From July 29th we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the 1948 London Olympics,
the so called games of the reconstruction. More than 4000 athtletes
from 59 countries participated in the Games of the XIV Olympiad.
But what happened next? The London 1948-project attempts to (re)construct
the biographies of every single athlete who participated back then.
It will try to do so by means of 'commons based peer production'.
This concept is coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler.
It describes a model in which creative energy of large numbers of
people is coordinated into large, meaningful projects. The reconstruction
of the 1948 London Games will be done with the aid of the internet
(photo by Craig
Richardson)
On this website these Olympics will be brought back to life. From
the opening ceremony on July 29th through the closing ceremony on
August 14th visitors can experience the games day by day. You can
read a report on the basketball match between Brazil and Mexico
for the bronze medal or a report from the Modern Pentathlon won
by William Grut. Also the medal table will be updated day by day
and you can read all about the venues and the programme on the website,
just like you would be able to if the 1948 Games were held in 2008.
This first journalistic level is complemented by a second biographical
level. Every athlete starts with a blank biography and through input
similar to Wikipedia (with the difference that anonymous posts are
not allowed) we attempt to recontruct the biography of every athlete
from South Africa to Norway and from Chile to New Zealand. We would
like to invite all those interested to contribute and/or check where
possible.
This academic project will build up to the London 2012 Games. By
the start of these games we would like to have located every single
athlete who participated in 1948. This means that,on average, just
over three athletes will have to be found every day...
Relive the games on www.london1948.org day by day
from July 29th 2008.
And help to reconstruct the games of the reconstruction.
Tom Van Aken is a co-lecturer of prof. dr. Jan Tolleneer at the
University of Ghent (UGent, Belgium) on the course "Fundamentals
and History of Physical Education and Sports". For this course
an oral history project was started on the Olympics. So far students
have interviewed more than 70 Belgian olympic athletes. Previously
Tom Van Aken worked as a sports journalist and was the first Belgian
online journalist during the Olympics (Sydney 2000). Four years
later he was a researcher for a television programme (Flemish public
service, VRT) during the 2004 Athens Olympics. He is also a member
of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH), an organisation
that supports this project.
Bertrand Lafontaine is a Master of History and currently works for
the VRT. For this project he will write some of the articles on
the London Games.
On this website these Olympics will be brought back to life. From
the opening ceremony on July 29th through the closing ceremony on
August 14th visitors can experience the games day by day. You can
read a report on the basketball match between Brazil and Mexico
for the bronze medal or a report from the Modern Pentathlon won
by William Grut. Also the medal table will be updated day by day
and you can read all about the venues and the programme on the website,
just like you would be able to if the 1948 Games were held in 2008.
