Media releases

• Brock experts available to comment on Paris 2024 Olympics

  Monday, July 29, 2024 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY: July 29, 2024 – R0091

  With the Paris 2024 Olympics now underway, Brock University experts are available to comment on a broad range of related topics.

  Michael Carter, Professor of Greek and Roman History

  • Social and cultural significance of gladiatorial contests and ancient athletics in the Greek and Roman Worlds
  • Logistics involved with the production of ancient spectacles, including financing, organization, participants/victims, and the multi-sensorial nature of the arena games

  Nicole Chimera, Associate Professor of Kinesiology

  • Intervention strategies to reduce risk of injury in sport and physical activity

  Keri Cronin, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture

  • Arts and culture at the Paris 2024 Olympics, including the Olympic Art Visions program and Olympic-themed cultural events happening at Paris museums and galleries
  • History of 20th century artists competing for medals at the Games

  Michele Donnelly, Associate Professor of Sport Management

  • Gender equality
  • Women and the Olympic Games
  • Olympic sport programme
  • Action sports (For example, BMX, skateboarding, surfing)

  Todd Green, Associate Professor of Marketing

  • Corporate social responsibility/irresponsibility and ethics
  • Green marketing

  David Hutchison, Professor of Educational Studies and Digital Humanities

  • Olympics and K-12 education
  • Using the Olympics as a summer learning opportunity

  Nota Klentrou, Professor of Kinesiology (and organizing committee member at Athens 2004 Olympics)

  • Human performance
  • Implications of sports training and nutrition on health growth and development
  • How the interaction of exercise training and dietary choices during childhood and adolescence affect lifelong bone health

  Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor of Sport Management

  • History of Canadian sport
  • Sport media
  • Violence in sport
  • National and international sport organizational governance
  • Sport policy
  • Spectacle and mega event planning

  Toby Mündel, Professor of Kinesiology and Canada Research Chair in Extreme Human Environments

  • How heat and dehydration affect athletes (and related mitigation strategies)
  • How nicotine raises the risk of developing heat exhaustion while undergoing intense physical activity, especially while in a hot environment
  • Female physiology and the role estrogen and progesterone play in regulating the body’s temperature
  • Physiology of female athletes

  Michael Naraine, Associate Professor of Sport Management

  • Professional sport
  • Sport marketing
  • Sport gambling
  • Sport sponsorship

  Kyle Rich, Associate Professor of Sport Management

  • Sport policy and sport development in Canada
  • Regional and demographic differences in sport participation
  • Political tensions in how mass participation and elite sport development are supported, leading to different outcomes for communities (social, cultural, health and economic)

  Ian Ritchie, Associate Professor of Kinesiology

  • History of the development of anti-doping policies in international, high-performance sport, especially in the Olympic Games
  • Development of anti-doping policies within Canadian sport
  • History of the Olympic Games

  Olan Scott, Associate Professor of Sport Management

  • Sport and social media
  • Olympic studies
  • Portrayal of nationalism
  • Gender and ethnicity at major sporting events by broadcasters and media

  Philip Sullivan, Professor of Kinesiology

  • Mental health in sports, including the mental health literacy of coaches, support staff and officials, and applied sport psychology/mental skills consultation
  • Sports psychologists working with athletes to create an optimal mental and emotional state for performance
  • Confidence, mental toughness, choking under pressure, sleep and well-being

  Barry Wright, Dean, Goodman School of Business

  • Organization of national multisport games
  • Business of sport
  • Legacy of the Canada Summer Games

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University, sackles@brocku.ca or 289-241-5483

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  Categories: Media releases

• From wrestling to breaking: Brock experts reflect on changing nature of Olympic sports

  Friday, July 26, 2024 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY: July 26, 2024 – R0090

  Breaking, commonly known as breakdancing, will make its debut at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

  For those who think this and other relatively new sports, such as skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing, are odd choices for Olympic competitions, Taylor McKee begs to differ.

  “The Olympic program will continue to change in years to come, with new sports added to reflect the sporting character of individual host nations,” says the Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, referring to a process instituted in 2020 where the host can propose additional events for their particular Olympics.

  McKee says before petitioning the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include a particular sport in the Games, the proposed sport is subject to rigorous judging and evaluation metrics as well as having to adhere to international anti-doping policies.

  The process involves a wide array of officials from the IOC and national sporting bodies.

  Despite this rigorous approach, defining sport and who is permitted to play is “notoriously fraught” with assumptions and subjective opinions, he says.

  The culture of the day also influences what is considered to be sport.

  “The continuing alteration of Olympic sports is an opportunity to maintain, or perhaps regain, cultural relevancy for generations less inclined to welcome the Games to their countries,” he says.

  McKee refers to the “rich legacy of non-traditional ‘demonstration’ sports” that were popular in the past, including trampolining, trap shooting, dogsled racing, ski ballet, water-skiing and even live pigeon shooting at the 1900 Paris Olympics.

  But determining what is and isn’t a “sport” to be included in the Olympics is a challenge spanning back to when the first modern Olympics began in 1896.

  “It is curious that even in antiquity, what was considered ‘sport’ was very hard to define,” says Professor of Greek and Roman History Michael Carter, from the Department of Classics and Archaeology.

  Every culture around the world, across time, has done what would be recognized now as sport, says Carter, and yet there was no word for ‘sport’ in antiquity.

  In fact, many cultures and languages today use the English word ‘sport’ when there is no equivalent word otherwise.

  “When this type of use of a lone word occurs in other cultures, it tells us that the word is an imported custom of sorts,” says Carter. “When you import a foreign word into a language, you are also importing meaning and potential bias.”

  In the ancient world, the Games encompassed a physical contest governed by established rules and procedures with the aim of winning a competition.

  Although all Greek men were encouraged to compete in Olympia for personal glory to show their true strength and worth to the Greek gods, the process privileged the elite and those who had time to train individually, Carter says.

  “By competing and winning athletic competitions, people were perceived to be chosen by the Greek gods to be honoured for their excellence — it was not about working as team as we see now in modern day Olympics,” he says.

  “A lot of the events that still exist today — long jump, 200-metre dash, wrestling — are based on what we knew in the late 1800s about the ancient Games when the Olympic movement was revived leading to the first early modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.”

  In considering the new additions to the modern-day Olympics, Carter says a similar way of thinking was seen in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds through athletic events that included competitions in musical performances and poetry.

  “What endures is the broadness of the definition and concept of sport and competition,” he says.

   

  Brock University Assistant Professor of Sport Management Taylor McKee and Professor of Greek and Roman History Michael Carter are available for media interviews on this topic.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University sackles@brocku.ca or 289-241-5483

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  Categories: Media releases