makes this conclusion extremely speculative. From 2001 onwards, with the existence of a more stable data collection system and increasing awareness of the idea of a sport participation legacy, it is possible to make more reliable estimates of the pattern of grassroots sports participation following the hosting of the 2003 Rugby World Cup and the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. However, even when reliable and consistent participation data are available, the question of causality in the context of the wider sport development and participation system remains to be addressed.

Perceptions of Terrorism Threats at the 2004 Olympic Games: Implications for Sport Events

A legacy of September 11, 2001, and subsequent terrorist attacks such as the Bali, (2002), Madrid (2004) and London (2005) bombings, is evidenced in the increased security measures put in place at major sport events. Heightened attention to safety management and public concern about terrorism threats and perception of risk has now become a fundamental component of the planning and risk management strategies for sport events. On the basis of appraisal-tendency theory (Lerner & Keltner, 2001), we investigated effects of anger and fear on risk judgments of 277 attendees at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Attendees who reported being fearful or feeling unsafe at the Games displayed increased risk estimates and associated concerns, whilst respondents expressing defiance and anger produced opposite reactions. Male respondents had less pessimistic risk perceptions than did females, and men were more likely than women to report that the increased security measures detracted from their Olympic Games experience. Nationality had minimal effect on perceptions of risk except in the case of the host country, with Greek respondents reporting fewer concerns for safety but greater awareness of the security measures present at the Games. The discussion focuses on theoretical, methodological and practical implications.

The Olympic Games and knowledge management: A case study of the Sydney organising committee of the Olympic Games

This paper uses the context of the Sydney Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (SOCOG) as a case study. It examines how information and knowledge management (KM) were utilised through a specific knowledge project (the Sydney 2000 Games Information System) in an event‐driven organisation with a limited lifespan and increasing staff numbers. This project helped ensure that SOCOGs KM processes became aligned with the corporate objective of sharing knowledge across the organisation, rather than it remaining in the programs or divisions where it was created. The article is written from personal experience and outlines SOCOGs KM growth and development from an information management approach into a wider knowledge management role, assisted by a technology solution. As a commercial knowledge legacy, there was a formal agreement signed between the IOC and SOCOG, which formalised SOCOGs selling of explicit and tacit knowledge. However we believe that the most important lesson that other event organisers can learn from the SOCOG KM project is that accurate and accessible information can be managed effectively throughout a growing organisation.

AUSTRALIAN TELEVISION, GENDER AND THE OLYMPIC GAMES

Previous studies investigating media coverage of sport in Australia during normal programming indicate that womens sport receives less than 10 percent of the air-time given to mens. This study of the Australian television coverage of the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics found that female events received 32.9 percent and 27.7 percent, respectively, of the Games televised. While it is unfortunate that this is the exception, rather than the rule, it may provide a key to breaking existing patterns of sports programming and thus reduce gender inequities by demonstrating that during the Olympics female sports rank highly in terms of viewer popularity as well as in terms of increased air-time.

Terrorism, sport and public policy in the risk society

There are strong links between sport and terrorism, the extent of which is evidenced through the 168 sport-related terrorist attacks that occurred between 1972 and 2004. The terrorist power of uncertainty is potent because we live in a risk society, characterised by the cultural desire to control chance, be secure, and through institutions implementing sophisticated risk management policies. Accordingly, expensive risk management strategies, often involving international cooperation between governments, are now being implemented at major sporting fixtures to prevent any terrorism attacks. The appropriation of sport, as a site of terror, has resulted in a positive backlash of governmental cooperation, and multinational networking as well as grass roots resistance demonstrated by spectators who want to prevent terrorism interrupting their enjoyment of sporting events.

Negotiating Cultural Diversity for Women in Sport: from assimilation to multiculturalism

Abstract Research addressing the issue of sport or physical activity for women of non‐English speaking backgrounds in the Australian context is still in its infancy. This is an area rich for study given the multicultural composition of the countrys population, combined with the popular view of sport as a major component of Australian cultural identity and the fact that levels of sporting involvement of women bom in non‐English‐speaking countries are extremely low. The research study presented in this article involved exploring notions of sport from the perspectives of women from Italian, Lebanese and Vietnamese backgrounds, and the attitudes of sport service providers about these populations. The outcomes clearly demonstrate that there is continued adherence to assimilation practices in the sporting environment and that such practices disadvantage women from non‐English‐speaking backgrounds in their sport participation. The findings highlight the need to improve the knowledge and training of sports provi...

Technology and Half-Pipe Snowboard Competition — Insight From Elite-Level Judges (P240)

Automated and objective information specific to half-pipe snowboarding has now been made available with micro-technology and signal processing techniques. In consultation with the practice community this has been introduced into training and competition in Australia. It is understood that any integration of technology into elite sport can effect change beyond the original purpose and can often generate unintended consequences. We have therefore evaluated the perceptions of key members of the elite half-pipe snowboard community in regards to how emerging technology could interface with the sport. Data were collected via semi-structured, open ended interviews with 16 international, elite-level half-pipe snowboard competition judges. This study revealed 8 dimensions and 42 sub-dimensions related to the community’s perceptions to 5 major themes that emerged during interviews. The major themes included: 1. Snowboarding’s Underlying Cultural Ethos 2. Snowboarding’s Underlying Self-Annihilating Teleology 3. Technological Objectivity 4. Concept Management 5. Coveted Future Directions. There was dominant perception that an underlying self-annihilating teleology could exist within competitive half-pipe snowboarding. This was believed however to pose a distant threat on judging protocols to reliably assess performance. Judges sampled in this study were largely in favour of using automated objectivity to enhance the judging process however, with a number of caveats. Most importantly that objective information is to be used as a judging aid and not for automatic generation of scores. This would address the most prevalent concern that integrating any automated objectivity into snowboarding could potentially remove freedom of expression and the opportunity to showcase athletic individuality - traits valued by the practice community. Our data highlight that successful implementation of emerging technologies in sport will be not be based on the type of technology developed but instead by the integration process which must feature a large element of control imparted to the key players within the sport.

‘Here be Dragons, Here be Savages, Here be bad Plumbing’: Australian Media Representations of Sport and Terrorism

As ‘Propaganda Theorists’ argue, an examination of key discourses can enhance our understanding of how economic, political and social debate is shaped by mainstream media reporting. In this essay we present content and discourse analysis of Australian media reporting on the nexus of sport and terrorism. Examining newspaper reports over a five-year period, from 1996–2001, which included the 11 September 2001 terrorist tragedy in the United States (9/11), provides useful insights into how public discourse might be influenced with regard to sport and terrorism interrelationships. The results of the media analysis suggest that hegemonic tropes are created around sport and terrorism. The distilled message is one of good and evil, with homilies of sport employed in metaphors for western society and its values. The reactions and responses of sport administrators and athletes to terrorist acts and the threat of terrorism to sport are used to exemplify these ideals, providing newspaper readers a context within which to localize meaning and relevance.

Ensuring safety at Australian sport event precincts: Creating securitised, sanitised and stifling spaces?

Since 9/11, pervasive concerns about public safety have irrevocably changed the management of large sport events and these events are now under constant pressure to improve security. This empirical research contextualises contemporary safety issues associated with sport event hosting and locates security debates within the Australian sport event landscape. Public safety considerations, policies and legislation are explored through in-depth interviews with ten sport venue managers. Content analysis of newspaper articles related to the topic was used to formulate questions used in the interviews. Results indicate safety-related processes and practices are firmly based in compliance-driven risk management. Media coverage portrays a general public acceptance of significantly increased security and surveillance with only a few isolated stories reporting that the changes have compromised human rights and/or the sport spectator experience. Current Australian approaches to safety and security are politically and institutionally derived, and largely devoid of community consultation.