European Journal for Sport and Society 2006, 3 (1), 43-54 The security issue at the 2004 Olympics

Abstract: This paper addresses the 2004 Olympic security issue in order to highlight the factors that were lying beneath the setting-up of the security shield in the first Summer Olympics of the post-September 11 era. The content analysis of US press coverage of that matter reveals that US press discourse has been arguably part of a broader US strategy to impose its own vision of security over the host country’s one. Hence, the security measures not only complied with the US perception of the terrorist threat, but were also related to specific US economic and political interests, whether these were relevant or not to the Olympics