CANOEING SLALOM: ORGANIZATION IN EUROPE AND OLYMPICS AREAS

The article describes how canoeing become an Olympic sport with development of competition’s areas. Itstudies the relations between slalom canoeing and urbanization process. Wild water slalom has been an Olympic discipline since 1972. It is fundamental to a better understanding of the process of 9sportivization9 (Elias and Dunning, 1994) experienced by this discipline in its constitutive phase. Although the original activity was practised on rivers, this sport took place from torrents to artificial areas. Two serials of results are discussed. On a hand, this sport appears to be still closely associated with the main characteristics of outdoor recreation. On the other hand, the new presence of sport among big cities does not seem to reduce this activity in the rivers, since both types of activity co-exist without any process of transformation. The historic study of the Olympic Gamesshows that athletes prefer artificial sites to natural ones. Nowadays wild water Stadiums are situated in big cities. Canoeing remains an outdoor sport, even if it develops in urban areas. Canoeing is now practised by citydwellers, whose socialization and learning occur in a developed environment. Artificial installation changes theconstraints of the activity, and thus the sense of play habits