Olimpianos - Journal of Olympic Studies

Expectations from Kirsty Coventry's management as presidency of the International Olympic Committee

Rafael Carvalho da Silva Mocarzel — 2026-03-13

The election of Kirsty Coventry as the tenth president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – the first woman and the first African person to hold the position – represents a moment of significant institutional change. While her rise is a symbolic victory for gender equity and diversity, this essay adopts a critical and prudent perspective, being qualitative and descriptive in nature, with the objective of contextualizing Coventry's trajectory and performing a document analysis of her candidate manifesto. Coventry's proposals are organized around five pillars: harnessing the power of sport, maximizing collaboration, strengthening partnerships for mutual growth, advocating for sustainable development, and promoting credibility and trust. The former candidate aims to empower athletes, International Federations (IFs), and National Olympic Committees (NOCs), advocating for adopting technologies like Artificial Intelligence and expanding to new media platforms. However, implementing these goals will be challenging. The main difficulty lies in reconciling the interests of a diverse global community, the redistribution of resources concentrated within the IOC, and maintaining neutrality in a polarized geopolitical landscape. Coventry’s presidency will therefore require the ability to navigate this complex ecosystem and translate the symbolism of her election into practical actions that ensure the Olympic Movement's relevance and sustainability.

The first ladies of brazilian olympic athletics, 1948–1984

Andre Luis Ferreira Beltrão — 2026-05-01

The article presents emerging themes from the trajectory of a research project on the history of the first Brazilian female athletes to compete in Olympic track and field events. The research culminated in the exhibition “The First Ladies of Brazilian Olympic Athletics, 1948–1984”, held at the end of 2024 at the Centro Cultural Correios in Rio de Janeiro, which attracted more than 17,000 visitors. The development of the exhibition’s content and its curatorial approach addressed how, over ten editions of the Olympic Games, from 1948 to 1984, women gradually gained the right to compete in the same track and field events as men — with the women’s marathon being authorized only in Los Angeles in 1984. The objective of the research — to reconstruct and narrate the stories of the sixteen athletes who composed Brazil’s women’s Olympic athletics teams throughout this long period — was to give faces to these athletes and their achievements, while also recovering their struggles as women. The project sought to inspire new generations of athletes and to contribute scientifically through the visual documentation of uniforms, symbols, press coverage, and the key figures of this untold history. Iconographic research in newspapers and other bibliographical sources revealed how the erasure of these athletes gradually occurred: although they were nominally mentioned, they were almost always replaced by photographs of male athletes, and in several cases, their stories came close to disappearing entirely. The article illustrates these findings by presenting the stories of six of these athletes — the first female team to represent Brazil in Olympic athletics — who competed at the London Games in 1948, against the backdrop of major milestones in the history of women’s athletics worldwide.

Beyond passive neutrality: safeguarding the Olympic arena and rejecting collective sanctions

David Grassi — 2026-06-11

This contribution, conceived as a corollary to previous analyses on the dynamics of exclusion and sports activism, explores the need to redefine the concept of political neutrality within the Olympic Movement. The central question is how the International Olympic Committee can reconcile its institutional stance against human rights violations with the vital need to preserve the integrity and inclusivity of the Games. Through a re-reading of Rule 50 and the observation of recent dissent, it is argued that the ban on propaganda on the field is not censorship, but a safeguard for athletes and the neutrality of the arena. Concurrently, the prolonged exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes is examined as an inequitable collective sanction that borrows from the logic of political isolation. While the shift to an “active and functional neutrality” paves the way forward, the task for the future is to consolidate this paradigm through clear operational criteria. This article proposes such criteria to ensure the universal application of regulations in view of future Olympic cycles, starting with Los Angeles 2028.

Winter Olympic Games: a proposal for periodization, historical transformations, and competitive (in)equalities

Raoni Perrucci Toledo Machado — 2026-07-14

This article analyzes the historical evolution and medal distribution of the Winter Olympic Games, proposing a four-phase periodization: Regionalization (1924–1960), Expansion (1964–1980), Opening (1984–1992), and Globalization (1994–present). The objective is to understand how political, economic, and institutional transformations have shaped the event and influenced the concentration of sporting results over time. Methodologically, this study adopts a qualitative and quantitative approach, based on documentary analysis and the collection of official data regarding participation and performance of countries across different editions of the Games. The data were organized and comparatively analyzed across the defined periods in order to identify patterns of hegemony, diversification, and redistribution of medals. The results show that during the Regionalization phase, medal distribution was highly concentrated among European and North American countries, reflecting geographical and structural constraints. In the Expansion phase, there was an increase in the number of participating countries, although traditional dominance remained largely unchanged. The Opening phase is characterized by geopolitical reconfiguration following the end of the Cold War, leading to broader participation without significant changes in medal distribution. Finally, the Globalization phase demonstrates increased media visibility and global reach, accompanied by some degree of competitive diversification, despite persistent structural inequalities. It is concluded that the Winter Olympic Games have undergone processes of expansion and increasing complexity, while still reflecting enduring global disparities in sports development.

An investigation of the ethical and moral matrix of sport

Valecio Vasconcelos da Silva Senna — 2026-09-06

This work, which is philosophical in nature and focuses on the field of sports, aims to conduct transdisciplinary research on ethical principles and the formation of the moral foundation of sports. Thus, through a literature review on the subject, it discusses historical concepts and studies of morality and the human ethical framework as the foundation and driving force of the evolutionary process. Thus, it highlights the schools of thought that have influenced modern sporting ideology and normative and educational practices, such as the Olympic tradition of fair play and its benefits for moral education. As a result of the study, concepts were identified that support the initial hypothesis and provide a scientific basis for research into the roots of sports ethics and morality.

Homo Olympicus: Olympism as an instrument of human formation

Luis Gustavo Maganhato — 2026-09-12

In Brazil, Physical Education training has historically favored biological and technicist approaches to the detriment of philosophical, sociological and humanistic foundations aimed at the integral understanding of the human being. In this context, Olympism, conceived by Pierre de Coubertin as a philosophy of life based on the balance between body, mind and spirit, presents itself as an important pedagogical possibility for contemporary physical education. This theoretical essay aimed to analyze the concept of Homo Olympicus in contemporary society and discuss how Olympic Education can contribute to human formation in the context of contemporary educational and school sport. It is a theoretical essay, with a qualitative approach and analytical-descriptive character, based on bibliographic review and documentary analysis. The theoretical path was structured from the category’s philosophy of education, sports pedagogy, corporeality, fair play, educational sport and the anthropological concepts of Homo Ludens, Homo Gymnasticus, Homo Sportivus and Homo Olympicus. The results indicate that Olympic Education expands the pedagogical possibilities of sport by overcoming the restricted logic of performance and hypercompetitiveness, valuing principles such as respect, friendship, cooperation, excellence and citizenship. It was also evidenced that informal fair play and the valorization of corporeality contribute to overcoming reductionist perspectives present in school Physical Education. It is concluded that Olympism can be understood as a philosophy of education and a formative instrument for the construction of critical, autonomous and socially committed subjects.