Bidding for the Olympic Games: An Anatomy of Arguments

In this article, I draw on the philosopher of history Hayden White's typology of arguments to explain different accounts of bidding for the olympic games. White's typology helps explain the irreconcilable disconnect between representations of bidding for and hosting the olympic games put forward by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its academic supporters in olympic education, on the one hand, and their critics, on the other. While I advocate for contextual-based arguments as the most appropriate for understanding bidding at different points in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I conclude with an irony: the IOC's representations of bidding and hosting, which are based on organicist arguments presented in romantic and idealized narratives, continue to resonate better with a broad audience than fact-laden and eloquent contextualist arguments.