The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Games Changer: The International Olympic Committee, Tokyo 2020, and COVID-19 by Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney.
Unprecedented. Unparalleled. While past Olympic festivals in 1916, 1940, and 1944 had been cancelled due to global military conflicts, never before had the Olympic Games been postponed, only to be staged one year later. But COVID-19 changed the world’s path forward in 2020, alerting in its wake the trajectory of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. For the first two weeks of lockdown, upon the pandemic’s arrival, the future of the Olympic games—and of so much more than that—seemed to hang in the balance. It would be matter of time, as the shockwaves of it reverberated, for the immeasurable change in the preparations for the Olympics in Japan to be truly felt.
From the emergence of the pandemic in early 2020 through the staging of the games, delayed by one year, in August 2021, A Games Changer: The International Olympic Committee, Tokyo 2020, and COVID-19 takes the reader behind the scenes to learn of the myriad challenges faced by the IOC and Tokyo 2020 amidst the uncertainty that prevailed during the months leading up to postponement of the games.
A Games Changer will be published in September 2025.