1980s global athletic events
1984 Sarajevo Winter Games
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American Olympic skiing 1984
athlete and team performance records
athlete housing and logistics 1984
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Bosnian city international profile
British ice dancing champions
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Cold War athletics
Cold War geopolitics and sport
Cold War international competitions
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Debbie Armstrong Olympic gold
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East German figure skating
East-West Olympic confrontations
Eastern Bloc Olympic history
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global sports during Cold War
historic Winter Games achievements
International Olympic Committee analysis
international perception of Yugoslavia
international winter sports competition
IOC decision-making 1970s
Karin Enke competitive skating
Katarina Witt skating legacy
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media coverage of socialist Olympics
multiethnic city and Olympics
Olympic cultural significance
Olympic event management in Eastern Europe
Olympic Games in communist nations
Olympic historical perspective
Olympic legacy in Bosnia
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Sarajevo pre-war infrastructure
Sarajevo urban transformation
socialist state Olympic hosting
softlaunch
Soviet and American sports rivalry
Soviet hockey comeback
sporting excellence in 1984
sports and international relations
sports as political messaging
Torvill and Dean performances
tourism impact of Winter Olympics
Wild Bill Johnson skiing achievements
Winter Olympics cross-national rivalry
winter sports competitions under communism
winter sports event
Yugoslavia sports history
Product details
- ISBN 9781625341655
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 377g
- Dimensions: 154 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 24 Apr 2015
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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To most observers, the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, were an unmitigated success. That year, the unlikeliest of candidate cities in the unlikeliest of candidate countries did what many had thought impossible: it hosted an international sports competition at the highest level, housing and feeding hundreds of athletes and thousands of tourists while broadcasting a positive image of socialist Yugoslavia to the world.
The first Winter Games held in a communist country, Sarajevo also marked the first Olympic confrontation of Soviet and American athletes since the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. And the competitions themselves were spectacular and memorable. This was the Olympics of British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, American skiers “Wild Bill” Johnson and Debbie Armstrong, and East German skaters Katarina Witt and Karin Enke, not to mention a Soviet hockey team that rebounded from its stunning loss to the Americans at Lake Placid four years earlier to win all seven of its matches.
Yet The Sarajevo Olympics is more than just a history of sport. Jason Vuic also retraces the history of the Olympic movement, analyzes the inner workings of the International Olympic Committee during the troubled 1970s and 1980s, and places the 1984 Winter Games in the context of Cold War geopolitics. The book begins and ends by reminding readers that less than a decade after it hosted the Olympics, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo found itself at the vortex of a bloody and brutal civil war that would end with the dissolution of the multiethnic Yugoslavian state.
The first Winter Games held in a communist country, Sarajevo also marked the first Olympic confrontation of Soviet and American athletes since the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. And the competitions themselves were spectacular and memorable. This was the Olympics of British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, American skiers “Wild Bill” Johnson and Debbie Armstrong, and East German skaters Katarina Witt and Karin Enke, not to mention a Soviet hockey team that rebounded from its stunning loss to the Americans at Lake Placid four years earlier to win all seven of its matches.
Yet The Sarajevo Olympics is more than just a history of sport. Jason Vuic also retraces the history of the Olympic movement, analyzes the inner workings of the International Olympic Committee during the troubled 1970s and 1980s, and places the 1984 Winter Games in the context of Cold War geopolitics. The book begins and ends by reminding readers that less than a decade after it hosted the Olympics, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo found itself at the vortex of a bloody and brutal civil war that would end with the dissolution of the multiethnic Yugoslavian state.
An independent scholar and freelance writer, Jason Vuic holds a PhD in Balkan and Eastern European history from Indiana University, USA. His previous publications include The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.
