A legacy emphasis was one of the fundamental pillars of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The notion of an Olympic legacy was predicated on assumptions that the event's value would not purely derive from the sporting spectacle, but rather, from the 'success' of enduring effects met out in London and across the country. For physical education students and practitioners, Olympic legacy agendas translated into persistent pressure to increase inspiration, engagement, participation and performance in the subject, sport and physical activity.Responding to this context, and cogniscent of significant disciplinary scholarship, this paper reports initial data from the first phase of a longitudinal study involving Key Stage Three (students aged 11-13) cohorts in two comparable United Kingdom schools: the first an innercity (core) London school adjacent to the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London (n=150); the second, a (peripheral) school in the Midlands (n=198). The research involved the use of themed questionnaires focusing on self-reported attitudes toward the Olympic Games, and, experiences of physical education, sport and physical activity. Students from both schools demonstrated a wide variety of attitudes toward physical education and sport; yet, minor variances emerged regarding extreme enthusiasm levels. Both cohorts also expressed considerably mixed feelings toward the impending Olympic Games. Strong and variable responses were also reported regarding inspiration levels, ticketing acquisition and engagement levels. Consequently, this investigation can be read within the broader context of legacy debates, and, aligns well with physical educationalists' on-going discomfort regarding legacy imperatives being enforced upon the discipline and its practitioners. Our work reiterates a shared disciplinary scepticism that while an Olympic Games may temporarily affect young peoples' affectations for sport (and maybe physical education and physical activity), it may not provide the best, or most appropriate, mechanism for sustained attitudinal and/or social changes en masse.

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Contractual agreements have become an accepted part of participation processes for athletes in a variety of sport contexts. Closer readings of these contracts, however, pose several questions regarding organizational intentions and motivations, the conceptualization of athletes as 'workers', and, representation parity. In this paper, we draw on four types of athlete contractual documents from both 'amateur' and 'professional' sport settings across the globe. Our key considerations include: athletes' ownership over their image and identities; medical and health disclosures; lifestyle, behavioral and body choices and restrictions beyond sport; adherence to organizational philosophy and commitments, and social media and publicity constraints. Our exegesis here encourages sport researchers to deliberate whose 'wellbeing' matters most when signing that seductive dotted line.

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This paper traces some historical and contemporary instances in which sporting and other bodies naked physiques have been utilized to affect religious, social, ideological or political agendas. We argue that inherent aesthetic values of performative flesh have been lost (or minimized) in recent times which have, intentionally or otherwise, degraded and objectified the naked body. To satisfy society's insatiable consumer needs and desires, bodies, especially sporting bodies, have been sexualized to the extreme. This overt sexualization is symptomatic of a wider porno-ization of western (North American and European) culture and cultural products. Porno-ization (characterized by exploitative modes of production for pecuniary gain) has limited our contemporary readings, and respect for, the body and its educational, transformative, artistic and emancipatory potential. Tentative though our theorization may be, we call readers to appreciate athletic nudity anew to re-imagine the eroticism of sporting bodies in cultural and aesthetic terms, akin to artistic appreciation rather than as provocative objects of sports' capitalistic desires.