This article examines the historical creation of the legacy of Kyniska, the Spartan royal who was the first woman to win at the ancient Olympics in the early fourth century BCE, from her own lifetime to the modern era. By investigating the reception of her victory rather than her agency as historical actor, I demonstrate that the continuing relevance of her victory has depended on others’ literary, historical, or political goals. I examine the creation and contestation of Kyniska's victory at five key moments of reception: 1) in the narratives of Xenophon, Plutarch, and Pausanias; 2) in her own victory monument; 3) in poetry commemorating Hellenistic rulers; 4) in feminist didactic biography of the nineteenth century; and 5) in the debates surrounding the modern Olympics. These moments reveal how her victory's reception has contributed to ancient and modern discourses on womanhood and gender. By contextualising Kyniska in each of these distinct eras and environments, I suggest that the perception of her victory has never been monolithic, not even in the ancient world.

This study applies a genealogical mode of enquiry to the history of tigers as a symbol of Korea and the Korean people. The zoomorphic idea of Korea as a tiger is conventionally traced to the writings of the intellectual, Ch'oe Namsŏn (1890–1957). However, we argue that while Ch'oe was the first to link tigers with modern Korean nationalism, low levels of literacy and Ch'oe's later ambiguous status as a Japanese “collaborator” meant his promotion of the tiger symbol failed to gain traction. Instead, we locate the making of the modern Korean tiger metaphor in multiple post-colonial sites of cultural inscription, including national newspapers, zoos and museums, which generate and diffuse narratives about the ancient and continuous origins of the Korean people. In particular, it was during the 1980s that the successful Seoul Olympic bid and the Chŏn dictatorship's cultural policy converged to facilitate the “rediscovery” of the tiger as a national symbol with a supposedly ancient heritage, and with Ch'oe and his problematic legacy effaced. We also observe a continuing resistance to Japanese hegemony and a post-colonial construction of Korean identity through the recasting of the tiger – originally a Japanese symbol of Korea – in a new light.

Does inequality affect outcomes? To answer, we use the microcosm of Olympic competitions by asking whether a country's level of inequality diminishes its performance. If it does, is it conditional on institutional factors? We argue that the ability of economically free societies to win medals will not be affected by inequality. In these societies, institutions generate incentives to invest in the talents of individuals at the bottom of the income distribution (potential athletes otherwise constrained in the ability to expend resources on training). These effects mitigate those of inequality. The incentives that promote investments in skills across the income distribution are weaker in unfree societies and they cannot mitigate the effects of inequality. Using the Olympics of 2016 in combination with the Economic Freedom data, we find that inequality only matters in determining medal numbers for unfree countries. We link these results to inequality and its effects on economic outcomes.

In March 2020, Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee, and the International Olympic Committee postponed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for one year. The delay is the most prominent consequence of the COVID-19 crisis in Japan thus far. But the “Corona Calamity” (korona ka) is bigger than the Olympics. The totality of the disaster is impossible to capture. The very thing that makes it a calamity are the myriad rhythms of crisis that intersect at COVID-19. If there is a shared theme to be found in these rhythms, it is the question of recovery. When will it happen? What will it look like? And what, exactly, will we recover? In what follows, I share three rhythms of crisis and recovery: national history, the tourism industry, and the parcel delivery industry.

A number of organized and universally publicized, large-scale events take place each year in many parts of the world that involve a population at greater risk. Large gatherings provide a theater of operations for public health and more thought now is being given to these issues. The Olympic Games is the largest, single event that is concentrated into one significant geographical space that unfolds over a period of weeks and involves a transient population. From Atlanta to Sydney, a growing awareness of public health issues has occurred, and there is a clear recognition that much more preparation is necessary for all future events. Therefore, it is mandatory that we recognize that the Olympic Games, Athens 2004 is a potential venue for accidents as well as for purposefully precipitated acts leading to suffering, disability, and death. The organization and management of public health is a major hurdle for Athens 2004. At a minimum, hospital and emergency medical services must be in an optimal state of readiness, a network of public health laboratory services must be deployed, and human resources must be retooled.

Mass-gatherings events provide a difficult setting for which to plan an appropriate emergency medical response. Many of the variables that affect the level and types of medical needs, have not been fully researched. This review examines these variables.