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Corp. www.cognizantcommunication.com RISK MANAGEMENT IN MAJOR SPORTING EVENTS: A PARTICIPATING NATIONAL OLYMPIC TEAM’S PERSPECTIVE DAG VIDAR HANSTAD Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway This article explores the process of risk management in a major sporting event from the perspective of a participating team. More specifically, the article examines how Norway’s national team before and during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games (OWG) in Vancouver (i) identified the risk management issues, and (ii) handled risk strategies. The qualitative case study reported here draws upon docu- ments and interviews with key actors in the Norwegian Top Sports Program (Olympiatoppen) and other important stakeholders for the preparation and implementation of the Vancouver project based on the experiences from 2006 OWG in Turin, Italy. The article utilizes previous research on risk management and strategic management in order to analyze a participating team’s preparation and implementation. A framework for dealing with risk management issues experienced by participating teams at sporting events is provided. Key words: Risk management; Risk issues; Risk strategy; Sporting event; Olympic Games Address correspondence to Dag Vidar Hanstad, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, PO Box 4014 Ullevaal Stadion, 0806 Oslo, Norway. Tel: +47 23 26 23 62; Fax: +47 23 26 24 14; E-mail: [email protected] Introduction Participating and competing in the Olympic Games is an experience for the very few and may happen just once in a life time. Athletes and coaches work diligently on physical, technical, and mental factors that can add an extra edge to the perfor- mance level during these games. However, in any sporting events, from the local competition to mega-events such as the Olympic Games, risk is pervasive, both in the preparation and performance during the event. In the event literature the objec- tive of risk management is to control the impact of unforeseen issues or accidents that take place within a project. Risk management is thus a pro- active process (Getz, 2005; Wideman, 1992). It involves, “assessing all possible risks to the events and its stakeholders by strategically antici- pating, preventing, minimizing, and planning responses to mitigate those identified risks” (Leopkey & Parent, 2009a, p. 199). This article draws on the work of Leopkey and Parent, but while their work focuses on risk management from the host’s perspective, the object of this arti- cle is to identify the risk management issues in a large-scale sporting event from the perspective of 190 HANSTAD a participating national Olympic team, and ana- lyze how the team handled risk strategies before and during the 2010 OWG. Risk in sporting events has generally been ana- lyzed from a host’s perspective. A key to success is how event managers and others deal with the vari- ous risks. Chappelet (2001) stated that “due to its duration, cost and complexity, a major project [or sporting event] is inevitably subject to unforeseen events, to setbacks, and to numerous, major areas of uncertainty that are inevitable because of so many risks that exist” (p. 7). Topics that have been covered on risks include the effects of terrorism (Atkinson & Young, 2002; Giulianotti & Klauser, 2010; Taylor & Toohey, 2006, 2007; Toohey, 2008; Toohey, Taylor, & Choong-Ki Lee, 2003), security (Giulianotti & Klauser, 2010), crowd con- trol (Appenzeller, 2005), security for sporting facil- ities (Ammon, Southall, & Blair, 2004; Preuss, 2004; Walker & Stotlar, 1997), actual losses asso- ciated with the event (Chang & Singh, 1990), inci- dents (Fuller & Myerscough, 2001), injuries (Fuller & Drawer, 2004), and an overall impact on stakeholders, including risk management issues (Leopkey & Parent, 2009a) and strategies (Leopkey & Parent, 2009b). Even though delegations/partici- pants have been treated as stakeholders in some of these studies (e.g., Fuller & Drawer, 2004; Leopkey & Parent 2009a, 2009b), little research has been carried out on how the participating teams manage risks in events. The present study represents a down–up per- spective on major events, following the preparation and participation of the Norwegian national team in the OWG. Thus, this article adds something to the literature on project management and risk man- agement but it also fills a gap in the literature on elite sport organizations. While there is growing knowledge on how elite sport is organized (Andersen, 2009; Bergsgard, Houlihan, Mangseth, Nødland, & Rommetvedt, 2007; De Bosscher, Bingham, Shibli, van Bottenburg, & de Knop, 2008; De Bosscher, de Knop, van Bottenburg, Shibli, & Bingham, 2009; Green, 2004; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Hong, Wu, & Xiong, 2005; Houlihan, 2009), hardly anything has been written on how these organizations handle their main objective: to succeed in events such as world cham- pionships and the Olympic Games. This study is related to the literature on risk man- agement in sporting events. The point of departure is the recent work of Leopkey and Parent, who have identified the risk management issues (Leopkey & Parent, 2009a) and strategies in a major sporting event (Leopkey & Parent, 2009b). Their concept of strategic management will be used in the analysis. The major contributions of this article are to apply a different perspective to examine risk manage- ment in sporting events in which many stakehold- ers have different views and different concerns (cf. Parent, 2008), and to analyze similarities and dif- ferences between participating teams and organiz- ing committees in regard to risk management. In order to do so, risk management needs to be intro- duced as a backcloth to the present study. Risk Management and Its Strategies Risk management was developed as a concept from the 1950s and was initiated in connection with space programs, finances, and nuclear power (Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2010). Another early devel- opment of risk management was within the insur- ance industry, and it was later applied to other disciplines, such as project, clinical/medical, energy, and operational risk management (Hopkin, 2010). Risk management has also been included within sporting events and is today a crucial part of the overall sport program which includes budgeting, scheduling, insurance coverage, eligibility, equip- ment and facility management, contract, and other duties (Appenzeller, 2005). Risk management is defined by the British Standards Institution (2002) as the, “systematic application of management policies, procedures and practices to the tasks of establishing the context, identifying, analyzing, evaluating, monitoring and communicating risk” (p. 7). A working definition of event risk “is any future incident that will negatively influence the event” (Bowdin, Allen, O’Toole, Harris, & McDonnell, 2006, p. 318). In the event literature the objective of risk management is to control the impact of unforeseen issues or accidents that take place within a project. Leopkey and Parent (2009a) summarized earlier research and identified a num- ber of risk categories in major international sports events and how they involved and affected differ- ent stakeholders. They had a host perspective and