It is not always easy to see where the line is drawn for the Olympic spirit, as several cases have shown us during this year’s Olympic Games, Andreas Selliaas concludes in this comment piece discussing what fair play means in reality.

Australia, one of the world’s leading sports nations, has so far not lived up to its own expectations at the London 2012 Olympics. This has caused serious public debate and prompted the president of the Australian Olympic Committee to call for giving school sports a higher priority. In this comment piece Bonita Mersiades agrees, but not for the rationale of winning medals.

Justifying the Olympic spending by claiming that the Games in London will inspire more Britons to participate in sports may be plain wrong, reveals a new study.

A new prognosis suggests a major shift of power in elite sport as China seems to be on its way to being the undisputed best performing nation in the Olympic Summer Games in London.

In an new critical report, a group of Olympians, academics, athletes, journalists and students lead by human rights lawyer and former Olympic swimmer Nikki Dryden and investigative journalist Andrew Jennings put focus on how well the individual members of the International Olympic Committee live up to the Olympic ideals. In this comment, Dryden and Jennings explain their motivation behind the project and present what they call ‘the Real IOC’.

If the size of the Olympics are not reduced, they may become awarded only to rich and authoritarian regimes in the future. Professor Jean-Loup Chappelet, sports governance expert at IDHEAP in Lausanne, analyses the risks of Olympic gigantism