Olympic heritage : past, present and future

While there is not the space to adequately explore the more intricate nuances and lessons that lave emerged from the collection of chapters brought together here, there remains a clear message about the necessity for future research that continues to probe the relationship between heritage and the Olympics. For us, this leads almost to a sense of impatience as we wait to see how the 2016 Olympics are constructed and remembered. Like London 2012, Rio 2016 will once again present a fruitful research opportunity to think through the ways in which heritage and the Olympics become together and ignite the world, if only for a short period of time. Between then and now, however, it is easy to imagine that new frames of thinking will emerge, new theorizations of heritage, and new ways of identifying the touch points between the two concepts. And so in addition to our impatience, we are keen to also close this volume with a sense of excitement: excitement over the multiple and no doubt challenging ways of contextualizing, presenting and understanding the myriad possibilities that continue to open up around Olympic heritage.