International Security and the Olympic Games, 1972–2020

Duckworth provides a powerful analysis of the history of security operations at the Olympic Games that pioneered global security efforts in sport. Superbly written and based on the excellent use of international sources, the book is an essential contribution to our understanding of sport policy and sport events.

--- Jörg Krieger Aarhus University, Denmark

Drawing on new archival documents and interviews, this book demonstrates the evolving role of international politics in Olympic security planning. Olympic security concerns changed forever following the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) choice to ignore security after the attack in Munich left individual Olympic Games Organizing Committees to organize, fund, and provide security for the major international event. Future Olympic hosts planned security amidst increasing numbers of international terrorist attacks, and with the Cold War in full swing. For some Olympic hosts, Olympic security now represented their nation’s largest ever military operations. By the time the IOC made security more of a priority in the early 1980s, the trends in Olympic security were set for the future.

Austin Duckworth is an independent scholar who most recently worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, USA in Physical Culture and Sports Studies. His research interests are international relations, security, and sport.