Crafting critical echoes in sport organizations: Oral histories of, and possibilities for, the New Zealand Olympic Committee

Sport organizations’ digital spaces (e.g. organizational websites, fanzines, blogs, electronic repositories and social media) are, potentially, rich empirical terrain in which sport narratives may be (re)presented, mobilised and challenged, and content disseminated to wider audiences. Drawing on New Zealand’s participation in the Olympic movement, and the national Olympic Committee’s efforts to embrace historical thinking, we consider the confluence of oral and digital approaches. More widely, we examine how sport organizations might utilise oral histories and digital spaces to engage audiences more effectively with critical understanding of the past. To note, progressive shifts in museum and heritage studies have advocated ideological and institutional redirection, critical reflection and radical departures from traditional representational practices. In these processes, oral histories have been identified as a key means to these ends. Presenting vignettes constructed from interviews with sport participants, we interrogate connections between oral history, narrative making and public heritage praxis.