Week 2: 1984 Olympic Records

The topic I chose to discuss for this week’s blog post was the 1984 Olympic Games Records created by Clarence Hassel. The collection is pertaining to the soccer games held at Stanford, which is what sparked my interest in this data. (not to mention my high school belief that I’d one day be in the olympics)

From looking into the collection containing a short-stack of nine folders, you can gain various pieces of insight. First and foremost a clear range in the timeline of Clarence’s involvement with these Olympic games is presented, including dates from the Winter of 1984 on to the July of that same year. Seating arrangements, personnel lists, and guest lists are included, which hints that he takes on a different, operational role, as also supported by his said position of “government protocol manager”. One narrative that can be presented from this data would be the importance and prestige of this event drawn forth by putting under a scope who was in attendance, assuming that various government officials were there and included in the guest lists and personnel lists. Not only that, but also the precautions and security measures taken to ensure the many officials’ safety through a well planned seating arrangement.

Although various essential pieces to the planning of the Olympic games are included in this collection, there is a large amount of information that would be missing in the narrative pulled from this. What about the actual experience of the game? The seating arrangements are included, but does that cover the immensity of the stadium itself? Many components regarding the contextualization of the 1984 games in relation to the actual sport being played are almost completely un-included, except for the slight touch of insight that could potentially be attained by looking into the commemorative memorabilia book included in the collection. However, athletes and coaches who had participated in the games could be left out of this as well, which leaves a gap of understanding the magnitude of athletics controversy and milestones that could’ve been met at the time. There are guest lists and seating arrangements, but maybe including rosters of each team or simply including the game schedules could provide a tie between the political and social figures and aspects of the time period. The Olympic Games are a sporting event, however it leaves an extremely impactful imprint economically, socially and especially politically, so including more about the actual events and participants could be useful when trying to contextualize and draw forth narratives that discuss how these soccer games made an impact grander than games of a few goals.