BE R K S H I R E E N C Y C L OP E DI A O F
World Sport
BE R K S H I R E E N C Y C L OP E DI A O F
World Sport VOLUME
3
David Levinson and Karen Christensen Editors
BERKSHIRE PUBLISHING GROUP
Great Barrington, Massachusetts U.S.A.
www.iWorldSport.com
Copyright © 2005 by Berkshire Publishing Group LLC All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information: Berkshire Publishing Group LLC 314 Main Street Great Barrington, Massachusetts 01230 www.berkshirepublishing.com Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berkshire encyclopedia of world sport / David Levinson and Karen Christensen, general editors. p. cm. Summary: “Covers the whole world of sport, from major professional sports and sporting events to community and youth sport, as well as the business of sports and key social issues”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-9743091-1-7 1. Sports—Encyclopedias. I. Levinson, David, 1947- II. Christensen, Karen, 1957GV567.B48 2005 796.03--dc22 2005013050
Editorial and Production Staff Project Director David Levinson
Designers Joseph DiStefano and Linda Weidemann
Editorial and Production Staff Rachel Christensen, Tom Christensen, Elizabeth Eno, Jess LaPointe, Courtney Linehan, Marcy Ross, Gabby Templet
Printers Thomson-Shore
Photo Coordinator Joseph DiStefano
Composition Artists Brad Walrod and Linda Weidemann Production Coordinator Marcy Ross
Copy Editors Eileen Clawson, Robin Gold, Mike Nichols, Carol Parikh, Mark Siemens, Daniel Spinella
Proofreaders Mary Bagg, Eileen Clawson, and Elizabeth Larson
Information Management and Programming Trevor Young
Indexers Peggy Holloway and Barbara Lutkins
Editorial Board Editors
Editorial Board
David Levinson Karen Christensen Berkshire Publishing Group
Edward Beauchamp, University of Hawaii Jay Coakley, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Allen Guttmann, Amherst College Leslie Heywood, State University of New York, Binghamton Gertrud Pfister, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Roland Renson, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Allen L. Sack, University of New Haven Thierry Terret, University of Lyon, France Wayne Wilson, Amateur Athletic Foundation
Contents List of Entries, ix Reader’s Guide, xiii
Entries volume i: Academies and Camps, Sport–Dance 2
volume ii: DanceSport–Kinesiology 443
volume iii: Kite Sports–Sexual Harassment 903
volume iv: Sexuality–Youth Sports 1357 Index
1751
VII
List of Entries Academies and Camps, Sport Adapted Physical Education Adventure Education Aerobics Aesthetics African Games Agents AIDS and HIV Aikido All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club Alternative Sports Amateur vs. Professional Debate American Sports Exceptionalism American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) America’s Cup Anemia Animal Rights Anthropology Days Anti-Jock Movement Arab Games Archery Argentina Arm Wrestling Art Ascot Ashes, The Asian Games Astrodome
Athletes as Celebrities Athletes as Heroes Athletic Talent Migration Athletic Training Australia Australian Rules Football Austria Auto Racing Badminton Ballooning Baseball Baseball Nicknames Baseball Stadium Life Baseball Wives Basketball Baton Twirling Beauty Belgium Biathlon and Triathlon Billiards Biomechanics Biotechnology Bislett Stadium Boat Race (Cambridge vs. Oxford) Boating, Ice Bobsledding Body Image Bodybuilding Bondi Beach
Boomerang Throwing Boston Marathon Bowls and Bowling Boxing Brand Management Brazil British Open Bulgaria Bullfighting Burnout Buzkashi Cameroon Camogie Canada Canoeing and Kayaking Capoeira Carnegie Report Carriage Driving Central American and Caribbean Games Cheerleading Child Sport Stars China Clubsport Systems Coaching Coeducational Sport Coliseum (Rome) Collective Bargaining College Athletes IX
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Commercialization of College Sports Commodification and Commercialization Commonwealth Games Community Competition Competitive Balance Cooperation Country Club Cricket Cricket World Cup Croquet Cross-Country Running Cuba Cultural Studies Theory Curling Cycling Czech Republic Dance DanceSport Darts Davis Cup Deaflympics Denmark Diet and Weight Loss Disability Sport Disordered Eating Diving Drake Group Duathlon East Germany Economics and Public Policy Egypt Eiger North Face Elfstedentocht Elite Sports Parents Endorsements Endurance Environment
ESPN Euro 2004 European Football Championship Eurosport Exercise and Health Extreme Sports Extreme Surfing Facility Management Facility Naming Rights Falconry Family Involvement Fan Loyalty Fantasy Sports Fashion Feminist Perspective Fencing Fenway Park Finland Fishing Fitness Fitness Industry Floorball Flying Folk Sports Footbag Football Football, Canadian Football, Flag Football, Gaelic Foro Italico Foxhunting France Franchise Relocation Free Agency Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) Gay Games Gender Equity Gender Verification Germany
Globalization Goalball Golf Greece Greece, Ancient Growth and Development Gymnastics, Apparatus Gymnastics, Rhythmic Handball, Team Hang Gliding Hazing Henley Regatta Heptathlon Highland Games Hockey, Field Hockey, Ice Hockey, In-line Holmenkollen Ski Jump Holmenkollen Sunday Home Field Advantage Homophobia Honduras Horse Racing Horseback Riding Human Movement Studies Hungary Hunting Hurling Iditarod India Indianapolis 500 Injuries, Youth Injury Injury Risk in Women’s Sport Innebandy Interallied Games Intercollegiate Athletics International Olympic Academy International Politics Internet
LIST OF ENTRIES
Interpretive Sociology Iran Ireland Ironman Triathlon Islamic Countries’ Women’s Sports Solidarity Games Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Japanese Martial Arts, Traditional Jogging Jousting Judo Jujutsu Karate Karting Kendo Kenya Kinesiology Kite Sports Koreas Korfball Lacrosse Lake Placid Law Le Mans Lesbianism Lifeguarding Literature Lord’s Cricket Ground Luge Maccabiah Games Madison Square Garden Magazines Management Maple Leaf Gardens Maracana Stadium
Marathon and Distance Running Marketing Mascots Masculinity Masters Media-Sports Complex Memorabilia Industry Mental Conditioning Mesoamerican Ball Court Games Mexico Mixed Martial Arts Motivation Motorboat Racing Motorcycle Racing Mount Everest Mountain Biking Mountaineering Movies Multiculturalism Naginata Narrative Theory Native American Games and Sports Netball Netherlands New Zealand Newspapers Nextel (Winston) Cup Nigeria Norway Nutrition Officiating Olympia Olympic Stadium (Berlin), 1936 Olympics, 2004 Olympics, Summer Olympics, Winter Orienteering Osteoporosis Ownership
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Pain Pan American Games Parachuting Paralympics Pebble Beach Pelota Pentathlon, Modern Performance Performance Enhancement Personality Physical Education Pilates Play vs. Organized Sport Play-by-Play Announcing Poland Polo Polo, Bicycle Polo, Water Portugal Postmodernism Powerlifting Prayer Professionalism Psychology Psychology of Gender Differences Race Walking Racism Racquetball Radio Religion Reproduction Revenue Sharing Ringette Rituals Rodeo Romania Rome, Ancient Rope Jumping Rounders and Stoolball Rowing Rugby
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Russia and USSR Ryder Cup Sail Sports Sailing Salary Caps Scholar-Baller School Performance Scotland Senegal Senior Sport Sepak Takraw Sex and Performance Sexual Harassment Sexuality Shinty Shooting Silat Singapore Skateboarding Skating, Ice Figure Skating, Ice Speed Skating, In-line Skating, Roller Ski Jumping Skiing, Alpine Skiing, Cross-Country Skiing, Freestyle Skiing, Water Sled Dog Racing Sledding—Skeleton Snowboarding Snowshoe Racing Soaring Soccer Social Class Social Constructivism Social Identity Softball South Africa South East Asian Games
Spain Special Olympics Spectator Consumption Behavior Spectators Speedball Sponsorship Sport and National Identity Sport as Religion Sport as Spectacle Sport Politics Sport Science Sport Tourism Sporting Goods Industry Sports Medicine Sportsmanship Sportswriting and Reporting Squash St. Andrews St. Moritz Stanley Cup Strength Stress Sumo Sumo Grand Tournament Series Super Bowl Surf Lifesaving Surfing Sweden Swimming Swimming, Synchronized Switzerland Table Tennis Taekwando Tai Chi Technology Tennis Title IX Tour de France
Track and Field—Jumping and Throwing Track and Field—Running and Hurdling Tug of War Turkey Turner Festivals Ultimate Underwater Sports Unionism United Kingdom Values and Ethics Venice Beach Violence Volleyball Volleyball, Beach Wakeboarding Weightlifting Wembley Stadium Wimbledon Windsurfing Women’s Sports, Media Coverage of Women’s World Cup Worker Sports World Cup World Series World University Games Wrestling Wrigley Field Wushu X Games Yankee Stadium Yoga Youth Culture and Sport Youth Sports
Reader’s Guide College Sports Amateur vs. Professional Debate Carnegie Report College Athletes Drake Group Intercollegiate Athletics Racism Title IX
Culture of Sport Adapted Physical Education Adventure Education Athletes as Celebrities Athletes as Heroes Baseball Stadium Life Baseball Nicknames Baseball Wives Burnout Clubsport Systems Coaching Coeducational Sport Fan Loyalty Gender Verification Hazing Home Field Advantage Homophobia Mascots Mental Conditioning Motivation Multiculturalism
Officiating Performance Enhancement Personality Professionalism Rituals Sex and Performance Spectators Sport as Religion Sport as Spectacle Sport Politics Sportsmanship
Events African Games America’s Cup Anthropology Days Arab Games Ashes, The Asian Games Boat Race (Cambridge vs. Oxford) Boston Marathon British Open Central American and Caribbean Games Commonwealth Games Cricket World Cup Davis Cup Deaflympics Elfstedentocht Euro 2004
European Football Championship Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) Gay Games Henley Regatta Highland Games Holmenkollen Sunday Iditarod Indianapolis 500 Interallied Games Ironman Triathlon Islamic Countries’ Women’s Sports Solidarity Games Le Mans Maccabiah Games Masters Nextel (Winston) Cup Olympics, 2004 Olympics, Summer Olympics, Winter Pan American Games Paralympics Ryder Cup South East Asian Games Special Olympics Stanley Cup Sumo Grand Tournament Series Super Bowl Tour de France Turner Festivals XIII
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Wimbledon Women’s World Cup World Cup World Series World University Games X Games
Health and Fitness Aerobics AIDS and HIV Anemia Athletic Training Biomechanics Biotechnology Diet and Weight Loss Disordered Eating Endurance Exercise and Health Fitness Fitness Industry Injury Injury Risk in Women’s Sport Jogging Nutrition Osteoporosis Pain Performance Pilates Reproduction Sports Medicine Strength Stress Tai Chi Yoga
Media ESPN Eurosport Internet Magazines Media-Sports Complex Newspapers
Play-by-Play Announcing Radio Sportswriting and Reporting Women’s Sports, Media Coverage of
National Profiles Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Cameroon Canada China Cuba Czech Republic Denmark East Germany Egypt Finland France Germany Greece Greece, Ancient Honduras Hungary India Iran Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Kenya Koreas Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria Norway
Poland Portugal Romania Rome, Ancient Russia and USSR Scotland Senegal Singapore South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom
Paradigms and Perspectives Cultural Studies Theory Feminist Perspective Human Movement Studies Interpretive Sociology Kinesiology Narrative Theory Physical Education Postmodernism Social Constructivism Sport Science
Sports Industry Agents Athletic Talent Migration Brand Management Collective Bargaining Commodification and Commercialization Competitive Balance Endorsements Facility Management Facility Naming Rights Fashion Franchise Relocation Free Agency
READER’S GUIDE
Management Marketing Memorabilia Industry Ownership Revenue Sharing Salary Caps Spectator Consumption Behavior Sponsorship Sport Tourism Sporting Goods Industry Unionism
Sport in Society Aesthetics American Sports Exceptionalism Animal Rights Art Beauty Body Image Commercialization Community Competition Cooperation Country Club Economics and Public Policy Environment Gender Equity Globalization International Politics Law Lesbianism Literature Masculinity Movies Prayer Psychology Psychology of Gender Differences Religion Scholar-Baller Sexual Harassment Sexuality Social Class
Social Identity Sport and National Identity Technology Values and Ethics Violence
Sports—Air Ballooning Flying Hang Gliding Kite Sports Parachuting Soaring
Sports—Animal Bullfighting Buzkashi Carriage Driving Falconry Foxhunting Horse Racing Horseback Riding Hunting Jousting Polo Rodeo
Sports—Ball Basketball Bowls and Bowling Floorball Footbag Goalball Handball, Team Korfball Mesoamerican Ball Court Games Pelota Netball Volleyball Volleyball, Beach Sepak takraw Speedball
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Sports—Body Movement and Strength Baton Twirling Bodybuilding Capoeira Cheerleading Dance DanceSport Gymnastics, Apparatus Gymnastics, Rhythmic Powerlifting Rope Jumping Tug of War Weightlifting
Sports—Combative and Martial Aikido Archery Arm Wrestling Boxing Bullfighting Buzkashi Fencing Japanese Martial Arts, Traditional Jousting Judo Jujutsu Karate Kendo Mixed Martial Arts Naginata Shooting Silat Sumo Taekwando Wrestling Wushu
Sports—Environmental Fishing Hunting
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Foxhunting Mountaineering Orienteering
Sledding—Skeleton Snowboarding Snowshoe Racing
Sports—Field
Sports—Mechanized and Motor
Australian Rules Football Camogie Football Football, Canadian Football, Flag Football, Gaelic Hockey, Field Hurling Innebandy Lacrosse Rugby Shinty Soccer
Auto Racing Carriage Driving Cycling Hockey, In-line Karting Motorboat Racing Motorcycle Racing Mountain Biking Polo, Bicycle Skateboarding Skating, In-line Skating, Roller
Sports—General
Sports—Mixed
Alternative Sports Disability Sport Fantasy Sports Folk Sports Native American Games and Sports Senior Sport Worker Sports
Biathlon and Triathlon Duathlon Extreme Sports Heptathlon Pentathlon, Modern
Sports—Ice and Snow Boating, Ice Bobsledding Curling Hockey, Ice Luge Skating, Ice Figure Skating, Ice Speed Ski Jumping Skiing, Alpine Skiing, Cross-Country Skiing, Freestyle Sled Dog Racing
Sports—Racket Badminton Racquetball Squash Table Tennis Tennis
Sports—Running and Jumping Cross-Country Running Heptathlon Marathon and Distance Running Race Walking Track and Field—Running and Hurdling
Sports—Stick and Ball Baseball Billiards Cricket Croquet Golf Rounders and Stoolball Softball
Sports—Throwing Boomerang Throwing Darts Heptathlon Ultimate Track and Field—Jumping and Throwing
Sports—Water Canoeing and Kayaking Diving Extreme Surfing Lifeguarding Polo, Water Rowing Sail Sports Sailing Skiing, Water Surf Lifesaving Surfing Swimming Swimming, Synchronized Underwater Sports Wakeboarding Windsurfing
Venues All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club Ascot Astrodome Bislett Stadium Bondi Beach
READER’S GUIDE
Coliseum (Rome) Eiger North Face Fenway Park Foro Italico Holmenkollen Ski Jump International Olympic Academy Lake Placid Lord’s Cricket Ground Madison Square Garden Maple Leaf Gardens Maracana Stadium Mount Everest Olympia
Olympic Stadium (Berlin), 1936 Pebble Beach St. Andrews St. Moritz Venice Beach Wembley Stadium Wrigley Field Yankee Stadium
Youth Sports Academies and Camps, Sport American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO)
Anti-Jock Movement Child Sport Stars Elite Sports Parents Family Involvement Growth and Development Injuries, Youth Play vs. Organized Sport School Performance Youth Culture and Sport Youth Sports
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KITE SPORTS
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evolved to nonrigid, air-inflated, or ram-air-inflated designs that have stability, heavy pull, and portability. While kites made according to “soft” designs are undoubtedly safer when flying in groups, if framed kites ofodern kite traction—substituting maneuverable fered leaps in performance, they would quickly kites for sails—is a modern phenomenon that proliferate. Air-inflated kites by Wipica, Naish, and has evolved rapidly in the last fifteen years. Advances in Northsail are hybrids in that their rigidity is achieved by kite design, materials, and maneuverability have allowed closed inflation—like an air mattress. The ram-air dekite sailors on land, water, or snow to approach the persign requires wind going into the forward opening to informances of sailboats and state-of-the-art land sailers— flate its three-dimensional wing. also called land yachts, sand yachts, and dirt boats— Acknowledged as the father of modern kite traction, wheeled, cart-like boats that move by sail power on firm New Zealand’s Peter Lynn has been at the forefront of ground and paved surfaces. With pioneer developers kite buggy (land) and kite sailing (water) design. He in New Zealand, France, and Hawaii, the sports— brings an aeronautical engineer’s especially kite surfing—have grown mind and sailor’s experience to all into a worldwide phenomenon. the traction sports. Bruno and Dominique Legaignoux, Frenchmen History of the Sport who invented the Wipicat, conKite traction has a long but mostly tributed much to the early developinvisible history. From Ben Franklin’s ment of kite sailing, and the Wipicat’s childhood adventure of being drawn inflated kite sail has morphed into across a pond by his kite to Engthe most popular kite-surfing deland’s George Pocock’s kite-powered sign. Corey and Bill Roeseler’s kitecarriage, the Char Volant, invented in powered water ski has given way to 1827, kite traction largely has been today’s kite surfer—the most popular ridiculed. Pocock’s invention appears and most visible of all the traction in numerous political cartoons of the sports. Kite surfing received a huge period, and even Samuel Franklin push in credibility when wind-surfing Cody, the first man to fly a powered, superstar and entrepreneur Robby heavier-than-air airplane in Great Naish entered the business with seriBritain, was alternately lauded and ous commitment. Kite surfing has scoffed at for his 1901 crossing of evolved most rapidly and is an exthe English Channel by kite-powered treme sport with an emphasis on aerboat. ial tricks. Kite skiing or kite boarding Kite traction owes its recent boom seems to be evolving along the same to the development of sport kites— lines, while land-based kite buggying two- and four-line maneuverable kites and kite sailing are characterized as that are used in ballet, team, and preracing sports. cision flying contests. Most of these Kite sailing, currently in its early kites are rigid, with lightweight carevolution, and kite surfing have bon or fiberglass frames and an emspread, logically, to areas in the world phasis on precise steering, speed, and A Japanese cuttlefish kite. with active sailing or windsurfing performance. Traction kites rapidly
Kite Sports
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communities. Kite buggying, which requires great open space, has found hotbeds in the desert southwest of North America, hard-pack beaches of Europe, and the deserts and beaches of Australia and New Zealand. Kite surfing, skiing, and buggying are relatively inexpensive, with beginning equipment costing no more than $2,000. Kite sailing’s cost, like that of any sailing sport, depends on variables like boat size, type, and material.
Nature of the Sport Kite surfing, buggying, and sailing/skiing each have some distinctive attributes.
KITE SURFING (WATER) From a sailing start, riders demonstrate power and control by launching airborne and performing spins, flips, or twists, and a controlled landing. Riders are judged on form, style, and ingenuity. Maneuvers from sister sports, wake-boarding, snow-boarding, surfing, water-skiing, and wind-surfing, are all possible in kite surfing. Aerial flips, turns, forward and backward landings, and all contortions in between are possible.
KITE BUGGYING (L AND) Riders race around a set course or around two pylons. In course racing riders with best times or head-to-head leaders win. In pylon racing a rider wins when lapping his single opponent. Long-distance races or “endures” measure distance traveled over a set time.
KITE SAILING AND KITE SKIING/BOARDING Both kite sailing and kite skiing/boarding look to be evolving along the lines of kite surfing and kite buggying, with kite sailing developing into a more traditional sailing sport, and kite skiing/boarding evolving into a trick sport. In the four kite traction sports, there are three components: kite and line, conveyance (surf board, buggy, boat, ski, or board), and rider. State-of-the-art in kites and line are air-inflated, four-line maneuverable kites with two lines that control steering (kite direction) and two lines that control power. Lines are attached to
a control bar that steers the kite (“pull right to turn right, pull left to turn left”) and also moves toward or away from the rider to power down or power up. Line length is variable according to conditions and flyer preferences—very short lines reduce the power of a given kite. Kite surfing, especially, has made great technical advancements and strides in popularity. It draws participants, equipment, and sponsors from windsurfing, surfing, wake boarding, sailing, snowboarding, skiing, and skateboarding. Participants are predominately young males, but females compete with the same rules and equipment. Kite surfing has also generated controversy since it competes for space at surfing and windsurfing areas. Safety has become a critical issue since competitive riders have been killed in uncontrolled landings, and even a spectator has been killed by a kite line when a kite relaunched prematurely.
Competition at the Top Currently, kite surfing is the most organized of the traction sports. Its “Red Bull King of the Air” competition is held annually in Maui, Hawaii, with qualifying contests held worldwide. On a much smaller scale, but evolving in the same way, are the kite skiing/boarding competitions for which there is already a winter tour in Europe and the United States. Both kite surfing and skiing/boarding attract young participants—men and women under thirty years old. Kite buggying attracts enthusiasts of a much wider age range, and organized events are usually local or regional, with rules tailored specifically to the locale. Kite sailing is in its infancy, but the idea received huge media attention when the U.S. entry in the America’s Cup, Oracle, tested a kite sail in 2003. Scott Skinner
Further Reading Drachen Foundation Journal. Retrieved February 28, 2005, from http:// www.drachen.org Kiteboarding Magazine. Retrieved February 28, 2005, from http:// www.kiteboardingmag.com
KOREAS
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Koreas Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 2 Gold, 2 Silver 2004 Summer Olympics (South Korea): 9 Gold, 12 Silver, 9 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics (North Korea): 4 Silver, 1 Bronze
Koreas
N
orth Korea and South Korea are East Asian nations located on the Korean peninsula, bordered by China to the north and the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan. The thirty-eighth parallel divides the peninsula into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea, capital Pyongyang) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea, capital Seoul). The division followed World War II, when Soviet troops invaded the north and the United States the south. The United Nations ratified the political division, which survived the Korean civil war (1950–1953). The division led both nations to pursue very different political and economic policies (communism vs. capitalism). The population of North Korea is estimated at 24 million and that of South Korea is 43 million.
Korean Traditions Strength tests, archery, and two national sports—tae kwon do, the Korean form of kickboxing that is now an Olympic sport, and ssirum Korean wrestling—belong to the Korean sport tradition. Both national sports reflected male dominance and fed the values of loyalty, fierceness, and strength that typify the traditional Korean ideology. The traditional ball game of chuk-guk was similar to English football before the codification of rugby and soccer. In 1864, Korea became involved in the world commercial system and entered into treaties with the Western powers. Before the Japanese annexation of 1910, soccer and then baseball and basketball spread to Korea.
Japanese Dominance Japan ruled Korea from 1910 to 1945 and enacted policies meant to assimilate Korea into Japanese society. An indigenous Choson (the self-name for Korea) Sport Association (CSA) formed in 1920 and attempted to control all national sports activities, but in 1925 Japan absorbed most of the clubs into its own federations. Nonetheless, CSA continued to resist. In 1932, the
Koreans competed in the Olympics for the first time, although under the Japanese flag. In 1935, Kee Chung Sohn won the Marathon of Osaka, setting a new world record. Selected for the Berlin Olympics of 1936, he was forced to change his surname to a Japanese form, Kitei Son. He won the gold and his country-mate Nam Sun Yong took the bronze medal. On the rostrum, both men bowed their heads in front of the Japanese flag as a sign of shame and outrage. The Japanese authorities repressed the enthusiastic tributes to them that took place in Seoul. Another Korean sports star was the weightlifter Su Il Nam, who, in the under 60-kilogram category, broke some world records in 1939. The International Weightlifting Federation attributed the records to Korea, not Japan.
North Korea Military and paramilitary organizations govern sports in Communist North Korea, which has been largely closed to the non-Communist world. A sports relationship with the Soviet Union began in the mid-1960s, when North Korea prepared for its first Olympics. North Korea competed in the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) in 1963 and 1966, the Winter Olympics in 1964, and the Summer Olympics to 1972. Perhaps the leading North Korean athlete of the 1960s was a woman, Shin Geum Dan, a world class competitor in the 400 and 800 meter races. Women were traditionally barred from sports in Korea, and her prominence ushered in a new era. The national soccer team shocked the world at the 1966 World Cup when it eliminated Italy and made it to the quarterfinals before losing to Portugal. In Italy, the term “Korea” became synonymous with “defeat.” In 1970, North Korea
A Korean man on stilts.
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Koreas Kite Flying in Korea Kite-flying is a national institution here as in China and Japan. The kites are not so elaborate as in the neighbouring countries, but the interest in the sport is fully as great, for there are what may be called kite-fights that are very exciting. By dextrous manipulation the rival kite-fliers get their strings crossed. Then comes the contest of pure skill, to see which can saw the string of the other in two first. You see the tiny kites high in the air darting this way and that, seemingly without rhyme or reason, but all the time their owners are manoeuvring for position, just as rival yachtsmen do in our own land. When one of
them thinks that the right moment has arrived, he makes his kite dash across the path of the other and clinch in the final struggle. Sooner or later one of the strings is cut, and the liberated kite floats away on the breeze, followed by a crowd of eager boys. The kites, though scientificially constructed, cost but very little, but the cord must be of the finest, and it must be smeared with a kind of paste mixed with pulverised glass. This makes it better able to saw the other cord in two. Source: Hulbert, H. B. (1906). The passing of Korea (pp. 278–79). New York: Doubleday, Page and Co.
Koreas Key Events in Korea Sports History 57 BCE Taekwondo is part of the physical training for young warriors.
1966 The North Korea soccer team gains attention when it defeats Italy in the World Cup.
1880s Late in the century soccer, basketball, and baseball are introduced by Westerners.
1972 North Korea competes in the Summer Olympics for the first time.
1920 The Choson (Korea) Sport Association is formed.
1980 Taekwondo is recognized as an Olympic sport.
1925 Japan, which has conquered Korea, incorporates Korean sports associations into its own associations.
1983 South Korea forms the first professional soccer league in Asia.
1932 Koreans compete in the Olympics for the first time, but under the Japanese flag. 1964 North Korea competes in the Winter Olympics.
withdrew from the World Cup when faced with the possibility of having to play Israel. North Korea boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984 with other communist nations and the Seoul Olympics in 1988, having unsuccessfully sought to be the co-organizer. North Korea has won thirty-seven medals, eight of them gold.
1988 The Summer Olympics are held in Seoul. North Korea boycotts the games. 2000 South and North Korea compete as one team at the 2000 Olympics and again at the 2002 Winter Olympics and 2004 Summer Olympics.
South Korea With much Western influence, South Korea developed an industrialized society in the 1970s and 1980s. The government reorganized sport and physical education following Western models and also encouraged participation by women. It won its first gold medal at the
KORFBALL
1976 Olympics. In 1981 Seoul was selected to host the 1988 summer games. Its preparation for the Olympics served to tie South Korea’s economic boom with the development of sports. At Seoul, South Korea won twelve gold medals in archery, wrestling, judo, boxing, and table tennis. In the 1992 Olympics, South Koreans won medals in shooting, tae kwon do, weightlifting, and badminton. Large investments were made in professional sports and in 1983 the first professional soccer league in Asia was established. South Korea co-organized with Japan the 2002 World Cup of soccer and its team reached an unexpected fourth place. In the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, South Korea continued its success in short track skating in which, since the event’s Olympic debut in 1992, South Korea has won at least one gold medal at each Winter Olympics. The female golfer Se Ri Pak has won major professional tournaments in the United States and has become a symbol of the sportswoman in South Korea.
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Riordan, J. (1996). Communist sports policy: The end of an era. In L. Chalip, A. Johnson, & L. Stachura (Eds.), National sports policies: An international handbook (pp. 89–115). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Korfball
K
orfball is a coed sport that combines elements of basketball and netball. It was introduced in 1902 by Dutch schoolteacher Nico Broekhuysen (1877– 1958) as a safe, noncontact game that boys and girls could play together. In the Netherlands the new sport caught on and quickly gained a following. It took until the last decades of the twentieth century—when coeducation and equality of the sexes in sport became an issue in many countries—for korfball to develop internationally. It is now played in almost fifty countries, although mostly as a minor sport.
History of the Game
The Future The future of sports in the two nations is linked to ongoing but as yet unsuccessful attempts to reunite as one nation. In 1988, the leaders of the north and south failed in their negotiations to form a joint team for the Olympics. The situation was reopened in 1994, with the death of Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, and in the context of North Korea’s difficult economic situation. North Korea competed at the 2003 Asian Winter Games in Daegu. Finally, at the 2000 and 2004 Summer and 2002 Winter Olympics, the athletes of the two nations marched together behind a unique white flag with a picture of the Korean peninsula. Gherardo Bonini
Further Reading Buchanan, I., & Mallon, B. (2001). Historical dictionary of the Olympic movement. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow. Mulling, C. (1989). Sport in South Korea: Ssirum, the YMCA, and the Olympic Games. In E. Wagner (Ed.), Sport in Asia and Africa: A comparative handbook (pp. 83–99). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
According to Broekhuysen (1949), he developed korfball after attending a handicraft course in Nääs, Sweden, in 1902. One of a group of progressive educators, he was looking for low-cost, open-air games that boys and girls could play together. While attending the course, he became acquainted with “ringboll.” The nonScandinavian participants labeled this game “basketball” although—according Broekhuysen’s reconstruction of the history—there was no basket or korf (Dutch for a “rattan basket”). Inspired by his experiences with ringboll, Broekhuysen developed a game he called korfball for his school. He had two poles constructed that had detachable, bottomless cane baskets on top. He then established a set of basic rules and upper-grades started to play the game after school hours. Recently, the Belgium sport historian Roland Renson investigated the roots of korfball. His findings correct Broekhuysen’s version of korfball history. Renson discovered three pictures (from the United States in 1892 and Naäs, Sweden, 1897 and 1912) on which rattan baskets (korfs) are to be seen. In his “genealogy” of korfball,
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Renson convincingly argues that Broekhuysen’s korfball has its roots in Senda Berenson’s (1893) concept of threecourt women’s basketball and in “korgboll” as it was presented at the 1902 Nääs course. Renson concludes: “It is certain that the Dutch teacher Nico Broekhuysen in 1902 made the acquaintance of the mixed game of three-court basketball with bottomless baskets during his participation in a course at Nääs in Sweden. We know for a fact that he introduced this form of game in Amsterdam and —to the analogy of the Swedish korgball and the American basketball—conferred upon it the Dutch name of korfbal. . . . Broekhuysen’s korfball is not an original invention but indeed a unique interpretation of Berenson’s women’s basketball, distinguished by the fact that it is essentially a mixed form of game” (Renson 2003, 59, 60). Other educators immediately became interested in the new game, and soon korfball clubs began to be established. In 1903 the Dutch Korfball Association was established (now called KNKV) with Broekhuysen as its first president. Korfball was exported to countries that were under Dutch colonial control (Indonesia, Suriname, and the Dutch Antilles) at the time, but otherwise the Dutch made little effort to promote the game internationally. In 1920 the Dutch Korfball Association demonstrated korfball at the Antwerp Olympic Games. As a result, the Belgian Korfball Association was established in 1921. The first international match between Belgium and the Netherlands took place in 1923, and it has continued to be an annual event. In 1924 the International Korfball Bureau was founded, and in 1933 it became officially known as the International Korfball Federation (IKF).The international organization, however, remained inactive for a long period because of a lack of funds. After World War II, the Dutch began to promote korfball in other countries. In 1946 korfball was introduced into Great Britain. Demonstration tours were conducted in Austria, Denmark, and Switzerland, but these countries did not adopt the game. In the 1960s korfball was successfully launched in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1967 the first European Cup Tournament in outdoor korfball for national championship clubs was organized. In the 1970s korfball be-
came well established in France, Spain, Papua New Guinea, and Luxembourg, mostly because it was promoted by enthusiastic teachers. In 1976 the KNKV was invited by two United States physical education professors, who were both originally from the Netherlands, Jan Broekhoff and Nicolaas Moolenijzer, to make a longer demonstration tour at universities in the United States. The initiative was a consequence of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, stipulating equal sport opportunities for men and women. In 1978 the U.S. Korfball Federation (USKF) was established. The following year, in 1979— three years after the first trip—a second KNKV trip was made with demonstrations in Illinois, Wisconsin, California, and Oregon. By that time Broekhoff was the president of the USKF, and Moolenijzer, the secretary. The American tours represented major growth for the sport and prompted the IKF to invest in the international expansion of korfball. In 1979 the federation’s international coach, Adri (“Swan”) Zwaanswijk, embarked on a six-month world tour to promote korfball as a coed sport and a passport to coeducation. On the occasion of its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1978, the KNKV organized the first world championship, which included six European teams as well representatives from Papua New Guinea and the United States. The world championship takes place every four years—the sixth held in Australia in 1999 and the seventh, on the occasion of the one hundredth birthday of the Dutch Korfball Association, in the Netherlands in 2003—and korfball has been on the program of the World Games since 1985. The 1990s saw the rapid expansion of korfball in Eastern Europe, following periods of dramatic political and economic change. In 1993 korfball was officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In 1998 Portugal hosted the first European indoor korfball championship. In most of these international competitions, the Dutch team was victorious, with Belgium as its biggest rival. In the last ten years or so—due to clinics given by Dutch coaches—the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Portugal, and the Republic of South
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Africa have made substantial progress in competitive strength. On the invitation of the Chinese goverment in March 2004, the IKF sent Ben Crum (the Dutch national coach for many years and now charged with the development of korfball) with a Dutch demonstration team to Beijing, where korfball was introduced at three universities. To date korfball has developed into an international sport played in forty-six countries, while thirty-eight countries are associated within the IKF. The IKF is a member of the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) as well as the International World Games Association (IWGA). Although it is now an international sport, korfball is—apart from in the Netherlands—still a minor one. The Netherlands has 100,000 players, but this figure is not matched by the sum of all players in all other IKF countries. That it has attained only this modest popularity is probably due not to any specific features of the game, but rather because its leading proponent, the Netherlands, is a small country that does not have a strong position in the grand scheme of international cultural exchange (see van Bottenburg, 1992, 2003). In the Netherlands, where more than 630 clubs have about 100,000 players, korfball is the fourth most popular team sport (behind soccer, volleyball, and field hockey). In the large competitive league system, players range in age from six to fifty-plus. There are no professional players in korfball, although players in the highest Dutch league receive an allowance for expenses.
How to Play the Game Korfball was originally played only outdoors on a threezone court with four players from each side per zone. In 1990, however, the middle (connecting) zone was abolished. This was the result of the growing popularity of indoor korfball, which was introduced in the 1950s and played in two zones (each side having two players per zone), and also was one with a view to the internationalization of korfball—two-zone korfball is a faster, more spectacular game, an important promotional consideration.
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Indoor korfball is played on a court of 40 ✕ 20 meters, with the outdoor court as large as 60 ✕ 30 meters. A post 3.5 meters high with a korf on top is placed 6.7 meters (10 meters, outdoors) from the baseline of each of the two halves. Korfball is played with a ball about the same size and weight as a soccer ball and made of leather. Four players from each team (two male, two female) play in each half, as the offense and defense. Each time two goals are scored (two by either team or one by each), the players change zones, so that the attackers become defenders and vice versa. During the 2003–2004 Dutch indoor league season, the average number of scores per match was forty-one, meaning about twenty changes per match. This aspect of the game requires players to master both offensive and defensive skills. The objective in offense is to develop passing and running combinations to create a shooting opportunity. Shooting when defended is not permitted. An attacker is defended when his or her opponent is nearer to the post, is within arm’s length, and is actively trying to block the ball. This aspect of the game limits the advantage that would otherwise accrue to taller players since they are not allowed to jump shoot over their opponent if they are in a defended position. Korfball is characterized by players moving around the court in pairs, an offensive player with a defensive opponent. Players may not run or dribble with the ball. Rapid changes of speed and direction, combined with good teamwork and passing, are required for the attacker to break free from the opposing player and receive the ball to shoot. Goals can be scored by shots from a distance (22 meters is not exceptional) or from close range when an attacker has passed the defense player by using feints and moving quickly. The defenders attempt to remain close to their opponents and be alert to opportunities to intercept passes or to rebound after a shot. Korfball restricts physical contact as it is meant to be a noncontact sport.The emphasis is on skill and speed, not on power or aggression. The Dutch outdoor leagues start in autumn and continue into spring. The indoor season, which is much
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more popular with spectators, television broadcasters, and most players, runs from November until the end of March. The high point of the korfball year is the annual indoor championship final, which annually attracts 9,000 spectators to the Ahoy Sport Palace in Rotterdam. In connection with attempts to increase TV exposure and promote the game internationally, there have been a number of experiments with new equipment as well as rule changes. In 2004 the Playing Rules Committee of the IKF approved a synthetic korf that will replace, probably in 2005, the traditional rattan korf. Rule experiments that have been conducted over the last four years concern, for example, the introduction of a twopoint score for a distance shot (comparable to the threepointer in basketball), different types of free throws, and more tolerance with regard to the defended shooting rule.
Women, Korfball, and Equality Mixed-gender teams, plus claims that korfball is a passport to coeducation, have opened doors for the introduction of korfball internationally. But the question remains as to whether korfball can really be seen as a means of facilitating the blending of men’s and women’s sports cultures? Potentially, male and female competitors are equals. In reality, as the situation stands in the beginning of the twenty-first century they are not equals. Korfball has the potential to be played on a highly competitive level with equal chances for success and status for men and women. Two elements of the game promote this. First, because the position of the korf makes it possible to attack from all directions and the small number of defenders (only four) tactically excludes the option of a zone defense, the person-toperson defense system is essential. Consequently, every player in the attack zone has a single person defending him or her. Second, the rules require two males and two females from both sides in each section, and players are allowed to guard or attack only opponents of the same sex. These features of the game tend to cancel any gender-based differences in height, strength, or speed.
Because there is generally no reason to assume that female players are technically or tactically less competent than their male teammates, the role division (e.g., who is the scoring player and who does the supportive work) can be arranged independently of the gender factor. Tactically, in assigning positions to players, teams also consider the issue of which player must be supported in order to score by determining who of the four in the offense section has the best chance to score on his or her defender. Herein lies the potential for gender equity within korfball. However, a team in which female players have the same or a higher status (according to successful scoring chances) is unusual. The view that korfball still suffers from traditional ideas about the division of roles and power also emerges when looking at the positions that men and women hold in the formal power structures of the korfball organizations (Crum 1988, Summerfield and White 1989). Males are still overrepresented as referees, as well as in administrative positions, and there is no formal mechanism in place to change this situation despite the fact that half the players are women.
The Future The most important—the largest, the strongest— national competitions are those in the Netherlands. A remarkable fact is that the (younger) indoor competition has much more status than the traditional outdoor competition. At the international level, the following tournaments have achieved the most prominence: the annual European Cup, two matches (one outdoor, one indoor) annually between Belgium and the Netherlands, the World Championship, and the korfball championship as part of the World Games, the last two being held every four years. In 1993 the International Olympic Committee accepted korfball as an IOC-recognized sport. The importance is that as a result the IKF receives modest financial support from the IOC and national associations improve their position with regard to their NOCs. Although there are still a few diehards who strive for
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korfball as a part of the program of the Olympic Games, it is realistic to state that efforts to have korfball attain Olympic status in the twenty-first century are entirely without chance.
Governing Bodies The primary governing bodies are the International Korfball Federation (IKF) (www.ikf.org) and the Royal Dutch Korfball Association (www.knkv.nl). Bart Crum
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Further Reading Broekhuysen, N. (1949). Het ontstaan van korfbal [The origin of korfball]. In Dat is korfbal [This is korfball] (pp. 11–19). Den Haag/ Rotterdam, Netherlands: Nijgh & Van Ditmar. Crum, B. (1988). A critical analysis of korfball as a “non-sexist” sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 23(3), 233–240. Crum, B. (2003). The Olympic ambition of korfball—A critical comment. In F. Troost (Ed.), “ . . . and I went on a voyage to Sweden” (pp. 109–139). Utrecht, Netherlands: KNKV. Renson, R. (2003). The roots of the game of korfball—A genealogy. In F. Troost (Ed.), “ . . . and I went on a voyage to Sweden” (pp.13–69). Utrecht, Netherlands: KNKV. Summerfield, K., & White, A. (1989). Korfball: A model of egalitarianism? Sociology of Sport Journal, 6, 144–151. Van Bottenburg, M. (1992).The differential popularization of sports in continental Europe. The Netherlands’ Journal of Social Science, 28(1), 3–30. Van Bottenburg, M. (2003). If korfball had been developed in America. In F. Troost (Ed.), “ . . . and I went on a voyage to Sweden” (pp. 71– 106). Utrecht, Netherlands: KNKV.
Lacrosse Lake Placid Law Le Mans
Lacrosse
Lesbianism Lifeguarding Literature Lord’s Cricket Ground Luge
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acrosse, the oldest organized sport in North America, is a high-speed combination of cradling, dodging, shooting, scoring, and blocking. Since 1636, when French missionaries first documented Native Americans playing the sport, lacrosse has spread beyond the United States and Canada and continues to grow in popularity around the globe.
History Although historians have no definitive date, Native Americans invented lacrosse (the Algonquin tribes called it “baggattaway”; the Iroquois tribes called it “tewaarathon”). Native Americans used lacrosse, known as the “little brother of war,” as training for war, among other things. Pregame preparations and prewar preparations were often similar, if not identical, in their frenzy and rituals. People also used lacrosse to settle intertribal conflicts peacefully. Lacrosse also had a spiritual and religious importance. Many Native Americans believed that lacrosse was the Creator’s game. They believed that by playing lacrosse, they could please the Creator and bring about favorable weather, honor the deceased, or cure the ill. The tribes of North America developed three distinct styles of play. Native Americans in the southeastern part of the United States developed a game in which players used two sticks—one stick 76 centimeters long in each hand. These tribes—the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Yuchis, among
L others—used a soft, small ball made of deerskin that was held between the two sticks. The tribes who lived around the Great Lakes—the Ojibwas, Menominees, Potawatomis, Sauks, Foxes, and Santee Dakotas, among others—used a stick that was 1 meter long and had a round, closed pocket 7 to 10 centimeters in diameter. Their ball was usually carved from wood, charred, and then carved into shape. Both the southeastern tribes and the Great Lakes tribes played on a flat, grassy field with no boundaries. The goals were often more than 1.6 kilometers apart. Each team was required to have an equal number of players; team members often numbered in the hundreds or thousands. Thus, to European settlers a game of lacrosse often appeared as a battle between tribes rather than a game. The third style of lacrosse developed within the Iroquois nation, a group of tribes living in upstate New York and southern Ontario, Canada. Their stick was more than 1 meter long and had a curved shaft ending in a large, triangular split that was netted to form a pocket. The Iroquois style was more organized than the other two styles and was the precursor of the modern sport. Each team had a limit of twelve to fifteen players, and the goals were approximately 110 meters apart. A lacrosse game could last for days, played between sunrise and sunset. No uniformity of game rules existed between tribes, but the concept of sportsmanship was universal. Settlers from Europe during the 1600s were the first non-Native American observers of lacrosse. The word lacrosse was given to the sport after French missionaries first observed the Iroquois style of the game. It was named lacrosse because the Native Americans’ sticks re-
sembled the crosier (a staff resembling a shepherd’s crook) carried by French bishops as a symbol of their office. French missionary Jean de Brebeuf in 1636 first used the word lacrosse when he documented the sport. European settlers saw the sport as savage and violent and did not understand its symbolism to Native Americans. However, European interest in the sport grew and, in one instance, had dramatic results. In June 1763 a group of British soldiers who had recently occupied the Native Americans’ Fort Michilimackinac near Lake Michigan became enthralled with a game of lacrosse being played outside the fort. When the ball accidentally flew inside the fort, the soldiers opened the doors to the fort; the lacrosse players rushed the fort, and only three soldiers survived. This event came to be known as the “Conspiracy of Pontiac.”
Growth of the Modern Sport Little documentation exists that European settlers played lacrosse until the 1800s. However, historians speculate that early French pioneers competed with Native Americans as early as the mid-1700s. In 1834 the Caughnawagas demonstrated the sport in Montreal, Canada. In 1856 Canadian dentist William George Beers created the first non-Native American lacrosse team, the Montreal Lacrosse Club. Beers is known as the “father of modern lacrosse” because he standardized the sport and instituted rules and field boundaries. Beers also changed the Native Americans’ hair-stuffed deerskin ball to the solid rubber ball still in use today. In 1867 the number of Canadian lacrosse teams rose to eighty, and Beers finalized the game rules when he
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created the Canadian National Lacrosse Association, the first governing body for the sport. In 1867 the Canadian government also chose lacrosse as the national sport, an honor it shares with hockey. Lacrosse quickly gained in popularity in Canada but was slow to catch on in the United States. Not until 1877 was the first U.S. collegiate team organized at New York University. In 1881 the first U.S. intercollegiate tournament was held at the Westchester Polo Grounds in New York. In 1882 the first high school lacrosse teams were formed at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Men’s lacrosse gained in popularity; however, women’s lacrosse was virtually nonexistent in the United States. The first women’s lacrosse game was played in 1890 at St. Leonard’s School for Girls in Saint Andrew’s, Scotland. Frances Jane Dove, the headmistress of St. Leonard’s, changed some of the rules of the men’s lacrosse game to make it more feminine, more graceful, and more appealing to women.The women’s game had no body checking and no lined boundaries on the field; women played lacrosse in a skirt. Lacrosse quickly spread throughout Scotland and England, and in 1912 the Ladies Lacrosse Association was established in England. As women’s lacrosse grew in Europe, men’s lacrosse continued to grow in North America. In 1904 lacrosse was played as an exhibition sport at the Olympics in St. Louis and again in 1908 at the Olympics in London. However, despite its growing popularity, lacrosse did not appear
Lacrosse players going for the ball. Source: istockphoto/mantonino.
again at the Olympics until 1928. On the collegiate level, however, the growth of lacrosse spurred development of the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse League (USILL) in 1904.The league agreed on a new set of rules and a standard code of operation for lacrosse teams and split collegiate teams into Northern and Southern divisions. In 1925 Constance M. K. Applebee ran a summer camp for women field hockey players in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Applebee hired Joyce Cran Berry to assist her as an instructor. Berry, a field hockey player from England, was also a lacrosse player who was interested in spreading the sport in the United States. However, Berry and her fellow English lacrosse players had difficulty promoting women’s lacrosse because often the women’s sport was likened to the rough and aggressive men’s sport. As a coach at the camp, Berry had the opportunity to change the U.S. mind-set about women’s lacrosse. She used the association with field hockey, a widely accepted sport in the United States, to gain acceptance for lacrosse. Without field hockey, lacrosse probably would not have spread as quickly as it did. In 1926 Rosabelle Sinclair, a graduate of St. Leonard’s School for Girls, organized the first
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Lacrosse Lacrosse in a Tribal Community Lacrosse as played by the Central Ojibwa of the Lake Superior region, Ontario, Canada in the 1800s. Of all the Indian social sports the finest and grandest is the ball play. I might call it a noble game, and I am surprised how these savages attained such perfection in it. Nowhere in the world, excepting, perhaps, among the English and some of the Italian races, is the graceful and manly game of ball played so passionately and on so large a scale. They often play village against village, or tribe against tribe. Hundreds of players assemble, and the wares and goods offered as prizes often reach a value of a thousand dollars and more. On our island we made a vain attempt to get up a game, for though the chiefs were ready enough, and all were cutting their raquets and balls in the bushes, the chief American authorities forbade this innocent amusement. The raquets are two and a half feet in length, carved very gracefully out of a white tough wood, and provided with a handle. The upper end is formed into a ring four or five inches in diameter, worked very firmly
women’s lacrosse team at Bryn Mawr College in Baltimore, Maryland. By 1928 Sinclair had spread lacrosse to Philadelphia and Baltimore and was instrumental in the development of women’s club lacrosse teams. In 1931 out of Applebee’s summer field hockey camp came the United States Women’s Lacrosse Association (USWLA). Berry was the first president of the USWLA, which governed both collegiate and club-level women’s lacrosse. The USWLA held its first national tournament in Greenwich, Connecticut. Lacrosse continued to evolve and to gain in popularity. In 1932 men’s lacrosse was played at the Los Angeles Olympic Games before a crowd of eighty thousand. To this day no other lacrosse game has attracted so many people. A sport that was often played in the shadows of baseball fields was finally coming into its own. In 1937 Robert Pool introduced the double-walled
and regularly, and covered by a network of leather bands. The balls are made of white willow, and cut perfectly round with the hand: crosses, stars, and circles are carved upon them. The care devoted to the balls is sufficient to show how highly they estimate the game. The French call it “jeu de crosse.” Great ballplayers, who can send the ball so high that it is out of sight, attain the same renown among the Indians as celebrated runners, hunters, or warriors. [ . . . ] Another description of ball play, especially practised by the women, is what is called the “papassi kawan,” which means literally “the throwing game.” It is played by two large bands, who collect round two opposite poles, and try to throw the object over their opponents’ pole. In the place of a ball, they have two leathern bags filled with sand, and attached by a thong. They throw them in the air by means of a staff excellently shaped for the purpose, and catch it again very cleverly. The stick is sharp and slightly bent at the end, and adorned like the raquets. Source: Wraxall, F. C. L. (1860). Kitchi-Gami: Wanderings round Lake Superior (p. 8890). London: Chapman and Hall.
wooden stick, an early prototype of today’s plastic lacrosse stick. In 1856 only one lacrosse team existed in Montreal, Canada. By 1950 two hundred college, club, and high school teams existed. Within one hundred years lacrosse had spread from Canada to Europe and back to North America to the United States. The focal point of lacrosse in the United States was the East Coast, but by 1959 lacrosse had spread across the country to California. In 1959 the Lacrosse Foundation, now called “U.S. Lacrosse,” and the Lacrosse Hall of Fame were founded. The Lacrosse Foundation was organized as a nonprofit group to further the development of lacrosse. Since the 1950s lacrosse has spread across the United States as well as around the globe. In 1967 the International Lacrosse Federation (ILF) began international play at the Men’s World Lacrosse Championship. In 1972
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A drawing of Native Americans playing lacrosse in the 1800s.
the International Federation of Women’s Lacrosse Associations (IFWLA) was organized, and international play began with women’s teams. The Women’s World Championships, now called the “Women’s World Cup,” are held every four years. In 1971 men’s collegiate lacrosse aligned with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and the first men’s NCAA lacrosse tournament took place. With the help of the NCAA the popularity of men’s collegiate lacrosse surged, and the tournament continued to be a highly attended event. In 1982 the NCAA took over the United States Women’s Lacrosse Association, and the first women’s collegiate lacrosse tournament was organized. In 1940 only twenty high schools in the United States supported a women’s lacrosse team. By the year 2000 more than fifteen thousand women were playing at more than six hundred high schools across the United States. More than fifty-five hundred women were playing lacrosse at 240 colleges across the United States, and nearly twenty-five thousand men were playing on the collegiate level at more than four hundred colleges. The popularity of lacrosse cannot be attributed to one element, although its history, its athletes, and the
thrill of the crowd as a goal is scored contribute. Lacrosse is an intensely physical and mental sport that is devoid of any major scandals or controversies.
What Is Lacrosse? Lacrosse is similar to basketball, hockey, and soccer. The prime difference is that lacrosse uses a solid rubber ball instead of an inflatable ball or a puck. The object of lacrosse is to pass the ball down the field and score a point in the opponent’s goal without handling the ball with anything other than the lacrosse stick. The team with the most points wins. Each team is made up of offensive and defensive players and a goalie. The goalie is the only player allowed to touch the ball with a hand. A men’s lacrosse team is made up of ten players who cover the entire 100 meters of the field. The skills of cradling, passing, checking, and shooting are vital. Cradling a ball keeps the ball in the pocket of one’s stick and allows one to travel on the field without losing the ball. Passing the ball to a teammate is one way to continue the movement of the ball toward the opponent’s goal. Checking an opponent’s stick allows one to dislodge the ball from the pocket of the opponent’s stick. Shooting the ball on the goal is necessary to score a
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point. Not only must a player possess these technical skills, but also a good lacrosse player must be well conditioned and capable of sprinting short distances and changing directions quickly. The most important skill is teamwork. Every member on the team is a vital part of winning. The basic equipment, regardless of team position, is a lacrosse stick, made of wood, laminated wood, or synthetic material with a shaped net pocket at the end. Men lacrosse players are required to wear a helmet, a mouthpiece, and gloves. Lacrosse goals are 2 meters high by 2 meters wide and are placed at each end of the field. The game begins with a face-off in the center of the field; two referees enforce game rules and penalties. Women’s lacrosse has no body contact, and thus women players wear no protective equipment except a mouth guard. The field for women’s lacrosse is longer: 109 meters. Technical skills are the same as in men’s lacrosse, and women players need cardiovascular endurance just as much as their male counterparts do. The differences between adult lacrosse and youth lacrosse can be as simple as a shorter game time. Younger players are encouraged to play on a full-size field and to focus on the basic skills, such as cradling, passing, and catching. Some restrictions may be applied on checking an opponent’s stick, but those restrictions are up to the discretion of coaches and referees.
Competition at the Top Lacrosse would not be where it is without the support of the NCAA. In 1971 the NCAA took a group of colleges and organized a tournament that has set records with the most successful programs, coaches, players, and attendance records for outdoor sports. During the 1980s attendance at NCAA lacrosse games surged because of the Gait twins, Paul and Gary, two Syracuse lacrosse standouts who led their team to three NCAA titles in a row. Prior to that, only Johns Hopkins University had won three NCAA titles in a row. However, since the Gait twins Princeton University has won three titles in a row. Records continue to be
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broken in both men’s and women’s tournaments. In fact, the crowd of 37,944 at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium for the 2003 NCAA Division 1 men’s lacrosse championship was the largest to ever attend an NCAA outdoor championship. Only men’s basketball has drawn a larger crowd for an NCAA championship game. Two professional lacrosse leagues exist. The Major Indoor Lacrosse League (MILL), formed in 1986, is an indoor league with six players per team and a higher level of physical contact. Although the pay for players is minimal, they play for the love of the sport and the adoration of fans. An outdoor league, the National Lacrosse League (NLL), was formed in 2000.
The Future Because of the success of international lacrosse play, some people have talked of applying to have lacrosse readmitted to the Olympics. However, the Olympic charter states that an Olympic sport must be widely played in seventy-five countries. Currently lacrosse is played in fewer than twenty countries.
Governing Bodies Governing organizations include US Lacrosse (www. lacrosse.org); International Lacrosse Federation (www. intlaxfed.org); and International Federation of Women’s Lacrosse Association (www.womenslacrosse.org). Annette C. Nack See also Native American Games and Sports
Further Reading Altherr, T. L. (1997). Sports in North America, a documentary history: Vol. 1. Sports in the colonial era 1618–1783. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press. Craig, S. (2002). Sports and games through history: Sports and games of the ancients. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Eisen, G., & Wiggins, D. K. (1994). Ethnicity and sport in North American history and culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Fisher, D. M. (2002). Lacrosse: A history of the game. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hanlon, T. W. (1997). The sports rules book: Essential rules for 54 sports. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
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You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do. ■ A. J. KITT
Hoyt-Goldsmith, D. (1998). Lacrosse: The national game of the Iroquois. New York: Holiday House. Oxendine, J. B. (1988). American Indian sports heritage. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Vennum, T., Jr. (1994). American Indian lacrosse: Little brother of war. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books.
Lake Placid
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ake Placid is a small town of about 2,800 people located in the Adirondack region of upstate New York. It was the host for the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics and in 1980 the venue for the “Miracle on Ice,” one of the most famous events in American sports history. The Miracle on Ice was the United States Olympic hockey team’s 4 to 3 victory over the Soviet Union team in a semifinal game and then victory over Finland in the final to take the gold medal. The U.S. victory was considered a “miracle” because the team was composed of amateur college players coached by college coach Herb Brooks. The Soviet and Finnish teams were made up of older, more experienced quasi-professionals. Given the U.S.-Soviet Cold War rivalry of the time, the U.S. victory was hailed across America as a triumph of capitalist democracy over communism. The 1980 Winter Olympics were also the “Eric Heiden Olympics” as he won the gold medal in all five speed skating events, from 500 to 10,000 meters. Although considered too small a community to host the Olympics, both the 1932 and 1980 events were considered successful. Only Innsbruck, Austria, and St. Mortiz, Switzerland, have also hosted two winter Olympics. Lake Placid built on the 1980 Olympics with the assistance of the newly-created Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) to turn itself into a major venue for winter sports training and competitions and as a venue for year-round tourism. Previously, except for the two Olympics, it had been mainly a summer tourist destination. The development plan used the existing facilities and added new ones. In 1988 a U.S. Olympic Training Center was opened and many athletes train there year-round. Lake Placid, with its world-class
facilities also has numerous major competitions in bobsled, luge, and skeleton racing; Alpine, freestyle and cross-country skiing; ski jumping; speed skating; and snow boarding. The 1980 Olympic Center that houses the hockey rink has become a national hockey shrine with hundreds of youth hockey teams coming to play there each year. For those interested in sports and public policy, the Lake Placid experience is often cited as a case study in how the Olympics can work to build and strengthen communities. Unlike many other Olympic venues that were left saddled with enormous debt and underutilized facilities, Lake Placid has maintained its small town way of life while building on Olympic resources to prosper. David Levinson See also St. Moritz
Further Reading The official magazine of the XIII Winter Games, Lake Placid 1980. New York: Seidler, Ludwig & Shpack, Ltd. Wacholder, M. (2005). Lake Placid’s Olympic legacy; 25th anniversary of the Winter Games. Adirondack Sport & Fitness. Retrieved on February 7, 2005, from www.adksportsfitness.com/january/2005/ articles
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he relationship between law and sports has never been more prominent. Unlike immutable principles in science, law is dynamic. As a result, the legal issues related to sports continue to change in response to global social, economic, political, and technological changes. Understanding that law continues to evolve is important to the understanding of the rule and role of law in sports. Much of sports law emphasizes issues raised in contract law. This fact is the result of the development of rules and codes of participation that more clearly define the legal relationships among participants. Sports law,
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however, covers a vast array of subjects beyond contracts. Only recently did academicians consider this array to be a definitive area of the law because many had believed that “sports law” was not a clearly defined area among the classical categories of law. The study and discussion of sports law today remain quite broad, although sports law certainly has carved out its own niche among other traditional areas of law, including criminal, tort, property, labor issues, antitrust, Title IX (gender equity), and intellectual property.
History An appreciation of modern sports law requires an appreciation of the historical perspective and development of law during thousands of years. Two major legal models are civil law and common law. Civil law forms the legal basis for much of continental Europe, Latin America, Japan, Quebec, and the state of Louisiana in North America. Civil law is statutory in nature and is based upon the principle that judges apply (rather than interpret) the law as it is written in statutes. On the other hand, common law forms the legal basis for most of the United States, England, Australia, and South Africa. Common law provides judges with greater opportunity to apply legal principles on a case-by-case basis. The use of precedent in decisions (sometimes referred to as “stare decisis”) forms the basis of common law. Around the world hybrid forms of civil and common law exist, some of which are heavily influenced by religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. Nonetheless, modern legal systems ultimately derive their greatest influences from common law or civil law, both heavily influenced by the laws and structure of law provided by the ancient Roman culture.
Contract Law Professional and amateur athletes are now often required to sign contracts as a prerequisite to participation in sports. These contracts delineate and define the rules of the sport in addition to the possible penalties and even an appeals process for potentially adverse decisions involving objective and subjective decisions.
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When considering the legal system, such contractual arrangements attempt to avoid ambiguities that later might require subjective decisions by juries or interpretations or opinions by potentially biased judges. Examples of sports contracts include league collective bargaining agreements (contracts between owners and players), standard player contracts, sponsorship agreements, codes of ethics and conduct, and waivers or releases of liability in the event of an injury. More often than not, contemporary sports contracts provide for alternative forms of dispute resolution (ADR) such as arbitration and mediation (as opposed to litigation). The emphasis on ADR has streamlined the efficacy and timeliness of the application of law in sports in order to reach quicker decisions. This streamlining allows for more competition on the court than in court, the latter of which could take years to resolve.
Olympic Movement International sports competitions and their relationship to law revolve primarily around the Olympics. Olympic rules, policies, and procedures have evolved during many years and are now codified. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) mandates that every person or organization that plays any part in the Olympics must accept the supreme authority of the IOC and be bound by its rules and submit to its jurisdiction. Thus, the IOC has established its supreme authority in decisions regarding the suspension, expulsion, or disqualification of all athletes or coaches in its regime. The IOC uses the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) to resolve disputes. The IOC has a medical code, for example, that classifies certain drugs as legal or illegal. IOC rules and their application and interpretation have faced controversial legal challenges, including outright boycotts by nations. Although all Olympic athletes subject themselves to the IOC regulations, the particular rules of sports in swimming, gymnastics, and triathlon, for example, are placed in the hands of the international federations. Then domestic qualification standards and events are further regulated by distinct national governing bodies, which, in turn, are overseen by national Olympic committees
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(NOCs). Thus, the IOC relies heavily on its own hierarchy rather than court systems to enforce its rules and regulations.
Court of Arbitration of Sport The CAS uses neutral arbitrators who make final, binding decisions involving disputes surrounding the Olympics at the games themselves. The CAS is appellate in nature, which means that it hears appeals from decisions made at lower levels of the Olympic Games. An appeal might include, for example, a disqualification of a competitor for a positive drug test as a result of the testing done by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The CAS arbitrators ensure that the rules are applied correctly. Additionally, the CAS is the court of last resort for Olympic participants. The effect is that CAS decisions are not able to be appealed elsewhere, including state or federal courts. So efficient is the CAS that during the Olympic Games if an appeal is filed, a three-member panel holds a hearing and renders a decision usually within twenty-four hours. The judicial efficiency of such a process is unheard of in most legal systems. The use of the CAS began in the Atlanta Olympics (1996).
Athlete Rights Submission to the IOC rules and procedures does not mean that participants have no rights. Compliance simply streamlines the process of resolving disputes by means of submission to a contract agreeing to abide by decisions by the CAS. For U.S. athletes, the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act (TSOASA) in 1998 altered their rights dramatically for disputes not directly related to issues at the Olympic Games themselves. For example, TSOASA requires the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to hire an athlete ombudsman to provide free independent advice to athletes about the TSOASA, United States Olympic Committee bylaws, and rules of national governing bodies with respect to the resolution of any dispute arising out of the Olympics, Paralympics, or any other similar competition.
NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), based in Indianapolis, Indiana, governs amateur sports in the United States at the college level. Although not all institutions of higher learning are members of this organization, its rules are applicable to more than twelve hundred schools that sponsor amateur sports. The NCAA is a nonprofit organization whose members join voluntarily. The NCAA rules can vary depending upon the division of a school. For example, athletic scholarships (grants-in-aid) are not offered at the Division III level, whereas student-athletes compete for such scholarships at the Division I and II levels. Additionally, numbers of scholarships vary depending upon the sport and whether it is a male or female sport. Although the NCAA’s purpose is to maintain a clear line of demarcation between amateur and professional sports, several exceptions to its rules exist. For example, a student-athlete may have played professionally in one sport but maintain amateur status in a different sport. At one time if a student-athlete was a professional in any way, he or she relinquished amateur status entirely. Thus, NCAA rules change each year and sometimes dramatically in response to changes in the way in which amateur and professional sports continue to shape the landscape of U.S. sports and entertainment. Competition among member schools has been so fierce that many rules are often created and later modified in response to violation of rules by one school trying to gain a competitive edge over another school in recruiting a student-athlete. As with the IOC, NCAA student-athletes must sign consent forms, contracts, and waivers as a condition to participate in NCAA college sports. For example, the NCAA established its own drug-testing program in 1986 and comprehensively tests for both illegal “street” drugs and performance-enhancing drugs, similar to the IOC. However, because the NCAA is a private and nonprofit organization, the NCAA is not considered a “state actor” in the traditional sense. This fact is important in that if an organization is an arm of the federal or state government, then upholding
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Law AFL v. NFL Sports law has had an enormous influence on the modern sports scene. The following case played a role in the merger of the two American football leagues. In this action for treble damages and injunctive relief under the antitrust laws, plaintiffs, the American Football League (AFL) and its members charge defendants, the National Football League (NFL) and most of its members, with monopolization, attempted monopolization and conspiracy to monopolize major league professional football. It is not disputed that all of the parties to the case are engaged in interstate commerce and subject to the provisions of the antitrust law, Radovich v. National Football League, 352 U. S. 445. See also United States v. National Football League, E. D. Pa., 116 F. Supp. 319. [. . .]
CONCLUSIONS 1. This court has jurisdiction over the defendants and the subject matter of this action.
constitutional principles such as search and seizure (Fourth Amendment), due process (Fifth Amendment), and equal protection (Fourteenth Amendment) is vital. Such constitutional protections are safeguarded in all public schools and those private schools that receive funding from the government. The NCAA has been the subject of much litigation throughout the years. In one instance the NCAA was found to have violated antitrust laws (laws governing monopolistic behavior) by creating a plan that limited the number of times a college football team could appear on television. In another case the NCAA violated antitrust laws by capping assistant basketball coaches’ salaries in an effort to maintain costs among athletic departments. No doubt the NCAA and its member institutions play a major role in legal evolution of sports law issues, possibly even more than the professional leagues themselves.
2. Neither individually nor in concert have the defendants monopolized any part of the trade or commerce among the several states; particularly they have not monopolized major league professional football. 3. None of the defendants has attempted to monopolize or combined or conspired with any other person or persons to monopolize major league professional football. 4. None of the defendants has engaged in a combination or conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of trade or commerce among the several states in the presentation of major league professional football games. 5. None of the plaintiffs is entitled to relief in this case against any of the defendants. Judgment will be entered in favor of the defendants, with cost. Source: American Football League, et al. v. National Football League, et al., Civil No. 12559 (1962).
Title IX In addition to its own rules, the NCAA has been at the forefront of supporting policies related to gender equity in sports. The concept of gender equity is put forth formally in Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972. This federal statute evolved ultimately from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was created to prohibit discrimination based on gender in any program that receives financial assistance from the federal government. In practice virtually every school in the United States must comply with Title IX policies. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) enforces Title IX compliance. Hundreds of cases have gone to court over Title IX issues in sports even though the original law did not specifically mention athletic departments or programs. In Grove City College v. Bell (1984), the United States Supreme Court ruled that athletic programs are exempt from Title IX policies, but
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the passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 by Congress overturned the ruling. Title IX remains a controversial issue today, but no doubt it has opened previously closed doors for women athletes and coaches to participate in intercollegiate athletics. Title IX has had a positive impact on the landscape of U.S. sports and culture, but it came with a price. Hundreds of men’s swimming, wrestling, gymnastic, baseball, football, and other programs have been terminated in response to financial and equity concerns related to the imposition of Title IX policies. Debate continues to rage regarding compliance with Title IX, but it continues to adapt to the changing culture and interpretation of the statute, particularly involving participation (or exclusion) in contact sports.
Sports Agents Quite lucrative and competitive, the sports agent profession has gone through stages of no regulation to self-regulation, state regulation, league and union regulation, and to now even federal regulation. As money poured into sports television programming, and as athlete salaries began to rise during the 1960s to the unprecedented level of today, the sports agent profession has negotiated deals for professional athletes similar to the way lawyers negotiate settlements for their clients. However, sports agents are not required to be lawyers. Misrepresentation and abuse by some agents, however, led to the Uniform Athlete Agents Act (UAAA), adopted by more than one-half of the states. This act has created a more uniform state approach to regulating unethical conduct by sports agents who often were able to operate a business without any regulation whatsoever. The passage of SPARTA (Sport Agent and Responsibility Trust Act) in 2004 continued to increase the scrutiny that sports agents receive.
Sports and Torts Much debate has divided jurisdictions over whether a participant in an athletic contest may seek financial compensation from another competitor for injuries received. Generally speaking, competitors often fail when
instituting a civil (as opposed to criminal) lawsuit against another for such injuries. Courts significantly defer to the sports leagues themselves, both at professional and amateur levels, to enforce rules related to injuries. Being injured in a sports contest is often considered an inherent risk, and participants assume that risk. However, the rule is clearly not absolute, and some exceptions may exist. In cases involving intentional or reckless misconduct by a participant, injury to another competitor might be compensable in civil tort law (personal injury law). Although injuries are an inherent risk of sports participation, no bright-line test exists to determine when conduct supersedes the normal expectations of competitors. Courts generally exclude monetary damages for ordinary negligence in sports, but that exclusion must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. Compensation has been awarded for wrongful death of participants. Spectators hit by flying debris, foul balls, or deflected hockey pucks have been occasionally successful in suing promoters of sports contests who failed to provide adequate protection. Such potential liability has given notice to sports organizations, architects, and leagues to use foresight and special care when conducting a public contest. Tort issues are also relevant to misconduct against (or by) coaches, referees, and sports officials.
Sports Crimes A sports participant rarely will be guilty of a crime. Generally speaking, criminal law does not enter the sports arena. However, a few criminal charges have been filed against participants in hockey for fights on the ice involving the use of a hockey stick as a lethal weapon. In the same sport fist fights and melees that have led to physical confrontation in the stands have infrequently been processed in the criminal justice system. If players, coaches, or owners engage in illegal gambling related to a sport, criminal law is likely to intervene. More likely than not, however, criminal law and its relationship to sports manifest themselves with the athletes or coaches themselves engaging in illegal conduct in their personal life outside of the context of sports per se.
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Labor Issues The four major U.S. professional sports of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey have a contractual relationship between owners and players known as a “collective bargaining agreement” (CBA). This agreement forms the basis of the employment relationship between the parties and covers all aspects of their association, including retirement, pension, roster quantity, drug testing, player selection drafts, ADR procedures, grievances, and salary caps. The relationship between players and owners has been cooperative in some leagues, contentious in others. One of the major concerns with professional sports is the lack of uniform standards in drug testing, for example. Punishments and policies vary greatly by league.
Intellectual Property Intellectual property is an area of sports law that continues to grow. It involves securing and protecting a copyright, patent, or trademark. Licensing a trademark (words, logos, package design, or their combinations) is important, especially when the licensing of such trademarks generates revenue for a business, league, or institution through sales of merchandise. Using a trademark or logo without obtaining a license to do so constitutes an infringement of intellectual property and is actionable in court. The regulation of registered trademarks has become so difficult that private organizations are often hired to monitor illegal conduct both domestically and internationally and over the Internet. In fact, the mere use of the word Olympic itself has been litigated frequently as the IOC continues to protect its international trademark and the word Olympic.
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register Internet domain names ending in .com, .org, .net, and so on in bad faith and often with the expectation that they will be compensated for registering a name first. In 2000 the IOC monitored Internet websites using the word Olympic in their Web addresses, and almost two thousand websites were informed to cease and desist. The IOC filed a lawsuit in federal court in the United States to protect the word Olympics and the Olympic symbol of five rings. WIPO uses ADR to resolve domain registration controversies involving sports figures, leagues, and others. WIPO has a fasttrack arbitration system and renders published decisions as well.
The Future The relationship between law and sports continues to evolve but is now considered its own area of law. Both internationally and domestically, people must understand the legal aspects of sports for participants and practitioners. Although litigation and the courts continue to remain a vital part of resolving civil and criminal disputes, arbitration, mediation, and their hybrid forms of ADR clearly continue to alter the legal landscape of sports law. Additionally, the use of contract law has become an important aspect in sports law to define and limit the scope of the relationship among sports participants, leagues, and spectators. The advent of advanced technology such as the Internet has created concerns in sports law, but the law evolves to meet those concerns. Adam Epstein See also Collective Bargaining; Economics and Public Policy; Free Agency; Unionism
WIPO The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) represents more than 90 percent of the countries in the world. It is designed to ensure that the rights related to intellectual property are protected worldwide. The advent of the Internet has created numerous challenges for designers, authors, composers, and other creators of intangible property. Cybersquatters, for example,
Further Reading American Bar Association, Forum on Entertainment and Sports Industries. (2005). Retrieved March 11, 2005, from http://www. abanet.org/forums/entsports/home.html Anderson, P. (1999). Sports law: A desktop handbook. Milwaukee, WI: National Sports Law Institute. Appenzeller, H., & Appenzeller, T. (2000). Youth sport and the law: A guide to legal issues. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
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Berry, R., & Wong, G. M. (1993). Law and business of the sport industries. Westport, CT: Praeger. Champion, W. (2002). Sports law in a nutshell. St. Paul, MN: West. Clement, A. (1996). Legal responsibility in aquatics. Aurora, OH: Sport and Law Press. Cotten, D., & Wolohan, J. (2003). Law for recreation and sport managers (3rd ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Cozzillio, M., & Levinstein, M. (1997). Sports law: Cases and materials. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Dougherty, N., Auxter, D., Goldberger, A., & Heinzmann, G. (1993). Sport, physical actitity and the law. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Epstein, A. (2002). Sports law. Clifton Park, NY: Thompson/Delmar. Gallup, E. (1995). Law and the team physician. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Gardiner, S., Felix, A., James, M., Welch, R., & O’Leary, J. (1998). Sports law. London: Cavendish. Greenberg, M. (1998). Sports law practice. Charlottesville, VA: Lexis Law Publishing. Hart, J., & Ritson, R. (1993). Liability and safety in physical education and sport. Reston, VA: AAHPERD. Moriarty, D., Holman, M., Brown, R., & Moriarty, M. (1994). Canadian/American sports, fitness and the law. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Peterson, J., & Hronek, B. (1992). Risk management for park, recreation and leisure services (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Sagamore. Quirk, C. (1999). Sports and the law: Major cases. New York: Garland. Ruxin, R. (1993). An athlete’s guide to agents (3rd ed.). Boston: Jones and Bartlett. Thygerson, A. (1992). Safety. Boston: Jones and Bartlett. Uberstine, G., & Stratos, K. (Eds.). (1994). Law of professional and amateur sport. Deerfield, IL: Clark Boardman & Callahan. Weiler, P., & Roberts, G. (2004). Sports and the law: Text, cases and problems (3rd ed.). St. Paul, MN: West. Wong, G. M. (2002). Essentials of sports law (3rd ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger. Yasser, R., McCurdy, J., & Goplerud, P. (1999). Sports law, cases and materials (4th ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.
Le Mans
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he Le Mans auto race is one of the most prestigious in the world. Approximately fifty drivers and their teams compete in four classes. The winners in each class and overall are the drivers who travel the farthest during twenty-four hours. Held annually in northwestern France since 1923 (except during war and strike years) on the Circuit Permanent de la Sarthe, the race was originally conceived as an incentive for manufac-
turers to improve the reliability of touring cars. A victory at Le Mans is an important marketing tool; many manufacturers have special teams working on their Le Mans entries.
Origins L’automobile Club de l’Ouest (Automobile Club of the West), founded in 1906, is responsible for the rules, organization, and circuit of the race. The race was conceived by Charles Faroux, a French motoring journalist, and staged on 26–27 May 1923. The first winners were Frenchmen Andre Lagache and Rene Leonard in a Chenard and Walcker Sport with a 3-liter engine, traveling 2,208 kilometers at an average speed of 91 kilometers per hour. Thirty-three cars took part in the first race; thirty finished; seventeen manufacturers were represented.
Circuit The Le Mans race is held south of the city of Le Mans (about 177 kilometers south of Paris), the capital of the La Sarthe region. The 13.65-kilometer circuit is the longest auto racing circuit in the world. It has been changed many times to improve safety by slowing the cars or protecting spectators. Much of the circuit is a public road, but part of it follows the permanent Bugatti racetrack. The original Circuit de la Sarthe was used from 1923 to 1939. During World War II the area was used as a German Luftwaffe air base and suffered extensive bombing. Retreating Germans destroyed what was left after the bombing. L’automobile Club de l’Ouest reconstructed the track by June 1949 and racing resumed that year.
Drivers Although Le Mans is dominated by men drivers, the first woman drivers were Marguerite Mareuse and Odette Siko in 1930. The best finish by a woman driver was Siko of France, who finished in fourth place in 1932. Among men, Jacky Ickx and Tom Kristensen have won the race six times each. Drivers and their racing
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teams are supported by large pit crews near the main spectator area of the circuit.The drivers must be focused, patient, and able to drive well in all types of conditions. Many drivers come from the Formula 1 circuit.
Cars Le Mans is a great marketing venue for sports car manufacturers, especially the manufacturers of the winning cars. English Bentley cars won many of the first races, putting the race on the international map. People attempted to get the manufacturers to use publicly available touring cars during the race’s beginnings; however, beginning in 1949 L’automobile Club de l’Ouest allowed manufacturers to use “prototype” cars that had been manufactured in limited quantities. Rules are added every year to make the competing cars somewhat uniform and to keep the speeds down for safety. Overall, Porsches have won sixteen races, followed by Ferrari with nine.
And They’re Off The race takes place from 4 P.M. on Saturday to 4 P.M. on Sunday, usually in early to mid-June. Three drivers trade off driving duties (only two drivers were allowed until the 1980s) in each car. Only one driver can be in a car at a time. Until it was ruled too dangerous in 1970, the race began as the drivers ran across the track to their cars (the Le Mans start). Now the race begins behind a pace car. Occasionally the race loses world championship status because of the restrictions that organizers place to ensure safety or tradition. The average speeds are 321 kilometers per hour with the restrictions. Le Mans has an all-night party feel and attracts a young crowd. A large amusement area for spectators and a trade fair for members of the motor industry are provided. The hype continues for a week prior to the race, with the “scrutineering” of the cars (checking that competing cars meet all the regulations), qualifying runs, and practices. Drivers race in one of four classes: LMP1 (or LMP 900, the premier class), LMP2 (or LMP
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675), LM GTS (Grand Touring Sport), and LM GT (Grand Touring), with drivers in all classes competing to be the overall winner.
Tragedy One of the worst tragedies in the history of auto racing occurred in the 1955 race. French driver Pierre Levegh crashed his Mercedes into the crowd; eighty people, including Levegh, were killed. The race was not halted after the tragedy because that would have led to spectator panic, and medical help would not have been able to reach the crash scene. The crash led to a ban on motor racing in Europe for a time, but the ban was lifted after an inquiry, and L’automobile Club de l’Ouest agreed to improve the safety of the race. Mercedes did not compete in auto racing for many years because of the tragedy.
The Future Participation in Le Mans has hovered around fifty entries per year for about two decades and shows no signs of declining. The race is now followed live worldwide via television and the Internet, reaching a larger audience each year. In 1999 the Le Mans brand was expanded to the American Le Mans series, a weekly series of races in the Americas using the types of cars raced at Le Mans. With the success of this series, the Le Mans name will probably be expanded to other international ventures as well. Christina L. Hennessey
Further Reading Bamsey, I. (1987). The world’s greatest motor competitions: Le Mans. London: B. T. Batsford. Bochroch, A. R. (1976). Americans at Le Mans. Tucson, AZ: Aztex Corporation. Fraichard, G. (1954). The Le Mans story. Boston: Robert Bentley. Hodges, D. (1963). The Le Mans 24 hour race. London: Temple Press. Klemantaski, L. (1961). Le Mans: A picture history. New York: Macmillan. Laban, B. (2001). Le Mans: 24 hours. St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing. Moity, C. (1975). The Le Mans 24-hour race. Radnor, PA: Chilton.
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I can’t remember a single time that I was prevented from doing what I wanted because I was a female, either on the rock or in the mountains. ■ ANNIE WHITEHOUSE
Lesbianism
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esbianism is the affectional and sexual attraction of women for other women. Although sexual orientation has nothing directly to do with a woman’s choice to be physically active or to participate in sports, a specter of lesbianism has haunted sports and women’s participation in physical activity since early in the twentieth century. An enduring commonsense assumption is that sports are a masculine activity and that their cultural importance lies with men. The presence of women in an activity that many see as the primary contemporary route for the development of masculinity challenges traditional notions of gender and gender roles in profound ways.
Vocabulary As opposed to the term sex, which refers to the biological makeup of people that causes them to be identified as female or male, the term gender refers to the socially constructed norms that place people into the categories of girl/woman or boy/man. The social expression of gender assignment is reflected in those characteristics that are recognized as feminine for people with female bodies and masculine for people with male bodies. The term gender refers to a collection of traits that is valued within a culture and is divided into those characteristics that are appropriate for females and those that are appropriate for males. For many centuries Western culture has been created and directed by men of power. These men of power have created social institutions and structures that have been seen to be the best for their society in so far as the men have been advantaged by these structures. This outcome is patriarchy. Sexism is prejudice based on sex, especially valuing what is defined as male/masculine over what is defined as female/feminine. In the same way that what is male/masculine is seen to be superior to what is female/feminine, heterosexuality is seen to be the only acceptable sexual practice and is deemed to be superior to homosexuality or other forms of sexual identification or expression.
Heterosexism vilifies other forms of sexual expression. The term homophobia refers to a fear of homosexuality or homosexuals. By practice, homophobia discredits people who do not identify as heterosexual. It also constrains the behaviors, appearance, and activities of people who do not comply with the compulsory social requirements of feminine and masculine behaviors for women and men, respectively. The term homonegativity refers to the outcomes and actions that take place because of homophobic attitudes. Homonegativity is reflected in various sports and sports-related cultural practices that systemically discriminate against lesbian athletes, coaches, officials, and administrators.
Historical Foundations People traditionally have seen sports as a domain restricted to males. Many of the attributes required to be a successful athlete are the same as those recognized as being exclusively masculine or manly. The association among males, masculinity, and athletic prowess as a naturally occurring relationship has been a persistent one. Strength, power, aggression, and commitment are individual needs of the athlete but are also understood to be masculine—and, conversely, not feminine—attributes. Cooperation, teamwork, challenge, and leadership are also seen to be desirable masculine-identified characteristics that can be developed through sports. At the beginning of the twentieth century “Americans simply could not separate the concept of athletic superiority from its cultural affiliations with masculine sport and the male body” (Cahn 1994, 2). Women’s greater involvement in sports was opposed by people who supported this attitude. Girls and women have had a place in sports in most cultures, but the meaning of sports for them was different from the meaning of sports for boys and men. In North America at the end of the nineteenth century this difference supported gentle, moderate, rhythmic physical activities that were seen to be beneficial for women’s health—particularly women’s reproductive health. Rough-and-tumble play was discouraged, especially
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among white, middle- and upper-class girls for whom such activities were seen to be at odds with their womanhood. However, as these same women were entering colleges and professions previously closed to them they viewed sports as a vehicle for women’s emancipation. Racism was coupled with sexism in the application of “medical” and “educational” expertise regarding sports participation. This vigilance was directed toward only white, middle- and upper-class girls. Women from the lower socioeconomic groupings, many immigrants, and all women of color were not included in the prudent application of cautions regarding reproductive health and the feminine aspects of womanhood. Demanding physical labor, undertaken for hours every day, was not seen to be a detriment to these women. Sports participation was more acceptable for females in many of these sociocultural groups. Industrial leagues and professional sports teams were more likely to be populated by working-class women and women of color, when such opportunities became available. Threats to the standards of femininity and womanhood, which were often the basis for the underlying concerns regarding women and sports, were directed toward only those women who were seen to have a greater value within the social structures of the day. The early feminist attitude about the role of sports in the advancement of women was controversial. Many people celebrated women’s greater involvement in myriad sporting activities, including traditionally acceptable sports such as tennis, golf, and horse riding and, increasingly, the newer team sports of baseball and basketball. The athletic woman represented a break from stiff Victorian constraints. The new modern woman was partly formed by her involvement in sports. However, traditional Victorian beliefs were not relinquished easily, and many people disparaged women’s sporting involvement, believing that it endangered female reproductive functions, increased sexual immodesty, and blurred the lines between genders and accepted gender roles. As physical strength was becoming less important to the work being done by middle-class males, sports became an important vehicle for the cultivation of their masculin-
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ity. Many political, social, and religious leaders were concerned with what they defined as a feminization of U.S. culture and the U.S. male. Even President Theodore Roosevelt called for an increase in games such as football to bring a strong masculine presence to the lives of U.S. boys. Sports were reclaimed as a means to ensure virility and masculinity in the country’s future leaders. However, women did not back down from their desire to play sports. People began to express concern about the possibility of masculine activity causing women to become masculine. Conversely, if sports did not masculinize women, were women possibly feminizing sports? The need to maintain the association between sports and masculinity intensified, and organized sports for men increased in schools and in public and workplace activities in an attempt to maintain the notion of men’s physical supremacy, distinct male and female roles, and the masculine definition of sports. The media focused on the concerns of women’s sports participation. An article entitled “Are Athletics Making Girls Masculine?” appeared in the Ladies Home Journal in 1912. In it support for women’s exercise to maintain beauty and reproductive health was encouraged, but the fear that sports might masculinize women’s bodies and characters also was expressed. Dudley Sargent, an early leader in physical education from Harvard University, wrote that success in sports could be achieved only by taking on masculine characteristics. This was a direct critique of women’s participation in sports that were defined as masculine.
Challenging the Status Quo Concerns regarding the possible masculinization of women through sports did little to discourage growing numbers of girls and women from taking up vigorous sports. The stronger and fit female body was celebrated as a new feminine aspect of the modern woman. The flapper era of the 1920s supported a freedom for women that included sports, a public social life, and less restrictive sexual mores. An association between sports and sexuality began to grow. The vitality gained through sports and other
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vigorous physical activity was seen as a positive addition to the femininity and heterosexual attractiveness of women athletes to potential male suitors. Whereas vigorous sports were seen as a way by which men’s sexual energy could be controlled and directed in a harmless expression, sports for women were seen as a way to help liberate women’s sexuality from the constraints of the Victorian assumptions of women’s lack of sexual desire. From 1900 to the 1930s heterosexual desire was seen to be a positive by-product of masculine sports that helped to loosen sexual inhibitions in women toward men.
Reversal of Fortunes However, the association of women’s sports participation and sexuality had a downside as well. The increase in women’s sporting participation allowed for the development of professional and industrial leagues in a number of team sports (e.g., baseball, basketball) and individual sports (e.g., track and field, bicycling). Promoters exploited the sexuality and attractiveness of women athletes. Shorter and tighter uniforms, tasteful makeup, and hairstyles became selling points to induce more male spectators into the women’s events in order to increase profits. The media contributed to this exploitation by focusing almost exclusively on the sexual attributes and heterosexual attractiveness of the athletes rather than on their athletic achievements. Another downside came as women athletic stars became better at their sports. Popular and successful women athletes of the 1920s and 1930s, who were at first celebrated for their skills and winning records, began to face criticism and questions regarding their womanhood. Negative descriptions of women athletes in the media planted a question in the minds of readers: Can anyone who is this good at sports really be a true woman? Tennis great Helen Wills; Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won the 1932 Olympic track and field competition; and Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, began to see the early celebration of their accomplishments turn to criticisms of their womanhood. The stigma of the mannish woman
athlete began to build through the media and through critics of women’s sports in schools and workplaces. The initial celebration of women’s liberation from restrictive Victorian sexual expectations became reversed. As women’s success in sports moved too far from what many critics deemed to be an acceptable feminine level to what began to be considered too masculine or mannish, the celebration of women’s sports participation turned to caution. What was applauded as the freer sexual attitudes of the early decades of the century began to be seen as an unbridled sexual passion. This reversal created a faux hysteria about an out-of-control expression of female sexual desire. The message regarding sexuality and women’s athletics was that sexual dangers are an outcome of female athletic participation in traditionally masculine activities. People proposed that freer bodies produce freer morals.
Stemming the Tide To halt the negative downturn that women athletes were beginning to face, women physical educators and coaches attempted to change the focus of women’s sports from competition and a goal of winning (deemed to be masculine aspirations) to cooperation and fun (supposedly feminine aspirations). Sports themselves were modified to a more “feminine” version, which meant less body contact, less strenuous physical output, and changes in rules to reduce risk or simply to change the sports from the way males played them. Another strategy to “demasculinize” sports was to stress the feminine presentation of the women athletes themselves. Women athletes were prevented, by threat of being dropped from a team, from wearing their hair too short, from engaging in unladylike behavior (including hollering or smoking in public), and from engaging in other behaviors deemed to be unladylike and masculine. The desired outcome of these policies was to produce feminine girls, even though they may have had masculine sports skills. These policies allowed girls to continue to participate in a broad range of sports and other physical activities that included traditionally gender-normative activities for
LESBIANISM
boys.The all-female environment in which girls primarily participated, under the direction of female coaches, officials, and administrators, had the added benefit of controlling fears around the heterosexual deviance that was being promoted as a negative outcome of women’s sports participation. However, this all-female environment eventually became problematic in itself.
Lesbian Bogeywoman After World War II people attempted to return North American culture to a male-centered one. Women who had left their homes to take over the jobs that men had left behind to serve in the armed forces were encouraged to give up these jobs and return to their homes to take up traditional roles of wives and mothers. The boundaries of masculine and feminine gender roles returned to a rigid,Victorian-like condition.Women who chose to remain in the public sphere were criticized. Gender anomalies, such as women not necessarily wanting to marry or wanting to remain in the workforce, created suspicion and took on a meaning equivalent to sexual aberration. Beginning during the late 1940s sexual deviance among women began to be equated with lesbianism. The allfemale environment of sports that was created before the war to protect women athletes from the negative scrutiny for any masculine characteristics and to control notions of unbridled heterosexual passion became a suspicious environment that was implied to support homosexual deviance. Society again embraced early critiques of women’s increasing sports participation that supported a contradiction between athletic prowess and femininity and through which accepted wisdom sustained the belief that sports cause women to become mannish. Mannishness in women was defined as sexual deviance, which was equated with a sexual desire for other women, which was inherently a male trait. This assumed same-sex desire in supposedly mannish women was defined as “gender inversion.” The female gender invert, people concluded, would be attracted to masculine sports. This circular logic based on women’s desires to participate in sports made women athletes easy tar-
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gets for sexually based criticism and gave birth to the emerging stereotype that women athletes are also lesbians. These critiques functioned, as well, to remove many women athletes from the realm of the feminine. Women’s interest in sports is a threat to traditional assumptions of essential gender roles and femininity. It challenges white, male privilege to maintain its patriarchal position of supremacy and normative behaviors. Labeling women athletes as lesbians is one way to get girls and women to question their desire to engage in sports, especially those sports deemed to be masculine. This labeling also creates an unquestioned assumption that all male athletes are heterosexual. If sports are where boys develop and demonstrate those characteristics that are celebrated as masculine, then all male athletes must be heterosexual because masculinity, by definition, includes sexual attraction for women. If this were not the case, then the argument that masculine women must be lesbians would not hold up under even the merest scrutiny. The assertion that all male athletes are heterosexual is also essential in providing a space where male affection for other males can be demonstrated openly without the suspicion that such affection is homosexual. Open and physical contacts among men athletes, such as hugging, kissing, and patting buttocks, as expressions of congratulation and connection can never be construed as homosexual within the realm of male sports. This is one reason why the same demonstrations among “masculine” women athletes can be labeled as lesbian. This attitude has the added benefit of protecting any gay male athletes from exposure. Lesbian labeling produces many negative outcomes. Commonsense assumptions that all women athletes are lesbians, that sports cause women to become lesbians, or that sports environments are places where heterosexual women will be at risk from lesbian predators limit the sports choices of women and cause women to become defensive about their choice to be an athlete, coach, official, or administrator. Homonegative strategies reduce the numbers of women in all levels of sports. These strategies maintain an imbalance of power between women and men and reduce opportunities for
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women in sports. Lesbian labeling is one of the most effective homonegative tactics. Concerns that sports and lesbianism are in some way inherently linked keep women from entering specific sports in the first place or from not striving to reach a level of excellence that is well within their capability. Homonegativity causes women to question one another or to irrationally fear their teammates. Lesbian labeling causes many women athletes who are lesbian to remain closeted out of fear of personal or sports-related rejection. Keeping lesbians in sports closeted helps to maintain a stereotype that all lesbians are mannish, unfeminine, and sexually deviant. The invisibility of lesbians in sports and other social realms also helps to maintain a stereotype that all lesbians are mannish, unfeminine, and unattractive and contributes to a singular expression of all masculinities and all femininities regardless of the physical, racial, and ethnic differences that exist among people. The recurring identification of lesbians as either “butch” or “femme” proves that masculinity is not an exclusive and biological necessity for males and that femininity does not necessarily equate with female heterosexuality.
Glass Closet Women’s sports would not be successful today if not for the involvement of lesbians in all levels of sports since the early days of the twentieth century. Lesbians (although few would have identified themselves by this label during the first half of the twentieth century) had the personal freedom to engage in sports and sportsrelated careers without restrictions placed on them by husbands or children. This fact does not support the assertion that all women athletes were lesbians; it merely shows that the efforts to build and maintain a women’s sporting culture was advanced by women who had less to risk by not pursuing the “socially desirable goals” that were imposed on middle-class, white, heterosexual women throughout the twentieth century. These lesbians were not free to be public about their sexuality because they would have been removed from teams and lost their jobs as teachers and coaches. They were forced
to present themselves with feminine appearances and behaviors, as were all other women athletes. To assume that lesbians in sports are a new phenomenon would be as farcical as assuming that all women athletes are lesbians. Accusations of lesbianism have been directed toward lesbian and heterosexual women athletes for decades. Babe Didrikson, voted the greatest U.S. female athlete of the first half of the twentieth century, was hounded by suspicions of her sexuality all of her public life—even after her marriage to George Zaharias. Tennis and golf have been plagued by rumors of lesbianism since their inception as professional sports for women. Beginning during the 1980s people in the administrative structures of tennis and golf developed strategies to highlight the femininity and heterosexuality of players in an attempt to limit negative outcomes of lesbian labeling and rumors. The LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association), in a campaign to change the public perception that the “L” in “LPGA” stands for “lesbian,” showcased its most heterosexy and feminine golfers in media campaigns and TV endorsements to get away from lesbian identification with the LPGA. Stylists for hair, makeup, and clothing were hired to travel with the touring players to help them present themselves as more feminine and attractive regardless of their sexual orientation. Feminine had become a code word for “heterosexual” in women’s sports. Although a lesbian presence probably always has existed in sports, maintaining this public secret required much effort by participants and promoters. Promoting women’s sports as a healthy and “normal” environment was important to ensure the continuing financial sponsorship for school and professional sports, an increased presence in the Olympic Games, and positive coverage media at all levels. Certain media, however, exerted an equal effort to open the door to the lesbian closet as a strategy to set back the advances in women’s sports, especially after enactment of Title IX of the 1972 Education Act in the United States. This act prohibited discrimination based on gender in any school program receiving federal fund-
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ing. The growth of girls’ and women’s sports, which was a by-product of Title IX, was frequently reported to be occurring through the reduction of men’s programs in order to fund sports for women. Media attention on women’s sports was often directed toward reporting on the unnaturalness of many of the participants.This attention silenced many women, forced all women athletes and coaches into a stereotypical feminine package for public consumption, and kept the environment within and without women’s sports somewhat hostile. Many of the image problems faced by women athletes were created by the media and not by the lesbians who were often blamed for the problems in women’s sports. The silence of lesbians in sports was suddenly broken in 1981. Billy Jean King, one of the top women tennis players of that era, was “outed” by a woman named “Marilyn Barnett” through a palimony suit. King immediately lost all of her commercial endorsements. Shortly after that, Martina Navratilova, another top tennis player, announced she was a lesbian and began a public campaign to increase the awareness of homophobia, not only as a problem in women’s sports, but also as a human rights issue. The exodus of lesbian athletes from the closet has been a slow-but-steady trickle since the early 1980s. Many of these athletes are not famous, but the courage of Billy Jean King, Martina Navratilova, and other professional and Olympic-level lesbian athletes has helped other lesbian athletes to learn that staying in the closet is no longer a requirement to ensure personal protection, integrity, or even sports participation.
The Future The growth of women’s sports during the past century has occurred despite numerous setbacks, the least of which is the assumption that the most problematic aspect for women’s sports is lesbianism. In reality the greatest concern regarding equality in women’s sports is the changing power balance between women and men in sports. An important outcome of women participating freely in sports is their
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greater control over their bodies and their place in the public sphere of North American culture. The increased involvement of women in a social domain that is defined as masculine challenges the basic patriarchal beliefs and sexist practices that are central to the relationships between women and men. “The fear of the lesbian label ensures that women do not gain control over their sporting experience or develop their physical competence beyond what is acceptable in a sexist culture” (Griffin 1998, 49). Lesbian athletes who come out of the closet are vulnerable. Homophobia and homonegative practices vilify lesbians in sports and force greater attention on their sexuality than on their athletic abilities and interests. Lesbian athletes will choose to reveal their sexual orientation when the pressures of trying to conform to a stereotyped image of all women as feminine and heterosexually attractive become a greater burden to their personal well-being than does remaining closeted. All women can be empowered by the athletes who come out. The labeling of women athletes as “lesbian” will no longer be able to hold women hostage if they recognize the bogus power of this homonegative strategy. As more lesbian athletes come out, people will begin to realize that lesbians come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. They participate in all sports, including the traditionally masculine ones that build on the image of the masculine woman and the traditionally feminine ones that have never been in the cross hairs of lesbian targeting, regardless of how erroneous this assumption is. Homonegativity toward women’s sports is so prevalent that athletes, coaches, officials, and administrators can be just one lesbian rumor away from being outed or falsely identified as lesbian. The paralyzing impact of this reality comes from discriminatory practices directed toward lesbians that are based on ignorance and fear. The more lesbian athletes come out and heterosexual women refuse to be controlled by the threat of the label, the less lesbianism will be pinpointed as a problem in women’s sports. After people realize that homophobia and homonegative practices are the greatest challenges to women’s equality in sports, the topic of lesbianism
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will become merely a footnote in the history of women’s sports. Dayna B. Daniels See also Homophobia
Further Reading Allen, L. (1997). The lesbian idol: Martina, kd and the consumption of lesbian masculinity. London: Cassell. Bem, S. L. (1993). The lenses of gender: Transforming the debate on sexual inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Birrell, S., & Cole, C. L. (1994). Women, sport, and culture. Champagne, IL: Human Kinetics. Cahn, S. K. (1994). Coming on strong: Gender and sexuality in twentieth-century women’s sport. New York: Free Press. Choi, P.Y. L. (2000). Femininity and physically active woman. London: Routledge. Diamond, I., & Quinby, L. (1988). Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on resistance. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Griffin, P. (1998). Strong women, deep closets: Lesbians and homophobia in sport. Champaign, Il: Human Kinetics. Guttmann, A. (1991). Women’s sports: A history. New York: Columbia University Press. Jagger, A., & Bordo, S. (1989). Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Krane, V., & Barber, H. (2003). Lesbian experiences in sport: A social identity perspective. Quest, 55, 328–346. Lenskyj, H. J. (2003). Out on the field: Gender, sport and sexualities. Toronto, Canada: Women’s Press. Ringer, R. J. (1994). Queer words, queer images: Communication and the construction of homosexuality. New York: New York University Press. Shogan, D. (1999). The making of high performance athletes: Discipline, diversity and ethics. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Weitz, R. (1998). The politics of women’s bodies: Sexuality, appearance and behaviour. New York: Oxford University Press. White, K., & Young, K. (1999). Sport and gender in Canada. New York: Oxford University Press. Young, P. D. (1995). Lesbians and gays and sports. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.
Lifeguarding
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ifeguarding is an activity in which people monitor swimmers, caution them against dangerous behavior, and rescue them from a hazardous situation. Lifeguarding (also called “lifesaving”) began as a service
job, but today lifeguarding competitions are held to encourage lifeguards to maintain skills and fitness.
Origins Although a number of cultures have embraced swimming for centuries, not until the late eighteenth century did people organize people to rescue swimmers in distress. The Royal Humane Society was founded in England in 1774, based on the work of the Society for the Recovery of the Apparently Drowned, which had been founded in 1767 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The British society focused on the resuscitation of swimmers and sailors, not on swimming rescue techniques. In 1780 lifeguarding reached North America when the Humane Society of Philadelphia posted signs by the harbor to inform people where lifeguarding equipment was located. The Massachusetts Humane Society, founded in 1785 and fashioned after the Royal Humane Society, built shelters on beaches to provide sanctuary for shipwrecked sailors. In 1870 Edwin D. Ayers established the United States Volunteer Life Saving Corps. It was incorporated in 1890 in New York State. Wilbert E. Longfellow was general superintendent. In 1871 the United States Coast Guard Life Saving Service was founded. In England the Royal Life Saving Society was founded in 1891 to supplement the work of the Royal Humane Society. In 1894 the Royal Life Saving Society was established in Australia.
Women as Lifeguards Although women have served as lifeguards since the mid-nineteenth century, not until the early twentieth century were they able to participate in substantial numbers. They continue to seek to be treated as equals despite media portrayals (such as on Baywatch, the world’s most popular television program during the 1990s) that at times present them negatively. Lifeguarding emerged during the late nineteenth century throughout the world. In Germany the Arbeiterschwimmbund (workers’ swimming federation), founded in 1893, allowed women to teach swimming
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A lifeguard stand on Miami Beach. Source: istockphoto/bradrex1.
UNITED STATES
and, later, lifeguarding. In Scandinavia, particularly Sweden, women have participated in lifeguarding since the mid-nineteenth century. Sweden founded a women’s lifeguarding championship in 1921. In the Netherlands, lifeguarding was established during the late nineteenth century, and women founded their own association (Hollandsche Dames Zwem Club), which assisted in founding the national association. However, in other nations lifeguarding remained largely a male domain. Until the first decades of the twentieth century women’s participation was limited primarily because of perceptions of gender differences and the belief that women are physically inferior. Some people believed that women lack the physical strength to conduct water rescues. Women were subjected to social restrictions; they were restricted to segregated bathing huts at some beaches. However, between 1890 and 1920 social attitudes began to change, and women were encouraged to swim and to take part in other sports that had previously been considered unsuitable for them. The change in social attitudes toward women’s swimming was apparent in the change in women’s swimming attire. Modesty had been the rule for women; the skirts and other weighty elements of the suits made swimming difficult. This situation changed during the early twentieth century, although not without social opposition, when functional suits were created.
In 1909 Wilbert Longfellow was appointed commodore of the United States Volunteer Life Saving Corps and became a key figure in lifeguarding in general and in women’s lifeguarding in particular. After a series of visits to girls’ camps, Longfellow began the World’s Life Saving Alliance in 1913 to give women the chance to demonstrate their lifeguarding skills. Beginning in 1920 women were allowed to take the Red Cross tests and to join the Life Saving Corps. Women at first had a separate corps from men, as well as different proficiency tests. However, within a year the same lifeguarding tests were required of both men and women. However, the two corps remained separate, and women were not given the same responsibilities as men. Members of the women’s corps were not expected to perform actual lifeguard work. Women lifeguards were expected to be of service in women’s camps and “places where the attendance of men [was] restricted.” The Red Cross Life Saving Corps for Women and the World’s Life Saving Alliance for Women were merged shortly thereafter, and by 1925 nearly sixteen thousand lifeguarding certificates had been presented to women.
CANADA In Canada lifeguarding began under the auspices of the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) of England. The first RLSS branch was established in Ontario. In 1894 Arthur Lewis Cochrane was appointed honorary representative of the Swimmer’s Life Saving Society of London in Canada. He moved to Toronto and became an instructor at Upper Canada College. In 1895 he started the Upper Canada Life Saving Corps. The original girls’ school affiliate of the Royal Life Saving Society was the Young Women’s Christian Guild Pool in 1911.
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The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon. ■ DOUGLAS WILLIAM JERROLD
AUSTRALIA Since the early part of the twentieth century surf lifeguarding has been an important activity of men in Australia. However, women were restricted to a support role, such as serving on women’s fund-raising committees. They also prepared refreshments for beach patrols and for surf carnivals. Although women had demonstrated their lifeguarding abilities by the early 1930s, they were not allowed to join beach patrols or to enter surf competitions. They were occasionally featured in competitions against other women in demonstrations at local surf carnivals. During World War II women were needed to monitor beaches, but they were reinstated to their support role after the war. Finally, in 1980, the National Surf Life Saving Council granted women the right to test for the surf bronze medallion, which signified their qualification as lifeguards and gave them the opportunity to become active lifeguards. Women henceforth would be allowed to patrol beaches and to compete at surf carnivals. In fact, women won approximately one-third of the bronze medallions in the 1980–1981 surf session. However, their opportunities to succeed at surf carnivals were limited because they competed in the same categories as men.
Competition at the Top Spurred by the selection of Melbourne, Australia, as the site of the 1956 Olympics, Australian lifeguards invited their counterparts from around the world to participate in an international lifeguarding competition. Male lifeguards from England, Ceylon, New Zealand, Australia, California, and Hawaii participated, and the event drew more than 100,000 spectators. Since then lifeguarding competitions have expanded. Such competitions are intended to encourage lifeguards to develop skills and maintain high levels of fitness. Some local and national sponsors include the United States Lifesaving Association, the Dublin Lifesaving and Lifeguard Club of Ireland, the University of Tsukuba Lifesaving Club of Japan, the Surf Life
Saving Association of Great Britain, Surf Life Saving Australia, the Lifesaving Society of Canada, and the German Lifesaving Federation. International competitions are sponsored by the International Life Saving Federation. Events in lifeguarding competitions include beach sprints, surf swimming, surf ski paddling, board paddling, team events, iron man and iron woman events (which include a combination of skills and require technical ability as well as physical fitness), and still water and pool events. Lifeguarding has become mandatory at virtually all public swimming venues, and the need for trained lifeguards continues to increase. Their participation will continue to be necessary for the future of recreational swimming. Alison M. Wrynn See also Surf Lifesaving
Further Reading Baker, R. D. (1980). The lifesaving movement. In Lifeguarding simplified: The management principles and techniques of lifeguarding. New York: A. S. Barnes. Booth, D. (1994). Swimming, surfing and surf-lifesaving. In W. Vamplew & B. Stoddart (Eds.), Sport in Australia: A social history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rosen, G. (1982). Women and sport in Australia: Surf lifesaving as a case study. Proceedings of the Sports Science—section 34, fifty-second A.N.Z.A.A.S. Congress at Macquarie University, 36–49. Silvia, C. E. (1965). Lifesaving and water safety today. New York: Association Press.
Literature
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thletes may or may not be interested in literature, but many of the world’s greatest writers have been keenly interested in sports. The tradition began, at the very latest, in ancient Greece. Pindar composed odes to sing the praises of the athletes who were
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Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man’s life if he has the weight and cares about the words. ■ ARCHIBALD MACLEISH
victorious at Olympia and the other sites of sacred games. Homer’s Iliad contains a vivid description of the funeral games held by Achilles in honor of Patroclus, his slain friend. Interrupting their siege of Troy, the Greek heroes paid tribute to their fallen comrade by competing in athletic contests. Homer’s Odyssey includes two scenes in which Odysseus performs as an athlete, once to demonstrate his physical prowess to the Phaiacians, once to challenge (and slay) the suitors who had courted his wife during his twenty-year absence from Ithaca.
Epic Poems and Feats Sports also figure importantly in the Aeneid, the poet Virgil’s heroes epic account of the founding of Rome. Like Homer’s heroes, Virgil’s compete in funeral games (to which they add a non-Homeric boat-race). Roman gladiators and charioteers figure in many of the poet Martial’s witty epigrams. Athletes are satirized, along with the spectators who idolized them, in the poems of Juvenal, from whom we have the scornful phrase “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses). Roman poets also had a lively interest in women’s sports. The poems of Propertius include an eroticized account of women’s sports in ancient Sparta, but the most memorable account of a female athlete appeared in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the poet retold the Greek myth of Atalanta. Armed with a spear, she joined the hero Meleager in his hunt for the white-tusked Calydonian boar on Mount Parnassus. She was also famed as a wrestler and as a runner. Although she was determined never to marry, she lost a race, and gained a husband, when she paused to retrieve the golden apples that her clever suitor tossed at her feet. In the nineteenth century, Atalanta reappeared in poems by Walter Savage Landor, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Brunhilde’s fate, as told in the Nibelungenlied, was similar to Atalanta’s. The Icelandic maiden, having promised to marry the man who outperformed her athletically, was also defeated by a trick. Her suitor Gunther loses heart when he observes that it takes three men
to carry Brunhilde’s spear. His spirits droop even further when twelve men struggle to lift one of the stones that she hefts with ease. Fortunately for Gunther, his powerful friend Siegfried, rendered invisible by a magic cap, intervenes and assists him to victory. The Nibelungenlied is unusual in its treatment of a female athlete. When sports appear in medieval literature, they are almost invariably men’s sports. A poem by Johann Fischart celebrates a bravado sporting achievement that accompanied an archery match in Strasbourg in the spring of 1576. To win a bet, boatmen whisked a kettle of porridge from Zurich to Strasbourg. Nineteen hours after their departure, the legendary pottage, still warm enough to be palatable, arrived at the archery venue. The poem, like the unconventional sports event it celebrates, is an oddity. Ordinarily, poets and writers of prose romance dazzled their readers with stories of tournaments. Jousts abound in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, in Thomas Malory’s saga of King Arthur, and in the many courtly romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Knightly combat, like the joust between Gawan and Gramoflanz in Eschenbach’s poem, was often a serious matter, but Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s Service of Ladies was a comic poem in which a rebuffed lover rides away to compete in a whole series of tournaments in honor of his aloof and disdainful lady. In the Islamic world, polo was considered to be the sport of kings, which explains why the royalty are forever playing polo in the Book of Kings, the national epic of Persia, written by the tenth-century poet Hakim Abu ol-Qasem Mansur Firdawsi. (It hardly matters that some of the regal players were placed by Firdawsi in periods that antedated the first historically attested mention of polo by many centuries.) Firdawsi, Hafiz, and innumerable other Islamic poets also raided polo for their metaphors. When they lauded their royal patrons (or their patrons’ distant ancestors), the polo ball represented the earth and the mallet that propelled it symbolized kingly authority. When Islamic poets wrote of love, the same images were adapted to different
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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn? ■ JANE AUSTEN
meanings. “For lovers the heart is like a ball and their back is curved like a polo stick.” (An odd image, but love is an inexplicable emotion.) Polo also found its way into the metaphors of mystical poetry, where the highest bliss is to become a polo ball, driven back and forth by a divine mallet. Chinese poets occasionally mention polo and other sports, including football, but neither the Confucian nor the Buddhist tradition encouraged writers to look to sports for inspiration. Although medieval Christians also deprecated sports, including tournaments, which the Roman Catholic Church tried to ban, Renaissance attitudes were far less ascetic. Jacobean and Elizabeth drama was rife with images of sports. None of Shakespeare’s plays is entirely devoted to the adventures of an athlete, but the language of sports and sports themselves appear surprisingly often in his plays and in those of his contemporaries. Images drawn from hunting and hawking are especially frequent, but there are also Shakespearean references to archery, bowls, football, and a myriad of other sports. In Henry V, for instance, the haughty French dauphin sends the young English king a set of tennis balls that are allegedly “meeter for [his] spirit.” The dauphin’s messenger explains that Henry is too young to “revel into dukedoms.” Henry answers defiantly, “When we have match’d our rackets to these balls, / We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set / Shall strike his father’s crown [from his head].” The dramatis personae for As You Like It includes “Charles, Duke Frederick’s wrestler,” who shows his stuff on stage. Hamlet’s fencing match with Laertes ends so tragically that we forget that it began in sport, as a much-needed princely diversion.
Modern Sports Literature English literature of early modern times was rich in references to horse races, fox hunts, and “animal sports.” The eighteenth-century poet John Hamilton Reynolds wrote, for instance, of “bull-dog breeders [and] badgerbaiters,” and James Boswell attended a cockfight, where he was upset by the “uproar and noise” and by the lack
of pity for the “poor cocks . . . mangled and torn in the most cruel manner.” Pugilists were memorialized in popular ballads. Young women were as well: Four Virgins that supposed were A Race did run I now declare, Sure such a race was never seen As this at Temple Newsham Green.
Early in the nineteenth century, cricket became a major topos in English literature. “I doubt if there be any scene in the world more animating or delightful than a cricket match,” wrote Mary Russell Mitford in Our Village (1819), and hundreds of English novelists and poets have agreed with her. As modern sports became institutionalized, during the nineteenth century, writers more important than Mitford took notice. Wilkie Collins told the story of a foolish runner in Man and Wife (1870), and George Bernard Shaw published an early novel, Cashel Byron’s Profession (1886), about a clever young boxer. Walt Whitman sang the praises of baseball in Leaves of Grass (1855), and Mark Twain, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), imagined the game as it might have been played by an awkward team of armored knights. (Line drives bounced from the infielders’ breastplates.) Although there are references to sports in Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534), two masterpieces by François Rabelais, and in the work of German poets such as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Johann Gottfried von Herder, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a trio of passionate ice-skaters, modern sports did not play much of a role in novels, plays, and poems written in languages other than English until early in the twentieth century. (Hunters abound, but runners are few and far between.), When French and German writers belatedly discovered the possibilities of sports as a metaphor for life, they quickly made up for lost ground. In the 1920s, Marcel Berger, Dominique Braga, Maurice Genevoix, Jean Giraudoux, Louis Hémon, Paul Morand, André Obey, Jean Prévost, and many others penned (or typed) ecstatic descriptions of runners and
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Literature “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A. E. Housman (1859–1936) The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Now you will not swell the rout of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man.
To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder high-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.
So set, before its echos fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It whithers quicker than the rose.
And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s.
Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears:
Source: Housman, A. E. (1896). To an athlete dying young. In A Shropshire lad (p. 26– 28). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co.
cyclists, boxers and rugby players. Even Marcel Proust, the least athletic of authors, managed to put Marcel’s beloved Albertine on a bicycle. Among these auteurs sportifs, Henry de Montherlant was perhaps the most important. The major characters of Les Olymiques, the two parts of which appeared in 1920 and 1924, are all runners, female as well as male. The heroine of Le Songe (The Dream), which Montherlant published in 1922, is also a runner. When Dominique runs, Montherlant describes her ecstasy; when she poses and flexes before her mirror, Montherlant describes her athletic body in anatomical detail. (It is hard to think of another writer as spellbound by deltoids and abdominals.) Among Montherlant’s German contemporaries, Kasimir Edschmid was the most obsessed with sports. Gagaly Modosdy, one of the two women courted by Cesare Passari in Edschmid’s novel Sport and Gagaly (1928), is described as “Athena in tennis shoes.” Her young friend, Pista Tossuth, is equally athletic. Cesare is a runner as well as a tennis player; he is also an airplane pilot and an ardent automobilista who represents the Fiat motor company in deadly contests against Peugeot-
driving rivals. After a number of tennis matches and automobile races, Cesare makes off with both women, who have, in the meantime, fallen madly in love with each other. Sadly, Sport and Gagaly has never been translated from German into English. No European writer, not even Montherlant, was as sports-mad as Ernest Hemingway. Among his most memorable characters are hunters (Green Hills of Africa, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”), fishermen (the Nick Adams stories, The Old Man and the Sea), boxers (“The Battler,” “Fifty Grand”), jockeys (“My Old Man”), and bullfighters (Death in the Afternoon, “The Undefeated”). Bullfighters also figure importantly, along with boxers, tennis players, fishermen, and cyclists, in Hemingway’s finest novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926). The novel, narrated by Jake Barnes, a wounded veteran of World War I, is a series of symbolic contrasts: between the sterility of the modern “waste land” and the vitality of the primitive countryside, between Paris and Pamplona, between Robert Cohen (boxer) and Pedro Romero (bullfighter). Robert is a pathetic figure who learned to box at Princeton merely to defend
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Literature Extract from The All of It by Jeanette Haien The mysteries of angling are central to the meaning of The All of It (1986), a novel by Jeanette Haien set in Ireland: Yearning, he recalled the times in his life when he’d fished well through midge-ridden days in weather even meaner than this, and how, adroitly, Nature had put her claim on him and made him one with the very ground at his feet, and how, with every cast, past the gleaming green reeds of the shoreline shallows, he’d projected himself towards a specific spot in the rivers very heart, a different shading in the water that was like a quality of seriousness, or at a laze in the current’s glide, some felt allurement of expectation which became (ah, fated fish) the focused haven of his energy. Source: Haien, J. (1986). The all of it. New York: HarperCollins.
himself. Pedro, in contrast, is a man of simple dignity whose performance in the bullring is a lesson in courage, grace, and harmony. Jake envies and admires Pedro, has some sympathy for Robert, and despises the professional cyclists whom he meets at the end of the novel. Obscene and dishonest, the cyclists claim to be sportifs, but in Jake’s eyes they symbolize a perversion of the ethos of sport. During the latter half of the twentieth century, everywhere in the world, writers of popular fiction, including fiction intended for juveniles, seemed to turn en masse to sports. Major American and European writers, too, were entranced by the literary possibilities of sports; they became so numerous that is impossible to do more than list them. Among the baseball novels likely to find a permanent place in the American “canon” are Bernard Malamud’s The Natural (1952), Mark Harris’s Bang the Drum Slowly (1960), Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball
Association, Inc. (1968), Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel (1973), and W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe (1982). Although the prewar fascination with boxers survived in the nonfiction works of Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates, Leonard Gardner’s Fat City (1969) is the only postwar novel that can compete in excellence with the best of the baseball fiction. Despite its popularity as a spectator sport, American football has inspired only one truly impressive novel, Don DeLillo’s End Zone (1972). Basketball has fared even more poorly, with little to show beyond Jeremy Larner’s Drive, He Said (1964). Swimmers can, however, rejoice in at least one novel likely to become a classic, Jenifer Levin’s Water Dancer (1982). With the exception of Patricia Nell Warren, who published The Front Runner in 1974, American writers have shown little interest in track-and-field sports. British, French, and German novelists have dominated the genre. Alan Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the LongDistance Runner (1959), a work of important social criticism, may lead the pack, but Yves Gibeau’s The Straight Line (1956), Siegfried Lenz’s Bread and Circuses (1959), and Guy Lagorce’s The Swiftness of Wind (1977) are not far behind. Per Olov Enquist’s The Second (1978), another profoundly insightful exploration of sports and social class, has been unjustly neglected because it has never been translated from Swedish into English. The same sad fate befell Silvio Blatter’s track-and-field novel, Love Me Tender (1980), written in German although the title was taken from a song by Elvis Presley. Cyclists have also been given their due in British, French, and German fiction. Ralph Hurne’s The Yellow Jersey (1973), Pierre Naudin’s Bad Roads (1959), and Uwe Johnson’s Third Book about Achim (1961) all recount the physical agony of this most arduous of major sports. Soccer football is unquestionably the world’s most widely played sport, but few if any of the hundreds of writers who have dramatized the game seem to have made the transition from national to international ac-
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If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work. ■ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
claim. Dietrich Krusche’s On Top (1973) and Rachid Boudjedra’s The Cup Winner (1981) are excellent, untranslated, and unknown. A notable exception to this sad generalization is Peter Handke’s The Goalie’s Fear during the Penalty Kick (1978), in which a game of soccer plays an important symbolic role. Rugby football has done somewhat better. As a study of sports and social class in England, David Storey’s This Sporting Life (1960) is unsurpassed. Storey was also the author of a sports-centered play, The Changing Room (1972), but sports are, in general, better suited to the cinema than to the theater. The proscenium stage is an awkward place to dramatize a sports event. Playwrights as different as Clifford Odets and Georg Kaiser have done it, but most of the boxing and cycling took place off-stage. The high tide of sports-centered literature included thousands of poems, but England’s John Betjeman is almost alone among major poets who demonstrated a sustained interest in sports. He was enthralled by athletic women “full of pent-up strength” (“Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden”), “strongly adorable” (“A Subaltern’s Love- Song”), striding on the “strongest legs in Pontefract” (“The Licorice Fields at Pontefract”), or standing “in strong athletic pose” (“The Olympic Girl”). Sports have seldom attracted the attention of Asian and African writers with aspirations for an international reputation. Japanese literature has, however, produced a pair of exceptions. Body-builders and martial-arts specialists have a place in Mishima Yukio’s fiction. Inoue Yasushi’s Wall of Ice (1968) ranks among the best of the world’s many novels of mountain-climbing. The currents of globalization may soon bring a flood of impressively crafted sports-centered literature from China or India or some other society whose authors have not yet been translated into a European language. Or, the crest of the wave may have passed. Younger writers seem far less interested in sports, as a literary theme, than were the writers of a generation ago. Although sports are certainly more important than ever before, there seems, as yet, to be no twenty-first-century Ernest
Hemingway to absorb their significance and transform them into lasting literature. Allen Guttmann See also Magazines; Sportswriting and Reporting
Further Reading Charreton, P. (1985). Les fêtes du corps. Saint-Etienne, France: Centre interdisciplinaire d’études et de recherches sur l’expression contemporaine. Fischer, N. (Ed.). (1986). Sport und literatur. Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany: Deutsche Verein für Sportwissenschaft. Fischer, N. (1999). Sport als literatur. Eching, Germany: V+B. Lobmeyer, H. (1983). Die darstellung des sports in der Amerikanischen erzählliteratur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ahrensburg, Germany: Czwalina. Messenger, C. (1981). Sport and the spirit of play in American fiction. New York: Columbia University Press. Messenger, C. (1990). Sport and the spirit of play in contemporary American fiction. New York: Columbia University Press. Oriard, M. V. (1982). Dreaming of heroes. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Prouteau, G. (1948). Anthologie des textes sportifs de la littérature. Paris: Éditions Défense de la France. Schwarz, K. (Ed.). (1967). Dichter deuten den sport. Scorndorf, Germany: Karl Hofmann. Schwarz, K. (Ed.). (1970). Im stadion. Munich, Germany: Nymphenburger.
Lord’s Cricket Ground
T
he establishment of the first Lord’s Cricket Ground in 1787 coincided with the creation of the powerful Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which administered cricket and became cricket’s law-regulating body. Known simply as Lord’s, Lord’s Cricket Ground is located at St. John’s Wood in London. It has often been described as the mecca of world cricket, not only because of its long tradition but also because it has been formative in the rise and organization of English and world cricket. Lord’s is the home not only of the influential MCC but also of the Middlesex Cricket Club, the England and Wales Cricket Board, and the International Cricket Council.
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The Grounds Surrounded by a high wall that insulates it from its suburban environment, Lord’s is located on thirteen acres. The principal ground, which occupies five and a half acres, includes the Lord’s slope, a drop of about six feet six inches from the grandstand to the boundary in front of the tavern. The pavilion, which is the only remaining Victorian building at Lord’s, was completed in 1890. It is flanked by two great towers, each adorned with a flagpole and crowned with the MCC monograph. The famous Long Room stretches between the two towers at ground level; batsmen have to endure a long walk before and after an innings, closely inspected by the members. The symbolic Father Time weather vane dominates the Lord’s skyline. Many of the other stands, such as the Mound Stand (built in 1899), the Warner Stand (1958), and the Tavern Stand (1967), have been rebuilt over the years. The Lord’s Tavern has been associated with the ground since 1814 and has given rise to the Lord’s Taverners, a charitable cricket association. Bowlers deliver balls from the pavilion and nursery ends; the name of the latter derives from Henderson’s Nursery that operated there until 1887 and was famed for its tulips and pineapples. The official capacity of the ground has fluctuated between twenty-seven and twenty-eight thousand, which makes Lord’s much smaller than many other international cricket grounds, which can accommodate audiences of up to a hundred thousand. Lord’s is enhanced by a fine collection of paintings, photographs, memorabilia, and books, which was begun by MCC Secretary R.A. Fitzgerald in 1864. The Imperial Cricket Memorial Gallery, later known as the MCC Museum, was opened in 1953.The fragile Ashes urn, the most influential relic of world cricket, is its most famous exhibit. It is ironic that this urn, which is permanently based at the museum, derived from the 1882 Ashes test, which was not played at Lord’s but at the Oval. Despite a name that suggests an aristocratic pedigree, Lord’s is named after Thomas Lord (1755– 1832), a bowler and general cricket factotum, property
speculator, and wine and spirit merchant, who created the first Lord’s at Dorset Square in 1787 on behalf of the gentlemen and aristocrats of the White Conduit Club. The first recorded match there was between Essex and Middlesex on 31 May 1787. Lord’s moved to a second ground at the St. John’s Wood estate in 1809 and to its third and current ground in 1814. Each time, Lord dug up and re-laid the original turf from the first Dorset Square. He finally sold his interest in the ground in 1825. In the early nineteenth century Lord’s became the site of the most important matches on the English cricket calendar. Although the pitch was considered one of the worst in the country, matches between public schools such as Eton and Harrow began there in 1805 (and continue to be played there), and Cambridge and Oxford first played there in 1827. However, Lord’s was not entirely free from the threat of development until the MCC purchased the freehold of the ground in 1866. Because test cricket took some time to establish itself as the flagship of international cricket, the first two tests in England, which were both against Australia, were played at the Oval in 1880 and 1882. It was not until the fifteenth test in 1884 that a test was played at Lord’s. However, Lord’s has been the scene of all four World Cup finals that have been played in England— in 1975, 1979, 1983, and 1999.
People and Controversies Lord’s has been the seat of many influential administrators, including Lord Frederick Beauclerk (1773– 1850), who helped consolidate the power of the MCC as the accepted lawmaker and ultimate court of cricket. Others, such as the fourth Lord Harris (1851– 1932) in the late nineteenth century and G. O. B. “Gubby” Allen (1902–1989) in the twentieth, have also been influential. W. G. Grace (1848–1915), the most famous member of the MCC, played many important innings at Lord’s from the late 1860s and helped to enhance the status of Lord’s, the MCC, and cricket. The impressive
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W. G. Grace entrance gates at Lord’s recognize his contribution.
Current Prospects Although the MCC’s power in English and international cricket declined after 1945—with the club sharing power with the International Cricket Council and the Test and County Cricket Board—these other bodies still meet at Lord’s. With its rich tradition and history, Lord’s retains a powerful hold on the imagination of the international cricket world despite a popular myth noted by Geoffrey Moorhouse that Lord’s is run by a “bunch of old fuddy-duddies.” If anything, Lord’s is regarded with even greater reverence by international cricket players who do not play at Lord’s regularly. One of the greatest tributes to Lord’s came from Australian cricketer Jack Fingleton who noted that no other cricket ground rivals its “calm and peaceful majesty.” His description is not surprising because Australia has enjoyed better results at Lord’s than at any other English test ground. During the twentieth century, England beat Australia in only one Lord’s test (1934). Richard Cashman
Further Reading Fingleton, J. H. (1980). Lord’s. In E.W. Swanton (Ed.), Barclay’s World of Cricket: The Game from A to Z (pp. 41–6). London: Collins. Lewis, T. (1987). Double Century: The Story of the MCC and Cricket. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Moorhouse, G. (1983). Lord’s. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Luge
L
uge is a winter sport in which athletes lie on their back on a sled that has no brakes and race downhill on an ice track at speeds that can surpass 112 kilometers per hour, traveling 800 to 1,300 meters in less than one minute. The sport is most popular in North America and Alpine countries.
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History Luge is a French term meaning “sled.” German literature mentions the corresponding term rodeln as early as the fifteenth century. Luge racing has long been a winter pastime in Scandinavia, in the Russian Urals, and in the middle European mountains. In North America people traditionally raced on toboggans. In Canada the Montreal Tobogganing Club was formed in 1870. During the 1880s the two Swiss cities of Davos and Saint Moritz were instrumental in differentiating the three sledding sports of skeleton, bobsleigh, and luge. Skeleton is similar to luge, except that in skeleton the athlete races head first. Since 1881 Davos has hosted a race for one-seated toboggans, and the Davos Toboggan Club, founded in 1883, has managed the competition, which in its first year had twenty-one competitors from seven nations. The first club devoted to luge was formed in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1898. In 1909 an association grouping the German-speaking Austrian tobogganing clubs was formed. In 1911 five German clubs formed a national luge federation and, with enthusiasts from Switzerland, Hungary, and Bohemia, began international competitions. In 1910 Austria organized a national championship for the two forms of luge competition: natural track and artificial track. In 1913 Swiss and Anglo-Saxon residents in Davos formed the International Schlitteln Club, and in Dresden, Germany, on 8 November an international governing body for tobogganing sports was formed with the support of four Alpine associations. Roger de Riedmatten, president of Verband der Deutsche Schlittensport Verein Osterreichs, was named chairman. The track of Reichenberg, now Liberec in the Czech Republic, hosted the first European championship in 1914 with eighty-five entrants. The winner, Rudolf Kautschka, won for Austria but after World War I represented Czechoslovakia. Karl Lobel and Erwin Posselt won the doubles event for Germany. On the same day, Anna Skoda won the Sudetes championship, later recognized as the first European women’s event.
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Luge Street Luge For every mainstream sport, there seems to be an “extreme” version taking hold. Luge has its extreme counterpart with “street luge”— participants racing down a pavement at a rapid-fire pace. Here is how one street luge school described its training course: You get your basic training in a large slightly sloping area. We show you how to start, turn, stop and common riding positions.You practice these techniques at slow speeds in this area until we are comfortable with your ability to utilize them. From the basics we take you a short way up the hill for your first run, which will be at about 25 mph maximum. We critique your ride and if you are riding smooth and handle braking properly we will take you a little further up the hill for your next ride which will be at
In 1923 in Paris the governing body Federation Internationale de Bobsleigh et Tobogganing was formed; it did not govern luge. In 1927 four German-speaking federations representing Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia revived the older international tobogganing association. In 1935 this association joined the international federation.
Postwar History The United States first competed in the European championship in 1954. In 1955 the first official world championship was held in Oslo, Norway. In 1957 in Davos thirteen nations formed the Federation Internationale de Luge (http://www.fil-luge.org/index _ de.htm), the world governing body. In the United States the governing body is USA Luge (http://www.usaluge.org/). Luge first appeared in the Olympics in 1964 in Innsbruck, Austria. East Germany won fifteen of the twentyone gold medals awarded from 1964 to 1988. Other winners were Austria, Italy, West Germany, and the Soviet Union. After 1989 unified Germany, Austria, and Italy remained leading luge countries. The United States won several silver and bronze Olympic medals and won four victories in the men’s doubles World Cup
about 30 mph. This format is continued until you are riding at about 40-45 mph. You will then ride with another rider to get the feel of having someone riding with you on the road. Next we will show you various techniques of controlling your speed. When you demonstrate that you have gained the ability to control your speed, we will take you further up the hill so that you can start increasing your speed to about 60 mph. When you are comfortable with your ability to ride at about 60 mph we will take you up to the top of the hill (“The Dinosaur”) so that you can start riding the entire 2.5 miles of this super fun road with its smooth pavement, sweeping turns, chicane, 1⁄2 mile long straight and up hill braking area. Source: Wild Fro Racing. (2003). Retrieved April 29, 2005, from http://wildfro.com/ pages/623271/index.htm
competition, which began in 1978. The greatest luge champion remains the German Georg Hackl, who won Olympic gold in 1992, 1994, and 1998. At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the men’s singles Armin Zoggeler of Italy won gold, Georg Hackl of Germany won silver, and Markus Prock of Austria won bronze. Hackl’s silver medal was his fifth medal in a row, making him the first Olympic athlete to win five medals in one event in either the summer or winter games. In the men’s doubles Patric-Fritz Leitner and Alexander Resch of Germany won gold, Brian Martin and Mark Grimmette of the United States won silver, and Chris Thorpe and Clay Ives of the United States won bronze. In the women’s singles Sylke Otto of Germany won gold, Barbara Niedernhuber of Germany won silver, and Silke Kraushaar of Germany won bronze. German women swept the podium in luge competition for the fifth time.
Rules Natural track luge has no banking on the corners of the tracks, so tracks can be built anywhere by packing down snow or making ice. The course is then outlined with flags, hay, cones, or fencing. The slope varies according
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to location but does not exceed 1.5 percent. Natural track luge is not an Olympic sport. Artificial track luge uses banked curves, and the track has a slope of 8 to 11 percent. Tracks include two straightaways, left and right turns, and a curve combination such as an S. Olympic luge competition takes place on an artificial track. The Federation Internationale de Luge fixes the maximum weight of a luge at 23 kilograms for singles and 27 kilograms for doubles. The width is 46 to 47 centimeters. The length of men’s races varies between 1,000
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and 1,300 meters, whereas that for women varies between 800 and 1,050 meters. Gherardo Bonini
Further Reading Bass, H. (1971). Encyclopaedia of winter sports. London: Pelham Books. Bonini, G. (2001). Europa, Mitteleuropa, Vaste Land. Florence, Italy: Rilegatoria Cecchi. Federation Internationale de Luge. (1964). Rennrodeln Jungster Olympiasport. Innsbruck, Austria: Author.
Maccabiah Games Madison Square Garden Magazines Management
Maccabiah Games
Maple Leaf Gardens Maracana Stadium Marathon and Distance Running Marketing Mascots Masculinity Masters Media-Sports Complex Memorabilia Industry Mental Conditioning Mesoamerican Ball Court Games Mexico Mixed Martial Arts Motivation Motorboat Racing Motorcycle Racing Mount Everest Mountain Biking Mountaineering Movies Multiculturalism
A
s with the emergence of other regional sports events in other parts of the world during the first decade of the twentieth century, the idea of organizing Olympicstyle competitions for Jewish athletes from around the world was influenced by the Olympic idea. Thus, simultaneously with the organization of the Far Eastern Olympic Games by Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) missionaries in China, Japan, and the Philippines, a Jewish Olympic movement developed in Europe. However, whereas the YMCA movement extolled the virtues of “muscular Christianity,” the Jewish movement (Judische Turnerschaft und Sportbewegung—later called “Maccabi”) adopted the curiously similar words of a Hungarian Zionist (referring to an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel), Max Nordau, extolling the virtues of muskel Judentum (muscular Judaism). In 1911 an article appeared in the Judische Turnzeitung, the journal of the rapidly expanding Jewish gymnastic and sports movement. Fritz Abraham, a German Zionist who was strongly influenced by English sports, proposed a gathering of Jewish gymnasts and sportsmen in an Olympic-style competition. “If we believe at all in the victory of our national idea,” he wrote, “then we also should hope to organize a Jewish-national Olympiad.” He further stated that, “The world will perhaps become aware of how many outstanding athletes there are among us. Jews still help to build the fame of foreign nations while they
M fail to recognize their own nationality. . . . If we could only show how many Jewish nationalists participated in sports during the years 1903–1909, then perhaps in 1913 an athletic meeting at the 11th Zionist Congress might offer the promise of our own all-Jewish Olympic Games.” Although World War I scuttled his innovative idea, by 1924 Gustav Spiegler, an Austrian Maccabi leader who was obviously influenced by the 1924 Olympic Games, resurrected it with a twist. In a column in Der Makkabi, the organ of the Maccabi sports movement, he recommended, “Before we go to the world Olympics, we should first establish a personal selection process and that is what the Jewish Olympic festival should be all about.” He added later that the games should be held in Israel and that they should also include a seminar-style academy where “Jewish scholars from all over the world . . . would lecture during the festival.”
Jewish Olympiads Spiegler’s idea was revolutionary because of two elements. One element advocated the preparation of Israel, representing Palestine, to take part in the world Olympic movement. The other element sought to establish, simultaneously, a parallel Jewish Olympic festival. “This constant aim of bringing our athletes into the different Olympiads,” the Israeli sports functionary Yoseph Yekutieli wrote some years later, “created the idea of world Jewish Olympiads which would give to the Jewish youth a push forward and would serve to guide us in . . . preparing for international competitions.” As a quadrennial athletic celebration, the Maccabiah Games are held a year after the Olympic Games. Its
name, “Maccabiah,” alludes to the glorious past of the famed Maccabi revolt during the second century BCE. Although philosophically the Olympic movement has obviously influenced the inception of the Maccabiah idea, the Maccabiah Games have always transcended the competitiveness that is so emphasized by the Olympics. Rather, the Maccabiah Games serve as a vehicle for Jewish national ideals such as immigration and love of Israel. Indeed, the stated aim of the games is not to strive for world records or to compete with the international Olympic movement, but rather to attract the largest possible number of Jewish athletes, officials, spectators, and tourists to Israel from around the world. Since the first Maccabiah Games in 1932, fifteen additional games have been held in Tel Aviv. Utilizing the propaganda benefits of these games, the games have never repudiated their nationalistic overtone. They have created an important milestone in the evolution of Zionist recognition of the role of sports in its national aspirations of building a new society. Zionism proved the maxim that to be genuine, a revolution must radically alter a culture. Zionists wanted to create a broad national community by implementing a modern revolution by a movement that prided itself on being a movement of youth. This movement was followed by a redefinition of the role of men and women in Jewish society and by creation of a new body image. Zionist aspirations needed a physical component to their political platform as much for ideological purposes as humanitarian ones. Zionists had to resort to a nationalistic formula of “inventing a nation.” The ideological basis for this daunting task was the belief that in order to erase
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Athletes march in the opening of the Maccabiah Games.
the anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews, one must create a “new Jewish man and woman”—cleansed by physical toil and baptized by robust physical activity. During their eight decades the Maccabiah Games have evolved through three stages that have been influenced by both political and psychological factors: (1) the Summer and Winter games during the interwar years, (2) the founding of Israel, and (3) the fall of the Soviet Union. During these decades the games have also grown into one of the largest Olympic-style gatherings of the twentieth-first century. The first period of the Maccabiah Games, between the two world wars, included two Summer games (1932 and 1935) and two Winter games (1933 and 1935).These games reflected the complex interaction between the fledgling Jewish community in Palestine, the British mandate whose consent was crucial for the organization of the games, and the rising anti-Semitism in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Thus, the first two Summer games were held in Tel Aviv under the tutelage of the British high commissioners. Nevertheless, the Zionist establishment openly used the pretext of the games to smuggle in thousands of illegal immigrants. The two Winter games were held in and supported in some degree by Poland and Czechoslovakia. The founding of Israel gave new impetus to recast the philosophical foundation of the games. Starting in 1950 the games included an ever-increasing number of athletes from all over the world. Such sports as chess, judo, karate, lawn bowling, squash, ten-pin bowling, softball, field hockey, badminton, golf, and even bridge and backgammon were added to subsequent games. The addition of Masters Maccabiah (for people more than thirty-five years old) and Junior Maccabiah (for youth) and regional games gave more opportunities for inclusion of the entire Jewish community from all over the world, shaping the emerging image of the games to be as much as a cultural and educational celebration as
a top-level athletic competition. The unabashedly ideological foundation of the Maccabiah Games reflected this Zionist strategy of inclusion. The Maccabiah ideology actively encouraged participation over records. Sports such as tennis, basketball, table tennis, and water polo for women, for example, were already adopted for the program of the second Maccabiah Games. As a statement supporting women’s equality, one of the most memorable milestones of the Maccabiah Games took place in 1965 as the first woman, Debbie Marcus, held high the Maccabiah torch in the Maccabiah Stadium in Ramat Gan, in the outskirts of Tel Aviv, and lit the Maccabiah flame.
Soviet Collapse One of the most significant historical moments, ushering in a dramatic change in the Maccabiah Games, was the collapse of the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. The amazing speed with which many Maccabi clubs in central and eastern Europe, disbanded by Communist authorities, were reestablished shows the movement’s influence over Jewish life. The restoration of the connection between these clubs and Israel brought many world-caliber Jewish athletes from eastern and central Europe to the Maccabiah Games. For example, the famed Polgar sisters from Hungary, who were among the most celebrated chess players in the world, were invited to participate. The evolution of the Maccabiah Games also brought a rapid expansion of regional Maccabiah Games, in
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Maccabiah Games Max Nordau on “Muscular Judaism” Zionism rouses Judaism to a new life . . . It achieves this spiritually through the revival of common ideals, and physically through physical education of the new generation which will return to us the lost “Muscular Judaism” (Muskeljudentum).
which a cross-section of the Jewish community could participate in ever-increasing numbers. Thus, athletic festivals are held in individual countries as well as in North America, Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. George Eisen
Further Reading Eisen, G. (1979). Maccabiah Games: A history of the Jewish Olympics. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park.
Madison Square Garden
M
adison Square Garden, known to residents of New York City as “the Garden,” is the home of the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the New York Liberty of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), and the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League (NHL). It is also a venue for college and high school basketball, track and field, dog shows, circuses, concerts, political conventions, and religious gatherings. To New Yorkers it is the most famous and most important arena in the world and long a symbol of New York’s status as the leading sports and entertainment center. That the current Garden is the latest of four makes no difference: the Garden is the Garden. It has been the venue for many famous events in sports, including cycling, track and field, basketball, hockey, and, most importantly, boxing. Before boxing moved west to Las
Vegas during the 1960s, the Garden was the heart of the boxing world, and promoters, managers, trainers, and fighters made their reputations there. The current Garden is located between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and Thirty-First and Thirty-Third Streets in midtown Manhattan. It sits atop Pennsylvania Station, and the complex includes a large meeting rotunda, theater, office tower, and shops. The first Garden was located at Madison Square at Fifth Avenue and TwentyThird Street on the site of the abandoned Union Depot of the New York and Harlem Railroad. In 1871 the U.S. showman P. T. Barnum bought the property and converted it into Barnum’s Monster Classical Geological Hippodrome. It was an arena with high brick walls and no roof. In 1875 the arena was leased by the bandleader Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore (composer of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”), who turned it into a garden with trees and waterfalls and held concerts there. In 1876 he renamed it “Gilmore’s Gardens.” In 1879 wealthy businessman William Henry Vanderbilt took control and renamed the arena “Madison Square Garden.” The arena featured horse shows, cycling, and boxing, with John L. Sullivan winning the heavyweight championship there in 1882. Sullivan was arrested there two years later during another bout because prize fighting was then illegal. In 1890 the first Garden was torn down, and a new entertainment venue, designed by architect Stanford White, built in its place. The second Garden contained an 8,000-seat arena, a 1,500-seat concert hall, a 1,200-seat theater, an indoor swimming pool, and a rooftop garden restaurant. In 1906 White was shot and killed in the rooftop garden by millionaire Harry Thaw, the husband of White’s former mistress, model Evelyn Nesbit, in what was then called “the crime of the century.” When the entertainment district shifted farther north, the third Garden was built at Eighth Avenue and Fiftieth Street in 1925. The third Garden became the center of professional boxing, under the direction of a succession of promoters, including Tex Rickard, Mike Jacobs, and Teddy Brenner, and with the assistance of sports writer Damon Runyon. Any fighter who sought to
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make a name for himself wanted to fight at the Garden. Jack Dempsey fought there often, as did Joe Louis and later Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman. During the 1960s control of boxing shifted to Las Vegas, and although boxing was still promoted at the Garden, the Garden was no longer the center of the boxing world. In 1968 the third Garden was torn down and the current one built over Penn Station. In 1991 the current Garden was renovated at a cost of $200 million. It now seats 19,763 for basketball and 18,200 for ice hockey. New York sports fans associate the current Garden with two dates and major triumphs: 8 May 1970, when the Knicks won the NBA championship, and 14 June 1994, when the Rangers won their first NHL title in fifty-four years. David Levinson
Further Reading Brenner, T. (1981). Only the ring was square. New York: Prentice Hall. Kalinsky, G. (2004). Garden of dreams: Madison Square Garden 125 years. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang.
Magazines
S
port participants, enthusiasts, and spectators have long enjoyed reading about their favorite sports, together with articles about the skilled players or athletes, noteworthy administrators, and colorful coaches. They avidly scan and absorb news articles about recent championships, lives of star players, games, and results. Sport magazines and periodicals reflect the cultural interests of the times and range from the field sport titles published in the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the contemporary sport-specific titles that report on the major popular professional and amateur sports. From its physical education and gymnastics roots in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, the academic sport-science periodical saw a resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s.
By definition periodicals are published at frequent and regular intervals, usually weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. They are numbered by a consecutive numbering system or by use of volume/issue numbers to distinguish between each issue. Contents range from short or lengthy articles to news and reviews. Variously called magazines, serials, or, a newly coined term, fanzines or zines, access for most titles is by paid subscription and newsstand purchase. Since the late 1990s, online, digitized, or electronic periodicals have been readily available. Periodical issues are sent via e-mail to a subscriber as a file attachment or are available on a publisher’s or vendor’s website with free access, by paid library subscription, or in an individual member’s or subscriber’s password-protected area. Today, many diverse audiences are served by the different categories of sport periodicals that represent the work of the sport journalist, sports fans, commercial interests, or sport researcher and professional. They generally fall into three types: (1) general sport magazines, sport-specific periodicals, and fanzines; (2) house organs, including newsletters and bulletins; and (3) subject-specific academic sport and physical education periodicals.
General Sport and Sport-Specific Periodicals General sport magazines, for example, The Sporting News (1886–) or Sports Illustrated (1954–) emphasize current sporting events, with articles on many different sports, specific sport competitions, upcoming or current sport personalities, the business side of the sports industry or a particular sport, plus results of games and championships.
SPORT-SPECIFIC PUBLICATIONS The largest number of sport periodicals focus on one particular sport. An article in Advertising Age (2000) contends that from 1985 to 2000, sport magazines were introduced (and ceased publication) more frequently than those in any other subject area. Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory lists over 9,000 currently published sport and
MAGAZINES
sport sciences periodicals and newsletters. Add to this the thousands of sports periodicals in Asian languages, other languages, and newly created online titles, and the numbers of sport periodicals are staggering. Some sport-specific titles have a relatively long run— The Ring (1922–), Skating (1923–), Golf Monthly (1911–)—with the bulk of the extant titles published after World War II, including World Soccer (1960–), Golf World (1947–), Ski magazine (1948–), Swimming World and Junior Swimmer (1960–, microfilm 1960–), and Judo Journal (1978–). Just about every sport is represented by a major magazine, from well-established sports to the newer extreme sports. Major sports are exemplified by Football Digest (1971–), Hockey Digest (1972–), Tennis (1965–), Baseball Digest (1942–), and Runner’s World (1970–), and the extreme sports by Skydiving (1979–) and Kitesurf (online 2000–). The fanzine, a phenomenon of the post–World War II era, represents the voice of the public or passionate sports fan. These zines started in print form, but now many are distributed via e-mail or are available on a website. Recently, the Modern British Department of the British Library recognized the importance of this “grey literature” to the popular culture in the United Kingdom and has acquired a large number of sport fanzine collections (www.bl.uk/ collections/britirish/modbrisport.html). Sample titles in this genre include King of the Kippax (1988–) on the Manchester City Football Club, The Absolute Game: A Scottish Football Fanzine (1987–), The Fishing Network Web-Zine (1995–), and Zigger, Borrow Association Football Club Magazine (1967–).
NEWSLETTERS AND BULLETINS Sport newsletters or bulletins are published by nonprofit organizations, including sport associations, both professional and amateur; forprofit companies; and sport business
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consulting companies. For nonprofit associations and organizations, print or online newsletters and bulletins serve as a vehicle of communication with members. For instance, athletes, administrators, and volunteers who have membership in their international, national, regional, or local sport organization keep abreast of news, new policy, and/or forthcoming competitions through in-house newsletters. Examples include ISSF News (1961–) for members of the international sport federation, International Shooting Sport Federation. Sport business consulting companies or sporting goods associations issue state-of-the-art reports on the economics of a particular sport industry; for example, Sportspipe (2001–), from Gould Media Services. The online newsletter NASLINE (1993–) and IASI Newsletter (1995–) keep sport and kinesiology librarians and information professionals informed of recent publications, websites, and news in their professions.
Academic Sport and Physical Education Periodicals
Many of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sport and physical education publications were monographic in nature. European institutions that promoted physical activity, gymnastics, and teacher training published only a few periodicals. One title, Tidskrift i Gymnastik (1874–1983), was published originally at the Kungl. Gymnastiska Centralinstitutet i Stockholm (The Royal Gymnastic Central Institute of Stockholm), with contributions by Per Henrick Ling, the originator of the Swedish gymnastics system, and teachers at the institute. A Swiss periodical, Die Zürcherische Jungend (1799–1870), also dealt with physical education, calisthenics, and gymnastics, as did the German, Turnzeitung (1865–1921). In Boston, Dio Lewis’s Gymnastic Monthly The cover of a sports and Journal of Physical Culture association magazine.
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Magazines Competition Among Magazines As sports became popular, magazines covering sports competed for readers. In this extract from the December 17, 1836, issue of The Spirit of the Times a contrast is drawn with the rival American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. In the number of this Magazine for December, we have found the following remarks which concern ourselves, and upon which in return we purpose saying one word:— “The New York Spirit of the Times is informed, that the article in the October number of the Turf Register, concerning the race between Post Boy and John Bascomb, was furnished by a correspondent; if it had no signature, it was because the writer did not choose to use one. It was sent to us by a private hand, and a respectable gentleman became responsible for its contents. We think proper to enter into this detail, not as an apology for publishing the article, but merely for the purpose of showing that it was not editorial. As to the article itself, it professed to embody
(1861–c. 1886) promoted physical activity. Mind and Body (1894–1936), was founded as part of a campaign to introduce German gymnastics to the American school program by professionals involved with the North American Gymnastics Union. The predecessor to the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (1930–, online 1993–), the American Physical Education Review (1896–1929) was one of the first highly respected physical education journals. Its major goal was to persuade physical educators that research was important to the profession.
CURRENT ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL PERIODICALS Periodicals meant for the academic community can be peer reviewed or edited by the periodical’s editor. The focus of academic and professional periodical articles is on how to better train the human body for sport com-
the arguments and facts adduced by the friends of Post Boy in his behalf, and as such, were open to refutation, if innocent, by the friends of Bascomb. As the Turf Register takes no partisan interest in any horse of turf question, we could not refuse the article an insertion, even if it had come to us anonymously, without committing ourselves as a partisan of Bascomb. The Spirit of the Times need scarcely trouble itself with our affairs, when informed—which it appears is necessary—that it is quite unlikely that we shall consult its editor as to the propriety or impropriety of publishing any article whatever in the Turf Register. “We will remark further, that the considerable degree of feeling amongst Southern Turfmen, which the Spirit of the Times says has been caused by the publication of the article alluded to, is confined to the very brief precincts of the editor’s own imagination. . . . ” Source: Menna, L. K. (Vol. Ed.). (1995). Sports in North America—A documentary history. Vol. 2: The origins of modern sports, 1820–1840 (p. 49). Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
petition and fitness, plus the social/psychological and environmental aspects of participation and training. Many of the academic periodicals are usually very topic specific and include the results of theoretical or applied research, surveys, and state-of-the-art articles on the social, psychological, historical, philosophical, business, and legal aspects of sport. The sport sciences specialty periodicals contain articles on topics ranging from sport medicine and physiology to biomechanics and sport engineering. There are also a large number of periodical titles on physical education, fitness, and coaching intended for professional physical teachers, trainers, or coaches. Currently, there are hundreds of periodical titles designed for the academic and professional audience. The following sample of core journals from the various disciplines illustrates the depth and breadth of available periodical publications.
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these services assist the dedicated researcher in finding periodical citations to a very specific aspect of a research topic. With the explosion in the number of periodical publications available, searching a number of online databases that best suits the research topic is an important activity.
PRIMARY INDEXING AND ABSTRACTING SERVICES One essential sport science indexing and abstracting service includes SPORTDiscus (1840–, www.sirc.ca/products/ sportdiscus.cfm).This database has over 700,000 records that link to periodical articles, and other publications on all aspects of sports sciences, psychology, administration, sociology, coaching, training, physical education, physical fitness, and recreation, in many languages. SPORTDiscus includes the French sport database Héraclès, produced by the INSEP, the Institut National de Sport et de l’Education Physique, in Paris, and the Australian sport science records indexed by the National Sport Information Centre of the Australian Sport Commission. The National Library of Medicine publishes Medline/ PubMed (online 1966–, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ PubMed/), a database of biomedical periodical articles, indexed from over 3,700 international periodicals in all languages. For German language publications, SPOLIT (1970–, www.bisp-datenbanken.de/index.html), produced by BISp, the Bundesinstitut for Sportwissenschaft (Federal Institute of Sport Science), is freely available on their website. SPONET (www.sponet.de/), produced by the Institute for Applied Training Science (IAT) in Leipzig and freely available, has over 9,000 international references to sport sciences citations and full-text articles available via the Internet. Other major indexing services have a reasonable number of citations to sport articles. These titles include America: History and Life/Historical Abstracts, PsycINFO (print 1927–, online 1967), CSA Sociofile (1963–), Philosopher’s Index (print/online 1940–), ERIC (print/ online 1969–), Biological Abstracts (print 1926–, online 1969–), and ABI/INFORM Global (1971–, indexes over 1,000 business periodicals).
Baseball researchers are served well by the Baseball Index (www.baseballindex.org), a product of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).The ChadwyckHealey PCI Web (Periodical Contents Index) has indexed some of the general nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury titles that contain sport articles (Atlantic Monthly, 1857–; Scribner’s, 1887–1939) and physical education titles (American Physical Education Review, 1896– 1929). However, there are hundreds of sport-specific titles that are not indexed. Some access to their current contents is available on the publishers’ websites or in a few general indexing services; for example, the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature (online 1983–) and the Reader’s Guide Retrospective (online 1890–1982).
FULL -TEXT AND ONLINE ACCESS Since the late 1990s, many of the sport-specific and academic sport periodicals are available in full-text format. As indicated in the paragraph on academic sport periodicals, many titles are available in print and online format, with the online format usually available from the mid-1990s. Many U.S. sport periodicals backruns are available in microfilm: Athletic Journal (1921– 1987), Chronicle of the Horse (1937–), and Sailing (print 1966–, microfilm 1975–). This format, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, is used as a means of preserving fragile print materials or provides newer libraries with access to essential periodical backruns. While many institutions have started a digitizing program for the monographic publications (Library of Congress, American Memory project, especially the Spalding Baseball Guides, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/amhome.html), periodicals are only being added recently. The best example of an institution that is forging ahead with digitizing important sport periodicals is the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles (www.aafla.org). With permission of the copyright holder, AAFLA offers, in addition to the Official Olympic Reports, the Olympic Review (online 1901–), Revue Olympique (online 1894–), Journal of Sport History (online 1974–), Olympika (online 1992–), and Sporting Traditions (online 1984–) on the “Virtual Library” section of their
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Magazines Keeping Track Sports magazines more so than newspapers have long had the job of supplying readers both with up-to-date information and background information. Here is an example from The Sporting News’ Record Book for 1927.
Heilmann, Detroit
16
Manush, Detroit
16
Simmons, Philadelphia
16
Grove, Philadelphia
12
MOST VALUABLE A. L. PLAYER
Goslin, Washington
9
Gehrig, New York
7
Lazzeri, New York
7
Falk, Chicago
6
Fothergill, Detroit
6
Melillo, St. Louis
6
Rice, St. Louis
6
Bluege, Washington
5
Todt, Boston
5
Cochrane, Philadelphia
4
Judge, Washington
4
McManus, St. Louis
4
Meusel, New York
3
Rigney, Boston
3
The addition of George Burns of Cleveland, to the honor roll makes the fifth of the American League stars to gain the distinction of being the most valuable player to their teams, the plan of recognizing the players having been inaugurated by President Ban Johnson in 1922, when George Sisler was honored. In 1923, Babe Ruth was the first nominee; 1924, Walter Johnson; 1925, Roger Peckinpaugh. Burns received 63 votes out of a possible 64. In view of the fact that the rules of the award bar playing managers, Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb and Eddie Collins were given honorary places in the honor roll by the Trophy Commission in 1926. Following is the list of players who received votes in 1926: Burns, Cleveland
63
Flagstead, Boston
2
Mostil, Chicago
33
Gerber, St. Louis
2
Pennock, New York
32
Zachary, St. Louis
2
Rice, Washington
18
Jacobson, Boston
1
Source: The sporting news’ record book. (1927). St. Louis, MO: Charles C. Spink and Son.
website. Some earlier sport periodicals are available in partial backruns: American Golfer (online 1908–1913), Baseball Magazine (online 1909–1918), and Outing (print 1883–1923, online 1883–1900).
The Future With the ease of creating a new sport-specific periodical on a website, the life and death cycle of new sport periodicals will continue unabated, with only the vigorous editor or well-financed publisher surviving for a longer run. The lines blur between what constitutes a distinct numbered periodical and a sport news website that is
updated daily.There is no doubt, however, that the availability of sport-specific and academic periodicals online is a convenience that sports fans and researchers will support enthusiastically. Gretchen Ghent See also Literature; Sportswriting and Reporting
Further Reading Hall, H., & Smith, N. (1997). You’ll wish it was all over: The bibliographic control of grey literature with reference to print football fanzines. Serials, 10(2), 189–194. Retrieved January 6, 2005, from http://www.bim.napier.ac.uk/%7Ehazel/esis/hh _ paper9.html
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Gerber, E. W. (1971). Innovators and Institutions in Physical Education. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. Kerwin, A. M. (2000). Sports spawns most magazines. Advertising Age, 71(2), 42.
Management
S
ports management is a recent field of study, but the practice of sports management has long been a major part of human civilization. In almost every society, play and games have been an integral part of child rearing, communal festivities, and inter-community rivalries. The games of archery, sword fighting, lifting heavy objects, horse racing, bull fighting, running, and hurdling have been prevalent in many societies across the globe. As Stiers notes, “Sport management has been in existence from the earliest times of human existence. For literally centuries, throughout written history, individuals and groups have gathered together for informal and/or formal competition in physical activities. And, as a result, there have been individuals involved in the planning, organizing, and supervising of such activities” (1999, 11). Modern-day sports management has its roots in the field known as organization and administration of physical education and athletics, which had its origins as early as the 1890s (Zeigler 1951). However, the field and the courses were part of the teacher training programs in physical education and were confined to management of sports and physical activity at the scholastic and collegiate levels. The origins of modern sports management was said to have been inspired by a letter from Walter O’Malley, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in the 1950s to Dr. James Mason. In the letter, O’Malley posed the question, “Where would one go to find a person who by virtue of education had been trained to administer a marina, race track, ski resort, auditorium, stadium, theatre, convention or exhibition hall, a public camp complex, or a person to fill an executive position at a team or league level . . . ” (Mason, Higgins,
and Wilkinson 1981). This simple query motivated Mason to initiate the first university-sponsored sports management program at Ohio University in 1966. Although early growth of sports management programs was slow, by 1984 there were seventy-five sports management programs in North American colleges and universities (VanderZwaag 1984). Recent estimates have placed this number at greater than 200 (Chelladurai 2001). Dr. Earle Zeigler spearheaded the scientific study of sports management at the Universities of Illinois, Michigan, and Western Ontario.
Defining the Field Over the years, many authors have given a fragmented view of sports management. For example, Chelladurai defined the field as “management of organizations whose major domain of operation is sport and physical activity” (1985, 4). Slack (1997, 5) similarly defined a sports organization as “a social entity involved in the sport industry; it is goal directed with a consciously structured activity system and a relatively identifiable boundary.” These two definitions focus on the organizations that deal with sport. Other authors have defined sports management based on careers in sports management. For example, Parks and Zanger believe sports management is “an area of professional endeavor in which a wide variety of sport and fitness related careers exist” (1990, 1). Comparable to this definition, the NASPE/NASSM Joint Task Force on Sport Management Curriculum and Accreditation describes sports management as “the field of study offering the specialized training and education necessary for individuals seeking careers in any of the many segments of the industry” (1993, 159). Hager sees sports management as business-oriented, stating the field places an “emphasis on providing satisfaction for the client” (1984, 118), defining the field by managerial functions. The constitution of the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM) defines sports management as “the theoretical and applied aspects of management theory and practice specially related to sport,
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955
There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque. ■ ROLAND BARTHES
exercise, dance and play as these enterprises are pursued by all sectors of the population” (NASSM, 2004). Finally, Pitts and Stotlar believe the sports industry is “the market in which the products offered to its buyers are sport, fitness, recreation, or leisure-related and may be activities, goods, services, people, places, or ideas” (1996, 3). Here, the emphasis is on the industry offering sports products. Chelladurai (1993, 1994, 2001) offered a more comprehensive description of the field. The label sports management implies the management of the sports industry, so it becomes necessary to clarify what constitutes the sports industry. Given that an industry is a group of organizations that produce the same or similar products, and that organizations are mechanisms for exchange of products, Chelladurai cataloged and classified the various products of the sports industry. His descriptive scheme follows. At the most fundamental level, the products of any organization can be either goods or services, or a combination of both. Goods are physical objects that can be produced at one time and used later. They include all equipment needed to engage in various kinds of sports and physical activities (such as baseball bats, basketball shoes, soccer goals). Typically, these operations have been excluded from the domain of sports management because they are part of the conventional manufacturing sector. A service, on the other hand, is an intangible occurrence, process, or performance that is simultaneously produced and consumed. The unique feature of the sports industry is the production of services in sports, although goods (such as facilities and equipment) may be used to facilitate the production of those services. Sports management has been primarily concerned with the services produced by various sports organizations.
ple. Professional services, however, are largely based on the expertise and special competencies of employees: an architect’s design of a fitness club, a consultant’s services relating to security arrangements for an event, a golf pro’s lesson or an intercollegiate coach’s teaching of a particular skill in a sport. Professional services can further be broken down into two separate categories. In some services, the focus is on applying technical expertise to something of interest to the clients (such as legal issues or investments). These are the traditional professional services. In some other services, however, the focus is on applying knowledge and expertise for the clients themselves as in educational services or health services. In these human services, the inputs of raw material are “human beings with specific attributes,” and the outputs are “persons processed or changed in a predetermined manner” (Hasenfeld and English 1974, 1). Hasenfeld (1983) further divides human services into three levels: ■
■
■
People-processing refers to testing or screening individuals, then placing them in a particular group or class based on some specified criteria, as in the drug testing agencies declaring an athlete drug-free. Human services that help prevent or delay the decline in welfare or status of clients are known as peoplesustaining. Nursing homes, welfare departments, athletic training departments, and physical therapy establishments all fall into this category. People-changing services attempt to alter clients in some biophysical, psychological, or social manner. For example, fitness programs make people healthier, sports camps make clients better performers, and sports management degree programs make their clients more knowledgeable about the field.
PARTICIPATION MOTIVES CONSUMER , PROFESSIONAL , AND HUMAN SERVICES Some services are routine, involving little information or skill or expertise. These services are known as consumer services, and the renting of a sports facility is an exam-
Clients are involved in the production of the services, so their motives are a critical factor in defining the services within the sports industry. For example, some individuals participate in sports because they enjoy the good feelings they derive from participating, or the competition
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provided by those activities. This motive is labeled pursuit of pleasure that is intrinsic to participation. Clients may also be in pursuit of skill when they participate in some form of sports or physical activity, to become competent in that activity. Beyond that, clients may also participate to excel in a given activity and such pursuit of excellence entails winning against another opponent, someone else’s performance, or their own previous performance. Some clients participate mainly for the healthrelated benefits that sports afford (that is, pursuit of health and fitness). Within this category, some individuals continue their participation to maintain their level of fitness and health, whereas others may participate to improve their health and fitness. These are labeled sustenance and curative motives, respectively. Although each of these categories is distinct, an individual’s primary motive (for example, pursuit of pleasure) may lead to outcomes related to other motives (such as competence in a skill or health benefits). For example, a client who participates in tennis just for the pleasure of it may also become proficient in the skills and gain the benefits of health and fitness.
■
■
■
■
SPECTATOR SERVICES Spectator services refer to the provision of sports as entertainment. The entertainment value of sports varies across individuals (some may prefer baseball to basketball) and across nations (baseball is very popular in North America, but soccer is more popular across the rest of the world). Chelladurai (2001) identifies three components of the spectator services: ■
Classifying Sports Services The services within the sports industry can be classified as participant services, spectator services, sponsorship services, donor services, and social ideas.
■
PARTICIPANT SERVICES Participant services are those services where the clients engage physically in some form of sports or physical activity offered by an agency. A combination of the two criteria (that is, the type of service and client motives) yields six types of participant services:
Human skills: Expert teaching and leadership in developing the skills of clients. Human excellence: Guiding and coaching clients toward excellence in a chosen activity. Human sustenance: Organizing and conducting exercise and fitness programs under the guidance and supervision of an expert. Human curative: Physical activity programs designed to rehabilitate those deficient in some area of health or physical appearance.
■
The contest itself is the most significant component, and its value is a function of the excellence exhibited by the contestants, the unpredictability of the outcomes (that is, sports is unscripted), and the loyalty and attachment of people to certain sports, teams, and athletes. The spectacle is also a part of the entertainment value. Opening ceremonies, half-time shows, and contests involving the spectators during intermissions all add to clients’ experiences at sporting events. Individuals also seek to satisfy their social needs at contests. Third-place experiences take place at the venues of these contests (as distinct from home and work).
SPONSORSHIP SERVICES ■
■
Consumer pleasure: Making the facility and equipment available and organizing and conducting different kinds of competitions for self-motivated clients who seek the pleasure afforded by that activity. Consumer health and fitness: Scheduling or reserving facilities for clients interested in maintaining or improving their health and fitness levels.
Sports sponsorship refers to the provision of some kind of resources by an external agency to a sports entity (e.g., a sporting event, a sports team, a sportsperson, or a sports organization) in return for an association with that entity, which, in turn, can be exploited for commercial purposes (e.g., Howard and Crompton 2004; Mullin, Hardy, and Sutton 2000). Such an association
MANAGEMENT
facilitates the access to the market created by the sports entity and projects the aura of excellence of the sports entity onto the image of the sponsoring agency (Chelladurai 1994, 2001). The sponsoring organization gains the opportunities to 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Link with local businesses and political communities Entertain corporate customers Improve employee relations Increase public awareness of the company or brand Change or enhance the company’s or brand’s image Test its products under “real-life” conditions (Amis, Pant, and Slack 1997).
Worldwide corporate spending on sports sponsorship in 2001 was estimated to be $24.6 billion (a 12 percent increase from 2000), with $9.5 billion in the United States, $7.4 billion in Europe, $4.3 billion in Pacific Rim countries, and $2.1 billion in Central and South American countries (IEG Forecast 2000). Business enterprises extend such sponsorship to non-elite sports as well, particularly youth sports through which businesses can tap into a market of millions of children (and their households) participating in sports.
D ONOR SERVICES The donor services involve receiving a resource from a donor in exchange for psychic benefits, such as the altruistic feeling of having supported a worthy venture or the egoistic and personal gratification in being recognized as a donor. These psychic benefits are self-administered by the donors themselves, and a donation may activate both altruistic and egoistic benefits simultaneously.
SOCIAL IDEAS Some sports organizations are engaged in promoting social objectives, such as fitness and health through physical activity. For example, in the United States, YMCAs have traditionally promoted participation in sports and physical activity. Although some may question Nike’s motives, its advertising slogan “Just Do It” promotes the idea of participation in physical activity (while promoting its own corporate image). Some of
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these efforts to promote sports and physical activity may come from nonprofit organizations such as the Trim and Fitness International Sport for All Association, ParticipACTION (a term coined to indicate participation and action) in Canada, and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) in the United States. Profit-oriented organizations such as Nike and the National Basketball Association (NBA) also engage in promoting sports and physical activity. In essence, these promotional activities are focused on the social idea and practice of participation in physical activity, and the benefits of such participation. This descriptive scheme captures most of the services in sports, but it does not indicate the relative significance of the various sets of services. Participant services are the largest and most significant set of services offered within the purview of sports management. Spectator services are based on the excellence achieved by contestants in a sport, and that excellence is fostered by participant sports labeled pursuit of excellence. In essence, spectator sports is an offshoot of participant sports. Further, concession, licensing, and sponsorship services are functions of spectator sports. Other services, which are not described in this scheme, also facilitate spectator sports (such as parking and traffic control).
Sports Management as Coordination Having cataloged the various services produced within the sports industry, Chelladurai defines sports management as the “field concerned with the coordination of limited human and material resources, relevant technologies, and situational contingencies for the efficient production and exchange of sport services” (Chelladurai 1994, 15). There are two emphases in this definition— (a) management as the process of coordinating (b) the production and exchange of sports-related services. The notion of coordination is central to many of the definitions of management. Further, management is conceived as encompassing both production and exchange of sports services. This latter point counters the artificial distinction between management and marketing and
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highlights the idea that both the production and marketing of sports services have to be managed. The factors to be coordinated include the following: ■
■
■
■
Human resources, including clients, paid employees, and volunteers Technologies, such as exercise physiology, sports medicine, sports psychology, sports pedagogy, coaching education, and so on. Support units, including those units dealing with facilities and events, public relations, legal issues, sports finance, and personnel management Context, such as the external forces represented by inter-organizational networks, market conditions, and government, culture, and community
One significant element of the context is the interorganizational networks such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The market conditions, such as changes in the demand for our services, and the activities of competitors providing those services are another set of factors that sports managers have to contend with. That is, managers must coordinate their own activities to be consistent with market conditions as well as counteract those of their competitors. Finally, the government, culture, and community play a role in managing sports organizations so their activities must be consistent with government regulations, cultural norms, and societal expectations. Further, management as coordination implies the proper implementation of the traditional management functions (planning, organizing, leading, and evaluating), and the possession of necessary managerial skills (technical, human, and conceptual) to carry out those functions.
Economic Impact of the Sports Industry There have been various estimates of the size of sports industry in the United States. According to Meek (1997), the economic value of the sports industry in 1995 was $151.964 billion:
■
■ ■ ■
Sports consumption, $144.848 billion, which includes $44.173 billion on entertainment and recreation and $93.153 billion on products and services Advertising, $7.522 billion Infrastructure investments, $11.816 billion Total net exports, $4.7 billion
Meek also noted that the sports industry facilitated other economic activities worth $259 billion. The sports industry and the industries supported by it employed 4.65 million people and generated $127 billion in household income. Chelladurai (1999) summed the expenses associated with participation in leisure sports ($32 billion) and with equipment, apparel, and footwear ($71 billion) to highlight that $103 billion was spent for participation in sports and the necessary equipment, apparel, and footwear. The rest of the expenditures were for spectating at sporting events and the associated expenses. The bottom line is that the expenses incurred by the American people constituted more than 60 percent of the total sports industry. The dominance of participant sports is further illustrated by the forty million youth who participate in various sports outside the programs organized by educational institutions. In addition, 6,903,552 students (boys, 4,038,253; girls, 2,865,299) participated in high school athletics (National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations [NFHS], 2004). The total expenditure on sports is most likely to be higher now than it was in 1995. But the pattern of expenditures described (i.e., the distribution between participant sports and spectator sports) is likely to be about the same. Similar statistics are not available in other countries, but we can surmise that the pattern of expenditures on participant and spectator sports would be similar across nations even though the economic worth of sports would vary considerably. Another significant difference between the United States and other countries is that nowhere else in the world is so much emphasis placed on sports in educational institutions as in the United States. In 2001, NCAA schools spent almost $5 billion on their intercollegiate athletic programs
MANAGEMENT
(Fulks 2002a, 2002b). At the top level of competition (Division I-A), NCAA institutions spent an average of $42,000 per athlete during that same year (Fulks 2002a). However, the contributions of the various sporting clubs (i.e., the so-called club system) are not as pronounced as they are in European countries.
Academic Study of Sports Management Given the enormity of the sports industry and the career options available in the industry, it is not surprising that more than 200 universities in North America offer degree programs in sports management. The popularity of sports management as a program of study at the university level is also reflected in other continents. In Europe, for example, several universities from different countries have joined to offer a European masters’ degree in sports management. With the increasing number of institutions offering sports management degree programs in North America, there has also been an effort to evaluate the quality of these programs and endorse them. More specifically, the NASPE and the NASSM have joined to propose a set of standards on the curricular content of the programs and the faculty requirements for programs at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. These guidelines are summarized in Table 1. Only thirty-four undergraduate programs, twenty-six master’s programs, and four doctoral programs had sought the approval of NASPE/ NASSM by July 2004 (NASSM 2004). Concomitant with the popularity of the sports management degree programs in the universities, several scholarly associations have also been formed: ■ ■ ■
■ ■ ■ ■
North American Society for Sport Management European Association for Sport Management Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand Japanese Society for Sport Management Japanese Society of Sports Industry Indian Association for Sport Management Asian Association for Sport Management
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In addition, several scholarly journals are also published in the field: the Journal of Sport Management, the Sport Marketing Quarterly, and the International Journal of Sport Management in North America; the European Sport Management Quarterly and the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship in Europe; and the Sport Management Review in Australia and New Zealand.
Allied Industries Notable among sports industries that support other industries are the shoe and apparel manufacturing industries, including Nike, Adidas, and Reebok. Their involvement in the sports industry takes two forms: 1. The provision of equipment, shoes, and apparel necessary for participation in sports 2. Their sponsorship of individual athletes, teams, organizations, and events, which involves millions of dollars In 2004 alone, Nike committed 338.6 million dollars to endorse several athletes and teams (By the Numbers 2004). Such contributions go a long way in promoting and financing sports teams and events. From this perspective, the sports and the shoe and apparel industries support each other. Tourism is another industry that is significantly associated with the sports industry. According to Brooks (1990), the transportation industry was the first to invest in sports. A New England train company sold train tickets to fans to see the Harvard-Yale crew competition in 1852. In the past decade, tourism for sports purposes “was marked by a growing recognition of the inherent relationship between sport and tourism” (Gibson 2003b, 205). Although there are numerous definitions of sports tourism, Hinch and Higham (2001) note that all share three key dimensions: 1. Spatial dimension: Individuals must leave and eventually return home. 2. Temporal dimension: The travel is temporary. 3. Relationship: The purpose of travel must be sports related.
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Table 1. NASSM/NASPE Guidelines for Program Approval Critical Mass
Content Areas
Undergraduate
Master’s
Doctorate
Curriculum
20% (without Field Experience) of the total number of required degree hours must be in sports management coursework
50% (without Field Experience) of the total number of required degree hours must be in sports management coursework
50% (without Field Experience) of the total number of required degree hours must be in sports management coursework
Faculty
2 full-time faculty members; at least 1 must have terminal degree
2 full-time faculty members; at least 1 must have terminal degree (3 full-time faculty members if both undergraduate and master’s program)
2 full-time faculty members; at least 1 must have terminal degree (3 full-time faculty members if both master’s and doctoral program; 5 full-time faculty members if all 3 degree programs)
Advanced Cognate
✔
Area of Specialization
✔
Background Requirements
Familiarity with content areas in undergraduate and master’s degree sports management programs
Budget & Finance
✔
Communication
✔
Economics
✔
Ethics
✔
Financial Management
✔ ✔
Governance
✔
Legal Aspects
✔
Management & Leadership
✔
✔
Marketing
✔
✔
✔
Public Relations
✔
Research
✔
Sociocultural
✔
✔
Field Experience
✔
✔
✔ Either focus on professoriate (i.e., teaching lower level sports management courses) or on practitioner (i.e., experiences in the sports industry)
Source: Sport Management Program Review Council (SMPRC) 2000.
In Gibson’s (2003a) view, sports-related travel may be undertaken for one of three purposes:
■
■ ■
■
Active participation, such as traveling to take part in a sports event as a participant Spectating at a sporting event; for example, traveling to watch others participate in a sports event
■
■ ■
Nostalgia; for example, traveling to visit sports-related attractions such as halls of fame and famous stadiums Spectators traveling to competitions, $40.82 billion University and college athletic teams traveling to their competitions, $1.09 billion Professional sports teams’ travels, $295 million Other, $2.26 billion
MANAGEMENT
The significance of the mutual interdependence between sports and tourism is reflected in the number of textbooks (see, for example, Standeven and DeKnop 1999; Turco, Riley and Swart 2002) and journal articles written on sports tourism. Many universities have begun to offer specialized courses in sports tourism. Sports tourism also has its own organization, the Sports Tourism International Council; its official publication is the Journal of International Sports Tourism. Another industry that facilitates the sports industry, and at the same time gains from it, is the media. They shower the sports industry with billions of dollars in return for the contracts to cover the sports events or competitions. For example, the National Football League (NFL) is currently being paid $17.6 billion over eight years for the rights to broadcast NFL games. The opportunity to cover these sporting events has become extremely lucrative to the various media outlets. It is so profitable that specialty channels have sprung up (such as ESPN). In some cases, these media conglomerates have begun to vertically integrate the production and distribution of spectator sports to maximize their profits.Vertical integration is gaining control over every part of the value chain in the production and distribution of sports entertainment. The media enterprises buy professional sports franchises so that they will have control over the programming of the events in which their teams participate and the sole control over the media rights for those events.
The Future The field of sports management has grown rapidly. Within a short period, journals have been launched in specialized topical areas such as sports marketing, sports sponsorship, and sports tourism. Further, new associations have sprung up to cater to experts in these specialized fields within sports management. Although all this growth is encouraging, this is still a fledgling field. To be recognized as an established field, sports management has to generate its own body of knowledge. So far, we have been borrowing theoretical frameworks from other
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fields such as sociology, psychology, economics, organizational theory, and organizational behavior. Given the enthusiasm, enterprise, and expertise of the emerging scholars in the field, however, the growth of the field into a recognized and respected field is assured. Packianathan Chelladurai and Brian A. Turner See also Facilities Management; Ownership
Further Reading Amis, J., Pant, N., & Slack, T. (1997). Achieving a sustainable competitive advantage: A resource-based view of sport sponsorship. Journal of Sport Management, 11, 80–96. Brooks, C. (1990). Sponsorship: Strictly business. Athletic Business, 14(10), 59–62. Brown, M. (2002). The size of the sport industry in the United States: Understanding the methodologies. Paper presented at the 10th Congress of the European Association for Sport Management. Jyväskylä, Finland. September 4–7, 2002. By the Numbers. (2004). Charlotte, NC: Street & Smith. Chelladurai, P. (1985). Sport Management: Macro perspectives. London, Canada: Sport Dynamics. Chelladurai, P. (1994). Sport management: Defining the field. European Journal for Sport Management, 1 (1), 7–21. Chelladurai, P. (1999). Sport management: Quo vadis? Keynote presentation at the 7th Congress of the European Association for Sport Management. Thessaloniki, Greece. September 16–19, 1999. Chelladurai, P. (2001). Managing organizations for sport & physical activity: A systems perspective. Scottsdale, AZ: Holcomb Hathaway. Delpy, L. (1998). An overview of sport tourism: Building towards a dimensional framework. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 4(1), 23–38. Fulks, D. L. (2002a). Revenues and expenses of Divisions I and II intercollegiate athletic programs: Financial trends and relationships— 2001. Indianapolis: National Collegiate Athletic Association. Fulks, D. L. (2002b). Revenues and expenses of Division III intercollegiate athletic programs: Financial trends and relationships— 2001. Indianapolis: National Collegiate Athletic Association. Gibson, H. J. (2003a). Sport tourism. In J. B. Parks & J. Quarterman (Eds.), Contemporary sport management (2nd ed.; pp. 337–360). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Gibson, H. J. (2003b). Sport tourism: An introduction to the special issue. Journal of Sport Management, 17, 205–213. Hager, S. A. (1984). Curricular questions confronting sport management: A summary. In B. K. Zanger & J. B. Parks (Eds.), Sport management curricula: The business and education nexus (pp. 118– 120). Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University. Hasenfeld, Y. (1983). Human service organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hasenfeld, Y., & English, R. A. (Eds.) Human Service Organizations. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Howard, D. R., & Crompton, J. L. (2004). Financing sport (2nd ed.). Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.
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IEG Forecast: Sponsorship spending growth will slow in 2001. (2000, December 18). IEG Sponsorship Report, 19(1), 4–5. Mason, J. G., Higgins, C. R., & Wilkinson, O. J. (1981). Sport administration education 15 years later. Athletic Purchasing and Facilities, 5(1), 44–45. Mullin, B. J., Hardy, S., & Sutton, W. A. (2000). Sport marketing (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. NASPE/NASSM Joint Task Force on Sport Management Curriculum and Accreditation. (1993). Standards for curriculum and voluntary accreditation of sport management education programs. Journal of Sport Management, 7, 159–170. NASSM. (2004). NASSM. Retrieved October 22, 2004, from http:// www.nassm.com. National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations (NFHS). (2004). High school athletics participation. Retrieved October 22, 2004, from http://www.nfhs.org/scriptcontent/VA _ Custom/SurveyResources/2003 _ 04 _ Participation _ Summary.pdf. Parks, J. B., & Zanger, B. R. K (1990). Definition and direction. In J. B. Parks & B. R. Zanger (Eds.), Sport and fitness management career strategies and professional content (pp. 1–14). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Pitts, B. G., & Stotlar, D. K. (1996). Fundamentals of sport marketing. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology Slack, T. (1997). Understanding sport organizations: The application of organization theory. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Sport Management Program Review Council (SMPRC). (2000). Sport management program standards and review protocol. Reston, VA: NASPE. Standeven, J., & DeKnop. (1999). Sport tourism. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Stevens, T., & van den Broek, M. (1997). Sport and tourism: Natural partners in strategies for tourism development. Tourism Recreation Research, 22(2), 1–3. Stiers, W. F. (1999). Managing sport, fitness, and recreation programs: Concepts and practices. New York: Allyn & Bacon. Turco, D. M., Riley, R., & Swart, K. (2002). Sport tourism. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Van der Smissen, B. (1984). Sport management curricula: An idea whose time has come! In B. K. Zanger & J. B. Parks (Eds.), Sport management curricula: The business and education nexus (pp. 5–18). Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University. VanderZwaag, H. J. (1984). Sport management in schools and colleges. New York: Wiley. Zeigler, E. F. (1951). A history of professional preparation for physical education in the United States, 1861–1948. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Oregon.
Maple Leaf Gardens
H
istorian William Kilbourn noted, “If I were asked by some stranger to North American culture to show him the most important religious building in Canada I would take him to Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gar-
dens.” Maple Leaf Gardens was the primary ice hockey venue and indoor arena in Toronto, Canada—and home to its most famous tenant, the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Toronto Maple Leafs—from 1931 to 1999.
History In 1927, Toronto entrepreneur Conn Smythe and a group of backers purchased the local NHL team, the St. Patrick’s. The club—renamed the Maple Leafs by Smythe—played in the fifteen-year-old Mutual Street Arena, which held approximately 8,000 fans seated and standing. The NHL’s commercial landscape, however, was shifting dramatically in the late 1920s with the expansion of the league to the United States, the influx of U.S. capital, and the construction of large, modern arenas in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit. In response, Smythe sought a new, larger arena, one that the Maple Leafs owned, eschewing the onerous lease payments the club faced at Mutual Street Arena. On 12 November 1931, in the midst of a debilitating depression and five-and-a-half months after ground was broken, Maple Leaf Gardens opened with its inaugural hockey match—the Maple Leafs hosting the Chicago Blackhawks—played in front of 12,500 fans. Besides professional ice hockey, “the Gardens” hosted a wide variety of one-off sporting events (from six-day bicycle races, popular in the 1930s, to a Muhammad Ali heavyweight boxing match in 1966), regular track-andfield meets and professional wrestling matches, music concerts, and political rallies. Nevertheless, the building is most commonly associated with NHL hockey and the Toronto Maple Leafs. In its sixty-eight-year history, Maple Leaf Gardens was home to eleven teams that won the Stanley Cup (the NHL’s championship trophy, awarded annually). Former greats such as Charlie Conacher, Ted Kennedy, Frank Mahovolich, and Darryl Sittler were among the many members of the Hockey Hall of Fame who skated for the Maple Leafs at the Gardens. Radio’s emergence in the 1920s contributed significantly to the growth of commercial sport in Canada, and from the time that Smythe took control of the NHL team in 1927, Foster Hewitt became widely known by
MAPLE LEAF GARDENS
broadcasting games on local radio. He was so integral to the success of the club that, in 1931, Hewitt was asked by Smythe to consult on the location of the broadcast booth in the new arena. Hewitt’s “Gondola” was situated in the rafters of Maple Leaf Gardens and before the end of the 1930s had become famous as the home of “Hockey Night in Canada.” These regular Saturday night national radio broadcasts were sponsored by corporations such as General Motors and Imperial Oil, and, in 1936, six million Canadians reportedly tuned in to Hewitt’s broadcast of a Maple Leafs playoff game (at the time the country’s population was only eight million). With the introduction of television in 1952, hockey telecasts—most hosted at Maple Leaf Gardens— became a staple of Canadian popular culture.
Maple Leaf Gardens Today From the early 1930s until the early 1970s, Maple Leaf Gardens and Montreal’s Forum were the only arenas in Canada hosting NHL hockey, and the former became associated with professional hockey in English-speaking Canada. This was largely because every Saturday night, Canadians from the Atlantic to Pacific coasts tuned in to watch (or listen to) not just NHL hockey, but NHL hockey broadcast live from Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens. Through “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcasts, Maple Leaf Gardens was, within the public imagination, the “home” for Canada’s most popular sport. This largely remained the case despite the fact that the hockey club has not captured the Stanley Cup since 1967 and suffered at the hands of megalomaniacal owner Harold Ballard for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Creating a home for hockey was an aspiration consistent with the rhetoric used by Smythe during the Gardens’ construction. Indeed, the mythology that surrounds Maple Leaf Gardens often credits Smythe with saving hockey in Toronto and building one of the game’s great temples. More critical scholarship, however, offers an alternate view. While a storehouse of memories for many hockey fans, Maple Leaf Gardens can also be viewed as evidence of the growing capitalist hegemony of commercial hockey over alternate sport
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forms in the interwar years. This sport culture promoted a particular brand of masculinity, which revealed itself both in the popular media’s valorization of physical play on the ice and in the more recent, tragic abuse of young boys by some members of the Gardens’ staff over a number of years, a scandal whose full magnitude was not revealed until the 1990s. The Maple Leafs played their final game at the Gardens on 13 February 1999. The event was marked by a 75-minute on-ice ceremony, broadcast nationwide, that featured Maple Leaf players past and present and focused almost exclusively on the building’s heritage as a hockey arena. Since then Maple Leaf Gardens has been home to junior ice hockey, professional lacrosse, and an auction house, as the arena’s contents—seats, exit signs, urinals, everything—have been sold off to memorabilia collectors. The building itself, however, still stands at the corner of Church and Carlton Streets in downtown Toronto, protected to a degree by its designation as a heritage property under the provincial Ontario Heritage Act. As of June 2004, negotiations were underway to sell Maple Leaf Gardens, its outer structure preserved, to Loblaws Inc., a national chain of grocery stores. Russell Field
Further Reading Cruise, D., & Griffiths, A. (1991). Net worth: Exploding the myths of pro hockey. Toronto: Viking. Diamond, D. (Ed.). (1999). Maple Leaf Gardens: Memories & dreams, 1931–1999. Toronto: Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. Field, R. (2002). Passive participation: The selling of spectacle and the construction of Maple Leaf Gardens, 1931. Sport History Review, 33(1), 35–50. Field, R. (2002). Profits, playoffs, and the building of Maple Leafs Gardens. In C. Howell (Ed.), Putting it on Ice, Volume I: Hockey and Cultural Identities. Halifax, Canada: Gorsebrook Research Institute. Gruneau, R., & Whitson, D. (1993). Hockey night in Canada: Sport, identities and cultural politics. Toronto: Garamond. Houston, W. (1989). Inside Maple Leaf Gardens: The rise and fall of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Kidd, B. (1996). The struggle for Canadian sport. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Obodiac, S. (1981). Maple Leaf Gardens: Fifty years of history. Toronto: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
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Smythe, C., & Young, S. (1981). If you can’t beat ’em in the alley. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Tedesco, T. (1996). Offside: The battle for control of Maple Leaf Gardens. Toronto: Viking.
Maracana Stadium
M
aracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is the largest soccer stadium in the world. It was originally named “Estadio Municipal Angelo Mendes de Morais” after the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, but locals dubbed it “Maracana” after a nearby river. In 1966 the stadium was renamed “Estadio Mario Filho” in honor of the Jornal dos Sports journalist who had been a loud proponent of its construction in 1947. However, it is still most commonly known as “Maracana.” Built to host soccer’s 1950 World Cup competition, Maracana Stadium is a monument of near-religious significance to the people of Brazil.The stadium, when full, has a carnival atmosphere of throbbing drums, singing fans, glaring floodlights, billowing flags, and pregame sorcederos, who perform voodoo and prayer rituals. Its theatrical spectacle is an appropriate metaphor for the grandness of Brazil.
History To be considered as the host of the 1950 World Cup, Brazil required a world-class stadium. Although Mario Filho’s articles advocating a municipal stadium were popular, the subject was controversial because many community members felt government funds should be used to build hospitals instead. After intense debate, in 1947 Mayor Angelo Mendes de Morais signed Law 57, which authorized construction of the stadium in Rio de Janeiro, which was then the capital of Brazil. The project was awarded to architects Rafael Galvao, Orlando da Silva Azevedo, Pedro Paulo Bastos, and Antonio Augusto Dias Carneiro. Construction began 2 August 1948 and took almost two years to complete, using 9,000 metric tons of iron and 500,000 bags of cement. Ten thousand laborers (mostly economic mi-
grants) and hundreds of soldiers operating heavy machinery worked day and night. The result of 7.7 million hours of labor is a stadium that occupies 195,600 square meters—almost twice the size of New York City’s Ellis Island. The uppermost perimeter of Maracana measures 944 meters, which, if stretched out in a line, would be more than eight U.S. football fields in length. The highest point of the stadium is 32 meters, which is about the height of a thirteen-story building. The original maximum capacity was legally 183,354 (much of it standing room only), which was 43,000 more than that of the largest stadium at the time, Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland. The inaugural soccer game was played on 17 June 1950, between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The first goal in Maracana Stadium was scored by Rio’s legendary midfielder, Valdir “Didi” Pereira (1929–2001). However, Sao Paulo won 3–1.
Maracanazo On 16 July, amid what was most likely the largest attendance in the history of soccer, Brazil faced Uruguay in the final match of the 1950 World Cup. More than 173,000 tickets were sold, but many accounts estimate the attendance at closer to 200,000 because of gate crashers and small children who were admitted for free. Almost 10 percent of Rio de Janeiro’s population attended the game. Brazil had only to tie Uruguay to win its first World Cup. However, in the last minutes of the game, Alcides Gigghia of Uruguay kicked a goal that changed a tie into a 2–1 loss for Brazil. Gigghia said many years later, “Only three people have, with just one motion, silenced the Maracana: Frank Sinatra, Pope John Paul II and me” (Bellos 2002, 52). Most South Americans are aware of this game, which Argentineans called maracanazo, which stems from the Spanish slang macanazo, meaning “huge goof.”
Physical Features Built entirely of reinforced concrete in a massive oval of two tiers, Maracana Stadium contains one of the first
MARATHON AND DISTANCE RUNNING
modern versions of the “dry moat,” which separates spectators from the field of play. Three meters wide, this protective moat has been copied by every major stadium in Brazil and by those in some other countries as well. The grass pitch (playing field) is 110 meters by 75 meters (the length of a U.S. football field but 29 yards wider). Because of the rainy climate, a cantilevered roof spanning 30 meters covers the two tiers and some of the flats between the moat and the stands. The inner ring of the lower tier, known as the “geral,” was designed for standing spectators only and offers poor sightlines and limited access to concourse areas. The best seats (cadeira especials) are accessible by elevator and offer a midfield vantage point and fence protection from the competing rooting sections on either side. Only limited street parking is available, so most fans take mass transportation to the games.
Facilities Today The state government—not the city government—of Rio de Janeiro still owns and operates Maracana Stadium, although an attempt to sell it to private parties was made in 1996. Maracana also hosts nonsporting events, including religious services, college entrance exams, and concerts. Because of the dangers of overcrowding, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the Union of European Football Association (UEFA) have stepped up stadium safety requirements. From 1962 to 1996 Maracana underwent renovations for safety measures, technological enhancements, FIFA regulations, and restoration. Because of these renovations, capacity has been reduced to 103,022.
to build a more modern stadium to host the 2014 World Cup, but polls showed most soccer fans to be opposed to this proposal. Preserving the stadium in which Brazilian soccer star Pele scored his thousandth goal appears to be a matter of national identity. In March 2003 FIFA awarded the 2014 World Cup competition to South America, and all ten South American nations voted Brazil as the continent’s only candidate to host it. Brazil holds the record for most World Cup victories with five yet has hosted the World Cup only once. If the residents of Rio have their way, 2014 will avenge the tragedy of the maracanazo, and Maracana Stadium will finally fulfill its destiny. Julie Huffman
Further Reading Bellos, A. (2002). Futebol:The Brazilian way of life. London: Bloomsbury. Inglis, S. (1997, July). Rio not so grand. Panstadia International Quarterly Report, 4(3), 22–24. Lever, J. (1983). Soccer madness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moura, G. (1998). O Rio corre para o Maracana. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Fundacao Getulio Vargas Editora. Sergio, R. (2000). Maracana: 50 anos de gloria. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Ediouro. Shulman, K. (2004, September 18). Maracana. Retrieved September 30, 2004, from http://www.onlyagame.org/shows/2004/09/ 20040918 _ 8.asp SUDERJ Maracana/Estadio Mario Filho. (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2004, from http://www.suderj.rj.gov.br/Maracana/main.asp Touguinho, O. (1998). Maracana: Onde Todos Sao Iguais. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Relume Dumara.
Marathon and Distance Running
The Future Today soccer attendance at the stadium tops out at thirty thousand to fifty thousand per game. This range is a far cry from the club-attendance world record of 177,656 set in 1963, when local clubs Flamengo and Fluminense faced each other. In 2002 controversial Brazilian Soccer Federation president Ricardo Teixeira proposed to raze Maracana
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T
he marathon race has its origins in a story that merges history with legend. Although scholars have debated the factual content of the story, it has inspired both art and the modern race. The story involves the exploits of a military messenger on the battlefields of ancient Greece.The first account of
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Lorraine Moller winning the Avon Marathon in Paris in 1984.
this story appears in the ancient Greek historian Herodotus’s The Histories. Writing in approximately 450 BCE, he told the story of the Battle of Marathon, which had taken place some forty years earlier. He told of the arrival on the plain of Marathon of the Persians, who came to conquer Athens. Greatly outnumbered, the Athenian generals sent a messenger named “Pheidippides” to Sparta to ask for troops with which to defend their land. Pheidippides ran to deliver his message, covering the 241 kilometers between Athens and Sparta in less than twenty-four hours. However, he returned without the required troops. The Spartans could send help only six days later, which would not be in time for the battle. This development forced the small Athenian army to fight with what they had. Their army, ten thousand men strong, crested the hills surrounding Marathon and literally ran into battle, surprising the Persians. The element of surprise resulted in Greek victory despite all odds. The Syrian rhetorician Lucian took the story further and created the basis of the story that is most frequently quoted today. He described Pheidippides running once more, this time after the successful battle, from Marathon to Athens, to announce the Greek victory. According to Lucian, as soon as Pheidippides delivered his message, he dropped dead from exhaustion. Whether the ancient runner of Marathon was legend or real is hardly material to the impact that his story has made on art and literature as well as on the development of the race during the nineteenth century and its appeal in the twenty-first century. The heroism of the runner who gave his life to deliver a message appealed to the imagination of the European Romantic movement (a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the eighteenth century) and its attachment to Greek glory. The English poets Lord Byron and Robert Browning both referred to the magic of Mara-
thon, with the latter paying tribute to Pheidippides in an ode by that name, referring to him as a noble messenger who “ran like fire.” The French poet Armand Renaud referred to the soldier of Marathon: “he was but a solider, one amongst thousands.” Renaud’s short elegy highlighted the noble humility of the simple runner who died happy with glory in his heart. The re-creation of Pheidippides’s exploits fascinated French grammarian Michel Breal, a member of the Institut de France and of the first French Olympic Committee. He offered a silver trophy to be awarded at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 to the winner of a race to be run over the course of the legendary messenger. Although some critics considered the modern Olympic movement in general, and Breal’s gesture in particular, as debasing antiquity through the pretext of promoting it, the marathon was an appealing event in the eyes of the public. This appeal may have been because of the concurrent fascination with feats of pedestrianism, which had been staged since the mid-eighteenth century. This professional race walking or jogging attracted both athletes and spectators to events of up to 1,600 kilometers. These events pitted athletes against time or distance and resulted in increasingly amazing performances associated with large wagers and big crowds of spectators.
Olympics The first Olympic marathon, on the other hand, provided the stage for an amateur endurance event and served as a catalyst for other long-distance running
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events. The Boston Marathon, which is still run today, was first held in 1897, one year after the first modern Olympics in Athens. The distance of the early marathons was variable: Athens, 40 kilometers; Paris Olympic Marathon, 40.260 kilometers; and the 1908 London Marathon, 42.263. The imperial distance of 26 miles, 385 yards was arrived at by tailoring the race such that it could start at Windsor Castle and finish at the Royal Box in the Olympic stadium in England. The current race distance is 42.195 kilometers. The first Olympic marathon winner was a Greek, Spiridon Louys, who finished in just under three hours, much to the delight of the fifty thousand spectators in the Olympic stadium. This victory was the first and only major victory for the home nation at the games and was further highlighted when eight more Greek runners were in the finishing field of nine. In subsequent Olympic Games winners came from all corners of the globe. Ethiopia claims the greatest number of Olympic marathon victories with the victories of Abebe Bikila and his compatriot, Mamo Wolde, in 1960, 1964, and 2000. Their performances were commemorated by the performances of Fatuma Roba, winner of the women’s marathon in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996, and of Gezsaahegne Abera in the men’s event of 2000. Bikila’s 1960 performance was a landmark. Not only did his marathon victory give Africa its first gold medal, but also his race erased the Olympic record set by Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia in 1952 by almost eight minutes. Quite spectacularly, Bikila ran the entire race without shoes. He repeated his victory in 1964 despite having undergone an appendectomy only thirty-five days earlier and improved the Olympic time by three minutes. Twelve years would pass until his time would be erased by Waldemar Cierpinski of East Germany with 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 55 seconds. Bikila’s winning time of 2 hours, 12 minutes, and 11 seconds would have placed him in the top ten of every Olympic marathon ever run and would have allowed him outright victory in all but five. Ethiopia is not alone in producing multiple marathon champions. The United States has won three men’s vic-
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tories (1904, 1908, and 1972), as well as the first woman’s marathon title, won by Joan Benoit Samuelson in 1984. French athletes also have won three times: 1900, 1928, and 1956. Countries to win two Olympic marathons include Finland, Argentina, Japan, Portugal, and East Germany. Women’s involvement in the marathon was slower to develop for a range of reasons. Pierre de Coubertin, president of the International Olympic Committee, like many people of his era, was not supportive of demonstrations of female exertion. The nineteenth-century approach to the health of middle-class women was to protect what was seen as innate feminine fragility. European middle-class women were confined to genteel recreation and demure in activity in order to protect their role as bearers of children. The restriction of activities resulted from a belief that women lose valuable energy through menstruation and childbirth and thus need to conserve a limited reserve of energy. Further, people were concerned not only for women and the depletion of their vital reserves, but also for their reproductive capacity, which, many people believed, could be damaged if women were overtaxed. Sport, hence, was a male preserve to a great extent. Such logic was not applied across all classes, and whereas European middle-class women were involved in genteel activities that precluded sporting competitions, their working-class sisters participated in pedestrianism. Pedestrianism, although indeed a demonstration of physical prowess, was also, and perhaps predominantly, a commercial spectacle with wagers and financial gain at stake.
Marathon Women However, one woman, if not two, was reported to have run in or about the 1896 Athens Olympics. According to a French-language newspaper, a woman named “Melpomene” ran from Marathon to Athens in a trial but was not permitted to start the race, and another woman, Stamata Revithi, ran the course the day after the Olympic event. Although almost a hundred years would pass before women could officially participate in
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To give any less than your best is to sacrifice a gift. ■ STEVE PREFONTAINE
an Olympic marathon, their early efforts underscore the fact that in the minds of at least some women, longdistance running was neither incompatible with, nor detrimental to, womanhood. The foray of women into long-distance running was hindered by the 1928 Olympics, where the women’s 800-meter race was cautiously introduced and then immediately withdrawn as officials were dismayed by the state of exhaustion of the runners as they finished on a hot summer day. This race was not reintroduced until 1960.The 1,500-meter race was introduced in 1972, and no race longer than that was introduced until 1984— which was when the first Olympic women’s marathon was run—when the 5,000-meter races and 10,000-meter races were added. With long-distance races for women excluded from the Olympic program, the International Amateur Athletics Federation, the governing body for the sport, and its national affiliates did not sanction long-distance events, and women were confined to sprints and middle-distance races. However, a number of women participated unofficially in long-distance events. Among the most significant was Great Britain’s Violet Piercy, who in 1926 covered the official marathon distance in 3 hours, 40 minutes, and 22 seconds on the Polytechnic Harrier’s course. Over the years other women runners attacked the distance around the world. In 1963 U.S. runner Merry Lepper took three minutes off Piercy’s time, running in the Culver City Marathon. One year later 800-meter and cross-country runner Millie Sampson of New Zealand was invited by her male clubmates to participate in a marathon to raise the profile of their running club. She set a world’s best performance of 3 hours and 19 minutes. However, another woman’s performance was the most significant in the emergence of the women’s marathon. Kathrine Switzer of the United States ran in the 1967 Boston Marathon, registered as “KV Switzer.” When the race organizer realized that Switzer was a woman, he attempted to oust her physically. This attempt took place in front of a media truck, which recorded the attempt. Switzer finished the race, was exposed not only to the wrath of the Amateur Athletic
Union but also to the public gaze, and indeed caught their fancy. She went on to become one of the more effective advocates for the inclusion of women in longdistance running. While U.S. women were discovering the running craze and fighting for their inclusion in long-distance running events, in Europe the German doctor and coach Ernst van Aaken was helping women to train for long-distance running events. He believed that women are physiologically well adapted to endurance running, and he led a number of young women, including Liane Winter, to world records. Winter set the world record for the marathon in 1975 with 2 hours, 42 minutes, and 24 seconds. Van Aaken also organized the first world championship for women, which demonstrated both the interest in and the quality of women’s marathoning—an important prerequisite for Olympic inclusion. The first Olympic marathon for women was the result of lobbying by a variety of proponents but most importantly by women marathoners themselves.The context of 1970s feminist awareness coincided with the jogging craze, and the juncture of these two elements resulted in the inclusion of the women’s marathon on the Olympic program.
Jogging Craze However important the Olympics may have been in the revival of the marathon as a modern sporting contest, the marathon, as well as other long-distance running events, does not owe its popularity to the Olympics alone. The jogging craze of the 1970s has played an important role in the marathon and other long-distance running events. Although recreational sports have featured widely in health and social recommendations since the nineteenth century, during the second half of the twentieth century the idea of going for a long, slow run for physical, emotional, and social benefits emerged. Numerous books about the benefits of long, slow running to general health and fitness were published. One of the earliest was written by the New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard. His athletes included three
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Marathon and Distance Running Native American Running The extraordinary speed and endurance of Native American runners is legendary. The following letter to the editor of the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine in 1835 describes the role of long-distance running in the Osage nation. A recent residence of a few weeks at the Osage Agency enabled me to procure some information relative to the manners and customs of the Osages; and I transmit for publication, should you deem the subject likely to interest your readers, some notes made at the time. . . . To beg, is no disgrace; to be a dextrous thief is an honour. . . . Their appreciation of theft, arises from the danger incurred and bravery displayed in stealing horses from their enemies. Two warriors once lurked about a town until they ascertained where the horses were kept, and selecting thirty or forty of the best, escaped with their prize. Horses are stolen by night, as their loss is always known at dawn of day, if not earlier, a few hours start only is obtained; and pursuit is made in great force for several days, until the property is recovered, or the pursuers approach so near the towns of their enemies, that they abandon it. A party may only capture horses enough to mount a portion of its members, for their expeditions are usually undertaken on foot, and then is evinced the extraordinary speed and endurance of the Osages; for knowing that pursuit will be made in overwhelming numbers, the cry is sauve qui peut, and those who have been so fortunate as to secure horses, think not of waiting for the pedestrians.These last, aware that if overtaken their doom is death, run until late at night, when exhausted nature requiring repose, they snatch three or four hours sleep, but start before day, and run until night again affords them a short and perilous slumber, and the parties (mounted and pedestrian) pass and repass each other until in safety. To run sixty miles between sunrise and sunset is not an uncommon performance; and four men are known, on one occasion, to have run seventy-five. Messieurs A. P. & P. L. Chonteau, in February 1832, when the nation was in council at the Saline, the residence of A. P. C. Esq., offered a wager to the Indian Commissioners, who had expressed some doubts of the relations of their performances, the losers to provide a feast for those
Osages present, that they could produce a runner, who should start from that place at sunrise with a letter, proceed to Fort Gibson—the distance estimated between forty and forty-five miles—and return with an answer before night. To attain this degree of speed, great practice is necessary, and in addition to the efforts made on their war, horse stealing, and hunting expeditions, they are frequently running with each other when in their towns, the distance about four miles. When different towns meet on their hunts, it is common for a match to be made between the best runner of each, a prize being offered and a day appointed, to allow time for preparation, the distance from four to ten miles. Great ambition is felt to be acknowledged the best runner of the town and nation; and no exertion spared to attain the distinction. At these meetings, the sports commence with the boys and girls of one town competing with their own sex in the other; and as the excitement increases, the men and women contend in the lists respectively, and the chiefs proclaim a day when each town will start its champion, and offer a prize as already mentioned. Each village supports its champion, and all bet; guns, horses, blankets, ornaments are staked, and not unfrequently, the breech-cloth of the man and the petticoat of the woman, are deposited, and the bettors await the result in a state of nudity. Horse races are also run, the distance from three to fifteen miles; and it has been remarked, that the band or town of White-hair, has generally proved victor, when the men contended; but the Big Hill band when horses were run. This system establishing beyond cavil, who are the best runners; these are selected to act as scouts and spies, and upon their reporting the vicinity of an enemy, their position and numbers, if the latter justify the attempt, the runners are sent as a decoy, to hover within two or three miles of the foe, until the latter give chase, when an ambush near their own camp having been formed, some eight or ten miles from that of the enemy, it being supposed that with such an advantage in the start, their runners can run that distance before being overtaken, even by horsemen; they surprise and slaughter the unsuspecting pursuers, if to save their runners they are not obliged to forego the surprise, and to hasten to their relief. . . . Source: American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. (1935, May).
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Olympic medalists in the 1960 Rome Olympics over distances from 800 meters to the marathon. In 1961 Lydiard wrote Run to the Top, which stressed the need for cardiovascular fitness both for health and well-being and for competitive runners over all distances. In a way this book opened the door for people to use running as something other than just preparation for competition and performance, and during the period of social transformation of the 1960s and 1970s running emerged from its status as an elite sport to appeal to a wider public. How-to books and popular magazines flooded the market, encouraging the euphoric benefits of exercise and advocating jogging as the means. In North America Runners’ World Magazine hit the newsstands during the early 1970s, as did Long Slow Distance by George Henderson, Jogging by Bill Bowerman, and The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx. In Europe Ernst van Aaken wrote the Van Aaken Method, which focused on the benefits of running not only to aid athletes but also to prevent the “diseases of civilization.” Noel Tamini in Switzerland published the French-language magazine Spiridon, which introduced an attitude toward running that, although respectful of performance, touted the physiological, social, spiritual, and emotional benefits. The ranks of competitive runners grew, but they also attempted to enunciate a clear distinction between running and jogging. However, runners and joggers often merged at popular long-distance events, running distances from 5 kilometers to the marathon. Running was a religion for some, and the “runner’s high” was lauded as something akin to a spiritual state. The business world recognized a commercial market in running and runners. Running brought with it events to sponsor and shoes, clothing, and equipment to sell. Running is an effective marketing tool and is effectively marketed by corporations who use runners, their race numbers, and their T-shirts as the billboard for their goods and services. Today, although competitive long-distance track events may have declining numbers, off-track competition, in the
form of road running, continues to gain in popularity. Although the arduous marathon was previously seen as the ultimate physical challenge, the entry of a wide range of running enthusiasts into the competitive arena transformed the marathon and other running events into less formidable challenges. Furthermore, the multiplication of other endurance events designed for a wide public, such as triathlon, ironman, and multisport events, means that completing a marathon no longer represents the same level of heroism that it did for Pheidippides. The road race and the marathon also have become special events within the urban setting. Big cities all have their marathon or 10-kilometer road race: Boston, New York, London, Berlin, and Paris close their streets to automobile traffic and open them to foot traffic, with crowds lining the streets to applaud the performance of thousands of runners. Long-distance races have become festivals that celebrate a city or historical events. The Boston Marathon, for example, commemorates Paul Revere’s ride, and the London Marathon honors the special link that runners develop with the city. “For a day,” reads the London Marathon’s website, any runner can say that “London belongs to me!” As Pamela Cooper points out, “The city creates the marathon; the marathon serves the city” (Cooper 1998, 177). However, festivities go beyond a race itself. Merchandise expositions, pasta parties, and social affairs accompany most important road races. These developments challenge the marathon and other long-distance running events as an institution. Although the number of participants in road running and marathon races continues to rise, this rise is not reflected in a rise in affiliation with the governing bodies of the sport in many Western countries. Contemporary preoccupation with thinness and health, rather than athletic performance, explains the numbers of people jogging down the streets of practically any town, and finishers’ medals and T-shirts motivate the racers more than does the victory podium. Annemarie Jutel See also Boston Marathon
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Further Reading Cooper, P. (1998). The American marathon. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Jutel, A. (2003). “Thou dost run as in flotation”: Femininity, reassurance and the emergence of the women’s marathon. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 20(3), 17–36. Lennartz, K. (1994). Two women ran the marathon in 1896. Citius, Altius, Fortius, 2(1), 19–20. Lucas, J. A. (1976). A history of the marathon race: 490 BC to 1975. Journal of Sport History, 3(2), 120–138.
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he sport industry has, by tradition, been divided into for-profit and nonprofit sectors. The for-profit segment included commercial sporting goods operations, professional teams, resort and recreation centers, sports and fitness clubs, and the like. Nonprofit entities ranged from amateur sport organizations and school sport associations to civic and recreational sport. However, the last twenty-five years have brought a change to the sport industry. The line between for-profit and nonprofit has all but disappeared. The 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal was a watershed event in sports. Since its modern revival, the Olympics had been funded essentially by national governments and host cities. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) contributed funds from its television contracts, and international sport federations supported the holding of their events during the games. However, the enormous financial deficit generated from the 1976 games changed the playing field in sport. Sport organizations began to receive less government funding and were often required to generate more funds of their own. Although the trend started in North America, similar developments occurred around the world. Globally, sport organizations would need to either break even or turn a profit. Given this phenomenon, scholars in sport management proposed a new paradigm for segmenting the sport industry that divided it on the basis of function rather than profit. One segment is the performance seg-
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ment, which includes sports as offered to consumers— either as spectators or participants. Within this category are such activities as amateur and professional sport, fitness and recreational sport, and private membersupported sport (i.e., private sport clubs). A second segment in the sport industry is sport production. This segment encompasses products and services needed for the production of sports and sporting events. Sports equipment and apparel fall into this segment. In addition, the segment includes professionals working to produce sport; namely, coaches, trainers, officials, and sport governing organizations. Sport facilities are also classified as being part of this segment. The final segment addresses sport promotion. Within this segment would be sport media, sponsorship, endorsement, and promotional products and events.
Marketing 101 The basics of sport marketing reside substantially in the business discipline of marketing. Marketing has been defined as the utilization of a company’s resources for the purpose of meeting a consumer need. The focus of marketing is therefore the consumer, not the product. Antiquated approaches to marketing typically focused on selling a product: a so-called product orientation of selling whatever it is that you make. A more contemporary approach is to examine what it is that consumers need and then produce products to meet those needs. Thus, contemporary marketing is predicated, not on the needs of the seller, but rather on the needs of the buyer.
Sport Marketing Pitts and Stotlar (2002, 79) define sport marketing as “the process of designing and implementing activities for the production, pricing, promotion and distribution of a sport or sport business product to satisfy the needs or desires of consumers and to achieve the company’s objectives.” While it may seem simplistic to just add the word sport to existing definitions, there are several aspects of marketing in the sport industry that differentiate
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it from standard business marketing. This is particularly true of marketing sports events. Sports contests are, by their very nature, unpredictable. You never know the outcome ahead of time (this is why professional wrestling is now classified as entertainment as opposed to sport!). When you purchase a consumer good, you know exactly what you are getting. Not true in sport. You might attend a game that goes down in history as the best ever. On the other hand, it may be boring and uneventful. To further complicate the matter, sport is intangible. What constitutes a first-rate contest for one person may not be the same as it is for another. In recent years some fans have complained that Formula 1 racing is too predictable. Only a few teams have a real chance of winning, and at times the championship has been decided long before the schedule is complete. In contrast others may be satisfied with the fact that “their team” continues to show its superiority over all challengers. Standard production for consumer products begins with manufacturing and follows a prescribed distribution process until the product reaches the consumer. Sports events have no distribution. They are produced and consumed at the same time. This also means that sports events are perishable; there is no shelf life. If tickets for the event are not sold today, there is no tomorrow. Determining consumer behavior is also difficult in sport. Why do people go to fitness clubs? You might assume that they go to improve their level of fitness. However, some would argue that they might go to see and be seen socially. Why do consumers buy Nike golf balls? Is it because the product dynamics of the ball are
Modern sports facilities are venues for the marketing of all types of products.
particularly suited to the their game? Or could it be that they just want to be like Tiger Woods? Unlike most consumer products, sports events are dependent on social facilitation; they are consumed by people in groups. Few people would get together with a group of friends to go to the store and purchase an electric drill. Not so with sports. Friends congregate to follow their favorite team in the stadium, in front of the television, and in local sports bars. Collectively, these factors present unique sets of challenges for sport marketers. They also present extraordinary opportunities. Sport events do not clearly fall into a category of product or service. Products have a physical presence, which customers can touch, feel, and see. They are produced, distributed, and then purchased. For example, a football is manufactured from raw materials, packaged, shipped to warehouses, trucked to retail stores, and then sold to consumers. Services, however, are intangible in that the consumer does not own anything. As with events, sport services are produced and consumed at the same time. Consumers purchase a tennis lesson that is produced at the club and delivered on request. There is often no chance to experience the service before it is purchased.
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The sport industry is dominated by services. Major service providers include health and fitness centers, sport clubs, professional and amateur sports teams, and stadiums and arenas. Judging the quality of a product is accomplished by examining the item and assessing its materials and performance characteristics. Evaluating service quality is more difficult. While there are some tangible aspects to service delivery in the physical facilities (i.e., colors, seat width, décor, ticket access), other aspects of service cannot be measured until the service is delivered. Research in the area has identified a range of elements that consumers use in assessing service quality. Reliability, responsiveness, and empathy are key elements. Reliability relates to the service performing in a dependable and accurate manner. Was the service provided at the agreed upon time? Did it measure up to expectations and industry standards for quality? Responsiveness comes through in the willingness of the service provider to help customers and pay prompt attention to their needs. We have become a world of immediate gratification. Consumers know what they want, and they want it now! They have little tolerance for standing in line or inattentive sales staff. Empathy or “caring” about the customer also affects consumer satisfaction. In today’s market there are plenty of choices for sport services, and if your organization does not show a sincere concern for the customer, the customer will go elsewhere. In the end customer satisfaction is based on the relationship between the consumer’s expectation and actual delivery.
The Sport Marketing Process In the 1960s business leader and scholar E. Jerome McCarthy came up with the concept of the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. This concept formed the framework around which marketers discussed marketing processes for many decades. This paradigm is still relevant today, although some modifications to it are clearly evident. Sport marketers have also embraced this framework. A sport product includes actual products as well as services. Sport products include shoes, equipment, and clothing and meet con-
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sumer needs within the designated group of customers. Sport organizations sell not only the “core” product, but also product extensions. These “extensions” include things like concessions and souvenirs as supplements to the basic product or service. For example, tennis centers often offer a “pro” shop where customers can purchase tubes of tennis balls. Most consumers would not make a special trip to the pro shop when the item could be purchased for less money elsewhere, but the item is a convenience for the customer and also makes a small profit for the tennis center. Sport stadiums also sell concession items for their fans. Again, this represents a convenience for the fans and a profit center to the stadium, but food service is not their main business. Price is rather easily defined as the amount of money exchanged for the goods or services. Considerations include competitor’s prices, available discounts, and market share. The classic pricing theory is that of supply and demand. Demand orientation is directly focused on the strength of the market you wish to serve; the higher the demand, the higher the price. Golf courses charge more in green fees to play on the weekend than they charge for play during the week. Ski resorts set prices on “high” and “low” season. Many sports teams now engage in variable pricing: A premium is placed on games against popular or traditional rivals. Some teams are putting a selection of their best seats on the Internet for auction. For the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, sport managers auctioned some of their tickets on the Internet to help determine the price-demand ratio. Place is the actual point of distribution of your product or service. Place could include retail outlets or the geographic location of a stadium or health club. The physical location of a sports entity cannot easily be changed. It can be redesigned and renovated, but it’s hard to move a stadium. The physical characteristics of the place also have an impact on consumers. U.S.-based adventure gear outfitter REI has constructed stores with climbing walls, cold rooms for customers to test sleeping bags and ski parkas, and rain rooms for trying out foul-weather gear. The importance of place is also evident in that some stadiums have a reputation that
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transcends the team’s. People have a strong emotional attachment to the place. Place also influences the perceived quality of the items purchased. Many top-of-theline golf manufacturers will not allow their products to be sold through discount stores, preferring instead to sell only through pro shops. In today’s economy place can also be a “virtual,” existing only on the World Wide Web. The Web is more than an electronic catalog; it represents the entire company to the consumer.The quality of the website, the ease of navigating the site, and the graphic design of the site all have an impact on the consumer. Once a purchase is made, the quality of the delivery service becomes the critical factor. Through the website, a company can also communicate more effectively with customers than it can through a catalog because a website facilitates interaction and builds a stronger relationship. Some experts believe that individual consumers will soon be issuing RFPs (requests for proposals) just like the large industrial buyers. A customer can request price proposals on a new set of golf clubs from a variety of companies. Who will provide the best price for the newest set of Callaway golf clubs? Companies then e-mail the customer with their best offer. Another aspect of the Web that enhances marketing is the ability of the company to more easily customize the product. Consumers want products that meet their individual specifications and provide solutions to their needs, not mass-marketed products in the “one size fits all” mode. The tradition of “take it or leave it” is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Promotion involves getting your message about products and services to potential consumers. This can be achieved through publicity, advertising, or other means of communication. Sport marketers implement numerous promotional campaigns to gain attention and to send their message to consumers. Traditional means of advertising in newspapers, television, and radio are used, as well as recently developed communication channels on the Web. Sport teams are also famous for specialized promotions at the stadium. Events like “hat day” and “kids day” have had varying levels of
success across different sports and countries. Sport businesses do not operate in isolation. A variety of factors must be considered in the marketing process. Brenda Pitts, one of the leading scholars in the field, characterized the major factors into what she called the 4 Cs of sport marketing: climate, the economic, political, demand trends; competitors, identifying the main companies vying for the same customers; company, the specific strengths and weakness of your own organization; and customers, the detailed information about your target market, those customers most likely to buy your product. The economic and political climates in which sport operates are constantly changing. Fluctuations in the world economy have a huge impact on sports. Sport products and services are not a human necessity, but they are based on discretionary income; that is, the money that is not required for basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. During the worldwide economic problems of the late 1990s, many sports companies filed for bankruptcy, and others saw significant declines in revenues. Likewise, sports often lead an economic recovery, with more people buying new sports equipment and purchasing tickets to events. On the political side, new laws and regulations can affect sports tremendously. For instance, the ban on tobacco advertising in many nations has presented challenges for those sports that depended heavily on tobacco sponsorship. Competitors exist for almost every sport team or organization. The competitor is not, as some would believe, the opponent that the team plays, but rather another business where consumers might choose to spend their discretionary money. Thus, for many sports, movies and concerts might be considered competitors. For the world’s largest sport company, Nike, Adidas would certainly be a competitor. Therefore, it is important to study each competitor to determine the best marketing approach. Information is available from a variety of sources. If the competitor is a publicly held company, they most likely have to file an annual report for shareholders. This document can give a general idea of their success and future plans. In many segments of
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the industry, there are also trade magazines that provide news and stories about the industry. Examining your own company is also necessary. Analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that affect your businesses is critical. Just as coaches assess players on a team, sport managers must take stock of their players and the resources available to the business and create a corporate “game plan.” Customers constitute the lifeblood for any sport organization. Without customers there is no need for the company. From the macro perspective, customers can be viewed as a large, homogeneous group. With a micro view, sport marketers examine each specific user of the product or service. While neither situation presents the complete picture, the trend is toward a more individualized look at consumers. In both scenarios it is crucial for the sport marketer to get as much information about the consumer as possible. Information gathering can be done through either primary or secondary research. Primary research is conducted directly with customers, most typically through surveys and interviews. Secondary research is conducted by outside firms on general consumers in the market. For example, the data would assess football fans in general. The data might be similar to that of a local football club, but slight variances may also exist. Once the sport marketer discovers the characteristics of the population such as age, gender, marital status, lifestyle, occupation, and earned income, marketing strategy can be tailored for the target audience. If the target market were twelve–eighteen-year-old children, strategies would be totally different than it would be for forty-five–fifty-five-year-old adults. Similarly, attempting to market yachts to lower-income individuals would be fruitless. The confluence of these factors drives the marketing process.
Current Practices in Sport Marketing Marketing in sport centers around two distinct concepts. Marketing of sport and marketing through sport. Companies whose primary business is the delivery of a sport product or service are involved in marketing of
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sport. However, there are many companies that use sport as a marketing vehicle for their nonsport products and services. This typically occurs through sponsorship.
MARKETING OF SPORT The sport industry is huge. The industry in the United States was ranking it at $213 billion, putting it among the top ten industries. In many countries sport is a significant contributor to the national economy. Categories included in the industry range from sporting goods sales to sport services. Other categories present somewhat of a paradox. Are the monies associated with a golf vacation attributable to the sport industry or the travel industry? Is the construction of a sports stadium contributing to the sport industry or the construction industry? If endorsement earnings are counted in the industry calculations is this double counting because the monies for the endorsement fees actually came from the sale of the sport product that was already counted? There are no clear answers to these issues, but they should be considered nonetheless. There is no doubt that several global sports companies contribute greatly to the sport economy. Nike had $10.6 billion in 2003 revenues, and Adidas was second with $6.3 billion. Perhaps a look at Nike’s marketing plans for 2002–2004 can demonstrate current practice in the field. As a multinational corporation Nike has a global brand plan. The specific details of the plan are closely guarded; however, the key concepts are relevant to understanding the topic of sport marketing. Nike desires to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. The predominant characteristic of the company since its inception is to be authentic, focused on the performance needs of athletes. Secondary to this is the desire to be authentic in addressing the performance needs of active consumers. Nike is also driven by the need to innovate. Their goal is to make possible new levels of performance and to do the unexpected, taking the consumer someplace new. The ultimate objective is to connect the brand with every consumer and to promote a sense of possibility
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for every athlete. Nike wants to inspire their consumers to a better life and celebrate the power of sport and the joy of movement. The strategies for implementing these goals are directed through activities that drive the brand. Soccer (football), basketball, women’s training, and running have been the mainstay of Nike marketing for decades. The future drivers are action sports because of their connection with youth. Nike sees the youth market as a principal source of synergy for the future, a group that will help direct the brand. Like most companies, Nike wants to create a dialogue and build long-term relationships with their core consumers. This brings forward a marketing concept that many sport and nonsport companies have embraced in recent years, relationship marketing.
Relationship Marketing Relationship marketing focuses on the interaction between consumers and the company, not just the transaction. The goal is to identify, develop, and maintain an association with individual consumers and to constantly reinforce that relationship. This path is completely opposite of the one that traditional marketing took in the twentieth century. During most of that century, companies engaged in invasive marketing. Consumers are exposed to thousands of advertising messages each day. U.S. data show that the average American is confronted with three thousand advertisements per day. Think of the advertising messages on TV, in newspapers, and on the Internet. Our lives are invaded by advertising. Are those messages effective? Do you pay attention? Advertising clutter is getting worse. Junk e-mail and pop-up banners occur too frequently to be noticed and have become meaningless “noise.” In fact many consumers are annoyed, not motivated, by this form of advertising. In response, many organizations have begun to explore alternate methods to communicate with consumers. This creates a need to shift from interrupting consumers to developing relationships, from a focus on short-term profits to one of lifetime value.
The underlying theory of relationship marketing is that it costs less to retain existing customers than it does to secure new ones. Research has also shown that repeat customers develop higher loyalty and are more receptive to new product offerings and at the same time are less price sensitive. The airline industry was one of the first to operationalize this concept with their “frequent flyer” programs. Sport organizations have developed similar strategies. Many professional sport teams have developed “Frequent Fan Clubs” or “Fan Loyalty Programs.” These programs typically reward sports fans for attending games, making purchases at concession stands, and buying team merchandise. The fans can earn and redeem the points for additional tickets, food, or merchandise. Many organizations also offer special opportunities, such as player autograph sessions or stadium tours, to club members. Relationship marketing can assist in the utilization of a process called permission marketing. Permission marketing starts when the consumers give you permission to contact them, or when they contact your organization for product information.While this concept is not totally new, it has emerged with the growth of the Internet. In the past many sports teams would distribute “reply cards.” These cards were to be completed by a consumer requesting more information about season tickets, merchandise, or the like. However, with the emergence of the Internet and data-based marketing, communication with customers has changed. Using information collected via the database, sport corporations and sport organizations can introduce products and involve the consumer with the organization, leading them to the advocate and partner positions in relationship marketing. Sport marketers often send press releases to the media. It would be quite simple to add consumers and fans to the distribution list. Consumers could be advised of special offers, and fans could get the latest sports news, often before the general public. This process makes them feel very special and increases their identification with the team or company. Several examples exist in sport. Many professional base-
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A pair of toddler basketball shoes. Source: istockphoto/csrobles.
ball teams regularly send newsletters to their supporters via e-mail. The U.S. Olympic Committee sends special notices to their club members, with news stories and human-interest pieces on selected athletes and sports. Many of these stories would never be published in the regular newspaper because they have limited interest. However, because their “subscribers” have a special interest in Olympic sport, they enjoying receiving this information. Sporting goods retailers also use permission marketing. Consumers receive discount coupons and advance notice of special sales. A good database can also match special merchandise with the historical purchasing habits of consumers. (One important thing to remember and respect is that the e-mail address belongs to the customer, not to the organization. It should not be sold, traded, or otherwise abused. If this is honored, permission marketing can be effective in maintaining a long-term relationship.) Database marketing is predicated on obtaining quality information about customers. A good database will enable sport companies to easily identify their best customers and engage in meaningful dialog about their needs. Through this channel the company can conduct market research and increase marketing efficiency because they are better able to understanding the customer. Understanding the customer includes knowing his or her buying and consumption patterns, demographics, attitudes, interests, and opinions.
To begin the process of building a sport consumer database, a company needs to collect information from or about its consumers. Jon Spoelstra, former market director for the NBA New Jersey Nets, found that the ticket office had no records of previous seasons’ single-game ticket purchasers. The problem stemmed from the way the organization was handling ticket sales. If a customer called the office for ticket information, the sales staff simply took the caller’s information by writing it on an envelope. A brochure was then placed in the envelope and mailed to the caller. Convenient and efficient, yes, but not effective. Spoelstra changed the way the orders were handled, having the sales staff enter the customer’s information into a database and then print an envelope with the address. Using this approach, the Nets captured important data from actual fans. Many Nets tickets were also sold through electronic ticket broker Ticketmaster. At the end of each basketball season, Ticketmaster would purge their files. The Nets had never asked for the names, addresses, and contact information of the people who had purchased their tickets. Spoelstra asked Ticketmaster for the data and started building a comprehensive customer database for the Nets. Building a representative profile of customers through utilization of database marketing can help sport managers design strategies to access those consumers. These customers, the target market, constitute the group of people with defined characteristics that are most likely to buy the company’s product.
MARKETING THROUGH SPORT Marketing through sport consist of nonsport companies using sport to attract and form a relationship with customers. This marketing approach typically occurs through sport sponsorship. Sponsorship is based on the mutual exchange between a sport organization and a corporation. In this exchange corporations are looking for exposure and revenues. Not coincidentally, the
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If you aren’t playing well, the game isn’t as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid. ■ THOMAS J. WATSON
sport organization is often looking for the same. In many nations around the world, sport organizations have aggressively marketed themselves to sponsors in an effort to obtain the funds necessary to operate programs. In the United States, 2004 spending on sponsorship was estimated at $11.14 billion. Several companies spent upward of $100 million on sponsorship, including Pepsi ($250–255 million), Anheuser-Busch ($240– 245 million), General Motors ($185–190 million), and Coca-Cola ($180–185 million). Sponsors in the United Kingdom were spending more than £1 billion annually on sport, and worldwide spending on sponsorship was estimated at US$28 billion for 2004. Cordiner defined sponsorship as “a business relationship between a provider of funds, resources, or services and an individual event or organization that in turn offers rights and association for commercial advantage” (Cordiner 2002, 14). Sponsorship is not, therefore, philanthropy. Sponsorships have to perform on the same basis as other business decisions in their ability to match the right demographic and psychographic targets, reach the appropriate decision makers, and ultimately help sell product or services. These sponsoring corporations are interested in marketing their products and services to potential customers. If sport can provide a vehicle for this endeavor, then a successful relationship can be established. Current research in the sponsorship industry has shown that market-driven objectives such as corporate awareness and product sales ranked as the primary criteria. For some corporations awareness is a key objective. With the expansion of markets in the global economy, gaining awareness can be difficult. However, with the extensive reach of sport, the task becomes easier. Sponsorship of soccer’s (football’s) 2002 World Cup cost each company $43 million. What did official sponsors and suppliers of the World Cup hope to get? Not just exposure in front of 2.5 million ticket holders, but exposure to the 36 billion cumulative television viewers around the globe. Similarly, American package shipping company UPS used sponsorship of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games to launch its worldwide deliv-
ery system. Coors Brewing Company (USA) Field Marketing Director Steve Saunders summed up the sales objective rather clearly when he addressed a meeting of professional sport team marketers asking the question, “Does it sell beer?” He continued to say that too often sport marketers approach the Coors company with a sponsorship proposal and never address the question of how the relationship will help the company accomplish its primary objective. Another prominent objective that sponsors seek is hospitality. Corporations need places and events to entertain potential clients and enhance business-to-business (B2B) relationships. Sport settings provide a great atmosphere for building relationships with prospective clients. The large sporting events provide facilities for sponsors to entertain their guests, access to the best tickets, and an environment in which they can enjoy the event with all the luxuries imaginable. Companies like UPS, which sponsors NASCAR racing in the United States, tracks the clients who attended their hospitability events to see if their use of UPS shipping increases over previous levels. Olympic sponsors like credit card company VISA have seen dramatic increases in card preference through their sponsorship of sport. Since the initiation of their Olympic sponsorship in 1988, VISA’s share of the market has increased from 40 percent to 65 percent. During the same period, American Express, which had dropped out of Olympic sponsorship in 1984, saw their market share decline from 21 percent to 9 percent. In a $1.3 trillion industry, even small increases in market share can be meaningful.The gains realized by VISA certainly provide a return on their $65 million Olympic sponsorship fee. This win-win relationship means that sponsoring companies can get a positive return on their investment, and at the same time the sport organization can increase revenues.
The Future It seems that relationship marketing will continue to grow as corporations find ways to learn more about their customers and interact with them in meaningful ways. Customers have shown that they will reward com-
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panies that truly care about them with increased loyalty and higher levels of spending. The next wave in sport marketing has been termed by some as experience marketing. Experience marketing is predicated on creating memorable experiences for customers. With a multitude of purchasing options, many believe that the only way to retain market share is to provide exemplary services and high-quality products. However, most marketers would agree that superior products and services are only part of the marketing process. Building longterm relationships will create the lasting and loyal customers that every organization wants and needs. Technology has revolutionized every aspect of our lives. Sport is no different. The days of buying a scorecard at the baseball stadium and writing in the names of the players are over. In the summer of 2001, the MLB San Francisco Giants installed “palm-beaming stations” around the stadium. Via infrared beams, fans could download game information, player biographies, game statistics, and even the current weather forecast. Fans could also rent wireless computers that enabled them to select a variety of camera angels, pick replays, and even order food to be delivered to their seats. The future is sure to hold even more amazing breakthroughs for the sports fan. Technology has also had an impact on the way tickets are sold.The tradition of walking up to the ticket window and purchasing a ticket is gone. Even online ordering that results in mailed delivery of tickets will soon be history. Customers of the more technologically advanced stadiums can obtain their tickets electronically and then print out a bar-coded paper ticket to be scanned on entry at the stadium. Tickets can even be e-mailed to friends on any number of mobile wireless devices. These developments have also pushed the development of a secondary ticket market. Holders of high-demand tickets can easily transfer tickets to the highest bidder in an online auction. Some sport teams actually sponsor such sites for their season ticket holders (for a small fee, of course). Trends in sponsorship are rapidly moving to a focus on market-based objectives and return on investment (ROI). Sponsors are looking for sport to communicate
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with their customers and solidify their brand. Unfortunately, sport, which is quickly becoming overly dependent on sponsor revenues, seems to have created a more cluttered environment. Historically, companies came to sport because it was less cluttered than traditional advertising. However, today, the spectrum of title sponsor, presenting sponsor, official supplier, and so on is making the sport environment less attractive to sponsors. Storm clouds could be forming as many sponsors are poised to move to arts and entertainment sponsorships. Yet the sport industry is expected to continue to grow modestly over the next decade. Sport executives will certainly continue to find new and innovative marketing strategies to communicate with their consumers.With advances in technology, company databases will improve marketing efforts and facilitate more interaction between the company and the consumer. Relationship marketing will replace traditional marketing efforts, creating a shift from transactions to relationships and a focus on lifetime value rather than short-term profits. Nonsport companies will continue to use sport to market their products through sponsorship. This tie to the sport demographic and the transmission of the sport image to corporate products is both powerful and profitable. David K. Stotlar See also Commodification and Commercialization; Facilities Naming Rights; Sponsorship; Sporting Goods Industry
Further Reading Cordiner, R. ( 2002, January). Sponsors of the wide world of sport. Sports Marketing, 14–15. Desbordes, M. (1999). Marketing du sport. Paris: Geston-Economica. Hagstrom, R. (1998). The NASCAR way. New York: Wiley. Irwin, R. I., Sutton, W. A., & McCarty, L. M. (2002). Sport promotion and sales management. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Mullin, B., Hardy, S., & Sutton, W. A. (2000). Sport marketing (2nd ed). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Pitts, B. G., & Stotlar, D. K. (2002). Fundamentals of sport marketing (2nd ed.). Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Spoelstra, J. (1997). Ice to the Eskimos: How to market a product nobody wants. New York: Harper Business.
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Spoelstra, J. (2001). Marketing outrageously. Atlanta, GA: Bard Press. Stotlar, D. K. (2001). Developing successful sport marketing plans. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Stotlar, D. K. (2001). Developing successful sport sponsorship plans. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Veeck, B. (2001). Veeck as in wreck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Original work published 1962].
Martial Arts See Aikido; Judo; Jujitsu; Kendo; Mixed Martial Arts; Naginata; Silat; Taekwando; Tai Chi; Wushu
Mascots
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eam mascots are a mainstay of modern sport. It is hard to imagine athletic events without them. Nevertheless, one could argue that the use of mascots in connection with team sports is a relatively recent, American phenomenon.Team sports have a history that dates back to the era of the world’s earliest urban states, yet we have no clear evidence of mascots being used by athletic teams as they are today until the nineteenth century. However, the idea underlying the concept of mascot has its roots in the depths of the human psyche and in the efforts of early humans to extend kinship identities beyond families and lineages. As bands grew in size over time into tribes and chiefdoms, societies expanded beyond the boundaries of extended family units. In order to extend the regularities of kinship across greater numbers of people, the clan (from the Gaelic, clann, meaning family, stock, or offspring) evolved. The clan functioned to project the rules and framework of kinship onto the larger group, providing a family-like structure to that group, helping to regulate marriage, define economic relationships, and employ the myth of common ancestry to bond the group together. Clans were defined and set apart from each other by their respective icons: animals, other living things, natural phe-
nomena, or inanimate objects that symbolized the common ancestor of the membership. These icons are what have become known as “totems,” the word coming from the Algonquian language as in Ojibway ototeman or Cree ototema (meaning “his relations”). Thus, members of the Bear clan would think of themselves as descended from the bear, either literally or figuratively, and would reserve special respect for the bear. The bear symbolized the collective identity of the group, much as the mascot symbolizes the community of players and fans of a particular athletic team (e.g., the Chicago Bears). Thus, in many ways, the mascot as it is used by athletic teams and organizations today is a modern totem. With the rise of the urban state and the emergence of dynastic governments, beginning some 6,000 years ago, it is likely that the symbols identifying kin groups in prestate societies were transformed into flags, crests, and other icons that represented the state or subgroups within the state. These symbols of community became not only tools for creating a sense of political unity among the diversity of peoples governed by the state, but also motivators on the battlefield and symbols designed to bring good luck and ultimately victory. Dynastic states were dependent on their military prowess, and flags, platoon names, and the identification of the troops with ferocious beasts (e.g., the lion) were important to troop camaraderie, morale, and will to fight. Again, these symbols functioned in much the same way as today’s mascots. This tradition has survived over the years and into the twenty-first century. The Roman armies marched under their eagle symbol. English troops refer to themselves as the bulldog breed, often using the lion and bear as heraldic symbols Among the Australians, one of its armies has traditionally used the Bengal tiger as a mascot, and its ships often have mascots (e.g., black panther). These practices remain common throughout the world of modern warfare. “Mascot” is historically understood as though it were limited to the use of magic. The word is defined by Webster as “any person, animal, or thing supposed to bring
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Mascots The Perennial Fight Song Substitute any mascot or team name that has two syllables—be it “Titans,” “Bulldogs,” or “Tigers”— to create a version of this fight song that has been used by campers, pep squads, and cheerleaders for decades. Everywhere we go, People wanna’ know Who we are, and so we tell them: We are the Cougars, Mighty, mighty Cougars C-O-U-G-A-R-S Gooooo Cougars!
good luck by being present.” The term has its roots in the French mascottie and Provencal mascot, a derivative of masco, meaning sorcerer. The word was initially used to refer to “something that brought luck to a household” (Mascot 2002–2003). A mascot can be both an abstract icon and a real incarnation. In other words, an institution may use the Great Dane as its mascot and actually have a Great Dane or someone who dresses up like a Great Dane and brings the icon to life. The term “mascot” was popularized in the late nineteenth century by a French composer named Edmund Audran, who wrote a popular operetta called La Mascotte (1880). Audran’s operetta featured a farm girl who brought luck to whoever possessed her, as long as she remained virtuous. The title was translated into English as The Mascot, and from that title emerged the notion of a mascot as something that brings luck. The sport mascot is, however, more than simply an instrument for the bringing of good luck. The fact that mascots are generally associated with team rather than individual sports gives credibility to this assumption. Mascot is a plural not a singular phenomenon. Tennis players, Olympic track stars, and golfers may use magic and identify with some totem-like symbol, but to refer to them by using that symbol would seem to most to be ridiculous. Calling Jack Nicholas the “Bear,” for example, is not the same thing as referring to Mike Ditka as a “Chicago
Bear.” Sport itself is an ancient institution, dating back to the early stages of human history and perhaps even further into the prehistoric period. And even though it is likely that a wide variety of symbols have been used over the centuries to unite, inspire, and bring good luck to teams competing in athletic contests, there is little evidence to document the explicit use of mascots, as the term is currently used, as icons or symbols of particular teams. It is likely that the first explicit association of mascots with athletic teams occurred in the late 1800s. According to Elder (2003, 20), “Yale claims to have been the first U.S. college to adopt a mascot.” Handsome Dan was a bulldog that a Yale student bought from a blacksmith and donated to the university. The bulldog remains today both a symbol of Yale sports and an incarnation of that symbol. The practice has since become commonplace across the world of amateur and professional sport in America and is gradually spreading to other parts of the globe as American sports grow in popularity.
Sport Mascots Today Mascots today are integral components of schools, colleges, universities, and professional teams. Indeed, many American educational institutions are known almost as much by their mascot as they are by the name of the school itself (e.g., Notre Dame or the Fighting Irish). For the most part, the mascots fall within a fairly narrow range of animals, natural phenomena, and ethnic terms, but there are the deliberately unusual mascots (e.g., the Banana Slugs of the University of California– Santa Cruz or the Artichokes of Scottsdale [Arizona] Community College). According to a survey of over 2,000 colleges and universities conducted in the early 1980s, the most popular mascot was the eagle (72). Not far behind was the tiger (68), followed by the cougar, bulldog, warrior, lion, panther, Indian, wildcat, and bear. For many colleges and universities with large athletic programs and budgets, the mascot is important to image, marketing, ticket sales, alumni giving, and other sport-related revenue streams. Certainly this is the case for America’s professional team sports. Mascots
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are fundamental to the bottom line, and the selling of the team is virtually the selling of the mascot. The more fans identify with the mascot, the more team memorabilia (caps, T-shirts, windbreakers, sweatshirts) they will buy and the more likely they are to buy tickets or tune into the games on their television or radio sets, even if their Cowboys, Knicks, or Red Sox are suffering through a losing season. Also, as America’s professional athletic teams have become more mobile, migrating from one city to another in pursuit of more fans, bigger markets, tax breaks, and larger profits, the mascot has become increasingly important. Even for those teams whose owners have resisted the urge to move, placing as much emphasis on the mascot as on the place has the potential for widening fan support. For example, for many, it may be easier to feel an attachment to the Colts than to Indianapolis. The symbolic importance of the mascot is witnessed to in the way they contextualize the game and instill it with a meaning that extends well beyond the contest taking place on the field. Consider the significance of the annual competitions between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins. It is a clash of symbols that reach deep into the roots of American history. For the Cowboy fan, the Washington team represents the savagery, cunning, and trickery of the stereotypical Indian brave of the mid-nineteenth century. On the other hand, “the Dallas mascot, the cowboy, symbolizes rugged individualism and courage. He is a repository of the virtues that the team itself embodied—or so it sought to suggest to the public, styling itself ‘America’s Team’.” (Mandelbaum 2004, 187). Europe does not have or does not use mascots to the extent they are used in the United States. Schoolboy sports are generally not as ubiquitous in European countries as in America. Often, there are symbols of collective identification other than mascots that unite and inspire their athletic teams. For example, most of England’s professional soccer clubs are known by their place names more than by their mascot. And when there are nicknames they are often the result of convenience. For example, the Leeds United are known as
the Whites because traditionally they have worn white uniforms. The Sheffield Wednesday team is so named because that was for years the day of its team practice. Certainly European sports teams use mascots. But they are more likely to be based in superstition and seen as sources of good luck. One reason for the prominent role of the mascot in American sports is the organized cheering, celebrating, and entertaining that surround athletic events in the United States. European sporting events do not include formal cheerleaders, bands, halftime entertainment, and the other ceremonial accouterments that characterize the American ball game. This is why, “to the puritan, the American soccer match looks like a musical spectacular, with interval for a little sport” (Morris 1981, 28). The mascot, as it is known in American sport circles, may be a response to a need not as evident in European sport. Frequently in Europe, rivalries between teams are rivalries between communities that go back for decades if not centuries. In other cases, teams identify with ideologies. For example, one of the roughest soccer rivalries in Europe is that between two Scottish teams: the Celtic versus the Ranger. The former is Protestant and the latter Catholic. Up until recently, the two teams only recruited members of their own respective faiths. Perhaps the unifying power of ideology and longer history eliminates the need for the American mascot model. Because of the ethnic diversity and geographic mobility of the people of the United States, its use of mascots may be viewed as a substitute for that built-in sense of identity and belonging that characterizes European sport. This may be why Americans tend to take their mascots much more seriously than do the Europeans, who “frequently treat their mascots almost as a joke” (Morris 1981, 86). However, as American professional sports become more global, they are exporting not only the sport but also the mascot. For example, the relatively new European National Football League sports a rather jazzy list of mascot names, including the Fire, Galaxy, and Thunder. Also, mascots have become part of the Japanese baseball phenomenon (e.g., Hanshin Tigers, Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes) and are finding their way into other areas of the globe.
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The Boston Red Sox mascot with a fan.
Mascot Controversies Perhaps the most written-about and discussed sport mascot issue is that having to do with the use of Native American images and stereotypes as team names. Of the 143 teams among the ranks of America’s major league sports, six have “Indian” mascots (Redskins, Indians, Braves). Among the college and university ranks, just under 5 percent of the institutions with athletic programs use such images as mascots. This figure is declining as schools (e.g., Stanford, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Miami University of Ohio, Adams State College, Montclair State) choose to change mascots in recognition of the problems inherent in what many view as offensive to the Native American community. It is interesting that, with few exceptions (e.g., Celtics, Irish, Swedes), American teams with ethnic name mascots use Native American images. Why have Native American peoples been singled out to serve as icons for schools, colleges, universities, clubs, and professional teams across the country? As one writer puts it: “Why would it be socially repugnant to name a team the ‘New York Negroes’ but not to name one the ‘Cleveland Indians’? Worse yet, could there be a team named the ‘New York Niggers’? Isn’t that just the racial equivalent of the ‘Washington Redskins’?” (Pace 1994, 7). One writer suggests that the problem is not only that such mascot
names project a violent and demeaning stereotype of Native Americans, but that they “promote an oversimplified . . . image of a vastly diverse people” (Putnam 1999, 197). From another perspective, Native American mascots “perpetuate inappropriate, inaccurate, and harmful understandings of living people, their cultures, and their histories” (King and Springwood 2001, 7). Despite the inherent problems, controversy, and many court challenges, Indian names, themes, and images remain the most frequent and popular mascots for American schools, colleges, and universities. The University of Illinois and its Illini have been the target of many protests, yet its board continues to defend the mascot and the antics of Chief Illiniwek. The Cleveland Indians continue to defend their mascot and their Chief Wahoo, arguing that the use of the Native American images is an effort to “perpetuate the memory and legacy of [Louis Francis] Sockalexis,” a Native American who played for Cleveland back at the beginning of the twentieth century (Staurowsky 2001, 86). And it appears that the majority of Americans remain comfortable with the Washington professional football team calling itself the Redskins. In response to two surveys conducted in 1992, 80.6 percent of those surveyed in Washington were opposed to their NFL team, the Redskins, changing its name. An even greater percent (88 percent) of those surveyed nationwide were likewise opposed to changing the controversial mascot name. The reasons given for selecting Native American images as mascots for athletic teams are many and varied. In some cases (e.g., Cleveland Indians), it is argued that the images celebrate a particular Native American. In others, teams claim the mascots were chosen to honor Native Americans in general and highlight their strengths and virtues as brave, tenacious, and strong. Some will
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also admit that when they think of Indians they think of ferocious, fearsome, and violent warriors, the virtues appropriate to sports such as football and hockey. On the other hand, scholars tend to see more subtle and less noble intentions underlying this phenomenon. For example, it has been suggested that the use of Native American mascots is a ritual reenactment of the hunt, when white settlers were the hunters and the Indians the hunted. The Native American sport mascot is thus a trophy of that hunt and the ritual of the sport itself, which provides a context for that hunt, only perpetuates the myth of the Indian as “hunted.” In a related vein, the Native American sport mascots may be seen as springing from a nostalgia for that time when the invading Europeans looked upon the aboriginals of the Western Hemisphere as savages, albeit noble savages. The appropriation of Native American stereotypes as mascots serves to legitimate “the process of civilization” that led to the virtual annihilation of the vast majority of aboriginal populations (Slowikowski 1993, 25). Whatever the explanation for their use and regardless of how offensive some might feel they are, Native American mascots are still a dominant component in American sport life. And the protests and challenges have become likewise a dominant theme in the discussion about sport. A variety of Native American organizations with support from other human rights groups have attempted to force institutions with mascots that are offensive to Native peoples to see the error of their ways and find new mascots. To date, the courts have been reluctant to act on behalf of these challenges, citing the lack of sufficient legal grounds. Native American icons are not the only team sport mascots that have created controversy. For at least three decades, there has been public pressure on Middle Tennessee State University to change its mascot from the Blue Raiders to a less politically loaded symbol. The Blue Raiders were troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest’s command, and it is generally assumed that Forrest was the person most responsible for the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. Middle Tennessee State University has a student body that is
12 percent African-American and is under a court order to increase that percentage as well as hire more faculty and staff of color. To date, the conservative voices on the campus and in the community have prevailed. Middle Tennessee State University is still the Blue Raiders. The mascot at Valley College of Imperial Valley, in California, is the Arabs. The story is told of the Valley College football team traveling to Las Vegas for a game in the fall of 1981. They had put a sign on the bus that read “The Arabs are Coming.” Unfortunately, this occurred in the midst of the oil crisis and many were not the least bit amused. Despite the controversy and the portrayal of the “Fighting Arabs” as cunning, ferocious, and somewhat sinister, the college continues to call itself the Arabs. Another social issue that is discussed more in academic circles than in the courts is the tendency for sport team mascots to be male, even though today there are almost as many women as men participating in formal athletic programs. Historically, sport team mascots have consistently been conceptualized as male. For example, it’s always the Rams, never the Ewes; the Bulls, not the Cows; or the Stallions, never the Mares. Most high schools, colleges, and universities have taken the easy way out on this by simply ignoring the gender implications of the name or by putting the gender descriptor “Lady” in front of the mascot name (e.g., Lady Vols, Lady Saints, Lady Skyhawks, etc.).
Perspectives Mascots have become an integral part of American sports and as the latter continue to proliferate around the globe they are gaining footholds in many other areas of the developed world. They can be seen as the exporting of American culture, a topic that deserves further research. While the term mascot, from a technical perspective, refers to the effort to bring good luck, it also has become synonymous with team spirit and sense of community. And though sometimes controversial, they inspire, energize, and motivate. They also help to sustain a massive sport memorabilia market. But, perhaps most important, mascots are the
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When I was playing I never wished I was doing anything else. I think being a professional athlete is the finest thing a man can do. ■ BOB GIBSON
modern-day totems of athletic programs, both professional and amateur. Kendall Blanchard
Further Reading Blanchard, K. (1995). The anthropology of sport: An introduction. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Elder, J. (2003, September). Glad you asked: Fun with college football. Jewish World Review, 17, 20. Franks, R. (1982). What’s in a nickname: Exploring the jungle of college athletic mascots. Amarillo, TX: Ray Franks. King, C. R., & Springwood, C. (2001). Introduction: Imagined Indians, social identities, and activism. In C. R. King & C. Springwood (Eds.), Team spirits: Essays on the history and significance of Native American mascots (pp. 1–21). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Mandelbaum, M. (2004). The meaning of sports: Why Americans watch baseball, football, and basketball and what they see when they do. New York: Public Affairs. Mascot. (2002–2003). In LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 4, 2005, from http://46.1911encyclopedia.org/M/ MA/MASCOT.htm Morris, D. (1981). The soccer tribe. London: Jonathan Cape. Pace, K. A. (1994). The Washington Redskins case and the doctrine of disparagement: How politically correct must a trademark be? Pepperdine Law Review, 22, 7–57. Putnam, D. T. (1999). Controversies of the sports world. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Sigelman, L. (1998). Hail to the Redskins? Public reactions to a racially insensitive team name. Sociology of Sport Journal, 15, 317–325. Slowikowski, S. S. (1993). Cultural performance and sport mascots. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 17(1), 23–33. Spindel, C. (2000). Dancing at halftime: Sports and the controversy over American Indian mascots. New York: New York University Press. Springwood, C. (2001). Playing Indian and fighting for mascots. In C. R. King & C. Springwood (Eds.), Team spirits (pp. 304–327). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Staurowksy, E. J. (2001). An act of honor or exploitation? The Cleveland Indians’ use of the Louis Francis Sockalexis story. In C. R. King and C. Springwood (Eds.), Team spirits (pp.82–106). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Masculinity
M
odern sports emerged in the early to mid-1800s with the advent of industrialization and urbanization. They developed at a time when gender relations, along with many other social relations, were in a
state of flux. Industrialization radically changed work and family life; this meant significant shifts in gender roles. Maintaining traditional power relations across the social hierarchy required ideologies to be adjusted and reinvigorated to accommodate these changes (Crosset 1990; Gorn and Goldstein 1993; Kimmel 1990). Moreover, ideologies of social mobility began to make it imperative that men demonstrate a new type of powerful masculinity. Modern sports provided a forum in which to reassert and redefine hegemonic masculinity, the most powerful form of masculinity (Connell 1987, 1995), as distinguished from femininity and subordinated masculinities (Crosset 1990, Gorn and Goldstein 1993, Kimmel 1990). As a result, initially, sports were presumed to promote the best of masculinity. Sport would impart the virtues of hard work, loyalty, perseverance and leadership to young men. Yet, it was not every man who would learn leadership through sports; while middle- and upper-class racially privileged young men would be trained to lead, sports were also viewed as a way to inculcate obedience and loyalty in a different group of young men, those expected to follow.
Sports and Social Relations At the same time, new social relations by gender required retaining and re-creating social distinctions. Fears of social feminization fueled a quest for sufficiently “masculine” activities for boys. School and a prolonged adolescence altered traditional patterns of masculine indoctrinations to work, and increasingly boys were cared for and taught primarily by women (Gorn and Goldstein 1993). Sports became a way to teach boys “how to be men.” It also became a way to assimilate the increasing number of arriving immigrants. Sports could be learned regardless of mastery of the language, and they provided a forum in which boys could learn the norms of the dominant culture. Sporting leagues thus became a key forum in which masculinity could be learned, enacted, and valorized. As a ritual of social display, venues provided a forum in which some men could “prove” or demonstrate the
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Masculinity Masculinity through Soccer in Brazil Football [soccer] is a primary site for the construction of a vigorous male gender across Brazil. Every boy child is likely to play football on the street (or is expected to). In the Baixa such games are ubiquitous. Many young men there dream of becoming professional footballers (at least one has succeeded) though it is more likely that they play the weekend variety. In Bahia this is known as bába football. Amateur teams formed on a neighbourhood basis establish claims to particular open spaces to play on weekends. The game is organized according to specific rules, adapted to the limited area and accidental terrain of the pitches, and allowing for the rapid changeover of teams and players necessary to accommodate all players. These rules are normally manipulated shamelessly by the dominant men in the teams. Violence, especially against subordinates or outsiders, may occur (Bacelar 1991). Local groups may attack outsiders to preserve their access to the space, or fights break out over the results of matches. Women are not welcome in this milieu, though they are a constant verbal presence in the jokes and boasts of players (Bacelar 1991). Players shout out insults to their opponents, using perjorative sexual comparisons questioning their masculinity. Altogether, bába football is the site of an intensive construction of a virile street machismo distinct from the domestic manhood of family life (and therefore I suppose,
physical superiority of all men over women and hegemonic men over marginalized men. The exclusion of women and subordinated men from reputable and venerated venues maintained this fiction. For example, the first modern Olympic Games held in Athens, Greece, in 1896 excluded women altogether. (Even today, there are fewer Olympic events for women than men, even when gender neutral sports are included; for example, the equestrian events).
also constructive of it). This is experienced during the game, at moments of victory, when a goal is scored, as a kind of personal transcendence (Bacelar 1991). In Bacelar’s study, losers are like homosexuals, those “done to”; winners are “real men” . . . And they too may achieve dominance by rulebending and violence (sacanagem) as well as physical prowess and skill. Despite the important differences between local bába football, club football and international matches, the function of constructing a conquering masculinity (whether this is openly sexualized or not) remains an important common denominator. Women too may construct national identity through talk constituting masculinity. Although “football heroes” are male, women partake in the transcendent emotions that embody football nationalism. Thus, in this context, national identity is dependent on the realization of male potential—for all the spectators to really feel Brazilian, the team must win. Players or spectators of bába football understand such wins in terms of their own experience, so it seems fair to suppose that the sexualization and aggression of bába does not necessarily shape women’s involvement. In this sense, there could be fundamental differences between men’s and women’s (or football-players’ and non-players’) relationships to the nation as constituted by football. Source: McCallum, C. (1996). Resisting Brazil: perspectives on local nationalisms in Salvador da Bahia. Ethos 61, 3. 223–224.
At the same time, because sports codified social relations, it provided a context for resistance. Sports became a way for subordinated men to challenge their status by challenging ideologies of physical inferiority. During the nadir of race relations in the United States, between 1890 and 1920, ideologies of racial superiority rested on the “science” of eugenics. Eugenics argued that racial differences could be measured and quantified. Differences in things like skull size could then be used to
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Masculinity The Competitive Spirit 1912 Now, what are athletics and how are women affected by them? An athlete is one who contends against another for a victory; athletics are the events in which one contends. A gymnasium is a place for the performance of athletic exercises; a gymnast is a person who trains athletes, and gymnastics are the exercises practiced in the gymnasium for the purpose of putting one’s self in proper condition for competing in the athletic contests. In our times the terms athletics, gymnastics and physical training are often used synonymously, while actually they are not alike and may bring about very different results. If a schoolgirl practices jumping a bar with other girls, as one of the physical exercises prescribed for general development, she is engaging in gymnastics. If, however, the bar is jumped with the purpose of finding out which girl can clear the bar at the greatest height the performance becomes an athletic one.
justify ideologies that argued that subordinated men were less able in every respect.The success of some early sports heroes challenged racial classification. For example, race riots broke out after the first of the great white hopes and former world champion, Jim Jeffries, came out of retirement only to lose a boxing match to the then world champion, Jack Johnson, in 1910. The ensuing and continuing success of marginalized men in the world of sports effectively destroyed dominant ideologies of physical inferiority. (Ideologies of mental inferiority have to some extent remained as demonstrated in the underrepresentation of people of color in key coaching and administrative positions throughout the sports world, though over time improvement has been seen.)
The Cost of Gender “Superiority” Despite a wide range in overlap in abilities both within and between the sexes, the belief that men are physically superior to women remains salient and guides attitudes and ideologies (Dowling 2000). However, sports schol-
In the first instance the exercise would be undertaken as a means of physical improvement for its own sake. In the second instance, if the spirit of emulation ran high the girls would be engaging in a course of special physical training, not primarily to benefit themselves physically, but for the set purpose of improving their jumping powers so as to vanquish their nearest competitor. This distinction, that gymnastics are pursued as a means to an end, and athletics as an end in themselves, would apply equally well to such forms of exercise as walking, running, vaulting, swimming and skating, which may be measured in time or space and thus be made competitive. The element of competition and “sport” must, therefore, enter into what we now term athletics. Sargent, D. A. (1912, March). Are athletics making girls masculine? The Ladies Home Journal.
ars point out that holding on to this belief comes at a cost. Sports promote a version of masculinity that includes a number of physical and emotional costs. The level of violence men are asked to endure, as well as rampant misogyny, homophobia, and racism remain significant problems and are related to and reinforced by the specific type of masculinity many modern sports promote (Messner 1990). In terms of the costs to men, most hegemonic sports encourage athletes to ignore and play through injuries, risking additional injury and permanent disability. Further, many sports have a high level of risk built in. Not surprisingly, those participating in high-risk sports are disproportionately working-class and/or nonwhite men.The rampant use of performanceenhancing substances exposes athletes to further risks, physical, legal, and financial. Moreover, as athletic icons of masculinity become ever bigger, stronger, and faster, a host of pathologies emerge in men. Pope et al. (2000) have identified an increasing trend among men, similar to anorexia—willingness to go to unhealthy extremes to gain physical size in an attempt to meet current ideals.
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These panels from an advertisement for Charles Atlas’s book on muscle building show a point of view common in the 1960s.
Finally, as the work of the sociologist Michael Messner (1990, 1992) points out, the misogyny and homophobia that emerges as tied to masculinity and as part of rituals of masculine bonding (e.g., locker room jokes) remains problematic on a number of levels. Faye Linda Wachs
Further Reading Connell, R. (1987). Gender and power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Connell, R. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cross, G. (1990). A social history of leisure since 1600. State College, PA: Venture Publishing. Crosset, T. (1990). Masculinity, sexuality, and the development of early modern sport. In M. Messner & D. Sabo (Eds.), Sport, men and the gender order: Critical feminist perspectives. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Dowling, C. (2000). The frailty myth. New York: Random House. Dunning, E. (1986). Sport as a male preserve: Notes on the social sources of masculine identity and its transformations. In N. Elias & E. Dunning (Eds.), Quest for excitement: Sport and leisure in the civilizing process. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Gorn, E., & Goldstein, W. (1993). A brief history of American sports. New York: Hill and Wang. Kimmel, M. (1990). Baseball and the reconstitution of American masculinity. In M. Messner & D. Sabo (Eds.), Sport, men and the gender order: Critical feminist perspectives. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Messner, M. (1990). When bodies are weapons: Masculinity and violence in sport. International Review for Sociology of Sport, 25, 3. Messner, M. (1992). Power at play: Sports and the problem of masculinity. Boston: Beacon Press. Pope, H., Phillips, K., & Olivardia, R. (2000). The Adonis Complex: The secret crisis of male body obsession. New York: The Free Press.
Masters
T
he Masters Tournament, first played in 1934, is the most recently established of golf’s four major championships and the only one that is always played on the same course: Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
Building the Course When the U.S. amateur Bobby Jones (1902–1971) retired from serious competitive golf in 1930, he turned to his ambition of building a golf course. He and his friend Clifford Roberts (1894–1977), an investment banker, agreed that the course should be in the vicinity of Augusta, Georgia, and before long a suitable 147-hectare property called “Fruitlands Nurseries” became available and was purchased. Dr. Alister Mackenzie (1870–1934) of Scotland was employed as course architect, construction began in 1931, and the course was completed by the end of 1932. The course’s origins as a nursery explain the presence of many trees and other plants that were imported from abroad, including the magnolias and azaleas for which the course is famous. Augusta National is hilly, and Jones aimed to create a course that made the fullest use of the natural terrain and did not rely on deep rough and innumerable bunkers to make it challenging. Good strategy is paramount in playing the course successfully, and many holes can be played in several ways; the taking of risks is rewarded or punished, depending on the quality of the shots played. The greens are fast and true but also large and undulating; the golfer whose approach shot finishes far from the hole is likely to take three putts or even more.
Tournament Jones and Roberts wanted to help golf by hosting a tournament at Augusta, and they decided to hold an annual event, with participation by invitation only, starting in 1934. For the first five years the tournament was called the “Augusta National Invitation Tournament,” but thereafter it officially was called the “Masters.”
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Golf. A game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose. ■ WOODROW WILSON
The winner of the first tournament in 1934 was Horton Smith (1908–1963), but in 1935 the first immortal story emerged from the play: During the final round Gene Sarazen (1902–1999) holed his second shot at the fifteenth hole for a double-eagle 2, which enabled him to finish tied for first place; he then won the playoff the next day. A high proportion of Masters titles have been won by players who rank among the all-time greats of the game: in 1937 Byron Nelson (b. 1912) won the first of his two titles, and in 1942 he defeated Ben Hogan (1912– 1997) in a playoff for the second. Hogan himself won in 1951 and 1953, and Sam Snead (1912–2002) won in 1949, 1952, and 1954, in the last of these years beating Hogan in a playoff. Snead in 1949 was the first winner to be presented with the now-traditional Masters green jacket; prior to that year green jackets were worn only by members of the club. Unlike the members, the winner may take the jacket home for the year he is champion, but at the end of the year it must be returned to the club. In 1958 Arnold Palmer (b. 1929) won the first of his four titles, and his play over the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth holes that year led the sports writer Herbert Warren Wind (b. 1918) to name that part of the course the “Amen Corner,” a name that refers to an old jazz song, “Shouting at Amen Corner”: The golfer who plays these holes successfully should quietly say “Amen” when he has negotiated them. Gary Player (b. 1935) won the Masters three times, his first title coming in 1961, Jack Nicklaus (b. 1940) won a record six times between 1963 and 1986—an astonishing span of years between first and last victories— and Tom Watson (b. 1949) won in 1977 and 1981. However, the victory of Seve Ballesteros (b. 1957) in 1980 marked the start of a successful period for European golfers. During the years from 1980 to 1999 Europeans won the Masters eleven times, including Nick Faldo (b. 1957) three times. In 1997 Tiger Woods (b. 1975) won the first of his three titles to date, becoming at twenty-one the youngest winner and also the winner by the largest margin (twelve strokes).
Augusta, Controversy, and Social Change The location of Augusta National in the Deep South of the United States and the small and exclusive membership of the club have contributed to making the Masters more controversial than any of the other major championships of golf. After the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) ended its “Caucasian only” policy in 1961, a number of black golfers played on the tour, and with increasing frequency during the late 1960s and early 1970s people asked when one of them would be invited to the Masters. Augusta National’s response was always that the rules for qualification were the same for all players, and although people often expressed doubts about this claim, in 1975 Lee Elder (b. 1934) became the first black player to appear in the Masters. Local black caddies continued to be used in the Masters until 1983, and although the caddies were unhappy finally to lose their bags that year, the perception that the Masters was a tournament played largely by whites with black caddies had become unhelpful. People also criticized the all-white composition of the club’s membership; this criticism was finally silenced in 1990 when a black businessman was invited to join. In 2003 controversy returned when Martha Burk, chairwoman of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, drew attention to Augusta’s all-male membership policy. Major demonstrations outside the club were planned for the time of the Masters if the policy was not changed; the club made no concessions, and as yet its policy remains unchanged, but the demonstrations were much smaller than some people had anticipated.
The Future In a relatively short time the Masters has acquired immense prestige and established unique traditions; to play in the tournament will continue to be a great ambition for leading golfers. As the first major championship of each calendar year, played on a course of unique beauty and immense challenges, it attracts huge international interest. The tensions caused because Augusta National is
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As I see it, the world of sports is in very fine company, with a fine heritage. It is one of the Big Four. Only four kinds of events—politics, religion, the arts, and sports—have been able to draw consistently large crowds of paying customers throughout history. That must mean something. ■ BILL RUSSELL
a private club that hosts a key international sporting event are likely to lead to continued controversy. Tony Sloggett
Further Reading Brown, C. (1999). Masters memories. Chelsea, MI: Sleeping Bear Press. Eubanks, S. (1997). Augusta: Home of the Masters Tournament—A revealing look inside America’s most intriguing golf club. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press. Owen, D. (1999). The making of the Masters: Clifford Roberts, Augusta National, and golf’s most prestigious tournament. New York: Simon & Schuster. Price, C. (2001). A golf story: Bobby Jones, Augusta National and the Masters Tournament. Chicago: Triumph Books. Sampson, C. (1999). The Masters. New York: Villard Books. Shipnuck, A. (2004). The battle for Augusta National: Hootie, Martha, and the masters of the universe. New York: Simon & Schuster. Sowell, D. (2003). The Masters: A hole-by-hole history of America’s golf classic. Washington, DC: Brassey’s.
Media-Sports Complex
T
he media-sports complex is the interconnection between media and sports that incorporates media institutions, sports organizations, and the processes, products, and services that emerge from the interconnection. The media-sports complex has become increasingly close, becoming significant in affecting the structures, ethos (distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs), and governance of commercial sports.
History Although the relationship between the media and sports has tightened in recent decades, the relationship is longstanding. Print media coverage of sports, most notably via daily newspapers, was pivotal in the rise, popularization, and spread of modern sports during the 1800s and early 1900s. In conveying scores, match reports, and other information, sports pages, weekly journals, and subsequently dedicated sports sections within newspapers played a significant role in popu-
larizing sports. In particular they stimulated interest and spectatorship and generated civic, regional, and national pride in sports teams. Newspapers also contributed to the early commercial development of sports by actively promoting and investing in events and teams to boost circulation. Traces of early commercial connections are still evident today. For example, the maillot jaune (yellow jersey) instituted in 1919 to denote the leader of the Tour de France bicycle race is so colored because of the sponsorship of the event by the newspaper L’Auto (the pages of which were yellow). Such coverage, promotion, and investment by the media were pivotal in the early emergence of commercial sports. Simultaneously, sports emerged as an important component of media output, attracting readers and hence advertisers. Thus was borne a relationship of mutual reliance. Technological advances in the form of radio coverage and telegraphy subsequently extended interest in and coverage of sports and enhanced the media-sports complex. Radio broadcasting was significant because live transmission of events could reach large audiences distant from the actual events. With the aid of evocative commentaries, broadcasts popularized sports on a national scale. Early radio sportscasts took place during the 1920s and rapidly attracted large audiences. For example, by 1926 an estimated U.S. audience of 15 million tuned in to listen to a Dempsey–Tunney boxing bout. During the same year World Series baseball was broadcast on radio for the first time. Alongside national commercial broadcasters, public service providers helped further establish sports within national cultures. In Canada, for example, by the late 1930s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) audiences of 1 million were tuning in to ice hockey broadcasts. By the end of that decade audiences for Hockey Night in Canada had doubled to 2 million listeners. Accordingly, sports programming formed a significant component of radio programming and helped popularize radio listening per se. Furthermore, the increasing popularity of radio stimulated by sports
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Media-Sports Complex Commercial Considerations and the Sports Pages scene—reporting what’s happening in “the big leagues.” The standard fare of the paper’s sports news is game results from the previous day, player movement through trades and outright releases, injury reports on athletes, and the current status of any labor unrest. Indeed, reporting this news seems to be the raison d’etre of any metropolitan daily’s sports section: “This is the stuff people want to read about . . . big time sports gets you readers,” remarked the Examiner’s sports editor. The paper’s sports section is thus saturated with commercial spectator sports news, as this is how a quality audience is attracted and subsequently sold to advertisers. A commercial spectator sports bias is simply a matter of financial survival. (Lowes 2004, 132)
Mark Lowes’ analysis of work routines at the Examiner, a large metropolitan daily Canadian newspaper in the mid-1990s was driven by his curiosity about why the sports pages were “so thoroughly saturated with news of the North American major-league sports scene” (1999, 4). He wanted to know what it was about “these entertainment spectacles” that led to people believing they were so much more significant than sports like, for example, sprint canoeing. His research clearly demonstrated the focus on commercial male sports and the cultural belief systems that underlie the choices made by sports editors and journalists. In the following description of the daily planning of the sports pages, Lowes also points to the importance of commercial considerations as sports editors and writers decide which sports to cover and which to ignore.
Sources: Lowes, M. D. (1999). Inside the sports pages: Work routines, professional ideologies, and the manufacture of sports news. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
The first concern at the Examiner when planning its sports section each day is with the commercial sports
Lowes, M. D. (2004). Sports page: A case study in the manufacture of sports news for the daily press. In D. Rowe (Ed.), Critical readings: Sport, culture and the media (pp. 129–145). Berkshire, UK: Open University Press.
programming boosted advertising revenue for commercial stations. Radio, of course, continues to be a significant medium for transmitting sports with dedicated sports stations and phone-in programs. The role of media exposure and investment in the development of commercial sports—via both newspapers and radio—established an interdependent media-sports relationship, which was later consolidated with the emergence of television broadcasting.
Sports-Television Relationship Televising of sports began during the 1930s. One of the first experimental broadcasts occurred at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, where more than seventy hours of live coverage were broadcast on large screens throughout the city. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) first transmitted coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships in 1937. In Britain at that time only two thousand homes had sets that could receive the blurred images. In the United States televised sports
emerged in 1939 with coverage of a college baseball game between Columbia and Princeton. These early broadcasts were limited in their sophistication and scope, featuring fixed-position cameras conveying realtime footage. Accordingly, expectations of the sportstelevision relationship remained relatively muted at this early stage. The early phases of the sports-television relationship were marked by the fears of sports owners and administrators that coverage would detract from the gate receipts of live events, upon which commercial sports relied. During the immediate postwar era these fears reached a peak. Accordingly, entrepreneurs and administrators adopted protectionist measures. In Canada, for example, fear of televising ice hockey resulted in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts during the early 1950s coming on the air only after the first period of a game had been played. Similarly, in the United States fears of the adverse effects of television coverage on gate receipts were displayed by National Collegiate
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Media-Sports Complex Major Television Rights Deals in North American Sports 2005 Contract Period
Rights Holder
Total Fee
Annual Value
National Football League 2006–2013
ESPN, NBC
$10.2 billion
$1.7 billion
2006–2011
CBS, Fox
$8 billion
$1.3 billion
1998–2005
CBS, Fox, ABC, ESPN
$17.6 billion
$2.2 billion
1994–1997
NBC, Fox, ABC, ESPN/TNT
$4.3 billion
$1.1 billion
$2.5 billion
$146.7 million
Major League Baseball 2001–2006
Fox
2000–2005
ESPN
$851 million
$141.8 million
1996–2000
Fox, NBC, ESPN
$1.7 billion
$340 million
National Basketball Association 2002–2008
ABC/ESPN, Time Warner
$4.6 billion
$766.7 million
1998–2002
NBC, TNT/TBS
$2.64 billion
$660 million
1994–1998
NBC, TNT
$1.1 billion
$275 million
National Hockey League 2004–2005
ESPN
$60 million
$60 million
1999–2004
ABC/ESPN
$600 million
$120 million
1994–1999
Fox
$155 million
$31 million
Fox, NBC/Tumer
$2.4 billion
$400 million
NASCAR 2001–2008
Source: Adapted from Street & Smith’s sports business journal, 7(39), 17.
Athletic Association (NCAA) policies regulating football broadcast rights to protect in-stadium attendance. The English Football League was equally resistant to live coverage throughout the 1950s. Notwithstanding these early reservations, the sportstelevision relationship became consolidated during the 1960s.Technological advances in the form of video replay, graphics, slow motion, and color footage considerably enhanced the sophistication and appeal of televised sports for viewers. As a consequence TV networks began to devote more program time and budget to sports coverage. In the United States, for example, by making sports a centerpiece of its scheduling, ABC was able to top the ratings against competitors NBC and CBS during the 1970s. Such competition from rival networks led to rising broadcast rights fees as sports administrators benefited from the increasingly competitive media marketplace.
Sports-Television Transformations The sports-television relationship transformed sports. The transformation was significant because of the alternative conventions, protocols, and priorities of television. With the exception of noncommercial public service broadcasting, these changes centered on maximizing commercial opportunities by attracting the widest possible audiences. The large fees that commercial broadcasters were prepared to pay for exclusive broadcast rights ensured that sporting bodies were willing to adapt to the demands of television protocols and scheduling. Many sports have undergone changes as administrators have sought to modify their formats, scheduling, and rules to conform to television priorities. A particularly prominent example was English Rugby League, which in 1996 shifted the entire season from winter to
MEDIA-SPORTS COMPLEX
summer to meet media scheduling priorities. The playing schedules of most commercially oriented leagues are established to fit with broadcasting needs that are designed to maximize the audience by coinciding with peak viewing times. The scheduling of boxing bouts during the early morning hours in the United Kingdom to coincide with peak-time U.S. audiences illustrates the relative dominance of the media within the media-sports complex. Numerous sports have changed their rules to speed up the action, minimize stoppages, and prevent negative play that is not conducive to television scheduling and spectacle. The transformation of professional football in the United States into the “archetypal television sport” (Barnett 1990, 124) is a prominent example. During the 1960s innovations in the form of the “TV time-out,” the two-minute warning, and numerous viewer-oriented innovations such as razzmatazz were implemented to attract viewers. Further televisionoriented rule changes during the 1970s facilitated offensive play and spectacular resolutions to games (overtime). Changes such as modifications to false start rules in swimming and sprinting are designed to minimize disruption to scheduling by events overrunning their time allocation. Similarly, the back pass (a defensive pass to a team’s own goalkeeper) rule instituted in world soccer during 1992 was designed to stop negative play and to enhance spectacle. Just as television has transformed sports, sports have transformed television. Specifically, sports provide programming with broad popular appeal and hence are capable of attracting large, loyal audiences, even outside of peak viewing times. Sports programming is relatively cheap to produce in relation to alternative types of programming, features established “characters,” and operates in a serialized way that ensures ongoing appeal. Thus, sports have become a crucial component in broadcast schedules, and accordingly certain sports have been able to command large broadcast rights fees. The significance of this revenue is that the commercial underpinnings of numerous major sports are reliant on media finance.
993
Government Intervention in Sports Broadcasting The sports-television relationship has been subject to government intervention under “public service” principles. For example, in countries such as Australia and New Zealand and the United Kingdom governments have sought to protect sports events deemed to be of “national cultural significance” to ensure free-to-air broadcasting access. In the United Kingdom a list of protected sports was first implemented in 1954, briefly rescinded in 1991, and reimplemented in 1996 because of the threat of new satellite broadcasters. The list contains key sporting events such as the FA Cup Final, Grand National, and Wimbledon tennis championships. The consequence of this government intervention was that certain events emerged as important national rituals and symbols of unity and ensured the BBC’s role as national broadcaster.
Media-Sports Complex Debates The transforming effects of the media-sports complex are not always welcomed by either players or fans who have suffered from inconvenient timings or who have argued that the very essence of some sports has been altered by rule changes. Some people also have argued that control of various sports may now lie more with media executives than with sports administrators. Critics of the complex suggest that money injected by television broadcasters is responsible for shattering the values and ethos of sports, replacing them with overt commercialism. The very integrity of sports, critics suggest, has been corrupted by financially driven, primarily media-oriented alterations implicated in the emergence of a win-at-all-costs attitude, cheating, and a decline of moral standards. In contrast, advocates suggest that television has “made” sports, that it has turned events into global spectacles, injected significant revenue, attained unparalleled levels of entertainment, and heightened the pervasiveness of sports. Critics have also noted that media coverage of sports is overwhelmingly constituted of cliches and trivia. That is, the deeper social significance, meanings, and
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problems associated with sports are rarely explored in media output. As a consequence, many of the illusions of sports as being apolitical and somehow beyond the bounds of “real life” have been perpetuated in media coverage. Additionally, the sports media’s tendency to reflect a narrow breadth of sports events has been criticized as presenting a distorting image of sports culture per se. The underrepresentation of women’s sports, for example, and the capacity to present stereotyped characteristics of gender or national identities have been cited in criticisms of the distorting power of the media.
Media Deregulation, New Technology, and Globalization During the 1970s and 1980s developments in the economics, technology, and regulation of media heralded large-scale changes for the media-sports complex on a global scale. New technology generated new possibilities for media-sports production and consumption. The delivery of sports is now characterized by new services, including dedicated sports channels, the Internet, and mobile telephony by which consumers can receive mediated sports. Unprecedented sports-only outlets such as ESPN and SKY Sports channels were largely enabled by the emergence of digital, cable, and satellite systems that allowed “delivery” on a global basis. Furthermore, developments in encryption technology allowed the capacity for new forms of payment, such as pay-per-view and subscription networks and events. The capacity of subscription-based broadcasters to raise considerable revenue via subscriptions has led them to dominate various national markets, in particular sports broadcast rights.The dominance of the Rupert Murdoch-controlled SKY network in the United Kingdom and New Zealand is an example. These technological developments coincided with deregulation of national markets and the marketization of public service media outlets (for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation) during the 1980s. These processes included the removal or downgrading of “public interest” clauses, national content limitations and quotas, and media ownership restrictions. These
mechanisms had previously regulated media ownership and content. The regulation of media in the “public interest” by governments was largely replaced by regulation according to market dynamics. Such regulation had major impacts within Europe, which had traditionally operated along public service principles. Similarly, in North America the removal of cross-media ownership restrictions and reregulation altered the media marketplace. Accordingly, the Fox network of local cable television stations arose during the 1980s. Additionally the removal of ownership restrictions enabled takeovers and mergers of media groups. Shifting economic opportunities resulted from these regulatory and technological changes. In particular, conglomeration, resulting from takeovers and mergers, concentrated ownership of media outlets in fewer and fewer hands. The new megacorporations benefited from economies of scale in their widespread operations that featured multiple media holdings. For example, conglomerates featured cross-ownership in such areas as newspapers, magazines, films, music, television, and the Internet. Prominent media conglomerates include News Corporation, Vivendi Universal, Walt Disney/ ABC/Capital Cities, AOL Time-Warner, Bertlesmann AG, and Viacom. These conglomerates adopted strategies of global expansion with sports as a core feature of market penetration. Indeed, at a News Corporation annual general meeting in 1996, Rupert Murdoch asserted that “sport absolutely overpowers film and everything else in the entertainment genre,” noting it can be used as a “battering ram” in the quest for global markets. Accordingly, media groups, in conjunction with corporate sponsors and advertisers also seeking global exposure, have used sports broadcasting to penetrate global markets. These technological, regulatory, and economic transitions have restructured national media industries in a variety of ways as structures and institutions have undergone transformation or accommodation within global media marketplaces. In particular, new media delivery and presentation, including pay TV, sportspecific channels, Internet webcasts, and mobile
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telephony technologies, have precipitated new forms of attachment, identification, and consumption in diverse ways. That is, unlimited opportunities exist to consume sports according to interest and, crucially, the ability to pay.
rapidly became global in scope. By late 1998 a compromise reunited the Australian sport, largely under Murdoch’s influence. Again, however, the capacity for the media to challenge existing structures and relationships in sports had been demonstrated.
“Superleagues” and Media Control
Mediasport: Symbiosis and Vertical Integration
The media-sports complex has stimulated numerous challenges to relationships of power and control in sports. At times the uneasy relationship has spilled over into struggles over control of sports as a media commodity. During the late 1970s the media group of Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer bought the services of leading world cricketers to establish an international televised competition to compete with established international cricket run by the sport’s traditional authorities. The Packer-backed competition contracted many top cricketers from around the world to compete in what was called “World Series cricket,” operated successfully for two years, and instituted many changes to enliven the media spectacle, including brightly colored uniforms and floodlit games. In 1979 a compromise, largely in favor of the Packer organization, was reached with cricket administrators. The example of World Series cricket, however, demonstrated the capacity for media corporations to invest in sports and challenged the long-standing power of administrators and governing bodies to control the commercial aspects of sports. A similar situation emerged in Australian Rugby League (ARL) in 1995. In what was dubbed the “Superleague War” rival media networks adopted competing strategies to ensure their access to televising the sport. Rupert Murdoch established a “rebel” competition by signing elite players to his “Superleague” to rival the Kerry Packer-backed traditional competition governed by the Australian Rugby League. Subsequently, rival media-backed competitions operated during 1997. To gain dominance the Murdoch camp captured exclusive rights to the sport in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, with caveats that it must become more media friendly. The consequences of what had started as a struggle for dominance in the Australian media market
The sports-television relationship has largely been conceived as symbiotic—that is, a mutual reliance of one institution on the other. This mutual reliance has been profound in transforming sports in numerous ways. Yet, so entwined have commercial sports and the media become that the distinction has become increasingly dissolved. Accordingly, the term mediasport (Wenner 1998, 3) has been used to describe the fusion of sports with the media industries and corporate landscape, with sports events functioning first and foremost as media spectacles. The cross-ownership of sports and media holdings— vertical integration—has completely dissolved the media-sports distinction. The most prominent example is News Corporation ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers (baseball) and Brisbane (Australia) Broncos (rugby league) franchises, alongside part interests in the New York Knicks (basketball), New York Rangers (ice hockey), Manchester United (soccer), and Manchester City (soccer). AOL Time-Warner, in turn, has a controlling interest in the Atlanta Braves (baseball), Hawks (basketball), and Thrashers (ice hockey). Similarly, the Disney/ABC/Capital Cities conglomerate owns the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim ice hockey franchise. Such patterns of ownership give the opportunity for cross-promotion between the varying outlets and products of corporate empires. For example, the Disney-distributed Mighty Ducks films promoted the professional sports franchise and stimulated sales of branded merchandise. In turn, the merchandise helped establish the brand visibility of the films and team and so on in a circular manner. Similarly, sports teams now own media outlets. A prominent example is the Manchester United Television (MUTV) channel,
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majority owned by the largest soccer club in the world. These examples demonstrate the outcomes of the close media-sports-corporate relationship that are centered on product promotion and brand visibility on a global scale. They also demonstrate the breakdown of a tangible media-sports distinction. In these cases the corporate entity that emerges leaves distinct sports and media entities indistinguishable.
Whannel, G. (1986). Television spectacle and the internationalization of sport. Journal of Communication Enquiry, 9(2), 54–74. Whannel, G. (1992). Fields in vision: Television sport and cultural transformation. London: Routledge.
The Future
he memorabilia industry is a worldwide phenomenon that includes collectibles from every sport. Different sports thrill different nationalities, and prices of collectibles vary accordingly. For example, baseballs might sell for a lot in the United States and Japan, but they would be hard to give away in France. Cricket and soccer memorabilia are hot items in London but would go unsold in Chicago. Sports have been popular in almost every culture since the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans wrestled, boxed, and ran races. Modern sports became popular during the late nineteenth century, and collecting became a popular hobby by the early twentieth century when trading cards were created for U.S. baseball players. However, before baseball trading cards came graphic illustrations of sporting events, made popular throughout the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Newspapers such as Harper’s Weekly, Leslie’s, and the Illustrated London News printed images of sports in every nation where journalists ventured. These line drawings were popular and collectible, especially when the publication printed a fullpage image or, in some cases, a double-page image to be removed and framed. Sports such as rowing, wrestling, boxing, cricket, rugby, golf, archery, bowling, fencing, and pedestrianism were popular subjects during the nineteenth century. In Germany dueling was a common image, found rarely in U.S. publications. British newspapers featured rowing and rugby, whereas U.S. newspapers featured baseball and football. Readers learned about other cultures through these illustrated weeklies, which today are collectible.
Sports have been integrated with the media industries, advertising agencies, and multinational corporations that seek world markets. Media coverage, in this sense, is used to promote sports and associated products on a global basis. These relationships ensure that, within the mainstream media marketplace, certain sports will continue to dominate output. Indeed, coverage of certain dominant sports will likely increase as a key part of the entertainment, advertising, and promotional industries. Notwithstanding these trends, diversification of audiences is likely to continue as specialist niche media emerge to capitalize on desires to consume sports from anywhere around the globe in pay-per-view television and webcast formats. Mark Falcous See also ESPN; Eurosport; Magazines; Movies; Play-byPlay Announcing; Radio; Sportswriting and Reporting; X Games
Further Reading Barnett, G. (1990). Games and sets: The changing face of sport on television. London: British Film Institute. Bernstein, A., & Blain, N. (2003). Sport, media and culture: Global and local dimensions. London: Frank Cass. Boyle, R., & Haynes, R. (2000). Power play: Sport, the media & popular culture. London: Longman. Brookes, R. (2002). Representing sport. London: Arnold. Rader, B. (1984). In its own image: How television has transformed sports. London: Free Press. Rowe, D. (1996). The global love-match: Sport and television. Media, Culture and Society, 18, 565–582. Rowe, D. (1999). Sport, culture and the media. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Wenner, L. (Ed.). (1998). Mediasport. London: Routledge.
Memorabilia Industry
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Several nostalgic baseball items. Source: istockphoto.com/JSABBOTT.
As sports became more popular the collecting of autographs and images became more common. The New York Yankee Babe Ruth made U.S. baseball cards and other related objects popular and collectible. Today’s memorabilia industry has a huge following for baseball cards, used sports equipment such as balls, bats, uniforms, and even chewing gum alleged to have been chewed by an important athlete. Some memorabilia shops stock only baseball hats from every team imaginable or only basketball jerseys costing nearly one hundred dollars. After the collecting phenomenon became more profit oriented, young people were left out as the athletes, owners, and the business end of sports cashed in. Investors sought—and bid up—the rarest of sports memorabilia. Auction houses such as Regency-Superior, Lelands, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips have entered the marketplace with auctions at which prices have skyrocketed into the millions of dollars for items such as a home run baseball hit by former St. Louis Cardinal Mark McGwire. In the United States thousands of people also buy, sell, and trade memorabilia at huge sports shows. The memorabilia industry in the United States predominantly deals in baseball, football, basketball, and ice hockey. In England the industry deals in golf, cricket, rugby, and soccer. Every Olympic year a worldwide market in Olympic memorabilia thrives; pin collecting is the major interest. However, the big money is on gold, silver, and bronze medals from the winners,
as well as torches and old posters. Some Olympic medals have sold for $20,000 at auctions. During recent years marketing and licensing have controlled the U.S. memorabilia marketplace—athletes and teams protect their names and logos. People who want to market an item must pay a fee, causing prices to increase greatly. Young collectors have trouble getting an autograph from an athlete without first paying a fee because some people get autographs in order to sell them. The fun of collecting has become tempered by the profit motive. Fakes also abound in the sports memorabilia industry. Cheap reproductions or forgeries of signed baseballs and bats are sold to gullible collectors. Many dealers guarantee that their products are authentic, but the buyer still must beware and should deal only with reputable dealers who guarantee their products or will refund the buyer’s money. Books that list values of collectibles must be used with caution because condition is crucial to the value of an item and can be debated. What is “mint” to one dealer might be “very good” to another. As in any marketplace buyers must research their interest before buying, shop carefully, and, in the end, collect for fun and be cautious of collecting for profit. The best resources for research are dealer catalogs and auction catalogs (from such auction houses as RegencySuperior, Leland’s, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips), most of which are available by paid subscriptions. Some libraries have collections of these catalogs in their acquisitions departments or rare books rooms. A leading publication is the Sports Collector’s Digest, a weekly publication by Krause Publications. Bookstores have the most recent edition of sports memorabilia guides for major sports such as baseball, football, and golf. Antiques magazines and newspapers sometimes have an article on sports collectibles. Harvey Abrams
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That which does not kill me makes me stronger. ■ FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Further Reading Lehman, B. (2003). Standard catalog of sports memorabilia. Iola, WI: Krause Publications. Mortenson, T. (2001). Warman’s sports collectibles. Iola, WI: Krause Publications.
Mental Conditioning
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ental conditioning is a method of psychological preparation for performance. Often referred to as mental training, mental conditioning is a relatively new concept that is often linked to sport psychology. Sport psychology has been defined as the study of people and their behavior in sport. More specifically, sport psychology deals with identifying and understanding emotional and psychological factors that can affect human athletic performance and personal growth. Mental conditioning represents a division of sport psychology that focuses on applying psychological theories to sport in an attempt to enhance athletic performance. Therefore, mental conditioning is used by athletes and sport psychology consultants to help athletes achieve the appropriate mental state for peak performance.
The Early Years in North America Although mental conditioning and sport psychology have only recently become well-known throughout the world, their roots go back to the late nineteenth century. Much of the credit for North American sport psychology is given to Norman Triplett, a psychologist from Indiana University, who began to study the psychological aspects of sport in 1897. Triplett, an avid cyclist, wanted to understand why cyclists often rode faster in groups than when they were alone. In the first recorded sport psychology study, Triplett studied the effects of others on the performance of cyclists. During the early years of sport psychology (1895–1920), Triplett and others also studied athletes’ reaction times, acquisition of sport skills, and the influence of sport on moral and character development.
While Triplett is often credited with initiating sport psychology in North America, Coleman Griffith deserves equal billing. Griffith, who is often referred to as the father of sport psychology in North America was the first person to systematically study the mental aspects of sport for an extended period of time. Griffith, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, developed the first sport psychology laboratory and is responsible for two of the most classic sport psychology books, Psychology of Coaching and Psychology of Athletics. Griffith is also credited for being the first to bring mental conditioning techniques to the attention of athletes and coaches. Using sport psychology principles and mental conditioning, Griffith worked with several prominent athletes and coaches including Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne, pitcher Dizzy Dean, and Hall of Famer Red Grange.
Soviet Influences While Triplett and Griffith were supplying the groundwork for sport psychology in North America, the Soviet Union was also beginning to delve into mental conditioning. Beginning in 1917, Lenin began to promote the use of mental conditioning for athletes and soldiers. It was his belief that being mentally and physically strong was an important part of Soviet life. Therefore, mental conditioning was heavily used in both military and athletic preparation. Beginning in 1919 the Soviets constructed two Institutes for the Study of Sport and Physical Culture that were designed to promote research and the application of psychological and exercise principles to athletic performance. Scientists working at these institutes were provided the opportunity to test their research on elite athletes and develop methods to enhance performance. Prior to World War II much of the mental conditioning conducted by the Soviets was used for military purposes. However, after the war, they began to employ mental conditioning with their Olympic athletes and thus became a prominent force in Olympic competitions. Soon the mental conditioning provided to Soviet athletes became known as the “Soviet system” and was
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touted as a major reason for their Olympic success. In the 1980 Moscow Olympics the Soviets won an astonishing eighty gold, sixty-nine silver, and forty-six bronze medals. Much of their success was attributed to their use of mental conditioning.
European Influences Noticing the success of Soviet athletes, several European countries began using mental conditioning with their athletes. In the 1950s and 1960s East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia were introduced into the “Soviet system” and enjoyed success in athletic competitions despite their relatively small populations. In the early 1950s Czechoslovakia built the Institute for Physical Education and Sport and Bulgaria constructed several sport psychology laboratories in 1966. These facilities were designed to improve athletic performance and housed large numbers of sport psychologists who provided mental conditioning for elite athletes. In fact, during this time Bulgaria had 127 sport psychologists working with high-level athletes. Several Western European countries were not far behind their Eastern counterparts in the use of mental conditioning. In 1965 Ferruccio Antonelli of Italy brought together the first International Congress in Sport Psychology, attended by more than four hundred professionals eager to learn more about sport psychology and mental conditioning. During this meeting the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) was formed, which further increased the visibility of the field and led to the organization of several additional associations in Italy, Germany, Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal.
Modern History in North America In the 1970s and 1980s sport psychology and mental conditioning began to flourish in North America. In 1978 the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) recruited sport psychologists to enhance elite athletes’ performance. In 1983 the USOC established a registry of qualified sport psychologists to provide mental conditioning
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for Olympic athletes. This involvement with high-profile athletes further increased the stature of mental conditioning as a tool for athletes. In 1985 the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology (AAASP) was formed. This organization still serves as the predominant worldwide organization for sport psychology professionals. In 1991 AAASP implemented guidelines for certification of sport psychology consultants. These guidelines allowed the organization to monitor the provision of mental conditioning by sport psychology professionals.
Mental Conditioning Basics Most athletes agree that anywhere from 40–90 percent of athletic success is mediated by mental factors. In fact, mental readiness has been shown to be a major factor in Olympic performances. Therefore, mental conditioning is used by athletes in an attempt to achieve peak performance by eliminating psychological barriers to performance. More specifically, athletes often use mental conditioning to achieve a mental state conducive to peak performance. This ideal state has often been characterized by a lack of fear, intense focus on the activity, effortless performance, minimal thinking, feeling in control, and a total immersion in the activity. In their attempts to achieve this, athletes will often seek out the services of sport psychology professionals.
Frameworks Sport psychology professionals provide mental conditioning to athletes through several different frameworks, including psychophysiological, social-psychological, and cognitive-behavioral orientations. While these frameworks differ on some levels, at their core they are all designed to help athletes develop strong psychological techniques that will aid their performance. The psychophysiological orientation focuses on the physiological processes of the brain and how these processes influence athletic activity. Sport psychology professionals who work from this orientation generally use assessments of heart rate, brain wave activity, and muscle action potentials to improve athletic performance. An
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Mental Conditioning Mountain Climbing and Martial Arts Julie Tullis, a British mountaineer, died in 1986 after reaching the top of K2, the world’s second highest mountain. In the extract below, from her book Clouds from Both Sides (1985), she explains how she blended martial arts training into her mountaineering. In [budokan as in all of] the martial arts it is the basis of any practice to harmonize mind, body and spirit. Normally we tend to waste a lot of our energy, spilling it out in many directions from our bodies, like heat escaping from an uninsulated house. Learning to control and direct energy could benefit everyone in so many ways, but is something which is not considered even in sport. Just as we regrettably no longer use our basic senses to their fullest potential, so we ignore a capability that we all have and which could save so much effort and stress. This control, which has enabled me to be strong enough to cope with so many hardships in my mountaineering and continue when others have given up, I gained mainly through sitting absolutely still in meditation. One of the easiest ways to explain about directing energy is to rest an extended arm on someone’s shoulder and ask them to use all their strength to bend it. If you try to maintain a straight arm by muscular power you will soon tire. However, if you relax and concentrate on letting the energy flow smoothly out
example of this is the use of heart rate assessments to teach marksmen to fire their rifles between heartbeats, thus improving their accuracy. The social-psychological orientation is based on the belief that athletic performance and behavior are based on the interaction between the inherent traits and makeup of the performer and the environment surrounding the performer. Sport psychologists working from this viewpoint attempt to identify the effect that the environment has on athletes’ behavior and how their subsequent behavior affects their environment. The cognitive-behavioral orientation is focused on the thoughts of athletes. This approach is based on
through the Centre (or hara) along the arm out through the tips of the fingers, like water from a hose, it is impossible for the arm to be bent. I demonstrated this to a group of medical students in Pakistan and they were so impressed they nicknamed me “Superwoman”! But after five minutes they could do it too. Martial arts practice is like a bottomless pool; the deeper you look the more you want to see. That for me epitomizes mountaineering too. After I had been practicing for a few months I realized that my approach to many things in life, and especially my climbing, had changed. A lot of things I had learnt in the dojo could also be used to improve my climbing and, even more important, the way in which I taught climbing. I made myself and my students breathe out when making a strenuous move and to relax. I understood far more about how muscles and joints worked. Warming-up exercises were explained and done in a logical sequence. . . . Moving from the centre makes everything easier, and understanding that tiredness and pain do not mean one has to give up, the body can go on, has saved my life on several occasions. Best of all I was enjoying my climbing more than ever before. It was fascinating to find two activities which complemented each other so well. Tullis, J. (1985). Clouds from both sides. London: Grafton Books.
the belief that thought is the driving force in behavior. Sport psychologists working from this framework are interested in self-confidence, anxiety, and motivation and their effects on performance. After assessing these, sport psychology consultants will use mental conditioning to improve athletes’ abilities in these areas and thus, in their estimation, improve athletic performance.
Mental Conditioning Techniques A complete mental conditioning program consists of several different mental skills. An important aspect of mental conditioning is the understanding that the skills
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build on one other and a truly “mentally tough” athlete has been introduced to and trained in all of the aspects of mental conditioning. These aspects include but are not limited to goal-setting, imagery, arousal, concentration, and confidence. Some athletes begin a mental conditioning program with the goal of eliminating a current performance problem; however, many elite athletes believe that mental conditioning is a vital part of their overall preparation. Therefore, while some athletes may focus on a specific skill or aspect of mental conditioning, the majority practice several skills, believing that this overall knowledge will allow them to effectively deal with any potential performance obstacles.
GOAL -SETTING Setting goals is one common technique of mental conditioning that athletes use to enhance their performance. In the course of goal-setting, athletes will employ several types of goals, including outcome, performance, and process goals. Outcome goals focus on the result of competition, for example winning a game or a conference title. Performance goals are based on personal improvement and may include increasing a batting average or shooting percentage. Finally, process goals specify the procedures in which athletes must go through to perform at their desired level—for example, a proper follow through on a jump shot or golf swing. Goal-setting has been shown to be a very powerful technique for improving performance. Several different theories attempt to explain this connection. Many people believe that goals help direct a performer’s attention to appropriate aspects of performance. Goals have also been shown to increase motivation and effort in the immediate- and long-term. Finally, goals appear to have a positive effect on an athlete’s confidence and self-efficacy.
IMAGERY Athletes use imagery to create or re-create certain experiences in their mind through the use of all their senses. In doing this athletes are able to relive excep-
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tional performances and prepare themselves for future competitions. Imagery has been shown to be an effective tool for skill acquisition and development, preparation, confidence building, and injury recovery. Athletes who use imagery can create a picture in their minds of them successfully completing a task. Through numerous imagery sessions, athletes can improve their abilities on certain tasks. Quarterbacks will often use imagery to prepare for various defenses they might encounter during their next game, and golfers use imagery to prepare for different course and weather conditions. Imagery can also build confidence; by imaging successful performances, athletes can elicit positive feelings resulting in greater confidence. Finally, by imaging successful rehabilitation and strengthening of injured muscles, athletes can speed their recovery time.
Arousal and Anxiety Most athletes acknowledge that they perform at their best when they are experiencing low levels of anxiety and ideal (i.e., not too high or too low) levels of arousal. Therefore, athletes will often use mental conditioning to lower their anxiety levels and reach their desired level of arousal. Sport psychologists often teach athletes relaxation skills to help them deal with high levels of anxiety. Relaxation can include breathing and imagery that helps lower competitive anxiety. Athletes will also use relaxation techniques to lower their arousal if they feel they are at an unusually high level. Some researchers have suggested that athletes will perform optimally at high levels of arousal while others believe that high levels of arousal can be detrimental to performance. Recently, sport psychologists have suggested that each individual has an optimal zone of arousal that can best aid their performance. For example, golfers generally desire low levels of arousal prior to making a swing, therefore, they might practice relaxation to decrease their arousal prior to a shot. Conversely, many athletes use mental conditioning to increase their arousal prior to competition; for example, football players may use energized
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breathing and imagery to heighten their arousal levels prior to games.
videos often increase athletes’ feelings of confidence even if the images they are viewing are not of them.
Concentration
The Future
Over the course of a game or season all players are susceptible to lapses in concentration. To combat this, athletes use mental conditioning techniques to improve their focus and concentration during competition. Since different sports require different levels and focuses of concentration, mental conditioning can help athletes practice several different types of concentration. A broad external focus is wide in range and focused on the surrounding environment. A golfer might need this type of focus when surveying a hole. A narrow external focus is concentrated on a small portion of the environment. A quarterback might employ this focus as he prepares to throw to an open receiver. A broad internal focus is wide in range and focused on inner thoughts and feelings of the participant. A runner might use a broad internal focus to assess his or her abilities to increase the speed for the final “kick” in a race. A narrow internal focus is directed at a specific thought or feeling. A tennis player might use this type of focus to ensure proper placement of the left foot while stepping into a forehand.
Mental conditioning is a vastly growing method of performance enhancement. The U.S. Olympic Committee continues to employ increasing numbers of consultants to work with elite level athletes. The number of graduate programs is also increasing across the world and producing many sport psychology professionals qualified to provide mental conditioning services to athletes. The amount of youth, high school, collegiate, and professional athletes who are using mental conditioning is also dramatically increasing. Several universities and professional teams have started to employ full-time sport psychology consultants to provide mental conditioning to their athletes. As this trend continues, one might expect mental conditioning to become as widely accepted and used in sport as weight training currently is. The growth and use of mental conditioning within sport has led to advancements in its use across disciplines. In fact, mental conditioning has become popular for actors, musicians, doctors, and performers in all arenas. The principles of mental conditioning that have been used to improve athletic performance are now being applied to several different performance settings. One can expect this trend to continue, resulting in increased awareness and use of mental conditioning around the world. Noah Gentner See also Motivation; Psychology
Confidence Confidence is considered by many to be the most crucial component of mental conditioning. Confident performers generally execute important tasks with greater proficiency and success than their less confident counterparts. While some athletes naturally possess high levels of confidence, many others use mental conditioning techniques to increase their confidence. Athletes often build confidence through thoughts of previous successful performances. Through imagery or video, athletes can relive an exceptional performance that often reminds them of their abilities and subsequently increases their confidence. Confidence can also be increased through viewing others who have accomplished a desired goal. Inspirational movies or highlight
Further Reading Andersen, M. B. (Ed.). (2000). Doing sport psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Anshel, M. H. (1994). Sport psychology: From theory to practice. Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick. Berger, B., Pargman, D., & Weinberg, R. (2001). Foundations of exercise psychology. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Institute Technology. Cox, R. (1998). Sport psychology: Concepts and applications (4th ed.). Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row. Horn, T. (Ed.). (2002). Advances in sport psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
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The ball is man’s most disastrous invention, not excluding the wheel. ■ ROBERT MORLEY
Murphy, S. (Ed.). (1995). Sport psychology interventions. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Orlick, T. (1986). Psyching for sport: Mental training for athletes. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Orlick, T. (2000). In pursuit of excellence: How to win in sport and life through mental training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Ravizza, K., & Hanson, T. (1995). Heads-up baseball: Playing the game one pitch at a time. Redondo Beach, CA: Kinesis. Rotella, B., & Cullen, B. (1995). Golf is a game of confidence. New York: Simon & Schuster. Williams, J. M. (Ed.). (1998). Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Mesoamerican Ball Court Games
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esoamerican ball court games were team sports that people played in the lowlands of Central America and southern Mexico as well as the highlands of Mexico for as much as two thousand years prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. Although the lowland Mayan cities with monumental ball courts, such as Chichén Itzá and Tikal, were already abandoned when the Spanish arrived, the games were still being played in highland areas, including the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. The fact that massive labor was needed to construct the monumental stone ball courts affirms the importance of the games in the lives of inhabitants of Mesoamerica (the region of southern North America occupied during pre-Columbian times by peoples with shared cultural features).The Mayan courts were no longer in use when the Spanish arrived, and the Spanish soon destroyed those courts in the highlands by 1585 because of their symbolic and religious significance to the indigenous people. Nevertheless, archaeological remains of the courts as well as game paraphernalia, including balls, provide information about the games and their play. In addition, Mesoamerican manuscripts, called “codices,” stone sculptures, and decorated ceramics have provided details of the games and their significance in native Mesoamerican religious
and symbolic life. The Codex Mendoza, for example, indicates that the Aztecs imported as many as sixteen thousand rubber balls annually to Tenochtitlán from rubber tree-growing areas in the lowlands to the south. This fact not only indicates the importance of the games but also indicates that rubber for balls was a major trade commodity and that trade routes covered long distances.
Courts Mesoamerican ball court games were played on a variety of types of courts, known as “tlachtli” in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The largest and best known of these courts were in the Mayan areas. Courts were generally in the shape of a capital I with two end zones and long walled sides. Some courts had enclosed end zones, whereas others had open end zones. In some cases stone rings were mounted in the middle and on either side of the walled area. Propelling the rubber ball through one of these rings automatically won the game for the scoring team. Although some scholars have suggested that the games were a precursor to basketball because of these rings, the rings were mounted with their opening vertical rather than horizontal, their openings were usually only slightly larger than the ball used, and scoring by passing the ball through a ring was evidently rare. Hence, any relationship between Mesoamerican ball court games and basketball is highly unlikely. Ball courts were generally oriented in a north-south configuration, but some may have been oriented to reflect seasonal, astronomical, or other symbolic themes. Courts also differed dramatically in size. The court at Chichén Itzá in the northern Yucatan is 70 by 168 meters, making it nearly twenty-five times larger than the next-largest court in the lowlands. Mayan area courts were about 25 meters long by 7 or 8 meters wide, on average, whereas those in the central highlands averaged 36 meters by 7 meters. The size of courts generally reflected the importance of the cities within which they were located. Major urban areas often had a main court and several smaller subsidiary courts. Because the size of the courts varied widely, the number of players also varied. On smaller courts apparently
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A Mesoamerican ball court at Uxmal, in the Yucatan.
two players could play against each other, or as few as two players could be on a team. On the largest courts teams reportedly consisted of as many as eleven or twelve players. However, most teams probably had from four to seven players. Whereas the large stone courts in major urban centers were likely reserved for play by nobles or professional players retained by nobles, commoners apparently played on smaller earthen courts.
Play Ball court games were played with a ball of natural rubber that ranged in diameter from 16 to 31 centimeters. Players propelled the ball with only their hips and buttocks, according to the Spanish cleric Motolinía, but players also may have used their elbows, thighs, forearms, and possibly other parts of the body. Players apparently never kicked or threw the ball, however. In order to protect themselves from blows from the heavy ball, players wore protective cotton pads on their hips and waists as well as on their forearms. Clay figurines
Source: Gary Chick.
suggest that a U-shaped yolk around the waist or one hip was worn as well. Descriptions of the play of the games left by Spanish clerics, such as Duran, indicate that players had to propel the ball across a line drawn between the two walls at the center of the court each time the ball was struck or else incur a foul. Duran indicated that if a ball came to rest in the end zone of one of the teams, the opposing team scored a point. Unfortunately, none of the Spanish soldiers or clerics who witnessed the play of the games left detailed written descriptions of rules. Although people almost surely played ball court games for recreational purposes at times, the games also had deep symbolic meaning. People may have played for ritual purposes, including fertility, for dispute resolution, for status acquisition, for trade, and for gambling. Given the importance of human sacrifice in Mesoamerican cultures, we should not be surprised that games were often accompanied by sacrifice, sometimes of members of the losing team but also, reputedly, of the captain
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Mexico Olympics Results 2004 Summer Olympics: 3 Silver, 1 Bronze
or members of the winning team. Winners might have been sacrificed because they were considered to be superior to the losers and therefore of greater sacrificial value. Spectators watched games from the tops of the court walls, which were accessible by external staircases.
Current Status Although the monumental ball courts of the ancient Mesoamerican cities are no longer used for games, simplified versions exist in areas of northern and northwestern Mexico. These versions are played on small courts marked by stones and lines drawn in the dirt. In some versions players may propel the ball only by their hips, whereas in other versions players may use their upper arms and shoulders also. These games appear to be purely recreational and lack the symbolic and cosmological (relating to the nature of the universe) aspects of their predecessors. Garry Chick
Further Reading Codex Mendoza. (1938). London: Waterlow and Sons. Duran, F. D. (1971). Book of the gods and rites of the ancient calendar (Trans. F. Horcasitas & D. Heyden). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Leyenaar,T. J., & Parson, L. A. (1988). Ulama:The ballgame of the Mayas and Aztecs. Leiden, Netherlands: Spruyt, Van Mantgem & De Does. Santley, R. S., Berman, M. J., & Alexander, R. T. (1991). The politicization of the Mesoamerican ballgame and its implications for the interpretation of the distribution of ballcourts in central Mexico. In V. L. Scarborough & D. R. Wilcox (Eds.), The Mesoamerican ballgame (pp. 3–24). Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Scarborough, V. L. (1991). Courting the southern Maya lowlands: A study in pre-Hispanic ballgame architecture. In V. L. Scarborough & D. R. Wilcox (Eds.), The Mesoamerican ballgame (pp. 129–144). Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Stern, T. (1949). The rubber-ball games of the Americas (Monographs of the American Ethnological Society No. 17). New York: Augustin.
Mexico
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exico, the southernmost nation of North America, has long coasts on the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean and borders the United States, Guatemala, and Belize. Its capital, Mexico City, is
located in the south-central region and is one of the largest cities in the world (an estimated population of 18 million in 2000). Mexico’s national population in 2004 was estimated at 105 million. Sports have been of great importance in Mexico since the early twentieth century, as seen by early sports coverage in newspapers; widespread participation in schools, clubs, and the YMCA; representation in the Olympic Games since 1924; hosting of the 1968 Olympics; and extensive media coverage today, including newspapers and magazines dedicated to sports. Soccer is the most popular sport, involving both amateurs and professionals, but baseball is also popular, and all modern sports have a place in the country.
History The Mesoamerican ball game pelota maya was widespread in southern Mexico. Many playing courts are preserved in archaeological sites. Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán Peninsula is one of the most striking courts, with its stone rings high on each side. This ancient activity, which we might consider to be more religious rite than sport, disappeared many centuries ago, but a modern version (still using the ancient name, Ulama) is still played, especially in the northwestern coastal state of Sinaloa. Tarahumara Indians from the northwestern state of Chihuahua traditionally ran long distances to hunt deer, carry messages, and so forth. Men’s sport involved team races, which could last all day and even overnight. Members of each team had to kick a hand-carved wooden ball without touching it with their hands. Women also raced long distances and had to propel a handmade ring by using throwing sticks. The ancient sport of pelota mixteca is still played, mainly in the southern state of Oaxaca. It involves propelling a ball back and forth between two teams by the use of heavily padded gloves. The sport is similar to a medieval European game that evolved into tennis. Jaripeo (charrería) had its beginnings in early colonial Mexico, growing out of skills developed by ranch workers for handling cattle. Competitions still exist for
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men and women, and the traditional figure of the male charro derives from this sport. It formed the basis for what became rodeo in the United States and Canada. Men’s activities include riding horses and bulls, throwing bulls by the tail, and roping horses using a variety of techniques. Women have a more decorative function but also are involved in a horse-riding event called the escaramuza. Bullfighting was an important colonial sport, with Spanish and native-born torreros performing. The Plaza México in Mexico City is the world’s largest bullring, and the sport retains its popularity today. Cockfighting is another colonial sport that retains its popularity and is a staple offering in some state fairs. Horse racing was established early and still has its following. Early modern sport, including soccer, baseball, rowing, and men’s and women’s tennis and golf, began to develop during the late nineteenth century. Much of the early activity took place in elite sport clubs and the National Preparatory School, as well as at other private schools. The YMCA was also an important force in development of sports (especially swimming, track and field, and basketball) during the early twentieth century. Mexicans such as Enrique Aguirre attended the YMCA college in Springfield, Massachusetts, and returned as physical directors in YMCAs in Mexico City and Monterrey. Jai alai and boxing were popular professional spectator sports as early as the turn of the twentieth century. Famous foreign boxers, such as Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey, appeared in Mexican rings during the 1910s and 1920s.
Participant and Spectator Sports Mexicans participate in a wide variety of recreational sports, including soccer, baseball, softball, basketball, bowling, tennis, and golf. Frontenis is a popular form of pelota vasca played with tennis rackets; another popular form is three-wall handball. Amateur leagues exist for team sports, but much recreational activity still takes place in private athletic clubs, such as the Chapultepec Club in Mexico City. People play school sports, espe-
cially in private schools. Universities also have teams, and even American football is played at the National University and Monterrey Tech.
Central American and Caribbean Games Encouraged by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Mexico City held the “First Central American Games” in 1926.This was the first regional Olympic-type event for the Americas that the IOC recognized and supported. Cuba, Guatemala, and Mexico participated in the first games, which were renamed Central American and Caribbean Games in 1938. Only men participated in the initial games, but women competed on an exhibition basis in 1930 and increasingly in the regular program after that. These games have continued to the present and were hosted by Mexico City again in 1954 and 1990. Mexico has participated in all the games. In the initial games Mexico won all twelve track and three of the eight field events, basketball, tennis, and two of the three shooting events. Federico Mariscal won both diving events. From 1926 through 1990 male Mexican athletes won gold medals in track and field (especially the 1,500 meters, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, half marathon, marathon, 3,000-meter steeplechase, and 10kilometer, 20-kilometer, and 50-kilometer walks), archery, badminton, and basketball (1926–1950, 1954 tie, 1990). Mexican men also won gold medals in bowling, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, frontenis, gymnastics, judo, soccer (1935, 1938, 1959, 1975 tie, 1990), softball, and swimming (all men’s and women’s swimming events in 1950 and 1959 and all men’s events in 1962). Mexican men also won gold in diving (Antonio Mariscal in 1938; Joaquín Capilla in 1946, 1950, and 1954; and Fernando Platas in 1990; all men’s diving medals in 1946, 1950, and 1954; and six of six gold medals in 1990), water polo (1950–1962, 1982), polo, racquetball, rowing, tennis, shooting, volleyball (1930, 1935, 1950–1962), wrestling, and yachting. From 1935 through 1990 Mexican women won gold in discus, javelin, 1,500-meter, 5,000-meter, and 10,000-
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Mexico Key Events in Mexico Sports History c. 500 BCE Mesoamerican peoples are playing ball court games. c. 1585
Mesoamerican ball courts are destroyed by the Spanish.
1890s
Modern sports are introduced, mainly from the United States.
c.1910
Professional baseball is established.
1923
The National Olympic Committee is established.
1924
Mexico participates in the Olympics for the first time.
1926
The first Central American Games are held in Mexico City.
1951
Mexico participates in the first Pan American Games.
1955
Mexico hosts the Pan American Games.
1968
The Summer Olympics are held in Mexico City.
1970
Mexico hosts the Caribbean (baseball) Series for the first time.
1975
Mexico hosts the Pan American Games.
1976
Mexico wins the Caribbean (baseball) Series.
1987
The Mexican Olympic Festival is held for the first time.
meter runs, marathon, and 10-kilometer walk, archery, badminton, basketball (1935, 1946–1959, 1966), bowling, canoeing, cycling, equestrian events, gymnastics, racquetball, rowing, swimming and diving, synchronized swimming, tennis, and volleyball (1935, 1938, 1954, 1959, 1970). In 1993 the large Mexican delegation won 68 gold, 109 silver, and 73 bronze medals, including the nation’s first medals in team handball, karate, and skating. In
1998 the medal numbers were 61, 87, and 70, respectively. Cuba boycotted the 2002 games in El Salvador, giving Mexico the chance to dominate, winning 145 gold, 116 silver, and 102 bronze medals, including gold in men’s and women’s archery and its first gold in the men’s 200 meters. Through 1986 Mexicans held two women’s track records (10,000-meter run and 10,000-meter walk) and seven men’s track records (distance running and walks), two cycling records, two men’s and one women’s swimming records, and one men’s shooting record. During this period Mexico dominated swimming, diving, and tennis and won 25 percent of gold and 24 percent of total medals (second place in both, far below first-place Cuba but far above third-place Puerto Rico). The Mexican delegation won the most gold medals (and usually the most total medals) in 1926, 1935, 1950–1966, and 2002 (in the absence of Cuba) and second most in 1930, 1938, 1946, and 1970–1998.
Pan American Games Mexico participated in the initial Pan American Games in 1951 and all succeeding games, hosting the games in 1955 and 1975. Mexican businessman Mario Vázquez Raña is president of the Pan American Sport Organization, headquartered in Mexico City. From 1951 through 2003 Mexican men won Pan American gold medals in marathon, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, 20-kilometer walk, 50-kilometer walk, bowling, boxing, cycling, diving (Joaquín Capilla, 1955; Fernando Platas, 1995), equestrian, fencing, frontenis, gymnastics, judo, kayak and canoe, modern pentathlon, racquetball, rowing, tennis (1955 and mixed doubles in 1951–1963), soccer (1967, 1975 tie, 1999), shooting, swimming, taekwondo, weightlifting, freestyle wrestling, water polo (1975), and yachting. During the same period Mexican women won Pan American gold in the marathon, 400 meters (Ana Guevara in 1999 and 2003), 3,000 meters, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, 10-kilometer walk, 20-kilometer walk, bowling, cycling, fencing, frontenis, racquetball,
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So-called Asian martial arts have become a global phenomenon. This photo shows a taekwondo center in a Mexican town in central Mexico in 2003.
rowing, taekwondo, tennis, volleyball (1955), and yachting.
Olympic Games With the stimulation of a visit from IOC vice president Henri de Baillet-Latour in 1923 and the financial support of a major Mexico City newspaper, El Universal, Mexico first took part in the Olympics in Paris in 1924 with a group of fifteen track and field athletes, two shooters, and two tennis players. One of the shooters was Colonel Tirso Hernández, who later became a principal figure in Mexican sport administration. Since then Mexican athletes have participated in all summer Olympic Games, winning their first medals in 1932 (silver in flyweight boxing by Francisco Cabañas and a silver in shooting). Subsequent medals include bronze in bantamweight boxing, polo, and men’s basketball in 1936; two gold, one silver, and one bronze in equestrian and one bronze in men’s diving (Joaquín Capilla) in 1948; one silver in men’s diving (Capilla) in 1952; one gold and one bronze in men’s diving (both by Capilla) in 1956; one bronze in men’s diving in 1960; one bronze (tie) in bantamweight boxing in 1964; silver in men’s 20-kilometer walk, two gold and two bronze in boxing, one gold in men’s swimming, one bronze in women’s swimming, one silver in women’s fencing, and one silver in men’s diving in 1968. Mexican athletes also won silver in bantamweight boxing in 1972; gold in men’s 20-kilometer walk (Daniel Bautista) and bronze (tie) in featherweight boxing in 1976; one silver in men’s diving and three bronze
in equestrian events in 1980; gold and silver (Raul González) in men’s 20-kilometer walk, gold in men’s 50kilometer walk (Raul González), silver in bantamweight boxing; and one silver in Greco-Roman wrestling. Mexican athletes also won one bronze in men’s cycling in 1984; bronze (tie) in flyweight boxing and one bronze in men’s diving in 1988; silver in men’s 50-kilometer walk in 1992; bronze in men’s 20-kilometer walk in 1996; one gold in women’s weightlifting, silver in men’s 20-kilometer walk and men’s platform diving (Fernando Platas). They also won bronze in men’s 50-kilometer walk, lightweight boxing, and men’s taekwondo in 2000; and silver in women’s 400 meters (Ana Guevara), one silver in women’s cycling, one silver in men’s taekwondo, and one bronze in women’s taekwondo in 2004. In the 2004 Olympics Mexico was sixtieth overall in gold and tied for forty-sixth in total medals. Mexico City was the site of the 1968 Olympics—the only Olympics to have been held in Latin America. Those games were the largest Olympics that had been held at that time, with 5,931 athletes from 112 countries. Opening ceremonies were conducted in the stadium of the National University, constructed during the 1950s and used previously for Pan American and Central American and Caribbean Games. Many sports
MEXICO
facilities were built, including a huge gymnasium, the Sport Palace, a world-class velodrome (a track designed for cycling), and the Olympic swimming complex. Mexico entered more than three hundred athletes, and its nine medals were an all-time high for the country. The Mexican Olympic Committee hosted its Mexican Olympic Festival at its training center in Mexico City every year during the period 1987–2003. Competition in Mexican and international sports is held for Mexicans from all parts of the country as well as athletes from other countries. Several Mexicans have been members of the IOC, including General José de Jesús Clark Flores, elected in 1952 and serving as vice president during the period 1966–1970. Current Mexican IOC members include Mario Vázquez Raña (member of the executive board; received the IOC’s Olympic Order in Gold in 1988) and Olegario Vázquez Raña. Mario Vázquez Raña is also president of the Association of National Olympic Committees.
Professional Sports The most important professional sport in Mexico is soccer. First division teams receive strong fan support, their matches are frequently shown on TV, and national selections compete in international competition. Professional baseball began during the early twentieth century, and the Mexican League became especially important during the 1940s and later, drawing players even from the U.S. major leagues in 1946. The Mexican Pacific League plays winter ball. Between 1970 and 1992 Mexico hosted seven Caribbean Series (later called the “InterAmerican Series”) championships, and Mexican teams won the series in 1976 and 1986. Many Mexican players have starred in U.S. professional baseball, the best known being Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela (1981–1990). Mexicans also have played jai alai since the late 1800s, and the Frontón México in Mexico City is still a popular spot for watching and betting on jai alai matches. Mexican boxers are widely followed in their country and internationally. Julio César Chávez was world champion in
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three divisions, winning 106 matches (89 consecutively) and losing only 5, finally retiring in 2004 at age fortyone.The pseudo-sport of professional wrestling is well established in Mexico and featured on TV.
Women and Sport Mexican women have participated in sports for more than one hundred years. During the earliest period socially elite women played tennis and golf, and working-class and middle-class girls and women played basketball. Since the mid-twentieth century Mexican women have participated in most modern sports from recreational leagues to international competition. Currently 400-meter runner Ana Guevara is probably the best known Mexican woman athlete.
Organizations The Secretaría de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Secretary of Education, Culture, and Sports) is the cabinetlevel government office that oversees sports in Mexico. The Comisión Nacional de Cultura Física y Deporte (National Commission of Physical Culture and Sports) (www.conade.gob.mx) is the principal organization that promotes physical education, recreation, and sports. Mexico’s National Olympic Committee (www. com.org.mx) was established in 1923. The committee’s training center in Mexico City, constructed for the 1968 games, contains gymnasiums, swimming pool, track and athletic field, a velodrome, archery area, and a dormitory and dining hall for athletes in residence, as well as an Olympic library and museum.
The Future Sport, especially soccer for boys and basketball for girls, are important for Mexican youth, and national spirit is fostered by victories of Mexican professional boxers and by the successes of other athletes in international competitions, such as the Pan American and Olympic Games. Spectator enthusiasm for sport is most developed in professional soccer, and the traditional sports of bullfighting and jaripeo maintain their fans. Critics have complained that, in sport, Mexico has not lived up
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to its status as a powerful nation and leader in Latin America, but professional sports and Olympic-type sports seem to have a bright future in Mexico. Richard V. McGehee See also Mesoamerican Ball Court Games
Further Reading Arbena, J. L. (1991). Sport, development, and Mexican nationalism, 1920–1970. Journal of Sport History, 18(3), 350–364. Arbena, J. L. (2002). Hosting the Summer Olympic Games: Mexico City, 1968. In J. L. Arbena and D. G. La France (Eds.), Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean (pp. 133–143). Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Beezley, W. H. (1987). Judas at the Jockey Club and other episodes of Porfirian Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bjarkman, P. C. (1994). Baseball with a Latin beat. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Clay, M. A. (1980). Sport and physical education in Mexico. In W. Johnson (Ed.), Sport and physical education around the world (pp. 405– 423). Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing. Fernandez, J. R. (1994). El futbol mexicano: ¿un juego sucio? [Mexican soccer: A dirty sport?]. Mexico City, Mexico: Editorial Grijalbo. Ferreiro, A. (1986). Centroamérica y el Caribe a Traves de sus Juegos [Central American and Caribbean Games]. Mexico City, Mexico: Artes Gráficas Rivera. Klein, A. M. (1994). Baseball wars: The Mexican baseball league and nationalism in 1946. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 13, 33–56. McGehee, R. V. (1993). The origins of Olympism in Mexico: The Central American Games of 1926. International Journal of the History of Sport, 10(3), 313–332. McGehee, R.V. (1994). Sports and recreational activities in Guatemala and Mexico, late 1800s to 1926. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 13, 7–32. McGehee, R.V. (1996). The dandy and the mauler in Mexico: Johnson, Dempsey, et al, and the Mexico City press, 1919–1927. Journal of Sport History, 23(1), 20–33. McGehee, R.V. (1998). Carreras, patrias y caudillos: Sport/spectacle in Mexico and Guatemala, 1926–1943. South Eastern Latin Americanist, 41, 19–32. Sands, K. M. (1993). Charrería Mexicana: An equestrian folk tradition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Zenteno, A. (1990). Julio César Chávez: Nuestrocampeón. Mexico City, Mexico: Editorial Pax México.
Miracle on Ice See Lake Placid
Mixed Martial Arts
M
ixed martial arts combine kicking and punching with wrestling techniques and finishing holds from U.S. boxing, kickboxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, judo, and Brazilian jujitsu. The term mixed martial arts is also used to describe a combat sport in which fighters of all disciplines test their skills against one another with minimal rules and equipment.
History The term mixed martial arts may be relatively new, but martial arts have always blended and experimented; “traditional” styles as varied as karate, silat (an Asian martial art), and jujitsu were heavily influenced by Chinese kung fu, which in turn traces its roots to the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, who is believed to have brought from India a set of exercises to ease the pain from long sessions of sitting meditation. The trail doesn’t end there, however; when Alexander of Macedon invaded India in 326 BCE, he was accompanied by a large number of pankratists—experts in pankration, a brutal, no-holds-barred combat sport popular in the Greek world. Translated as “all powers,” pankration was the first recorded mixed martial arts sport, combining boxing with wrestling and submission holds (painful joint locks and choking techniques). Matches had only two rules—no biting and no eye gouging—and contestants often ignored even these rules, whereupon the referee would beat the offending fighter with a stick. Matches had no time limits and ended only when one fighter was knocked unconscious or submitted by raising a hand. Broken bones and serious injuries were common, and some matches ended in the death of one or even both combatants. Because of the popularity and brutal effectiveness of choking techniques, the leading cause of death in matches was strangulation. Around 648 BCE pankration was included in the Olympic Games and quickly became the most popular sport of its day. Pankration champions were lauded as
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A kickboxing or Muay Thai match in Thailand. Source: istockphoto/andy _ lim.
heroes. Tradition holds that the Greek hero Hercules was a pankratist. With the rise of the Roman Empire, pankration was either upstaged by or absorbed into the most infamous of combat sports, the spectacle of the gladiators. Mixed martial arts remained a staple of martial training, but two thousand years would pass before unarmed mixed martial arts competition would become an international phenomenon. Contemporary mixed martial arts trace their origin to Brazil during the early part of the twentieth century. After studying with renowned Japanese judo champion Mitsuyo Maeda, brothers Carlos and Helio Gracie opened a jujitsu academy in Rio de Janeiro. To promote their new academy they placed newspaper ads challenging anyone who wished to fight. Their vale tudo (anything goes) matches soon packed soccer stadiums with fans. During the next five decades the Gracie brothers and their sons defeated martial arts champions from around the world and developed Gracie jujitsu (Brazilian jujitsu). Similar mixed martial arts competitions enjoyed small but loyal followings around the world, including a Japanese fight-sport called “pancrase” in homage to its Olympic progenitor. During the 1980s Helio Gracie’s son Rorion brought his Gracie Challenge to the United States, offering $100,000 to anyone who could defeat him or one of his
brothers. Brazilian jujitsu grew in popularity until, in 1993, mixed martial arts competition was reintroduced to the world in a live pay-per-view event called the “Ultimate Fighting Championship” (UFC). Designed as a showcase for Gracie jujitsu, these no-holds-barred matches were unpredictable, pitting kickboxers against wrestlers and even a 272-kilogram sumo wrestler against a karate fighter half his size (the little guy won). As in pankration, the rules were few. Fights could be ended by the referee, by knockout, or by submission. Blood was mopped off the canvas between bouts, and fighters might have to compete two or three times in a single night. Royce Gracie and his family style swept the tournament, and he would go on to win two more before his opponents learned his tactics and leveled the playing field. By the third UFC event the audience had tripled in size, and UFC had come to the attention of activists groups who labeled it a “blood sport.” Even as its popularity skyrocketed in the United States and overseas, mixed martial arts competitions were banned in many states and removed from television. Pressure from fans and legislators prompted creation of a governing body, the International Fighting Championships (IFC). In order to legitimize the sport, the IFC developed new rules, including weight classes, time limits, and a judging system. As a result, the UFC was sanctioned by the Nevada Boxing Commission and returned to television as a legitimate fight sport, breaking previous pay-per-view audience records. Today mixed martial arts competition is one of the fastest growing sports in the world.
Nature of the Sport Known as “no-holds-barred” or “submission fighting,” a new mixed martial art has evolved for competitions
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Play for more than you can afford to lose, then you will learn the game. ■ WINSTON CHURCHILL
first made popular by the Ultimate Fighting Championship. In this new mixed martial art, fighters from many disciplines pit their skills against one another in gladiatorial combat with minimal rules. Despite legislative efforts to ban these competitions, mixed martial arts rejuvenated worldwide interest in martial arts around the world and became a legitimate fight sport.
Governing Bodies In addition to the International Fighting Championships (www.ifc-usa.com), a governing body is the International Sport Karate Association (www.iska.com). Kathy Long
Further Reading Gracie Brazilian jiu-jitsu. (2005). Retrieved February 1, 2005, from http://bjj.org Grapple arts. (2005). Retrieved February 1, 2005, from http:// grapplearts.com Kraus, E., & Aita, B. (2002). Brawl: A behind-the-scenes look at mixed martial arts competition. Toronto, Canada: ECW Press. MMA fighting. (2005). Retrieved February 1, 2005, from http://www. mmafighting.com
Motivation
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otivation is continually changing in sports. Sports psychologists often characterize motivation as including direction of effort, intensity of effort, persistence of behavior, and the extent to which an athlete returns on a regular basis to the behavior (referred to as “continuing motivation”). To recognize how individual motivation is developed and to discover the most effective ways to influence motivation, coaches and sports psychologists acknowledge not only characteristics of an athlete but also the social environmental and physical environmental conditions in which the athlete participates. Hence, no single strategy or view is used to explain motivation. The best approach incorporates individual, social environmental, and physical environmental influences on motivation.
Sports psychologists attempt to account for both individual and situational variables that influence an athlete’s motivation. The individual athlete (with his or her gender, race/ethnicity, religion/spirituality, etc.) and his or her interaction with the sports environment (social and physical factors) have a major influence on motivation. Personal factors involved in the interaction of athletes with the sports environment may include physical fitness, physical skill, perceptual skill, and psychological skill. Furthermore, sports are often rooted in cultural traditions. Where an athlete lives and plays influences motivation. Hence, social factors associated with sports, including the athlete’s roles and responsibilities at work and home, surroundings in which an athlete participates, and family, friends, teammates, and coaches influence motivation. Accordingly, economic conditions, socioeconomic status, and educational and family structures also influence motivation. Moreover, research in sports psychology has identified an athlete’s experiences with cooperation and competition as well as with coaching behavior as additional social factors influencing motivation. Physical environmental factors, including convenient and accessible training facilities, enjoyable scenery, and weather, may also influence motivation.
Intentions In order to discuss principles of motivation, we must assume that athletes are actively involved in decision making about what behavior they will engage in. Athletes can choose to behave through the exercise of selfinfluence. Those actions done intentionally are referred to as “agency.” To be an agent is to intentionally make things happen by one’s actions. Agency embodies the endowments, belief systems, self-regulatory capabilities and distributed structures and functions through which personal influence is exercised, rather than residing as a discrete entity in a particular place.The core features of agency enable people to play a part in their self-development, adaptation, and self-renewal with changing times. (Bandura 2001, 2)
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Motivation Persistence Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Anonymous
Behavioral intention is a strong influence on motivation. Intention represents an athlete’s immediate behavioral orientation toward engaging in a sport and reflects the athlete’s motivation toward that sport. Intentions reflect a decision to enact a particular behavior (e.g., attending practice). Intentions for sports summarize an athlete’s motivation to be involved in sports. An intention is a representation of a future course of action to be performed. It is not simply an expectation or prediction of future actions but a proactive commitment to bringing them about. Intentions and actions are different aspects of a functional relation separated in time. It is, therefore, meaningful to speak of intentions grounded in self-motivators affecting the likelihood of actions at a future point in time. (Bandura 2001, 7)
Hence, we can view intention as a convincing predictor of behavior and influence on motivation.
Self-Efficacy Beliefs Self-efficacy is a theoretical construct that has received a great deal of support as a significant influence on motivation. Self-efficacy represents a form of situationspecific self-confidence. Self-efficacy is an athlete’s perception of her ability to perform a given task. An athlete’s belief in her capability to exercise some meas-
ure of control over her own functioning and over environmental events is central to the athlete’s personal agency. Efficacy beliefs are at the foundation of this personal agency. The likelihood that an athlete will participate in a given sport depends on her beliefs about whether she can perform the skills necessary for that sport. Unless the athlete believes she can produce chosen results by her actions, she has little incentive to act or to persevere in the face of hardship. Other factors may operate as motivators in sports but must be rooted in the core belief that the athlete has the power to produce effects by her own actions. Athletes with high levels of self-efficacy persevere when faced with obstacles or negative circumstances. In contrast, athletes with low levels of self-efficacy fail to overcome similar obstacles. Efficacy beliefs play a pivotal role in motivation and also influence whether athletes think optimistically or pessimistically. Therefore, efficacy beliefs may enhance or hinder sports motivation.
Expectancy In addition to self-efficacy, outcome expectations influence motivation. The likelihood that athletes will engage in a behavior (e.g., physical training) depends on their self-efficacy and their outcome expectations (e.g., winning in competition). In examining any theory related to motivation, we must understand the relative importance of the activity to the athlete. In the self-efficacy model a strong relationship exists between doing something and seeing the results. However, the model itself excludes the relative importance of the outcome to the athlete. The expectancy theory proposes that expectations can influence motivation. The first element of expectancy theory is valence or the relative importance of the outcome of the situation. Knowing what an athlete wants to gain from a certain situation and understanding the relative importance of the outcome are significant parts of the athlete’s motivation. Self-efficacy and outcome expectations are powerful influences on an athlete’s motivation. An expectancy-valence model depends on the athlete’s expectations of reward. Positive expectations
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for success produce subsequent positive effects. An athlete’s motivation to achieve something depends on the product of his estimation of his chance of success and the value he places on success. Note that if an athlete does not value the outcome or believes that his probability of success is zero, then his motivation will be insignificant. In addition, under certain circumstances an overly high probability of success can be detrimental to motivation. Athletes form outcome expectations from observing the sports environment in which they participate as well as the outcomes from the actions they take. Athletes pursue courses of action that are likely to produce positive outcomes and avoid courses of action that are likely to produce negative outcomes. Athletes who believe they have control over events in their lives are more likely to behave in accord with expectancy theory. However, athletes who believe that they are pawns of fate do not. These alternative beliefs are subjective and are referred to as the athletes’ “locus of control.” Locus of control explains how each athlete generally views the source of her outcomes, positive or negative. “Internal locus of control” means that an athlete’s reinforcements and punishments are the result of her resources and own efforts. “External locus of control” means that an athlete’s reinforcements and punishments are the result of outside forces over which she has no control. How she perceives the source of control determines an athlete’s locus of control. An athlete’s subjective locus of control affects how she behaves. According to expectancy theory, athletes are motivated not only by their goals but also by how attainable they think these goals are. Within this theory three factors help determine an athlete’s motivation: valence, instrumentality, and expectancy. Valence is the satisfaction the athlete anticipates from an outcome. Instrumentality is the perception of that outcome’s relationship to the current performance. Expectancy is the expectation that effort will affect performance. According to this theory, motivation is high when valence is high, instrumentality is clear, and expectancy is strong.
Self-Determination Athletes with a self-determined motivational profile engage in sports because of personal choice or because they derive pleasure and satisfaction from the experience. Deci and Ryan describe self-determination as a person’s “capacity to choose and to have those choices be the determinants of one’s actions” (Deci and Ryan 1985, 38). To further develop self-determination theory, Vallerand proposed the hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In the model motivation may be intrinsic, extrinsic, or amotivated. “Intrinsic motivation” refers to engaging in sports for the pleasure derived from simply participating. This type of motivation comes from within the athlete regardless of outside influences. Intrinsically motivated athletes possess greater perceptions of physical competence or participate in sports for the feelings of self-determination, perceptions of control, and satisfaction that the sports provide. Intrinsic motivation is fostered when feelings of competence are increased or perceptions of selfdetermination and internal control are prominent. Furthermore, sports activity that is perceived to be interesting or challenging, that provides feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, or that is performed for its own sake rather than for external reward induces intrinsic motivation. When the sports activity is perceived to be under one’s internal control, intrinsic motivation is high. Extrinsic motivation, however, results from behavior performed to gain some substantial reward or to avoid negative consequences rather than to reap the inherent pleasure it provides. “Extrinsic motivation” refers to a wide range of behaviors considered to be a means to an end. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the athlete, most commonly from others through either positive support or negative reinforcements. The fundamental goal of such behaviors is to receive something positive and to avoid something negative. Amotivation is the complete lack of motivation. Feelings of incompetence and lack of control often characterize amotivation.
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Everybody kind of perceives me as being angry. It’s not anger, it’s motivation! ■ ROGER CLEMENS
Enjoyment Enjoyment (a form of intrinsic motivation) is an important influence on sports motivation. Enjoyment based in part on feelings of competence and perceived control is essential for enhancing motivation and continued participation. Athletes continue to participate because they enjoy what they are doing. Feelings of enjoyment clearly play an important role in sports motivation. Athletes who enjoy their chosen sport will stick with it longer than those who do not.
Goal Setting Goal setting has long been a part of the study of motivation and coaching in sports psychology. Many studies during the last thirty years have supported the effectiveness of goal-setting theory in various sports settings. Goals can be divided into outcome goals, performance goals, and process goals. Research in goal setting indicates that subjects with easy goals usually have higher expectations for reaching their goals but perform worse than do subjects assigned to difficult goals. A relationship between probability of success and incentive value of success appears to exist in that success in an easy task is not valued as highly as success in a difficult one. Additionally, multiple-goal strategies are advantageous for sports performance when compared with strategies that do not combine different types of goals. Specifically, the benefit of developing a process orientation toward goal setting has been well documented. Process goals are most beneficially used within a hierarchy of goals that should also include performance and outcome goals. The key to this type of goal setting is for the athlete to focus on what she needs to do as opposed to what she wants to happen. Performance and outcome goals can be set with process goals as the means to achieving the desired outcome. Process goals are simply the means chosen to implement performance and outcome goals. The function of goal setting is to institute and give direction to action. Goals serve as a motivational tool by
engaging self-evaluation in the activity itself. Athletes often use journals or training logs as a means of selfevaluation, feedback, and continued motivation.Technological and computer advances allow athletes to record, share, and analyze training information (i.e., heart rates, power output, mileage) with coaches via spreadsheets, databases, and e-mail. Monitoring an athlete’s pattern of performance (e.g., actual physical training) and the cognitive (e.g., mood during training) and environmental conditions (e.g., heat and humidity) under which the training occurs is one step toward affecting performance. Current actions influence future actions through performance comparisons.With this immediate information and feedback available, evaluation based on individual and coaching guidelines gives further direction to athletic pursuits. This evaluation helps athletes sustain their efforts toward further goal achievement and continued motivation. Intentional behavior, such as sports participation, must center on a plan of action. Intentions and goals must be revised and even reconsidered, depending on new information or changes in the sports environment (e.g., level of competition).
Attention to Action To increase motivation, athletes must use a here-andnow focus. Athletes do well over time when they use a task-oriented approach toward training and competition. Task orientations are associated with intrinsic motivation. Although the past may influence reasons for current behavior (e.g., previous lack of physical conditioning), the past cannot be changed. Furthermore, when an athlete is cognitively focused in the present, expected future events are transformed into current motivators of behavior. When focused in the present, behavior (e.g., daily physical training) is motivated and directed by specific performance and process goals and anticipated outcomes. Athletes must choose to behave and focus in the present (e.g., process goals). One key to reaching full athletic potential is to develop the skill to keep previous successes and failures in perspective and to view things with a here-and-now focus. This
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I hated every minute of training, but I said, don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life a champion. ■ MUHAMMAD ALI
here-and-now focus must involve effective concentration on the task at hand. Having adopted an intention and an action plan, one cannot simply sit back and wait for the appropriate performances to appear. Agency thus involves not only the deliberative ability to make choices and action plans, but the ability to give shape to appropriate courses of action and to motivate and regulate their execution. This multifaceted self-directedness operates through self-regulatory processes that link thought to action. (Bandura 2001, 9)
Implication Motivation in sports is continually changing. We must recognize the complexity of individual, social environmental, and physical environmental influences on motivation. Agency and the core belief that the athlete has the power to produce effects by his or her own actions are strong influences on motivation. Knowing what an athlete wants to gain from his or her sport and understanding the relative importance of the outcome are significant parts of the athlete’s motivation. To maintain and enhance motivation, the athlete must understand the degree of effort necessary (e.g., training time, intensity) and the relationship among process goals, performance goals, and outcome goals. Understanding how and why each goal can be achieved will aid in motivating the athlete. Motivation is high when valence is high, instrumentality is clear, and expectancy is strong. Athletes are motivated not only by their goals but also by how attainable they think these goals are. An emphasis on establishing realistic and achievable process goals focusing on specific task accomplishments will further enhance the athlete’s feeling of self-confidence and motivation. Constant monitoring with corrective feedback based on goal attainment is also recommended. The combination of knowing what direction the athlete is heading in, what performance level is needed, and what effort is needed often results in high motivation. Jeffrey Mario Cherubini See also Coaching; Mental Conditioning; Psychology
Further Reading Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman. Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Reviews of Psychology, 52, 1–26. Biddle, S. (Ed.). (1995). European perspectives on exercise and sport psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Bootzin, R. (1986). Psychology today—An introduction. New York: Random House. Brannigan, G. G. (Ed.). (1999). The sport scientists: Research adventures. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Cox, R. H. (2002). Sport psychology: Concepts and applications (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and selfdetermination in human behavior. New York: Plenum. Deci, E. L., Vallerand, R. J., Pelletier, L. G., & Ryan, R. M. (1991). Motivation and education: The self-determination perspective. Educational Psychologist, 26, 325–346. Filby, W., Maynard, I., & Graydon, J. (1999). The effect of multiple-goal strategies on performance outcomes in training and competition. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 11, 230–246. Horn, T. S. (Ed.). (2002). Advances in sport psychology (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Kowal, J., & Fortier, M. S. (2000). Testing relationships from the hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation using flow as a motivational consequence. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 71, 171–181. Martens, R. (1987). Coaches’ guide to sport psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Murphy, S. (1997). The achievement zone. New York: Berkeley Publishing Group. Orlick, T. (1990). In pursuit of excellence: How to win in sport and life through mental training. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press. Sheeran, P., & Orbell, S. (1999). Augmenting the theory of planned behavior: Roles for anticipated regret and descriptive norms. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 2107–2142. Slavin, R. (1988). Educational psychology theory into practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Theodorakis, Y. (1996). The influence of goals, commitment, selfefficacy and self-satisfaction on motor performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 8, 171–182. Tubbs, M., Boehne, D., & Dahl, J. (1993). Expectancy, valence, and motivational force functions in goal-setting research: An empirical test. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 78, 361–373. Vallerand, R. J. (1997). Toward a hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 271–360). New York: Academic Press. Vealey, R. S. (1994). Knowledge development and implementation in sport psychology: A review of The Sport Psychologist, 1987–1992. The Sport Psychologist, 8, 331–348. Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2003). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology (3rd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
MOTORBOAT RACING
Motorboat Racing
M
otorboat racing (also known as powerboat racing or speed-boat racing) is a global sport that combines elements of sailing and auto racing. Like sailing it takes place on the ever-changing water surface. Like auto racing it relies on powerful engines and vehicles often specially designed for the sport. And, like both sailing and auto racing it takes brave and skilled competitors, talented crews, and wealthy sponsors at the top end of the sport. Competitive motorboat racing takes place on inland waterways, rivers, and open water. Events are varied and are based on type of boat, style of boat, type and power of the engine, and amateur versus professional status of the competitors. Motorboat racing is often a spectacular sport to watch, with the powerful hydroplanes racing along the water at 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour or more, shooting off large “roostertails” of water behind them. The decision to move offshore racing close to shore was a key factor in increasing the popularity of motorboat racing.
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History The development of powerboating is a product of development of engines used to propel vehicles on the water, on land, and in the air. The first motorized boats were operated by steam engines in the early 1800s. These early racers were often wealthy owners of steampowered private yachts. The start of modern powerboating is generally traced to the invention of the internal-combustion engine. One of the first motorboats of this type was built in France around 1865 by Jean Lenoir. In the 1880s, Gottlieb Daimler developed a gas-powered engine in Europe that became the engine for both automobiles and boats. Powerboating then grew rapidly after the engine came into widespread use after 1900. Because racers were on the cutting edge of technology, they often tested new engines and boat designs that later came into general use. In 1907 Ole Evinrude invented the outboard motor, which was portable and easy to attach to boats. Evinrude’s outboard motor helped to make small powerboats practical. Around the same time, the first hydroplanes appeared. These racing boats had bodies that were designed specifically to be used with engines at high speeds. Their design included a shallow stepped hull that rose above the water as the boat moved faster. Another type of powerboat body, called the “V” hull because of its shape, was developed around 1910 and combined speed with stability. Later designs were more sophisticated, but were based on the principles established by these early models. The first races were typically sponsored by auto clubs such as the Royal Automobile Club A hydroplane race. Source: istockphoto/joe32780.
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of England, or by yacht clubs. As these organizations were devoted to other sports, boat racers soon formed their own clubs to organize races. Perhaps the first major race was the Harmsworth Trophy, established by British publisher Sir Alfred Harmsworth. The first event was held in 1903 on a 13.6-kilometer (8.5-mile) course off the coast of Ireland. The Harmsworth Trophy took place continuously until the early 1930s and was revived at various times in subsequent years. In the United States, the American Power Boat Association (APBA) was formed in 1903. The APBA sponsors the annual Perpetual Challenge, or Gold Cup, which was first run in 1904. It and its 132 affiliated clubs now sponsor over three hundred events each year. The United States Power Boat Squadron was founded to promote boating safety through instruction and other activities. The Coast Guard Auxiliary is also active in power boating. In 1922, the Union of International Motor Boating (UIM) was formed. It sanctions events and the international standings of racers, including world records. Powerboating has become ever more popular since the 1970s. This was stimulated by many factors, including the introduction of new models and the visibility of powerboats in action movies and in television series like the police show Miami Vice. Powerboats also became more integrated as products.Traditionally, boats and motors were often sold separately. However, the makers of boats and engines increasingly designed and sold boats and motors as a single product. In addition to the continued evolution of large, high-performance powerboats, a new generation of very small and responsive boats gained popularity among recreational boaters.These new vessels also created new categories of racing events.
Nature of Motorboat Racing As the designs of motorized boats became more varied it was increasingly difficult to compare their performance in races. This prompted efforts to define different categories of powerboats, so that craft would compete against like craft. In 1917 there were five boating divi-
sions sanctioned by APBA, including cruisers, express cruisers, open boats, runabouts, and hydroplanes. By the mid-1990s there were over ten basic classes and many subdivisions within them. As with all forms of racing, more speed is a constant goal. The top speed in the first Gold Cup race in 1904 was just under 39 kilometers (24 miles) per hour. The introduction of hydroplanes boosted speeds considerably to 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour or more. In 1978, Kenneth Peter Warby achieved a world’s water-speed record of 552.8 kilometers per hour (345.48 miles per hour or 300 knots) in New South Wales, Australia, in his hydroplane, the Spirit of Australia. Safety is a major issue in powerboating.Various safeguards have been instituted over the years to reduce risk, such as helmets, lifejackets, and other protective gear. Other safety measures have included closed cockpits on certain types of very fast racing boats, covers around propellers, and kill switches that automatically cut the engine if the driver is dislodged from the boat. Powerboating has also raised environmental concerns, including noise, the waves that these vessels can generate, and pollution, including fuel leaking into the water and the exhaust fumes that escape into the air and water. Manufacturers have tried to produce cleaner, more efficient engines. In the 1990s in the United States, the Federal Clean Air Act was expanded to include control of boats and other recreational vehicles. The Environmental Protection Administration issued guidelines that required a decrease of 75 percent in the emissions released by outboard engines manufactured after 1998. Racing powerboats are complex machines, and there are an infinite number of possible variations based on combinations of design, engines, and other features. To bring consistency to the sport, powerboats and racing events are divided into categories that are based on the specifications of the participating boats. A racing event may be entirely focused on one particular class of boat, or it may contain separate races for boats in several categories. Major categories in the APBA include Inboard; Modified Outboard; Off-shore; Outboard Performance Craft; Outboard Drag; Professional Racing Outboard;
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A semi-sectioned view of Miss Britain III, a record-setting speedboat of the 1920s.
Stock Outboard; Unlimited Hydroplanes; RC (radio controlled) Model,Vintage, and Historic; American Performance Racing; and Personal Watercraft. The types of possible races are also extremely varied. The rules, procedures, and methods for determining the winners can be based on many possible criteria. Races that are part of larger series—or that affect speed records and the national and international standings of drivers and boats —follow general guidelines established by oversight bodies like UIM. Races may be organized as heats or laps among groups of boats or in timed solo runs. The winners are frequently determined by average speed or top speed during a race. In endurance races, boaters try to cover as much distance as possible in a designated amount of time. A basic distinction among powerboat competitions is between inland and offshore racing. Inland races, held on lakes, rivers, and similar bodies of water, have long been a mainstay of powerboat racing. Offshore races take place in oceans and bays and other large bodies of water connected to them; they cover various distances. Powerboat races are often held on circular or oval courses of varying lengths. Races may also be based on laps, which allows boats to cover long distances within a small area. Among the longest offshore races was a 1972 marathon from England to Monte Carlo. Cruising races,
based on speed, for larger boats was another early form of competition. However, these boats could not compete for speed with high-powered craft like the hydroplane. Instead, cruising was revived as a competition called the “predicted log,” which relies on navigation and accuracy. In these races, the pilots attempt to predict the times it will take them to reach designated points on a course. Drag racing, which emerged in the late 1950s, takes place on straight courses. In events for “stock” boats, the engine and body must remain true to the specifications they were manufactured with and may not be significantly altered. In Modified or Unlimited competitions, the owners and driver are allowed greater flexibility to customize the boat and engine more extensively to improve its performance. One basic method of classifying a powerboat is by the design of its body. As with other types of water vessels, the design of a motorboat involves trade-offs between speed and stability. Boat designers and builders also consider many other factors, including whether the bow goes smoothly through waves on the uneven surface of the water or slaps the surface in an up-anddown motion. The design of the hull, or lower portion of the boat, is especially important. At low speeds, the hull of a boat goes forward through the water, displacing it
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(pushing it aside) as the vessel moves ahead. However, as the speed and power increase, other forces also push the hull upward toward the water’s surface and into the air, a principle known as planing. Boat designers and builders emphasize one or the other of these forces, depending on the priorities and use of the craft. Boats that emphasize stability, such as cabin cruisers, have deeper, broader hulls that emphasize displacement. This makes the boat better able to resist the tendency to rise from the water. These displacement hulls are slower but more seaworthy. At the other end of the spectrum are boats with very shallow hulls designed for speed, such as those on hydroplanes. As they increase in speed, these planing hulls rise to the water’s surface and may continue into the air. Variations of this style of hull include hydrofoils, which virtually float above the water except where extensions of the boat remain in the water. The “V” is another basic style of hull that combines the stability of displacement and the speed of planing. These hulls become narrow at their bases. When traveling at low speeds they stay primarily in the water, but when they are moving faster they rise in the bow. V-boats are often used in offshore ocean racing because they are fast but also able to handle rough water. Another important factor in the design of powerboat bodies is the length of the hull. Motorboats are powered by a variety of engines. The primary form is the internal combustion engine. A basic distinction is between inboard and outboard motors. Inboards are engines built into the boat itself, with a drive shaft that is horizontal or angled slightly and that is connected to one or more propellers in the stern. Outboard motors are separate units that are attached to the boat’s exterior at the stern. Boat engines that combine features of these basic types are known as inboard/ outboards. In the 1980s and 1990s, electronic fuel injection and other components became increasingly important aspects of marine engines, enabling them to operate more efficiently and cleanly. Other types of engines include turbines, or jets. These may be used to turn propellers or propel the boat directly by creating
very strong currents of air or water through the hull. In addition, there are less common specialized boats, including those with electric engines and boats that are powered by large fans at the stern that push the boat with air currents. A branch of the sport that has become very popular is known as personal watercraft. These may include craft that are designed like other motorboats, but on a smaller scale for one or two passengers. Another type, sometimes referred to as “jet skis,” have seats in the center that the rider straddles, similar to the posture of a motorcyclist. Some enthusiasts enjoy restoring and racing older powerboats, a category known as vintage or historic racing. In addition to full-sized boats, powerboating organizations have also added special classes for other types of vessels, including miniature radio-controlled powerboats. John Townes
Further Reading Desmond, K. (2001). Century of outboard racing. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International. Fostle, D. W. (1988). Speedboat. Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum Stores. Maurer, T. (2003). Watercross. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publishing Group. Rabinowitz, N. (1988).Thunderboats. Motor Boating & Sailing (October). Rasmussen, H. (1988). Muscle Boats: the classic and the new wave deepvee hulls and catamarans. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International.
Motorcycle Racing
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otorcycling became popular when industrial engineers applied the newly invented engine to the velocipede (a lightweight wheeled vehicle propelled by the rider) toward the end of the nineteenth century. Although early motorcycles used steam engines as well as four-stroke and two-stroke gasoline engines, riders came to prefer the four stroke and two stroke. People have always preferred the automobile over the motorcycle, but
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markets expanded rapidly when manufacturers sought to attract customers to the possibilities of motorcycle racing. Beginning in 1903 the Federation of American Motorcyclists and later the Amateur Motorcycle Association governed motorcycling in the United States; in racing the two top manufacturers—Harley Davidson and Indian— competed for the commercial market; Harley Davidson, with its attention to personalized, varied designs, became the symbol of U.S. motor sport. In Europe the Federation Internationale des Clubs Motorcyclistes (later the Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme—FIM) was established in 1904. European nations strove to excel in the competitions between manufacturers that created a golden era for motorcycle racing. After World War II improved tires, asphalt tracks, and greater attention to safety changed the sport. Sponsors and television coverage, meanwhile, encouraged motorcycle racers to seek ever higher speeds and increased athleticism.
Origins Several countries claim to have been the cradle of motorcycle racing: Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States all submitted patents for crude motor velocipedes, but scholars generally consider the German auto manufacturer Gottlieb Daimler (1834– 1900), developer of the Einspur machine (1885), to be the father of the motorcycle. Daimler applied the fourstroke engine, which the German engineer Nikolaus August Otto (1832–1891) had elaborated a few years earlier, but used a combination of gases—an important step in the evolution of the motorcycle. Motorcycle racing initially was combined with motor tricycles and automobiles; the first race exclusively for motorcycles was held in France and England in 1896. Within a few years the gasoline internal combustion engine had surpassed the steam engine, which the U.S. inventor Sylvester Roper exhibited in the United States during the early 1870s. Roper’s European counterpart was Baron De Dion, whose steam-engine-powered tricycle eclipsed earlier performances of internal combustion engines. De Dion’s engines were exported to the
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United States and were purchased by people interested in the technical structure of motorcycles, including Harley Davidson and Indian. However, soon Harley Davidson and Indian abandoned the De Dion engine in favor of the more powerful gasoline four-stroke engine. These new engine models became popular, and in many cases the motorcycle usurped the position of the automobile because it was cheaper.
Development Experiments, brilliant successes, crushing failures, and hazardous attempts marked the early history of motorcycle racing. Like bicycle racing and automobile racing, early motorcycle racing took place across long distances, often linking the capitals of Europe. However, races often failed, with only a handful of competitors finishing the course, because technical preparation and materials were not developed enough to support the performances of the engines, whose displacement had increased to 1,000 or 1,200 cubic centimeters. The FIM limited the capability grades to 500 cubic centimeters to avoid accidents, wasteful expenditures, and risks to racers and spectators. Such technical difficulties stimulated improvements in motorcycles, and the quest for recordbreaking performances further stimulated progress. Races in the United States also generally covered long distances, such as the 320-kilometer Savannah (later Daytona) race. Dirt courses and circular tracks excited U.S. spectators beginning in the 1920s. The European races were held in towns or on artificial unasphalted tracks. With the popularity of motorcycle racing small manufacturers emerged in Italy: Moto Guzzi was founded in 1921 in Mandello del Lario, and Gilera was founded in 1909 in Milan. In the United Kingdom Birmingham Small Arms (BSA), Londoner Norton, and AJS dominated the market for years. British fans considered the rider who displayed self-control, pluck, and fighting abilities to be the true racer. A distinction emerged between heavier road motorcycles and lighter racing motorcycles after World War II. The popularity of motorcycle racing diminished as the
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specialization of races divided the fans and reduced their number—notwithstanding the attendance of 400,000 spectators at a German circuit race in 1951. The young generation watched Marlon Brando express his rebellion on a motorcycle in the movie The Wild One in 1954, and in 1969 Peter Fonda in the movie Easy Rider turned in a performance on a personalized Harley that established the road motorcycle as the symbol of youthful protest. Until the 1960s Britain, Germany, and Italy dominated the sport with the best racers and the best motorcycles. Then the Japanese weighed in with Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki. Japan created competitive motorcycles, first in the lower power categories and then, with improved technology, in the higher power categories; the four-valve, four-cylinder Yamaha engine remained the top performer among competitive motorcycle engines until the 1980s. (The French manufacturer Peugeot had created a similar engine in 1914, but the project had been abandoned with the outbreak of World War I.) The established European firms Moto Guzzi, Gilera, and BSA could not afford to build highpowered racing motorcycles and were forced into retirement. From 1960 to 2003, Japan won 108 world titles for motorcycles, but only seven for racers. In South America, Asia, and other newly developed areas industrialization has opened new markets for motorcycles and motorcycle racing. In 1949 the FIM organized the world championship grand prix circuit. Racers competed in a number of races, each one hosted by a different country with a strong motorcycle racing tradition. Recently the grand prix circuit has expanded to include Malaysia, Indonesia, and Venezuela in the consolidated and traditional grand prix of Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and Sweden. During the 1970s U.S. racers also began to compete in the grand prix. Supported by Marlboro and other sponsors, U.S. racers won thirteen of eighteen titles from 1978 to 1995 in the 500 cubic cen-
M. Serpollet on his first steam tricycle (coal-fired) in 1887.
timeter category. The daring of U.S. riders—who touched the asphalt with their knees on bends, reducing the distance in curves and facilitating passing— increased the popularity of the sport by reviving the daring style of Italian racer Tazio Nuvolari (1892–1953), who protected his elbow and his arm with cotton in order to reduce the danger involved in touching the walls. U.S. domination ended in 1995 (with the exception of Kenny Roberts Jr. in 2000), leaving the grand prix titles to non-U.S. motorcyclists Mick Doohan (Australia, World Champion 1994–1998), Alex Criville (Spain, 1999), and Valentino Rossi (Italy, 2001–2003).
Races During the early days of motorcycle racing the Tourist Trophy race on Britain’s Isle of Man, first staged in 1907, became legendary. Racers from the European continent tried in vain to win the race, not succeeding until 1935. The course of the 1911 race included a mountain, which lengthened the race by about 25 kilometers to 67 kilometers and created challenges that forced engine manufacturers to install a clutch with three gears. The Tourist Trophy race set the standard for other races
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A motocross competitor jumps his dirt bike over a hill. Source: istockphoto/Mummu Media.
winner received 20 points, the runner-up 17, and other racers 15, 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, and 1. Now the winner takes 25 points, the second 20, the third 16, the fourth 13 and other racers 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.The 125 cubic centimeter category is reserved for one-cylinder bikes, 250 cubic centimeters for two-cylinder bikes, and 500 cubic centimeters for fourcylinder bikes.
Appeal of the Sport
and established the power categories: 250, 350, and 500 cubic centimeters (and sporadically a 175 cubic centimeter category). In 1914 the wearing of helmets became mandatory in the Tourist Trophy race. In 1977 the FIM removed the Tourist Trophy race from the world championship program because 129 deaths had occurred from 1907 to 1976. The mortality rate of the Tourist Trophy race inspired the notion of the motorcycle as a Moloch (a Semitic god to whom children were sacrificed) that provided glorious death to those people attracted to racing by their courage and their love of risk. The FIM, after upgrading from the 50 cubic centimeter to the 80 cubic centimeter power category in 1982, in 1989 eliminated races for the 80 cubic centimeter and 350 cubic centimeter categories and inaugurated superbike races for 750 cubic centimeters. The FIM made these changes to reduce the organization’s costs and to better manage the grand prix circuit. The point system, too, has evolved. At the beginning the FIM counted grand prix points from only about threefourths of the races scheduled because of the high cost of participating in all of the grand prix races in a season. Later the FIM counted points from all of the races. Until 1988 the winner received 15 points, the runner-up 12, and other racers 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1; in 1989 the
During the twentieth century motorcycle racing enjoyed growing popularity in Italy and Britain: In Italy fascism fueled nationalist pride in racing successes; in Britain motorcycle racing served as a kind of replacement for horseback riding. Germans, too, felt the appeal of racing to their nationalist pride, and the Nazi regime supported motorcycle racing by investing money in the technological improvement of the motorcycle, anticipating its use in war. In fact, Germans pushed the motorcycle speed records up to 279.50 kilometers per hour in 1937.The fans exalted not only the racer but also the machine; a racer who chose to race a foreign motorcycle was considered a traitor. Motorcycle racing attracted large crowds, leading to an expansion of the sport. Despite the depression that resulted after the collapse of Wall Street in 1929, production of motorcycles increased because the working classes could afford a motorcycle when they could not afford an automobile. Accordingly, the Workers’ Olympics—three sport festivals organized by socialist organizations (Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1925; Vienna, Austria, in 1931; and Antwerp, Belgium, in 1937)—included motorcycle events. The marathons—six-day-long courses in which racers covered more than 600 kilometers per day —attracted as many as 500,000 spectators. In every nation where motorcycles were raced spectators lined dusty, dirty courses or town circuits; the media created heroes and nourished the cult of the sportsman. Aside from their fascination with speed and victory, fans were intrigued by the skill and danger involved in racing. Collapses, accidents, and deaths fed the myth of the
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unlucky protagonist. The motorcycle racer seemed a rugged and lonesome hero as he challenged long courses that left him dusty, dirty, and tired. Nicknames such as “Death Angel” and “Black Devil” convey the popular conception of the motorcycle racing champion as the custodian of dreams of freedom, always flirting with death. In fact, the Italian word for “racer” is centauro. Like the centaur, a mythological man-horse, the racer represents a union between person and motorcycle. During the 1950s the shift to asphalt tracks for racing reflected growing concerns for safety; in fact, after the death of British racer Leslie Graham (1911–1953) and other champions in 1953, racers forced manufacturers to boycott the German grand prix. A new breed of racer emerged, one who no longer was the heroic victim but rather was a professional racer and prime actor who demanded safety rules and standards. Not until the 1970s, however, when spectators were moved back from the track—giving racers a larger area to slide in case of a fall and the space to avoid hitting spectators—did racers secure better safety conditions. Equipment also improved. For example, Michelin introduced smooth tires in 1970. The rise of professionalism and the inflation caused by television coverage and commercial sponsorship changed not only the look of racing but also increased the attention that racers paid to safety. Payment of awards and obligations to sponsors can pressure racers to compete in unsafe conditions.
Women Motorcycle Racers Motorcycle racing is one of the last bastions of machismo: In this sport the image of a woman is that of a pin-up girl kissing the race winner or the pom-pom girl parading among the racers before the start of a race. During the early years of the sport women did challenge men in France and Italy; in France in 1896 a championship was organized for women only. During subsequent years, however, women raced only sporadically. The Frenchwoman Violette Morriss (1835–?), a world record-holder in shot put during the 1920s, caused a scandal by competing in motorcycle races and provoked admiration as well as scorn for her aggres-
siveness and bravery. When Beryl Swain (b. 1926) finished the Tourist Trophy race in 1962, members of the Tourist Trophy Riders Association voted unanimously against allowing women to enter the race in the future. The lack of women competitors limits motorcycle racing; in noncompetitive motorcycle sports, however, women abound. Gherardo Bonini
Further Reading Hawkes, K. (1962). Their place is in the stands. World Sports, 28(8). Pirazzini, E. (1971). Storia dei motomondiali: I giorni del coraggio [History of the world motorcycling championships: The daredevil days]. Bologna, Italy: Edizioni Calderini. Pirazzini, E. (1977). Addio campione: I cavalieri dell’impossibile [Goodbye champion: The ultimate chevaliers]. Bologna, Italy: Edizioni Calderini. Rivola, L., & Rivola, G. (1991). Storia del motociclismo mondiale dalle origini ad oggi (Su strada) [History of world motorcycle racing from origins up to today (race courses)]. Milan, Italy: Vallardi Associati. Sucher, H. V. (1990). Harley Davidson. London: Bison Books.
Mount Everest
S
een from outer space, the Earth would appear to be a perfectly smooth sphere. However, it is not. Its land surfaces have many bumps and wrinkles—some of which, seen from our Earth-bound perspective, rise to enormous heights. The highest of all these bumps and wrinkles is known as “Mount Everest” to most of the people of the world and as “Chomolungma” (Goddess Mother of the World) to the peoples who have dwelt at its base for centuries. (During recent decades Nepal has named the mountain “Sagarmartha,” as in “Sagarmartha National Park”—a name unknown to local inhabitants.) Mount Everest’s summit, a constantly varying cone of snow and ice (and sometimes bare rock) is now listed as being 8,850 meters above sea level. Mount Everest is one of more than a thousand peaks in the greater Himalayas that exceeds 6,100 meters in altitude. The mountain range was formed within the past 50 million years
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The best and fastest way to learn a sport is to watch and imitate a champion. ■ JEAN CLAUDE KILLY
as the Indian subcontinent crossed the equator northward at the breakneck speed of 10 centimeters a year and crashed into the belly of Asia. The result: a series of huge terrestrial folds, making up the highest and one of the youngest ranges on Earth. (Mount Everest is still rising—about an inch a year.) Geologically Mount Everest is a huge pyramid. Although surrounded at its base by four major glaciers, it is essentially a rock peak, a remarkable mixture of schist, gneiss, and granite rock, with layers of sedimentary rock at the top. A chalky layer at 8,500 meters (known as the “yellow band” to generations of climbers) is filled with the carbonate remains of marine animals. For Europeans the existence of Mount Everest was first noted on a map prepared by a group of French Capuchin friars returning from Lhasa, Tibet, in 1733. They spelled the name of the mountain “TschoumoulLancma.” However, apart from a tiny group of Tibetan lamas in a monastery near the Rongbuk Glacier (at 5,000 meters a scant 25 kilometers from the base of Mount Everest), few people knew of it. It was not readily visible from any of the major trade routes (for mules, yaks, and foot traffic) that for centuries had pierced the Himalayas between India, Nepal, and Tibet. That situation began to change during the 1850s with completion of the Grand Trigonometrical Survey that Sir George Everest of England had directed for nearly twenty-five years. The goal was to run a survey line from the extreme tip of India (Cape Cormorin) to the Himalayas 2,900 kilometers to the north. The survey was, at the time, the longest and most meticulous ever done—one of its goals was to measure the curvature of the Earth. In 1852, after Everest himself had retired, a clerk working on the data stored in Calcutta rushed up to the new director, Colonel Andrew Waugh, saying “Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain in the world! Peak XV is 29,002 feet high!” Waugh then launched a fifteen-year campaign to get the mountain named in honor of his predecessor. Everest himself complained to the end of his life that local names, not the names of Europeans (especially those still living), should be used for newly discovered
mountains and rivers. However, the name “Mount Everest” has stuck. Some people say the name has even the right sound for the grandest mountain of them all. Today only the local Tibetans and the Chinese call it “Chomolungma.” Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century czarist Russia and Great Britain vied with one another over which was to dominate central Asia. In what was called the “Great Game,” dozens of spies, “explorers,” and occasional official expeditions laced over the hills and valleys north of India and Afghanistan, penetrating as far as the Silk Road routes linking China with Persia (Iran) and the West. In 1892 the London Times published news of the explorations of Sir Martin Conway and aroused great public discussion about Mount Everest, the mysterious mountain, hitherto seen only through George Everest’s survey instruments from 177 kilometers away. In 1904, in a move to block the Russians, a British army under Sir Francis Younghusband fought its way all the way to Lhasa and forced the Dalai Lama (the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism) to sign a trade treaty. On their way back to India two officers took a side trip and spotted Mount Everest from the north—still 96 kilometers away. Through field glasses Captain C. G. Rawling observed the north ridge and felt it might well be climbable.
“Ought We Not Be Able?” Said Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, in 1905: “It has always seemed to me a reproach that with . . . the highest mountain in the world in a neighboring and friendly state, we, the mountaineers and pioneers par excellence of the universe, make no attempt to climb to the top . . . Ought we not be able to do this?” (Unsworth 2000, 14-15). In 1910 the Dalai Lama had to flee to India to escape a Chinese occupation. In 1912, with the help of British arms, the Tibetans drove out the Chinese, and from 1913 to 1950 Tibet was an autonomous state. Hence, we should not be surprised that during the years between the two world wars, all expeditions to attempt to climb Mount Everest were British and were from the northern (Tibetan) side. Nepal, to the south, was a hermit kingdom closed to outsiders.
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On 10 March 1919 Major J. B. Noel electrified an audience at the British Royal Geographic Society (RGS) when he revealed an illicit journey in disguise into Tibet in 1913 during which he had come within 64 kilometers of Mount Everest—the closest of any Westerner yet. At once the RGS and the Alpine Club attempted to fund an expedition to explore the mountain from the north, test the feasibility of routes to the summit, and perhaps even attempt one or two of them. The London Times reported a speech by Younghusband in which he said: “Although there is no more use in climbing Mount Everest than kicking a football about, or dancing, the accomplishment would do a great deal of good. It would elevate the human spirit.” World War I had killed or maimed nearly 40 percent of Britain’s male youth. The average age of this first serious climbing party was forty-four and one-half. One member in his late fifties died from a heart attack on the march in. Others had to turn back or remain in lower camps as the problems of thin air and oxygen deprivation began to assert themselves. Among the exceptions was George Leigh Mallory, at thirty-five well seasoned in the Alps and only slightly damaged by his time in the trenches of the war. The journey from Britain to Darjeeling, India, took a full month—by rail, ship, and narrow-gauge railway. On 13 May 1921, the party set out from Darjeeling on a second month’s journey of more than 321 kilometers, north into Tibet and then west, riding mules and horses and walking. In early June, Mallory wrote to his wife: “We are about to walk off the map.” On 13 June he climbed a thousand feet up a cliff and saw one of the great sights in modern exploration. Peering through the monsoon clouds, Mallory reported: We were now able to make out where Everest should be; but the clouds were dark. We gazed at them intently through the field glasses as though by some miracle we might pierce the veil. Presently the miracle happened. We caught the gleam of snow behind the gray mist. A whole group of mountains began to appear in gigantic fragments
. . . A preposterous triangular lump rose out of the depths; its edge came leaping up at an angle of about 70 degrees and ended nowhere. Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and aretes [sharp-crested ridges in rugged mountains], now one fragment, now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared. (Unsworth 2000, 49)
Although not officially the leader, Mallory soon became in effect the climbing leader. Exploring the upper reaches of the Rongbuk Glacier, he noted a gap in the main ridge above him—the north col (saddle), a key takeoff point, he thought, for an ascent. He accomplished two more goals critical for climbing Mount Everest. First, he decided that some of the coolies (unskilled laborers), whom some climbers called “porters” and whom he now began to call by their ethnic name (“Sherpa”), should be trained in ice and snow climbing if they were ever to carry major loads of supplies up to the high camps of the future. (A Sherpa is a member of a Tibetan people living on the high southern slopes of the Himalayas in eastern Nepal and known for providing support for foreign trekkers and mountain climbers.) Second, as the party split into small teams to further explore the Tibetan side of Mount Everest, Mallory got a glimpse south into Nepal—forbidden territory. He was gazing into the Western Cwm (cwm is a Welsh term for cirque, a deep, steep-walled basin on a mountain usually forming the blunt end of a valley). “We have seen this western glacier and are not sorry that we have not got to go up it. It is terribly steep and broken . . . From what I have seen now, I do not much fancy it would be possible, even if one could get up the glacier.” Ironically, in 1953 the Sherpa Jamling Tenzing Norgay and the New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary used that route to climb Mount Everest. Strange tracks in the snow were proclaimed by the Sherpas to be those of a yeti (abominable snowman).When the party questioned the chief lama at the Rongbuk monastery about it, he calmly informed the party that five yetis lived in the upper reaches of the valley. None was seen, however, as
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A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills and uses these skills to accomplish his goals. ■ LARRY BIRD
the party pushed its way up the East Rongbuk Glacier. A series of camps was established up to the north col itself, at 7,000 meters the highest that any people had ever climbed. Finally, from Camp V at 7,700 meters the first real attempt to reach the summit was made. Exhaustion, wind, and frostbite forced the climbers to turn back at 8,100 meters (yet another record height). Everyone retreated back to base camp. New snow was falling. The summer monsoon had arrived.
“Because It Is There!” However, Mallory was stubborn, determined to make one more attempt. Leading a group of heavily laden porters back up to the north col, his party was caught by an avalanche. Seven porters died. In 1923, while Mallory was on a three-month lecture tour in the United States, when a reporter asked why he had wanted to climb Mount Everest, Mallory’s impromptu reply—“Because it is there!”—became a phrase that has now entered the English language. History will forever associate the names of two pairs of climbers with British attempts on Mount Everest: Mallory and Irvine, tragically lost in 1924; and Tenzing Norgay and Hillary, brilliantly successful in 1953. Although they had better oxygen equipment, the 1924 climbers dressed as if in the Alps. Edward Norton, the overall commander, described his kit: Personally I wore a thick woolen vest and drawers, a thick flannel shirt and two sweaters under a lightish knickerbocker suit of windproof gabardine the knickers of which were lined with light flannel, a pair of soft elastic Kashmir putties and a pair of boots of felt bound and soled with leather and lightly nailed with the usual Alpine nails. Over all I wore a very light pyjama suit . . . of windproof gabardine. On my head I wore a fur-lined leather motor cycling helmet. (Norton 1924, 103-104)
The usual series of camps was established successively up from the Rongbuk Glacier to the north col and from there up the ridge to Camp VI at 26,800 feet. On 3 June 1921, climbing without oxygen, Norton was forced to turn back just above the “yellow band”—an al-
titude of 28,126 feet. It was a record not to be broken for twenty-nine years. Unless . . .? Unless George Mallory and Andrew Irvine climbed higher five days later. On 8 June 1924, these two men set out from Camp VI. Mallory had determined to use oxygen (indeed, one reason for taking twenty-two-year-old Irvine instead of one of the more experienced mountaineers available was Irvine’s mechanical skill in tinkering with the temperamental oxygen kits). Mallory wrote to his wife: “It is almost unthinkable with this plan that I shan’t get to the top; I can’t see myself coming down defeated.” Noel Odell, a geologist with a remarkable ability to climb high without oxygen, went up toward Camp VI later in the morning of 8 June. At 7,900 meters he stopped to gaze up at the ridge.The time was 12:50 P.M. “Suddenly, I saw the whole summit ridge and final peak of Everest unveiled. I noticed far away on a snow slope leading up . . . to the last step but one from the base of the final pyramid, a tiny object moving and approaching the rock step. A second object followed, and then the first climbed to the top of the step. As I stood intently watching . . . the scene became enveloped in clouds once more . . . ” (Norton 1924, 130). Neither Mallory nor Irvine ever returned. For decades people have debated whether the two might have scaled Mount Everest and then been killed or frozen to death on the way down. On 30 May 1933, a British expedition again trying the north ridge via the north col found an ice ax on the slabs just below the crest. The ax was Irvine’s. Had it been dropped in a fall (unlikely at that spot), or had he simply laid it aside in preparation for the final rock climb ahead, or did he drop it in exhaustion on the way down? In 1960 a Chinese climber supposedly found the body of “an English” several hundred feet below the ridge crest. Before he could be questioned by Westerners he was killed in an avalanche. In 1991 Eric Simonson, leading a commercial ascent from the Tibetan side, found a discarded oxygen cylinder 188 meters from the first step and 259 meters above Camp VI. This cylinder was rediscovered by Tap Richards on 17 May 1999, during the Mallory and
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I had climbed my mountain, but I must still live my life. ■ TENZING NORGAY
Irvine Research Expedition. It was identified as cylinder number nine from Mallory’s 1924 attempt. Evidence strongly suggests it was emptied and discarded on the way up, not on the way down. On 1 May 1999, this research expedition discovered Mallory’s body, lying prone as if in “self-arrest,” hundreds of feet below the north ridge and the first step. Irvine’s body has not been found. Because he was known to have had a small camera, possibly if its film could be developed, it would settle the question of whether Mallory and Irvine actually reached the summit. In 1933, 1935, 1936, and 1938 four more British attempts were launched from the Tibetan side. All failed. “We are beginning to look ridiculous,” was a sentiment heard not only in Alpine Club circles but also in the British media. In 1934 Maurice Wilson, an eccentric ex-captain of the British Army, made a bizarre attempt to scale the north col route alone. His body was found by the 1935 expedition at a height of 6,400 meters. Buried on the spot, it was rediscovered by the Chinese expedition of 1960. In 1935 the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made his first carry high on Mount Everest. Altogether he was to make seven forays up the mountain, the last in 1953 a resounding success. The 1930s featured several expeditions into various portions of the Himalayans to track down, capture, photograph, or even spot a yeti. None was spotted.
U.S.-British Team Ascends After World War II many circumstances changed. In 1950 the Chinese seized Tibet, cutting off any climbing by Westerners from that direction for several decades. However, Nepal, emerging from its isolation, decided to issue a limited number of climbing and exploration permits commencing in 1950. In 1950 a U.S.-British Nepal reconnaissance team, led by father and son Oscar and Charles Houston and including British Himalayan expert H. L. Tilman and U.S. woman mountaineer Betsy Cowles, hiked in from the south. The first foreigners ever allowed to penetrate the Sola Khumba region, they reached the foot of the Khumbu Glacier—
and announced on their return to Katmandu, Nepal, that the way was open to at least attempt Mount Everest via the Khumbu Glacier, the Western Cwm, and the south col, from which a southeast ridge ascends to the summit. Having freed India, Britain was no longer the Raj (colonial ruler) of prewar years. To the shock of all good English people everywhere, Nepal gave the Swiss first crack at the new route up Mount Everest—on a premonsoon and a postmonsoon set of dates in 1952. During the spring a nine-member team including Tenzing Norgay, by now a sirdar (foreman of the Sherpas) but also counted as a member of the climbing teams, set out. A route was successfully hacked up the ice of the Khumbu ice fall. Aiming for the south col, the team climbed the difficult Geneva Spur, a ribbon of rock protruding from the snow and ice below the col. On 28 May 1952, Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay reached 8,598 meters—a record height. During the postmonsoon autumn the Swiss made their final effort. They were defeated by poor oxygen kits and cold winds far more bitter than those of the spring. One of the most promising Sherpas, Mingma Dorje, was killed by a falling splinter of ice. Knowing that the turn of the French would come in 1954, the British sent forth the best expedition the empire had ever seen. Not only did they want to forestall the French, but also they knew that in 1953 Britain would crown a new queen. What a gift for her, should they prevail this time! At the head of their expedition they placed Colonel H. C. John Hunt, a man who could not only enforce the necessary discipline and make tough decisions as required but also could climb high himself and thereby be a “forward” leader. Ten top climbers were recruited, including Edmund Hillary. Tenzing Norgay was again sirdar and also a recognized member of the climbing team (the English had learned from the Swiss). Equipment had improved since Norton’s gear in 1924. The oxygen equipment was far lighter and far more efficient. The ropes were nylon, far stronger and far less likely to break than old-fashioned ropes of
MOUNT EVEREST
Manila hemp. The men still wore wool underneath (which stays warm even when wet). On top of that they wore thick padded jackets and trousers filled with eider down and over everything an outer casing of windproof “Everest cloth.” On their hands they wore three pairs of gloves: silk, wool, and Mount Everest cloth outers. On their feet were huge insulated boots. Goggles and an oxygen mask protected their faces. Once up the Khumbu ice fall, they ignored the rocks of the Geneva Spur and instead ascended the Lhotse Glacier on the right side of the western cirque. As Hunt himself led part of the climb, a long upward traverse crossed the Lhotse face and eventually dropped down a short distance to the south col. This place became (as it has for all south col expeditions since) a major staging base for attempts up Mount Everest’s southeast ridge. On 26 May, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans reached the south summit of Mount Everest (8,763 meters). On 28 May, Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, and two companions established a camp at 8,503 meters. On the next day, after a precarious and sleepless night, Tenzing Norgay and Hillary set out for the summit. Soon gaining the south summit, they found the going fairly easy until they were stopped by a rock barrier 12 meters high. Separated by a thin gap, a snow cornice lapped against this rock. Hoping that the ice wouldn’t simply pop off and let him fall, Hillary braced his back against the ice and, propping his feet against the rock, “chimneyed” his way to the top of this last awkward barrier. Tenzing Norgay soon followed—the place has since been known as the “Hillary Step.” It was the key to the final summit. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top. Hillary took one of the most famous photos in climbing history: Tenzing Norgay, standing on the summit, holds aloft an ice ax with the flags of Britain and Nepal flapping from the shaft. The news reached London by a secret code in time for the Times to report it on the morning of 2 June 1953— Coronation Day. Mount Everest was not climbed again until 1956, when a Swiss expedition climbed both Mount Everest
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and its neighbor Lhotse (8,499 meters). In 1960 the Chinese entered the ranks, scaling the mountain from the Tibetan side via the old British route from the north col to the north ridge and then past the first and second steps to the summit on 25 May. Experts in the West disbelieved this climb for years, but it is now generally believed. One reason is because remains of tents left behind in the refuse of the Chinese climbers’ camps have been dated.
Two More on Top of the World In 1963 a large, well-funded U.S. expedition under Norman Dyhrenfurth set out to reclimb the southeast ridge route and, if possible, link with a second expedition attempting the unclimbed west ridge. Both succeeded. Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld scaled the west ridge with a roped rock climb and met Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad, who had climbed to the top via the south col route that day. On the way down all four had to endure a forced bivouac in the dark (a first for men on Mount Everest). However, the mountain had been traversed from one side to another for the first time. Alas, the Khumbu ice fall, always dangerous, claimed its first victim: Twenty-seven-year-old Jake Breitenbach was killed when an ice serac (a pinnacle, sharp ridge, or block of ice among the crevasses of a glacier) collapsed on him. From then on ascents were made with increasing frequency. In 1978 Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler astounded the world medical community by scaling the mountain without artificial oxygen. In 1980 Messner reached the summit via the Hornbein couloir (a steep mountainside gorge) alone—and again without the use of oxygen. In 1981 a U.S. expedition under Lou Reichardt reconnoitered the east Kangshung Glacier face. In 1983 and 1988 two U.S. expeditions returned to climb two variant routes successfully (aided, to be sure, by the British Stephen Venables). Other first ascents included the difficult southwest face and the north face, Japanese, French, and British expeditions playing leading roles. By 1989 244 climbers had made 274 ascents (some climbers, especially Sherpas, climbed more than once).
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Mount Everest Mountain Medicine A well-rounded climber should have a good working knowledge of advanced first aid, but mountaineering has one problem peculiar to itself, that of hypoxia: problems stemming from lack of oxygen. At 14,000 feet, air pressure is reduced 40 percent. Here, science can be used with precision, and some of the best studies of human adaptation to altitude have been done in the United States and Canada (including those done by Dr. Charles Houston, the same man who led the attempts on K2 in the 1950s). Medically, the conditions most peculiar to mountaineering are HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) and HACE (high altitude cerebral edema). Often misdiagnosed and treated, unsuccessfully, as pneumonia, these are now seen as distinct syndromes with treatment regimens unique to themselves (the
By 1996 four thousand people had attempted Mount Everest, 660 successfully (16.5 percent). One hundred forty-two (3.6 percent) had died. From 1997 through 2002 807 more people scaled the mountain. Forty-two climbers were killed—one for every nineteen who reached the top. The oldest person to reach the summit is Ramon Blanco (sixty), and the youngest is Bertrand Roche (seventeen). In 2002 a blind man climbed Mount Everest. A. F. Mummery, the best British climber of the nineteenth century (and the first to die attempting to climb a Himalayan peak—Nanga Parbat in 1895), loved to quote Sir Leslie Stephen, a cofounder of the Alpine Club (and father of the English author Virginia Woolf) as follows: “Every mountain goes through three stages: at first it is deemed unclimbable. Next, it is said to be very difficult. Finally, it becomes an easy day for a lady!” The first woman to scale Mount Everest was Junko Tabei of Japan on 16 May 1975. Eleven days later a woman named “Phantog” of China was successful from the north col-north ridge side. On 29 September 1988, Stacy Allison became the first U.S. woman to reach the top. On 10 May 1993, Rebecca Stephens became the
best treatment of all, where feasible, is to descend as rapidly as possible to a much lower altitude). A very few mountaineers, Reinhold Messner being the most noted, are able to climb to extraordinary heights without any artificial oxygen at all. On 8 May 1978, Messner and his partner Peter Habeler climbed Mount Everest (29,028 feet) completely on their own and without artificial oxygen. Messner went on to climb all fourteen of the peaks over 8,000 meters (26,240 feet), often alone and usually without artificial oxygen. He has fervently expressed his opinion that the use of any kind of artificial aids (bolts, pitons) as well as artificial oxygen takes the adventure out of climbing. Supremely conditioned, a super-climber in every respect, he is today in a league of his own!
Stan Boucher
first British woman. More than thirty women have climbed Mount Everest. So far, in eighty-one years, no one has seen, photographed, trapped, or hugged a yeti. In 1991 the fee for an expedition from the Nepal side was set at $2,300. By 2001 it was $70,000 plus an extra $10,000 for every member after the first seven. Amounts charged each person to join a commercial expedition now average $64,000. However, no shortage of customers eager to pay for the adventure of a lifetime exists. In 1996 three commercial groups became so intermingled and disorganized that eight persons died, including Yasuko Namba (at age forty-seven the oldest woman to reach the summit) and two of the most famous guides: Scott Fischer of the United States and Rob Hall of New Zealand. Most ascents, and by far the majority of commercial ascents, have employed the route to the south col and thence up the southeast ridge—the way pioneered by Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Indeed, some of the Sherpas now call this “the yak Route.” However, Mount Everest is still Mount Everest—the highest mountain on Earth, with the thinnest air, some
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I can’t understand why men make all this fuss about Everest—it’s only a mountain. ■ JUNKO TABEI
of the most prodigious winds, snowfields known to avalanche at the least provocation, and ice falls replete with hidden dangers (especially the Khumbu ice fall, a different challenge every year). Its monsoon summers virtually preclude climbing. Its winters feature polar cold. Each of the two “windows” supposedly opportune for climbing (the premonsoon spring and the postmonsoon early autumn) have frequently been known to unleash storms of unpredictable severity. Mount Everest is a mountain that can, when it wishes, protect itself very well. Stan Boucher
Further Reading Boukreev, A., & DeWalt, G. W. (1997). The climb: Tragic ambitions on Everest. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bruce, C. G. (1923). The assault on Mount Everest 1922. London: Edward Arnold. Dittert, R., Chevalley, G., & Lambert, R. (1954). Forerunners to Everest: The story of the two Swiss expeditions of 1952. New York: Harper. Habeler, P. (1979). The lonely victory: Mt. Everest ’78 (D. Heald, Trans.). New York: Simon & Schuster. Hemmleb, J., Johnson, L. A., & Simonson, E. R. (1999). Ghosts of Everest: The search for Mallory & Irvine. Seattle, WA: Mountaineers Books. Holzel, T., & Salkeld, A. (1986). First on Everest: The mystery of Mallory and Irvine. New York: Henry Holt. Hornbein, T. F. (1965). Everest: The west ridge. San Francisco: Sierra Club. Howard-Bury, C. K. (1922). Mount Everest: The reconnaissance 1921. London: Edward Arnold. Hunt, J. (1954). The conquest of Everest. New York: E. P. Dutton. Krakauer, J. (1997). Into thin air: A personal account of the Everest disaster. New York: Villard. Lunn, A. (1957). A century of mountaineering, 1857–1957. London: George Allen & Unwin. Messner, R. (1989). The crystal horizon: Everest, the first solo ascent (J. Neate & A. Salkeld, Trans.). Seattle, WA: Mountaineers Books. Norton, E. F. (1925). The fight for Everest 1924. New York: Longmans, Green. People’s Republic of China. (1975). Another ascent of the world’s highest peak: Qomolangma. Beijing, China: Foreign Languages Press. Robertson, J. (1998). Betsy Cowles Partridge: Mountaineer. Niwot: University Press of Colorado. Ruttledge, H. (1936). Everest 1933. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Sayre, W. W. (1964). Four against Everest. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Tenzing Norgay, J., & Coburn, B. (2001). Touching my father’s soul: A Sherpa’s journey to the top of Everest. San Francisco: Harper. Tenzing Norgay, J., & Ullman, J. R. (1955). Tiger of the snows. New York: Bantam Books.
Tilman, H. W. (1948). Mount Everest 1938. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Unsworth, W. (2000). Everest: The mountaineering history (3rd ed.). Seattle, WA: Mountaineers Books. Younghusband, F. E. (1926). The epic of Mount Everest. London: Edward Arnold.
Mountain Biking
M
ountain biking is a form of recreational and competitive bicycling in which cyclists navigate offroad terrain. It started in the late 1970s in Marin County, California, when creative cyclists modified their bikes using parts from motorcycles, bicycle motorcross (BMX), and cruiser bikes. Soon after the early mountain bikes were created, affordable “production” bikes were developed, and mountain biking became extremely popular. Mountain biking differs from road biking in that mountain bikes are built with heavy-duty frames, fat tires, shocks, and disc brakes. These features, among others, allow a mountain bike to go where a road bike cannot, and the upright riding position is more conducive to scenery viewing. For mountain-biking enthusiasts, the attraction lies in pedaling up a steep mountain grade and later flying down that same mountain at extraordinary speeds. The history of mountain biking is often debated, but Joe Breeze, an engineer, is generally credited with creating the first “mass produced” off-road bike in 1977. The first bike sold for $750. In 1979 Gary Fisher, Charlie Kelley, and Tom Ritchey formed “Mountainbikes,” a group that sold custom bikes for $1,500. In 1982, at the Long Beach Bike Show, Specialized, one of the premier bicycle manufacturers, teamed up with a Japanese builder to make the Specialized Stumpjumper. Their success was phenomenal. They sold 500 bikes for about $750 each. In the United States , mountain biking continues to grow in popularity as indicated by bike sales and participation. Factors such as advances in equipment and technology, media coverage of events, increase in type
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and number of race events and governing bodies, and the popularity of the sport’s best riders have contributed to this trend. Mountain biking is so appealing today that bikes with “fat” tires account for the majority of total bicycle sales in the United States, and as sales go up, so do the number of riders. The total number of participants in the sport has continued to grow over the past decade, and according to the National Sporting Goods Association’s annual survey (www.nsga.org), this trend is in contrast to decreasing participation in the majority of the most popular sports in the United States. Along with the increase in popularity, the sport faces some critical issues, such as increasing damage to trails and the surrounding environment, a subsequent decrease in access to trails, and a high incidence of injuries.
Bicycle Technology New technology and advances in equipment have helped popularize mountain biking by making it safer and more comfortable to navigate off-road trails. One key aspect of technology that has revolutionized the sport is the development of suspension or shock absorption components. A suspension bike, with shock absorbers in front (hard tail), or in front and rear (full suspension), was developed with the idea that it would enhance cycling velocity and braking capacity as the result of better contact between the tire and the ground. Proponents also claim that they expend less energy and experience less physical stress with these bikes because they are not subjected to the full impact of bumps and vibrations. Innovations in shocks include “lockout” and “self-adjusting” technology. The lockout option enables a rider to “lock” the shock to a position so that it doesn’t bob during uphill climbing efforts when pressure is applied to the handlebars. The selfadjusting technology differentiates between a hard uphill effort and a series of downhill bumps and adjusts itself accordingly. Another innovation is the use of twenty-nine-inch wheels—instead of the standard twenty-six-inch wheels. The use of larger tires theoretically enhances climbing ability and improves a bike’s
ability to navigate bumpy terrain. Lastly, the addition of disc brakes to a mountain bike enables riders to brake more quickly and effectively in all conditions— including wet terrain.
Media Coverage Media coverage of mountain biking exploded in the 1990s. Outdoor Life Network (OLN) provided extensive coverage of professional mountain-biking events for both men and women. Unfortunately, in 2003 major sponsors pulled their funds from the National Off-Road Bicycling Association (NORBA) events, perhaps because of the sluggish economy, forcing a major “reorganization” of NORBA events. Today, TV coverage focuses mostly on “extreme” types of mountain biking, such as downhill and freeriding (e.g., X Games and Red Bull Rampage), but coverage of the World Cup and NORBA events is available via Webcast for a small fee (www.1010tv.com). Despite the waning TV coverage of mountain biking in the United States, interest in mountain biking is still strong worldwide. Almost 25,000 spectators watched the 2003 World Cup opener in St. Wendel, Germany. Arguably, the most dramatic increase in media coverage of mountain biking has occurred through the development of several outstanding websites. These websites include such information as gear reviews, international trail guides, races and events, racing tips, classified advertisements, and message boards (see www.dirtworld.com, www.mtbr.com, www.mtbiking. com, www.mbaction.com, www.singletrackworld.com, and www.bikemag.com). One website, available for a small yearly fee, provides topographic maps and trail information for a variety of areas (www.trails.com).
Biking Events Concurrent with the increase in media coverage is an increase in event offerings. For the recreational rider, a variety of “fat-tire festivals” exists. These festivals give participants an opportunity to learn basic skills via clinics and “sample” some of the area trails, while being led
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by a knowledgeable (local) guide. In addition, cycle manufacturing companies set up “demo” tents so individuals can try some of their latest bikes. Some of the largest festivals in the United States include those in Moab, Utah; Slatyfork, West Virginia; and Fruita, Colorado. For young riders the Canadian Cycling Association has developed “Sprockids.” This is a program designed to introduce children to cycling by teaching them skills specific to cycling and life. These courses include instruction in riding, safety, and etiquette, as well as mechanical issues related to cycling. Additionally, interest in mountain bike racing is growing at the high school level. Northern California has a four-year-old high school mountain bike league. There are already over thirty schools that participate, and sponsors support a six-race series that begins in February and ends with the state championship in May. Competitive mountain biking offers various options. Types of races include cross-country, short track, pointto-point, hill climb, downhill, dual slalom, mountain cross, observed trials, stage, marathon, and ultraendurance. The cross-country race is a mass start event of 3.2 kilometers or longer that takes place on dirt roads and trails. NORBA—the national governing body for mountain bike competitions in the United States— recently added the short-track race, which is perceived to be more spectator friendly than other races because the competitors start as a group and race multiple 1 kilometer laps for about thirty minutes. The point-to-point race is a mass-start event that begins at one point and ends at another. Some races require riders to ride loops; the difficulty in the point-to-point race, however, is that riders do not become familiar with the course, as they would if they were riding a loop. The hill climb is a timed event designed to see who can reach the top of a summit in the least amount of time. The downhill event also is a timed event, running in the opposite direction. The winner covers the course in the fastest possible time at speeds up to 60 mph. Clearly, downhill events are the most dangerous mountain bike races.The dual slalom requires riders to compete next to each other (side by
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side) in a format similar to dual slalom ski racing (that is, with penalties for false starts, crashing, or missing a gate). Each rider must go through the gate from his or her course, and riders switch courses for the second run. The best combined time from the two runs wins the event. Mountain cross is the newest form of mountain bike competition. Similar to the dual slalom, 4-cross (as it is sometimes called) is contested by four riders, with the first two riders to cross the finish line advancing to the next round of competition. In an observed trials event, a rider must negotiate an obstacle course typically consisting of rocks, water, and other natural hurdles without using a hand or putting a foot down for balance. A stage race typically combines several types of races, such as cross-country, uphill, and downhill. Winners of each event in a stage race are placed based on their combined time. Those with the fastest combined times are designated overall winners. Elite competitors typically specialize in either downhill (including dual slalom) or endurance-type (cross-country and shorttrack) events. Ultraendurance events, which are typically longer than 121 kilometers, are often held in scenic locations such as Durango, Colorado, or the Wasatch Front in Northern Utah. In 2003 the World Mountain Biking Marathon Championship consisted of a 78kilometer ride through the Swiss Alps that included 9,300 feet of climbing. The winner of the women’s event, Maja Wloszcowska from Poland, was riding in her first marathon mountain-biking event. The NORBA National Championship series has included marathon events at four of its eight venues for the 2004 season. Another emerging phenomenon is the twenty-four-hour race. This race, not for the faint of heart, can be done as a relay team or solo. Riders complete as many laps as they can in a twenty-four-hour period. Other types of events include stunt competitions, in which competitors jump over logs, curbs, or even park benches, and mountain bike polo, in which riders mount bicycles instead of horses—matches consist of two tenminute halves, and each team has four players. At the Winter X Games (a principal competitive forum for
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extreme sports), riders stud their tires with quarter-inch wood screws and edge them into the slopes like a set of skis for competition in snow mountain bike racing. Arguably, the ultimate mountain-biking competition is the Olympic Games. In 1996 cross-country mountain biking was added to the Atlanta, Georgia, games as an Olympic sport. The women’s cross-country race featured thirty entrants from twelve countries who raced about 24 miles around a loop course, while being watched by 35,000 to 40,000 spectators. Paola Pezzo from Italy placed first, followed by Alison Sydor from Canada and Susan DeMattei of the United States. Pezzo won the gold medal again in the 2000 games in Sydney, with Barbara Blatter of Switzerland in second and Margarita Fullana of Spain in third.
Governing Bodies As the number of competitive events has grown, the need for official governing bodies has increased. The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is the international governing body for cycling, and it oversees seven different cycling disciplines, including mountain biking (www. uci.ch). The UCI recognized the first world championships in 1990, and the next year, it began sponsorship of a World Cup series for the sport. In addition to promoting cycling worldwide, the UCI organizes cycling events at the Olympics on behalf of the International Olympic Committee. Competitions sanctioned by this organization offer valuable UCI points to individual riders, which are then tallied to determine the number of starting
A man descending fast on a mountain bike. Source: istockphoto.com/braddy.
slots a nation is awarded for world championship and Olympic contests. Countries who want their cyclists to compete at the international level have to create an organization that reports to the UCI to ensure that all courses and athletes meet UCI standards. In 1983 NORBA formalized competitive mountain bike racing in the United States. NORBA, whose membership is predominantly male (89 percent), was designed to guide, service, and promote mountain biking as a competitive sport and outdoor activity (www. usacycling.org/mtb/). U.S.A. Cycling, the governing body for cycling competition in the United States, bought NORBA in 1989 with the aim of unifying the sport. After 1989 NORBA grew by 100 percent and peaked in 1996 with 34,000 members. In 2004 NORBA membership has leveled at about 11,500. The organization issues more than 1,000 permits per year for off-road events in the United States. The rise in the cost of NORBA racing licenses encouraged the growth of smaller, regional mountain bike racing organizations in the past decade. These smaller organizations enable amateur racers to buy less expensive
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annual licenses to compete in local races that are not sanctioned by NORBA. The UCI and NORBA each offer a championship event, in addition to an overall series crown for the World Cup and NCS (National Championship Series), respectively. Currently, the UCI awards championships in cross-country, downhill, 4-cross ( or, mountain cross), and marathon events. The classic disciplines recognized by NORBA championships include cross-country, downhill, mountain cross, and short track. In addition to UCI and NORBA, other governing bodies have been founded, some to promote women’s participation in the sport and some to promote the sport internationally. For example, the Women’s Mountain Biking and Tea Society (WOMBATS) were founded by Jacquie Phelan of Marin County, California. The WOMBATS provide a forum for women to find riding partners, stay current with riding trends, and enhance awareness of bicycles as modes of transportation. Women who join the WOMBATS also receive a newsletter and may take part in riding clinics, organized trips, potluck dinners, and general female camaraderie. There are three international chapters (British Columbia, Sweden, and Norway), four regional chapters in the United States (California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Massachusetts), and twenty-one local chapters. The International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) was founded in 1988 (www.imba.com). IMBA works to create, enhance, and preserve trail opportunities for mountain bikers worldwide. This organization has a membership network that includes 32,000 individuals and over 450 bicycle clubs, plus corporate partners and bicycle retail members. In addition to building and maintaining trails, IMBA is an advocate for mountain biking through educational efforts and lobbying and partnering with governmental agencies (international, national, regional, state, and local) regarding trail access and management issues. The IMBA suggests six rules that safe and courteous mountain bikers should observe. First, ride on open trails only. This means that riders should respect trail and road closures and avoid riding on private property.
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Second, leave no trace. Riders should not pedal in conditions that will cause them to leave evidence of passing, nor should they leave trash on the trails. Third, always stay in control—which means maintaining a reasonable speed. Fourth, always yield on the trail. Riders should let others know (via bell, horn, or voice) that they are approaching, and they should assume that others may be around blind corners. Fifth, never spook animals. Sixth, plan ahead. No rider should try a trail without knowing his or her equipment, how it matches riding abilities and the terrain and weather in which the rider will be riding. Further, helmets are mandatory, and supplies such as sunscreen and extra food are highly recommended.
Women Mountain Bikers As the sport has grown, several unique female personalities have emerged. Jacquie Phelan is considered one of the premier mountain bikers. She won every race she entered between 1980 and 1986, including NORBA world championships in 1984 and 1985. She was known for her riding skills as well as her “off-mountain” antics. She entered races using “Alice B. Toeclips” as her pseudonym, she posed for a Rockshox advertisement wearing only mud and a feather, she advocated for equal pay for women racers, and she founded the WOMBATS. Other cross-country riders of note include Cindy Whitehead, who won the 1987 women’s division of the Raleigh Technium World Mountain Bike Championships (downhill), and the 1986 NORBA National Championship; Ruthie Matthes, the 1992 World Cup champion; and Silva Furst, the 1992 cross-country world champion. Juli Furtado won seventeen major events in a row in 1993—one of the longest win streaks in off-road history. Unfortunately, after setting that record, she experienced two seasons of disappointing results. Shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with lupus and retired. Paola Pezzo won the gold medal for Italy in the inaugural appearance of mountain biking as a cycling event in the 1996 Summer Olympics. She followed that with another gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and has recently
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It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at practice that counts; it’s what you put into the practice. ■ ERIC LINDROS
come out of retirement to compete again. Today’s top cross-country riders to watch include the “Alisons”: Alison Sydor, a Canadian who has won three world championships and an Olympic silver medal, and Alison Dunlap, from the United States, who was a gold medalist at the Pan Am Games and U.S. National Champion in 1999. In 2002 she won the overall World Cup championship. Other cross-country stars to watch include Gunn-Rita Dahle from Norway and Sabine Spitz of Germany. Missy “The Missile ” Giove, is a daring downhill diva who revolutionized the sport with her two-toned shaved haircut and piranha around her neck. Although she has broken thirty-three bones throughout her career, she won the 1994 downhill world championship. Despite being challenged by recovery from her injuries, Missy has had many podiums in NCS events since 1994. In 2002 she won the Durango, Colorado, NCS race and placed 3rd in the World Championships in Austria. In August of 2003 Missy Giove announced her retirement, but has competed in a few NORBA races since then, ending up 26th in the US for the 2004 season. Another “storied” competitor is Marla Streb. She recently wrote an autobiography, The Life Story of a Downhill Gravity Goddess, and she starred in an IMAX film called Top Speed. In today’s races Anne-Caroline Chausson is the competitor to beat. She started competing at age ten on the French BMX team. In 1997 she won her first world cup title and world championship, and she has won every downhill world championship since.
Problems of Mountain Biking In addition to the positive aspects of the sport, it is worthwhile to mention its potential negative impact. Naturalists, hikers, and horseback riders who share trails with bikers are increasingly critical of mountain biking and in some cases seek to have bikers banned from trails because the sport, they say, causes erosion and other damage to ecosystems and interferes with the aesthetic beauty of wilderness areas. Some bikers, for example, fail to ride along designated trails. In the desert this means soil erosion, which disrupts plant life
and diminishes the already sparse food supply available to desert wildlife. Other bikers lock their rear brakes on descents, creating gullies that can lead to increased erosion. Most conflict between mountain bikers and hikers occurs close to urban areas. Hikers tend to dislike bikers due to trail displacement, right of way and speed issues, and altered-trail experiences. Trail-user conflict can also be linked to the perception of mountain bikers as daredevils or as being unconventional. Marketing campaigns often construct the sport’s culture as centered around loud music, a brash attitude, extreme terrain, big air, and big crashes, thus creating an image of mountain bikers as out of control —and proud of it. Despite the stereotypical portrayal of riders, and the fact that mountain biking clearly does impact the environment, research indicates that this sport is no more damaging than other forms of outdoor recreation, such as hiking, horseback riding, or trail running. As mountain biking continues to draw interest as both a competitive pursuit and a recreational activity, the issue of access is central to the sport. Creating more access to spaces for riding, and perhaps more critically, protecting and preserving existing trails, remain important considerations for the elite and recreational mountain bikers. Trail access is an issue that mountain bikers will ignore at their own peril. One way that mountain bikers can combat the somewhat erroneous perceptions of them is to participate in trail building and maintenance. On the first Saturday of June each year, mountain bikers across the United States join with other trail users to celebrate National Trails Day, an event organized by the American Hiking Society. Mountain bikers of both sexes face the challenge of convincing critics that bikers can be responsible trail users. With increased participation in mountain biking and increased access to trails, the number of mountainbiking-related injuries has increased. Causes of injury are typically related to the rider (e.g., muscle fatigue, inattentiveness, inappropriate braking), terrain (e.g., loose gravel, mud, loss of traction, collision with tree or
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rocks), and/or bicycle (e.g., flat tire, brake failure, pedals, forks). Interestingly, compared with male competitors, female competitors are twice as likely to injure themselves during mountain biking and four times as likely to sustain a fracture. There is speculation that the reasons for these differences may include fewer years of racing experience and less upper body strength. According to a recent review on mountain-biking injuries, the most frequent mechanism of injury is a forward fall over the handlebars while going downhill, affectionately known as an “endo.” This type of action typically results in injuries to the head, torso, and upper extremities. Ways to prevent injuries include perfecting technical skills and increasing fitness level, becoming aware of one’s own riding abilities and limitations, conducting thorough preride maintenance checks, and using helmets. During 2003, 31.6 percent of mountain bikers were female, as indicated by the annual survey of the National Sporting Goods Association. Mountain biking attracts younger (25–34), more educated, and more affluent men and women. Researchers conducting a qualitative study with mountain bikers from Australia found that most riders ride for fun, health, challenge, and socializing. They also ride to experience nature, relax, and use an environmentally friendly and inexpensive mode of transportation. More experienced riders want technical challenges, fast downhills, and steep slopes and jumps. Recreational riders, who ride two to four times per week for 10–16.5 kilometers per ride, seek rides with water access and route markers. Interestingly, many females also report using their mountain bikes for on-road, as opposed to off-road, riding. In 2002, for instance, more than twice as many females used their bikes on roads, rather than on trails. The upright seating position and stability of the fat tires may appeal to the more recreation-oriented rider.
The Future Mountain biking is a relatively new sport that engages and challenges risk-takers. This sport enables adventurers to explore more wilderness and backcountry under human power than ever before by foot. The bike indus-
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try has grown quickly in the past three decades and has generated a wide range of equipment to meet the needs and comfort of many varied off-road applications. The recent inclusion of mountain biking in the Olympic Games is strong evidence that this sport is very popular. Lynda B. Ransdell, Shelley Lucas, and Sally Warner
Further Reading Clark, J. (1996). Mountain biking in the national parks: Off-Road cycling adventures in America’s national parks. San Francisco, CA: Bicycle Books. Davis, D., & Carter, D. (1994). Mountain biking. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Editors of Mountain Bike and Bicycling Magazine. (1996). Mountain biking skills. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press. Goeft, U., & Alder, J. (2001). Sustainable mountain biking: A study from the Southwest of Western Australia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 9(3), 193–211. Kronisch, R., & Pfeiffer, R. (2002). Mountain biking injuries. Sports Medicine, 32(8), 523–537. Mariolle, E., & Shermer, M. (1988). The woman cyclist. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Mountain Bike Review. (2004). Trails in the U.S. and around the world. Retrieved June 18, 2004, from http://www.mtbr.com/trails/ National Sporting Goods Association. (2002, 2003). Survey of sports participation. Retrieved June 18, 2004, from http://www.nsga.org/research Sprung, G. (2004). Natural resource impacts of mountain biking. International Mountain Bicycling Association. Retrieved June 18, 2004, from http://www.imba.com/resources/science/impact _ summary.html Streb, M. (2003). The life story of a downhill gravity goddess. New York: Plume Books.
Mountaineering
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ountaineering, as it has evolved since the late eighteenth century, consists of two basic elements: (1) a search for adventure—savory surprise—by scaling on foot (or skis) a mountain, cliff, glacier, or snowfield by a route that offers (2) difficulty and, potentially, danger. The adventure may range from nothing more profound than satisfying idle curiosity (What’s it like up there? What can be seen? Can it even be climbed at
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all?) to seeking what the U.S. writer Henry Thoreau would call “moments of transcendental awe” (a streak of mysticism is not uncommon among many climbers) to searching for what many younger climbers, venturing out to the extreme edge of what is technically feasible, refer to as an “adrenaline rush.” However, the primary goal of mountaineering is pleasure. No matter how arduous the ascent or the descent, the goal is finding pleasure, not finding gold, achieving fame, discovering a lofty perch for religious ceremonies, earning the right to have a mate, and so forth. Mountaineering qualifies as a sport in that it does indeed have certain rules, sometimes rather arbitrary and sometimes based on common sense. For example, no honor is lost in turning back when risks threaten to become excessive. One must not “damage” a mountain by chopping holds in the rock. Nor should dynamite be used to blast out campsites on steeply tilting slopes, as was done on one Himalayan attempt in an effort to honor a South American dictator. Like most sports, mountaineering has developed specialized gear, language, and athletic moves that are unique. Gravity (especially the effect known as “falling”), wind, wet, and the onset of darkness are the principal sources of accidents in the mountains. Mountain craft consists largely of mastering the specialized skills and technology devised during the past two centuries to avoid or minimize injury or even death. These are “objective” dangers. “Subjective” dangers include inexperience, incompetence, exhaustion, and what the Greeks would call hubris (self-blinding pride). With the possible exception of bull fighting, no other sport requires a person to pay such unremitting, momentafter-moment attention to avoid becoming a casualty. So why engage in such an absurd activity? The English climber George Mallory’s answer— “Because the mountain [in his case, Everest] is there!”— has been a standard reply since the 1920s. Most climbers know that although everyone has a natural fear of heights from childhood on, with training and practice and a little first-hand experience with the ropes and other climbing paraphernalia, climbing becomes—mysteriously—a
great joy for both men and women. An average climber, then, reasonably fit and practiced, differs from other lovers of the outdoors by deliberately going out of his or her way to avoid the easy path. Scalable cliffs or sheets of tilted ice, never or seldom previously trod, are what are wanted. Even if a route has been previously climbed (common nowadays), the mountaineer seeks the adventure of doing it again with its attendant dangers, possible adrenaline rushes, and high mountain views unattainable by normal mortals.
Early History Mountains abound all over the Earth, and people live in them and somehow learn to cope. However, not a single mountain culture—even in the Alps, the Andes, the Rockies, or the Himalayas—is known to have developed a sport remotely akin to climbing the local peaks just for fun. To be sure, mountains were sometimes climbed for religious purposes. Bear Butte, now a state park in South Dakota, is still used by Lakota and Cheyenne Native Americans as a mountain on which to conduct vision quests (solitary vigils by Native Americans seeking through a vision spiritual power and wisdom, usually revealed by a guardian spirit—a bird or animal). The Navajo considered Sierra Blanca, a 4,372-meter peak in the Colorado Rockies, to be sacred. When Franklin Rhoda, a government surveyor, scaled the peak in 1875 in the mistaken belief that it was the highest peak in North America, he discovered ceremonial altars on the summit built centuries before for Native American ceremonies. He himself did not climb the peak for fun or the joy of making a hypothetical first ascent. He was a member of the Hayden Survey, and neither he nor his fellow surveyors nor the Native Americans before them would qualify as “mountaineers” as we use the term. Likewise, neither would the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes’s soldiers who ascended Popocatepetl (5,440 meters) in Mexico in 1521. They were practical men, seeking sulfur to assist in making gunpowder, not the sheer pleasure of climbing high. Mount Kailus (6,714 meters) is a mountain in Tibet sacred to millions of Hindus and Buddhists. Thousands
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Mountaineering How Tough Is the Climb? There are numerous systems around the world that rate the difficulty of a climb, and every area seems to have its own method. Obviously, each system is entirely subjective—there can be no “scientific” way to measure how hard a climb is. The earliest, a British system, consists entirely of adjectives: easy/moderate/difficult/severe. Many climbers in the American West use the modified Yosemite Decimal System, especially appropriate for rock climbing. Grades 1 through 4 cover easy walking up through terrain that requires initial roping up. Grade 5, roped climbing with or without occasional use of nuts or pitons for safety, has now been decimally extended up to 5.14, and this may theoretically increase indefinitely as climbs come closer and closer to the absolute limit of possibility. Grade 6 means that pitons, nuts, chocks, or drilled expansion bolts must be used for direct aid (that is, in place of nonexistent hand and foot holds). With the aid of the UIAA (Union Internationale des Associations D’Alpinisme), some fourteen to twenty different grading systems have been identified around the world. All remain entirely subjective.
Stan Boucher
Educated climbers, even as they began to enjoy high places, proved their seriousness by lugging barometers all over the Alps. Altitude and weather data were the goals. In 1760 the Swiss scientist H. B. deSaussure offered a prize to the first person to climb Mont Blanc— at 4,810 meters on the French-Italian-Swiss border the highest peak then known in Europe. Jacques Balmat, a crystal hunter, and Michel Paccard, a doctor in Chamonix, France, claimed the prize in 1786. Gradually the wealthy began to not only visit the Alps to view glaciers and high peaks but also to actually walk upon them, allowing local peasant guides to supply ladders and iron-pointed staves for climbing. Even ropes were carried, although no method of belay-
ing or catching serious falls had yet evolved. Indeed, some so-called guides felt that ropes are useful only on glaciers and snow climbs. On steep rocks they often insisted that their patrons unrope—on the grounds that if one person in a roped party slipped, all would be carried to their doom. In 1851 mountaineering received enormous publicity when Albert Smith, a young English surgeon, was so smitten by his ascent of Mont Blanc that he created a public lecture complete with lantern slides that played for months at the Egyptian Hall in London. Even Queen Victoria was impressed. In 1857 the Alpine Club was founded in London. An era (often called the “golden age of mountaineering”) began in which wealthy or at least upper-income Englishmen took annual vacations in the Alps, invariably accompanied by local guides, who often began as daring chamois hunters (a chamois is a small goat) but found guiding an easier way to earn a living. A string of first ascents, by the easiest and most feasible routes, became the goal. Then, as all of the more prominent summits were climbed, first ascents by more difficult routes began to count. The English paid the fees, the guides did the leading, often carried the packs, and cut ladders of steps up whatever glacial ice had to be ascended. In 1865 the most famous moment in mountaineering history occurred: the tragic first ascent of the Matterhorn, at 4,475 meters on the Swiss-Italian border the most daunting “impossible” peak in the Alps. Edward Whymper, an English artist and not quite a true “gentleman” (a fact that bothered him and many more orthodox members of the Alpine Club), had been obsessed with the mountain for a decade. After six unsuccessful attempts in as many years from the Italian side, he noticed that a ridge viewed from the Swiss hamlet of Zermatt appeared to have its layers of strata so tilted as to create sharp foot holds rather than down-sloping slabs. On 13 July 1865, Whymper and three other Englishmen (one an English lord) set out with Michel Croz (one of the best guides of the time) and two porters to scale the Matterhorn by the northeast ridge. It worked.
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Then, peering down the Italian side they saw a group led by the mountaineer Jean Carrel, once a guide for Whymper but now a fiercely patriotic Italian determined that his people would make the first ascent of the peak. The Italians were only a few hundred feet below and would undoubtedly have reached the summit. However, Whymper and his comrades not only shouted down at them news of their own triumph but also tossed a few stones—not to hurt anybody but just to get the attention of the Italians. Then tragedy struck: All seven descending climbers were tied into the same rope (actually two ropes, tied together—something no modern climber would have done). The youngest climber, Douglas Hadow, slipped while guide Michel Croz was attempting physically to place his feet for him on the proper holds. Hadow’s weight pulled off Croz and then the two climbers below. The rope broke, and all four fell some 1,200 meters to the glaciers at the base of the mountain. Whymper was left stranded with the two porters. Somehow, he guided them down to eventual safety. The accident caused a profound sensation in England. Queen Victoria is said to have asked her prime minister whether mountain climbing could be banned. She was especially shocked that one of the Englishmen killed was a peer of the realm: Lord Francis Douglas. However, the genie was out of the bottle. Often inspired by Whymper’s Scrambles amongst the Alps, printed in 1871 (and surely the most reprinted and influential of all Alpine books), dozens of otherwise civilized men and women began to seek out wild places in the mountains. At first, members of the conservative Alpine Club considered guides to be mandatory. At least one guide per climber was recommended. The Guides Association in Chamonix originally recommended a minimum of four but failed to make this recommendation stick. Gradually more climbers began to guide their own climbs. In 1881 the English climber Albert Mummery made a series of “guideless” climbs, including the second ascent of the notorious Mummery Crack up a granite needle called the “Grepon” in the French Alps. (On
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the first ascent he had teamed up with a single guide. Thereafter, Mummery led all his climbs himself.) Two fiercely competitive women climbers, Miss Annie Peck and Mrs. Fanny Bullock Workman, essentially organized and led their own pioneering climbs in the Andes and Himalayas—each vied for years for the title of highest-climbing woman. Then the English began to climb the steep cliffs on their own isle. Rock climbing became a sport somewhat distinct from the rock-and-ice challenges in the Alps, although ice and snow climbs in Scotland in winter were soon discovered to rival those on the European continent in challenge.
Basic Procedures in Modern Climbing By the twentieth century most European climbing was conducted along fairly standardized lines (climbing in North America did not catch up until well after World War I): (1) The climbing party is organized as a small group: two, three, rarely more than four; (2) members of the group are roped together by a single rope, often 25 to 50 meters (160 feet) long; (3) the rope is strong enough that when well secured it can hold a falling person; and (4) when the climbing is difficult or dangerous, only one person moves at a time, well belayed by partners. Until after World War II the best rope was made of Manila hemp, although sisal hemp was often substituted in the United States. A manila rope could hold many falls into crevasses or down a slanting slab of rock. A direct free fall (as off an overhang) of more than 3 to 6 meters would likely break it. Various “dynamic” belays were taught in which the person trying to stop the falling climber would allow the rope to slide around his or her waist and through his or her hands for as long as 1 to 5 meters, thereby lessening the initial shock and bringing the falling climber to rest as gradually as possible. Today all climbing ropes are made of nylon or similar synthetic fiber, sometimes sheathed to cut down on abrasive wear. Unless cut by sharp rock, a nylon rope
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A climber on a practice wall moving into the horizontal plane. Source: istockphoto/berspacekaiser.
is essentially unbreakable. Thus, if a belay stance is “bombproof” (that is, the person feeding out rope to the climber above is so anchored that he or she cannot be pulled off), repeated leader falls are possible and sometimes indulged in when attempting rock so difficult as to be at the absolute limit of climbing possibility (or past it). Typically a modern leader will commence by climbing 3 meters to as much as 30 meters above the second climber who is feeding out rope and will try to catch his or her fall, if it occurs. (Here a basic law of geometry arises—unless protected by intervening pitons, chocks, or slings tied to protruding rocks or trees, a falling leader must fall twice the distance that he or she has gained above the belayer. This experience wonderfully concentrates the mind of even the most experienced leaders.) Having gained a secure stance, the leader can belay climber number two up, and so, in turn, the other climbers on the rope. Obviously, when belayed from above, climbers can fall only a few inches, unless they are making a traverse, in which case ideally they would be belayed by a buddy on each side. The photo that beginning climbers most enjoy sending their parents or friends is one in which they are rappelling down a steep cliff face. With the rope wrapped about their body or threaded through a metal friction device, they place both feet against the rock and lean out backward, allowing their body weight, suitably slowed by friction, to slide them down the cliff. Indeed, the best way is to simply walk down the cliff, facing up. The rappel (called an “abseil” by the Austrians and Swiss and indeed by most Brits and Scots) looks spectacular.
A rappel is often the easiest—perhaps the only— way to get down from a climb. Because well over a third of mountaineering accidents occur on the way down (when people are tired, often careless), learning to do an efficient rappel is invaluable to the novice. Nevertheless, rappels take time to set up, are often difficult to belay satisfactorily, and are—statistically—more dangerous than generally believed. Usually they are made by sliding down a doubled rope, anchored at its middle high above. Once landed, the climber retrieves the rope by pulling on one end. One of the truly vexing moments in the climber’s life occurs when the rope snags on something and cannot be pulled down. Determining how to retrieve it is an exercise in Zen imagination. Apart from learning elementary rope management, learning to tie the most essential knots in the dark, and handling an ice ax without injuring oneself or one’s colleagues, the accomplished climber must learn far more than can be detailed in a handbook. Most of this learning can come only from experience, hopefully augmented by experienced mentors. The climber must learn how to handle unexpected storms, ferocious winds, rain and sleet, and sometimes lightning. (Hypothermia
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Climbers aim for the summit because it is there. Bungee jumpers dive off the top because they aren’t all there. ■ JESSICA SEIGEL
is a condition in which the body’s temperature has been radically lowered, resulting in impaired judgment, or, if prolonged, death.) Even in summer, on high peaks cold weather can move in, chilling the underequipped climber to the bone. Climbers must keep track of time and manage the available stock of daylight. They must know how to use map and compass (and today the Global Positioning System). Because most climbing is done in small groups, climbers must learn to pay attention to partners and, when dictated by a crisis, become a group leader with a handy knowledge of group dynamics. This learning need not require a course in college. By watching veteran leaders, one easily picks up a stock of useful tricks and stratagems, a lifetime pursuit by the serious and careful climber.
Rules and New Tools As in any other sport, in mountaineering rules evolve but remain fairly simple: ■
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A climbing party must never abandon one of its members; no summit is worth the loss of a single life. If a climbing party finds itself close to another group in serious trouble, the first group is morally obligated to give aid, even if it means giving up its own objectives for the day. Remarkable examples exist of groups rendering such aid, especially in the Himalayas. A few examples to the contrary also exist. A few persons have been expelled from climbing clubs for needlessly endangering or abandoning their comrades. Sometimes climbers have been left behind by mistake.Thought to be dead, they may sometimes survive on their own, reappearing hours or days later, to the joy and consternation of those who went on without them. Geoffrey Winthrop Young, perhaps the finest English climber in the years just before World War I (he taught George Mallory how to climb), felt that climbers have a moral duty to take stock of their nerves just before a climb. If they feel at all shaky, they owe it to their companions to let them know. In such a case not being called upon to be a lead climber that day should be no loss of honor.
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Indeed, the concept of taking stock of nerves can be extended to feelings—vague, perhaps mere intuition —that something is not quite right about the climb itself, or the proposed route, or the proposed climbing team. Acting on such insistent uneasiness has occasionally saved lives, even whole parties, particularly in the Himalayas, where thin air and growing exhaustion impair judgment. Increasingly important in recent years has been the rule not to needlessly destroy or spoil wilderness climbing areas. Whole expeditions are now mounted on Mount Everest to pick up the trash that climbers, guides, and porters have witlessly cast about them. The Himalayan forests are being denuded as campfires are being built to feed climbers as they march up to the mountains. Efforts to replant and to teach lessons in conservation are just beginning.
As for tools, a piton is a small metal blade (with a hole or ring to attach a carabiner, a metal snaplink) that can be hammered into cracks in rock. For decades pitons were standard tools to safeguard high-angle rock climbs. When the Californian Yvon Chouniard noticed that the endless pounding of pitons into the cracks used to climb the steep walls of Yosemite National Park was permanently enlarging the cracks and disfiguring the rock, he promoted the use of metal chocks and nuts, which can be wedged into cracks, instead of pitons. The meteoric rise in the use of specially manufactured chocks and nuts (one can hardly drive a piton into a rock crack anymore without an attack of conscience) exemplifies the torrents of new technology that now inundate mountaineering every year. The first rule of nineteenthcentury climbing—the leader must not fall—can now be modified. With the rope no longer tied in a single loop about a climber’s waist, the climber now wears a harness seat, usually of nylon webbing and tied directly to the climbing rope.This arrangement makes a fall—if indeed one does fall—considerably more comfortable and vastly less likely to crush or constrict the rib cage. The venerable ice ax—long enough to serve as a “third leg” or a cane when negotiating streams or
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I don’t want to overstate my rock climbing ability. I choose my routes pretty carefully. I always go with people who can catch me. ■ TOM BROKAW
complex rock piles and always useful for catching falls when plunged to the hilt into steep snow slopes or at the edge of glacial crevasses—has been modified when steep ice or frozen waterfalls are to be ascended. Now a climber has two small axes, one for each hand, that become in effect movable handholds. The equally venerable crampon, an iron claw with sharp points to be strapped onto the bottom of the climbing boot, now has two extra blades that point forward. When kicked straight into the ice, the blades stick and afford a practicable foothold even on vertical ice. Stamping their feet alternately into the ice and plunging the small ax in either hand as high above the head as possible, climbers have scaled incredibly steep and long routes. Now, alas, even nailed boots have been replaced by boots with rubber-lugged soles. Prior to World War II all serious climbers wore nailed boots on major Alpine climbs. The nails were large Swiss hobs of soft iron rounded out with tricouni nails with hardened steel points. Such boots worked well on steep slopes of snow, wet moss and tundra, and rock even when it was wet. True, they were heavy and hard to learn to use, but one of the special delights of climbing was to watch another party descend at night. One could trace their route by the sparks that their boots struck.
Short Climbs and Expeditions People once took it as an article of faith that mountains such as the Alps were designed for mountaineering because most of the principal peaks can be climbed, up and down, in a single day. This fact was still true in the United States when major climbing areas were opened in the U.S. and Canadian Rockies, the Sierras, the Northern Cascades, and parts of the Coast Ranges. A partial exception was Mount Rainier in Washington and its volcanic sisters, mostly covered with glacial ice, which often took two days or even three. The Grand Tetons in Wyoming include a half-dozen truly Alpine peaks sporting glaciers, ridges, and cliffs and affording some of the finest all-around climbing in the United States. These, too, could generally be climbed in a day from a suitably high camp.
In California’s Yosemite Valley, the 900-meter walls of near-vertical, sometimes overhanging granite may be the best “big wall” climbing (in a temperate climate) in the world. Virtually all the most difficult routes, which once required multiday sieges with ladders of pitons and sometimes drilled bolt holes, have now been climbed in a few days or less. Indeed, the truly spectacular Nose on El Capitan was free climbed in 1993 by the U.S. woman climber Lynn Hill in a single day. The higher mountains in Alaska and the Canadian coastal ranges are of a size and scale far beyond one-day ventures. Denali (Mount McKinley), at 6,193 meters and far closer to the North Pole than anything in the Himalayas, has probably the fiercest storms on Earth, even sometimes in summer. Although gear and supplies can be flown in to a fairly high level, the actual climb is a major challenge requiring days. Likewise, such peaks as Mount Logan (at 5,958 meters the highest in Canada) and Mount Foraker (5,301 meters near Denali in Alaska) require a heavy use of small airplanes, ski equipped, if climbers are to avoid multiday treks just to get to the base of their objective. The U.S.-Canadian tradition from the beginning emphasized small-group ascents (two to six climbers), climbers carrying their own supplies on their backs after they had left their base camps. Denali itself was first climbed in 1913 by Hudson Stuck and three companions after a long pack-in using dogsleds.
Siege Techniques for Big Mountains In the Himalayas mountaineering evolved into huge expeditions such as those launched by the British in their attempts on Mount Everest (8,847 meters) during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1953 the New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa (a member of a Himalayan people known for providing support for climbers) Tenzing Norgay reached the summit just in time to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of England. In siege techniques the actual climbing is still done in small groups of two or three or four. Sherpas and supporting teams follow, using fixed ropes and
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Mountaineering The Origin of Nuts and Chocks With the realization that driving pitons into rock is enlarging cracks and disfiguring mountain surfaces, specially manufactured “nuts” and “chocks” are now the preferred tools for safeguarding high-angle climbs. The use of nuts and chocks in mountaineering was an idea pioneered in Wales. British climbers, who did not much believe in pitons anyway, had long put small stones in their pockets to stuff into cracks so that slings could be threaded behind them. Shortly after World War II, they found when walking along railroad tracks in Wales that they could pick up occasional loose nuts, an inch or so in diameter. These could be wedged or lightly tapped into place in suitable cracks, usually far wider than a piton blade. Best of all, with a twist of a hand, the nut could be removed and used again with very little wear and tear on the rock itself. A chock is a glorified nut often manufactured in various wedge or hexcentric forms, ranging from very large to truly tiny.
Stan Boucher
sometimes aluminum ladders to carry loads of supplies up to higher and higher camps. Finally, from the highest camp of all, a summit team of two is launched. Throughout the 1930s, five separate German and Austrian teams attacked Nanga Parbat (8,125 meters) in the Himalayas with similar heroics on a similar scale. All told, this mountain has endured twenty-two attempts, mostly German, with thirty-six lives lost. The attempt on Mount Everest by a U.S. team in 1963 was perhaps the pinnacle for large expeditions: nineteen climbers, thirty-two Sherpas (later thirty-seven), and 909 porters carrying 26 metric tons of food and equipment, broken down into 29-kilogram loads. Some veteran participants protested that a far smaller group would have been more efficient. However, apparently some of the commercial sponsors wanted spectacular size and lo-
gistics. Indeed, occasional gigantic expeditions still get launched, clumsy and obsolete but wonderful for media opportunities and advertising impact.
Alpine Style Today most big-mountain climbing of fresh routes in the Himalayas and the new areas such as Greenland, Antarctica, Ellesmere Island in Canada, and barely explored parts of western China and central Asia is conducted by small groups—two to perhaps a dozen members. Porters may be used to help pack supplies to the mountain’s base, but then they are often discharged. A few Sherpas may be taken, but now they are considered true members of the climbing team. Indeed, today’s Sherpas sometimes launch high climbs completely on their own. Once above base camp, members of the climbing team carry their own supplies on their backs. The advantages are speed, flexibility, and economy. The disadvantages are obviously in narrowing the margins of safety. If one of a party of two is injured, the odds of getting back down to safety are tiny. The advantages of small groups had already been realized in Alaska and northern Canada by such climbers as H. Adams Carter, Charles Houston, Robert H. Bates, and Brad Washburn. The use of dogsleds, horses, or small planes with skis somewhat did away with the need for armies of porters. Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman, two maverick British climbers, were already extolling the virtues of Alpine style, even in the Himalayas, during the early 1930s. In 1936 they joined a tiny team that included the U.S. climbers Carter and Houston and the Everest veteran N. E. Odell in climbing Nanda Devi in the Indian Himalayas. At 7,816 meters, it was the highest mountain yet climbed anywhere. Houston went on to use small teams, largely U.S., in two remarkable attempts on K2 in northern Kashmir, at 8,611 meters the second-highest mountain in the world. His small reconnoitering team in 1938 came within an ace of grabbing the summit, defeated by storms and by depletion of supplies. His return attempt in 1953 was defeated when victory seemed certain. One of the group, Art Gilkey, came down with a blood
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clot in the leg. At once, although realizing they might all be killed in the attempt, members of the team set about lowering him on an improvised stretcher, hoping to go all the way down to base camp, thousands of feet below. The retreat, recounted by Bates and Houston in their book, The Savage Mountain, is perhaps the greatest tragic saga in U.S. mountaineering. When one climber tripped on a crampon point, he pulled his partner off; the two then slammed into a second pair, pulling them off; and all four fell into the tangle of ropes surrounding the stretcher and a fifth climber trying to guide its bottom. For a time Pete Schoening, belaying the stretcher from above with an ice ax plunged behind a stone frozen in the ice, was holding the weight of five tumbling men. The shaken men left the stretcher anchored to two ice axes while they gathered in a nearby tent to recuperate and assess the situation. When two men then climbed back up to where the victim had been left on his stretcher, they found that he had disappeared along with his stretcher and anchoring ice axes, caught in a tiny but lethal avalanche.
Clubs for Teaching and Promoting Climbing The venerable Alpine Club, founded in London in 1857, was soon matched by mountain clubs in Austria (1862), Switzerland (1863), and France (1874). On the European continent such clubs tend to centralize activities such as training, mountain rescue, and so forth. In Britain the Alpine Club never sought such authority, and a number of other clubs soon proliferated. In Scotland a separate club for women climbers emerged with its own journal. After World War II the British Mountaineering Council was formed as an advocate and clearinghouse for climbing groups in the United Kingdom. In 1902 the American Alpine Club was founded. It publishes each year The American Alpine Journal, which has become the “journal of record” for most new ascents in the Himalayas and other exotic parts of the globe. In addition, the AAC is a major advocate for
mountaineering throughout the world as well in the United States. Its library, located in Golden, Colorado, is the largest mountaineering library in the Western Hemisphere. Numerous local and regional clubs exist in the United States, many of them offering training in climbing techniques. The pioneers have been the Appalachian Mountain Club (founded in Boston, 1876), the Sierra Club (San Francisco, 1892), the Mazamas (Portland, Oregon, 1894), the Mountaineers (Seattle, Washington, 1907), and the Colorado Mountain Club (Denver, 1912). In 1906 the Alpine Club of Canada was founded, partly inspired when the Canadian Pacific Railroad opened up access to dozens of new peaks in the Rockies and Coast Ranges of Canada. Indeed, the railroad hired Swiss guides to popularize climbing for potential customers.
“Sport Climbing” During the final years of the Soviet Union climbing was developed as a mass sport, and competitions, especially speed ascents up carefully marked routes, were common. With the fall of the Soviet Union, this movement shifted to western Europe, especially France. Climbs were staged up rocks and hotel walls and could be watched by large crowds (and easily filmed by TV crews). Today championship matches are held throughout Europe and occasionally in the United States. Even so-called world cup competitions are held. A further development has been the construction of artificial climbing walls in gymnasiums, sporting goods stores, and even in or outside of abandoned silos in the Midwest. However, in true mountaineering people confront large mountains, cliffs, or slopes of snow and ice. An element of danger (hopefully minimized by skill, proper tools, and reasonable luck) and a chance for adventure should exist—not from facing the terrors that kept medieval Europeans out of their mountains but rather from mastering enjoyable novelty: savory surprise.
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Finally, every climber should contemplate these words at least once a month: “There are old climbers, and there are bold climbers, but there are very few old bold climbers.” Stan Boucher See also Eiger Northface; Mount Everest
Tilman, H. W. (1937, 1949). The ascent of Nanda Devi. London: Guild Books. Unsworth, W. (1989). Everest (2nd ed.). Seattle, WA: Cloudcap. Whymper, E. (1900). Scrambles amongst the Alps in the years 1860– 69 (5th ed.). London: John Murray. Young, G. W. (1926). On high hills: Memories of the Alps. New York: E. P. Dutton. Young, G. W. (1949). Mountain craft. London: Methuen.
Further Reading Bates, R. H. (1994). The love of mountains is best. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall. Bates, R. H. (2000, 2001). Mystery, beauty, and danger: The literature of the mountains and mountain climbing published in English before 1946. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall. Bernstein, J. (1978). Mountain passages. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Child, G. (1995). Climbing: The complete reference. New York: Facts on File. Dent, C. T. (1914). Mountaineering: The Badminton Library (3rd ed.). London: Longmans, Green. Frison-Roche, R., & Jouty, S. (1996). A history of mountain climbing (D. Dusinberre, Trans.). New York: Flammarion. Herzog, M. (1952). Annapurna: First conquest of an 8000-meter peak (N. Morin & J. A. Smith, Trans.). New York: Dutton. Hornbein, T. F. (1965). Everest: The west ridge. San Francisco: Sierra Club. Houston, C. S. (1980). Going high: The story of man and altitude. New York: American Alpine Club. Houston, C. S., & Bates, R. H. (1954). K 2: The savage mountain. New York: McGraw-Hill. Jones, C. (1997). Climbing in North America. Seattle, WA: Mountaineers. Lunn, A. (1957). A century of mountaineering, 1857–1957. London: George Allen & Unwin. Messner, R. (1989). The crystal horizon: Everest, the first solo ascent (J. Neate & A. Salkeld, Trans.). Seattle, WA: Mountaineers. Mummery, A. F. (1974). My climbs in the Alps and the Caucasus. Lawrence, MA: Quarterman Publications. (Original work published 1896) Norgay, T., & Ullman, J. R. (1955). Tiger of the snows. New York: Bantam Books. Noyce, W. (1950). Scholar mountaineers: Pioneers of Parnassus. London: Dennis Dobson. Pilley, D. (1935). Climbing days. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Pyatt, E. (1980). The Guinness book of mountains and mountaineering: Facts & feats. London: Guinness Superlatives. Rebuffat, G. (1956). Starlight and storm: The ascent of six great north faces of the Alps (W. Noyce & J. Hunt, Trans.). London: Dent. Robertson, J. (1998). Betsy Cowles Partridge: Mountaineer. Niwot: University Press of Colorado. Salkeld, A. (Ed.). (1998). World mountaineering. London: Mitchell Beazley. Scott, D. (1974, 1981). Big wall climbing. New York: Oxford University Press.
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ports on the silver screen have ranged from fluff pieces designed to dramatize the lives of hero athletes to hard-hitting exposés that educate viewers to the troubled world of big-time sports. In either example, sport is commonly used as the venue to make a larger moral point. Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig (Pride of the Yankees, 1942), demonstrating tremendous courage and optimism in the face of imminent death; Nick Nolte as unscrupulous basketball coach Pete Bell (Blue Chips, 1994); or Parminder Nagra as Jess Bhamra (Bend It Like Beckham, 2002) have depicted characters whose stories dealt with more than winning or losing games. Sport, because of the inherent drama found there, is employed in these movies to make a larger point about the individual and the society that promotes sport as an important feature.
The 1920s to the 1960s: All that Is Good Movies about sport, in the American market, have focused primarily on baseball, football, and basketball, the most popular American team sports. During the first period, from the early days of motion pictures to the 1970s, sport films tended to use sport to exemplify all that was positive in American culture. Whether biographical pictures, dramas, or comedies, the all-American values of sportsmanship, hard work, and honesty were realized through participation in hard competition. Movies such as Knute Rockne, All American (1940) and The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) highlighted sport’s
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role in fostering the American dream of allowing people born to less privileged backgrounds to rise to stardom through their athletic prowess. In Rockne’s case, the movie told the story of his immigration to the United States and the hard work that made him a successful and legendary football coach at the University of Notre Dame. The film traced Rockne’s legendary invention of the forward pass and his inspirational half-time talks during his years as the coach of the Fighting Irish. Ignored in the mythology surrounding Rockne’s story were the lengths the coach would go to in order to win, as well as the less-than-savory background of George Gipp, who became saintlike only in his famous last words. For Robinson, gaining access to the American dream meant surmounting the tremendous barriers that kept African-Americans from sharing in the opportunities extended to those whose skins were white. As the first black player to break the color line in major-league baseball, Robinson faced hurdles even higher than those faced by a recent immigrant to the country. The Jackie Robinson Story depicted some of this but focused mostly on the transformational power of sport. A subplot involves a white New York trucker who falls in with a crowd of virulently racist Southerners and becomes a kindred spirit. Upon Robinson’s promotion to Brooklyn, the trucker continues to deride the star, despite sitting near a well-dressed African-American woman. However, Robinson’s play on the field wins over the racist, and in the climactic game, he jumps up from his seat in jubilation at Robinson’s spectacular play, overcome with such excitement that he hugs the woman whom he had previously slandered. The film version of Robinson’s groundbreaking first years, which starred the player as himself, was part of a tightly focused media campaign to tell his story to accomplish a higher purpose. A series of articles in The Saturday Evening Post, the film, newspaper accounts, and a comic-book version of the story all focused on the potential for Robinson’s entry into professional baseball to transform the hearts of white baseball fans and positively impact racial relations in American society.
The theme that the team was the thing ran strongly through sport movies in the period up to the 1970s and beyond. This was particularly important for American culture, as it responded to pressure from the Soviet Union during the Cold War (1946–1991). During the 1950s, any deviation from this theme and its promotion of American culture could bring dire consequences upon filmmakers.
AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE: SATURDAY ’S HERO In a departure from the paradigm of sport movies during the Cold War, Saturday’s Hero (1951) chose to present what was arguably a more realistic view of big-time college football. The story followed the exploits of Steve Novak (John Derek), a poor athlete from a New Jersey mill town. In order to escape his humble beginnings, Novak accepts an offer to play football for Jackson University, a prestigious southern university. As part of the deal offered by wealthy alumnus T. C. McCabe (Sidney Blackmer), Novak is paid handsomely to play for Jackson. All goes well until Novak is injured and no longer a valuable commodity. Disillusioned with big-time sport and the corruption it brought to the university, Novak quits the team and returns to his family, planning to attend night school while working in the mill to finish his education. Citizens concerned with the message of corruption at the core of not only American sport and the universities but also the nation itself picketed the opening of the movie, and Sydney Buchman, the screenwriter; Millard Lampell, who wrote the novel on which the movie was based; and Alexander Knox, who played one of Novak’s professors, were accused of being communists. In 1952 Buchman was called before the House of Representatives’ UnAmerican Activities Committee, and when he refused to attend, he was charged with contempt of congress. He was subsequently blacklisted by the movie industry.
The 1970s: All that Is Bad During the second period, which roughly encompasses the 1970s, Buchman’s vision of the corruption that lies at the heart of sport and American culture came to the forefront as the Hollywood blacklist and the Cold War
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consensus faded. Movies during that era focused on the often-harmful effects of sport on the culture and on the athletes. One of the first movies in this subgenre was The Bad News Bears (1976), a comedy that critiqued and poked fun at the American win-at-all-costs mentality. The story centered on Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), a down-and-out pool cleaner who had once played baseball briefly in the major leagues. Hired by a wealthy businessman to coach his son’s Little League team, Buttermaker shows up drunk, insults the players, and shows little interest in the sport or the team. When he finally displays some interest in winning, he decides to cheat, tracking down Amanda Whurlitzer (Tatum O’Neal), a young female con artist who can throw a wicked pitch. Buttermaker and Amanda also attract another ringer, who passes his time as a juvenile delinquent. Together they produce a competitive team, but in the final game, Buttermaker realizes that his actions have made him just another win-at-all-costs automaton that he despises. Instead of playing his ringers and keeping Amanda in the game with a sore arm, Buttermaker plays everyone, and loses the game. While The Bad News Bears was exposing the dark side of Little League baseball, North Dallas Forty (1979) critiqued professional football.The movie presents a portrait of football players as nearly subhuman barbarians, coaches as mindless junior executives ruled by computer printouts, and owners as sinister figures who abandon players whenever they exhibit any spark of independence. One on One (1977) told essentially the same story as Saturday’s Hero. The young star plugged into the corrupt college program in this case was Henry Steele (Robbie Benson), who is paid by the university to keep alligators out of the gym (in the Rocky Mountains), is given a private tutor to do his work for him, and is generally pampered as long as he produces. When Steele clashes with his coach (G. D. Spradlin), who demands a robotlike, controlled style of play, which inhibits Steele’s natural talent, the young star abandons the program after winning the big game, telling the coach, in no uncertain terms, what he can do with his scholarship.
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One of the most popular football movies of all time was The Longest Yard (1974), which told the story of a football game between prison guards and an inmate team led by exprofessional quarterback Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds). Football is presented as a way of transcending prison walls, but the tone of the movie is decidedly antiestablishment, presenting the warden (Eddie Albert) and all of the guards as sadistic tyrants. Movies dwelling on the corporatization of sport and the corrosive effect of winning at all costs were common during the seventies. These movies, such as Fast Break (1979), which featured a talented African-American woman (disguised as a man) helping to save a struggling basketball team, challenged the status quo and sought to bring new voices and new sports into the mainstream of sport movies. A rare hockey movie presented the same jaundiced view of society and professional sport. Slap Shot (1977) tells the story of Reggie Dunlop (Paul Newman), an aging veteran playing with and coaching a collection of misfits, which includes the Hanson brothers (Jeff and Steve Carlson, David Hanson), psychopathic triplets who wrap their knuckles in aluminum foil before games to give them an edge in the regular brawls that intersperse the games. The tone of sport movies during the 1970s reflected disillusionment with American society in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. However, sport was not often the target of the dark vision presented. Rather, the target of filmmakers was the regimentation of American society by corporate power, the skewed values of American parents, and the corrosive power of the status quo.Those themes became less prominent as filmmakers seemed to take their cues from a former actor that had risen to become president of the United States. Ronald Reagan’s presidency set off a wave of nostalgia in sport movies that posited a glorious past in which athletes played for the adulation of children and for love of the game.
The 1980s: Nostalgia for Love of the Game The new theme for sport movies first appeared in 1984 with the release of The Natural, which tells the story of
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Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), a young phenom whose career was cut short when he was shot by a mysterious woman. Attempting a comeback as a middle-aged rookie, Hobbs is able to recapture some of his former magic and become a star, and he remains unsullied by the corruption that surrounds him. He wins the big game, hitting a massive home run into the lights, which flash sparks onto the field as he rounds the bases in slow motion. The film is filled with adoring children who idolize Hobbs for his baseball prowess, including Hobbs’s son who plays catch with his father in a sundrenched wheat field at the end of the movie. The movie’s message was that baseball still held the power to transform individual lives and could return the nation to a time when all was well. The same theme echoed strongly through Field of Dreams (1989), which tells the story of Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), a man who hears a voice ordering him to build a baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. When he does, the apparitions of the 1919 White Sox, banned from baseball for throwing the World Series, appear and play games there. Despite a minor subplot that critiques the conservatism of rural America and the corporatization of family farms, the story sticks closely to a theme of redemption exemplified by the values found in baseball. At the end of the movie, Kinsella and his estranged and deceased father play a symbolic game of catch, a favorite image from movies of this type, thereby reconciling through the transcendent power of baseball. Basketball also served as a venue for the return to traditional values in the 1986 movie Hoosiers. Gene Hackman plays Norman Dale, a basketball coach with a checkered past who leaves the big time to coach an Indiana high school team. Dale is every bit the control freak that the coach in One on One is, but by 1986 control had become a virtue, and his team wins the state basketball championship.
The 1990s and Beyond: A Mixed Bag Since the resurgence of the positive sport movie in the 1980s, the genre has become more complex, with films
encompassing several messages at once being common. There also has been a huge outpouring of movies in the sport genre, making any interpretation of trends problematic. Sport movies such as Bull Durham (1988), Major League (1989), For Love of the Game (1999), Any Given Sunday (1999), and The Replacements (2000) present often sharp critiques of the current state of professional sport but avoid a concurrent criticism of the larger culture. They also offer an often-nostalgic view of how sport could be improved by players who care more for the team than individual glory. The Program (1993) and Blue Chips (1994) do the same for college football and basketball, respectively. Inspirational sport movies such as Rudy (football, 1993), Remember the Titans (football, 2000), The Rookie (baseball, 2002), Finding Forrester (basketball, 2000), Bend It Like Beckham (soccer, 2002), Radio (football, 2003), and Miracle (Olympic hockey, 2004) are films that tell of individuals and teams finding personal fulfillment through sport.
Women and Sport Women were not prominently featured in sport movies until the 1970s and even then were often featured as anomalies, such as Amanda Whurlitzer and Lucy Draper (Kathy Ireland), the female soccer player pressed into service as a kicker in Necessary Roughness (1991), or as evil influences who hinder the athlete/hero. An exception to this rule was A League of Their Own (1992), which tells the story of the Rockford Peaches of the AllAmerican Girls Professional Baseball League, which played during World War II.
Minor Sports While most American sport movies have focused on major team sports, there are a few notable exceptions. Movies have also explored high school wrestling (Vision Quest, 1985), golf (Tin Cup, 1996), soccer (Victory, 1981), Olympic bobsledding (Cool Runnings, 1993), running (Chariots of Fire, 1981), and even chess (Searching for Bobby Fisher, 1993). Boxing and horseracing also have been the subjects of several movies but have had less impact on the culture. One movie that com-
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It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts. ■ JOHN WOODEN
bined critique of modern sport, an unabashed love of sport, and a hybrid sport, was BASEketball (1998), which told of a group of disaffected sport fans who invented their own game in disgust at what sport had become. The movie’s opening narration contains as complete a critique of the ills of modern sport as can be found in any movie.
The Future The success of sport movies such as The Natural and Field of Dreams in the 1980s led to an explosion of sport movies in the 1990s, and the trend seems to be continuing. Throughout the history of film, sport has been used as a medium to present stories of personal growth, rebirth, and redemption.The presence of certain outcomes, of winning and losing, of us versus them, and the human drama associated with sport lends itself readily to telling these stories. As long as world cultures continue to make heroes of sport figures, the sport movie is likely to flourish. Russ Crawford
Further Reading Baker, A. (2003). Contesting identities: Sports in American films. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sandlot Shrink. (2004). All time movie listings. Retrieved December 18, 2004, from http://www.sandlotshrink.com Sperber, M. (1998). Onward to victory: The scandals that shaped college sports. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Tudor, D. V. (1997). Hollywood’s vision of team sports: Heroes, race, and gender. New York: Garland Publishing. Zucker, H. M., and Babich, L. J. (1987). Sport films: A complete reference. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
Multiculturalism
M
ulticulturalism began in education in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and Canada as a debate about expanding the core curricula in universities and schools to include not just works by white European males, but also the works and histories of
marginalized ethnic and racial groups and women. In the 1980s it extended into identity politics, with marginalized minority groups criticizing the liberal humanist focus on the protection of individual rights, and arguing that rights should also be guaranteed to groups defined by a shared cultural identity. This linked with a growing international concern in the 1980s and 1990s that a singular global culture, which was largely white and European, was rapidly wiping out local diversity around the world. Multiculturalists tended to focus on cultural institutions such as schools and museums, and cultural performances such as ethnic song, dance, dress, as sites where cultural diversity could be preserved and displayed. As an important genre of cultural performance, sports could have been an important realm for the multicultural debate, but they were not.
Spread of Multiculturalism into Sports In the 1980s the end of state-supported socialist sport in Europe and the rapid globalization of sports produced a backlash. There was a multiplication of international competitions and sports festivals celebrating alternative local and ethnic identities, such as the First Games of the Small Countries of Europe, the First InterIsland Games, the First Eurolympics of Minority Peoples, and so on. Although multiculturalism had begun in Canada, it did not enter the realm of sports in a big way there until the organization of the first North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) in 1990. The NAIG included “traditional aboriginal” sports such as archery, canoe, and lacrosse, as well as global sports such as track and field, basketball, volleyball, boxing, and others. Thus, within this important multicultural intervention in sports, both global and indigenous sports symbolized ethnic identity.
Multiculturalism in the Olympic Movement One of the most visible manifestations of the global order of nationally organized international sports is the Olympic Games, which began as an educational
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movement at the end of the nineteenth century that in many ways prefigured multiculturalism. In his biography of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, John MacAloon portrays Coubertin’s philosophy of “internationalism” as a respect for each national culture as expressed through the festive performance of difference. In an essay on “Mutual Respect,” Coubertin acknowledged that in the modern world it was not possible for a single faith to be valid for everyone, and therefore moral education should teach tolerance; mutual respect was the foundation of democracy. Neise Abreu observes that in some publications Coubertin distinguished nation from culture and advocated the doctrine of “all games, all nations” in the Olympic Games. However, this doctrine seemed to disappear after he withdrew from the presidency of the International Olympic Committee in 1925, when it was overshadowed by his notion of Olympism as a set of universal humanist values that places sport in the service of humankind. Lamartine DaCosta advocates that the current emphasis on the universalistic traditions of Olympism needs to be balanced with a new pluralist humanism, and criticizes Olympic leaders and sport scholars for failing to put pluricultural Olympism into action. Konstantinos Georgiadis, the dean of the International Olympic Academy in Olympia, Greece—which in the past forty years has provided more educational seminars in Olympism to young people and educators from around the globe than any other single institution— also complains that multicultural education is underdeveloped within Olympic education. He states that good methods for teaching multiculturalism through sports have not been developed, that teaching materials are inadequate, and that teachers need to be aided in developing multicultural sensitivity.
Multiculturalism in Global Sports Is the globalization of sports a process of homogenization or diversification? At the end of his survey of the
global diffusion of sports through colonialism, Allen Guttmann argues against those who claim that the diffusion of sports is an imperialist destruction of authentic native cultural forms, although he admits that the standardized universality of modern sports represents a loss of diversity. Indigenous groups are active participants in the borrowing and they change the sports in the process. MacAloon states that sports of Western origin have, over time, been emptied of their original cultural content and refilled with diverse local meanings by the people who practice them. Sports constitute “intercultural spaces” for cultural interaction, and cultural differences are created during the process of integration. Joseph Maguire argues in a similar vein that globalization should be understood as a balance between diminishing contrasts and increasing varieties. Global sport both fosters a cosmopolitan consciousness and strengthens feelings of ethnic identity. Adding power differences into the picture, he advocates a processsociological perspective that places questions of power, elimination struggles, and civilizational hegemony at its center. He notes that it is not inevitable that globalization will result in the continued rise of the West; the commingling of cultures through globalization could result in the decentering of the West.
The Future The multicultural debate was slow to arrive in the world of sports and remained underdeveloped, even within the Olympic movement, which embraces more member nations and territories than any other major world organization. Scholarship on the sports of non-Western and marginalized minority groups was sparse. Despite the paucity of specific historical and ethnographic studies about how globalization actually occurs on the ground and what happens to indigenous sports when international sports are adopted in local communities, a few key theorists developed theoretical formulations that saw cultural diversification and homogenization not as mutually exclusive, but as multilayered simulta-
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neous processes. As multiculturalism had already started to wane in other fields at the turn of the millennium, it was not clear that the multicultural debate would ever take off in the realm of sports. Susan Brownell See also Anthropology Days; Racism
Further Reading Abreu, N. (2002). Olympic multiculturalism: Proclaimed universal values versus cultural relativism. In L. P. DaCosta (Ed.), Olympic studies: Current intellectual crossroads (pp. 201–254). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Editora Gama Filho. Coubertin, P. de. (1986). Le respect mutuel [Mutual Respect]. In N. Muller (Ed.), Pierre de Coubertin: Textes choisis [Selected writings of Pierre de Coubertin] (Vol. 1, pp. 316–350). Lausanne, Switzerland: International Olympic Committee. (Reprinted from L’Education des adolescents au XXe siècle: Vol. 3. Education morale [The education of adolescents in the twentieth century: Vol. 3. Moral education], 1915.
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DaCosta, L. P. (2002). Questioning Olympism: Pluralism, multiculturalism, or what else? In L. P. DaCosta (Ed.), Olympic Studies: Current intellectual crossroads (pp. 39–58). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Editora Gama Filho. Georgiadis, K. (2001). International Olympic Academy: International understanding through Olympic education [Special issue]. The Journal of the International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport, and Dance, 27(2). Guttmann, A. (1994). Games and empires: Modern sports and cultural imperialism. New York: Columbia University Press. MacAloon, J. (1981). This great symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the origins of the modern Olympic Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MacAloon, J. (1995). Humanism as political necessity? Reflections on the pathos of anthropological science in pluricultural contexts. In J. Fernandez & M. Singer (Eds.), The conditions of reciprocal understanding (pp. 206–235). Chicago: International House. Maguire, J. (1999). Global sport: Identities, societies, civilizations. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Turner, T. (1993). Anthropology and multiculturalism: What is anthropology that multiculturalists should be mindful of it? Cultural Anthropology, 8(4), 411–429.
Naginata Narrative Theory Native American Games and Sports
Naginata
Netball Netherlands New Zealand Newspapers Nextel (Winston) Cup Nigeria Norway Nutrition
N
aginata is a Japanese martial art practiced by women—and some men—in virtually all schools and colleges in Japan. Outside Japan men and women practice in about equal numbers. Around the world eighty thousand people practice naginata, usually atarashii naginata, the modern sport form. Naginata began as a system of warfare; it is not a modern means of self-defense. Instead people practice it as a physical discipline and method of personal development.
History Japanese warfare underwent radical change during the ninth century with the increased use of the tachi curved cavalry sword. This change corresponded with the rise of the mounted bushi (upper-class warriors). Lowerranking warriors began fighting with a weapon consisting of a slightly curved blade mounted on a stout oak shaft, similar to a European halberd or glaive. This weapon was known as a “naginata,” meaning “long blade” or “reaping blade.” This single-edged weapon was fashioned from the same laminations of hard and soft steel used for sword blades. The proportion of shaft to blade has varied, but the overall length of the weapon has almost always been the same: between 2.1 and 2.4 meters. Warriors used these first naginata to cut the legs of horses and to slash through an enemy’s defenses. Naginata were also heavy and were used in thrusting attacks, with either the blade or the metal-capped butt. During
N the fourteenth century naginata began to be supplanted as spears were reintroduced for fighting. Warriors could more easily use spears in close formation, and spears required far less training time to be effective. By the midsixteenth century naginata became a rather uncommon weapon of war.
Women and Naginata Traditionally the naginata weapon was associated with women. People considered it most appropriate to women’s physique and to the circumstances in which women would fight, which were, generally speaking, in defense of their home. A strong, lithe woman armed with a naginata could keep all but the best warriors at a distance, where the advantages of physical strength were slight. During the early seventeenth century the imposition of the Tokugawa government (1600/1603–1868) led to strict social controls on all strata of society—controls that greatly affected women. Bushi women were expected to center their life on unquestioning service to their family, much as the samurai (warrior aristocracy) were expected to center their life on service to their lord. The naginata weapon became an emblem of a glorious past, a means of training women to stoically accept a life of subservience. The use of the naginata became more stylized and formalized in specific ryu-ha (martial traditions), which then became associated with women. Movements became quick and precise, and the weapons had light shafts and small, slender blades. Japan began to consolidate as a modern nation-state during the mid-1800s, and the new grammar school
system played a significant role in that consolidation. Martial arts training became a regular part of the curriculum. Because the traditional martial arts, with their emphasis on forms, did not lend themselves to teaching students en masse, they were restructured into martial sports such as judo and kendo (a Japanese sport of fencing, usually with bamboo swords). This restructuring brought the practice of naginata to a crossroads: People had developed judo, kendo, and later karate to be practiced in standardized forms. This development had not yet occurred with naginata, which was still split among a plethora of groups, each with its own curriculum. Therefore, competitive practice became more popular as a means both of training among different groups and of holding the interest of modern young women. At first practitioners used light wooden practice weapons covered with leather; later, for safety, practitioners attached bamboo strips to the end of a wooden shaft. This modern replica is light and whippy, allowing movements that would be impossible with a real naginata. As practitioners developed rules and agreed on point targets, the techniques that worked best in competition began to differ from those used by the traditional martial arts, which had been developed for different terrain and different combat situations. Thus, naginata was transformed into a sport and became known as atarashii naginata (new naginata). During World War II some naginata teachers, notably Sakakida Yaeko, devised a set of standardized forms that consisted of choreographies of one naginata form against another. In 1953, after a hiatus created
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Tendo ryu naginata features kata that pit a naginata against a sword. Source: Deborah Klens-Bigman.
when the occupying forces banned martial arts after World War II, Sakakida and several leading naginata teachers created the All Japan Naginata Federation.
Play and Rules Atarashii naginata has two parts: form practice and freestyle competition. Forms (kata) are sets of simple movements that require straight posture and sliding footwork. Practitioners use these forms in contests, in which two pairs of contestants perform simultaneously and are judged on the correctness of their movements. Practitioners use solid wood naginata weapons for kata practice. Practitioners rarely use live-blade naginata weapons today. Freestyle competition resembles kendo competition. Contestants wear protective gear and have ten designated targets on the body of the opponent. Contestants make strikes to the ribs (at the side of the chest), the top and sides of the head, the throat, the shins, and the wrists. The hip protector is not a target. Referees decide winning points; a contestant must strike a target with authority and accuracy. Contestants hold their body upright on the balls of their feet to be able to slide and jump quickly toward or away from their opponent. Since World War II atarashii naginata has spread around the world; international tournaments have been held since the early 1990s. In 1974 Helen Michiyo Nakano and Yasuko Yamaguchi established the United States Naginata Federation, the first federation outside Japan. People also have established naginata federations in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Brazil, and New Zealand. Because naginata is one of the least known martial arts, many students are geographically isolated and must travel to gatherings for practice and competition. Women participate in the sport throughout the world. Women make up about 50 percent of U.S. naginata students. Naginata students commonly practice other martial arts, especially kendo and aikido. Atarashii naginata is neither an archaic system of warfare nor a modern system of self-defense. It is instead a method of personal development. Practitioners believe that by confronting one’s own weaknesses,
which are revealed by dedicated practice, by repeatedly failing and succeeding, and by modeling one’s instructor (a person farther down the same road of personal development), they can achieve the ideal of calm and self-mastery. Ellis Amdur
Further Reading Amdur, E. (1995). The development and history of the naginata. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 4(1), 32–49. Amdur, E. (1996). The role of arms-bearing women in Japanese history. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 5(2), 10–35. Amdur, E. (2002). Old school: Essays on Japanese martial traditions. Seattle, WA: Edgework Publications.
Narrative Theory
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lthough narrative theory can seem like a somewhat arcane approach to anyone outside of the English departments where it originated, it has much wider applications today. Some cognitive psychologists such as Mark Turner argue that narrative is central to everyday thought and action—that the most basic operations of the mind are literary in their use of story, projection, and parable. Story, Turner notes, organizes our experience, knowledge, and thinking. One story helps us make sense of another as we project the terms of the first onto the second, a process known as “parable.” Such processes, far from being arcane practices of an educated, dated elite, are basic cognitive principles that
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show up everywhere, perhaps especially in the ways we give meaning to sports.
Theories of Narrative “Nothing,” narrative theorist J. Hillis Miller (1995) notes, “seems more natural and universal to human beings than stories.” The basic principles of narrative show up in everyday “texts” of all kinds, from novels and short stories to television and film to advertisements, news, and information available on the Internet. Sports narratives are a classic example of these everyday texts. The “triumph over adversity” stories that are such a characteristic feature of sports discourse give shape and meaning to what might otherwise be a perplexing phenomenon: athletes obsessively repeating training regimens for years, devoting a large portion of their time and energy to this strange thing called “sports.” The ways we come to understand this activity are fundamentally narratological. The formal features of narrative include plot, character, setting, and diction. Plot is what happens, a chronological progression of events with a beginning, middle, and end. Character refers to the actors within the action, the agents of the events. Setting is where the events take place, and diction refers to the way in which the story is told. These are the basics of narrative upon which almost everyone agrees. However, not everyone agrees on why humans need stories and the exact function or purpose that stories serve and how they serve it.
Schools of Narrative Theory Several schools of narrative theory exist. Although the schools from earlier periods are not as influential as they once were, they have a residual influence on more contemporary schools. Many narrative approaches blend several aspects of the different schools.
RUSSIAN FORMALISM The Russian formalists—precursors to proponents of the U.S. “new criticism”—were part of the larger movement of literary modernism early during the twentieth century, which, in all of the arts, was a movement
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against the social realism of the nineteenth century. Formalists exclude the nonliterary from literature or art more generally because they see life and art as opposites (art for art’s sake). Works of art refer only to themselves, not to the world outside of them. The form of the art, rather than its content—how it is made, rather than what it says—is what is most interesting and important. For Russian formalists literature is characterized by what differentiates it from other orders of facts and uses a “higher,” more sophisticated form of language than that of everyday speech. In this view sports would be a vulgar form not possible to analyze from a formal perspective. This view is at least partially responsible for the long-held bias against scholars who study sports, who tend to be linked with “dumb jocks”—that is, the body rather than the mind.
DIALOGICS Narrative theory of the dialogic form is based on the work of Mikhail Bahktin and is opposed to the work of the Russian formalists. For Bahktin linguistic production is dialogic in that it is formed in the process of social interaction. Whereas the formalists emphasize works of art divorced from their social and historical contexts, in dialogic theory we cannot separate the two. Language is always political and ideological in that for Bahktin it is characterized by “heteroglossia,” the competing voices and dialects within a language. Although dominant culture may claim that its terms are monologic (one form) and authoritative, contesting definitions or forms always exist. Bahktin sees this most clearly in parody, texts that, through a deliberate displacement and subversion of the dominant language and ideas, reveal those ideas to be changeable. Many voices and stories, not just those of the dominant discourse, exist. Within sports studies, texts that take a critical view of sports as well as emphasizing sports’ positive aspects would be “heteroglossic” in this sense.
NEW CRITICISM Associated particularly with the work of R. P. Blackmur and Cleanth Brooks, new criticism dominated English
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departments from the post–World War II period through the late 1960s. The new criticism looks at a text as completely distinct from its social and historical context, concentrating instead on the formal patterns present in each text.The text should be studied as an art object in and of itself, this school argues, for the specific formal literary properties it contains. Literary properties are not found in anything but literary texts. For a new critic the study of sports would be an anathema, but for media researchers who analyze the text of a magazine article for its patterns regarding the representation of gender, for instance, the close reading of texts that new criticism advocates serves as a (perhaps unconscious) model.
of texts, on the particular meanings that readers make from texts rather than the texts themselves. Reception studies are a neglected area of sports research that has just recently become a growth area. Because a focus on representation—how women athletes are portrayed in Sports Illustrated, for instance—can tell us only about that representation itself, not about how that representation is used by its audiences, the assumptions that some textual analysts make about the effect of the representation can be only assumptions. Reception studies either prove or disprove those assumptions (or somewhere in between), but they tell us a great deal more about actual cultural beliefs and practices than does a purely textual analysis.
SOCIOLOGICAL In direct opposition to the new criticism, the sociologically oriented narrative studies the way economic and cultural institutions shape the particular kinds of stories we tell. Frederic Jameson, for instance, was one of the first to rigorously argue that “facts” that we take as a given, such as historical narratives, are actually textual. A traditional conception of history would say that the narrative accounts of what happened faithfully record what happened—an event took place, and the story is the account of that event. For Jameson and other sociologically oriented narratologists, however, the stories we choose to tell about what happened are based on our own standpoint in relation to the dominant culture. Those who have power tell a different story than do those who don’t. The revisionist history currently taught in high school curriculums regarding, for instance, the representation of Native Americans, is largely the result of theorists such as Jameson who insist on a critical interrogation of relations of power and how these affect what stories get told by whom. Those people who own the National Basketball Association would tell a different story about its practices than would a late-round draft pick.
READER-RESPONSE Like audience reception theorists in media studies, reader-response theorists concentrate on the reception
DECONSTRUCTIONISTP OSTSTRUCTURALIST Deconstruction, a term coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, is a particular kind of poststructuralist approach. Whereas other poststructuralists such as Michel Foucault focus on institutions and how we construct our paradigms (frameworks) for knowledge, Derrida focuses on language itself as the original medium for all thought. This method assumes that “there is nothing outside the text” and that we know the world through language. Derrida questions the worldtext opposition (and every other kind of binary opposition): Everything is a text and thereby subject to interpretation. No “real” exists in that no set, fixed referent or world of things outside of the language we use to name it exists—only “an immense linguistic structure in which we move and have our being” exists. In this structure words usually have several and often conflicting meanings, which makes meaning provisional and contextually based. Therefore, deconstruction revises the representational theory of language in which language is taken to transparently represent some “real” outside of itself, “the thing itself.” Things were thought to have fixed, set, determined essences that language then represented. Deconstruction offers a nonreferential theory of language or
NARRATIVE THEORY
Sports is human life in microcosm.
linguistic construction of reality that sees language as constitutive rather than purely reflective. Representation, instead of describing an already existing reality, helps to create it. Representation is “the real” in this sense. This means that meaning, our ways of knowing, is linguistically rather than referentially based—we come to know through language. Acts and practices that make up the “real world” are inseparable from the discourses (social systems of meaning) out of which they arise and are thus open to interpretation. The emphasis on the indeterminacy of meaning that follows from this fact is one of the more controversial aspects of deconstruction, as many critics have misunderstood indeterminacy to mean that no meaning exists. This is an inaccurate characterization of Derrida’s theories because for him the principle of indeterminacy that he claims is central to language (and therefore everything is decentered, and meaning is contextual) is not a statement of meaninglessness but rather of the possibility of many meanings, of multiplicity. Meaning is then determined through dialogue and consensus rather than written from on high. Regardless of their particular approach, all schools of narrative deal with the problem of the origin of meaning and study how the human mind makes sense of and gives order to the random stream of events that characterizes daily life. Most recent approaches presuppose that we create rather than reveal the world through the narratives we tell about it and that “the way things are” is in large part determined by narrative. In these approaches the world has no inherent order in itself but rather is made meaningful through narratives. Our world, then, is the result of a story, a speech act: A story is a way, as J. Hillis Miller puts it, “of doing things with words.” Those things we do, the stories we tell, make our worlds meaningful.
Narrative Approaches to Sports Particularly the poststructuralist approaches have relevance to the ways narrative theory is used in sports
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studies. The narrative theory of sports is the application of the methods and perspectives of narrative theory to sports as a subject matter or object of analysis. Much as literary critics once took novels or poems as the object of their analysis, today scholars of the narrative approaches use various aspects of sports as their object of analysis. Anyone doing a media analysis of sports necessarily uses narrative theory broadly defined. Because from a poststructuralist standpoint everything is narrative, including history, the distinctions that literary critics once drew between the “high art” of canonical literary fiction and poetry and the “low culture” forms such as television and film have broken down. This breakdown has opened up the possibility of discussing sports in much the same way one once discussed, say, the novels of Charles Dickens. Anything and everything are fair game for analysis, and the application of narrative theory to sports studies has allowed a new breadth and depth in the field. A critical awareness of one’s standpoint as a researcher, for instance, and an awareness that the researcher is always necessarily telling a story in which he or she has a particular investment have led to exciting new approaches in ethnography (the study of culture) such as the critical autobiographical practice that Susan Birrell identified in narratives written by women of color. A focused and specifically named application of narrative theory to sports appeared in 2000 when a special issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal was devoted to what issue editors Robert Rinehart and Jim Denison called “sociological narratives.” The issue called for a narrative component to social science research and for ethnographic writing practices as a valid method of research. Literary narratives provide “thick description at its thickest,” and so the editors called for the use of “fiction and stories as nuanced ways in how to write up experiential ethnography.” These would include “combined theory/narrative pieces” that use fictional strategies to make their conclusions more explicit. The issue
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included framing articles that articulated a theoretical framework for this methodology, articles that were combinations of theory and narrative, and pieces that took the form of creative nonfiction that are examples of how the narrative imagination works and how it can be most effectively applied to sports. In Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon (2003), Heywood and Dworkin utilized these frameworks in an argument for a methodology that combines narrative and theory, analyzing the images of women athletes during the 1990s for the stories they tell about gender. Robert R. Sands (2002) discussed the application of narrative theory to ethnographic method in Sport Ethnography. Jim Denison and Pirkka Markula (2003) discussed the validity or even necessity of narrative approaches to sports in Moving Writing: Crafting Movement in Sport Research. Like generations of literary theorists before them, sports researchers working in narrative today have discovered the power of narrative forms and the ways those forms can complicate and extend traditional sports research. Leslie Heywood
Further Reading Bal, M. (1997). Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative (2nd ed.). Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Birrell, S. (1990). Women of color, critical autobiography, and sport. In M. A. Messner & D. F. Sabo (Eds.), Sport, men, and the gender order: Critical feminist perspectives (pp. 185–199). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Press. Denison, J., & Markula, P. (2003). Moving writing: Crafting movement in sport research. New York: Peter Lang. Denison, J., & Rinehart, R. (Eds.). (2000). Sociological imaginings, sociological narratives: Special issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal 17(1). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Heywood, L., & Dworkin, S. (2003). Built to win: The female athlete as cultural icon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lacey, N. (2000). Narrative and genre: Key concepts in media studies. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Miller, J. H. (1995). Narrative. In F. Lentricchia & T. McLaughlin (Eds.), Critical terms for literary study (pp. 66–79). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sands, R. R. (2002). Sport ethnography. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Press. Turner, M. (1996). The literary mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Native American Games and Sports
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he first inhabitants of North America—the indigenous or Native American peoples of Canada and the United States—have always embraced games and sports as an integral part of their cultures. Occasionally Native American athletes excel in “mainstream” sporting events organized and operated primarily by non-Native Americans. Among this group of athletes are Olympians such as Billy Mills (long-distance running), Sharon and Shirley Firth (cross-country skiing), Alwyn Morris (kayaking), and Waneek Horne-Miller (water polo), as well as professional athletes such as Notah Begay (golf), Jim Thorpe (football), Louis Sockalexis (baseball), and George Armstrong (hockey). However, Native American athletes also participate in competitions organized and operated by Native Americans, including “all-Native” competitions and “traditional” sports competitions. All-Native competitions, such as National Indian Athletics Association tournaments, the Indian National Finals Rodeo, and the North American Indigenous Games, are limited to participation by people of Native American ancestry. Events focus primarily on sports that have developed in non-Native American cultures, such as sports of the Olympics. Traditional sports competitions, such as powwows, Northern Games, Dene Games, the World Eskimo Indian Olympics, and snowsnake competitions, focus on activities that originated within Native American cultures. Organizers do not restrict who can participate in these competitions; however, participants are primarily of Native American ancestry.
History Indigenous peoples have inhabited North America for at least twelve thousand years. Oral histories provided by Native American peoples (Inuit [Eskimo], American Indian, and Metis)—complemented by the writings of European travelers who began to arrive in North America
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A Native American pictograph depicting a wrestling match.
during the sixteenth century—inform us that Native Americans played games and sports for enjoyment, but also for education and for preparation for subsistence activities such as fishing and hunting. Furthermore, games could be a part of celebrations or religious interventions, and they functioned in the redistribution of wealth through gambling games and games of chance. Games of chance consisted of dice games and games that involved hiding a marked item, then guessing where it was located. Hand games were a popular example of this activity. Accompanied by energetic drumming, they involved many deceptive and skilled movements. Hand games were a method of redistributing wealth as winners claimed the stakes put up as part of the games. Skill-based activities required physical strength, endurance, and/or speed and often involved pain tolerance and self-testing. Physical competitions involving running, jumping, swimming, boxing, wrestling, pushing, or pulling helped prepare people for the demanding subsistence life they led. These activities often took place when people gathered to celebrate and at times were used to settle grievances, as was the case, for example, with wrestling matches organized among the Inuit. Ball games were especially popular and widespread, often involving heavy gambling. Teams could number in the hundreds. Tewaarathon (lacrosse) is the best known of these games, in part because non-Native Americans created formal rules for this game and made it part of mainstream sports during the mid-1800s. Lacrosse involved two teams and a ball that was caught and thrown toward the opponent’s goal with a racket shaped like a basket. Matches extending over several
days were often arranged to provide religious intervention on behalf of a member of the community. Other games involved directing the ball toward the opponent’s goal by kicking (e.g., kickball), throwing it (e.g., mooseskin handball), or propelling it with a stick (e.g., shinny) or throwing two balls attached together with a thong (e.g., double ball). Both men and women played ball games, but they were often segregated by gender, and some games were specific to men or to women (e.g., double ball tended to be a female activity, whereas lacrosse was a male activity). Dancing, usually accompanied by drumming, was another activity, whether it involved one dancer and his or her drum (e.g., among the Inuit), round dances involving the whole community (e.g., among the Athapaskan), or specialty dances as part of powwow celebrations in the southwestern regions of North America.
Euro-American Impact After the United States (1776) and Canada (1867) achieved nationhood, official policies aimed at “civilizing” and assimilating Native American peoples were implemented. This implementation involved banning many traditional Native American activities and encouraging Native American involvement in non-Native American cultural practices. For example, government officials in both Canada and the United States outlawed certain traditional cultural practices during the late 1800s, including the potlatch and the sun dance, which were ceremonies that were of fundamental importance in Native American culture. At the same time, the Canadian government funded “appropriate” activities for Native American peoples, such as agricultural fairs, plowing matches, celebrations of the queen’s birthday, brass bands, select sports, and physical activities emphasizing calisthenics. U.S. government officials encouraged rigid exercise programs at off-reservation
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boarding schools such as the Carlisle, Pennsylvania, training school for Native American youth, opened in 1879. Boys were also encouraged to play mainstream sports such as football, baseball, basketball, and track and field. Many talented athletes from these schools went on to compete in sports against athletes representing some of the best universities in the United States during the early 1900s. In both countries traditional Native American sports and games were thus actively suppressed as part of the federal attempt to replace Native American culture with “appropriate” non-Native American social practices. Mainstream sports were one effective avenue for completing this task, although discrimination against Native American participants did occur. For example, in 1880 the National Amateur Lacrosse Association in Canada categorized all Native American athletes as “professionals,” thus using racial criteria to exclude them from participation in amateur lacrosse competitions. This categorization occurred even though Native American participants had been involved in lacrosse competitions with non-Native American athletes to that time, and Native Americans had introduced non-Native Americans to the game. Native American athletes were likewise banned from competing against non-Native Americans in activities in which they were perceived to have a “natural” advantage. For example, in snowshoeing competitions and rodeos during the late 1800s Native American athletes had to compete in separate events and were not allowed to compete in the open races against non-Native American athletes. Government policies that promoted cultural assimilation were rescinded during the 1930s, but by then Native Americans had ceased to participate in many of their traditional cultural practices. The subsequent closing of many U.S. residential schools worsened the problem. A number of Native American male athletes, especially those from the Carlisle Indian School or the Haskell Institute, had experienced success against nonNative American athletes by that time, both at the elite amateur and the professional levels. They were now left
with few opportunities for developing sports skills in the mainstream schools or sports leagues. Moreover, they often faced racism both in sports and in the wider community. Native American athletes thus largely disappeared from mainstream sports participation. One way to increase their access to mainstream sports eventually arose out of the creation of all-Native sporting events.
All-Native Sporting Competitions An all-Native sports system was created to provide Native American athletes with mainstream sports opportunities and an enjoyable, culturally supportive environment to improve sporting skills and to celebrate their heritage. Organizers of all-Native sporting events, which are often invitational in nature, ensure a Native American participation base through race restrictions for competitors. Rules can be fairly broad; for example, one all-Native bowling tournament required that participants be American Indian or married to an American Indian. More limiting conditions ensure that all players are of Native American heritage. For example, the 1980 Women’s Fast Pitch National Championship required that athletes be at least one-quarter American Indian. Criteria for the Little Native Hockey League demonstrated even more restrictive criteria, employing government-defined proof of American Indian status. Participants had to produce their federal band number to compete. All-Native sporting events are often annual tournaments and can be held at interreserve, provincialstate, national, and/or North American levels. Mainstream sports, such as golf, rodeo, bowling, basketball, hockey, fastball, tennis, and lacrosse, are the focus of these tournaments. Organizers finance events through a combination of entry fees, community fund-raising, and occasional government grants. The creation of all-Native sports organizations has helped to standardize these events. In the United States the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys Association was formed in 1957 as the first formal American Indian professional rodeo association. Other Native American rodeo
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Native American Games and Sports Hopi Running and Racing in Arizona Running, racing, and gambling contests of various kinds appear not only in stories of individual adventure and achievement but also in myth-legends, clan and village “histories,” and tales of awe and wonder. Fleetness of foot and endurance are regarded as supreme psycho-physical accomplishments. We hear again and again of races between villages and of individual running feats, not only in the old stories but in recollections of more recent times. In Oraibi there are older people who recall challenges by footracers of Walpi, and in Walpi there are stories of challenges from Oraibi. People speak of how only a few generations ago the men and boys of Oraibi would gather early in the morning to run in a group to Moencopi (some fifty miles away), cultivate their gardens there, and then return running to Oraibi. In Walpi there are recollections of Hopi mail carriers who ran mail from Keam’s Canyon to Holbrook, about seventy miles, in a single day. Such stories and the exaggerations they may have undergone in the telling reflect the traditional value placed on footracing, not only as social competition but also as an expression of community (and religious) vitality. The so-called kachina races, in which young men attired in kachina costumes challenge the young men of neighboring villages, are believed to bring a blessing or good medicine to the people. In the kachina races of earlier years, religious connections
organizations were soon created in both Canada and the United States, and the first National Indian Finals Rodeo was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1976. The National Indian Activities Association was formed in 1973 to showcase Native American athletes through national competitions while helping Native American youth develop pride in their heritage. An allIndian men’s championship in basketball was the first event sponsored, but other sports were soon added, including softball, golf, and bowling, with opportunities
were more visible than now. The personators of the kachinas prayed and purified their thoughts in the kivas before the races took place. Festive and secular as the races might seem, they carried the meaning of good fortune, rain, and fertility. The racing that takes place each year in the Horn and Flute rites is strictly ceremonial. In the old stories about clans and villages, racing usually takes place as a result of invitation or challenge. Though the races begin in a social atmosphere, in the end they may prove to have important, even grave, consequences. In many tales, the races escalate from tests of speed and strength to competitions between medicine and counter-medicine, witchcraft and counter-witchcraft, drawing on the dynamic forces of nature that reside in animals or inanimate objects. In “The Races at Tsikuvi” (text 20), for example, both sides invoke the intervention of magical elements, and the consequences of the races are so serious that the people of Payupki are forced to abandon their village. Even where witchcraft is not introduced, as in “The Dispersal from Sikyatki, I” (text 11), the contest may be laden with serious implications. The Sikyatki race ends with death and the scattering of the people of the village. Source: Courlander, H. (1982). Hopi voices: recollections, traditions, and narratives of the Hopi Indians recorded, transcribed, and annotated by Harold Courlander (pp. xxix– xxx). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
provided for both men and women to compete. All competitors must be at least one-quarter American Indian. This organization, renamed the “National Indian Athletic Association” in 1990, continues to offer yearly sports championships in a variety of sports. In Canada the Aboriginal Sport Circle was formed in 1995 as the national organization overseeing Native American sports in Canada. Member organizations from across Canada arrange for participants to compete in all-Native events such as the North American
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A drawing of Native Americans in the Southwest playing kickball.
Indigenous Games. A group of Native American leaders from Alberta organized the first North American Indigenous Games, held in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1990. These games, which are restricted to persons of Native American heritage, involve athletes from both Canada and the United States. Teams from a variety of provinces and states compete. Subsequent games have been held in Saskatchewan in 1993, Minnesota in 1995, British Columbia in 1997, and Manitoba in 2002. Mainstream sports are the focus of these games. Thus, the 2002 games included 3-D archery, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball, field lacrosse, boxing, canoeing, golf, rifle shooting, soccer, softball, swimming, tae kwon do, volleyball, and wrestling. Medals are awarded to the winners. Organizers generate funds through entry fees, community and sponsor contributions, and government grants. Cultural activities are an integral part of the games, providing athletes and spectators with the opportunity to celebrate Native American traditional practices as well as mainstream sporting activities.
The North American Indigenous Games, in conjunction with the work of national sports organizations and the inception of national awards for Native American athletes such as the Canadian Tom Longboat Award (begun in 1951) and the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame (begun in 1972), have created an environment that enables Native American role models to emerge and be recognized in mainstream sports
Traditional Sports and Games Competitions A number of competitions involve traditional Native American activities. These competitions maintain contemporary interest in traditional Native American sports and promote community spirit and pride in being Native American. One of the oldest competitions is the powwow, a summer celebration that dates back to the Plains warrior organizations of the 1870s. Powwows had almost died out by the 1930s because of government legislation against traditional Native American cultural
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practices. However, Native American organizers began to host powwows to honor the American Indian veterans returning to their reserves from the two world wars. Powwows grew in popularity as cultural awareness and pride in being Native American increased during the later decades of the twentieth century. Today more than 100 powwows occur annually in North America, both on reserves and in urban areas, as part of a “powwow circuit.” Large money prizes are awarded at major competitions, although some reserves prefer to hold “traditional” powwows, encouraging the audience to dance for fun rather than for money. Native American participants of all ages compete, and both Native American and non-Native American people attend as spectators. Although dancing is the primary focus, organizers sometimes include traditional foods and crafts, rodeos, hand games, giveaways, and parades. Powwow participants in part view these events as sports; however, Native American people also see these events as a place where Native American values can be reproduced through their connection with Native American ways of viewing the world. Native Americans in northern parts of North America have also created traditional sports competitions. The World Eskimo Indian Olympics were established in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1961 and have been held every year since. Events in 1961 included seal skinning, blanket toss, finger pull, high kick, and neck pull, as well as four dance groups. In Canada the Northern Games and the Dene Games were created during the 1970s. The Northern Games began in 1970 as a weekend festival of traditional Inuit (Eskimo) and Dene (American Indian) games involving Native American participants from the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska. Events included primarily Inuit activities; in 1970 events included one- and two-foot high kicks, arm pull, wrist pull, and Inuit drum dancing. Originally only males entered these events; however, female participants now compete. Men and women competed in jigging and kayak racing. Female participants originally competed in the Good Woman contest, which included activities performed by women on the land. In 1970 this contest included tea boiling, bannock (frybread)
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making, seal and muskrat skinning, fish roasting and boiling, dry fish making, and traditional sewing. Athletes have also participated in Dene traditional activities on occasion; the 1970 games included stick gambling. A separate Dene Games began in 1977 in the Northwest Territories, and Arctic sports (added in 1974) and Dene Games (added in 1990) have become events within the biennial Arctic Winter Games. The Iroquois in Ontario and New York host competitions in snowsnake, which is a traditional winter activity. These competitions involve sliding a spearlike stick, about 3 meters long, as far as possible along a flat, smooth track (now an artificially created trough in the snow). Each team includes a shiner, a thrower, and a marker. The thrower sends the snowsnake down the track, but the shiner often makes the snowsnake and is responsible for choosing the proper snowsnake and wax for the snow conditions. The marker determines the final landing place for his team’s snowsnake. Competitions are held weekly on various reserves in January and February. They involve primarily adult male competitors, although children, including occasionally young girls, also compete (this game was traditionally played only by males). Prizes are awarded to competitors who throw their snowsnakes the farthest. Traditional sporting activities, such as powwows, Inuit and Dene Games, and snowsnake, combine with all-Native and mainstream sports competitions to provide a rich cultural context for Native Americans across North America.
Significance Sports and games are an important part of all cultures because they are activities through which people express their values, know their bodies, and develop a sense of community through shared practices. Native Americans have always embraced sports and games, but they have been encouraged by non-Native American government policies to adopt mainstream activities, often at the expense of decreased involvement in their traditional cultural practices. Native Americans have developed an ability to embrace both traditional and mainstream
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sports and games. Mainstream sports are most often organized by non-Native Americans, but through the efforts of many Native American organizers and Native American sports organizations, all-Native competitions have become a meaningful means of aboriginal engagement with sports. Traditional games and sports have also become institutionalized through events such as powwows, Inuit and Dene Games, and snowsnake competitions. These events enable Native Americans to find meaning in physical activities that trace back to their heritage as well as to create new traditions as they embrace non-Native American sporting activities. Victoria Paraschak See also Anthropology Days; Lacrosse; Mesoamerican Ball Court Games
Further Reading Heine, M. (2002). Inuit-style wrestling: A training and resource manual. Yellowknife, Canada: Sport North Federation. Horse Capture, G. (1989). Powwow. Cody, WY: Buffalo Bill Historical Center. Iverson, P. (1999). Riders of the West: Portraits from Indian rodeo. Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books. Kelley, M. (1986). Heartbeat: World Eskimo Indian Olympics. Juneau, AK: Fairweather Press. Oxendine, J. (1988). American Indian sports heritage. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Paraschak,V. (1990). Organized sport for Native females on the Six Nations Reserve, Ontario from 1968 to 1980: A comparison of dominant and emergent sport systems. Canadian Journal of History of Sport, 21(2), 70–80. Roberts, C. (1992). Powwow country. Helena, MT: American and World Geographic Publishing. Salter, M. (1994). Iroquoian snow-snake: A structural-functional analysis. Paper presented at the Second International Sport History and Physical Education Studies Seminar, Lillehammer, Norway. Vennum, T. (1994). American Indian lacrosse: Little brother of war. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Zeman, B. (1988). To run with Longboat: Twelve stories of Indian athletes in Canada. Edmonton, Canada: GMS Ventures.
NCAA See Drake Group; Intercollegiate Athletics
Netball
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etball, like many other sports, evolved after another sport was transplanted. In 1895, Dr. Toll, a U.S. educator who was visiting a college of physical training in London, introduced netball to England as the indoor game of basketball. Dr. Toll taught the women students of the college how to play basketball, but she did not distribute a book of rules, and the playing area was of an indeterminate size. The goals were wastepaper baskets hung on the wall at each end of a hall—an arrangement that mirrored that of Canadianborn Dr. James Naismith (1861–1939), who invented basketball in Massachusetts in 1891 and used peach baskets as his goals. During the early years of the twentieth century netball—a sport of stop, start, catch, and shoot compared with the all-action fluidity of basketball— became popular in the girls’ schools of the British empire and frequently was an integral part of physical education programs. Although netball has never entered the Olympic arena, it does have its own world championship. In 1999 Australia won its eighth championship. It continues to be the dominating presence in the sport. During the 1980s and 1990s the West Indies and Australia had the most exciting teams. In 2005 the United States of America Netball Association will host the World Youth Netball Championships of the International Federation of Netball Associations in Florida. The Ling Association, founded in England in 1899 to represent the professional and academic interests of physical educators, played a major role in the development of netball. The Ling Association saw the educational potential of the sport if only the motley assortment of rules could be condensed into one standard set. Thus, a Ling committee drafted a set of rules that established a transatlantic compromise: Goals as a unit of scoring were replaced by points, and a shooting circle was introduced. These elements were part of the U.S. sport. However, the
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mentalized and contained. Netball is orderly and dissize of the ball (68 centimeters in circumference) was ciplined; team tactics and intelligent distribution of similar to the size of an English football (soccer ball), the ball take precedence over muscular exuberance and which was 10 centimeters smaller in circumference than individual flair. a U.S. basketball. The original baskets were replaced by goal rings and nets, goal rings were reduced from 46 centimeters in diameter to 38 centimeters, and the height of Ling Association the post rose to 2.5 meters. With the disappearance of As noted, the Ling Association contributed to the spread baskets, people began to use the term netball rather than of netball. Physical education teachers “exported” the sport around the world, including to Australia, the West women’s basketball. Indies, western Europe, Myanmar (Burma), and India. These English changes were introduced in 1905 to According to Janice Brownfoot, during the 1920s Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, as well as Canada, the sports such as netball grew in popularity and availabilUnited States, France, and South Africa, and people ity among women in Malaya. A decade later netball hailed netball for the sense of control it gives players. was so popular that interscholastic contests flourished, Control is critical to understanding why athletic adand people sought adequate playground space to play ministrators and educational leaders so strongly supthe sport. Netball was not played only by girls in ported such a distinctly unmodern game: Netball lacks English-language schools; Muslim communities in rhythm, speed, contact or collision, and all-out agMalaya also embraced netball. In 1935, when the gression, and points are not scored as a frantic climax Malay Women Teachers Training College opened in to a sequence of strategies. To early players netball Malacca, netball was part of the physical education epitomized rational recreation and a qualified acceptcurriculum. on the playing field. It ance of liberation for women In 1926 the All-England Women’s Netball Associareaffirmed society’s views of how women should betion was founded; of the ten committee members five have: They could run and catch and be competitive, but were Ling Association representatives. the unrestrained athleticism of other ball Many county netball associations were games (such as women’s field hockey) formed in England during the 1930s. was outlawed. Indeed, netball’s set shot From 1935 to 1956, despite World —when a player sets up and attempts a War II, netball expanded signifiscoring shot—is a frozen moment with cantly. Two publications devoted to the a virtual absence of offensive or defensport were founded: Netball Magazine sive movement. Observers have likened the jumping up and the attempting to (1935) and Netball (1949). The British thwart the set shot by the defense to the Broadcasting Corporation broadcast its irritation of a housefly. This action is in first radio coverage of a netball game in contrast to that of a woman basketball 1947, the same year a British netball player as she drives toward the hoop team went abroad. The fact that the and attempts a lay-up as every player on team visited Prague, Czechoslovakia, the court is involved in a demanding seis noteworthy because the Iron Curquence of movements, accelerating or tain was firmly in place, and a cultural tour of Communist satellite countries backpedaling at high speeds. The tenwas rare. sion and athletic dynamism are palpaGirls in the 1920s A major reason for the growth of netble. In netball, although skill and tactics playing netball. ball since World War II has been the are required, athleticism is compart-
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You’re regarded as a soft guy in Holland if you play cricket. They think it’s all eating lunch and tea, and pretty boring. ■ ANDRE VAN TROOST
sport’s shift from its school base to a broad base of community, club, and college support. For example, in 1970 the All-England Netball Association had nine hundred member clubs in addition to two thousand school affiliates. In 1963 New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Australia, Ceylon, England, Jamaica, Scotland, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Wales, and the West Indies participated in the first world netball tournament. However, netball does have its critics, as Colin Tatz said: “There has been some denigration of the game, with critics claiming that only thirty-six countries play it, and that competition comes from ‘lightweight’ nations such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malawi, and the like. This is unfair: there would hardly be thirty-six nations playing field hockey at international level; one would be scratching to find more than half a dozen countries playing league [rugby], and nobody else plays Aussie rules [football].” Meanwhile netball adapts to the changing needs of different cultures and communities. In New Zealand a new version called “kiwi netball” is designed for younger players. Boys or girls or coed teams can play it. The ball is smaller, the goal posts are lower, and different scoring systems provide more scoring opportunities for participants. Nevertheless, this children’s version stays true to the essence of the adult version. For example, movement with the ball is limited: A player who catches the ball may move from the place where the ball was caught but may not move the first landing foot while still in possession of the ball. If the player lands on both feet simultaneously, either foot may be moved. However, the second foot moved may not be regrounded while the player still possesses the ball. A netball team has seven players, and the traditional uniform is a bib. Players can play only one positional role. These roles are C (center), GS (goal shooter), GA (goal attack), WA (wing attack), WD (wing defense), GD (goal defense), and GK (goal keeper). A game is played in four quarters.
Scholarly Inquiry Netball has not received the same exhausting scholarly examination that other sports have received. However, in 1995 John Nauright and Jayne Broomhall, in an article entitled “A Women’s Game: The Development of Netball and a Female Sporting Culture in New Zealand, 1906–70,” noted that despite “patronizing attitudes” among male media personnel, netball gained popular appeal in New Zealand as a result of netball broadcasts on New Zealand television during the last fifteen years. Almost from the beginning media and health professionals hailed netball as a great game for women, especially because it fits into the dominant conceptions of proper women’s behavior and physical activity. Thus, netball succeeded in part because it fit the male hegemonic (relating to influence) system so well. As a sport netball does not seriously challenge notions about ways in which women should express themselves physically and therefore does not pose a threat to the gender order in the ways that many other sports, such as women’s rugby or soccer, do. Scott A. G. M. Crawford
Further Reading Arlott, J. A. (Ed.). (1975). The Oxford companion to world sports and games. London: Oxford University Press. Brownfoot, J. N. (1992). Emancipation, exercise and imperialism: Girls and the games ethic in colonial Malaya. In J. A. Mangan (Ed.), The cultural bond—Sport, empire, society. London: Frank Cass. Hillary Commission for Recreation and Sport. (1988). Kiwi sport activities manual. Wellington, New Zealand: Author. Mangan, J. A., & Hong, F. (2001, March). Freeing the female body. International Journal of the History of Sport, 1(18), 1–267. Nauright, J., & Broomhall, J. (1994, December). A woman’s game: The development of netball and a female sporting culture in New Zealand, 1906–70. International Journal of the History of Sport, 1(3), 387–407. Russell, D., & Wilson, N. (Eds.). (1991). Life in New Zealand survey. Wellington, New Zealand: Hillary Commission for Recreation and Sport. Tatz, C. (1995). Obstacle race: Aborigines in sport. Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press. Vamplew, W., Moore, K., O’Hara, J., Cashman, R., & Jobling, I. F. (Eds.). (1992). The Oxford companion to Australian sport. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.
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Netherlands Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 3 Gold, 5 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics: 4 Gold, 9 Silver, 9 Bronze
The Netherlands
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he Netherlands is a modern, industrial nation in Western Europe, and borders the North Sea, Belgium, and Germany. The capital city is Amsterdam, although The Hague is the seat of government. The Netherlands is a small but densely populated country, with a population of 16.3 million—that is 393 people per square kilometre. In a prosperous and open economy, the per capita purchasing power parity of the Dutch is $28,600, which is comparable to Australia, Germany, or Canada. Sport occupies an important place in Dutch society.The majority of the population actively participates in sport, and Dutch elite athletes are ranked at the top of many branches of international sport. Dutch sport is dominated by an extensive network of sport organizations, which are supported by or have close relationships with local governments, the business world, and the media.
History In a survey of Dutch pastimes conducted in 1871, the historian Jan ter Gouw identified ice skating, yachting, and horse racing as national pastimes with a long history. He also mentioned running and cycling races, billiards, archery, and rifle shooting. Traditional activities such as klootschieten, beugelen, kolven, and fives were also still popular at regional levels at that time. Strikingly, though, ter Gouw’s survey does not once mention the word sport. Yet only a quarter of a century later, football, tennis, field hockey, athletics, and cricket all had their own league competitions, clubs, and umbrella organizations in the Netherlands. The introduction of these English sports in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was not an isolated phenomenon. As a result of Britain’s prestige as a major power at that time, a general interest in the lifestyle of the British arose all over Europe. However, physical education teachers were far less enthusiastic about these new English products. Instead, they propagated alter-
natives that they believed would improve the nation’s mental or physical strength, like gymnastics, swimming, handball, and korfball, a Dutch derivative of earlyAmerican women’s basketball. American sports like basketball, volleyball, and baseball entered the Netherlands after World War I. In 1980, the membership in Dutch clubs playing these sports had risen to 197,000, after which the numbers stabilized. American football, on the other hand, received more than incidental attention in the Netherlands only after 1980. At that time, the Dutch sport culture was also exposed to two other American influences. First, there was the huge growth of new sports, like fitness, skateboarding, snowboarding, and extreme and adventure sports, which young people were adopting from the United States through commercial satellite television and the Internet. These new sports were not part of the typical European (and Dutch) sport club structure, but developed in the context of new commercial relationships and on the streets. Second, there was growing media attention on American professional sports, particularly on teams belonging to the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. Sport in the Netherlands receives substantial governmental support. In 2003 alone, some €700 million were given at a municipal level, and by far the greatest part of this was invested in the construction and maintenance of sport facilities. Financial assistance at a national level is less substantial (€74 million) and focuses on improving volunteer expertise, reducing the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and advocating elite sports events. Funds from national lotteries (€38 million) are also pumped into sport. In addition to this, the business community is closely involved, particularly with respect to broadcasting rights (which provide an income of €100 million for sport) and sponsoring (€500 million).
Participant and Spectator Sports In 2002, about 65 percent of the population claimed to have participated in a sport at least once a month.
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A diving tower on a beach in Vlissingen, the Netherlands. Source: istockphoto/cy.
Swimming, fitness, walking, and cycling were particularly popular. Roughly 28 percent of the population participates in a sport within the context of a sport association. Here football is by far the most popular sport, followed by tennis, gymnastics, golf, and ice skating. In general, Dutch elite athletes are most successful at football, cycling, speed skating, swimming, field hockey, and equestrian sports. Since the 1980s, their performances during the Olympic Games have continued to improve. They reached an all-time high at the Sydney games in 2000 when the Netherlands won eighth place in the medal ranking. Celebrated Dutch sporting events are the Rotterdam Marathon, the Dutch TT Motorcycle grand prix, the International Nijmegen Four Day Walking Event, and the Eleven City Ice-Skating Marathon. During important international sporting competitions, especially football, the multitudes of Dutch fans clad in orange are particularly conspicuous. This is the way that the Dutch express their “orange feeling,” which alludes as much to the House of Orange as to national unity and identity.
Women and Sport During the first half of the twentieth century, sport was primarily an activity for young men. Since then the situation has changed so radically that women are now represented more or less equally. This equalization also occurred at the elite sport level. Since 1988, women on the Olympic team won just as many medals as their male counterparts. Nevertheless, major differences still remain. Men continue to be overrepresented in football, golf, and basketball, whereas women predominate in gymnastics, equestrian sports, volleyball, and aerobics. In a variety of other sports, the ratio is more or less equal, such as in tennis, which is the most popular sport among women. However, women are still greatly underrepresented in administrative and managerial positions within sport.
Youth Sports Young people in the Netherlands are involved in sports on a huge scale. In 1999, roughly 91 percent of six- to eleven-year-olds participated in sports outside of school; 74 percent did so within the context of sport clubs. However, as young people get older, participation tends to decline significantly. Given the increasing prevalence of sedentary lifestyles, this is a source of concern for both sport organizations and the government. To encourage youth participation in sports, sport organizations are now adjusting the sports they offer to better reflect young people’s experiences and desires. Moreover, municipal governments grant subsidies to sport clubs in proportion to the number of youth members they have.
Organizations Although the popularity of commercial fitness centers is increasing, competitive sport in the Netherlands is mainly practiced in the context of sport associations. There are some twenty-nine thousand sport clubs throughout the country. These private volunteer organizations have a total of around 4.5 million members and are affiliated with national sport federations, which in turn belong to NOC*NSF (a merger of the Netherlands Olympic Committee and the Netherlands Sports Federation).
Sports in Society During the second half of the twentieth century, sport came to occupy a central position in Dutch society.
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Netherlands From Kolf to Golf Many people wonder whether the word golf is actually an acronym. The name, however, has its origins in the Dutch game, kolf. Here’s how the United States Golf Association explains it: . . . it derives linguistically from the Dutch word “kolf” or “kolve,” meaning quite simply “club.” In the Scottish dialect of the late 14th or early 15th century, the Dutch term became “goff” or “gouff,” and only later in the 16th century “golf.” The linguistic connections between the Dutch and Scottish terms are but one reflection of what was a very active trade industry between the Dutch ports and the ports on the east coast of Scotland from the 14th through 17th centuries. Some scholars suggest that the Dutch game of “kolf,” played with a stick and ball on frozen canals in the wintertime, was brought by the Dutch sailors to the east coast of Scotland, where it was transferred on to the public linkslands and eventually became the game we know today. Source: Golf history. (2005). Retrieved March 10, 2005, from http://www.usga. org/questions/faqs/usga _ history.html
Today sport is practiced and watched on a huge scale and there is a broad base of social support for its subsidization by the government, media, and business. The income and social security position of elite athletes has greatly improved, which means that an increasing number of people can practice elite sport professionally. However, the attention to and appreciation of elite sport is highly disproportionate, directed mainly toward football and a limited number of other sports.
The Future There are signs that sport participation has stabilized and is possibly even on the decline, in particular among adolescents and young adults. Indeed, how people can be encouraged to partake in physical exercise is a hot issue in current sport policymaking. This policymaking
also focuses on the elderly, although it appears that participation in sport is continuing to increase significantly among this group. The growing number of immigrants also forms a new disadvantaged group in the area of sport. Along with this, the problems of performance-enhancing drugs, hooliganism, and sports injuries also warrant structural attention. In the field of elite sport the costs continue to rise. While professionalization and commercialization are responsible for increased revenue, these developments also raise important questions—for example, what is the influence of commerce on sport and what will be the consequence of increasing pressure on elite athletes to remain at the international top at all costs? Maarten van Bottenburg
Further Reading Breedveld, K. (Ed.). (2003). Rapportage sport 2003 [Report on Sport 2003]. Den Haag, Netherlands: SCP. De Knop, P., B. Vanreusel & J. Scheerders (Eds.). (2002). Sportsociologie. het spel en de spelers [Sociology of sport: the game and the players]. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Elling, A. (2002). “Ze zijn er (niet) voor gebouwd”. In en uitsluiting in de sport naar sekse en etniciteit. [“They are (not) built for it.” Social inclusion and exclusion in sport based on gender and ethnicity.] Nieuwegein, Netherlands: Arko Sports Media. Nuijten, S., Lucassen, J., & Van Kalmthout, J. (2004). Verenigingsmonitor 2003 [Sports Club Monitor], Arnhem, Netherlands: NOC*NSF. Van Bottenburg, M. (2001). Global Games. Urbana–Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Van Bottenburg, M. (2004). Thrown for a loss? (American) football and the European sport space. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(11), 1550–1562.
New Zealand
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ew Zealand is a country formed of two major islands in the southern hemisphere, lying between 34 and 46 degrees of latitude south in the Pacific Ocean, a similar distance from the equator to Spain or California. Its nearest neighbor is Australia, which is 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) to the northwest. The population is just over 4 million and the capital city is
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New Zealand Olympics Results 2004 Summer Olympics: 3 Gold, 2 Silver
Wellington. New Zealanders like to think of themselves as a sporting nation, and there is little doubt that sport played a significant part in the formation of a national identity. Within this national identity, rugby, the “national game,” has played a pivotal role, and it remains a dominant cultural discourse despite sweeping social changes that have occurred in recent decades.
History Evidence suggests that the earliest inhabitants of New Zealand, the Maori, first settled in New Zealand in the thirteenth century. No single word for “sport” existed within Maori society and sportlike activities such as wrestling and swimming were integrated into everyday life, the activities being inseparable from ritual and survival skills. Many of these indigenous activities, which were primarily seen as cultural rather than sporting, largely disappeared under the forces of nineteenthcentury European settlement and the attitudes of the early missionaries. Sport and games were seen as important aspects of the cultural transfer from Britain to her colonial empire, and most of these imported sports gained ready acceptance in the young colony. Even before New Zealand became a British colony, cricket had been introduced by missionaries in 1825, and other major sports such as rugby, croquet, yachting, boxing, curling and golf (the influence of the Scottish settlers in the south of the country), hockey, lawn bowls, wrestling, cycling, tennis, rowing, and foot races were successfully established by the turn of the century. A modified form of basketball (renamed netball in 1970) was introduced in the early years of the twentieth century and has become the dominant sport for women in New Zealand today. Maori involvement in many of these sports was initially insignificant, but they were involved in rugby from the very early years of the sport in the 1870s. Jack Taiaroa and Joe Warbrick were two outstanding members of the first New Zealand rugby team, which toured Australia in 1884, while Tom Ellison, the first Maori to qualify in law in New Zealand, was the first to captain an official New Zealand rugby team on their Australian
tour in 1893 following the formation of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union a year earlier. One of the great sporting stars of the colonial era was Bob “Ruby Robert” Fitzsimmons, at differing times a triple world boxing champion as a middleweight, heavyweight, and light heavyweight. When he defeated James J. Corbett at Carson City, Nevada, in 1897 for the world heavyweight title, a fight still considered one of the great title fights and a ring classic, the bout was watched by such famous personalities as Bat Masterton and Wyatt Earp. As early as 1840, the 2,000 European settlers in New Zealand were catered to by billiard halls and gambling houses. Gambling and prostitution were part of the frontier life for many New Zealand males, and horse racing (initially established by the British elite) also became one of their favored pastimes. While private bars and “members’ stands” at racecourses preserved distinctions between the upper and lower classes, there was a “wide following for racing and trotting, and almost every public bar in the country had ‘bookies’ operating illegally to take bets” (King 2003, 308). Voluntary and commercial sectors met most of the organized sporting needs of New Zealanders in the latter part of the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century, with local government playing a role in the provision of fields and facilities. It was not until the 1970s that this situation changed. The Recreation and Sport Act 1973 was instrumental in funding and developing sport and recreation in New Zealand and the new Ministry of Recreation and Sport created by the act was to actively support this process.
Participant and Spectator Sports Although it began as a sport for the elite in Britain, rugby soon became the sport of choice for males in New Zealand. It fitted well with the physical and social needs of frontier life, and the rough surfaces of the typical sports “fields” were more conducive to rugby than to soccer or other competing forms of football. By the early part of the twentieth century, the success of the 1905 New Zealand rugby team (the All Blacks) on their
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A sports ground in New Zealand’s capital city of Wellington. Source: istockphoto/Mac Guy.
tour of Great Britain and the pride New Zealanders displayed in their achievements “suggested that a large part of the country’s emerging identity would be invested in this particular sport” (King 2003, 280). Rugby took “quick root in the distinctive male culture of New Zealand” (Phillips 1996, 95), and from the beginning of the twentieth century rugby was more than a game —as Jock Phillips suggests, it became a barometer of the nation’s health. Other team sports have also figured prominently in New Zealand’s international successes, with the New Zealand men’s softball team, the Black Sox, winning world championship successes in 1976 (joint winners with Canada and the United States), 1996, 2000, and 2004, and there was a gold medal triumph for the men’s field hockey team at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Water sports have also given the country significant success at the Olympic Games, with five gold medals in rowing including Rob Waddell in the single sculls in Sydney and the coveted eights in Munich in 1972, four gold medals in sailing and two in board sailing, and five gold medals in canoeing, four of these going to New Zealand’s most successful Olympian, Ian Ferguson. In addition to this, Peter Blake and Grant Dalton have both had major successes in ocean racing, each winning the Whitbread Round the World Race. One of New Zealand’s earliest sporting heroes was the highly gifted tennis player, Anthony (Tony) Wilding. Wilding won the Australian singles title in 1906 and 1909 and the Wimbledon singles four times in succession from 1910–1913, and he was a member of the
Australasian team that won the Davis Cup in 1907–1909 and again in 1914. The victory over the United States in 1914 almost coincided with the outbreak of World War I, and it was a war from which Wilding did not return, as he was killed in action at the age of thirty-one in France in 1915. John Edward “Jack” Lovelock was another incomparable athlete, setting a world record for the mile in 1933 and winning the gold medal in the 1,500 meters at the Berlin Olympics, also in world record time. He was another to die tragically, falling under a subway train in New York at the age of forty. Peter Snell, one of New Zealand’s most famous sporting sons, won gold in Olympic record time with his upset win in the 800 meters at the Rome Olympics in 1960, and completed a very rare double in the 800 meters and 1,500 meters in Tokyo four years later. A holder of world records for the 800 meters, 880 yards, and the mile, Snell’s time for the 800 meters at Tokyo in 1964 would have been good enough for a silver medal thirty-six years later at the Sydney Olympics, a measure of his remarkable ability. The great golfer Bob Charles was the first left-handed player to win a major title in winning the British Open in 1963, and this was a record he held for fifty years. A multiple winner on both the European and the PGA Tours, Charles continued his successful career on the Senior Tour with a further twenty-four titles, and he was knighted in 1999. In addition, the New Zealand team of 1992, a team that included two outstanding Maori golfers, Michael Campbell and Phil Tataurangi, won the world amateur teams golf championship for the Eisenhower Trophy, defeating a United States team including Justin Leonard and David Duvall by seven strokes. In motor sports, New Zealand has had some outstanding successes. Denny Hulme was world Formula One champion driver in 1967, while Chris Amon and Bruce McLaren were also successful drivers in the sport, McLaren also making an enduring contribution as an engineer and inventor. Since McLaren cars first appeared
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New Zealand Key Events in New Zealand Sports History 1825
Cricket is introduced by English missionaries.
1870s
Rugby is introduced.
1877
The Education Act makes sports part of the school curriculum.
1892
New Zealand Rugby Football Union is founded.
1897
Bob Fitzsimmons wins the world heavyweight boxing title.
c. 1900 Netball becomes popular. 1905
The All Blacks rugby team breaks attention to the sport with a successful tour of Great Britain.
1953
Edmund Hillary becomes the first person to climb Mt. Everest.
on the race tracks in 1966, they have won eleven Formula One drivers’ titles and eight constructors’ world championships. Scott Dixon, Indy Lights champion in 2000 and IRL Indycar champion driver in 2003, looks to be a future Formula One contender. World speedway champions Ronnie Moore (twice), Barry Briggs (four times), and Ivan Mauger (a world record six times), Hugh Anderson (twice world 50 cc and 125 cc motorcycle champion), Graeme Crosby (Formula 1 TT world champion in 1980 and 1981), world motocross champions Shayne King (500 cc in 1996) and Ben Townley (125 cc in 2004), and Wade Cunningham (world karting champion in 2003) have all reached the top in their chosen events. In addition, John Britten was a revolutionary motorcycle designer whose Britten V1000 motorcycle not only broke four world speed records in 1994 but was exhibited in the Guggenheim “The Art of the Motorcycle” exhibition in 1998. Britten, who died of melanomic cancer at only forty-five years of age in 1995, was placed equal with the four founders of Harley Davidson as Motorcyclist of the Millennium. Olympic 1500 meter gold medalist and world mile record holder John Walker, horseman Mark Todd, a double Olympic gold medalist in the three-day event
1964 Peter Snell wins the 800 and 1,500-meter races at the Olympics. 1966 The McLaren racing cars begin competing on the international circuit. 1973 The Ministry of Recreation and Sport is created. 1976 The Black Sox men’s softball team wins the world championship. 1988 KiwiSport is introduced to the elementary school curriculum. 1996 New Zealand wins the America’s Cup sailing race and retains it in 2000. 2000 The New Zealand cricket team wins the World Cup.
and voted Rider of the Twentieth Century by the International Equestrian Federation, Sir Richard Hadlee, one of the greatest fast bowlers and all-rounders in international cricket, Danyon Loader, the country’s greatest swimmer who was a double gold medalist in the 200 meter and 400 meter freestyle at the Atlanta Olympics, and four-time world mountain running champion Jonathan Wyatt have been other international sporting stars. To this list can now be added the former world number one ranked triathlete, Hamish Carter, who gained his greatest reward at the Athens Olympics in 2004, where he won the gold medal from his New Zealand teammate and 2004 world champion Bevan Docherty in the Olympic triathlon.
Women and Sport Hockey was the most popular team sport for women in New Zealand in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1935, the New Zealand women’s team was the first national women’s sporting team to travel overseas with its highly successful tour of Australia. Netball, which was becoming much more prominent by this time, toured Australia for the first time in 1938, and it was beginning to
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The place rugby enjoys demands analysis. It is not simply a sport but it encompasses such matters as the class structure, mateship and male bonding, the perpetuation of sexist attitudes in New Zealand, not to mention the social functions it performs in diverse communities around the land. ■ GRAEME FRASER
replace hockey in many areas as the dominant female sport. The New Zealand Silver Ferns have been world netball champions in 1967, 1987, and 2003, and the sport can now be considered to be the “national game” for New Zealand women. Over the last decade, the development and growth of women’s rugby has also been highly significant. In a sport that has been so important to male culture in New Zealand, the acceptance of women on the playing field was difficult to achieve, but the great accomplishments of the New Zealand women’s team, the Black Ferns, in winning the Women’s World Rugby Cup in 1998 and 2002 have brought a great deal of support for the game. The New Zealand women’s cricket team won the World Cup in 2000, the New Zealand women’s softball team has also tasted international success, winning the world championship title in 1982, and the Kiwi Ferns were successful in the first Women’s Rugby League World Cup in 2000 and again in 2004. New Zealand women can fairly claim to have produced some of the major highlights in New Zealand’s brief sporting history. At the Helsinki Olympic Games in 1952, Yvette Williams became the first female gold medalist for the country with her Olympic record in the long jump, and in 1954 she achieved the supreme distinction of breaking the world record in this event. Allison Roe reached the pinnacle of her running career in 1981 with wins in both the Boston and New York City marathons, and her time in the latter event was the fastest run by a woman at that time. Susan Devoy was a four-time world champion who won eight British Opens in squash and was continuously ranked number one from 1983 until her retirement in 1992. Almost unbeatable on the court, she was undoubtedly squash’s most formidable woman player of her era. Former British Open champion Leilani Rorani (nee Joyce), who took out the first women’s doubles championship with Philippa Beams, has also achieved notable success. Erin Baker, perhaps the most complete female triathlete and multiple world champion in the 1980s, and Barbara Kendall, a three-time world champion windsurfer who won Olympic gold at Barcelona, silver at At-
lanta, and bronze at Sydney to become the country’s foremost female Olympian, have kept the flag flying high for New Zealand sportswomen. More recently, at the Athens Olympic Games, the Evers-Swindell twins, Caroline and Georgina, kept a three-year unbeaten record intact when the double world champions took a gold medal in rowing in the double sculls. Sarah Ulmer became New Zealand’s first Olympic gold medalist in cycling when, after winning the individual pursuit and breaking the world record at the 2004 World Championships, she completed an identical feat at Athens, a magnificent achievement.
Youth Sports Physical training, games, and sport have been part of the curriculum in New Zealand schools since the passing of the Education Act in 1877. Sport has had a high profile in New Zealand schools from the early years of education in this country, and the earliest high schools quickly established sporting contests with other schools, a pattern that was to continue, to broaden in scope, and to intensify in the twentieth century. In 1988, KiwiSport was introduced into New Zealand elementary schools for 7–13-year-old pupils. A program of modified sports (based on the Australian Aussie Sport model), it has grown to the extent that almost every young New Zealander is now exposed to this program. While there has always been some tension between physical education and sport in schools, the national curriculum adopted in 1999 acknowledges that sport is integral to New Zealand’s culture and is an important part of the overall development of students. The development of sports academies has escalated over the past decade in New Zealand high schools. The academies provide specialized programs within the school timetable for talented or elite athletes who have been identified through a variety of methods determined by individual schools. More recent developments have involved the appointment of sports coordinators in New Zealand high schools with funding provided by the government and support from Sport and Recreation New Zealand.
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New Zealand Rugby in New Zealand Because it took such quick root in the distinctive male culture of New Zealand, rugby was at first regarded with a good deal of ambivalence by the more respectable middle class despite the game’s public school origins. Respectable people judged it to be ‘a rough and dangerous game’, as a Dunedin paper claimed in 1875, and an excuse for anarchy and violence. The ‘sober-minded folks’ watching a game in Wanganui in 1875 were ‘heard giving expression to their feelings of contempt’. When in 1877 Frederick Pilling was killed in a club match, the coroner claimed that ‘the game of football was only worthy of savages’. Such racist associations were not, of course, relieved by the quick enthusiasm with which Maori took up the game. As the Wairarapa Star claimed, Maoris were believed to be ‘warm-blooded animals’ whose interests easily degenerated into pugilistic encounters. During the 1870s many respectable folk of wowser sympathies must have shared the view of the New Zealand Herald in 1878 that ‘Bull-baiting
Organizations At a national level, the Ministry of Recreation and Sport was replaced by the Hillary Commission for Recreation and Sport in 1987, named in honor of the conqueror of Everest and one of New Zealand’s most famous sons, Sir Edmund Hillary. The commission was in turn replaced by Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) in 2002. The latter’s mission is to promote active lifestyles for New Zealanders through effective sport and recreation systems, and to promote sport at the elite level, particularly in those sports that are significant to New Zealanders. One of SPARC’s responsibilities includes the New Zealand Academy of Sport, which was established in 2000 to support elite athletes. The New Zealand Assembly for Sport claims a collective membership of more than 1.5 million and provides advocacy and information services and sports law resources, and also has a system for supporting prom-
and cock-fighting have more to commend them as recreations than the rough-and-tumble hoodlum amusement yclept football which our youths seem to take so much delight in’. Even as late as 1889 the Wellington Rugby Football Union complained of their game: ‘Somehow it has got a bad name and a large section of the public are never done condemning it. It is brutal, it is coarse, it is not scientific’. Rugby was seen as encouraging all the less desirable elements of male culture–fighting, drinking, swearing. The latter, in particular, was a cause of some concern. The Temuka Leader commented after a match with Timaru: ‘The abominable conduct and the oaths and filthy expressions made use of by some of the young roughs from Timaru were disgusting in the extreme . . . If such conduct is not stopped, no parents will permit their boys to mingle with such low young rascals.’ (Phillips 1996, 95) Phillips, J. (1996). A man’s country? The image of the pakeha male–a history. Revised edition. Auckland: Penguin Books.
ising athletes. The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) oversees the administration, selection, development, and funding of teams that compete at both the Olympic and Commonwealth Games. Regional sports trusts provide a regional voice for sport and, with support from the Hillary Commission and SPARC, they have had a major impact on the local and regional scene. The New Zealand Sports Foundation, the New Zealand Federation of Sports Medicine, Coaching New Zealand, and Sport Science New Zealand have all made significant contributions to New Zealand sport, although some of these organizations have now also been subsumed by SPARC.
Sport in Society While rugby has been the national game since the latter part of the nineteenth century, it has not been without moments of great controversy, none more so than the massive social upheaval created by the tour of
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Foxhunters jumping a barbed wire fence in early twentieth century New Zealand.
non-American team to retain the Cup, the Team New Zealand crew then suffered the loss of its skipper, Russell Coutts, and several other key members to rival Swiss syndicate Alinghi, and it was the latter who successfully wrested the cup from Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup challenge in 2003. New Zealand by the South African rugby team, the Springboks, in 1981. “The prolonged . . . relationship with South Africa and its rejection of Maori players, the upsurge of female resistance to the game, and the growth of a wide range of other sports contributed to the weakening of the near-exclusive hold of rugby over male leisure” (Hindson et al. 1994, 35). Not only was rugby in disrepute, but this was the very time when the success of the New Zealand soccer team, the All Whites, in qualifying for the World Cup in 1982 greatly furthered the popularity of that sport. For the next decade, the Rugby Union attempted to counter the effects of the “near civil war of 1981” (MacLean 2000, 256), and it took the success of the All Blacks under David Kirk in the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987 to restore the national game to a preeminent place in New Zealand sport. More recent rugby successes on the world stage have assisted in rehabilitating the sport, including wins in the Women’s World Rugby Cup, the World Rugby Sevens, and a gold medal to the Wheelblacks in the Wheelchair Rugby final at the Paralympic Games in Athens. In yachting, Team New Zealand’s magnificent victory in the America’s Cup in 1995 in San Diego was only the second time in the event’s 144-year history that a non-American team had won the coveted silver trophy. However, the reign of the cup holders was to end in considerable controversy. Successfully defending the Cup in Auckland in 2000, where they became the first
The Future While sport clearly still holds a privileged position in New Zealand, major social and cultural changes in the 1970s and early 1980s saw new activities and alternative approaches to sport begin to flourish, and older cultural or sporting forms were replaced or swept aside by the new, the novel, and the fashionable. Extreme or action sports are now attracting growing numbers of young people who are opting out of adult-controlled, structured sport activities, and there is a growing preference for unstructured physical leisure activities (e.g., skateboarding, roller blading, mountain biking, snowboarding, etc.). These activities have a youthful demographic and an attachment to youth culture with its associated clothing fashions and music. In addition, many New Zealanders can no longer participate in regular sporting competitions because of longer and sometimes irregular working hours, and this, too, has increased the popularity of individualistic sporting and recreational pursuits. This further erodes the popularity of team sports (from a participant but not a spectator level), and means there are fewer people committing themselves to such activities.While sport is still a major aspect of New Zealand culture, its centrality to national identity is now frequently challenged and called into question. Despite this, sport continues to hold a very significant place, and rugby and netball, the national games, retain a high profile. Rex W. Thomson
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Further Reading Collins, C. (Ed.). (2000). Sport in New Zealand society. Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore. Hindson, A., Cushman, G., & Gidlow, B. (1994). Historical and social perspectives on sport in New Zealand. In L. D. Trenberth & C. W. Collins (Eds.), Sport management in New Zealand. Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore. King, M. (2003). The Penguin history of New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin. MacLean, M. (2000). Football as social critique: Protest movements, rugby, and history in Aotearoa, New Zealand. In J. A. Mangan & J. Nauright (Eds.), Sport in Australasian society. London: Frank Cass. McConnell, R. (2000). Maori, the Treaty of Waitangi, and sport: A critical analysis. In C. Collins (Ed.), Sport in New Zealand society. Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore. McLean, T. P. (1990). Silver fern: 150 years of New Zealand sport. Auckland, New Zealand: Moa. Nauright, J. (Ed.). (1995). Sport, power, and society in New Zealand: Historical and contemporary perspectives. Sydney, Australia: Australian Society for Sports History. Phillips, J. (1996). A man’s country? The image of the pakeha Male :A history. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin. Pringle, R. (2004). A social-history of the articulations between rugby union and masculinities within Aotearoa/New Zealand. New Zealand Sociology, 19(1), 102–128. Swan, A. C. (1992). History of New Zealand rugby football: Vo. 1. 1870–1945. Auckland, New Zealand: Moa. Thomson, R. W. (2000). Globalization and national differences: The changing face of youth sport. New Zealand Sociology, 15(1), 30–45.
Newspapers
E
very day around the world millions of people collect their daily newspaper from the mailbox or buy it on the way to or from work, read a version on the Internet, or listen to radio or television summaries of the headlines. For many readers the sports pages are a large part of the attraction of the newspaper. The huge popularity of sports with newspaper readers is evident in the high proportion of editorial space given to coverage of sports. Around the world research suggests that newspapers in both developed and developing nations dedicate between 15 and 20 percent of editorial space to sports. The daily sports pages are primarily a record of what has happened during the previous twenty-four hours, focusing on those people and events deemed to be of most importance or interest to
the general public. As David Conley puts it, “If the media acts as society’s scoreboard, journalists are its scorekeepers. Some might think that the score is padded, or that someone cannot count, but few can deny that journalists are daily historians, recording a community’s best and worst moments” (Conley 1997, ix).
Changes in the Sports Pages Tradition has largely determined the sports that receive the most coverage. Those sports that received early coverage—such as boxing, horse racing, and baseball in the United States, rugby in New Zealand, soccer and cricket in the United Kingdom—have maintained their dominance despite an explosion in new sports and events since the 1970s. Since their early days newspapers have focused on those sports that appeal to the perceived interests of their readers. This focus has meant an emphasis on sports played or watched by an educated, literate, and middle-class readership. John Stevens argues that the strongest evidence of middle-class bias in news coverage appears in the sports pages, which fail to cover sports, such as stock car racing, bowling, or rodeos, that attract large blue-collar followings. Instead, American newspapers large and small devote space to elite or middle-class sports: golf, tennis, skiing, and distance running. Boating and yachting are covered out of all proportion to their popularity, and sports editors tend also to give space to “country club” sports like women’s golf and tennis. (Stevens 1987, 10)
The development of television through the 1960s had profound effects on newspaper coverage of sports. Most obviously, it generated a shift away from stories that focused on results and descriptions of play. No longer could sportswriters assume that most readers had not “seen” the game. Instead, coverage became more analytical and focused on in-depth analysis of why and how particular results occurred. The challenges posed by television also led to a broader range of stories being found in newspapers as “reporters began to look into boardrooms, courtrooms, and training rooms” (Garrison and Sabljak 1993, 31). Today’s sports sections are a mix of
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If you’re not a member of a major league baseball team, your errors, unless they are truly spectacular, don’t show up in the morning paper. ■ JANE GOODSELL
in-depth analysis, feature material, opinion, and behindthe-scenes or nonevent coverage. As sports have become big business, and as athletes have become celebrities, sports stories have begun to appear throughout the newspaper. Serious issues such as gambling, drugs, sex scandals, and restraint-of-trade legal cases often appear on the front page rather than in the sports section.
Acquiring Male Readers Even a cursory reading of most daily newspapers shows that the sports pages are far from a record of the full diversity of sports being played or watched. Instead, because newspapers are in the business of selling readers to advertisers, coverage is dedicated to those athletes and sports that are believed to attract the readers that advertisers want to target. “In effect, readers are a commodity generated by the news industry. . . and access to them is sold as advertising space” (Lowes 2004, 131). Advertisers want to purchase clearly defined and highly concentrated audiences of people likely to buy their products. Stevens points out that publishers developed special sports sections to help advertisers reach male readers “just as they packaged fashions and society for women and comics sections for kids” (Stevens 1987, 7). The trend continues today with metropolitan daily newspapers selling advertisers on the ability of the sports section to attract the highly desirable demographic of males aged eighteen to forty-nine with disposable income. Lawrence Wenner suggests that “in many ways, the sports press provides a socially sanctioned gossip sheet for men . . . a place where a great deal of conjecture is placed upon ‘heroes’ and events of little worldly import” (Wenner 1989, 15). In a recent study of work routines on a large metropolitan Canadian daily newspaper, Mark Lowes discovered that the newspaper openly courted male readers by focusing on commercial spectator sports that are widely considered as the most appealing to male readers. “The prevailing philosophy in the news industry is that the most effective way to attract male readers is to provide extensive coverage of commercial spectator sports” (Lowes 2004, 131). As a result, non-
commercial sports were largely absent or covered as an afterthought at best.
Reflecting Cultural Values Like all forms of mass media, newspapers select between different sports for those believed to have the widest appeal to readers. Within each sport newspaper coverage highlights particular aspects and downplays or ignores others. Research consistently reveals the cultural assumption that men’s commercial sports sell newspapers and advertising and have the widest appeal. In comparison, women’s sports, masters-level competitions, and events such as the Paralympics are believed to have a much narrower focus. However, evidence from Australia that few newspaper sports sections actually conduct market research means that the content of the sports section reflects the assumptions and choices of editors, journalists, subeditors, columnists, and photographers, the overwhelming number of whom are white, male, and middle-class. Their decisions, which are often explained as “natural” or “normal,” are in fact trained by on-the-job practices and years of consuming mediated sports. The increasing coverage of commercial sports reinforces the idea of sports as an entertainment spectacle to be purchased or consumed. The mostly male professional sports from which money can be made via tickets, merchandise, and television rights receive the most coverage.The process of assigning reporters to cover specific professional sports beats also contributes to the high level of coverage for commercial sports. Reporters on a beat are “forced to come up with something, even if it’s the most banal story imaginable. . . . Lack of activity on a sports beat is . . . insufficient grounds for a reporter not to generate news” (Lowes 1999, 43). Overall, newspapers’ choices among sports tend to mean commercial rather than amateur, male rather than female, able-bodied rather than Paralympic, and elite rather than masters-level sports. Choices within sports tend to reinforce rather than challenge cultural beliefs and ideas about gender, race and ethnicity, age, disability, and national identity.
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Influencing Readers The stories and images in the sports pages reflect and contribute to readers’ understandings of the society in which the readers live. As Stuart Hall puts it, rather than telling us what to think, the news media tell us what to think about. Media coverage does not directly affect behavior but slowly transforms what appear to be “the most plausible frameworks we have of telling ourselves a certain story about the world” (Hall 1984, 8). Phillips argues that “regardless of what is actually happening, it is the media’s interpretation of that event that shapes our attitudes, values and perceptions about the world and about our culture” (Phillips 1997, 20). Therefore, media versions of particular cultural events—particularly those with which fewer people have direct experience such as the Gay Games or masters games—are important to how those events and the people who participate in them are seen by the general public. When newspapers give saturation coverage of the Olympic Games but virtually ignore the Paralympics, this choice sends an important message about what kinds of sport “really” count and are valued by society.
Representing Gender Differences Generally, newspapers’ choices tend to reflect cultural beliefs of their time. For example, during the early 1900s sports stories about women tended to focus more on women’s ability to serve tea or their involvement as spectators rather than participants. Although sportswomen received coverage through the 1920s and 1930s, the sports pages after World War II reflected cultural expectations that women would return to motherhood, homemaking, and domesticity. In Australia coverage of women’s teams and international tours decreased in the face of a belief that “the only fitness women needed in postwar Australia was the fitness required to produce healthy babies” (Stell 1991, 232). Even during the 1970s a judge in a North American case over equal access to sports was reported to have said: “Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow” (Dyer 1982, 109).
Worldwide research shows that the sports pages are dominated by stories and images of men’s sports, particularly those commercial team sports that are also linked to national identity and culturally valued ideals of masculinity. Many newspaper stories and images focus on men’s courage, toughness, physical aggression, and ability to withstand pain. The sports pages carry images of bloodied men, bone-crunching tackles, and bandaged and taped body parts. As well, most images of male athletes are in action, performing physical feats of skill and daring. Similarly, coverage of women also tends to support cultural ideals of femininity. Historian Murray Phillips’s assessment of media coverage in Australia reflects the results of hundreds of international analyses: “As all the surveys since 1980 have indicated, women have struggled to get consistent, long-term and supportive media attention. . . . In reality the media profile of women’s sport is inconsistent, short-term and focused on sensational stories” (Phillips 1997, 19). Media descriptions often emphasize women’s physical traits, clothes, emotions, and relationships and focus on conventionally attractive or sports-sexy athletes such as tennis player Anna Kournikova. Photographs reinforce the sportssexy image by focusing on women’s buttocks, breasts, hips, thighs, and lips. Overall, most coverage is ambivalent, meaning that “positive descriptions and images of women athletes are juxtaposed with descriptions and images that undermine and trivialize women’s efforts and successes” (Wensing and Bruce 2003, 388). This focus on traditional notions of masculinity and femininity translates into higher levels of coverage for men in physically dangerous or contact team sports such as rugby or soccer and for women in individual, aesthetic, and noncontact sports such as tennis, ice skating, swimming, golf, gymnastics, and diving.
Representing Racial Differences Newspaper coverage has long reflected cultural beliefs about race. Newspapers during the 1930s equated black athletes with animal imagery and represented them as unequal to white men. Stereotypes such as laziness and
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Newspapers Accuracy in Sports Reporting This letter to the editor from the early 1800s comments on the need to report sports events accurately and also offers advice to the reporters. To the Editor of the Spirit of Times—The utility and the beauty of the reports of all races is their strict and rigorous accuracy; and rather than have the most humorous and witty account of a race which draws upon the fancy at the expense of truth and the facts of the case, all true sportsmen would prefer the bare statement of facts, without note or comment. Indeed, justice to horses and their owners or breeders demands this, or your records cease to be looked to as the standard of the merits of the horses of the day which they propose to notice, and may loose, if they be allowed to be inaccurate, all the advantages proposed by them, for after, as well as the present, times. One acknowledged inaccurate report, unless it be corrected, may vitiate the credit of a dozen reports from the same source, which may be rigidly correct as to the time made, and other matters. Under this impression, and with this view of the subject, I consider that the interests of the American Turf demand that every intelligent Turfite should regard it as his bounden duty to have corrected through
ability to cope with pressure were widespread. For example, in a description of U.S. boxer Joe Louis in 1939, reporter Paul Gallico wrote: “Louis, the magnificent animal. . . . He eats. He sleeps. He fights. . . . Is he all instinct, all animal? Or have a hundred million years left a fold upon his brain?” (Coakley 1998, 258). Although as time passes stereotypes change along with cultural beliefs and values, the echoes of the past can easily be heard in sports coverage that emphasizes black athletic superiority with little reference to hard work or intellect. Although several studies point to a wider array of representations and a decreasing reliance solely on the “black athlete” metaphor, more than twenty-five years of analyses suggest that much
your paper, any errors that may be officially reported, when there is a certainty that a mistake has been made—else we shall soon have doubted the record of a number of extraordinary durability or bottom. The report of a race should not be regarded as only a newspaper flourish, but a strict record of names and pedigrees, of distance, of time, and of the places of the different horses that run as they come in, if they can be placed. And for this purpose the person intending to make the report should hold pencil and paper in hand, and note the facts as they occur, and not depend upon his memory to record the particulars of several races which occur so near together in the same day as to be almost jumbled up together in the memory at its close. Nothing should be said by the reporter like these things—that “Boston, has he been pressed, could have made his 4 miles in this race in the astonishing time of 7:36”—or that “this heat by Balie Peyton and Duane—7:42 [1/2]—is the best on record”—or that “in this there were three second rate nags, and three certainly not above third rate.” Facts alone should be stated, and these facts left to deduce their own commentaries. Source: Menna, L. K. (Vol. Ed.). (1995). Sports in North America—A documentary history. Vol. 2: The origins of modern sports, 1820–1840 (p. 48). Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
media coverage reflects conventional racial stereotypes about black and white athletes. For example, black basketball players are, as McDonald and Andrews argue about U.S. basketball star Michael Jordan, frequently linked with lingering codes of natural athleticism that recapture the mind-body dualism that has dominated popular racial discourses. “This discourse of extraordinary athleticism relies upon common sense assumptions of an innate Black physicality, a racist characterization once used to justify the institution of slavery and Social Darwinist constructions of White supremacy” (McDonald and Andrews 2001, 25). One of the key effects of such coverage is the polarizing of distinctions between “races” so that they become
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I always turn to the sports page first, which records people’s accomplishments. The front page has nothing, but man’s failures. ■ EARL WARREN
understood as more rather than less different. The stereotypes produced by the media are repeated so often that they become accepted as cultural “facts.” They have significant effects because people come to see them as accurate and informative. For example: If a coach believes that the black sportsman he is helping to prepare is naturally endowed with the physical equipment to produce fast sprints . . . it will affect his judgment as to the areas of specialty into which he should channel the efforts of that sportsman. (Cashmore 1982, 44)
Representing National Uniqueness The media are a powerful tool in the symbolic imagining and (re-)creation of a nation. In particular, the Western sports media reinforce and re-create particular imaginings of national identity that hark back to past successes. Media coverage of international sports often emphasizes shared values and draws attention away from internal divisions such as race, class, religion, and gender. Rowe and colleagues suggest that “there is surely no cultural force more equal to the task of creating an imaginary national unity than the international sports-media complex” (Rowe, McKay, and Miller 1998, 133). Overwhelmingly, each nation’s media coverage of international sports events focuses on representing “us” as joined together and sharing in the successes of “our” athletes. When newspapers cover athletes from “other” countries, the coverage tends to draw upon and reinforce stereotypes about the personality traits of different nations or groups within nations such as the flamboyant Italians, the inscrutable Chinese, the hardworking British, or the hot-headed and unpredictable South Americans. Despite the media representing a nation as united, sporting national identity is strongly gendered. Rowe and colleagues (1998) argue that the sports media almost exclusively concentrate on men as the carriers of national character. They point out that although the achievements of individual women athletes may be of great media significance, “at the level of team sports, where the source of pride is collectivized, women are denied the status of bearers of national qualities that the
media and the apparatus of the state conventionally accord to men” (Rowe, McKay, and Miller 1998, 126).
The Future The trend of condensing media ownership, supporting fewer newspapers, and having less media competition continues apace throughout Europe, Australasia, and North America. Many markets today have only one daily newspaper. However, as Conley points out, “Despite periodic assertions—first by the broadcast industry, and currently on behalf of the information superhighway—that newspapers are destined to become fossils, there is still no sign this is occurring” (Conley 1997, 31). To date newspapers have successfully adapted to each challenge and maintained a steady share of the sports news market. The focus of newspaper research is likely to remain on commercial sports and global events such as the Olympics, tennis Grand Slams, and world cups that receive the most coverage. Except for those women’s sports that can sell themselves as sports-sexy, coverage of women’s sport is increasingly likely to be found in niche publications such as Sports Illustrated for Women or on the Internet, which offers publicity options for those sports that are ignored by mainstream newspapers. Toni Bruce See also Media-Sports Complex; Sportswriting and Reporting
Further Reading Brown, P. (1994). Gender, the press and history: Coverage of women’s sport in the Newcastle Herald, 1890–1990. Media Information Australia, 75, 24–34. Cashmore, E. (1982). Black sportsmen. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Coakley, J. J. (1998). Sport in society: Issues and controversies. Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill. Conley, D. (1997). The daily miracle: An introduction to journalism. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press. Cunningham, S., & Turner, G. (Eds.). (1997). The media in Australia. St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Dyer, K. (1982). Challenging the men. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press. Garrison, B., & Sabljak, M. (1993). Sports reporting (2nd ed.). Ames: Iowa State University Press.
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Hall, S. (1984). The narrative construction of reality: An interview with Stuart Hall. Southern Review, 17, 3–17. Jackson, D. Z. (1989, January 22). Call the plays in black and white. Boston Globe, A30, A33. Lowes, M. D. (1999). Inside the sports pages: Work routines, professional ideologies, and the manufacture of sports news. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Lowes, M. D. (2004). Sports page: A case study in the manufacture of sports news for the daily press. In D. Rowe (Ed.), Critical readings: Sport, culture and the media (pp. 129–145). Berkshire, UK: Open University Press. Magdalinski, T. (2000). The reinvention of Australia for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. International Journal for the History of Sport, 17(2–3), 305–322. McChesney, R. W. (1989). Media made sport: A history of sports coverage in the United States. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), Media, sports, & society (pp. 49–69). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. McDonald, M. G., & Andrews, D. L. (2001). Michael Jordan: Corporate sport and postmodern celebrityhood. In D. L. Andrews & S. J. Jackson (Eds.), Sport stars: The cultural politics of sporting celebrity (pp. 20–35). New York: Routledge. Messner, M. A. (2002). Taking the field: Women, men and sports. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Phillips, M. (1997). An illusory image: A report on the media coverage and portrayal of women’s sport in Australia. Canberra, Australia: Australian Sports Commission. Rowe, D. (2004). Sport, culture and the media (2nd ed.). Buckingham, PA: Open University Press. Rowe, D., McKay, J., & Miller, T. (1998). Come together: Sport, nationalism, and the media. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), Media sport (pp. 119–133). London: Routledge. Sabo, D., & Jansen, S. C. (1998). Prometheus unbound: Constructions of masculinity in the sports media. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), Media sport (pp. 202–217). New York: Routledge. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Stell, M. K. (1991). Half the race: A history of Australian women in sport. North Ryde, Australia: Angus & Robertson. Stevens, J. (1987, Fall). The rise of the sports page. Gannett Center Journal, 1(2), 1–11. Wenner, L. A. (Ed.). (1989). Media, sports, & society. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Wensing, E., & Bruce, T. (2003). Bending the rules: Media representations of gender during an international sporting event. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(4), 387–396.
Nextel (Winston) Cup
T
he Nextel (Winston) Cup is a U.S. stock car racing series that was sponsored by R. J. Reynolds tobacco company from 1971 to 2003 and by Nextel communications company since 2004. The series is the most famous governed by the National Association for Stock Car
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Auto Racing (NASCAR), the main motor sports sanctioning body in the United States. The winner of the series is determined by points awarded at races throughout the season. Part of the appeal of the Nextel Cup is the fact that drivers race in stock cars; fans can drive home in the same kind of car that they saw win a race. Seven million fans saw Nextel Cup races in person in 2003.
Origins Stock car racing grew in popularity in the southeastern United States during the 1940s, with many organizations trying to promote and control the sport. Bill (“Big Bill”) France Sr. consolidated these organizations into NASCAR in 1947. NASCAR started the “Strictly Stock” national point series in 1949, followed by the “Grand National” series from 1950 to 1970. However, the series was often won by any team who could simply get a car to all the national races because often more than fifty races a year were held. Junior Johnson approached R. J. Reynolds about sponsoring his racing team in 1970 for $800,000. The timing was good; Reynolds had extra advertising money to spend because it could no longer advertise on TV and radio, so Reynolds sponsored the entire series. In December 1970 Reynolds pledged $100,000 for a special point fund for the 1971 NASCAR season, creating the Winston Cup points series. Soon after, the number of races was reduced significantly so that drivers would be able to show up at all races. In 1972 the name of the series changed from “NASCAR Grand National” to “NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National,” then to the “NASCAR Winston Cup” in 1986. Reynolds’s promotion, along with the growth of corporate sponsorship across the board, brought the sport to a new level. The stars of the series—Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, and Richard Petty—also helped the series become popular. U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s visit to the Firecracker 500 race in Daytona, Florida, to see the final win of Petty’s career in 1984 brought national coverage to the sport. Other bonus payouts such as the Winston Million and No Bull 5 brought further interest in the series.
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When Nextel became the series sponsor in 2004, the series was renamed the “NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.” Reynolds could no longer sponsor the series because of the 1998 legal ruling that tobacco companies would not be permitted to sponsor sporting events in most states.
tracks: superspeedways (more than 4 kilometers), intermediate (1.6–3.1 kilometers) tracks, short (.8–1.2 kilometers) tracks, and road courses. Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt won the series championship seven times each. Petty also won the most races (two hundred).
Teams
Scoring
Forty to sixty teams compete in the series each week from mid-February to mid-November. To ensure close races, cars must have equal weight and the same size gas tank and use the same kind of gasoline and tires. Drivers are limited to driving a few makes of U.S.-made, steel-bodied passenger sedans: Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Ford Taurus, Pontiac Grand Prix, and Dodge Intrepid. Stock parts such as doors, windows, passenger seats, and the ignition are removed from the cars. Teams are made up of at least forty people, including the crew, pit crew, spotters, mechanics, managers, and scorers. Sometimes teams support more than one car; this arrangement helps distribute costs and allows drivers to share information.
The points system used until 2003 was invented by Bob Latford in 1975. The Nextel Cup winner receives 175 points. Each of the next five places receives five fewer points for each place (170, 165, and so forth). Places 7–11 receive four fewer points each, and places 12 and higher receive three fewer points each. At most forty-three drivers start a race, so the forty-third-place finisher would receive thirty-four points. In order to win points, a car must start the race and complete one lap. Five bonus points are awarded to any car that led at least one lap (counted at the start/finish line), and five more points are awarded to the car that led the most laps. At the end of the season the series winner is the driver with the most points.
Drivers Drivers must be at least sixteen years old. Originally NASCAR drivers were hard-racing, hard-fighting, hard-living folks from the southern United States. Now drivers are more down to earth and family oriented, coming from all over the United States and overseas. Drivers and team members are still mostly white males, with a few minority members and women involved (although women make up about 50 percent of the fans of the sport). Drivers must be versatile because the series is raced on four types of
The crowded stands at a race. Source: istockphoto/motoed.
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Nigeria Olympics Results 2004 Summer Olympics: 2 Bronze
The points system was changed in 2004 in an attempt to reward wins over consistent finishes. Points were tallied as described earlier until after the twentysixth race of the season. At that time the top ten drivers and any driver within four hundred points of the winner are the only drivers whose points are reset for the “Chase to the Cup.” The top driver gets 5,050 points; the second-place driver gets 5,045 points, and each driver after that gets five points less. Thereafter, races count the same as described earlier.
The Future Interest in the Nextel Cup and NASCAR is no longer confined to the southern United States as stock car racing has grown faster than all other U.S. national sports leagues during the last decade. Every large track is adding seats, perhaps to the detriment of the smaller tracks used in the series, and almost all series tracks are owned by corporations now. The U.S. television ratings are second only to those of the National Football League. Stock car racing is a $2 billion annual business, with $1 billion of that coming from souvenir sales. NASCAR is attempting to become a more diverse sport through initiatives and minority-owned teams. Christina L. Hennessey
Further Reading Assael, S. (1998). Wide open: Days and nights on the NASCAR tour. New York: Ballantine Books. Hemphill, P. (1997). Wheels: A season on NASCAR’s Winston Cup circuit. New York: Simon & Schuster. Howell, M. D. (1997). From moonshine to Madison Avenue: A cultural history of the NASCAR Winston Cup series. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Huff, R. (1997). Insider’s guide to stock car racing: NASCAR racing, America’s fastest growing sport. Chicago: Bonus Books. Huler, S. (1999). A little bit sideways: One week inside a NASCAR Winston Cup team. Osceola, WI: MBI Publishing. Martin, M. (2000). NASCAR for dummies. New York: Wiley. Moriarity, F. (1998). The encyclopedia of stock car racing. New York: MetroBooks. The official NASCAR handbook: Everything you want to know about the NASCAR Winston Cup series. (1998). New York: HarperHorizon. Wright, J. (2002). Fixin’ to git: A fan’s love affair with the Winston Cup. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Nigeria
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igeria, the most populous black nation in the world, is located along the west coast of Africa. Traditionally Nigerians—120 million people of diverse cultures and traditions—are sports-loving people. Traditional sports such as fishing, hunting, moonlight wrestling, and traditional dancing are organized competitively among cities, especially during festivals often staged during the harvest seasons and in the evenings after a hard day’s work on the farm.
Modern Sports Nigeria’s real sports progress began with formal sports organization in 1910 and its extension from teacher training colleges to secondary schools when Empire Day competitions were organized about 1928. The establishment of mission schools assisted the development of new sports and games, which were challenges to students. In spite of these challenges, sports brought Nigerians together. The period between 1920 and 1940 marked the beginning of modern sports in Nigeria. In 1933 the British syllabus was imported through missionaries. This syllabus included sports such as soccer and gymnastics. Then, between 1940 and 1960, the government backed sports in Nigeria, giving them legitimacy. Competitions—for instance, the Grair Powell Cup competition and the Principals Cup competition for secondary schools—were introduced, organized, and developed. These two competitions served as a way to select outstanding athletes to represent Nigeria at the 1950 Commonwealth Games. The first appearance of Nigeria at the Olympic Games —as a British colony in 1952 at Helsinki, Finland— further helped the development and acceptance of sports in Nigeria. Nigeria won its first Olympic gold medals in the women’s long jump and men’s soccer in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996. The period of 1960–1970 marked a turning point in the history of sports in Nigeria. During this period,
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Nigeria Indigenous Sports in Nigeria In the extract below, British missionary George Basden describes games and sports among the Ibos of Nigeria. Ordinarily the Ibo is a very serious person. At the same time he has a well-developed humorous side to his nature and he can, on occasion, give play to his emotions with complete abandon, so much so that he becomes totally oblivious of things around him. The games commonly played by boys and girls have been described in Chap. V [turning somersaults in the air, shooting with bows and arrows, wrestling
and dancing]. In the case of adults it is not always easy to distinguish between recreation and serious occupation; sometimes the two are combined, as in shooting. In the case of dancing it is often difficult to differentiate between that which is simply recreative and that which is the physical expression of religious enthusiasm. Shooting, wrestling, dancing and swimming are the sports of men; comparatively few of the women swim, but all indulge freely in dancing. The national game of Okwe is common to both sexes. Source: Basden, G. (1921). Among the Ibos of Nigeria. London: Seeley, Service and Co.
because of the acceptance of the educational values of sports, many institutions established departments of sports. Nigerian universities also formed the Nigerian University Games Association (NUGA) during this period.
Participant and Spectator Sports Soccer, the most popular sport in Nigeria, got its first boost when Governor Arthur Richards donated the Challenge Cup in 1945. Nigeria’s first attempt at international sports occurred when Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe represented Nigeria in the 440-yard race at the 1934 Commonwealth Games in London. Nigeria participated in the Commonwealth Games from 1950 onward: Auckland, New Zealand, in 1950; Vancouver, Canada, in 1954; and Britain in 2002. Sports have helped Nigeria to unite its diverse ethnic groups when politics has failed. Indeed, sports have been used to arrest the drift toward intertribal war such as the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970. The National Sports Council was established to govern sports in Nigeria. The biggest sporting event in Nigeria, the national sports festival, was introduced by Nigerian sports enthusiast and organizer Jerry Enyeazu in 1973 after the civil war, and it is still the most celebrated sports event in Nigeria, staged every other year. Today Nigeria participates in twenty-six international sports and five traditional sports. Nigeria has also introduced para-soccer (soccer on skates for paraplegics) to the
rest of the world. After soccer, the most popular sport in Nigeria is track and field (athletics).
Women in Sports Traditionally Nigerians had seen sports as an activity for men, whereas they had seen sports as a distraction for women rather than as a fundamental part of a healthy life. Nevertheless, women’s historical struggle for increased opportunities has resulted in changes that only a few years ago were unimaginable. Women now participate in a vast range of sports in Nigeria. They are no longer content to be spectators either in public life or in sports. Nigerian women have continued to boost the country’s international image through sports. They have shown some supremacy over men. For example, Nigerian women athletes during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta won four medals (one gold, one silver, and two bronze), whereas the men won one gold and one bronze. The first gold medal by Nigeria after thirtyeight years of Olympics participation was won by Chioma Ajunwa in the women’s long jump. Nigeria’s women’s national basketball team represented Africa in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
Youth in Sports The establishment of the Nigeria Schools Sports Federation (NSSF) in 1978 has helped youth participate in sports at local, national, and international levels. Sports
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Nigeria Key Events in Nigeria Sports History 1910 The first formal sports organizations are established.
pate in international competitions in England, Norway, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, in addition to regional competitions within Africa.
1928 The annual Empire Day competitions begin.
Issues and Controversies
1933 Sports is incorporated into the school curriculum. 1945 The soccer Challenge Cup is established. 1950 Nigeria competes in the British Commonwealth Games for the first time. 1952 Nigeria competes in the Olympics for the first time. 1973 The annual National Sports Festival is established. 1978 The Nigeria Schools Sports Federation is established. 1996 Nigeria wins its first Olympic gold medals, in the women’s long jump and men’s soccer.
are organized for the primary schools and secondary schools at local and zone levels to accommodate participation by a large number of schools. This organization is coordinated by school sports officers who are officials of the federal Ministry of Education in collaboration with Ministry of Education sports officers under the supervision of the NSSF.Youth participate in sports such as basketball, handball, tennis, swimming, football, track and field, chess, and gymnastics.The Youth Sports Federation organizes youth competitions, mainly in soccer. Some sports are sponsored by corporate bodies, private organizations, and government bodies. Private organizations include Nestle PLC (basketball), Shell Petroleum (soccer), MTN (marathon), and Nigeria Breweries PLC (various sports). Others are Guinness, Coca-Cola, Seven-Up, First Bank, Coscharis, Cadbury, and Globacom. The Nigeria Football Association and other sports federations have been helping young people to partici-
Sports influence the politics, economy, and social life of Nigerian people. Issues and controversies arising from these three areas also influence sports. Poor management is a major hindrance to sports development in Nigeria. Sports administrators tend to mismanage the human and material resources entrusted to their care. Sports administrators also often depend too much on foreign-based athletes who are more committed to their respective clubs than to national assignments. Another problem confronting Nigerian sports is the sudden and irrational change of technical crews at crucial times because of the desire to win all competitions. This behavior can discourage coaches and render a team’s program useless. The attitude of some of foreign-based athletes concerning wearing their national colors is another problem. Facilities and equipment are another issue. The government has tried to address this issue because sports administrators do not maintain facilities and equipment well enough. More funding should be directed toward the maintenance of sports facilities. Poor officiating is also a major issue. Poor officiating often mars soccer games in Nigeria and has resulted in violence by spectators that has caused serious injuries and loss of lives and property. Another issue is the selection of athletes for national and international competitions. This issue has become an obstacle to sports development because selection of athletes has been politicized in some sports. These issues notwithstanding, Nigerian elite athletes are well recognized by the government and by citizens. They are heroes and role models, some of whom have received national honors.
The Future Many Nigerians want to be like the Nigerian soccer star J. J. Okocha. Youths want to play soccer, and many
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Norway Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 11 Gold, 7 Silver, 6 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics: 5 Gold, 1 Bronze
don’t care to finish their secondary education before entering professional sports. With the number of interest groups in Nigeria, sports clubs are likely to go to the stock exchange as public liability companies in the near future. However, this change will occur only when coaches and club management become business oriented and players improve their standard of play to attract more spectators. The government should control the privatization and commercialization of sports to attract stakeholders and to induce investment, giving people the opportunity to invest in sports in areas such as production and distribution of sports equipment and the construction of facilities, physiology and research laboratories, and community sports centers, even in rural areas. The National Institute for Sports and Universities in Nigeria should provide sports information centers to enrich students’ knowledge of sports and related issues. Lasun Emiola
Further Reading Bucher, C. A. (1983). Administration of physical education and athletics programmes. St. Louis, MO: C. U. Mosby. Emiola, L. (2002). Go back to nappy age. Youth’s Football Development, 1(1), 16.
Norway
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he Norwegian population is very physically active in its leisure time—seven out of ten Norwegians between sixteen and seventy-nine exercise at least once a week. Many exercise with friends and family, but more than half exercise alone. The most popular activity is hiking in the forest, followed by bicycling, cross-country skiing, and swimming. While 18 percent exercise in a private fitness studio, 13 percent exercise in a sport club. Members of sport clubs are more physically active than those who are not members.
Organized Sport Sport is important to Norwegian society, both as physical activity and as entertainment. More than a third of the population of 4.5 million is engaged in organized sport in some way. The Norwegian sport federations and the regional sport organizations formed the Confederation of Sports in 1861. Today the Confederation’s formal name is the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Confederation of Sports. It is the country’s largest voluntary organization, has close to 2 million members, and consists of more than 12,000 sport clubs, which belong to one or more of the 55 different sport federations. And the number of people active in sport clubs is increasing. During 2002, about 500 new clubs and 30,000 new members were registered. Many sport clubs are quite small, with fewer than 100 members, but a few clubs are very large: About 10 percent of clubs have 40 percent of all members. The most popular participant sports are soccer, skiing, golf, and team handball. “Sports for all” is the long-term objective of the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Confederation of Sports, which works to ensure that the people of Norway are able to engage in sports according to their wishes and needs. It is also responsible for the administration of and preparation for Norway’s participation in the Olympic Games, where Norway has been relatively successful, especially considering that it is a very small country. Norwegian athletes usually win more medals in the Winter Olympics, but Norway became the best of the Nordic countries in the Summer Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, where its athletes took five gold medals. Voluntarism, democracy, loyalty, and equality are essential values in all sports in Norway. Traditionally, the sport clubs have been formed by friends or fellow workers, or simply by people who find a mutual interest in one or more branches of sport, and democratic elections have always been an integral part of them.The general assembly of the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Confederation of Sports consists of representatives of the federations and of the regional bodies. It meets
NORWAY
every four years to draw up objectives and strategies, to pass sport laws, and to elect the Board of Sports.
Financing The most important income sources for the sport organizations are the lottery money from the Norwegian state, money from sponsors, and different forms of voluntary work and of money raised by club members. The budget for the umbrella organization (the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Confederation of Sports) shows that two-thirds of its income comes from the state lottery. This percentage diminishes at the lower levels of the organization. Only 16 percent of the average sport federation’s budget comes from the state, and at the club level it is only about 10 percent. Here the major source of financing comes from the 24,000 manyears of voluntary work and of money raised by all members—including contributions by the parents of the 500,000 children and youth who belong.
Leadership and Gender In spite of the fact that Norway is known internationally for its work for equality between the sexes, only 7 percent of the presidents of sports federations are women.
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The women in Norwegian organized sport count for 38 percent of all memberships—a percentage that has remained relatively stable over the last ten to fifteen years. Among the executive board members in all sport federations, women make up 29 percent. This is higher than it was ten years ago, probably due to the fact that the law of the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Confederation of Sports states that all boards and committees in the organization shall consist of both genders, and that the gender proportions should reflect the proportion of membership in the organization. From an international perspective, this is relatively radical. However, at the sport club level, more than 80 percent of the leaders are men.
Membership by Sport and Gender More than half (55 percent) of the members in the sport clubs are twenty-five years old or younger.The age group nine to fifteen has by far the largest membership— 65 percent of all boys and 51 percent of all girls. The differences between girls and boys are largest among sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, where 25 percent of females and 42 percent of males belong to a sport club. The most popular sports among young female club members are soccer, team handball, and gymnastics. The boys’ favorites are soccer, skiing, and team handball. Six- to twelve-year-old girls also favor soccer, but among them, skiing is more popular than handball. Among boys in the same age group, soccer is followed by handball and skiing. Among men over twentyfive, soccer, golf, skiing, and
The view from a kayak paddling through a Norwegian fjord. Source: istockphoto/Saturated.
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shooting are the most popular sports. Among women in the same age group, golf, skiing, soccer, and gymnastics are the most popular sports.
Females in Soccer What is most interesting in these numbers is that soccer, which until 1975 was a sport only for men in Norway, has grown to be the largest female sport, with some 95,000 active players in 2003. One reason for this may be a shift in the position of women in Norwegian society, which is probably linked to Norwegian legislation for equal rights. In addition, since accepting women and girls as members, the Norwegian Football Association itself has worked systematically to recruit and keep girls in soccer. Kari Fasting See also Bislett Stadium; Holmenkollen Ski Jump; Holmenkollen Sunday
Further Reading Sport in Norway. (2005). Retrieved February 3, 2005, from http:// www.idrett.no Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB). (2002). Levekårsundersøkelsen 2001. Oslo, Norway: Kongsvinger. Tilstandsrapport for norsk idrett. (2002). Norges idrettsforbund og Olympiske Komite. Oslo, Norway: Akilles. Tilstandsrapport 2003, Om idrett og fysisk aktivitet i Norge. (2003). Norges Idrettsforbund og Olympiske Komite. Oslo, Norway: Akilles.
Nutrition
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he ability of a person to exercise or to participate in sports is impaired if the person’s diet is inadequate, although the concept of dietary inadequacy may be quite different for an active person than for a sedentary person. Conversely, performance may be improved by dietary manipulation, but we still have an incomplete understanding of how best to control diet to optimize sports performance. The same general nutritional prin-
ciples apply to all activities in which people need optimum exercise performance. At the highest level of competition, where competitors are predisposed to success by genetic endowment and have undergone the most rigorous training, nutritional intervention may make the difference between success and failure. We should not be surprised, therefore, that sportsmen and sportswomen generally are concerned about their diet, although this concern is not always matched by an understanding of basic nutritional principles. Nutrition in sport has been a concern since antiquity. Some of the dietary practices followed by athletes in pursuit of success are sound, but others have no beneficial effect and may even be harmful. As in other areas of nutrition, these practices are often encouraged by those who stand to gain financially from sales of dietary supplements. We should consider two aspects; the first is the diet during training that must be consumed on a daily basis for a large part of the year, and the second is the diet during the immediate precompetition period and during competition itself. Considering the range of activities encompassed by the term sport and the variation in the characteristics of the people taking part, we should not be surprised that nutritional requirements vary. For noncompetitive activities and for the person who exercises for recreational and health reasons, the daily diet forms part of a lifestyle that may be quite different from that of the competitive athlete, but the nutritional implications of exercise participation apply equally, albeit to different degrees.
Nutrition for Training An athlete in training needs a diet that meets the additional nutrient requirements imposed by the training load. In sports involving prolonged strenuous exercise on a regular basis, participation has a significant effect on energy balance.The metabolic rate during running or cycling, for example, may be fifteen to twenty times the resting rate, and such levels of activity may be sustained for several hours by trained athletes. Evidence suggests
NUTRITION
that the metabolic rate may remain elevated for at least twelve and possibly up to twenty-four hours if the exercise is prolonged and close to the maximum intensity that can be sustained; however, some experts have disputed this evidence, claiming that the metabolic rate would not likely remain elevated for long periods after more moderate exercise. If body weight and performance levels are to be maintained, the high rate of energy expenditure must be matched by a high energy intake. Available data for most athletes suggest that they are in energy balance within the limits of the techniques used for measuring intake and expenditure. This fact is to be expected because a chronic deficit in energy intake would lead to a progressive loss of body mass. However, data for women engaged in sports in which a low body weight, and especially a low body fat content, are important, such as gymnastics, long-distance running, and ballet, consistently show a lower than expected energy intake. No obvious physiological explanation exists for this finding other than methodological errors in the calculation of energy intake and expenditure, but that these errors should apply specifically to this group of athletes seems odd. Many of these women do, however, have a low body fat content: A body fat content of less than 10 percent is not uncommon in female long-distance runners. Secondary amenorrhea (abnormal absence or suppression of menses), possibly related more to the training regimen than to the low body fat content, is common in these women but is usually reversed when training stops. Athletes engaged in strength and power events have traditionally been concerned with achieving a high dietary protein intake in the belief that this intake is necessary for muscle growth and repair. In a survey of U.S. college athletes 98 percent believed that a high-protein diet would improve performance. Although a diet deficient in protein undoubtedly will lead to loss of muscle tissue, no evidence supports the idea that excess dietary protein will drive the system in favor of protein synthesis. Excess protein will simply be used as a substrate for oxidative metabolism, the series of chemical
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reactions in which the energy contained in carbohydrate, fat, and protein is made available and these fuels are converted to carbon dioxide and water, either directly or as a precursor of glucose, and the excess nitrogen will be lost in the urine. Exercise, whether it is long-distance running, aerobics, or weight training, will increase protein oxidation compared with the resting state. Although the contribution of protein oxidation to energy production during the exercise period may decrease to about 5 percent of the total energy requirement, compared with about 10–15 percent (i.e., the normal fraction of protein in the diet) at rest, the absolute rate of protein degradation is increased during exercise. This increase leads to an increase in the minimum daily protein requirement, but this requirement will be met if a person consumes a normal mixed diet adequate to meet the increased energy expenditure. In spite of this fact, however, many athletes consume large quantities of protein-containing foods and expensive protein supplements; daily protein intakes of up to 400 grams are not unknown in some sports. The timing of protein consumption relative to training may be more important than the amount of protein consumed. Remodeling of muscle tissues, the process by which structure and function change in response to an imposed stress, takes place in the hours and days after the training stimulus has been applied: Consumption of small amounts of protein can ensure positive protein balance. As little as 6 grams of essential amino acids, or 30– 40 grams of mixed protein, ingested either just before or soon after training may help promote that adaptations taking place within the muscles. The energy requirements of training are largely met by oxidation of fat and carbohydrate. The higher the intensity of exercise, the greater the reliance on carbohydrate as a fuel: At an exercise intensity corresponding to about 50 percent of a person’s maximum oxygen uptake, approximately two-thirds of the total energy requirement is met by fat oxidation, with carbohydrate oxidation supplying about one-third. If the exercise intensity is increased to about 75 percent of maximum
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oxygen uptake, the total energy expenditure is increased, and carbohydrate is now the major fuel. If carbohydrate is not available, or is available in only a limited amount, the intensity of the exercise must be reduced to a level where the energy requirement can be met by fat oxidation. The primary need, therefore, is for the carbohydrate intake to be sufficient to enable the training load to be sustained at the high level necessary to produce a response. During each strenuous training session glycogen stores in the exercising muscles and in the liver are depleted. If this carbohydrate reserve is not replenished before the next training session, training intensity must be reduced, leading to corresponding decrements in the training response. Any athlete training hard on a daily basis can readily observe this; if a low-carbohydrate diet, consisting mostly of fat and protein, is consumed after a day’s training, the athlete will have difficulty repeating the same training load on the following day. Eating a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet for prolonged periods has been shown to increase the capacity of muscle to oxidize fat and hence improve endurance capacity in rats but may not be effective in humans; similarly, short-term fasting increases endurance capacity in rats but results in a decreased exercise tolerance in humans. The training diet, therefore, should be high in carbohydrate, with a large proportion of total energy intake in the form of complex carbohydrates and simple sugars; this suggestion conforms with the recommendations of the U.S. Government Expert Committees on Health that carbohydrates provide at least 50 percent of dietary energy intake. In a study, a high-carbohydrate diet enabled runners who were training for two hours per day to maintain muscle glycogen levels, whereas if the carbohydrate content was low, a progressive fall in muscle glycogen content occurred. A dietary carbohydrate intake of 500–600 grams was necessary to ensure adequate glycogen resynthesis. Rather than think of carbohydrate needs as a fraction of total energy intake, we might do better to prescribe intakes in absolute terms relative to body mass. Thus, an intake of 6–8 grams per kilogram of body mass may be necessary
for athletes training hard. These high levels of intake are difficult to achieve without consuming large amounts of simple sugars and other compact forms of carbohydrate as well as increasing the frequency of meals and snacks toward a “grazing” eating pattern. Athletes may find that sugar, jam, honey, and high-sugar foods such as confectionery, as well as carbohydrate-containing drinks such as soft drinks, fruit juices, and sports drinks, can provide a low-bulk, convenient addition of carbohydrate to the nutritious food base. No evidence indicates that this pattern of eating is harmful; for the person who has to fit an exercise program into a busy day, changes to eating patterns inevitably must be made, but these changes need not compromise the quality of the diet. Failure to meet carbohydrate needs may also make the athlete more susceptible to minor infectious illnesses. Exercising with low carbohydrate reserves can result in increased levels of stress hormones, which in turn impair the functional capacity of the immune system. Although usually trivial in themselves, these illnesses can disrupt training and prevent participation in important competitions.
Micronutrients and Dietary Supplements With regular strenuous training, total intake must be increased to balance the increased energy expenditure. Provided that a reasonably varied diet is consumed, this increased intake will supply more than adequate amounts of protein, minerals, vitamins, and other dietary requirements. No evidence suggests that specific supplementation with any of these dietary components is necessary or that it will improve performance. Athletes who chronically restrict energy intake to limit body mass, and especially fat mass, may benefit from a broadspectrum vitamin and mineral supplement. Athletes with limited finances, little interest in the foods they eat, or lacking food preparation skills may also fail to consume a varied diet. Although supplements are no substitute for good dietary choices, they may have a use in some of these situations.
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A heart-shaped breakfast of muesli. Source: istockphoto/jillianpond.
The only exceptions to the generalization about the value of dietary supplements for meeting micronutrient needs may be iron and, in the case of active women, calcium. Highly trained endurance athletes commonly have low circulating hemoglobin levels, although total red cell mass may be elevated because of an increased blood volume. This condition may be considered to be an adaptation to the trained state, but hard training may result in an increased iron requirement, and exercise tolerance is impaired in the presence of anemia, the state in which the blood level of hemoglobin is below the normal level. Low serum folate and serum ferritin levels are not associated with impaired performance, however, and correction of these deficiencies does not influence indices of fitness in trained athletes. Moderate weight-bearing exercise has been reported to increase bone mineral density in women, and this increase may be a significant benefit of exercise for most women. Hard training, however, may reduce circulating estrogen levels and hence accelerate bone loss. For these athletes an adequate calcium intake should be ensured, although calcium supplements themselves will not reverse bone loss while estrogen levels remain low. We must emphasize that iron or calcium supplements should be taken only on the advice of a qualified practitioner after suitable investigative procedures have indicated an inadequate intake. Even then, alternatives to supplementation, specifically alterations in the selection of foods to achieve a higher intake, must also be considered. Low-fat dairy produce, for example, is a
good source of calcium in an energy-restricted diet. A wide range of supplements is on sale to athletes, often with exaggerated claims of efficacy. Many of these claims are not supported by evidence of either their effects on performance or their safety when taken in high doses for prolonged periods. Sports supplements that may be useful in helping the athlete meet nutritional goals during training and competition include sports drinks, high-carbohydrate supplements, and liquid meal supplements. These supplements are more expensive than everyday foods but often provide a convenient and practical way of meeting dietary needs in a specific situation. Evidence suggests an ergogenic (enhancing physical performance) effect of a few supplements, including caffeine, creatine, and bicarbonate. The use of caffeine in high doses by an athlete in competition formerly was likely to result in a positive doping test, but this restriction was removed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in January 2004. Caffeine in small doses—typically 2–4 milligrams per kilogram of body mass can improve performance in a variety of exercise tasks, with greater effects generally seen in prolonged exercise, probably by actions on adenosine receptors in the central nervous system. Creatine—in the form of creatine phosphate—acts as an energy source for adenosine triphosphate (ATP) resynthesis in high-intensity exercise. Meat eaters normally obtain about 1 gram per day from their diet, which is about 50 percent of the daily requirement, with the remainder synthesized from amino acids. Ingestion of 10–20 grams of creatine daily for four to six days can increase the muscle creatine content by 10–20 percent, leading to improvements in strength and sprint performance. The biggest improvements in performance are generally seen in repeated sprints with limited recovery. Acute ingestion of large doses of sodium bicarbonate (about 0.3 grams per kilogram of body mass)
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can increase the extracellular buffering capacity and improve performance in exercise lasting from about thirty seconds to about ten minutes. Of concern about many supplements on sale—apart from the lack of evidence of efficacy and safety—are reports of contamination of supplements by prohibited substances, including stimulants and anabolic steroids. The amounts of such substances are generally too small to be effective in improving performance but can cause a positive drug test.
Nutrition for Competition No doubt the ability to perform prolonged exercise can be substantially modified by dietary intake during the pre-exercise period, and this fact becomes important for the person aiming to produce peak performance on a specific day. The pre-exercise period can conveniently be divided into two phases—the few days prior to the exercise task and the day of the exercise task itself. Experts have recommended dietary manipulation to increase muscle glycogen content during the few days prior to exercise for endurance athletes after observations that these procedures increased endurance capacity in laboratory designed cycle ergometer exercise lasting one and a half hours to two hours. The suggested procedure was to deplete muscle glycogen by prolonged exercise about one week prior to competition and to prevent resynthesis by consuming a lowcarbohydrate diet for two to three days before changing to a high-carbohydrate diet for the last three days, during which little or no exercise was performed. This procedure can double the muscle glycogen content and increases cycling or running performance. A considerable amount of evidence indicates that a person does not have to include the low-carbohydrate glycogen depletion phase of the diet for endurance athletes. A person must just reduce the training load during the last five or six days before competition and simultaneously increase the dietary carbohydrate intake. This practice avoids many of the problems associated with the more extreme forms of the diet. Although an increased prec-
ompetition muscle glycogen content is undoubtedly beneficial, the rate of muscle glycogen utilization is faster when the glycogen content itself is increased, thus nullifying some of the advantage gained. Consumption of a high-carbohydrate diet during the days prior to competition may also benefit competitors in sports such as rugby, soccer, or hockey, although these players often do not pay attention to this aspect of their diet. In one study players starting a soccer game with low muscle glycogen content did less running, and much less running at high speed, than did those players who began the game with a normal muscle glycogen content. Players commonly have one game in midweek as well as one at the weekend, and full restoration of the muscle glycogen content likely will not occur between games unless a conscious effort is made to achieve a high-carbohydrate intake. Although this glycogen-loading procedure is generally restricted to use by athletes engaged in endurance events, some evidence indicates that the muscle glycogen content may influence performance in events lasting only a few minutes. A high muscle glycogen content may be particularly important when repeated sprints at near-maximum speed have to be made. Short-term highintensity exercise can also be improved by ingestion of alkaline salts prior to exercise to enhance the buffering of the protons produced by anaerobic glycolysis, the process whereby glucose is broken down to pyruvic or lactic acids, releasing some of the energy available in the glucose molecule and, because there is no oxygen involved, generating energy very rapidly. Scope for nutritional intervention during exercise exists only when the duration of events is sufficient to allow absorption of drinks or foods ingested and where the rules of the sport permit. The primary aims must be to ingest a source of energy, usually in the form of carbohydrate, and fluid for replacement of water lost as sweat. High rates of sweat secretion are necessary during hard exercise to limit the rise in body temperature that would otherwise occur. If the exercise is prolonged, this rise leads to progressive dehydration and loss of elec-
NUTRITION
trolytes (ions that in biological fluid regulate or affect most metabolic processes). Fatigue toward the end of a prolonged event may result as much from the effects of dehydration as from substrate, or fuel, depletion. The composition of drinks to be consumed during exercise should be chosen to suit individual circumstances. During exercise in the cold, fluid replacement may not be necessary because sweat rates will be low, but a need remains to supply additional glucose to exercising muscles. Although consumption of a highcarbohydrate diet during the days prior to exercise should reduce the need for carbohydrate ingestion during exercise in events lasting less than about two hours, a person cannot always achieve this; competition on successive days, for example, may prevent adequate glycogen replacement between exercise periods. In this situation more concentrated glucose drinks are preferred. These drinks will supply more glucose, thus sparing the limited glycogen stores in the muscles and liver without overloading the body with fluid. Many sports have little provision for fluid replacement: Participants in sports such as football or hockey can lose large amounts of fluid, but replacement is possible only at the
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half-time interval. Most athletes finish endurance events with some degree of dehydration, but some slower performers may consume fluid in excess of sweat losses. This situation is not helpful to performance. During the postexercise period replacement of fluid and electrolytes can usually be achieved through normal dietary intake. If a person needs to ensure adequate replacement before exercise is repeated, extra fluids should be taken, and additional salt (sodium chloride) might be added to food. The other major electrolytes, particularly potassium, magnesium, and calcium, are present in abundance in fruit and fruit juices. Salt or mineral supplements are not normally necessary. Ron Maughan See also Diet and Weight Loss
Further Reading Burke, L. M., & Deakin, V. (2000). Clinical sports nutrition (2nd ed.). Sidney, Australia: McGraw-Hill. Maughan, R. J. (2000). Nutrition in sport. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Maughan, R. J., Burke, L. M., & Coyle, E. F. (2004). Nutrition for athletes. London: Routledge.
Officiating Olympia Olympic Stadium (Berlin), 1936
Officiating
Olympics, 2004 Olympics, Summer Olympics, Winter Orienteering Osteoporosis Ownership
I
n any organized sporting event, someone must govern the contest. Those who oversee sport competitions are known as officials. Depending on the type of sport, an official may be referred to as a referee, umpire, or judge. In all cases it is the duty of the official to make competition as fair as possible and to make sure it is played by the existing rules of the sport. An official has been defined as “a person who is knowledgeable in the rules and mechanics of the game and applies them to make the contest fair for all participants and comports him- or herself as a professional at all times” (Sabaini 2002, 19). Of all of the groups involved in sports, including athletes, coaches, and spectators, officials may receive the least attention. In fact it is sometimes said the best way to tell if the officials have done a good job is if nobody noticed them. Most officials will agree that the focus should remain on the athletes. Indeed, on the limited occasions when officials receive attention, it is often due to a decision perceived to be incorrect or a controversial call. Regardless of the lack of attention generally given to officials, they represent an essential component of any organized sporting event.
The Official’s Job The official’s job can be understood by dividing it into three major components: knowledge, application, and comportment. Knowledge includes understanding the rules of the sport, as well as strategies used by athletes
O and teams. An effective official not only knows the rules listed in the rule book, but also remains current with the types of plays and maneuvers used in the sport. Knowledge also includes correct officiating mechanics, which refers to the physical movements and positions that the official should exhibit. For example, when signaling that a rules infraction has been committed, the official must use hand signals that are specified in the sport’s rule book. In addition, in many sports there are appropriate physical positions for officials to adopt for a given game situation. Most baseball spectators will recognize, for example, that the first-base umpire changes his or her location on the field when a runner reaches first base. The second component, application, includes qualities such as being honest, fair, consistent, using sound judgment, and having good communications skills. An effective official not only thoroughly knows the rules, but also applies them in the proper manner. Certainly, if an official is not fair and free of bias, the integrity of the entire contest is compromised. Additionally, while most rules are stated clearly, interpreting a particular action according to the rules often involves a certain degree of judgment (e.g., whether a foul was flagrant or unintentional). Therefore, judgment is an important factor in officiating. An official must also strive to be a good communicator, so that he or she can be understood by all interested parties. The third and last component of officiating is comportment, which includes displaying a suitable demeanor and behaving appropriately under pressure. Officials strive to exhibit a sense of authority and con-
trol over a contest, but without displaying a superior attitude. Demonstrating respect for coaches and players even while making unfavorable calls according to the rules is an aspect of comportment. Also, officials often must perform their duties under a great deal of pressure. Effective officials are able to perform well under stressful conditions without being inappropriately influenced by athletes, coaches, or spectators. One way to understand the job of an official is to consider the rules of the sport as laws to be upheld. In this way officials function as the sport’s law enforcement officers (indeed, both “official” and “officer” are derived from the same Latin word, officium, meaning “duty”). They are the final authority in determining the legality of any action and ensuring that an athletic competition is conducted according to the rules. Also, like police officers, sports officials place the highest priority on safety. In many instances players and coaches are familiar with the rules, and officials go largely unnoticed as they monitor the contest. However, when a question arises, the officials are charged with the responsibility of interpreting and enforcing the rules. Depending on the sport and level of competition, the rule book may be several hundred pages long, and it is the official’s job to know it all. Rulings that are visible to spectators in stadiums or on television reflect only a portion of the decisions that officials make. When a team of officials arrives at a competition site, they begin their work. Before a contest begins, officials verify the legality of equipment, facilities, and uniforms. In most sports one or more officials will check to ensure that the dimensions of the playing area are in accordance with
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Sport is imposing order on what was chaos. ■ ANTHONY STARR
the rules; meet with coaches and athletes to answer questions and discuss certain issues, such as those regarding sportsmanship; and communicate with support staff such as scorers and timekeepers. In sports where weight classes are used, wrestling and judo, for example (in addition to youth sports in which eligibility is determined by weight), the officials conduct weigh-ins. If a significant event should occur before, during, or after a contest, the officials are responsible for communicating the ruling and circumstances surrounding the event to league administrators. Often, this will involve reporting player or coach ejections, so that the league can take appropriate action.
crews are used include soccer, American football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Especially in team sports, where many athletes are on the field, too many activities occur simultaneously for one official to monitor them all. Therefore, each crew member has a specific assignment and area of responsibility. When disagreements arise, the official in charge of the crew may convene a brief conference before determining the appropriate ruling. In such a conference, the official who was in the best position to view the action is encouraged to suggest the proper decision, though the individual in charge of the crew is ultimately responsible for the ruling. Even in sports where winners are determined largely by clear objective measures, such as time or distance Officiating in Different Sports and (e.g., swimming and track and field events), officials are Competition Levels essential to the conduct of a safe and fair competition. In All officials have an interest in ensuring a safe and fair such sports the officials are responsible for monitoring contest, but the specific actions and decisions that they the legality of equipment and infractions such as faults make depend largely on the sport itself. In sports where and false starts, along with other rules and procedures. form and aesthetics partially determine an athlete’s Officials are used at all levels of competition, from score, such as gymnastics, figure skatyouth leagues to professional sports. At ing, and diving, officials are referred to the professional and international levels as judges. Generally, a panel of judges in some (but not all) sports, officiating is evaluates each athlete’s performance. a full-time job. At the collegiate, club, The judges remain relatively stationary recreational, and youth league levels, in a location best suited to view the perhowever, officials mostly work on a partformance and make independent contime or contractual basis. Usually, the clusions regarding scores. Here, the official gets paid for each competition, independence of each official’s ruling is with a fee that is agreed on ahead of of primary importance, allowing each time. In addition to the extra money projudge to make decisions according to vided, officials have cited interest and his or her interpretation of the rules enthusiasm for the sport, challenge and without being influenced by another excitement, and a sense of control as judge. In most cases the actual score reasons for officiating. Often at amateur recorded represents an average of levels of competition and in youth judges’ rulings. leagues, officials will volunteer their In contrast to the independence of time, perhaps receiving only a free meal as compensation for their efforts. judges, referees and umpires in many Even within a particular sport, the sports work together as a team—often rules that officials enforce differ for varyreferred to as an “officiating crew”— ing levels of competition. These differwhere each official openly communicates An old-style abacus ences include specific actions that are with the others. Sports where officiating tennis scoreboard.
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Officiating Officiating: A Dangerous Vocation Violence towards officials—both in the verbal and physical form—is a phenomenon that is all too familiar. In many circumstances, verbally berating game officials is common practice. More troubling is the occurrence of physical assaults perpetrated upon officials. Surveys have shown that as many as 84 percent of officials have been assaulted during their careers, and one would be hard pressed to find an experienced official who has not at least been threatened with violence. Physical actions against officials range from spitting—such as an incident in 1996 when baseball star Roberto Alomar spat in the face of umpire, John Hirschbeck—to life threatening forms of violence. Such incidents have occurred throughout nearly all levels of sport, from youth leagues to the professional ranks. The pervasiveness of such incidents is underscored by the fact that insurance companies offer special
prohibited for younger age groups, different dimensions on the playing field, and various other technical aspects of the sport, such as whether a receiver must catch a pass with one or two feet in bounds for the play to be ruled a completion in American football. An official who works at various competition levels in a sport must govern the competition according to the rule of the particular league.
Selecting and Evaluating Officials Becoming an official at lower levels of competition is a fairly straightforward process. If someone is interested in officiating, he or she can often become an official simply by volunteering. Sometimes, volunteer officials are required to pay a nominal fee to cover insurance costs and undergo a security screening. At higher levels of competition, the process becomes somewhat more involved. In addition to paying a registration fee, most high school sports officials in the United States must earn a minimum score on a rules examination and attend regular rules clinics. As the level of competition increases, so do the requirements for officiating at that level.
policies to cover the risk of injuries to officials due to violent acts towards them. In addition, as of October 2004, eighteen U.S. states had passed legislation specifically to protect officials from violence. Why does such violence occur? One possible explanation is that when players, coaches, and fans are upset about the outcome of a sporting event that matters a great deal to them, the officials provide a convenient target for their anger. According to C. W. Smith in a 1982 article (“Performances and Negotiations: A Case Study of a Wrestling Referee. Qualitative Sociology, 5, 33–46), an official, “. . . Has responsibility for maintaining social order in an extremely tenuous social situation. In a very real sense he or she functions as the communal ‘scape-goat.’ ”
David Neil Sacks and Loretta A. Handegard
Given the lack of monetary compensation available for officials in many leagues, as well as other demanding aspects of the vocation such as the threat of verbal and physical assault, the demand for officials often outweighs the supply. Officiating organizations therefore devote a fair amount of effort to recruiting new officials. This usually means encouraging athletes who are toward the end of their playing careers to consider officiating as a means of maintaining involvement in their sports. Once an official is registered, he or she may be selected to work at an actual contest. Typically, newer officials are expected to prove themselves at lower levels of competition (i.e., junior varsity contests at the high school level) before being assigned to major games or tournaments. Just as athletes strive to reach championship level competitions, so too do the officials. The method by which officials are assigned varies from one organization to the next, with many having no specific method in place. According to one study conducted in 2002, 52 percent of officials associations in the United States that responded to a survey did not use a standardized system for awarding tournament assignments.
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A referee at an ice hockey game, just after the whistle. Source: istockphoto/jamirae.
Various systems have been used, however. These methods include selecting officials based on evaluations conducted by veteran members of the association, rules test scores, coaches’ requests, and seniority. An additional factor in selection is neutrality. In playoff competitions, for example, when teams from two different conferences play one another, the officiating crew is usually made up of officials from a third conference. Likewise, in major international competition, for reasons of fairness the officials selected typically hail from a country other than those represented by the athletes. One of the difficulties in selecting officials stems from the inherent challenges in evaluating an individual’s or crew’s performance. Unlike assessing which team deserves to advance, which easily can be determined by the score, it can be difficult to ascertain how well an official has performed. Methods of evaluation can include written exams, oral quizzes with veteran officials, direct observation, and review of videotapes. Evaluators can include officiating assigners, commissioners, peer officials, state association members, and coaches. Due to the wide range of possibilities, when it comes down to how an official is evaluated, it is up to the officials’ governing body to standardize and implement the evaluation process.
Officials and Errors Officiating has been humorously described as the one job where someone is expected to start out being perfect—and then to improve from there. Some officials observe that they are held to higher standards than other sport participants, pointing out that athletes and coaches regularly make mistakes without incident, while a single bad call by an official attracts a great deal of criticism. Officials, of course, like anyone else, do sometimes make mistakes. With as many as several hundred or more decisions to make during a competition, errors are inevitable. Notwithstanding these imperfections, there is evidence that officials at the professional level are quite effective in making correct decisions. For example, in Major League Baseball in the United States during the
2004 season, a computer system indicated that umpires correctly called more than 93 percent of pitches as balls or strikes. The error rate also may be overestimated by the public because attention tends to shift to officials only when an error actually occurs. If spectators notice the official, it is almost always because a possible mistake has been made. In contrast, during the majority of the time when officials are performing adequately, they go largely unnoticed. In addition many calls that are perceived to be in error are actually correct. The rules of a sport typically require a good deal of judgment on the part of an official, and he or she generally has a better understanding of the rules than other interested parties. Considering that coaches, athletes, and spectators almost always have a subjective interest in the contest, officials represent the only group charged with maintaining a neutral, objective stance. Thus, their judgment is often appropriate, even when perceived as being flawed by a majority of viewers.
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A baseball fan is a spectator sitting 500 feet from home plate who can see better than an umpire standing five feet away. ■ UNKNOWN
Some officials have joked that since there are two sides to a contest, an official is perceived to be right only half of the time. Nonetheless, officials do attempt to minimize the number of errors made. In fact, rule books for most sports include procedures for correcting errors when they do occur—if the error is detected within a certain time frame. In addition, toward the end of the twentieth century, major sports organizations began using technology to improve officials’ rates of correct calls. Perhaps the most conspicuous use of technology involves video replay. As of 2004 professional basketball, hockey, and American football organizations were using some form of video replay to review officials’ initial decisions, with Major League Baseball, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (in football), and the United States Tennis Association also considering its use. Supporters of this type of technology in officiating claim that procedures such as viewing video replays of “close calls” increases the proportion of correct decisions. Others argue that officials must be entrusted with a degree of judgment, and the fact that they are human and, thus, imperfect, is part of the game. Indeed, it is likely that no matter how much technology advances, officials’ errors, like mistakes made by athletes and coaches, will remain a necessary aspect of sport.
Changing Rules over Time As all officials strive to conduct a contest according to the rules currently in effect, many are involved in evaluating the rules and, when deemed appropriate, suggesting changes. An historical review of nearly any sport will reveal that the rules have changed over time. These changes occur for a variety of reasons. In some cases officials recognize that competitors exploit a technical oversight in the rules to gain an unfair advantage over opponents, and that this oversight must be corrected. At other times innovations in competitive techniques and strategies require a change in the rules to address the most modern forms of play. On occasion rules are altered in order to increase public appeal by encouraging such things as higher scores or faster-paced play. An-
other frequent reason for rules changes is to better ensure the safety of the participants. Often, a rule modification will occur first at high levels of competition before trickling down to the rule books for the lower leagues, such as those at the youth level. For developmental and safety reasons, however, some modifications nearly always remain in the rules for younger competitors. On occasion trends in youth sport influence the rules at elite levels of play. For example, in addressing the need to promote sportsmanship among high school athletes, Mike Pereira, director of officiating for the National Football League, stated, “The pros and college sports have a huge impact on the play of the game at lower levels. To turn our backs on that is a huge mistake” (Arehart 2002, 25). With rules changing over time, officials must constantly evolve with a sport. One cannot memorize the rule book and be prepared indefinitely.To be effective an official must know the rules and the underlying intent, apply the rules during competition, and comport him or herself appropriately. Officials are expected to fulfill their assignments under stressful conditions and to maintain their composure and neutral stance despite sometimes harsh criticism. It is a difficult job, with recognition coming primarily when something goes wrong. Nonetheless, most officials express a fondness for the vocation, as well as for the sports in which they serve. David Neil Sacks and Loretta A. Handegard
Further Reading Anshel, M. H., & Weinberg R. S. (1995). Sources of acute stress in American and Australian basketball referees. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 7, 11–22. Arehart, J. (2002). Standing up for sportsmanship. Referee, 27 (1), 24–28. Burke, K. L. (1991). Dealing with sport officials. Sport Psychology Training Bulletin, 2(6), 1–8. Burke, K. L., Joyner, A. B., Pim, A., & Czech, D. R. (2000). An exploratory investigation of the perceptions of anxiety among basketball officials before, during, and after the contest. Journal of Sport Behavior, 23, 11–19. Davis, K. L. (1996). The art of sports officiating. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Grunska, J. (Ed.). (1999). Successful sports officiating. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
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Some of the best calls are the ones you don’t make. ■ EARL STROM
Kerkhoff, B. (2000). Upon further review: Controversy in sports officiating. Lenexa, KS: Addax Publishing Group. Purdy, D. A., & Snyder, E. E. (1985). A social profile of high school basketball officials. Journal of Sport Behavior, 8, 54–65. Rainey, D. (1994). Assaults on umpires: A statewide survey. Journal of Sport Behavior, 17, 148–155. Rainey, D., & Hardy, L. (1999). Assaults on rugby union referees: A three union survey. Journal of Sport Behavior, 22, 105–113. Rainey, D., & Schweickert, G. (1991). Evaluations of umpire performance and perceptions of appropriate behavior toward umpires. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 22, 66–77. Referee Magazine. (1999). 101 tips for better officiating (4th ed.). Franksville, WI: Referee Enterprises. Sabaini, D. (2002). NASO special report: Sports officiating 2002— evaluating officiating performance. Franksville, WI: National Association of Sports Officials and Referee Enterprise. Smith, C. W. (1982). Performances and negotiations: A case study of a wrestling referee. Qualitative Sociology, 5, 33–46. VanYperen, N.W. (1998). Predicting stay/leave behavior among volleyball referees. The Sport Psychologist, 12, 427–429. Weinberg, R. S., & Richardson, P. A. (1990). Psychology of offiiating. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press.
Olympia
O
lympia was the site of the ancient Olympic Games, the oldest and biggest of the four Panhellenic (relating to Greece) religious, athletic, and cultural festivals. The other three festivals were the Pythian Games at Delphi, the Istmian Games at Corinth, and the Games at Nemea. The festival at Olympia was celebrated every four years. The Olympic Games supposedly began in 776 BCE, but they may have started many years earlier. They continued until 393 CE, when the Roman emperor Theodosius banned all heathen cults. Different theories explain the origin of the ancient Olympic Games. Some theories say the games were invented by Pelops, who gave his name to the Peloponnese Peninsula. He defeated Oinomaos, king of Pisa, in a chariot race. Oinomaos had an eligible daughter, Hippodameia. Prospective suitors had to defeat Oinomaos in a chariot race. By trickery Pelops won the
race. He replaced the bronze axle pins of the king’s chariot with wax ones. As the chariot crashed, Oinomaos was thrown to the ground and killed. Pelops became king, and the games were celebrated in his honor at his grave. Another theory says the games were founded by Heracles (Hercules) after he had defeated Augeas, king of the Greek city-state Elis. Olympia belonging to Elis. Probably the games were a cult festival celebrated by the pre-Indo-Germanic rural population during the third millennium BCE. Later the festival became a festival for Zeus organized by the migrating Achaeans and later by the Dorians. Evidence of this change may be seen in the Temple of Hera next to the Temple of Zeus and the position of the female goddess Demeter, whose priestesses were the only married women allowed to sit at a place of honor on the spectator wall in the stadium at Olympia. Apart from these women, however, married women were banned from the stadium. In the beginning only one footrace of more than 182 meters was run. This measure was called a “stadium.” The modern word stadium is derived from this measure. The competition was called a “stadium race.” The Olympic stadium was a bit longer than 192 meters. The starting point of the race was a line of stone plates with grooves for the runners’ toes. Twenty stone plates existed, which meant that a maximum of twenty runners could compete in the race. After 724 BCE the diaulos and the dolichos were invented as second and third footraces. The diaulos consisted of two lengths of the stadium, whereas the dolichos was run over twenty or twenty-four lengths. In 708 BCE wrestling was added, and in 688 BCE boxing was added to the program. After 708 the pentathlon was added, with its disciplines of the discus; the jump with weights, called “halteres”; the javelin; a footrace more than five lengths of the stadium; and wrestling. Always a big attraction was the pancratium, added in 448 BCE. This discipline was a mixture of boxing and brutal, all-in wrestling. In addition to these athletic disciplines competitions were held in horseracing and chariot racing.
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Runners at ancient Olympia.
Special competitions were also organized for boys. After 396 BCE the games began with a contest of heralds and trumpeters.
Olympic Truce Initially the games lasted one day, later three, and finally five days. Whereas during the first decades most of the athletes were from the Peloponnese, the games were attended by citizens from the whole of Greece and from Greek locations in the Mediterranean. The athletes had to be freeborn and of Greek descent. In the Roman empire these rules were not followed closely. To ensure that athletes and pilgrims travelling to and from Olympia would have a safe journey, the Olympic Truce (Ekecheiria) was introduced; it lasted three months in the end. To announce the truce and its exact dates, heralds were sent out from Elis to every Greek state. Today the truce is often confused with a period of peace. It is often believed that the Greeks were not at war during the celebration of the games. However, numerous sources tell us that the Greek city-states indeed did make war against each other during the games. Olympia was not a permanent place of residence. It was a site with athletic venues and the altis (sacred grove) with temples. Athletic venues were within the stadium walls, having space for forty thousand spectators, the hippodrome, the palaestra, and the gymnasium. The palaestra and gymnasium were training sites. The
main temples were erected to pay homage to the goddess Hera and the god Zeus. The Temple of Zeus, with its 13-meter-tall statue of Zeus designed and built by the Greek artist Pheidias, was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Also honoring Zeus was an altar. During the Olympic festival one hundred oxen were sacrificed to Zeus on this altar. After each competition an award ceremony was celebrated. Only the athletes who placed first in the competition were crowned with an olive branch. Athletes who had won one competition were honored with a statue; for athletes with three victories a portrait sculpture probably was designed. The victorious athletes were much honored in their home towns and were showered with valuable presents. The title periodonikes was given to athletes who had won a contest in all of the four Panhellenic games. This title is comparable with today’s Grand Slam title in tennis. The greatest athlete was probably Milon from Crotone in southern Italy. He was a wrestler who won six times at Olympia and won another twenty-eight victories at other games. He became a quadruple periodonikes.
Olympia Lost During the sixth century CE two earthquakes destroyed the temples and other buildings at Olympia. The Alpheios and Kladeos Rivers burst their banks, destroying almost all of the altis and sport venues.The area was covered with 6–8 meters of clay. After that, for a long time the location of Olympia was unknown. Archaeologists exploring Greece with the permission of the Ottornan Empire at the end of the eighteenth century were the first to search for Olympia. They attempted to follow the steps of the Greek historian Pausanias, who wrote a travel report on Greece in the middle of the second century CE. In 1766 the Englishman Richard Chandler discovered Olympia. Numerous researchers and
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The ruins of the grounds at Olympia in 2003
archaeologists followed and began excavation. Excavation was conducted between 1875 and 1881 by German archaeologists. The Germans Ernst Curtius and Friedrich Adler succeeded in excavating the altis, but the stadium was completely excavated between 1936 and 1961 thanks to the German sports leader Carl Diem. Almost two-thirds of the gymnasium is not yet excavated. Of course, all of these endeavors were observed worldwide and were one reason why the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin thought of recreating the Olympic Games during modern times in 1896. Today Olympia is a major tourist site.Tourists from all over the world visit not only the excavations but also four museums focusing on ancient physical education, the history of the excavations, excavation exhibits, and the
history of the modern Olympic Games. The importance of Olympia as a historic sports site was emphasized at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens as the men’s and women’s shot-put competitions were held with a crowd of forty thousand watching on the grass slopes. Karl Lennartz and Stephan Wassong See also Greece, Ancient
Further Reading Finley, M. I., & Pleket, H. W. (1976). The Olympic Games: The first thousand years. London: Viking Press. Sinn, U. (2000). Olympia: Cult, sport, and ancient festival. New York: M. Wiener. Young, D. C. (1984). The Olympic myth of Greek amateur athletics. Chicago: Ares.
OLYMPIC STADIUM (BERLIN), 1936
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If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard. ■ JESSE OWENS
Olympic Stadium (Berlin), 1936
R
eferences to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany, are either to the colossal sports complex called the Reichssportfeld, which hosted most of the sports competitions during the 1936 Olympic Games, or to the stadium itself, which was the center for the Olympic ceremonies and sports competitions. As part of the legacy of the Nazi period, the much-debated historic buildings, the stadium, and the whole Reichssportfeld, are now subject to a preservation order.
The Location The origin of this site as a sport venue goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century when, between 1907 and 1909, a hippodrome was built in the western suburb of Berlin called Grunewald. The German Olympic Reich Committee for the Olympic Games submitted Berlin’s bid to organize the 1912 and 1916 Olympic Games, but this first bid was withdrawn. Nevertheless, through the efforts of the committee, a stadium (with a swimming pool) called the Deutsches Stadion— “German Stadium”—was built between the hippodrome’s tracks and inaugurated on 8 July 1913. But the 1916 Olympic Games, which were to be celebrated in Berlin, were canceled because of the ongoing World War. The German Higher Education School for Physical Education (founded in 1920) was housed in the Deutsches Stadion and extended to the Sportforum, a set of sports facilities and buildings for the school. On 13 May 1931, Berlin was chosen as the host for the XIth Olympic Games to be held in 1936. The Deutsches Stadion should have been the main facility for the event, but little work had been done to improve the stadium’s features by the time Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor on 30 January 1933. The Nazis quickly understood that the Olympic Games could be orchestrated for propaganda purposes. The proposed Reichssportfeld with its Olympic Stadium was
to become the site of Nazi sport. Indeed, the Deutsches Stadion was not considered luxurious enough to show the world how generous the “New Germany” was and how determined it was to succeed in gaining the world’s esteem. Visiting the education and sports grounds on 5 October 1933, Hitler personally changed all the previous plans in deciding to build an Olympic arena worthy of the “New German spirit.”
Building the Olympic Stadium The architect Werner March (whose father built the Deutsches Stadion and who had already designed the Sportforum) was given the responsibility for creating this new Olympic arena. The facilities of the Reichssportfeld were the Olympic Stadium, the swimming pool, the field for public and military parades (Maifeld), the oldfashioned amphitheater (Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne), the Reich Academy for Physical Education, the House of German Sport, the hockey field, the horse-riding field, the tennis courts, the basketball courts, and a restaurant.
P OLITICAL INVOLVEMENT IN SPORTS ARCHITECTURE The Reichssportfeld can be considered a turning point in sports architecture because its dimensions and the architectural balance of the whole complex were unprecedented achievements. Moreover, these grounds and the Olympic Games of 1936 were and still are primary examples of political involvement in sport. The Olympic Stadium with its capacity of around 100,000 and the Maifeld, which can hold over 106,000 people on the field and 60,000 people in the stands, clearly show the size of the task of organizing “the biggest and most beautiful Olympic Games the world has ever seen,” but also the degree to which it was successful. The Olympic Stadium is at the center of two axes that shape the landscape. The north-south axis, running through the swimming pool, the stadium, and Coubertin Square, crosses the chancellor’s private loggia inside the stadium. The east-west axis is almost the continuation of the straight thoroughfare that runs through
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Olympic Stadium (Berlin), 1936 Adolf Hitler Enters The arrival of Adolf Hitler at the stadium was a major event. Australian swimmer Pat Norton recalls his arrival: We four girls in our team stood without rest for two hours before entering the stadium, but the air of excitement and noise among the teams drove our tiredness away. While we were making friends with the only girl in the Argentinian team of 90 men, who were standing next to us, the teams suddenly became quiet at the sight of Hitler and his entourage striding down between the teams. He looked neither to the left nor right and gave no sign of greeting or welcome. It was my first direct look at the man who was the talk of the world, and a more uninspiring-looking person would be hard to find. Source: Berlin Olympics 1936. (2005). Retrieved February 24, 2005, from http://www.olympicwomen.co.uk/Berline.htm
the city and that Hitler wanted to become a Berlin via triumphalis. The Reichssportfeld’s east-west axis is composed of the Olympic Portal, the stadium, the Marathon Portal cut into the stadium’s west stand, and the Maifeld. It finishes at the chancellor’s private loggia and the Glockenturm, that is, the bell tower, overhanging the parade field. On the first level, the Langemarckhalle is a meditation hall in honor of the German soldiers who were killed in action during World War I. Towers and sculptures complete the axial scheme. The perfect symmetry and the monumental size of the buildings can seem to be highly oppressive, but at the same time they give the impression of being a perfect architectural creation.
IDEOLOGY IN STONE The impressive surroundings built for the Olympic Games crystallize the greater part of Nazi ideology. It is plain that the very construction of the Reichssportfeld and its architectural and esthetic features perfectly em-
body the Nazi vision of society. The Reichssportfeld is the most successful of completed Nazi buildings. In line with the “ruin’s theory,” according to which thousand-years-old ruins are an evidence of a civilization’s greatness and the ambition of building an empire of a thousand years, the Reichssportfeld was considered a model of Nazi artistic style. Indeed, it mixes ancient and modern artistic elements. But the opposition between the traditional and modernist features was hidden: Whereas the stadium and the bell tower are made of reinforced concrete, they are tidily covered with natural German stone. Hitler himself demanded those facings and influenced the esthetics of the facilities. Official speeches always stressed the degree to which German nature and tradition were present in the Reichssportfeld. The Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne, surrounded by woods, is emblematic of the desire to combine sport and culture —the Nazi idea of culture. It is not surprising to note that the Reichssportfeld unites sports and military facilities (Maifeld, Langemarckhalle). And indeed it was turned into a military base, when it was a stronghold in March–April 1945 and when British troops and their headquarters were there until 1994.
The Venue Today The Reichssportfeld lost its nationalistic name and nowadays is called simply the Olympic Stadium. Whereas the complex itself has not changed much in appearance, renovation work has been carried out in order to adapt the facilities to current safety standards. The Berlin soccer club Hertha BSC has its home at the Olympic Stadium and the other facilities are still used for training. Berlin’s unsuccessful bid to host the Olympic Games in 2000 and the organization of the soccer World Cup in Germany in 2006 still regularly raise the problem of how to deal with this monumental symbol of Nazism. Daphné Bolz
Further Reading Kluge, V. (1999). Olympiastadion Berlin: Steine beginnen zu reden [Olympia Stadium: Stones are beginning to talk]. Berlin, FRG: Pathas.
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As time went by I came to feel that if I, as a Jew, hit a home run I was hitting one against Hitler. ■ HANK GREENBERG
Schäche W., & Szymanski N. (2001). Das Reichssportfeld: Architektur im Spannungsfeld von Sport und Macht [The Reichssportfeld: Architecture between sport and power]. Berlin, FRG: be.bra Verlag. Schmidt T. (1983). Das Berliner Olympiastadion und seine Geschichte. [The Berlin Olympic Stadium and its history]. Berlin, FRG: Express Edition. Schmidt T. (1992). Werner March: Architekt des Olympia-Stadion: 1894–1976. [Werner March: The architect of the Olympic Stadium: 1894–1976]. Basel-Berlin, FRG: Birkhäuser.
Olympics, 2004
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he modern Olympic Games have become the world’s foremost multisport, multination event. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French nobleman, is the acknowledged father of the modern Olympics, but many persons and forces in society—such as innovations in transportation, communication, urbanization, and industrialization—influenced their beginnings. During the middle of the nineteenth century people had a particular interest in ancient Olympia after extensive archaeological discoveries made during the mid1870s. Coubertin was fascinated by these discoveries because he was able to interpret the ideals and objectives of the ancient Olympic Games to inculcate the values of “muscular Christianity” that he had perceived in British education and that had become more widely known as “athleticism.” Of course, the true lover of sports was the amateur. The word amateur is no longer in the Olympic Charter, but amateurism was a class-based issue during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The International Athletic Congress in Paris in 1894 organized by Coubertin was called ostensibly to discuss matters of amateurism and professionalism. Coubertin arranged the agenda so that the Congress broke into two sections, one of which discussed the revival of the Olympic Games within the framework of “advantages from the athletic, moral and international standpoints.” The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established at that congress, and participants decided that the Olympic Games would be revived as an international
amateur sports festival. Two years later more than three hundred athletes from thirteen countries assembled in the renovated Panathenaic Stadium in Athens to take part in the Olympic Games of 1896. The events of the 1896 Olympics included rifle and pistol shooting, lawn tennis, fencing, track and field events, cycling, and gymnastics. The games were such a success that some people suggested that Athens become the permanent site for the quadrennial games. U.S. athletes made this declaration to Constantine, crown prince of Greece, on 14 April 1896: We, the American participants in the International Olympic Games of Athens, . . . express entire satisfaction with all the arrangements for the conduct of the games. The existence of the stadium as a structure so uniquely adapted to its purpose; the proved ability of Greece to competently administer the ages; and above all, the fact that Greece is the original home of the Olympic Games; all of these considerations force upon us the conviction that these games should never be removed from their native soil.
King Giorgios (George) I of Greece soon expressed his support for holding future Olympic Games in Greece. Coubertin was not president of the IOC at the time but certainly was the driving force. He negotiated a compromise with the Greek king. However, not until 1901 was a proposal presented to the IOC recommending that “international competitions will take place every two years, alternating between Athens and other large cities of the cultured states.” Many people, not only Greeks, wanted the Olympic Games to be held in Greece every four years from that time onward.
First Victory for Athens Athens won the right to host the 2004 Olympics after eleven cities expressed interest: Athens, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Istanbul, Lille, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, San Juan, Seville, Stockholm, and St. Petersburg. The IOC decided in 1994 to implement a two-phase election procedure, and in 1997 Athens was elected from the remaining cities. The final vote was sixty-six votes for
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Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. ■ SAMUEL JOHNSON
Athens and forty-four for Rome. The other cities, in elimination order, were Buenos Aires, Capetown, and Stockholm. After some early organizational problems during the first few years of the Athens Olympic Organizing Committee (ATHOC), steady progress was made when Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalki took over the leadership in 1998. With the election of Athens’s first woman mayor, Dora Bakoyannis, in 2002, the 2004 Athens Games were the first to have two women in such significant administrative roles. A major concern, expressed frequently in the international media and cited by many IOC members, was the delay in construction of much of the infrastructure for the Olympics and for the city of Athens generally. Although the international airport was ready, the major arterial roads were still under construction. Much of the delay in completion of the subway was caused by the numerous archaeological finds during construction— many of these finds are displayed in situ (in the natural or original position or place), especially at Syntagma Square station. The provision of stadiums was to be a combination of construction of new stadiums and reconstruction and reconfiguration of old sites. The venues were: Athens Olympic Sports Complex, including the bridgelike main stadium with its elliptical arches reaching high into the sky (hosting athletics, basketball, cycling, diving, gymnastics, soccer, swimming, synchronized swimming, tennis, trampoline, water polo); Panathinaiko, the main site of the 1896 and 1906 games (hosting archery and the marathon finish); Goudi (hosting badminton and modern pentathlon); Peristeri Hall (hosting boxing); Faliro Coastal Zone Olympic Complex (hosting beach volleyball, tae kwon do, and volleyball); City Center (hosting cycling and modern pentathlon); Parnitha (hosting mountain biking); Vouiligameni (hosting cycling and triathlon); Markopoulo Equestrian Center; Markopoulo Shooting Center; Schinias (hosting canoeing, kayaking, and rowing); Galatsi Hall (hosting rhythmic gymnastics and table tennis); Ano Liossia (hosting judo and
wrestling); Agios Kosmas Sailing Center; Karaiskaki (hosting soccer); and Nikaia (hosting weightlifting). A special venue, which highlighted the relationship of the 2004 Olympics and the ancient Olympics, was used for the shot-put event. Many Greeks feel that they “own” the Olympic Games, but the residents of the village of ancient Olympia on the Peloponnese Peninsula feel that they are the real owners. Although the shot put was not part of the ancient Olympic Games, shot putters competed in the historic Olympia stadium in front of fifteen thousand spectators. The winners, following tradition, were crowned with an olive wreath pruned from the sacred Kalisthenos olive tree; their medals were presented in the Olympic Stadium in Athens two days later.
Light on Their Feet The torch relay for the 2004 Olympics was the most extensive staged since the relay was introduced for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Lit in Olympia on 25 March 2004, the flame traveled to five continents in seventyeight days and visited every previous host Olympic city. More than ten thousand people, chosen for their commitment to the Olympic movement, ran with the torch. Most of the 10,500 athletes and 5,500 team officials from 201 National Olympic committees competed in the Athens area. More than 21,500 members of the media (approximately 16,000 broadcasters and 5,500 print and photographic journalists) covered the games. The opening ceremony, with a live audience of 70,000 and an estimated audience of 3.5 billion worldwide, featured technological wizardry and more than 2,400 dancers and performers. Highlights included replicas of an ancient Greek ship floating across a massive tank of water—2 million liters—that took six hours to fill but only three minutes to drain. On this sea a young boy sailed homeward in a paper boat waving the Greek flag. Later a statue of a giant emerged from the water and split into fragments shaped as torsos of classical Greek statues, symbolizing the Greek islands. The production manager of the ceremony, David Zolkwer, stated that the ceremony was done on an “epic scale,”
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with the largest moving light rig (two thousand lights) ever installed for a single event. IOC President Jacques Rogge paid homage to Greece for giving the world the ancient games and then reviving them. He stated, “Athens, I turn to you now. . . . Through your conduct give us reasons to believe in sport that is increasingly credible and pure, by refusing doping and respecting fair play.” Alas, these words were largely overshadowed by a major drug scandal involving a Greek sports hero and one of the nation’s strongest medal hopes. Sprinter Costas Kenteris (Kederis), gold medalist of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the first Greek to win a medal in athletics at the Olympic Games since 1896, and fellow sprinter-girlfriend Katrina Thanou were hospitalized after what was later allegedly a faked motorcycle accident a few hours before they faced an IOC disciplinary board for failing to attend a drug test. The Greek Olympic Committee voted to withdraw the two sprinters from the Athens games, but four days after the opening ceremony the two disgraced athletes announced their withdrawal from the games. Despite the credo of the Olympic movement, sports and politics were intertwined. Iranian judo champion Arash Miresmaili withdrew from the Olympics because he refused to compete against an Israeli opponent. Judo (gentle way) is an Olympic ideal in microcosm. As one journalist observed, “to avoid a judo bout to make a political statement is to miss the point both of judo and of the Olympics.” Nonetheless, many great performances and examples of the Olympic motto of “citius, altius, fortius” (swifter, higher, stronger) occurred. Athletes competed in sizzling summer temperatures. Fortunately organizers had incorporated mesimeriano ipnako—the afternoon snooze. Nonetheless, during the women’s marathon, despite starting at 6 A.M., the heat affected reigning world champion Paula Radcliffe of Great Britain, who collapsed about 6.5 kilometers from the finish. The winner, Japan’s Mizuki Noguchi, won with a time of 2 hours, 26 minutes, 20 seconds—11 minutes outside
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Radcliffe’s world record and 3 minutes outside the Olympic record set at the Sydney Olympics. The swimming events included some sensational performances. Nineteen-year-old U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won eight medals (six gold and two bronze)— perhaps a better achievement than Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals in 1972 because far more countries now have accomplished swimmers. Australian Ian Thorpe won four medals (two gold, one silver, one bronze), including one in the 200-meter freestyle competition, which many people regarded as one of the most exciting contests of the 2004 Olympics: Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands, who beat Thorpe in Sydney, came in second, with Phelps third. In running, Great Britain’s Kelly Holmes won both the women’s 800 meters and 1,500 meters. Hicham El Guerrou of Morocco, considered by many to be the greatest distance runner in history, finally won the 1,500 meters after stunning upsets at Atlanta and Sydney, which were two of only four losses in his 1,500meter running career. He also won the 5,000 meters, becoming the first runner since Paavo Nurmi to win both races at the same Olympics. El Guerrou’s peer athletes at Athens elected him to IOC membership. Other athletes elected were Rania Elwani, Frank Fredericks, and Jan Zelezny.
Highs and Lows Many surprises and disappointments occurred at the 2004 Olympics. Reigning 100-meter hurdles world champion Perdita Felicien of Canada after running seven steps out of the blocks hit the hurdle, taking Russian Irina Shevchenko crashing down with her. The U.S. men’s basketball team, without thirteen National Basketball Association stars, was disappointed to win only the bronze medal. Justin Gatlin of the United States was the surprise 100-meters winner in one of the fastest (9.85 seconds) and closest Olympic sprints since Moscow in 1980. In the 200 meters Gatlin came in third to fellow U.S. runner Shawn Crawford. The absence of Greek Olympic
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champion Costas Kenteris hung over that event as crowds shouted “Hellas, Hellas,” delaying the start of the race for several minutes. Argentina won the soccer final against Paraguay. Paraguay’s silver medal was that country’s first Olympic medal in any sport. Windsurfer Gal Friedman won Israel’s first gold medal since Israel entered the Olympics at Helsinki, Finland, in 1952. Brazilian marathon runner Vanderlei Lima was grabbed by a spectator dressed in Irish traditional costume when leading the race about 5 kilometers from the finish. Although the altercation lasted only seconds, it clearly upset Lima, who was soon overtaken by the winner, Italy’s Stefano Baldini. When Lima ran into Panathenaic Stadium, venue of the 1896 Olympic Games, members of the crowd who had seen the altercation on a huge screen acknowledged the demonstration of sportsmanship. Along with his bronze medal Lima was presented with the Pierre de Coubertin Medal by IOC President Rogge for demonstration of fair play and Olympic values. Artists from thirty-nine countries exhibited sculpture and other art pertaining to the theme “sport and Olympism.” The IOC awarded the Olympiart prize— established in 1992 to recognize artists who contribute through their work to the promotion of sport, young people, and peace—to Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis. Renowned for his score for the film Zorba the Greek, Theodorakis has also composed works for the Olympic Games—Canto Olimpico and Homage to Greece—for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The presence of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) at the 2004 Olympics was evident. More than three thousand tests were undertaken, and more than thirty athletes at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games were caught using banned performanceenhancing substances. WADA head Dick Pound said that “far from tarnishing the Games, catching the athletes enhances them.” On a more optimistic note, more than 250 athletes a day throughout both the Olympic
and Paralympic Games visited the WADA Outreach Center in the Athletes Village to participate in educational programs, especially the “Doping Quiz” game, which has been translated into nine languages. The final medal count per country included the United States with 103 (35 gold, 39 silver, 29 bronze); Russia with 92 (27, 27, 38); China with 63 (32, 17, 14); Australia with 49 (17, 16, 16); Germany with 48 (14, 16, 18); and Japan with 37 (16, 9, 12). The Paralympic Games were held in Athens on 17–28 September. The games attracted many athletes with physical disabilities, but no athletes with intellectual disabilities were permitted by the International Paralympic Committee to participate. Overall, the 2004 Olympics were successful. Many of the concerns leading up to the games were allayed, although concerns about the readiness of venues, accessible transport, security, and accommodations kept away thousands of spectators. However, the sports venues were ready, the traffic flowed and, as the IOC president remarked during the closing ceremony, security was “flawless.” Of course, 45,000 security personnel (25,000 police, 7,000 military, 3,000 coast guards, 1,500 firefighters, 3,500 private security contractors, and 5,000 trained volunteers) had been used to ensure safety. One journalist remarked that “security was omnipresent without being smothering.” Attendance was disappointing during the early days; ticket sales fell short of the predicted 65 percent of the total 5.32 million tickets sold by the commencement of the games. However, venues filled as the competitions moved closer to finals. The global broadcast of the 2004 Olympics broke all records. Three hundred channels broadcast the games to 220 countries and territories, thereby providing thirty-five thousand hours of dedicated coverage (two thousand hours per day to an audience of 3.9 billion people). Several technological firsts also occurred in electronic coverage. Some countries made streaming video and highlight clips of the Olympic Games available through mobile phone handsets and the Internet.
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We all experience doubts and fears as we approach new challenges. The fear diminishes with the confidence that comes from experience and faith. Sometimes you just have to go for it and see what happens. Jumping into the battle does not guarantee victory, but being afraid to try guarantees defeat. ■ BRIAN GOODELL
In general, the majority of respondents surveyed felt positive about the 2004 Olympics and Greece. Citizens in five major countries (United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and France) considered Greece to be a “safe destination,” a “modern European country” that organized “technically excellent” Olympic Games with a “human dimension.” A nationwide survey showed that a majority of Greeks believe that the success of the 2004 Olympics enhanced the position of Greece on the international stage.
Cost of Success In November 2004 the Greek government announced the cost of the 2004 Olympics. At approximately $11.6 billion, they were the most expensive Olympic Games ever. The security expenditure alone—$1.39 billion— almost equaled the total cost of staging the Olympics in Sydney ($1.5 billion). Greek Deputy Culture Minister Fani Palli-Petralia stated, “We had very successful and very safe Games but we also had very expensive Games.” Fears by the IOC that it had awarded the 2004 Olympics to a small, poor country were unfounded. Members of the IOC and many others left the closing ceremony with images that linked Greek history and its modern reality as the music of Zorba the Greek rose to a crescendo.The Olympic symbol of five interlinking rings, along with the emblem of the 2004 Olympics—a branch from an olive tree intertwined in a circle—reached an audience that no other event can reach. Jacques Rogge wrote in the final issue of the Olympic Village bulletin: “All together, we have shared in the emotion and passion generated by the Olympic Games, this universal rendezvous symbolized by tolerance, peace and friendship.” Ian Jobling
Further Reading Athens 2004 Olympic Games. (2004). Retrieved January 18, 2005, from http://www.athens2004.com BBC Sport, Olympics 2004. (2004). Retrieved January 18, 2005, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics _ 2004
Olympics, Summer
T
he Summer Olympics are the world’s biggest sports event. At the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, in 1896 fewer than 250 athletes from thirteen nations participated. Today more than ten thousand athletes from around the world participate. The Athens Olympics in 1896 and 1906 lasted only ten days. In contrast, the games between 1900 and 1928 lasted several months; weekly periods of competitions were interrupted by breaks. In 1930 Olympic officials decided that the games should last only two weeks over three weekends (sixteen days). Seventeen days have been permitted when the opening ceremony is held on a Friday. The time between the quadrennial Summer Olympic Games is an olympiad; each olympiad begins with the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics. Each Olympics and each olympiad are designated by Roman numerals; for example, the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, were the XXVII Olympics, and the 2004 Olympics in Athens were the XXVIII Olympics. If the games are cancelled for any reason the number designation of the olympiad remains the same. Thus, although the 1916 games in Berlin, Germany, were cancelled because of World War I, the period between 1916 and 1920 remained the VI modern olympiad. Since 1994 the Winter Olympic Games have not been held in the middle of an olympiad. From 1924 until 1992 Summer and Winter Olympic Games were held in the same year. Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937) of France is known as the founder of the modern Olympic Games. However, even before Coubertin people had attempted to reestablish the ancient Olympics of Greece. However, these attempts—in Greece, France, England, and the United States—failed because they lacked the internationality that has been the elixir of today’s modern Olympic Games. Coubertin did not reintroduce the Olympic Games merely to stage an ancient sports festival but rather to
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Olympics, Summer Key Events in Summer Olympics History 1894 The Olympic Games are re-established and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) founded at the Olympic Congress in Paris.
1956 Athletes enter the stadium for the closing ceremony in mass, rather than by nation, to signify unity.
1896 The first modern Olympics are held in Athens.
1968 Drug testing is used for the first time at the Mexico City games.
1900 Women are allowed to compete in only a few sports.
1972 Twelve Israeli athletes and coaches die as a result of a Palestinian terrorist attack.
1913 The Olympic flag is designed by 1981 Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
1976 Seventeen African and Arab nations boycott the games in Montreal.
1921 The Olympic Charter is established.
1980 About sixty nations, led by the United States, boycott the games in Moscow.
1921 The Olympic motto, “Citius, altius, fortius” (faster, higher, stronger), is officially used for the first time. 1928 Women are allowed to compete in track and field events. 1930 Olympic officials set the duration of the games as two weeks over three weekends (sixteen days).
1981 International sports federations are asked to modify their rules to allow professionals to compete in the Olympic Games. 1984 About twenty nations, led by the Soviet Union, boycott the games in Los Angeles. 1984 At the games in Los Angeles professionals are allowed to participate for the first time.
1936 The torch relay is run for the first time at the Berlin Olympics.
1984 Wholesale commercialization of the games begins with the Los Angeles Olympics.
1936 The Olympics are shown on television for the first time, although only in Berlin.
2001 The IOC is embroiled in a scandal over charges of bribery of officials to influence site selection.
1952 Athletes are housed for the first time in an Olympic Village.
offer nations of the world a chance to peacefully compete. He hoped that young people would develop a maturity that would lead to an ability to cope with social, political, and economic challenges of the early twentieth century and become responsible and democratic citizens. Coubertin and his supporters also hoped that the Olympic Games would foster “international contacts,” allowing people to represent their country and get to know people of other countries and encourage a reduction of hatred, distrust, and prejudice. Nationalism and internationalism do not, in Coubertin’s opinion, exclude each other. Coubertin believed that, properly understood, peaceful internationalism corrects a narrowminded nationalism but also acknowledges the differences and characteristics of other nations, thus disas-
2004 The Olympics return to Athens.
sociating itself from superficial cosmopolitanism. By reintroducing the Olympic Games Coubertin planned to consolidate and extend interest in international competition. The Olympic Charter—the rules and regulations of the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee (IOC)—addresses this goal: “The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair-play.”
Revival The Olympic Games were reestablished and the IOC founded in 1894 at the Olympic Congress in Paris.
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Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the Modern Olympics.
Coubertin was the organizer of the congress and was supported foremost by Charles Herbert of England and William Milligan Sloane of the United States. Athens was chosen as the first host city, and amateur rules were established. Coubertin was an advocate of amateurism. To Coubertin and Sloane, only amateur sports can attain the educational goals of athleticism. Both men—as well as other early Olympians—believed that the pursuit of money in professional sports often goes along with corruption, unfairness, and an unlimited exhibition of ambition. The question of amateurism was hotly disputed through many decades. Athletes repeatedly were excluded from the Olympics because they violated the amateur rules. For example, the 1912 gold medalist Jim Thorpe of the United States lost his Olympic eligibility for violating the amateur rules. Thorpe was stripped of his gold medals because he was paid for playing semiprofessional baseball in 1910. The IOC returned Thorpe’s medals to his family in 1982. During the 1970s the amateur rules were liberalized. At the 1981 Olympic Congress in BadenBaden, Germany, international federations were asked to modify their rules to allow professionals to compete in the Olympic Games. At the 1984 games in Los Angeles professionals were allowed to participate. The highly paid professionals of the U.S. National Basketball Association competed as the Dream Team at the 1992 games in Barcelona, Spain, to much acclaim. Coubertin regarded the Olympic Games as the institutional framework of his ”Olympic Idea”: Moral perfection can be realized by education of mind and body alike. Therefore, he felt, the Olympic movement should not be limited to sports alone: It should be defined in
a broader sense. Coubertin therefore established the Olympic Congresses. Until his resignation as IOC president in 1925, Coubertin organized eight such congresses. The IOC organizes Olympic Congresses at undetermined intervals. The 1914, 1921, 1925, and 1930 Olympic Congresses dealt with Olympic rules, the program, and the amateur question. The congresses of 1973, 1981, and 1994 dealt with the future of the Olympic movement, focusing on the amateur question and its liberalization, sports in modern society, and sports and the media in a social context. Coubertin felt that only men should participate in the Olympics. However, since the 1900 games in Paris women have taken part in various Olympic sports such as tennis and golf. In 1912 women began to participate in swimming. Because the IOC refused to admit women to track and field events after World War I, the Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale (FSFI) was founded to organize a women’s olympiad in 1922. At the proposal of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) in 1928, the IOC admitted women for track and field events to avoid a rivalry. Since that time the Olympic program for women has been substantially extended. For the last twenty-five years only sports for men and women have been admitted. Today the number of women athletes is about 40 percent that of men athletes. In 1913 Coubertin designed the Olympic flag with its five rings: the blue, black, and red rings at the top, interlaced with yellow and green rings at the bottom against a white background. The flag was hoisted for the first time at a sports festival in Alexandria, Egypt, and then at the Jubilee Olympic Congress in 1914 in
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Paris. The flag was renewed by the South Korean National Olympic Committee (NOC) in 1985.
Torch Relay The German sports leader Carl Diem in 1931 proposed a torch relay from ancient Olympia in Greece to the venue of the upcoming games to stress the link between the ancient and modern Olympic Games. In 1931 the IOC approved a torch relay at its session in Athens. The relay was first held for the 1936 Berlin games and has become a tradition. Whereas in 1936 relay runners ran the shortest route from Olympia to Berlin, today the route allows as many runners as possible to carry the torch through the host country. In the months before the games the flame of the torch is lit in the sacred grove at ancient Olympia with a concave mirror and sent on its journey. The Greek composer Spyros Samaras wrote a hymn for the 1896 Athens games. The Greek national poet Kostis Palamas set the hymn to music, and it was played at the 1896 and 1906 games in Athens. From 1932 to 1960 musicians from the host country composed the Olympic hymn. In 1954 the IOC announced a competition for a permanent Olympic hymn. Michael Spisak of Poland won the competition, but, because of a money shortage, the Olympic movement returned to the hymn of Samaras in 1964. Since 1952 the Olympic Village has been an institution of the games. At the 1928 games in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and at the 1932 games in Los Angeles, athletes were accommodated in cabins. In 1936 in Berlin, athletes were accommodated in houses for the first time. Festive highlights of the Olympic Games include the opening, award, and closing ceremonies at the Olympic stadium. The opening ceremony begins with the arrival of the host country’s head of state, who is accompanied by the IOC president and the president of the Organizing Committee. Then comes the march of the nations, organized in alphabetical order according to the alphabet of the host country, but the first nation to march in is always Greece.The last nation is always the host coun-
try. After the march of the nations, the president of the Organizing Committee and the IOC president deliver speeches. Then the Olympic hymn is played, and the Olympic flag, unfurled horizontally, is brought into the stadium and hoisted on the flagpole. The Olympic torch is brought into the stadium by runners in relays.The last runner circles the track before lighting the Olympic flame. The lighting of the flame often is followed by a symbolic release of white doves. The flag bearers of all nations form a semicircle, and a competitor and a judge from the host country successively recite the Olympic oath, which is included in the Olympic Charter: “In the name of all competitors I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, committing ourselves to sport without doping and without drugs, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams.” At an award ceremony the top three athletes in a competition are awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals. An award ceremony takes place after each competition. The national flags of the three medalists are hoisted, with the flag of the gold medalist in the middle. During the hoisting of the flags the national anthem of the gold medalist is played. From 1928 until 2000 the front and reverse sides of the medals were designed by the Italian sculptor Guiseppe Cassioli. The top eight athletes in a competition receive a diploma. All athletes receive a campaign medal and a campaign diploma. The closing ceremony ends the Olympic Games. The flag bearers of each national delegation enter the stadium, followed by the athletes, who since 1956 have not been categorized by nations in order to demonstrate international friendship among all athletes. The flags of Greece, the host country, and the host country of the next (winter) games are hoisted, and the national anthems of these countries are played. The mayor of the host city hands over the Olympic flag to the IOC president, who delivers the flag to the mayor of the next host city. Before the flame of the torch is extinguished and the Olympic hymn played, the IOC president officially closes the Olympic Games.
OLYMPICS, SUMMER
Olympics, Summer How Lady Heath Saw the Olympic Games (1928) Lady Heath, the famous British airwoman, utilized her ability as a pilot in a novel way to secure admission to the Olympic Stadium at Amsterdam. When the British women athletes decided to stay away from the Olympiad, Lady Heath’s name was erased from the register of officials, but she did not intend to miss the Olympiad, and finding there were no tickets, she set out in her aeroplane, and circled above the Stadium. Then she dropped a note to this effect: “I shall continue circling around until tickets of admission are left at the front office. When these arrangements are made, place coats in the shape of a cross in the centre of the Stadium and I will immediately make a landing and come along.” The request was complied with. Lady Heath returned to the Stadium by car, and had since acted in an official capacity. Source: African World (1928, August 11). p. 119.
The global reputation of the Olympic Games has increased with modern communication technology. The IOC reports that the 1996 games in Atlanta, Georgia, were broadcast to a worldwide audience of 2.3 billion and that the 2000 games in Sydney, Australia, drew a broadcast audience of 3.7 billion people. Pictures of Olympic competitions were first televised live at the 1936 games in Berlin. They could be watched in more than twenty-four viewing halls throughout Berlin. The first international broadcasts of Olympic competition occurred at the 1956 winter games in Cortina, Italy. The broadcasts could be watched in eight European countries. With the growing popularity of broadcasting the Olympics in the 1950s, the IOC recognized that the sale of broadcast rights could finance the games and the expenses of the IOC. The European Broadcasting Union paid $660,000 for the broadcast rights for the 1960 winter games in Squaw Valley, California. The
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I grew up on a farm and I always learned when you work you go forward, you don’t stop and say, well, I’ll take a break. You always go forward and get the job done. ■ RULON GARDNER
price has escalated: The NBC television network paid $3.5 billion for the rights to broadcast the five Olympics from 2000 through 2008.
Commercialism However, the selling of broadcast rights is only one aspect of the marriage of commercialism and the Olympic Games. Sponsorship and advertising contracts are as profitable as ticketing and merchandising. The unlimited commercialization of the Olympic Games began with the 1984 Los Angeles games. After the financial disaster of the 1976 games in Montreal, Canada, which created $990 million in debt for the host city, few cities except Los Angeles were interested in hosting the 1984 Olympic Games. For the first time the organization of the Olympic Games was put into the hands of a privately financed organizing committee—the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC). Sponsorship programs for local, national, and international companies, the sale of broadcast rights, tickets, and Olympic coins led to a surplus of $225 million. The LAOOC demonstrated that corporations are willing to spend huge sums of money to associate themselves with the Olympic Games. Thus, the IOC invented the program TOP (The Olympic Program) to allow corporations to become Olympic sponsors for four years by paying millions of dollars. Since 1984 the prospect of financial gain has led to constantly increasing competition among cities to host the next games. Apart from the financial advantage, the Olympic Games increase the tourist appeal of the host city. Even after the Olympic Games end millions of tourists who watched the Olympic Games on television visit the host city. Before the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, the city ranked sixteenth among favorite European travel destinations; seven years later Barcelona ranked third. Likewise, the number of tourists in Australia increased after the 2000 games in Sydney. Of course, competition to host the next Olympic Games has led to corruption inside and outside the IOC. For example, during the application procedure to host the 2002 winter games IOC members accepted gifts from
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I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability, it was my mental ability. ■ BRUCE JENNER
applicant cities. After some IOC members were expelled, the IOC modified the regulations for application. The modern Olympics have always been affected by political tensions. When Greece could not afford to host the 1896 games in Athens, Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis refused to host the event. He had to resign when the opposition demanded that Athens host the event. Because the founder of the modern Olympics was French, the German Gymnastic Association did not participate in the 1896 games, motivated by narrow-minded nationalism. During the 1930s fascist governments tried to use the games for political purposes. The most hotly disputed modern games were probably the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.Then the ideological conflict between East and West bedeviled the games between 1952 and 1990. Three boycotts, however, were unable to stop the Olympics: In 1976 seventeen African and Arab nations boycotted the games in Montreal, Canada, protesting a visit by the New Zealand rugby team to apartheid (racially segregated) South Africa. Four years later about sixty nations, led by the United States, boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. In return, the former USSR, with about twenty other nations, foremost from eastern Europe, did not participate in the 1984 games in Los Angeles. In defense of that boycott, some people said that the safety of east European athletes could not be guaranteed in the United States. The greatest political tragedy occurred at the 1972 games in Munich, Germany, when twelve Israeli athletes and coaches were either murdered by Palestinian terrorists or died when German police stormed the terrorists.
Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
The Olympic motto, “Citius, altius, fortius” (faster, higher, stronger), was officially used for the first time in 1921. This Latin motto, with its message urging athletes to strive for their natural best, is often perverted at the games by the misuse of performanceenhancing drugs. Drug tests were first used at the 1968 games in Mexico City. Four years later the IOC officially established drug tests. Anabolic steroids, synthetic male hormones, and erythropoietin (EPO) are probably the most abused illegal substances in elite sports. New methods of doping, for which methods of detection have yet to be developed, are widely available. A clear warning signal against drugs was sent by the founding of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), funded by the IOC. The IOC is the supreme authority of the Olympics. It is a nongovernmental and nonprofit organization based in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the proposal of Coubertin, the IOC was formed in 1894 at the Olympic Congress. Initially the IOC consisted of thirteen members. Today it consists of more than 130 members. The IOC is a self-recruiting body. New members are elected
OLYMPICS, WINTER
by the membership. Membership is limited to resident citizens of countries that have national Olympic committees (NOCs). Members are not representatives of their country or of their NOC but rather are ambassadors of the IOC in their country.
IOC IOC members are elected, with the option of being reelected. The IOC meets at an annual session to elect a president and a vice president, nominate cities to host the games, and approve the budget. Formerly the president was elected for life. Today the president is elected in a secret vote for eight years and can be reelected for a term of four years. The Olympic Congress in 1894 decided that the president should be born in the nation that would host the next Olympic Games. Therefore, the Greek Dimitrios Vikelas became founding president and served as president from 1894 until 1896. His successor was Coubertin because the games of 1900 took place in Paris. When William Milligan Sloane of the United States refused to become president for the third Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904, Coubertin remained in office and was reelected several times. In 1925 he resigned the presidency and became honorary president. He was followed by the Belgian Count Henri de BailletLatour, who remained in office until his death in 1942. Baillet-Latour was followed by his vice president, Sigfrid Edstrom of Sweden, who was elected president in 1946. Other presidents were Avery Brundage (United States) from 1952 to 1972, Lord Killanin (Ireland) from 1972 to 1980, and Juan Antonio Samaranch (Spain) from 1980 to 2001. Jacques Rogge of Belgium was elected to the post in 2001. The Executive Committee founded by Coubertin in 1921 acts as the cabinet of the IOC. It meets at least three times a year and executes business between sessions. During the first years of the twentieth century national Olympic committees were founded in countries that participated in the games regularly. In order to send athletes to the Olympic Games the NOCs must be recognized by the IOC, and their statutes must be in ac-
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cordance with the ideals of the Olympic Charter. The charter was set up by Coubertin in 1921. Today its official version is available in French and English. During the 1920s members of the International Sport Federations affiliated and formed the Bureau Permanent to have more influence on the Olympic program and its amateur rules. In 1967 the General Assembly of International Federations (today called the “General Assembly of International Sport Federations” —GAISF) was founded. The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) represents the sports associations that take part in the Olympics. The sports disciplines that are not in the Olympic program but that are recognized by the IOC have been affiliated in the IOC-recognized International Sports Federations. Karl Lennartz and Stephan Wassong See also Olympic Stadium (Berlin), 1936
Further Reading Buchanan, I., & Mallon, B. (2001). Historical dictionary of the Olympic movement. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Findling, J. E., & Pelle, K. D. (Eds.). (2004). Encyclopedia of the modern Olympic movement. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Guttmann, A. (1992). The Olympics: A history of the modern Olympic Games. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lucas, J. A. (1992). Future of the Olympic Games. Champaign, Il: Human Kinetics.
Olympics, Winter
A
t the IOC session in Budapest on 24 May 1911, the Italian IOC member Count Eugenio Brunetta d’Usseaux proposed to include a winter sports week in the program of the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games featuring skiing in particular—but Colonel Victor Balck, the organizer of both the Nordic Games and the Stockholm Olympics, scheduled for 1912, did not want his Nordic Games being internationalized nor changed from 1913 to 1912. The latter was thus a clear step
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Olympism is the marriage of sport and culture. ■ JUAN ANTONIO SAMARANCH
backward compared with the 1908 London Games, where figure skating for men, women, and pairs was included in the program. The competitions were held in the Prince’s Skating Rink in Knightbridge. Ulrich Salchow from Sweden who won gold, would make a remarkable comeback in Antwerp in 1920, where he finished fourth at the age of forty-two. A clear distinction between Summer and Winter Games was only made from 1924 onwards. Probably the simple fact that the ice rink of the Palais de Glace happened to be there was good enough reason for the organizers of the 1920 Antwerp Games to program figure skating and ice hockey. These events took place five months before the official opening of the Games, from 24 to 27 April. Swedish figure skater Ulrich Salchow, who had been amateur world champion eleven times, only finished fourth, but his young compatriot Gillis Grafström won the gold medal. Magda Julin, also from Sweden, won gold in the ladies competition. American figure skater Theresa Weld was the darling of the Antwerp public, but she had to be content with a third place due to a partial jury. The Canadian ice hockey team, entirely made up of players of the Winnipeg Falcons, won this Olympic premiere by beating the American team.
Early Winter Games The IOC decided on 26–27 May 1921, in Lausanne, to take up once again the question of the winter sports. Sweden, Norway and Finland voted against Olympic winter sports. Nevertheless, the conference participants voted in favor of a resolution proposed by marquis de Polignac on behalf of the French, the Swiss, and the Canadian Olympic committees. As the 1924 Games were to be held in Paris, the French Olympic Committee received permission to choose the site of the socalled Winter Sports Week in France. Chamonix, which had already organized the French skiing championships in 1906 and 1908, was chosen. The Winter Sports Week of the Eighth Olympiad was inaugurated at Chamonix in February 1924. Athletes from sixteen nations entered the first Winter Olympic
Games. The program consisted of ice hockey, bobsledding, figure skating, skiing, curling, and speed skating, but women could compete only in figure skating. The skating competitions took place outdoors and were thus seriously affected by the weather conditions. Canada and the United States were the finalists in the ice hockey competition. People watched from rooftops to see the Canadians win by 6–1. The Scandinavians dominated four out of the five events: figure skating, bobsled and Nordic combined. Norway won 4 gold, 7 silver, and 6 bronze medals. Finland ended second with 4 gold, 3 silver, and 3 bronze medals. At the twenty-fourth IOC session in Prague on 27 May 1925, the Winter Games were officially included in the Olympic program. The 1928 Summer Games were given to Amsterdam and the Winter Games to St. Moritz, Switzerland. Of the 495 competitors in St. Moritz only 27 (5.4 percent) were women. St. Moritz programmed the first Alpine skiing competitions. Norway excelled again by winning seven gold medals. One of them was won by the fifteen-year-old figure skater Sonja Henie, who would repeat this feat at the two following Olympics. Henie thus became the youngest winter Olympic champion of all times. The Canadian hockey team, composed of University of Toronto students, completely ruled the ice and won its final three games by scores of 11–0, 14–0, and 13–0. The little-known village of Lake Placid in the Adirondack forest of New York managed to become the venue for the 1932 Winter Games. Lake Placid native Jack Shea, who had taken the Olympic oath, won the first gold medal in the 500-meter speed skating event. He also won the 1,500-meter (and went on to later become mayor of Lake Placid). American skater Irving Jaffee won both the 5,000- and 10,000-meter distance races. Edward Eagan, who had won the light heavyweight boxing title at the 1920 Antwerp Games, now won gold again as a member of the U.S. four-man bobsled team. Swedish figure skater Gillis Grafström, who had won gold in 1920, 1924, and 1928, was outclassed by Austrian Karl Schäfer. Four years earlier, Schäfer had
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participated in the Amsterdam Summer Olympics as a breaststroke swimmer. Sonja Henie won her second gold medal at Lake Placid and became the darling of the public. At Lake Placid women’s speed skating became for the first time an Olympic sport. The Canadian ice hockey team was victorious again. When the 1936 Olympic Games were awarded to Germany, the German organizers were also eager to host the Winter Olympics. The neighboring resorts of Garmisch and Partenkirchen were chosen because they featured all the necessary infrastructure, including ski jump and bobsled facilities. Alpine skiing competitions were for the first time included in the Winter Olympic Games. Combined events, a downhill race and two slalom races, were scheduled for both men and women. Christl Cranz was the first to win the new event for Germany; her compatriot Käthe Grasegger finished second. One day later, German skier Franz Pfnür won the Alpine combined for men. Also new was the 4 ✕ 10-kilometer Nordic relay, won by the Finnish team. The British hockey team that took to the ice consisted of thirteen players; all but one of them were Canadian trained. The Canadians had protested that two members of the British team had not obtained proper transfer papers from the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. In the end the Canadians, winners of all former Olympic competitions, were eliminated after a 2–1 loss to Great Britain. The German Winter Games organizing committee was well aware that the organization of the Summer Games would be at risk if anything should go wrong. They did their utmost to create a friendly climate of Alpine “Gemütlichkeit” on the one hand, and a perfectly planned program on the other hand.
War and the Games The city of Sapporo, Japan, was awarded the 1940 Winter Games. (Tokyo had already been given the 1940 Summer Games.) As the Fédération Internationale de Ski rejected the IOC’s decision to exclude “professionals,” the IOC canceled the Alpine ski competition for the 1940 Sapporo Games. Japan, in the meantime, was at war with China, and the Japanese Olympic Committee
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decided in early 1938 to cancel their hosting of the Summer and Winter Games. St. Moritz was awarded the 1940 Winter Games, having already demonstrated its organizational capacities in 1928. The Swiss, however, refused to reinstate ski jumping as a demonstration sport, as the IOC had decided. The IOC held a secret vote and took the Games away from St. Moritz and gave them—again—to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, but World War II began with the German invasion in Poland on 1 September 1939, and neither the 1940 nor the 1944 Winter and Summer Games took place.
The Cold War Games St. Moritz, in neutral Switzerland, was the ideal site for the postwar 1948 Winter Games. Two rival American hockey teams appeared in St. Moritz: one from the Amateur Hockey Association (AHA) and one from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). The AHA team finally finished fourth but was later disqualified by the IOC. There were more troubles: the Canada versus Sweden hockey match ended in a fistfight, speed skating rules were heavily criticized, and a Swiss policeman was accidentally shot by a competitor in the pentathlon. Despite all of this, the St. Moritz Games added men’s and women’s downhill and slalom ski races. Gretchen Fraser from the United States took gold in the slalom and became the first non-European to win a skiing event. Skeleton sledding reappeared, having made its first appearance in 1928, and the ill-starred winter pentathlon was included as a demonstration sport. The 1952 Winter Games were held in Oslo, Norway. Snow was so scarce in February 1952 that volunteers and soldiers had to move large quantities of it to the downhill courses. For the first time a torch relay was part of a Winter Olympics. The West Germans participated in the Oslo Winter Games because their national Olympic committee had been recognized by the IOC, whereas the status of the East German Olympic committee was not resolved yet. The Oslo Games added the giant slalom race for both men and women to the program and the 10-kilometer Nordic cross-country race for women. The Alpine combined for men and women
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was, however, dropped. American figure skater Richard “Dick” Button not only repeated his 1948 victory, he also amazed the enthusiastic crowd with a never before seen triple jump and double axel. Canada finished first and the United States second in the hockey competition after playing to a 3–3 tie in the final game. The Norwegians had opted for bandy, a Scandinavian variant of ice hockey, as a demonstration sport. The Olympic oath was for the first time taken by a female athlete, Italian skier Giuliana Chenal-Minuzzo, in the Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter games of 1956. The Italian national broadcasting company RAI produced the first live television coverage of the Winter Games. This was the Soviet Union’s first appearance at Winter Games. Soviet speed skaters entered the Olympic Winter scene en grandeur, winning the 500-, 1,500-, and 5,000-meter events. Soviet women won the 10-kilometer cross-country ski race and the 4 ✕ 10-kilometer crosscountry relay race. Moreover, the USSR hockey team captured Olympic gold, leaving the silver and bronze medals to the United States and Canada, respectively. The star athlete at Cortina was Austrian skier Toni Sailer, who was the first skier to win all three Alpine events: slalom, giant slalom, and downhill. Among the new technologies introduced during the Squaw Valley Games of 1960 was artificial indoor and outdoor ice and electronic timing and scoring devices. In contrast with these technological changes, Piutte Indians performed ritual snow dances on the eve of the 1960 Games. The winter biathlon, which consisted of cross-country skiing and shooting, was on the program for the first time. Women’s speed skating was also contested for the first time. Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol region of Austria took the preparations of the Ninth Winter Olympics very seriously. The French sisters Catherine and Marielle Goitschel finished first and second in the women’s slalom then traded positions in the giant slalom. Soviet speed skater Lydia Skoblikova became the first athlete to win four individual gold medals in a single Winter Olympics by sweeping the 500-, 1.000-, 1.500-, and 3.000-meter events.
Grenoble marked the beginning of the media era in the Winter Games. Gigantism was the term used by IOC president Avery Brundage to describe the capital involved, which according to the official report amounted to a total expenditure of just over 1 billion French francs (US$240 million). The decentralization of the 1968 Games generated great criticism. Only the skating and ice hockey events were held in Grenoble itself. In the meantime the IOC had introduced doping control. Sex-testing measures, too, were first introduced to the Winter Games at Grenoble. Jean-Claude Killy duplicated the historical feat of Austria’s Toni Sailer by winning three gold medals in the Alpine events: the downhill race, the slalom, and giant slalom. Killy was an enfant terrible in Brundage’s eyes; Brundage saw in him the personification of commercialism in sport. U.S. figure skater Peggy Fleming became the uncontested Olympic Games ice princess of Grenoble. The 1972 Winter Games went to Sapporo, Japan. Avery Brundage had demanded that ten prominent skiers be excluded because they had been compensated for their participation in a ski camp. All major European ski countries threatened to boycott the Winter Games if Brundage did not back away from his demand. He eventually did. In the absence of Austria’s Karl Schranz, the giant slalom was won by Gustav Thöni from Südtirol in Italy. Slalom gold went to Francisco Fernandez Ochoa from Spain, who won his country’s first ever Winter Olympic medal. Ard Schenk from the Netherlands won the 1,000-, 5,000and 10,000-meter speed skating. Two U.S. women speed skaters won gold medals: Anne Elizabeth Henning in the 500-meter race and Dianne Mary Holum in the 1,500meter race. The USSR again very convincingly won ice hockey; the U.S. team finished second. Austria was awarded the 1976 Winter Olympics as a recompense for the exclusion of its national skiing hero Karl Schranz from the 1972 Sapporo Games. As in the 1952 Oslo Games, Innsbruck had to launch an “Operation Snowlift” in which soldiers had to move large quantities of snow to the ski runs. Another concern that haunted the organizers of the Innsbruck Games was the threat of terrorism, especially
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Olympics, Winter Snowball Fights Snow is a requirement of many winter sports. The following description is of snowball fights among the Saami (Lapps) of Finland in the nineteenth century. Snowball fights (t shkki = hard snowball, muohtspab’b = soft snowball) are popular and are practiced as often as the weather is suitable. Two children stand opposite each other, while the others watch. The starting distance is fixed at seven or eight fathoms, but as the fight warms up, the two fighters approach each other until it becomes almost a close combat (sm ogkodeäbme) in which there is no time to make balls and they can only throw snow by double handfuls on each other. The one who takes to his heels is the loser. They may also form two parallel rows, with the oldest participant settling the combination of the two parties in such a way that they are equally strong. Now begins a general contest: Whoever is hit by a ball is out. They proceed in this way until one side is empty. If only one or two children are left on each side, they will approach each other and finish with a hand-to-hand fight. Anyone who has behaved contrary to the rules is punished, e.g. by having his trousers filled with snow.
after the terrorist massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Games in 1972. The Olympic Village, housing 1,650 athletes and officials, looked very much like a fortress with a two-to-one security-to-athlete ratio. East Germany (GDR) won all five bobsled and luge events. The Soviet Union once again led the medal count, winning a total of twenty-seven medals, of which thirteen were gold. Soviet cross-country skier Galina Kulakowa, became the first woman to win five gold medals. Her bronze medal in the 5-kilometer individual race was taken away, however, after she tested positive for ephedrine use. The small Adirondack ski resort of Lake Placid, New York, obtained the Games for the second time in 1980. Because very little housing was available in the village of Lake Placid itself, spectators had to find lodging in
far away hotels and motels. As a result the three twolane roads that were the only access to the village became the scene of a transportation nightmare. Among the top athletic achievements in Lake Placid were the double slalom victories of Swedish Ingemar Stenmark for the men and Hanni Wenzel from Liechtenstein for the women. American speed skater Eric Heiden realized what no other athlete had done before, or since, in the Winter Games, capturing five gold medals, one in each speed skating event. Pairs skating was won by the Soviet couple Irina Rodnina and Alexander Saizew. The spectacular ice hockey victory of the young American team over the much more experienced Soviet team was generally acclaimed as a symbolic victory of the free world over a totalitarian regime. Although the Soviet athletes won more gold, the East Germans won an overall total of twenty-three medals against twenty-two for the USSR. The IOC awarded the XIV Winter Olympics to the city of Sarajevo in Yugoslavia. The athletes/journalists ratio at these Olympics was stunning: An Olympic Village was built to house 2,200 athletes and delegates, whereas the village for the press had room for 8,500 journalists! The athletic highlight for the local population occurred when Slovenian skier Jure Franko won the first-ever Yugoslavian Winter Olympic medal, capturing silver in the men’s giant slalom. “Billy D” Johnson, often called “crazy boy” by his U.S. teammates, won the gold medal in the downhill race. U.S. skiers Debbie Armstrong and Christin Cooper finished first and second respectively in the giant slalom. Scott Hamilton from the United States won the gold in the men’s figure skating. Katarina Witt of East Germany made her Olympic debut and won the first of her eventual two gold medals in women’s figure skating. On the Paskapoo slopes west of the city of Calgary, Canada, a US$72 million Olympic Park was constructed for the 1988 Winter Games. Sixty thousand spectators attended the opening ceremony in the McMahon Stadium. Over 8,000 performers staged a spectacular show of old and newly invented Alberta traditions. Competing in her fourth Olympics, Raissa Smetanina from the
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A snowmaking machine. Snow is the key requirement of the Winter Olympics. Source: istockphoto/dra _ schwartz.
Soviet Union won her eighth and ninth cross-country medals. The star athlete in ski jumping was Matti Nykänen from Finland. However, British ski jumper Michael Edwards, better known as “Eddie the Eagle,” who finished last in both jumping events, got an abundant amount of public acclaim as a satirical antihero. Italian super skier Alberto “la Bomba” Tomba excelled in both slalom events. Vreni Schneider from Switzerland was his female counterpart in the slalom and giant slalom. Brian Boitano from the United States and Katarina Witt from the GDR won the figure skating events for men and women, respectively. Dutch speed skater Yvonne van Gennip captured triple gold.The two-man and four-man bob races were won by the USSR. The Soviet hockey team won its last Olympic golden medal. Free style or “hot dog” skiing and shorttrack skating were programmed as demonstration sports. Curling, which had been on the men’s program in 1924 and 1932, made its reappearance—as a demonstration sport for men and women.
Olympics in the Post–Cold War World Albertville was chosen during the ninety-first IOC session in Lausanne. The 1992 Winter Games were the first Olympics since the collapse of the Communist Bloc states. The former Soviet Union sent a Unified Team, consisting of athletes from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Germany, East and West, now united, sent a joint team for the first time since the 1964 Innsbruck and Tokyo Games. The Albertville Games opened with a futuristic mass spectacle, with thirty-six countries represented. Newly introduced as Olympic events were short-track skating (4 events), freestyle skiing (2 events), and biathlon for women
(3 events). Free-style ski ballet and aerials, speed skiing, and curling figured as demonstration sports. The most successful athlete of the Games was female crosscountry skier Ljubov Egorova of the Unified Team, with three gold and two silver medals. Her compatriot, forty year-old Raisa Smetania, competing in her fifth Winter Olympics, won gold in the 4 ✕ 5-kilometer cross-country relay. Alberto Tomba successfully defended his gold medal in the giant slalom. So did Bonnie Blair from the United States in the 500-meter speed skating; she also won the 1,000-meter event. Toni Nieminen from Finland was only sixteen when he won gold in the long ski jump and bronze in the short jump. The Unified Team continued the old time Soviet tradition by winning the ice hockey competition. The reunified German team went home with the most medals won: 10 gold, 10 silver, and 6 bronze. When the IOC decided to alternate the Winter and the Summer Games every two years, starting in 1994, the little Norwegian ski resort of Lillehammer took up the challenge by presenting a new bid to compensate for its loss of the 1992 Games. The Lillehammer Winter Olympics qualified as the first “green Olympics.” Schoolchildren were called on to help with the planting of “Olympic forests” and to transplant rare wildflowers from ski or bobsled construction sites. And up-to-date energy-saving techniques were used. Stein Gruber made a thrilling ski jump with the Olympic torch at the open-
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ing ceremony. Johann Olav Koss—“Koss is the boss”— became Norway’s national sport hero by winning three speed skating gold medals in world record time in the 1,500-, 5,000-, and 10,000-meter events. Bonnie Blair, who had already captured gold medals in two previous Olympics, won gold again in the 500- and 1,000-meter speed skating races. Her U.S. teammate Dan Jansen finally realized his Olympic dream by winning the 1,000-meter speed skating race. With a gold medal in the slalom, Swiss skier Vrenie Schneider became the first woman to win three gold medals in that event. Although Russia ended in first position with a total of 23 medals (11 gold, 8 silver, and 4 bronze), the Norwegians did almost as well with a higher total of 26 medals (10 gold, 11 silver, and 5 bronze). When the Japanese city of Nagano warrowly beat out Salt Lake City (by a vote of 46 to 42) as the host city of the 1998 Winter Olympics, environmentalists were very concerned that some of the Games-related construction would damage protected mountain forest areas. The official program of the Nagano Games increased to seven sport disciplines and sixty-eight events with the addition of curling for men and women, women’s ice hockey, and snowboarding. The two most successful athletes were two cross-country skiers: Larissa Lasutina from Russia (with 3 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze medal), and Norwegian Bjorn Daehlie (with 3 gold and 1 silver medal). Local ski jumper Kazuyoshi Funaki captured gold in the 90-meter ski jump and silver in the 70meter ski jump; Austrian alpine skier Hermann Maier won gold in the giant slalom and in the super G after having survived a disastrous fall in the downhill race. The Czech ice hockey team, which counted the fewest NHL players in its ranks, won convincingly. The U.S. women won the first female ice hockey event; Canada and Finland were second and third, respectively. Salt Lake City finally won the right to stage the 2002 Winter Olympics after thirty years of unsuccessful bids. The preparations were, however, tainted by a bribery scandal. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) had not only given scholarships to IOC relatives but also gifts, favors, and cash payments to IOC members.
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Then, the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., happened just five months before the start of the Olympics. Security measures were therefore greater than at any previous games. The United States was at the Salt Lake City Games the second most successful winter sports nation with thirty-four medals, only one less than Germany. New IOC president Jacques Rogge solved the figure skating judging controversy by declaring the Canadian pair of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier co-winners of the Olympic gold with Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze from Russia. Thanks to extensive testing before the Games, there was little doping news during the Games. On the last day of the Games, however, three Nordic ski medalists, one from Spain and two from Russia, were disqualified for using darbepoetin. Women’s figure skating gold was won by American Sarah Hughes. Canadian men and women’s teams triumphed in hockey. Janica Kostélic from Croatia won four medals (three golds), the most by an Alpine skier in a single Olympics. Norway’s Ole Einar Bjoerndalen won four gold medals in biathlon and Finland’s Samppa Lajunen three gold medals in Nordic combined. The young Swiss ski jumper Simon Ammann won both events.Third-generation U.S.Winter Olympian Jim Shea and his compatriot Tristan Gale won gold in the skeleton. The 2002 Winter Games were a popular and financial success and were followed in March by the first Winter Paralympics under Olympic patronage. Roland Renson See also Lake Placid; St. Mortiz
Further Reading Flower, R. (1977). The history of skiing and other winter sports. Toronto, Canada: Methuen. Gerlach, L. (Ed.). (2004). The Winter Olympics: From Chamonix to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Goksoyr, M., von der Lippe, G., & Mo, K. (Eds.) (1996). Winter games, warm traditions (ISHPES Studies 3). Sankt Augustin, FRG: Academia. Renson, R. (2004). The cool games: The Winter Olympics 1924– 2002. In L. Gerlach (Ed.), The Winter Olympics: From Chamonix to Salt Lake City (pp. 41–86). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
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Orienteering
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rienteering, which enthusiasts refer to as “the thinking sport,” was developed in 1895 in Scandinavia. People of all ages and fitness levels can practice it alone or as a competitive sport; it requires minimal equipment; and it is environmentally benign (although some people disagree). An orienteer uses a topographical map and a specially designed compass to follow a crosscountry course and walk or run through woods and fields, navigating streams and conquering or avoiding hills and other rough terrain. Orienteering, first popularized during the early twentieth century, has an estimated 800,000 enthusiasts in about fifty countries. Events are held for individuals and for teams, and orienteers compete in both national and international championships. Variations of the sport include ski orienteering, developed in Norway during the late nineteenth century, and bicycle orienteering, which has more recently become especially popular in Germany and France. Orienteering enthusiasts often refer to their sport simply as “O,” whereas they refer to its variations as “ski-O,” “bike-O,” and so forth.
Origins Orienteering, developed in what was then the kingdom of Norway and Sweden as a military exercise, was designed to train officers to find their way swiftly over a course through unfamiliar terrain. The exercise also had an athletic component: Winners were determined by a formula that included elapsed time, pulse rate at the finish line, and participants’ ability to deliver a verbal report immediately after completing the course. As a military exercise orienteering has proved its worth numerous times. Its popularity in Scandinavia during the 1930s is credited with helping the Finns resist the Soviet invasion in 1939 and enabling Norwegian resistance fighters to escape to Sweden after the German invasion of 1940. Scholars believe that the first nonmilitary orienteering event took place near Bergen, Norway, in 1896. Sigge
Stenberg, a Swedish engineer who wrote about orienteering after visiting Kristiania (now Oslo, Norway) in about 1900, introduced the sport to Sweden. Several Swedish athletic clubs, inspired by Stenberg’s reports, began to hold small orienteering events. The first Swedish national orienteering event was held in 1902 near Stockholm, but because of bad weather only five people competed. The Swedish scouting movement soon adopted orienteering as part of its outdoor training program. Historians of orienteering consider Ernst Killander (1882– 1958), a Swedish scoutmaster and president of the Stockholm Sports Federation from 1917 to 1934, to be the father of orienteering. He organized the first major orienteering event at Saltsjoboden, Sweden, in 1919.The 12-kilometer event had 155 participants; O. B. Hansson had the fastest time: 1 hour, 25 minutes, and 39 seconds.
Development Norway and Sweden competed in the first international orienteering competition in 1932. During the 1930s the sport spread elsewhere in Europe. Competitions were held in Hungary and the Soviet Union (1933), Switzerland (1938), Czechoslovakia (1950),Yugoslavia (1953), and Bulgaria (1955). The first European championships were held in Loten, Norway, in 1962, and the second in Le Brassus, Switzerland, in 1964. Bjorn Kjellstrom (1910–1995), a former Swedish orienteering champion and lifelong promoter of the sport, coined the word orienteering in 1946. Kjellstrom later helped popularize orienteering in the United States. The International Orienteering Federation (IOF) was formed in 1961 by Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, West Germany, and East Germany. Orienteering federations were formed in Britain in 1966, in Canada and Israel in 1967, in Japan in 1969, in Australia and France in 1970, and in the United States in 1971.
Equipment The design of modern orienteering maps owes much to the IOF Map Committee and Harald Wilbye, a
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To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self. ■ SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Norwegian computer consultant. The IOF during the late 1960s introduced a standardized approach to the design and layout of orienteering maps that could be used internationally. Wilbye created the first multicolor orienteering maps based on aerial photographs and complete with IOF symbols; they set the standard for future orienteering maps. Maps use five colors and a 15,000 to 1 or 10,000 to 1 scale in detailed terrain. For educational and introductory purposes even bigger scales are used. The equidistance (i.e., the vertical distance) between contour lines is normally between 2.5 and 5 meters. Map symbols are standardized, allowing competitors from different countries to compete equally. Kjellstrom and Gunnar Tillander developed the principle of the modern orienteering compass during the early 1930s: A liquid-filled magnetic compass revolves on a transparent base. The base also serves as a protractor and contains various markings to help orienteers read maps and determine location, direction, and distance.
Event Types The lengths of orienteering courses range from 1 to 15 kilometers, and variations in terrain determine the degree of difficulty. At competitive events officials set the course in advance, having first marked checkpoints (places that each competitor must reach) with orangeand-white flags. Each competitor is given a map on which the control points have also been marked. Competitors begin the course at intervals of from two to five minutes. Using compass and map, they find their way sequentially from one checkpoint to the next as fast as they can. To prove that they reached each checkpoint, competitors use a special punch provided at each checkpoint to punch a hole in a control card that they carry with them. An electronic recording system more recently has replaced punches, allowing instantaneous registration of all intermediate times for all legs of the course. Point-to-point orienteering, the classic form of the sport, is used in regular competitions. A person called
the “course setter” selects control points in the field, and participants find their own routes from one control point to the next, trying to find each control point in the predetermined sequence in the shortest time. Point-topoint orienteering has numerous variations, including Score-O, in which competitors locate control points in any order, trying to find as many as possible within a time limit; ROGAINE (rugged outdoor group activity involving navigation and endurance), in which teams compete over a much larger area during a period of six to twenty-four hours using the Score-O format; and Relay-O, in which teams of three or four compete, with each team member using a different course. In some orienteering events, mainly for beginners and children, the course setter presets the routes that competitors follow. This preset-course version is more relaxed than point-to-point orienteering and is a good introduction for novices. A variation of the preset-course version is line orienteering, in which the course setter establishes five to twelve control points along the route and marks them on a master map. A route between the control points is then plotted. Competitors’ maps are marked with the route, but the control points are not indicated. Each competitor must navigate the route, marking the map with the location of each control point as it is found. In such events time is not the main factor; the objects are to locate and plot as many control points as possible. Other variations of preset-course orienteering exist, such as route orienteering, in which colored streamers mark the route. Persons with physical disabilities may compete in handicapped-O; they may receive help in moving along the course but must do their own plotting to find the control points.
Specific Demands Map reading is, of course, the fundamental skill required in orienteering, but participants must also be able to compare features on a topographical map with actual features of the terrain. Participants use the compass to turn the map toward the north and sometimes to take a bearing in a certain direction.
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Whereas beginners normally use most of their time interpreting the map and making decisions, accomplished orienteers expend a great deal of physical effort. Their main challenge is to avoid making mistakes in reading the map and using the compass while moving quickly over uneven terrain.
Organization The IOF (www.orienteering.org) has sixty member nations. The IOF hopes to develop orienteering worldwide by setting international standards for mapping and course planning, establishing competition rules, and organizing international events. In 1966 the first World Orienteering Championships (WOC) were held in Finland. Since 1979 the championships have been held in odd-numbered years. An official World Cup and ski WOC are held in even-numbered years. Orienteering organizations continue to lobby to have the sport included in the Olympic Games. The IOF publishes an annual magazine Orienteering World, and since 1985 the Scientific Group of the IOF has published Scientific Journal of Orienteering, the first international sport-specific scientific journal, and international symposiums are conducted regularly.
The Future Orienteering attracts people who enjoy using their minds while engaging in vigorous outdoor activity. For aesthetic as well as competitive reasons, they also want to protect the natural environment. In some countries conflicts between hunters, environmentalists, and orienteers arose during the 1980s, although studies have shown that orienteering events harm neither animals nor plants if certain precautions are taken. Hundreds of orienteering events, most of them for all age groups, both genders, and different levels of competitiveness, are organized around the world these days. Multiday events are becoming popular. One of the biggest is the annual Swedish five-dagars (five-day) event, which attracts as many as twenty-five thousand orienteers of all ages. Roland Seiler
Further Reading Braggins, A. (1993). Trail orienteering. Doune, UK: Harveys. Dresel, U., Fach, H. H., & Seiler, R. (1989). Orientierungslauf training. Derendingen, Switzerland: Habegger. McNeill, C., Ramsden, J., & Renfrew, T. (1987). Teaching orienteering. Doune, UK: Harveys. Palmer, P. (1994). Pathways to excellence—Orienteering. Doune, UK: Harveys. United States Orienteering Federation. (1991). Coaching orienteering: Orienteering coach certification manual, level I. Forest Park, GA: Author.
Osteoporosis
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steoporosis is basically a pathological depletion in the calcium content of a person’s bones, with little change in other components of the tissue. Osteoporosis may be either primary or secondary in type. Primary osteoporosis reflects the effects of age and changes in secretion of the sex hormones, whereas secondary osteoporosis is caused mainly by some other disease or condition (such as thyrotoxicosis, chronic liver disease, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes mellitus, alcoholism, or an excessive secretion of hormones from the adrenal cortex). Primary osteoporosis is important in sports medicine because development of the condition leaves the affected individual vulnerable to fractures and because the likelihood of the problem can be greatly reduced by physical activity that maximizes calcium stores as a young adult and reduces calcium losses in later life.
Manifestations of Osteoporosis Manifestations of primary osteoporosis may be either generalized or localized to a few bones. The disorder is most commonly observed in the spongy, trabecular type of bone (where the turnover of minerals occurs six times more rapidly than in compact cortical bone).The loss of calcium weakens the bone structure. The affected tissue becomes porous and brittle, predisposing it to what are termed pathological fractures—injuries sustained as a result of minor falls or vigorous muscle contractions, or sometimes with no obvious external cause at all.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear not absence of fear. ■ MARK TWAIN
The commonest sites of injury are the spine, the hips, the neck of the femur, and the wrist. The U.S. National Osteoporosis Foundation estimated that in 2002 the following injuries were attributable to osteoporosis: 700,000 vertebral fractures, 300,000 hip fractures, 250,000 wrist fractures, and 300,000 other fractures. Osteoporotic fractures of the hips are particularly dangerous. Many elderly people who sustain such injuries do not walk again. About half of them require care for the remainder of their lives, and 20 percent die of complications in the year after the fracture. Osteoporotic deterioration of the vertebrae is also common in those over the age of seventy; it leads to compression and curvature (kyphosis) of the spine, often with a substantial (5–8 cm) decrease in standing height.
The Influence of Age and Sex on Bone Calcium Content Osteoporosis is often not diagnosed until the eighth decade of life, but exercise behavior as early as adolescence can influence the likelihood that this problem will develop. In most people, the calcium content of the bones reaches its peak at twenty-five to thirty years of age, and thereafter it shows a slow but progressive decline. Eventually, in old age, the extent of mineral loss is sufficient to allow pathological fractures. The pattern of calcium loss is different in men and women. In men, there is little loss of bone mineral before the age of forty years. A loss of 0.5 percent per year develops between the ages of forty and sixty, and depending on subsequent deterioration in gonadal function, losses can amount to as much as 4 percent per year after the age of sixty. In women, there is a loss of 1 to 2 percent of bone calcium per year beginning around the age of thirty-five, but this accelerates in the five years following menopause, when there is a cumulative loss of about 20 percent. The peak bone calcium is generally lower in women than in men, probably because women secrete only very small quantities of testosterone and related hormones. Moreover, on average women live longer than men, so that there is more time for them to develop osteoporosis before they die.
Factors Predisposing to Osteoporosis Among the factors that predispose people to osteoporosis, several are potentially modifiable.These include a lack of adequate physical activity, dietary restrictions, the deliberate suppression of hormone secretions, and lifestyle choices such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.
INADEQUATE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY Perhaps the commonest adverse influence upon bone density is a lack of adequate habitual physical activity.The deposition of calcium in the bones is facilitated by the application of mechanical forces to the bone structure— either gravitational forces or vigorous muscle contraction. Thus, bone density is generally greater in athletes than in sedentary people. The benefit is most noticeable in those body parts that are used in performance of the sport; for instance, bone density is enhanced in the serving arm of a tennis player. However, forms of physical activity that minimize gravitational forces (for example, recreational swimming or pool exercises) provide little stimulus to bone mineralization. The impact of a lack of gravitational stimulation is particularly marked during long space voyages; the preservation of bone mineral content in a zero-gravity environment is a major challenge for interplanetary astronauts, and as yet agreement is lacking on the ideal type of exercise to take inside a space capsule. Immobilization by a plaster cast following a fracture is another common cause of local osteoporosis, and it is important to prescribe local exercises to restore bone mineral content after such an injury has healed.
INADEQUATE DIET For various reasons (including a low level of habitual activity), old people who are living alone may have a diet that provides inadequate amounts of energy, protein, vitamins, and minerals, predisposing them to osteoporosis. Several categories of young female athletes such as gymnasts and figure skaters are also liable to develop an inadequate diet. One reason why they do not eat enough food is that their events are judged in part on their
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appearance; in order to keep a slim figure, these young athletes restrict their overall intake of food energy and thus of protein, calcium, and vitamins. Production of the sex hormones declines, menstruation may cease, and there is a parallel reduction in bone calcium content. Even if the decrease in bone calcium is insufficient to cause fractures immediately, osteologists argue that the reserves of bone calcium are diminished by deliberate dietary restriction during adolescence, increasing the risk that affected individuals will become osteoporotic during old age.
THERAPEUTIC SUPPRESSION OF TESTOSTERONE SECRETION Men who have developed a prostatic cancer are increasingly undergoing a form of treatment in which irradiation of the tumor is combined with the injection of substances such as leuprolide, which counter the action of luteinizing hormones. Leuprolide administration reduces the circulating concentrations of testosterone.This decreases the likelihood that a prostatic tumor will recur, but it has the unfortunate side-effect that vulnerability to osteoporosis is increased, much as it is in women at menopause.
ADVERSE LIFESTYLE CHOICES Cigarette smoking and an excessive consumption of alcohol both increase the risk of osteoporosis. However, it is difficult to be certain of the magnitude of the effect of these adverse lifestyle choices, because smoking and an excessive consumption of alcohol are commonly associated with sedentary behavior.
Diagnosis of Osteoporosis Local loss of bone mineral following immobilization can often be detected semi-quantitatively by comparing standard radiographs of healthy and fractured limbs. A more formal diagnosis of local or generalized osteoporosis is usually based on bone scans. Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) measures the bone mineral density (BMD) in such regions as the lumbar spine or the proximal femur; calcium content is
reported per unit of cross-sectional area (g/cm2). Measurements can be made quite rapidly, and the x-ray exposure is less than a tenth of that received during a standard chest x-ray. The alternative technique of computed tomography measures bone density per unit of bone volume (g/cm3). Some research laboratories are also beginning to develop methods of detecting an excessive rate of bone turnover. The World Health Organization regards a bone as osteoporotic if the BMD is more than 2.5 standard deviations (SD) below the average value found in a young adult. Osteopenia (a low bone mass, and an important risk factor for osteoporosis) is diagnosed if the BMD is 1.0 to 2.5 SD below the expectation in young adults.
Population Magnitude of the Osteoporosis Problem The risk of a hip fracture increases threefold with each 1 SD decrease in bone density at the hip. Various archeological reports note evidence of osteoporosis in antiquity. However, perhaps because the energy requirements of daily living have decreased in recent years, the prevalence of this disorder has increased over the past fifty years. Some investigators suggest that currently 10 percent of women eventually succumb to osteoporosis. In the United States alone, there are now over 40 million cases of osteopenia, and about 10 million diagnosed cases of osteoporosis (80 percent of these are in women).The incidence of pathological fractures is 1.2 million per year; indeed, the risk of an osteoporotic fracture of the hip in elderly women equals the combined risks of breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer. Moreover, if the rate of increase in the prevalence of osteoporosis continues unchecked, 61 million U.S. citizens over the age of fifty will have osteopenia or osteoposis by the year 2020.
Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis The prevention and treatment of osteoporosis are based mainly on an adequate intake of food, calcium, and vitamin D, along with adequate daily physical activity.
OSTEOPOROSIS
Possible pharmaceutical treatments include hormone replacement therapy (estrogen-progestin), estrogen receptor modulators such as Raloxifene (in postmenopausal women), administration of phosphonates (Alendronate or Risedronate), and (again, only in postmenopausal women) dosage with calcitonin.
DIETARY REQUIREMENTS To keep bones heathly, the overall intake of food must be sufficient to maintain body weight. The diet should include an adequate quantity of good quality protein (0.7–1.0 g/kg of body mass per day in the general population, but as much as 1.5–2.0 g/kg in some categories of athlete). Calcium supplements are commonly needed, particularly in older individuals, since a daily intake of around 1,500 milligrams is required, and, particularly in soft-water areas, the normal nonathletic diet may provide only 500 to 750 milligrams of calcium. A poor intestinal uptake of calcium in the elderly increases blood levels of parathyroid hormone, which in turn increases bone turnover. An adequate intake of Vitamin D is important for the incorporation of calcium into bone. The body synthesis of vitamin D varies with exposure to sunlight and decreases with age. Since 2002, the recommended intake of Vitamin D has been increased from 400 to 1000 International Units.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY Regular daily physical activity plays an important role in ensuring an adequate intake of both calcium and vitamins. Dietary deficiencies that predispose to osteoporosis are most likely in elderly people who take very little physical activity. Laboratory studies, cross-sectional comparisons of sedentary individuals and athletes, and longitudinal training trials also show that physical activity has a direct influence on the retention of calcium by bone. The mechanical forces associated with vigorous exercise stimulate piezo-electrical activity in the bone cells. The magnitude of the piezo-electric effect seems to depend more upon the intensity of loading than on the
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number of cycles of bone loading that are undertaken. A bending or vibration of the bone induces a difference of electric charge across the cells, favoring the deposition of calcium ions on the side of the cell which has become negatively charged. Piezo-electric effects also stimulate the bone cells to produce adenosine 3-5 cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) and prostaglandin E2, and this in turn facilitates bone formation. Finally, benefits may also arise because of exercise-induced increases in blood flow to the bone. Optimal training programs for maximizing bone density have yet to be defined. Part of the problem in determining the merits of various types of sport and leisure activity is that a positive response probably requires an overloading of the bone. The optimal stimulus thus depends on the initial fitness and bone density of the individual. Further, calcium retention cannot occur if the intake of calcium and vitamin D is inadequate. The increase of bone density is specific to the bones that are placed under stress. Benefit is obtained from exercises that yield skeleton-loading ground reaction forces through high-intensity impact, and also from nonimpact resistance exercises that stress the skeleton through vigorous eccentric muscle contractions. Positive effects are large in sports such as weightlifting and weight-throwing, and benefit is also seen from the repetitive weight-bearing of distance running and Nordic skiing, but the bone density of swimmers differs little from that of sedentary controls. Bone density is positively correlated with peak muscle torque and thus the forces exerted on specific bones, but bears little relationship to the individual’s cardiorespiratory fitness. Even if the forces applied to the bone are increased progressively as a conditioning program continues, returns diminish as the exerciser approaches his or her ceiling of bone density. The current consensus for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis thus calls for a long-term, progressive regimen, using either high-impact aerobic exercise or resistance exercise. Relatively intense muscle contractions are needed, with only a small number of repetitions per session. A meta-analysis of some sixtytwo studies conducted over a thirty-year period found
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that on average exercise programs of six to twenty-four months duration prevented or reversed bone loss by 1 percent per year relative to controls. Additional benefits from programs of longer duration are less clearly established. A small number of studies have suggested that individuals who have already developed osteoporosis can still benefit from a program of progressive resistance exercise. Indeed, because of a low initial bone density, the response is likely to be greater than in those who begin an exercise program with good bone health. The type of activity that is prescribed must be selected carefully in order to avoid fractures from falls and violent body movements. On the other hand, a reduced risk of falling is a second important consequence of muscle-strengthening exercise in the frail elderly.
PHARMACEUTICAL TREATMENTS It is still not altogether clear how the sex hormones influence bone mineralization. However, estrogen receptors have been detected on bone-forming osteoblasts, and administration of estrogens increases the number of vitamin D receptors on the osteoblasts. Estrogens are also thought to stimulate the production of calcitonin (which inhibits the resorptive process) and bone growth factors (insulin-like growth factors 1 and 2), while inhibiting the production of interleukins 1 and 6 (which seem to promote osteopenia). Until recently, many authorities have recommended prolonged hormone-replacement therapy (HRT)—typically, combinations of estrogen and progestin—to prevent osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. Such treatment may be warranted during the phase of very rapid calcium loss, but there is growing recognition that any advantages of prolonged HRT are more than offset by increased risks of cardiovascular disease, strokes, and breast cancer. Raloxifene (Evista) is an estrogen-receptor modulator for use after menopause, which is currently being evaluated for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis. It slows bone loss and slightly increases normal bone growth, but it may have some of the drawbacks of hormone replacement therapy.
Alendronate (Fosomax) is a drug that decreases bone turnover by causing a selective death of osteoclasts, the cells that remodel bone. Controlled trials have now shown that if Alendronate is administered once weekly, this somewhat drastic form of treatment can cause a clinically valuable decrease in bone calcium loss. Risedronate (actonel) is a biphosphonate drug somewhat similar in its action to Alendronate. Calcitonin has theoretical potential in the treatment of osteoporosis, but currently it has only been approved for the treatment of established osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.
Implications for Prevention and Treatment Most adults show a weakening of bone structure from the combined effects of aging and the associated decrease in habitual physical activity. The loss of calcium predisposes older people to pathological bone fractures, which can often shorten their lives. More research is needed to determine the optimum pattern of physical activity recommended to prevent the factors that predispose people to osteoporosis. However, the current consensus calls for repeated bouts of vigorous activity at high peak loads, coupled with an adequate intake of protein, calcium, and vitamin D. Roy J. Shephard
Further Reading Agarwal, S. C. (2003). Bone loss and osteoporosis: an anthropological perspective. New York: Kluwer. Avioli, L.V. (2000). The osteoporotic syndrome: detection, prevention, and treatment. New York: Academic Press. Bilezikian, J. P. (1999). The aging skeleton. New York: Academic Press. Blake, G. M. (1999). The evaluation of osteoporosis: Dual energy x-ray absorptiometry and ultrasound in clinical practice. London: Martin Dunitz. Bonnick, S. L. (2004). Bone densitometry in clinical practice: Application and interpretation. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press. Brickley, M. B. (1997). Age-related bone loss and osteoporosis in archaeological bone: A study of two London collections, Redcross Way and Farringdon Street. London: University of London Institute of Archaeology. Burckhardt, P. (2004). Nutritional aspects of osteoporosis. New York: Elsevier/Academic Press. Compston, J. (2000). Osteoporosis and bone biology: The state of the art. London: International Medical Press.
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The mastery of the true self, and the refusal to permit others to dominate us is the ultimate in living, and self-expression in athletics. ■ PERCY CERUTTY
Cook, A. R. (2001). Osteoporosis sourcebook: Basic consumer health information about primary and secondary osteoporosis and juvenile osteoporosis and related conditions. Holmes, PA: Omnigraphics. Dishman, R. K., Washburn, R. A., & Heath, G. W. (2004). Physical activity and osteoporosis. In R. K. Dishman, R. A.Washburn, & G.W. Heath (Eds.), Physical activity epidemiology (pp. 209-233). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. . Drinkwater, B. L. (1994). Physical activity, fitness and osteoporosis. In C. Bouchard, R. J. Shephard, & T. Stephens (Eds.), Physical activity, fitness and health (pp. 724–736). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Fondazione Giovanni Lorenzini. (1999). Women’s health and menopause: Risk reduction strategies—improved quality of health. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Geusens, P. (1998). Osteoporosis in clinical practice: A practical guide for diagnosis and treatment. Berlin: Springer. Goltzman, D. (2000). The osteoporosis primer. London: Cambridge University Press. Kato, J. (2000). Hormone replacement therapy and osteoporosis. New York: Springer. Kollenkirchen, U. (1998). Novel approaches to treatment of osteoporosis. Berlin: Springer. Marcus, R. (2001). Osteoporosis. New York: Academic Press. Meunier, P. J. (1998). Osteoporosis: Diagnosis and management. London: Martin Dunitz. Orwoll, E. S. (1999). Osteoporosis in men: The effects of gender on skeletal health. New York: Academic Press. Pearson, D. (2002). Clinical trials in osteoporosis. New York: Springer. Reid, C. (2000). The health benefits of physical activity for girls and women: Literature review and recommendations for future research and policy. Vancouver, BC: British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, University of British Columbia. Simkin, A. (1990). Bone-loading: The new way to prevent and combat the thinning bones of osteoporosis. London: Prion Books. Takahashi, H. (1999). Mechanical loading of bones and joints. New York: Springer. World Health Organization. (1998). Guidelines for preclinical evaluation and clinical trials in osteoporosis. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Ownership
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wnership is a vital aspect of the development and growth of sports from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the present day. In sports, the organizational model that predominates is based on the historical power exerted through ownership. Privately owned clubs or franchises dominate the sporting landscape, despite some notable and successful publicly owned teams.
Organizational Background Recent research highlights the importance of the business and economic history of sports. The role of entrepreneurs is vital in considering developments in sports and recreation relative to the broader concept of ownership. Sporting goods manufacturers were the first notable group of owners to make their presence felt, and the best example of this was A. G. Spalding and his role in the development of baseball’s National League during the 1870s. Spalding was the owner of Chicago’s National League team who played a significant role in moves toward establishing a salary cap. This in turn led to the formation of a players’ union (Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players) in 1885. Spalding also sought to export baseball overseas to Europe, Australia, and North Africa. Clearly Spalding’s motives were at least in part driven by the opportunity to develop new markets for his sporting goods. Certain forms have traditionally dominated the structures of sports organizations, and this has been affected by the developing influences of the commodification and commercialization of sports throughout the twentieth century. Indeed, sports as an enterprise has been directly affected by shifts in the standard model of ownership. An organization can be viewed as a system that draws on a network of contributing participants for adding value through the acquisition, allocation, and commitment of resources. Sports can be viewed as a model of mutually beneficial exchanges where participants receive a tangible, material benefit in return for resources. This process will have slightly different outcomes depending whether fans, players, or communities provide the context and how stakeholder objectives are managed. In many cases, the key stakeholders are the shareholders of the venture or organization. Just as vital to the operation of the team or franchise, however, are the individuals that make up the workforce. This group remains crucial to the operation of the business.Without an effective and productive workforce, a venture can quickly become very undesirable for both owners and shareholders. The stakeholders in sports include the fans who support the team, the cities and nations that the team represents, and
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Ownership Owners and Unions in 1889 At one point the players took the matter of ownership into their own hands. The short-lived Players League is described in the following account from the Chicago Tribune, titled: Magnates declare war. They will fight the Brotherhood to the bitter end. League directors authorize the expenditure of unlimited blood and treasure in defeating the “Conspirators.” New York, Nov. 15-[Special.]-The National League finished up its business today and adjourned. . . . The league men met about 11 o’clock and devoted three hours to the consideration of the desertion of their players and the Players’ League. Director John I. Rogers stated that is was a notorious fact that a number of players reserved by league clubs have declared their intention to violate said reserve, notwithstanding notices of their respective clubs of said reserve and of the latter’s option to renew the usual form of contract with such players for the season of 1890. Also that the opinions of eminent counsel had
those who exert power through their financial ownership. Suppliers, employees, agents, and consumers also play roles within this wider dynamic. Stakeholders broadly represent any group that has an actual or potential interest or impact on a sports organization’s ability to achieve its objectives. Furthermore, a number of different groups claim an interest or stake in the sporting venture, which creates multiple publics. Applying traditional business models to the sporting environment has brought about a change in focus and thinking. Notably, pressure groups that include citizen-action publics and local publics (including councils and civic authorities as well as government more generally) also directly affect the practicalities of ownership. Indeed, the business aspects of sports have become increasingly important in recent years. It is useful to gauge the reactions of these diverse groups when foreign owners become involved in local companies and sports teams, as the proposed take-over of
been received affirming the legal and equitable rights of said clubs under said contracts to the services of their reserved players for the season of 1890, and that therefore he moved the following resolution: “Resolved. That this league hereby declares that it will aid each of the club members in the enforcement of the contract rights of said clubs to the services of its reserved players for the season of 1890 and that a committee of three be appointed by the league with full power to act and so formulate and carry out the best methods of enforcements of said contract rights of said clubs, and that said committee be authorized to draw from the guarantee fund of the league such amount as may be necessary to carry out the intent and purpose of this resolution.” The resolution was adopted and Messrs. John I. Rogers, Charles H. Byrne and John B. Day were appointed as the law committee. Source: Chicago Tribune, p. 3. (1889, November 16).
the Manchester United Football Clubby by American billionaire Malcolm Glazer (owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the National Football League [NFL]) in 2004 illustrates. A fringe group of the Manchester club’s supporters, who also happen to be shareholders in the publicly limited company, attempted to disrupt the deal with protests at games, appeals to the club’s fans not to purchase club merchandise, and attempts to gather support from other nonaligned shareholders. This illustrates how situations in the United States and the United Kingdom (U.K.) and differ yet might interact. The intrinsic value of involvement in sports has continued to fuel its development, yet the perceived investment value of sports has also been important to this process. For most shareholders and owners, maximizing profits continues to be a strong motivation for involvement, particularly because sports are increasingly being organized as industries. There has been increasing con-
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vergence between sports organizations. The importance of the process of exerting control over the product is vital to understanding the finer points of ownership and an owner’s initial reasons for involvement. Ownership becomes a privileged position with access to assets such as goodwill and the brand name. This can provide economies of common governance and tends to affect the broader situation for sports leagues. The disorderly accumulation of economies enables owners to offer innovatory or complementary services that reinforce their competitive positions. The emergence of team credit cards and other financial services during the past decade illustrates this process of diversified revenue streams. In many ways, a sport becomes a commodity when its owners and producers transfer it, via exchange, to a separate group of consumers. This takes place every day with the televising of sports events from around the world. The best illustration of this in the United States is the long, invariably capital-driven history of franchise relocation. Indeed, the role of owners in organizing, regulating, and controlling the spread of their club and the sport itself is central. Furthermore, it is important to understand that the sports product does not exist in isolation. Invariably, the prevailing cultural climate, as well as historical developments, dictates both taste and ascribed values, which in turn affects the popularity of the sports event. Without the sport developing a growing and consistent popularity, profits do not develop.
Models of Ownership The traditional sports owner was primarily philanthropic or paternalist in outlook. Maximizing profits was an important but not always a primary concern of sports teams’ owners during the nineteenth century. For many owners, establishing a coherent and stable market in which to operate was as important as profit. There is a clear difference between being involved for the perceived psychic income or utility and being involved solely for profits. Profit utilization means that although many owners will seek maximum profits, this is not likely feasible for every team or franchise in every situation.
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Changes in the economic situation throughout the twentieth century dictated that businesspeople and rich individuals became increasingly vital to the ownership and stewardship of sports. It is difficult to quantify the importance for sports clubs and organizations of being able to draw on the expertise of this newer style of owner, particularly throughout the transformation into more capitalist operational structures within sports. In the United States, capitalist structures were central to the organization and development of sports from the early 1870s on. Notably, this did not exist in most other countries that were developing recognizably modern sporting forms. Differences become obvious when examples are drawn from various countries because individual national structures depend on the particular social, political, and economic climate within each territory. These differences are themselves subject to varied rates of change. Attempts at drawing conclusions that can apply to every sport and its specific context complicate the situation even more. Those clubs and organizations operating on a more obviously businessbased model have benefited from the opportunities afforded by the growing market for sports, particularly since the end of World War II. Traditional owners could be described as paternalist, philanthropist, or hobbyist. These individuals tended to act as the guardian of the team and the club, often at their own personal expense. This model of ownership was widespread in the latter part of the nineteenth century but has gradually declined throughout the twentieth. ■
The paternalist owners are not averse to flamboyant promotional activities. For example, Charles Comiskey’s antics and marketing efforts in seeking maximum attendance for his baseball franchise, the Chicago White Sox, provides an illustrative example. Comiskey was particularly notable in that he pioneered many of the innovations that we now take for granted. These include fireworks displays, musical interaction between fans and the stadium announcer, as well as meet-the-players sessions.
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Sweat plus sacrifice equals success. ■ CHARLIE FINLEY
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Philanthropic owners often get involved in sports in the same way that someone donates to charity. Hobbyist owners act more like star-struck fans than like business managers.
Sometimes, the motives of these individuals directly conflict with those of the key people within a club or franchise, including the players and the fans. All three types of owners often provide significant financial support for their clubs, yet are less interested with profits than with other benefits. A subgroup of this more traditional ownership model includes owners who can be viewed as being performers. These individuals are primarily concerned with promotional and marketing gimmicks and tried anything to make sure the fans turned out for the games. The dominant model of ownership includes highprofile individuals who are driven to succeed by relying on their business backgrounds. These people are often successful tycoons and bring a capitalist emphasis to their operations. The Busch family and its stewardship of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball franchise is a good example. Since the end of World War II, this type of owner has become increasingly ubiquitous. In the United States, the traditional sports team or franchise owner has been Caucasian and male, but during the last twenty years, this has begun to change: ■
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Notable female owners of sports franchises have been Marge Schott, majority owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team from 1984 to 1999; Georgia Frontiere, owner of the St. Louis Rams NFL team; and Denise DeBartolo York, owner with her husband of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team. In 2002, billionaire Robert L. Johnson became the first African-American majority owner in a major U.S. sport, when the National Basketball Association (NBA) granted him an expansion franchise for the Charlotte (North Carolina) Bobcats. Some observers have likened this shift to Jackie Robinson breaking the color bar in baseball fifty years ago.
Other minorities (and even foreign nationals) are increasingly involved in owning shares of professional sports teams, which indicates how sports ownership is likely to develop in the future. The take-over of the Chelsea Football Club by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in 2003 provides a key contemporary example of this capitalist dynamic. In this case, Abramovich bought the club and its debts then spent more than 100 million pounds on new players. This injection of cash transformed a sluggish and uncertain transfer market, especially given the paucity of revenue streams within European football at that time. Capitalist structures are the currently prevailing organizational structure within western sports, and although there are notable exceptions, the trend is clear. Another trend is that during the last twenty years, the number of these owners has declined as an increasing number of sports teams now have corporate owners. The Walt Disney Company’s ownership of the NHL team the Mighty Ducks is an interesting example, because the team was actually named after the title of one of the company’s films. This capitalist emphasis forces other sports clubs, franchises, and even the leagues themselves to re-think strategies and organizational structures as they attempt to control the financial and operational aspects of their sport. The exceptions, however, are notable and important: ■
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The successful NFL franchise, the Green Bay Packers, is owned by the community of Green Bay, Wisconsin, rather than by an individual or corporation. In the United Kingdom, lower-league soccer teams in Northampton,York, Exeter, and Lincoln are among a number of examples of supporters’ trusts, therefore fans effectively operate as stakeholders. This government funded scheme aims to increase supporter influence within their local team. While this directly affects notions of ownership, it is noteworthy that such concessions will not be applied at the top end of sport, as the finances at the elite level are far more secure and stable.
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Ownership Landing a Franchise Obtaining a team was what made someone an owner. To do so required the approval of the existing team owners. This account from the Chicago Tribune of February 10, 1886 indicates some of the issues considered and which influenced the decision. It is quite safe to say that there were few happier men in Chicago yesterday than were those composing the delegation from Kansas City in attendance upon the league committee meeting held at the Tremont House yesterday, and at which the metropolis of Western Missouri was chosen as the eighth member of the league circuit for 1886. The committee, composed of Messrs. Spalding of the Chicago Club, Lucas of the St. Louis Club, and Marsh of Detroit, met in Parlor A yesterday morning, the session being a private one, with President Spalding in the chair. The Milwaukee delegation, composed of Messrs. Forth, Harry Quinn, and G.M. Kipp, were first admitted and their claims for representation listened to and discussed for an hour or more. The advantageous location of the Cream City, the rivalry that had existed between its club and the Chicagos in days gone by, the alleged willingness of the people to support a National
The key to the success of such organizations seems to be a broad mix of individuals making decisions. The situation in different sports is also illustrative, in that depending on the activity, the diversity of ownership can be more extensively considered. For example, horse racing is a sport where owners are feted openly at presentation ceremonies as equal partners in the venture alongside the trainer and the jockey. The historical development of an activity determines the form of ownership that predominates as the sport progresses. Some of the more notable historical aspects of how notions of ownership have continued to develop, particularly in the United States, relate to the slow shift
League team there, and their readiness to give to the league such reasonable guarantee as it might ask for the faithful fulfillment of their contract were all gone over, after which the Milwaukeeans were permitted to withdraw. Kansas City was then called, and while the members were awaiting the appearance of those representatives President Spalding read to the committee a letter from the Indianapolis Club voicing its claim to recognition. The committee’s attention was then given to the Kansas City delegation. . . . The new league city has a population of about 135,000, and that of the suburbs within a radius of ten miles will swell it to fully 180,000. Within twohours’ ride of the city are the populous cities of Lawrence, Atchison, Topeka, St. Joseph, and Leavenworth, with an aggregate population of 140,000. All of these points, it is promised by the Western delegates, will send down generous delegations to the league games. With the advent of league games at Kansas City it is predicted that the game will receive a boom there which it has not before know (sic) west of Chicago. Source: Kansas City selected to fill the vacancy in the base-ball league. (1886, February 10). Chicago Tribune, p. 3.
from traditional notions of sport history. The focus was often based on a history of social processes; however, current research considers the influence of economic and commercial factors on sport history. More generally, the importance of such ownership models and notable examples to current research within sports can also directly affect social change within the social sciences themselves. The commercialization and commodification of sports increased throughout the twentieth century. As society in general has developed a more businesslike focus and, particularly since the end of World War II, sports organizations have also adopted business and commercial practices more like that of the business world.
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Ownership The First Female Owner In the excerpt below, Helene Britton, St. Louis Cardinals’ owner from 1911–1917, reflects on being a woman in baseball. I can honestly say that I have always loved baseball. My father and uncles talked about baseball ever since I can remember. My father insisted that I keep score. . . . I grew up . . . in an atmosphere of baseball. I even played it when a girl and am glad to know that the game is played in a somewhat modified form in hundreds of girl camps and elsewhere by young ladies all over the United States. Played in that way, I believe
It is also important to consider the darker side of ownership and consider how corruption throughout history has been relevant to notions of ownership. In some cases, the owners of sports teams take advantage of situations, but end up harming the team and the sport, such as the following:. ■
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In 1998, the Olympique de Marseilles association football team was relegated to second division from the top league of French football, following a matchfixing scandal involving Bernard Tapie, the president and owner of the club. He was eventually convicted and sent to prison. The Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919 is another instance when the negative side of commercialism and gambling impinged on the sporting arena. In that case, a betting conspiracy led to eight members being banned from the Chicago White Sox baseball team.
The Future Those who own a sports club or franchise have the opportunity to shape both their organization and the direction of the sport itself. Responsibility for individual sports often lies in the hands of a few, yet issues related to ownership allow us to question who the owner actually serves. Their financial backgrounds and the self-
it is a healthful and interesting diversion though I realize that anything which resembles a professional type is distinctly a man’s game. . . . I realize that my position as the only women owner in the major leagues is a peculiar one. And I don’t pretend to know the game as intimately from a playing stand-point as a man might do in my place. I appreciate the fact that baseball is a man’s game, but I also appreciate the fact that women are taking an increasing interest in the sport. Source: My experience as a league owner. (1917, February). Baseball Magazine.
imposed requirement that they maximize their investment act as strong motivating factors for many owners. Significant issues present themselves within the prevailing capitalist model of sports remain the following: ■
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Who is going to pay for the development of future sports stars? How should sports exist within their social context? What should be the balance between profit and filling a social, or other, need?
Sports are currently regulated by the laws that govern the operations of businesses and organizations, meaning that sports teams have become corporate enterprises legally. This is a telling and significant indicator of how sports and notions of ownership relate to the wider society. Jonathan M. Thomas See also Economics and Public Policy; Franchise Relocation; Revenue Sharing; Salary Caps
Further Reading Grant, R. (2001). Contemporary strategy analysis. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Helyar, J. (1995). Lords of the realm: The real history of baseball. New York: Ballantine. Noll, R. (Ed.). (1974). Government and the sports business. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
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Ownership The Legendary Steinbrenner Perhaps no team owner has gained more notoriety than George Steinbrenner. Since he bought the New York Yankees in 1973, Steinbrenner has enraged his managers and players, as well as the media and the fans, with his no-holds-barred comments and actions. As Steinbrenner puts it, “Look, I’m not saying that I’m a calm, peaceful guy. I’m not Marian the Librarian. I’m a hard-driving guy, and sometimes I get upset.” And many would agree with former Yankee Graig Nettles’ comment, “It’s a good thing Babe Ruth isn’t still here—George would have him bat seventh and say he’s overweight.” And the media had a field
Noll, R., & Zimbalist, A. (Eds.). (1997). Sports jobs and taxes: The economic impact of sports teams and stadiums. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Parks, J., Zanger, B., & Quarterman, J. (Eds.). (1998). Contemporary sport management. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
day with the fact that Yankee managers have come and gone so often—most notably Billy Martin, who was hired and fired five times by Steinbrenner, who denied that these were publicity stunts, noting: I did not fire managers to get the headlines. Never did. The thing is, New York’s a very demanding city. You’ve got three tabloids battling with one another: the Post, the Daily News and Newsday—all good papers. All you have to do is walk into New York on any given day, look at the newsstand and see the headlines. All sensationalism. Some of it accurate, some of it not, but all of it meant to do one thing: sell those papers.
Segal-Horn, S. (Ed.). (2002). The strategy reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Slack, T. (1997). Understanding sports organisations: The application of organisation theory. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Pain Pan American Games Parachuting Paralympics
Pain
Pebble Beach Pelota Pentathlon, Modern Performance Performance Enhancement Personality Physical Education Pilates Play vs. Organized Sport Play-by-Play Announcing Poland Polo Polo, Bicycle Polo, Water Portugal Postmodernism Powerlifting Prayer Professionalism
P
ain, not unlike love, is one of the basic human experiences that forms us and makes us who we are (Morris 1991). The fullness of our life embraces the contradiction between pleasure and pain and poses the critical question as to why pain has become so unacceptable in Western culture. The sensation of pain can influence the self to the point at which nothing else is felt. “Pain appears to be what is most personal, which enables the self. Since pain is the self’s possession—a possession which admittedly no one else wants—the only possession, that no jealousy seeks to acquire” (Schmid 1999, 341). Pain also opens the way to care for one’s self. It is an existential experience of life that can be sensed. Pain research in general covers a wide field. Historical, philosophical, theological, sociological, and cultural approaches have been attempted (Bendelow and Williams 1995, Fichter 1981, Honkasalo 1998, Le Breton 2000, Morris 1991, Rey 1998, Scarry 1985). The medical, the psychological, and the psychosomatic discourses of pain research are well developed and have brought about different methods of pain management (James and Large 1992, Melzack and Wall 1983, Uexküll 1997).
Psychology Psychology of Gender Differences
What Is Pain? The current definition of pain from the International Association for the Studies of Pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with
P actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (Pain Terms 1979). This definition is the background of a larger part of the research studies. Using this definition as a starting point, it will be enlarged by discussing pain as an expression of a communication. Parts of the communication are the subject, the health system, and the social surroundings. (This communication is discussed in the section below on sport and pain.)
The History of Pain The story of pain can be told in different ways and marked with different causes and by different periods. Recent pain research locates pain and its sensation in DNA. In this way pain is associated with smaller and smaller physical units, even though it includes more than medical causes. Yet pain is more than a matter of neurotransmitters and pain receptors. Historically, pain has also always been a magical and/or religious concept. Suffering could be seen as an unavoidable part of existence, but also as something that, when it gives meaning, needs to be worked through. The history of pain also includes a story that is seldom told by the history of medicine—namely, the story of the healers and midwives who effectively administered their knowledge and craft independent of prevailing medical discourse.
Changing Pain Paradigms Until the 1960s a split between physical and psychological pain shaped the dominant pain paradigm. In the tradition of Descartes, it was normal to separate the
body from the psyche and correspondingly also to separate physical pain from psychic pain. In this respect pain is either a sign of tissue damage or, as in the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s thinking, an injury of the psyche. Pain has the important function of warning the body and protecting the body and the psyche. In the 1960s the traditional dualism was challenged by the gate control theory of Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall (1983). This theory postulated that pain was not a simple mechanical process between a stimulus and a response, but rather a complex event. Otherwise, it would not be possible to explain phenomena like the anaesthetic reaction when pain disappears though the existing tissue damage remains present, nor the opposite phenomena, like the phantom pain in an amputated limb, when pain is present without a somatic basis. Pain can be described in many different ways: as a sensory quality (sharp, burning, pulsating), as an affective quality (merciless, punishing), or as a relative quality (uncomfortable, unbearable). What is important is that these qualities are subjective. The experience of pain depends on individual factors. Melzack and Wall used the metaphor of a “gate” in the spinal cord that controls and regulates whether pain impulses are sent on to a higher cerebral level or not. The intensity of the pain impulse will depend on factors like awareness, fear, or concentration. There is no such thing as objective pain; instead, the experience of pain depends on subjective factors. That is why in the highly emotional atmosphere of competition or sexual activity, a person can cross over limits and only later— occasionally painfully—first become aware of it.
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There is no coming to consciousness without pain. ■ CARL JUNG
The gate-control theory has become a dominant paradigm in recent pain research, though, since the 1990s, theories that attempt to base pain sensitivity and pain memory in genetic factors (the so-called neuromatrix theories) have gained in importance. But due to the gate-control theory, it became possible to explain many phenomena that could not be understood within the Cartesian paradigm. For example, in sports athletes experience in different ways the pain that arises in situations of competition as compared with the pain that is part of training.
Sport and Pain— Coping with Sport Injuries The definition of pain as an “unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with tissue damage” seems to be too narrow when applied to the pain in sport. Take, for example, the case of Kerri Strug. In the 1996 Olympics the American gymnast Kerri Strug was turned into a media star because she took a running approach to a jump over the horse although she had an ankle injury. Her technique brought the American team the gold medal. How can we explain that Kerri Strug could run although she was heavily injured? According to the gate control theory of pain, we can explain her actions by her high degree of concentration. She focused on the jump, not on her injury. Pain in sports tells us many stories. Modern performance sports demands time and resources. The pressure can lead to major psychic and social burdens. Recent sport research refers to this milieu in terms of stress, social pressure, and plain “burnout” (Nixon 1994). Raedeke 1997). Since the subjectivity of pain and injury plays a central role in recent sport psychology literature (Brewer 2001, Nixon 1996, Taylor and Taylor 1998, Udry 1997, Williams 2001, Williams and Roepke 1993), a
An injured skateboarder. Source: istockphoto.com/elDivino.
deeper analysis of the psychological aspects of sport injuries is necessary. Precisely who is injured when or how a rehabilitation process will proceed is not simply a matter of coincidence One model that has proven valid over the years is the stress and athletic injury model of Williams and Anderson (in Williams 2001). Recent research has applied this model in many different ways to different populations. The research around the Williams and Anderson model is mainly concentrated on coping of pain and on pain prevention following a sport-medical intake. But it is also interesting to analyze how sport expresses pain. Sport is—besides masochism—one of the few fields where pain is expressed or accepted voluntarily. The research on pain in the field of sport psychology is mostly connected to injuries. Injuries can have a negative impact on the mind, the emotions, and the body of an athlete. The rehabilitation period after an injury is
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Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret. ■ ANONYMOUS
often a time of emotional distress. Interventions stemming from sport psychology can minimize these negative experiences and maximize recovery from injury. By the 1960s it was postulated that the personality of the athlete had an influence on the rate of injuries and pain (Ogilvie and Tutko 1966). In 1993 Heil’s Psychology of Sport Injuries offered the first general view of the role of personal and social factors, coping– strategies, and possibilities of interventions. The last decade produced much follow-up research in the field of the psychology of pain and injury, focusing especially on the ways of coping with the injuries (Brewer 2001, Taylor and Taylor 1998, Udry 1997, Williams 2001, Williams and Roepke 1993). Relevant personality factors were named, and stress, anxiety, and coping strategies connected with pain were analyzed for a lot of populations (e.g., Johnson 2000). Sport psychology showed that factors like stress and burnout can lead to overtraining and loss of balance in an athlete’s life. While it is true that pain in sport is usually connected with injuries, other aspects of pain should not be overlooked. When athletes experience pain, their experiences can have very different meanings. Besides being a sign of injury, pain can also provide a “kick” and become the ultimate limit in the experience of the self. Runners especially often describe the “high” experienced as part of an endurance event. The limits of the body are explored out of a simple desire to do so or out of curiosity about how far a person might extend his or her own limits, how far a person can grow beyond his or her “normal” self. It appears as though pain serves as an indicator that the limit has been reached and “selfenhancement” has begun (Roessler 2004). To overcome pain and to exceed one’s limits is another characteristic of the attractive and voluntary aspects of pain. People often tell the story of establishing their own psychological and physical limits, for example, when they run a marathon or compete in a triathlon. They control the pain by an act of will, and they experience this pain as a way of testing the limits of their self-control. Sports can be intoxicating activities that evoke pleasure even when they hurt. It is not a
product (performance), but rather an activity itself (the delightful search for limits) that is the key. One not only has to be in the best possible physical condition, but also in top mental form. The winner must be able to cope with the pain in order to integrate the pain. The 3,000-meter steeplechase runner has to integrate the fact that running rhythm is broken by hurdles and by a water jump. It hurts to have the rhythm broken because these interruptions jar and detract from the trance of long-distance running.
Different Ways of Reacting to Pain There are different ways to react to pain in sports. The most obvious way (from a medical perspective) of dealing with pain is to look for treatment. The athlete who trails his leg alongside a hurdle and stumbles is hurt. The injury is probably to the knee. This kind of pain is quite mechanical, we can call it an objective pain, one that can be localized in physical receptors. Pain feels like an unpleasant stimulus, like an unpleasant sensation. The athlete is hurt and the injury can be acute or chronic. The control of this kind of pain is a success story for medical science. Help in dealing with these injuries is also a success story in sport psychology. Understanding the expression of pain and the general significance of pain events in the life of an athlete, however, is more complicated. Runners in a 400-meter race have to decide at the 300-meter mark if they want to overcome the pain—if they wish to “run trough the pain barrier.” This kind of pain has quite another quality than pain calling for a treatment. To establish one’s own psychological and physical limits is a challenge. The pain is controlled by an act of will, and the experience of pain is a way of testing the limits of self-control. Understanding the experience of pain demands on further analysis a focus on the individual and cultural processes of communication. Pain not only can be experienced as an individual trauma, but also as an accepted by-product of sport (“no pain, no gain”), especially achievement sport; as a way of finding one’s self (e.g., the kick of running); or as a narrative (Allen
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Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you. ■ OVID
2003). To find out which it is, we have to ask the athlete of his or her own interpretation of pain.
The Future Future challenges in the pain research of sport science and especially sport psychology should focus more precisely on the aspects of communication and culture. Pain and injury in sport might fruitfully be analyzed as an expression of a communication problem between the athlete and his or her body, between the athlete and the trainer, and/or between the athlete and the surrounding culture. Kirsten Kaya Roessler See also Injury
Rey, R. (1998). The history of pain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Roessler, K. (2004). Sport und Schmerz. Ein sportpsychologischer Ansatz zur Schmerzforschung. Immenhausen, FRG: Prolog. Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmid, W. (1999). Philosophie der Lebenskunst: Eine Grundlegung. Frankfurt, FRG: Suhrkamp. Taylor, J., & Taylor, S. (1998). Pain education and management in the rehabilitation from sports injury. The Sport Psychologist, 12, 68–88. Udry, E. (1997). Coping and social Support among injured athletes following surgery. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 19, 71–90. Uexküll, T. von. (1997). Psychosomatische medizin. München, FRG: Urban & Schwarzenberg. Williams, J. (2001). Psychology of injury risk and prevention. In R. N. Singer, H. A. Hausenblas, & C. Janelle (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (pp. 766–786). New York: Wiley. Williams, J., & Roepke, N. (1993). Psychology of injury and injury rehabilitation. In R. N. Singer et al. (Eds.), Handbook of research on sport psychology (pp. 815–839). New York: Wiley.
Further Reading Allen, C. (2003). Running into injury time: Distance running and temporality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 20(4), 331–350. Bendelow, G., & Williams, S. (1995). Pain and the mind-body dualism: A sociological approach. Body & Society 1(2), 83–103. Brewer, B. (2001). Psychology of sport injury rehabilitation. In R. B. Singer, H. A. Hausenblas, & C. Janelle (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (pp. 787–809). New York: Wiley. Fichter, J. (1981). Religion and pain. New York: Crossroad. Heil, J. (1993). Psychology of sport injuries. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Honkasalo, M. (1998). Space and embodied experience: Rethinking the body in pain. Body & Society 4(2), 35–57. James, F., & Large, R. (1992). Chronic pain, relationships and illness self-construct. Pain 50, 263–271. Johnson, U. (2000). Short-term psychological intervention: A study of long-term injured competitive athletes. Journal of Sport Rehabilitation, 9, 207–218. Kugelmann, R. (1997). The psychology and management of pain: Gate control as theory and symbol. Theory and Psychology, 7(1), 43–65. Le Breton, D. (2000). Anthropologie de la douleur. Paris: Éditions Métailié. Melzack, R., & Wall, P. (1983). The challenge of pain. New York: Basic Books. Morris, D. (1991). The culture of pain. University of California Press. Nixon, H. (1994). Social pressure, social support, and help seeking for pain and injuries in college sport networks. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 18(4), 340–355. Nixon, H. (1996). Explaining pain and injury attitudes and experiences in sport in terms of gender, race, and sport status factors. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 20(1), 33–44. Ogilvie, B., & Tutko, P. (1966). Problem athletes and how to handle them. London: Pelham Books. Pain Terms. (1979). A list with definitions and notes on usage. Pain, 6, 240. Raedeke, T. (1997). Is athlete burnout more than just stress? A sport commitment perspective. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 19, 396–417.
Pan American Games
T
he Pan American Games are the grandest sports festival of the Americas, offering a large Olympic-type program, with additional disciplines reflecting special sports interests of the region for all countries of the hemisphere (more than forty now eligible to participate). The games’ slogan, “América, Espírito, Sport, Fraternité” (America, Spirit, Sport, Fraternity), uses the hemisphere’s principal languages: Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French.
History Discussions of regional games for the Americas were held during the 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games. In 1937 several Latin American countries, Canada, and the United States competed in Dallas, Texas. The first Pan American Sport Congress, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1940, established the games on a four-year cycle starting in 1942, but World War II interrupted these plans. Since 1951 the Pan American Games have been held every four years, with the athletic program and numbers of participating countries and athletes expanding dramatically.
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Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. ■ UNKNOWN
The Pan American Sport Organization (PASO) is headquartered in Mexico City. Early leaders of PASO (known until 1955 as the “Pan American Sports Committee”) were Avery Brundage (United States, 1940– 1951), José de Jesus Clark Flores (Mexico, 1951–1955 and 1959–1971), Douglas Roby (United States, 1955– 1959), Sylvio de Magalhaes Padilha (Brazil, 1971), and José Beracasa (Venezuela, 1971–1975). In the first games (Buenos Aires, 1951), twenty-one countries (approximately twenty-five hundred athletes) participated in nineteen sports: baseball, basketball, boxing, cycling, equestrian events, fencing, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, polo (never again included), rowing, yachting, shooting, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, water polo, weight lifting, and wrestling. Only a few U.S. athletes attended these games. The United States won men’s basketball but lost baseball to Cuba. Argentina won boxing, soccer, water polo, polo, rowing, tennis, shooting, and cycling and ended well ahead of all others in gold and total medals. Outstanding men athletes included Brazilian triple jumper Ademar Ferreira da Silva (winner also in 1955 and 1959), sprinters Rafael Fortún (Cuba), Arthur Bragg (United States), and Herb McKenley (Jamaica), shot and discus athlete James Fuchs and pole vaulter Bob Richards (both United States), and diver Joaquín Capilla (Mexico). Women participated in track and field, fencing, swimming, diving, and tennis. In their four track and five field events, women athletes from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile figured most prominently. U.S. women won the 4 ✕ 100-meter relay, as they would in many future games. Pat McCormick (United States) won diving gold and silver medals, and U.S. men and women exhibited an overall superiority in swimming that lasted throughout later years. The United States was second in shooting but dominated this sport in future games. The 1955 games in Mexico City dropped polo and yachting and added women’s basketball and synchronized swimming and men’s and women’s volleyball. Twenty-one countries (2,583 athletes) participated.
The United States won the most gold and total medals, as in all future games except for 1991. Guatemala’s Mateo Flores won the marathon, Brazilian da Silva’s triple jump was a world record, and Argentinean Osvaldo Suarez won the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters (winning gold or silver in both events again in 1959 and 1963). Rodney Richard (United States) won three sprint events. Boxing was dominated by Argentina and United States. Dominican Republic won baseball. U.S. women won basketball, as they would in many later games. Mexican women and U.S. men won volleyball. For the 1959 Pan Ams, designated host Cleveland, Ohio, and alternates Guatemala City, Guatemala, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, withdrew, and Chicago was chosen over São Paulo, Brazil. Synchronized swimming was left out and yachting renewed. Women began competing in gymnastics and equestrian events. More than two thousand athletes from twenty-four countries participated. Oscar Robertson led the U.S. men’s basketball team to victory. Venezuela won baseball. The United States and Canada began a dominance in gymnastics that would last until 1971. Lucinda Williams and Wilma Rudolph (both United States) finished first and second, respectively, in the 100 meters, and Williams repeated her victory in the 200 meters. Both were on the winning 4 ✕ 100-meter team. Althea Gibson (United States) won tennis singles and second place in doubles. Brazil won women’s volleyball, and the United States won women’s basketball (second of three consecutive victories in the games). In 1963 for the São Paulo games, men’s judo was introduced, and the women’s program added yachting and restored synchronized swimming. The new 800meter race was the first women’s track event longer than 200 meters. Twenty countries (1,665 athletes, the smallest number ever) participated. Impressive victories by host Brazil included three first places in boxing and the soccer championship. The Brazilian Maria Bueno won tennis singles, and Darlene Hard (United States) won third in singles and first in doubles. Mexico won its fourth consecutive title in tennis mixed doubles.
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Winnipeg in 1967 At the Winnipeg, Canada, games in 1967 new sports included men’s field hockey (won by Argentina at four consecutive games) and women’s pentathlon. Modern pentathlon, women’s yachting, and again synchronized swimming were dropped. Canoeing was a demonstration sport. More than two thousand athletes from twenty-nine of the thirty-three eligible nations participated. The United States won ten times the number of gold medals won by second-place Canada. U.S. athletes Don Schollander (three golds) and Mark Spitz (five golds) starred in swimming. Cuba’s three boxing victories (Rolando Garbey’s gold medal to be repeated in the next two games) presaged Cuba’s future dominance in this sport. For the Cali, Colombia, games in 1971, judo and tennis were dropped and synchronized swimming restored. Women’s track added 400-meter, 4 ✕ 400-meter, and 100-meter hurdles. Thirty-two countries (2,935 athletes) participated. Cuba doubled the number of medals it won in 1967 to begin challenging U.S. supremacy. Cuban triple jumper Pedro Pérez Dueñas set a world record, and gymnasts Jorge Rodríguez and Jorge Cuervo won a total of eleven medals, beginning years of strong Cuban performances in men’s gymnastics. Cuba’s successes in men’s and women’s fencing would accelerate in future games. Frank Shorter of the United States set records in the 10,000 meters and marathon, and Jamaican Donald Quarrie won the 100 meters and 200 meters, tying the world record in the 200 meters. Brazil won men’s basketball—the first time the United States had not won. Cuba won women’s volleyball, and Brazil won women’s basketball. Greco-Roman wrestling was added, and tennis and judo returned to the program in 1975. These games were originally awarded to Santiago de Chile, but Chile’s new military government declined to hold the games. First alternate, São Paulo, withdrew, and Mexico City stepped in with only ten months left for preparation. CBS-TV covered the first of three games. More than three thousand athletes from thirty-three countries participated. Brazilian Joao Carlos de Oliveira (who
won again in 1979) had a world-record triple jump. Janice Merrill (United States) won the new women’s 1,500 meters. U.S. women won basketball and continued to dominate gymnastics. Ray Leonard (United States) won light welter boxing. Sixty million dollars went into facilities constructed for the 1979 games in San Juan, Puerto Rico. New events were men’s and women’s archery, softball, and roller skating (including men’s hockey on skates). Thirty-four countries (thirty-seven hundred athletes) participated. Cuba won baseball and five gold medals in boxing and dominated fencing, weight lifting (eight of the ten categories), and men’s gymnastics. The United States won most wrestling medals and dominated tennis, roller skating, shooting, and swimming and diving. Pan Am records were set by U.S. women runners Evelyn Ashford (100 meters and 200 meters), Essie Kelley (800 meters), Mary Decker (1,500 meters), Janice Merrill (3,000 meters; her record in this new event was never broken), and the 4 ✕ 400-meter team. Records were set in all throwing events (by three Cuban women, three U.S. men, and a Canadian man) and by U.S. high jumper Louise Ritter. Cuba’s María Colon won javelin. Colon became the first Latin American woman to win an Olympic gold medal (1980). U.S. women won softball (repeating in most future games). Tracy Caulkins of the United States won four individual swimming medals and two relays. She would repeat her gold medals in the 200-meter and 400-meter medleys in 1983. Brazil won soccer, tying with Argentina at four games victories each. Archery was dominated by the United States in these and all later games. Canada won men’s softball (repeating through 2003). The program for the 1983 games in Caracas, Venezuela, dropped roller skating and added men’s and women’s Sambo wrestling (a Venezuelan specialty, never again included) and table tennis. Other new women’s events were the 400-meter hurdles, heptathlon (replacing the pentathlon), shooting, judo, and rowing. Women’s yachting was restored. Thirty-seven countries (3,426 athletes) participated. Drug testing was initiated, and several athletes left the competition before testing or
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Pan American Games Latin American Sport Festivals Since the early 1920s a variety of Olympic-type sport festivals have been established for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean basin. The first was the Central American Games, held in Guatemala City in 1921 as part of Guatemala, and the region’s, independence centennial celebration. Athletes representing Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and the host nation competed in six sports. The series failed to develop in the 1920s, and the project was dropped until 1973 when it was renewed on a much larger scale in Guatemala. Subsequent CA Games were held in San Salvador, El Salvador (1977); Guatemala City (1986); Tegucigalpa, Honduras (1990), which was the first inclusion of all seven countries of the region; San Salvador (1994); San Pedro Sula, Honduras (1997); and Guatemala City (2001). This festival was established for the purpose of providing athletic competition at levels attainable by most Central American countries, without the dominating influence of sport powers in their region, such as Cuba and Mexico (as well as the United States, Canada, and powerful South American nations in the Pan American Games). The first South American Games were held in Rio de Janeiro in 1922 as part of Brazil’s centennial celebration of independence. This series also failed to develop fully at the time but was reestablished in 1978 in Bolivia and continued without interruption to the present (Rosario, Argentina, in 1982; Santiago, Chile, in 1986; Lima, Peru, in 1990; Valencia, Venezuela, in 1994; Cuenca, Ecuador, in 1998; and Rio de Janeiro in 2002). The Central American and Caribbean Games began in Mexico. Inspired by a visit from International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President Henri Baillet LaTour in 1923, promoted by the IOC and with preliminary planning during the Paris Olympics of
were disqualified. Mexican men set records in race walking, continuing the tradition they started in 1975. Canada’s Charmaine Crooks set a record in the women’s 400 meters. Cuba won men’s volleyball for the fourth consecutive games. Cuba, the United States, and
1924, the “First Central American Games” were held in Mexico City in 1926. Fourteen countries were invited from Central America, the northern tier of South American countries, and the Caribbean. Only Mexico, Cuba, and Guatemala participated. However, the series became well established, with subsequent sites in Havana (1930); San Salvador (1935); and Panama City (1938). With the fourth set of games in Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1946, the event was renamed Central American and Caribbean Games, to reflect the actual geographic region of the participants. Subsequent games have been held in locations from Puerto Rico to Panama. This festival has expanded to more than thirty nations and a large sport program. Cuba has dominated the competition with Mexico usually occupying second place. The Central American and Caribbean University Games were held first in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1972, with eight nations participating in four sports. Subsequently the festival has grown in participation and sports program, being held in Mexico City (1975); Santo Domingo (1977); Barquisimeto, Venezuela (1982); Havana (1986); Guatemala City (1990); Guadalajara, Mexico (1997); and San Germán, Puerto Rico (2000).The Games scheduled for 2002 in Medellín were canceled due to security concerns in Colombia. Cuba has dominated the University Games. The Bolivarian Games include the six nations whose wars of independence from Spain were led by General Simón Bolívar: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Panama (formerly part of Colombia).This festival was first held in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1938, and subsequently in locations ranging from Lima, Peru, in 1947 to Ambato, Ecuador, in 2001.
Richard V. McGehee
Brazil (and Peruvian women) have dominated volleyball overall. Political conflict between the United States and both Cuba and Nicaragua was played up by the media during the tenth games in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1987.
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Modern pentathlon and men’s and women’s roller skating were restored. Men’s and women’s team handball, men’s taekwondo and canoe-kayak, and women’s cycling, field hockey, kayak, marathon, 10,000-meter run, and 10-kilometer walk were introduced. Thirtyeight countries (4,453 athletes) participated. Brazil won men’s basketball. Carl Lewis of the United States bettered the long jump record by 0.45 meters, and Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor set a record in the high jump. Ana Fidelia Quirot won the 400 meters and 800 meters (setting records and setting records again in both events in 1991). Jackie Joyner Kersey (United States) won the women’s long jump (a record). Costa Rica’s Sylvia Poll won eight medals (three gold) in swimming (and another gold medal in 1991). The United States dominated women’s cycling (continuing in future games). The first winter Pan American Games, canceled the previous year, were held in September 1990 in Las Lenas, Argentina, and included Alpine skiing for men and women. Other events had to be eliminated because of poor snow conditions, and no results were officially recorded for skiing competition. Winter games were planned again for 1993 in Chile but canceled because of poor snow conditions.
Cuba in 1991 Cuba hosted the games in 1991, and records were set in the numbers of countries (thirty-nine) and athletes (4,519) participating. The U.S. economic embargo and travel restrictions made financing of the games difficult for the host. Initially the U.S. Treasury Department would not allow any payments to Cuba, but after court contests, ABC-TV and Turner Network Television were allowed to send personnel and equipment with severely restricted crew sizes and spending limits. The events were held in new facilities, such as the Pan American Stadium, a velodrome (a track designed for cycling), and tennis and swimming complexes, as well as many existing sports facilities in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. Modern pentathlon was dropped; new sports were rhythmic gymnastics and men’s and women’s bowling. Seventy-four Pan Am records were set. Pro-
fessionals were allowed to participate in tennis, and Pam Shriver (United States) won women’s singles and doubles. Puerto Rico won men’s basketball. Cuba won eleven of the twelve boxing categories, all ten weightlifting golds, and the men’s 4 ✕ 100-meter relay (marking only the second time the United States had not won). Overall, Cuba passed the United States in gold medals (the only time the United States was not first since 1951) and was second to the United States in total medals. The games returned to Argentina (Mar del Plata) in 1995. New sports included men’s and women’s badminton, karate, racquetball, squash, triathlon, water skiing, and women’s taekwondo. The women’s 3,000 meters was replaced by the 5,000 meters. Jai alai was a demonstration sport. More than five thousand athletes from forty-two countries participated. Women’s basketball was canceled because of the small number of entries, but U.S. women again won softball. Argentina won men’s basketball and volleyball. The United States sent a record 746 athletes and won an all-time high of 424 medals (169 gold). The 1999 Pan American Games were held in Winnipeg, Canada. About five thousand athletes from fortytwo countries competed in forty-two sports. Men’s and women’s beach volleyball and women’s soccer (won by the United States) were introduced. Modern pentathlon returned to the program and was offered for the first time for women. The women’s 20-kilometer walk replaced the 10-kilometer walk. Brazil won women’s volleyball (and beach volleyball), ending Cuba’s string of seven consecutive victories begun in 1971. Canada won men’s beach volleyball. Pan American and world recordholding high jumper Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) tested positive for cocaine and was disqualified after winning what would have been his fourth consecutive title. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, held the 2003 games. More than five thousand athletes from forty-two countries participated. The host nation won ten gold and forty-one total medals, its best Pan American performance to date. Dominican world champion hurdler Felix Sanchez won gold, and his nation took sil-
PARACHUTING
ver in men’s basketball and gold in women’s volleyball. Cuba won baseball (the eleventh time) and women’s basketball. Only Cuba, Brazil, and the United States have won more women’s basketball. Argentina won men’s soccer, and Brazil won women’s soccer. Four doping violations were detected, and as a result the United States had to forfeit gold medals in the 100 meters and the 4 ✕ 100-meter relay. Through 2003 the United States had won far more Pan American medals (3,787) than any other nation, followed by Cuba (1,671), Canada (1,456), Argentina (859), Brazil (758), and Mexico (705). Gold medals follow the same trend. Countries winning the fewest or no medals tend to be relatively poor and/or small, such as Guyana and some Central American and Caribbean nations. However, some small countries, such as Jamaica and Costa Rica, commonly figure in the medal counts. PASO also offers Pan American Wheelchair Games and Pan American Games for the Blind. The Wheelchair Games have been held twelve times between 1967 and 2003, not always in the same year as the regular games or using a four-year interval. Former sites include Winnipeg; Buenos Aires (twice); Kingston, Jamaica; Lima, Peru; Mexico City (twice); Rio de Janeiro; Halifax, Canada; San Juan; Caracas; and Mar del Plata. Winning over strong competition from San Antonio, Texas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will host the 2007 Pan American Games. The 2007 Wheelchair Games, to be held two weeks after the regular competitions, will be hosted by Rio de Janeiro.
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these games are of great importance in the sporting life of their nations, and the preparations for, daily progress, and results of the competitions receive wide coverage in the media. Those countries that offer monetary compensation to their medalists consider Pan American Games victories inferior only to Olympic victories. On the other hand, the United States commonly places less value on Pan American Games results and may send athletes of less than Olympic caliber. The U.S. news media rarely give much attention to the games. However, hosting the Pan American Games is considered a prize by all nations of the Americas. Richard V. McGehee See also Central American and Caribbean Games
Further Reading A history of the Pan-American Games. Retrieved August 6, 2004, from http://www.aafla.org/8saa/PanAm/pan _ am _ history.htm Compendium of the results of the Pan American Games from Buenos Aires 1951 to Indianapolis 1987 (4th ed.). (1989). Mexico City: Pan American Sports Organization. Emery, C. R. (1972). The story of the Pan American Games. Kansas City, MO: Ray-Gay. Ferreiro Toledano, A. (1992). Historia de los once juegos deportivos panamericanos, 1951-1991. Mexico City: Artes Gráficas Rivera. McGehee, R.V. (1994). Los juegos de las Américas: Four inter-American multisport competitions. In Sport in the global village (R. Wilcox, ed.). Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Olderr, S. (2003). The Pan American Games: A statistical history 1951– 1999. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. The Pan American Games. Retrieved August 6, 2004, from http://www. internationalgames.net/panamegamsum.htm
Significance At a lower level than the Pan American Games are national competitions, university games, and several regional festivals (South American, Central American and Caribbean, and Central American Games) for Latin American and Caribbean countries. These regional events are lead-ups to the Pan American Games and Olympics and thus are accorded high regard in the region. For most Latin American and Caribbean athletes, the Pan American Games represent the highest level of athletic competition to which they can aspire. Thus,
Parachuting
P
arachuting as a modern sport began during the early twentieth century and was a crowd pleaser at air shows that featured aerial stunts and aerobatics such as formation flying and wing walking. In 1930 the first competition in parachuting took place in the Soviet Union. Two years later forty parachutists took part in the U.S. National Air Races.
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Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward. ■ VERNON LAW
Parachuting initially revolved around target jumping, but, thanks to French experimentation during the late 1940s and early 1950s, freefalling was introduced, leading to the addition of style and “relative jumping” competition. Five European countries took part in the first world championships in 1951 in France. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale has supervised biennial world championships since 1954.
Origins Parachuting began as early as the twelfth century, but until the invention of the hot air balloon and the airplane, parachuting served no purpose other than to display inventiveness and provide simple entertainment. In China people amused themselves by jumping from high places with early parachutes that were constructed like umbrellas. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), the Italian Renaissance man and innovator, designed a wooden, pyramid-shaped parachute during the late fifteenth century. In 1595 the Hungarian mathematician Fausto Veranzio created a wood-framed canvas parachute, which he used to leap from a tower in Venice. During the 1600s tumblers from royal courts launched themselves from high places holding two large umbrellas. In 1783 Sebastian Lenormand of France jumped from a tower in Paris using a parachute. Also in 1783 the parachute made an important transition from a means of entertainment to a means of safety. In that year the Montgolfier brothers of France made their first balloon flight, which made the escape means provided by a parachute important. Another significant development in that year was a collapsible silk parachute, designed by J. P. Blanchard (1753–1809) of France. Earlier parachutes had been held open by a rigid frame. The French aeronautical pioneer Andre Jacques Garnerin (1769–1823) in 1797 made what scholars consider to be the first parachute jump when he jumped from 600 meters over Paris from a hot air balloon. In 1802 he jumped from more than 2,400 meters above London. Jodaki Kuparento of Poland in 1808 became the first person to use a parachute to escape death when
he jumped from his flaming hot air balloon over Warsaw. Confidence in the parachute as a safety device grew, and in 1838 John Wise of the United States intentionally exploded his balloon nearly 4,000 meters above ground and parachuted to safety.
Development A series of developments transformed da Vinci’s woodframed parachute into the modern parachute. The first development was Blanchard’s creation of the collapsible silk parachute. The second development was the harness that replaced the basket structure of parachutes. Captain Tom Baldwin of the United States created the harness in 1887. The next development was the coatpack, a parachute worn on the back like a modern parachute. Charles Broadwick of the United States designed the coatpack in 1901. A. Leo Stevens invented another device, the ripcord, in 1908. Broadwick’s adopted daughter, Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick (1893–1978), was the first person to jump with a manually operated parachute after her parachute line caught on the tail of her airplane in 1914, and she cut the line. Parachuting was being transformed from a safety precaution into a military maneuver as well as a popular sport. In 1928 U.S. Army General Billy Mitchell demonstrated the military effectiveness of the parachute as he deployed airborne soldiers (paratroopers). Both sides would use paratroopers during World War II. At a festival in the Soviet Union in 1930 parachutists competed in a landing accuracy contest. As parachuting gained popularity, in 1951 the first World Parachuting Championships were held. Four years later the United States formed a team and competed in the world championships in 1956. The United States fielded a women’s team at the sixth world championships in 1962. During the mid-1960s the challenge of parachuting in formations was added to the sport. A six-man starshaped formation was achieved in 1964 and, a year later, an eight-man star. In 1970 a twenty-person star was achieved in the United States. The sport was flourishing by 1978.
PARACHUTING
A parachutist just before landing.
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Source: istockphoto.com/TerryHealy.
Practice Relative work—the maneuvering of two or more parachutists close to one another during freefall—is one of the most popular forms of parachuting. Relative work began as two people parachuting together but now can involve as many as 150 people. Body position is the key to relative work. To drop from the airplane and become level with the rest of the group, parachutists use the “delta” position. The “boxman” position is a series of 90degree angles. The parachutist arches the back and raises the legs and torso to create a U shape or a 90degree angle. Parachutists can also spread their legs at a 90-degree angle and hold both arms in an L-shaped 90-degree angle. In the boxman position parachutists close their legs and hold their arms against their sides and assume a dive position toward the meet-up area.
Participants must flare (open the arms and legs) before reaching the meet-up area so as not to go too far off course or collide with fellow parachutists. After reaching the meet-up area, parachutists need to dock. To dock, parachutists use a no-tension grip, that is, the parachutists fly in close proximity without touching. After the parachutists are in place the grip is used to keep the formation steady. Relative work can yield extraordinary results. For example, above Quincy, Illinois, in 1988 a 144-person formation was achieved. The popularity of parachuting is growing because of the thrills that it provides. One of its greatest thrills is the experience of altered states of consciousness. For example, on exiting an airplane a parachutist experiences the excitement of feeling one’s body accelerate from 0 to 175 kilometers per hour in a matter of seconds.
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Moreover, technological advances make parachuting safe, and modern lightweight sport parachutes make soft, stand-up landings reasonably easy.
Competition More than three hundred people competed in the 1995 National Skydiving Championships in Florida, and when fifty-four teams registered for the four-way event, they broke the record of forty-seven set in 1978. The championships offered medals to the winners of four-, eight-, and ten-way competitions, as well as a twentyway competition. At Raeford, North Carolina, in 1995, during only twenty-four hours Cheryl Stearns of the United States, considered by some people to be the most successful competitive parachutist in the world, broke three world records. On 8 and 9 November she broke the women’s record for jumps in a twenty-four-hour period (352) and the overall record (331). She also set a record for the most dead-center landings on an electronic sensor pad (188). Freestyle competition is another element of parachuting. Freestyle parachuting is essentially a choreographed repertoire of creative movements. Parachuting is still a minority sport and does not have the popular appeal of major sports such as track and field or soccer. Nonetheless, it can be found in all corners of the globe. Hundreds of clubs exist in the United States and in other countries in Europe, South America, and Asia. Parachuting has also caught on in Australia, where the first parachute club was formed in Sydney in 1958. That year the Federation of Parachute Clubs and Centres, later called the “Australian Parachute Federation” (APF), was formed. A number of states have parachute councils. Interested persons can become involved in relative work, canopy relative work, classical style and accuracy, and freestyle. Clubs under the APF exist across Australia for beginners and professionals. Virtually anyone can participate in parachuting. Jim Thomas of the United States says parachuting requires neither athleticism nor physical skills. He took up the
sport at the age of thirty-four to overcome his fear of heights. Clearly he achieved his goal and, after more than forty jumps, continues to love the sport’s “sensory overload.” He said, “Sport parachuting is all about an adrenaline rush and a thrill a second. At the completion of each jump there is a euphoric sense of achievement.” However, he pointed out that the equipment for parachuting (such as main canopy and reserve canopy) can cost $5,000. Simon J. Crawford
Further Reading Hickok, R. (1992). The encyclopedia of North American sports history. New York: Facts on File. Poynter, D. (1992). Parachuting: The skydiver’s handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: Para Publishing. Vamplew, W., Moore, K., O’Hara, J., Cashman, R., & Jobling, I. F. (Eds.). (1992). The Oxford companion to Australian sport. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.
Paralympics
D
uring World War II, Dr. Ludwig Guttmann (1899– 1980) worked as a physician at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital and introduced physical activity and sport as part of the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation of wounded soldiers, mainly those with spinal cord injuries. He was also the first to organize competitions in wheelchair sport and initiated the first multisport games at Stoke Mandeville.These games started on the same day as the opening of the Summer Olympic Games in London, 28 July 1948, and marked the beginning of the Paralympic movement. Four years later, athletes from England and the Netherlands competed in the second Stoke Mandeville Games, following the fouryear period of the Olympiad. It was the vision of Dr. Guttmann that athletes with physical disabilities should be given the same opportunity for international competitions as able-bodied
PARALYMPICS
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Paralympics Winter Paralympic Games Year
Location
Disability Categories
Countries
Athletes
1976
Omskoldsvik, Sweden
VI, A
14
250
1980
Geilo, Norway
PI, VI
18
350
1984
Innsbruck, Austria
PI, VI
22
350
1988
Innsbruck, Austria
PI, VI
22
397
1992
Albertville, France
PI, VI
24
475
1994
Lillehammer, Norway
1998
Nagano, Japan
2002
Salt Lake City, USA
PI, VI
31
1,000+
PI, VI, ID
32
571
PI, VI
36
416
Abbreviations—Physical impairment: PI; visual impairment: VI; amputee: A; cerebral palsy: CP; intellectual disability: ID.
Paralympics Summer Paralympic Games Year
Location
Disability Categories
Countries
Athletes
1960
Rome, Italy
SCI
23
400
1964
Tokyo, Japan
SCI
21
375
1968
Tel Aviv, Israel
SCI
29
750
1972
Heidelberg, FRG
SCI
41
1,004
1976
Toronto, Canada
SCI, VI, LA
42
1,657
1980
Arnhem, Netherlands
SCI, A, VI, CP
42
1973
1984
Aylesbury, UK
SCI, A, VI, CP
41
1180
New York 1988 1992
Seoul, Korea
SCI, A, VI, CP, LA
Barcelona, Spain
45
1800
61
3,053
SCI, A, VI, CP, LA
82
3,020
Madrid
ID
74
1400
1996
Atlanta
SCI, A, VI, CP, LA, ID
103
3,195
2000
Sydney, Australia
SCI, A, CP, LA, ID
123
3,430
2004
Athens, Greece
SCI, A, CP, LA
130
4,000
Abbreviations—Spinal cord injury: SCI; visual impairment: VI; les autres: LA; amputee: A; cerebral palsy: CP; intellectual disability: ID.
athletes at the Olympic Games, and that they should receive worldwide recognition for their sporting excellence. In 1960, for the first time in history, the Stoke Mandeville Games were held outside of England in Rome, Italy, following the Summer Olympic Games in the same
city. During an audience at the Vatican, Pope John XXIII received Dr. Guttmann and the athletes and recognized the remarkable contribution of Dr. Guttmann by calling him the “Coubertin of the Paralyzed,” after the founder of the modern Olympic movement.
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A woman racing in the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece. Source: istockphoto/vasiliki.
The year 1960 marked the beginning of the Summer Paralympic Games, which are held every four years. Since 1976, Winter Paralympic Games have been organized, also with growing numbers of participating nations and athletes. In 1952, based on the initiative of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation (ISMGF), later renamed the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation (ISMWSF), was founded for persons with spinal cord injury. This was followed, again on the initiative of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, by the foundation of the International Sports Organisation for the Disabled (ISOD) in 1964, which was open to persons with amputation and other physical disabilities (les autres). In 1968 the International Cerebral Palsy Society was established in England, which ten years later led to the Cerebral Palsy-International Sport and Recreation Association (CP-ISRA). In 1981 a separate organization was established for visually impaired and blind people, the International Blind Sport Association (ISBA), while in 1986 the International Sports Federation for Persons with Mental Handicap (INAS-FMH) was formed. This organization was renamed in 1999, replacing “Mental Handicap” with “Intellectual Disability.” It is now known as INAS-FID. In the early 1980s a number of communication and coordination difficulties existed between the various organizations, both with regard to internal processes and communication with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This led to the creation of an International Coordinating Committee (ICC) in 1982. Under the rotating leadership of the presidents of the different international organizations of sport for the disabled, several meetings were held to reach agreement among themselves and with the IOC, in particular with regard to the organization of the Paralympic Games. A meeting of the ICC in September 1989 in Düsseldorf, Germany, culminated in the foundation of the In-
ternational Paralympic Committee (IPC). The first president of the IPC was Dr. Robert Steadward (Canada). In addition to the national sport organizations for persons with a disability, six international disability sport organizations became members of the IPC: ISMWSF, ISBA, ISOD, CP-ISRA, INAS-FMH, and CISS (Comité International des Sports des Sourds—The International Sport Organization for the Deaf). In 1995 CISS decided to leave the IPC, because of their strong desire for more autonomy and interest in keeping their long tradition of organizing their own World Games for the Deaf, which started in 1924. Following the Summer Paralympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, for the first time in history, games were held (in Madrid) for athletes with intellectual disabilities. This event was called Paralympiada. During the 1996 Summer Paralympic Games in Atlanta, athletes with intellectual disabilities were included with full medal status, but this changed following the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney due to problems related to clear eligibility criteria.
Significance of the Paralympic Movement Since its beginning, the Paralympic movement has rapidly developed, with the Paralympic Games now bringing together athletes with a disability at the highest level of performance. Among the most important issues and challenges facing the Paralympic movement are the following:
PEBBLE BEACH
■
■
■
■ ■
■ ■
■ ■ ■
■
■
The relationship of the Paralympic movement and Paralympic Games to the Olympic movement and Olympic Games The development of fair classification systems for athletes with different disabilities An increased efforts toward inclusion (e.g., demands for the introduction of events for athletes with a disability in Olympic Games and World Championships with full medal status) Media, marketing, and sponsoring Professionalization of the whole Paralympic sport system Ethical aspects of Paralympic sport Discrepancies between “developed” and “developing” countries (e.g., with regard to the availability of sport equipment, wheelchairs, prostheses, etc.) Doping and performance-enhancing methods Eligibility criteria Barriers to sport participation and retirement from high performance sport High performance sport for children and youth with disabilities The voice and the role of athletes with a disability
Since the foundation of an IPC Sport Science Committee in 1993, important initiatives have been undertaken toward the development of scientific knowledge and increased research efforts in Paralympic sport. This effort is also reflected in the close cooperation that exists between IPC and the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE). Close cooperation also exists between the IPC and the IOC, based on formal contracts. The current president of the IPC, Philip Craven (England), is a member of the IOC, and future host cities of both Summer and Winter Olympic Games will also organize Paralympic Games in the same venues. The Paralympics and the Paralympic movement have made tremendous progress with regard to the level of performance by athletes with disabilities and recognition given by the public and media. The number of participating nations in the Paralympics has grown remarkably
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since the 1970s, reaching 136 at the 2004 Paralympic Summer Games in Athens, Greece. Gudrun Doll-Tepper
Further Reading DePauw, K., & Gavron, S. (1995). Disability and sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc. Doll-Tepper, G. (1995). The future of sport science in the Paralympic movement. Berlin, Germany: n.p. Doll-Tepper, G., Sonnenschein, W. , & Kröner, M. (Eds.). (2001). Sport for athletes with a disability. VISTA 1999. Aachen, Germany: Meyer & Meyer. ONCE. (Eds.). (1993). 1st Paralympic Congress, Barcelona 1992. Barcelona, Spain: Support Serveis, S. A. Scruton, J. (1998). Stoke Mandeville Road to the Paralympics. Aylesbury, UK.: Peterhouse. Steadward, R. (1996). Integration and sport in the Paralympic movement. Sport Science Review, Adapted Physical Activity 5(1), 26–41. Steadward, R., Nelson, E., & Wheeler, G. (Eds.). (1994). The outlook. VISTA 1993. Edmonton, Canada: Rick Hansen Centre.
Pebble Beach
P
ebble Beach Golf Links, located near Monterey, California, is one of the most beautiful golf courses in the world and has been the location of many important golf events, including several memorable U.S. Open Championships.
History The first golf course in the Monterey area was the Del Monte, opened as a nine-hole course in 1897 and extended to an eighteen-hole course in 1903, but the origins of the Pebble Beach course lie in the appointment of Samuel F. B. Morse in 1915 as manager of the Pacific Improvement Company’s land holdings, which included the whole Pebble Beach area. After starting to sell off the land holdings as housing plots, Morse had a vision of developing a scenic and challenging golf course along the edge of the ocean. He formed the Del Monte Properties Company, bought a 7,300-hectare unit including the Hotel Del Monte, and began to buy
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If you think it’s hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. ■ JACK LEMMON
back the plots he needed for the course. Two amateur golfers, Jack Neville and Douglas Grant, were employed as course architects, and the Pebble Beach Golf Links was opened in 1919.
Course The intention of the architects was to locate along the ocean as many of the holes as possible, and so imaginatively were the holes laid out that most of them have remained largely unchanged ever since. Jack Neville said in later years that the terrain was such that nature seemed to have intended the land to be a golf course and that the architects had to do relatively little, but he was almost certainly being overly modest. However, the eighteenth hole was initially a 315meter par four and was considered too easy for championship golf; it was extended twice, and on the second extension in 1922 William Herbert Fowler changed it to a 501-meter par five, one of the best finishing holes in the world. Seven years later, prior to the first U.S. Amateur Championship on the course in 1929, the greens were reshaped and rebunkered, several holes were reconfigured, and length was added to a few others. The only really significant further change to the course came in 1998. Samuel Morse had been unable to buy back one piece of land overlooking Stillwater Cove, and so the original fifth hole had to be built away from the shoreline. However, during the 1990s the Pebble Beach Company managed at last to buy back that piece of land, and the U.S. golfer Jack Nicklaus was asked to design a new fifth hole, which was opened in 1999. This development finally fulfilled the vision that Morse had had for the course more than eighty years earlier. The Monterey Peninsula Open was held at Pebble Beach in 1926, the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1929 and 1947, and the U.S.Women’s Amateur Championship in 1940 and 1948. However, despite the stature of these and other tournaments, the course was
Diagram of the half swing in golf.
not in those years crowded every day with golfers as it is today and was inexpensive to play—a green fee was as little as $5 well after World War II. However, in 1947 the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am moved to Pebble Beach, and the renown of the course grew rapidly after televising of this tournament began in 1958. In 1986 the “Crosby Clambake,” as it was informally known, became the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. The Pebble Beach Resorts now comprise four courses; in addition to the original Del Monte Golf Course and the Pebble Beach Golf Links itself are the Links at Spanish Bay (opened in 1987) and Spyglass Hill Golf Course (opened in 1966). The latter, together with the Poppy Hills Golf Course, opened by the North California Golf Association in 1986, are used along with Pebble Beach for the AT&T pro-am.
U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Jack Nicklaus won the U.S. Amateur Championship when it was played for the third time at Pebble Beach in 1961, and he figured largely in the first two U.S. Opens to be played at the course in 1972 and 1982. In each case the par-three seventeenth hole was crucial. In 1972, in windy conditions on the last day, Nicklaus hit a oneiron to within a few inches of the hole, and this shot gave him a margin over his nearest challengers that secured his victory. In 1982 he had already finished his round and was tied for the lead with Tom Watson when Watson came to the seventeenth hole and hit a two-iron into the rough beside the green; at this point Nicklaus
PELOTA
1155
The harder you work, the luckier you get. ■ GARY PLAYER
looked to be the likely winner, but Watson sank his sand-iron shot from the rough for a birdie and went on to win. In 1992 the U.S. Open was played at Pebble Beach for a third time, and playing in high winds in the final round Tom Kite achieved a par score of seventy-two, most remarkable in the conditions, and won his first major championship. Equally remarkable was the play of Tiger Woods in the hundredth playing of the U.S. Open in 2000, when his opening score of sixty-five was the lowest round ever recorded in a U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, and he went on to not only equal the lowest-ever total score for the tournament—272—but also to finish fifteen shots ahead of his nearest rival— a margin of victory four shots greater than in any other U.S. Open.
The Future Pebble Beach has been long regarded as one of the best courses in the United States; it is ranked the number one public course in the country. Given its great natural beauty and the presence of a number of other highquality courses nearby, golfers of all standards will always be drawn to play at Pebble Beach regardless of expense, and it will continue to be a regular venue for important championships. Tony Sloggett
Further Reading Hotelling, N. (1999). Pebble Beach Golf Links: The official history. Chelsea, MI: Sleeping Bear Press. March, R. A. (1992). A paradise called Pebble Beach. Trumbull, CT: Golf Digest. Ward-Thomas, P., & Lawrenson, D. (2001). World atlas of golf: The greatest courses and how they are played. San Diego, CA: Thunder Ridge Press.
Pedestrianism See Race Walking
Pelota
P
elota is a sport in which players propel a ball with their hand or an instrument. The antecedent of pelota is jeu de paume (French for “palm game”), a sport that spread rapidly throughout Europe during the thirteenth century. In the rural Basque (relating to people inhabiting the western Pyrenees on the Bay of Biscay) provinces of northwestern Spain and southwestern France pelota acquired a unique identity. People came to play two forms of pelota on three types of courts: the place libre, an open outdoor court with a single wall at one end; the fronton, which includes both covered and outdoor courts with two or three walls; and the trinquet (or tripot), a small, rectangular covered court. In the villages of Basque country most often the wall or arches of a church were used for pelota. Courts were “never more than a stone’s throw from the church” (Gallop 1970, 49) because the fronton and the church were the two centers of village life. The original form of pelota is jeux directs or juegos directos. This form is descended from the outdoor game of jeu de paume known as “longue paume,” which two or more players played by facing each other and beating a ball back and forth across a net or line in any convenient open space. Rebot, for example, was a fiveper-side form of jeux directs played with leather gloves or chisteras (baskets) in a place libre. A ceremonious and traditional game, rebot is now played only rarely on Sundays after Mass in Basque villages. Basques also play pasaka, a two-per-side version of jeux directs, only rarely now. Bare hands or leather gloves are used to propel the ball over a net inside a trinquet. Playing in trinquets became popular in France during the fourteenth century, and many spaces were enclosed and roofed in for the sport. Although trinquets were eventually standardized, the earliest courts were rarely identical either in size or detail because most were converted from stables, barns, or unused houses. Nets were high and strung
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Pelota Pelota among the Basques in Chino, California The first handball court in Chino was built around 1927 or 1928 by Loran Arretche on an empty lot on Ford Street next to his house. Handball games were held at the fronton on Sundays. Basques came from Los Angeles and the surrounding area to play. This lasted one year and then the court fell down in a strong Santa Ana windstorm. This was during Prohibition and Mr. Arretche sold beer and wine, at least, during the games. These Sunday handball games drew large Basque crowds and the neighbors and a church complained about the noise so Mr. Arretche never repaired the fronton. Mr. Arretche sold the blocks from the ruined fronton to a Mexican, Julian Montez, and he constructed the second handball court in Chino. Although it was used by Mexican players, the Basques played there every Sunday. In time, Montez sold the court to another Basque, Joaquin Ezurdiag. Source: Eagle, S. J. (1979). Work and play among the Basques of southern California (pp. 161–162). Ann Arbor, MI & London: University Microfilms International.
across the center of the court. In both rebot and pasaka scoring is similar to tennis, and a match consists of thirteen games. Rebot and pasaka were played before the introduction of rubber balls during the eighteenth century. Such balls may derive from Mesoamerican (relating to the region of southern North America that was occupied during pre-Columbian times by peoples with shared cultural features) rubber ball games observed by Spanish conquistadors. The introduction of the rubber ball revolutionized pelota. It not only modified existing games, but also set off a whole range of new games. The new games came to be known as “jeux indirects” or “juegos indirectos,” meaning that the ball was hit “indirectly” to the opposing player by the use of walls.
Variations The new games were much faster and were normally played with only one or two persons per side, whereas the older games required more players. The new games were so popular that they almost completely displaced the older games. Many variations of jeux indirects exist, including main nue, cesta punta, remonte, yoko garbi, and grand chistera. They share similar tactics and strategies. People play main nue en place libre (bare hand in open court) either in singles or doubles against a single wall in an open court similar to that used for rebot. The game is simple: The ball must remain within the limits of the court and of the wall. Main nue en trinquet or en fronton (bare hand in court or fronton) is a more popular form of handball for singles, doubles, or three-per-side because of the hazards of the walls. In Basque countries the champions of main nue are the elite of pelotaris (ball players) because main nue is not only a physically demanding game but also wearing on bare hands. Cesta punta, known as “jai alai” in other countries, is a two-per-side game played with a long chistera (basket) in a three-sided court. Remonte (Spanish for “to return”) is similar, but the basket-glove used for remonte is narrower and less curved than that used in other chistera games. Rattan canes replace the osier (a type of willow) twigs of the standard chistera, and the inside curve is polished. The ball appears to rebound instantaneously, but in fact hits the chistera near the wrist, travels down it, and flies out the far end. The rubber ball, the length of the court, and the pace are demanding. Remonte and cesta punta are pelota’s fastest and most difficult games. Yoko garbi (pure game or clean game) is a three-perside form played with a small chistera in an open court with a single wall. The court is like that used for main nue en place libre except it is longer. Yoko garbi is played with two players near the wall and one in back. The game is fast because of the shallow curve of the small basket-glove. Grand chistera is a three-per-side variation played with even longer chisteras. These games are played most often by professionals in Spain, where gambling is popular and demands a consistently high standard of play.
PENTATHLON, MODERN
Basques venerate the best pelotaris. The first was Perkain, born in the French village of Les Aldudes about 1765. Perkain helped to put pelota on the map. The balls used by Perkain weighed as much as 907 grams and were hit back and forth. Perkain was succeeded at the top by two Spanish Basques: Jose Ramon Indart, called “Michico,” and Bautista de Arrayoz. Then came the French Basque Jean Erratchun, born in 1817 and known as “El Gaskoina” (the Gascon). Gaskoina played games that were basically the same as those played by Perkain, except for the change in the shape of the glove. He used a longer glove with a deep curve in its end in which the ball could be held for an instant before it was hurled back against the wall. This slice shot was known as “atchiki” (to hold). The Spaniards took advantage of the new glove and began to dominate the sport. Although the new glove made pelota faster and more spectacular, its popularity declined for physical and economic reasons. When chisteras and rubber balls were introduced almost simultaneously, the impact on pelota was revolutionary. The final decade of the nineteenth century was a significant period for pelota as it developed into a sport of worldwide renown. Expansion took place mainly in South America, particularly in Argentina, which became a mecca of the sport. The new way of swinging the chistera led to pelota’s vogue as a spectator sport, which increased its professionalism and, in turn, gambling.
Governing Body The Federacion Francaise de Pelote Basque, led by the French Basque Jean Ybarnegaray (1881–1956), was formed in 1921. This federation codified the various forms of the sport, wrote the rules, classified the players, and generally gave the sport a responsible authority. Spain and the South American countries followed suit. In 1924 pelota was included in the Olympic Games held in Paris, and five years later the Federacion Internacional de Pelota Vasca was founded and, with Ybarnegaray as president, became fully operative in 1945. The federation organized its first world championship in 1952 in San Sebastian, Spain. The federation
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also gave pelota a patron saint: the sixteenth-century Basque Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier, the cofounder of the Jesuit order. (St. Francis was a pelotari: A commission found on his skeletal right hand the telltale deformation of the phalanges that marks all handball players.) People now play pelota in countries wherever the Basques immigrated, including South America, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. Although its popularity is worldwide, nowhere does it remain more popular than where it evolved—in the Basque provinces of Spain and France. Teresa Baksh McNeil
Further Reading Arlott, J. (Ed.). (1975). The Oxford companion to sports and games. London: Oxford University Press. Bombin-Fernandez, L., & Bozas-Urrutia, R. (1976). El gran libro de la pelota. Madrid, Spain: Tipografia Artictica. Clerici, G. (1974). The ultimate tennis book. Chicago: Follett. Gallop, R. (1970). A book of the Basques. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Henderson, R. W. (1947). Ball, bat and bishop. New York: Rockport Press. Ziegler, E. (Ed.). (1973). A history of sport and PE to 1900. Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing.
Pentathlon, Modern
T
he history of modern pentathlon, unlike that of most sports, is well documented. For the program of the 1912 Olympic Games at Stockholm, Sweden, the French educator and sportsman Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937), founder of the modern Olympics, suggested the addition of a multisport competition for soldiers, referring to it as a “military pentathlon,” probably to distinguish it from the five-event competition that was already a part of the program. De Coubertin based modern pentathlon on the series of challenges that a military courier or spy might have encountered during the Napoleonic era. Such a person,
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The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do. ■ DENIS WAITLEY
alone behind enemy lines, might have to ride a strange horse over broken country, fight a variety of opponents with a rapier and a pistol, ford a deep river, and run cross country over unfamiliar terrain. By the 1920 Olympic Games at Antwerp, Belgium, people were referring to the competition as the “modern pentathlon” to complement the ancient or classic pentathlon with its military overtones. Until 1952 most pentathletes were military men.
Development The modern pentathlon has always consisted of the same five events, although the specifics and scheduling of each have changed over time. The events are (1) riding cross country for a distance of between 2,500 and 5,000 meters over unfamiliar ground, on a horse drawn by lot, against time and with penalties for faults; (2) fencing with an epee (a fencing or dueling sword), with a round-robin during which every pentathlete fences every other sometimes lasting fourteen hours; (3) shooting twenty shots at a silhouette target from a distance of 25 meters with a .22-caliber rapid-fire pistol; (4) swimming freestyle for 300 meters against time, conducted in heats; and (5) running cross country for a distance of about 4,000 meters over unfamiliar ground against time. Through the years the order of pentathlon events changed occasionally, but one event was held per day for five days until 1984, when two important changes were made. First, the five events were compressed into four days, with the fourth day beginning with shooting and ending with running. This change was made to counteract any attempt by pentathletes to take sedatives or beta-blockers (drugs that decrease the rate and force of heart contractions and lower high blood pressure) to steady themselves for the pistol shoot because this would have had an adverse impact on their running. Second, to create a more dramatic finish, the cross-country run was conducted with a staggered start; the leader after the first four events started first, and each competitor followed at a handicapped lag that
reflected how far behind the leader each was. As a result of this change, the order of finish in the run was the order of finish for the entire competition. In 1988 another change converted the cross-country riding competition into a stadium jumping competition. The jumping course now consists of twelve obstacles over a course of between 350 and 450 meters. Also, effective with the 1996 Olympics at Atlanta, Georgia, the .22-caliber rapid-fire pistol event was converted into a 10-meter air pistol event. Moreover, the five events have been further compressed into a single day. All these changes reflect the continuing pressure on the Olympics to emphasize events that are more suitable for televising.
Practice Until 1956 modern pentathlon scoring was determined by adding the places that a competitor earned in each event, with the lowest score winning; a perfect score would be five. The finest performance ever turned in under this method of scoring was by Captain Willie Grut of Sweden at the 1948 Olympics in London. He won riding, fencing, and swimming and took fifth at shooting and eighth at running for a total score of sixteen. Scoring for the modern pentathlon now resembles that of the decathlon (a ten-event athletic contest). A set of charts assigns one thousand points to a standard result, and a competitor receives more or fewer points depending on how the competitor’s result compares with the standard result. Modern pentathlon is, by its nature, a competition among individuals. However, adding the individual scores of three competitors from each nation creates a team event. This practice was done on an informal basis for many years before the 1952 Olympics at Helsinki, Finland, at which time it was formalized and a medal event created. The team event was discontinued in 1996, in part because the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to discontinue what are considered to be artificial events created by adding results from disparate competitions.
PENTATHLON, MODERN
When de Coubertin introduced his new sport at Stockholm, it proved to be very popular with the host nation: Swedes took six of the first seven places. In first place was Gustaf Lilliehook; in fifth place was Lieutenant George S. Patton (1885–1945) of the United States, the future World War II general. Patton might have won had he not done so poorly in the shooting event, where he insisted on using his service revolver while the remainder of the field used target pistols. Patton also insisted that he was wrongly penalized by the judges, who failed to detect that he put a second shot through a previous bull’s-eye. Sweden continued to dominate modern pentathlon during the ensuing decades, producing eight of the first nine Olympic champions. Hungary and Russia have dominated since the 1950s; Poland, Finland, Italy, and occasionally the United States also have done well. The Olympic community has long recognized the modern pentathlon champion as the best all-around athlete in the world. When recruiting pentathletes, coaches have traditionally looked for prospects who excel at running and swimming. Coaches believe that shooting, fencing, and riding can be taught to athletes who have a solid background in the first two activities. The first nonmilitary modern pentathlon champion was Lars Hall of Sweden. He was also the first modern pentathlon champion to win the Olympics twice: in 1952 and 1956. Andras Balczo of Hungary won three Olympic championships: two team in 1960 and 1968 and one individual 1972. The modern pentathlon until 1949 was the only event at the Olympic Games that was actually conducted under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee itself—a tribute to de Coubertin, the founder of both. In that year the International Modern Pentathlon Federation was created, and it now conducts the world championships, the junior world championships (for competitors under twenty years of age), and the pentathlon events of the Olympics. Modern pentathlon, like many other sports, has endured its share of scandal. The most notorious scandal
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in the history of modern pentathlon occurred at the 1976 Olympics at Montreal, Canada, when Boris Onischenko of the Soviet Union, a member of the defending Olympic championship team and the defending individual silver medalist, was discovered to be using a rigged epee during the fencing event. The epee contained a switch that enabled Onischenko to register a touch without actually hitting his opponent. His deceit was detected by James Fox, a British pentathlete, and the Soviet was disqualified. A variation of modern pentathlon was featured as a demonstration event at the 1948 Olympic Winter Games at Saint-Moritz, Switzerland. The winter pentathlon consisted of Nordic (cross-country) skiing, Alpine skiing, pistol shooting, riding, and epee fencing. The winter pentathlon was held only once, and Sweden took the first three places. The winner was Gustaf Lindh, and one point behind in second place was Captain Willie Grut, only six months before his triumph in the modern pentathlon in London. This winter pentathlon undoubtedly served as a model for the biathlon, combining Nordic skiing and rifle shooting, which was introduced at the 1960 Olympic Winter Games at Squaw Valley, California.
The Future The future of modern pentathlon is not especially bright. It is an expensive sport for a person to pursue. It is not “mediatique” (readily broadcast on television); thus, commercial sponsorship is unlikely. Modern pentathlon’s public image has been repeatedly damaged by cheating and other scandals. Finally, the advent of triathlon events (swimming, cycling, and running) threatens the continuation of modern pentathlon on the Olympic program. Jeffrey R. Tishman
Further Reading Grombach, J.V. (1956). Olympic cavalcade. New York: Ballantine Books. U.S. Olympic Committee. (n.d.). Olympic sports: A handbook of recognized Olympic sports. New York: Author.
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We are judged by what we finish, not by what we start. ■ ANONYMOUS
Performance
P
erformance can be defined as an accomplishment or how someone functions during a given task. Performance is often used as a measure of one’s success at accomplishing one’s mission—that is, good performance is synonymous with success, and poor performance is akin to failure.
Early History of Performance Athletic ability, physical fitness, competition, and play have always been major components of our world’s culture. Performance has often been linked to an individual’s physical ability and success in athletic competitions. As early as 3000 BCE, however, performance was linked with a much more essential element of life: survival. Civilizations relied predominantly on the physical ability and performance of their people for survival. People needed to be able to find and kill food to survive during dangerous times. Successful performances led to more food and greater chances of survival, according to English scientist Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory, which states that survival depends on people’s ability to adapt to their environments. As sport moved into the modern age between 1820 and 1870 CE, however, performance became linked more heavily with sport success rather than survival. Successful performances were no longer necessary for survival; rather, performance started to bring great wealth and fame.
and prepare them for war. Groups of men were asked to surround several lions to prevent them from escaping until the leader of the men was able to kill the lions. Many men were killed during these hunts, and performance was assessed by the soldiers’ ability to live. Sumerians also competed in other combat sports such as wrestling and boxing where performance was again linked to survival.
EGYPT Like the Sumerians, Egyptians were exceptional warriors and placed value on one’s ability to fight. From 3000 BCE to 30 BCE, the Egyptians showed their ability to fight and survive. Skills with a bow and arrow and foot speed were highly desired characteristics. Similar to the Sumerians, performance was judged by survival. Although successful performance was easily judged by life and death, the Egyptians were also one of the first civilizations to keep performance records. Scribes accompanied soldiers during combat and kept records of every spoil taken during battle. They also recorded the numbers of captured soldiers. This bookkeeping served as an additional way to measure performance. The Egyptians were also accomplished hunters and, much like the Sumerians, judged performance on a man’s ability to provide food for his family. Unlike combat situations, records were not kept during hunting trips, so performance was gauged solely by one’s ability to gather food. Much like the Sumerians, Egyptian measures of performance were easy to assess: The most successful performers were those who were alive.
SUMER From 3000 BCE to just after 2500 BCE Sumer was the world’s predominant society. Hunting and warfare were key components of Sumerian life; thus, performance was easily measured: If you were able to hunt and fight without dying, you were successful. There were no statistics or competitions: performance was judged by life and death. Those who were most proficient at hunting and warfare were looked upon with great honor. One of the most popular sports in Sumer was lion hunting because it was thought to teach men bravery
CHINA Ancient Chinese history runs from approximately 2500 BCE to 900 CE and contains many components of performance that are similar to those of both Sumer and Egypt. Combat was an important aspect of the Chinese life, and soldiers often had only their athletic prowess and skill with weapons to keep them alive. In addition to the bow and arrow used by Egyptians, Chinese warriors were skilled with axes, spears, and daggers.
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An English country footrace in which the thinner man carries a human jockey.
This focus on fighting led the Chinese to incorporate combat sports such as boxing to their daily lives.The predominant focus on boxing was on appropriate offensive tactics, thus making skilled boxers better soldiers. Similar to combat situations, performance during boxing was gauged by survival. Martial arts were thought to build more potent warriors. This focus on building successful soldiers through boxing and martial arts highlights the link between performance and survival.
GREECE AND ROME Much like civilizations before them, the ancient Greeks (1000 BCE–300 CE) competed in combat sports. These warrior sports included chariot racing, wrestling, boxing, javelin throwing, and foot races. Severe injury and even death were commonplace during these competitions. Although the Greeks participated in many activities in which performance success was gauged by survival, they also began competing in more modern sporting activities. Starting in 1000 BCE, the Greeks competed in games at Olympia every four years; these games were the beginnings of the modern Olympics. Success in these games, which were less combat-like than previous activities, was connected with glory, honor, and prizes; successful athletes received cash prizes as well as living
expenses. Although no records were kept to measure performance, the most successful athletes at these competitions were given great power and advantages over the less-dominant athletes. Performance during ancient Greek civilization became less about survival and more synonymous with honor and power. Ancient Romans (500 BCE–500 CE) participated in more dangerous games than the Greeks did. Romans viewed athletic events as preparation for combat, therefore, they competed in warrior games. Their competitions included mortal combat with lions, tigers, and panthers as well as gladiator fights. For the most part, women were not allowed to participate in Greek or Roman games. Athletic performance was not thought to be a feminine characteristic, thus women were discouraged from competing in athletic competitions. However, evidence indicates that a small number of female gladiators did exist during Roman times. A few Greek women held their own games at Olympia, but their reputations were seriously damaged as questions were raised about their femininity and sexual orientation. In addition, the achievements and performances of these women were not publicized as were those of their male counterparts.
Sport Performance in the Middle Ages The most popular sporting activities during the Middle Ages (500 CE–1453 CE) were warrior games designed to prepare soldiers for combat. Tournaments were quite similar to actual battles. Death and serious injuries were common, and the victors often left with the loser’s possessions and took the defeated as prisoners. These competitions were drastically different from modern sporting events. There was no measurement or record keeping of athletes’ performances during these events; the only way to measure the competitors’ performance was through their ability to survive. Athletic prowess was not a desired characteristic of women during this period, either. Thus, women did not take on many athletic endeavors. They were expected to
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Peak performers develop powerful mental images of the behavior that will lead to the desired results. They see in their mind’s eye the result they want, and the actions leading to it. ■ CHARLES A. GARFIELD
be subservient and rarely left their homes because physical activity was not thought to be feminine. Overall, women avoided physical activity, and the few activities they did take part in were considerably less physical and dangerous than those of their male counterparts.
Sport Performance in the Twentieth Century As sports moved into the twentieth century, more formal methods for gauging performance became popular.With the advent of professional leagues in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey and professional tours in sports including tennis, golf, and volleyball, sport performance began to be quantified through statistics and record keeping. Instead of gauging performance through one’s ability to survive combat-like contests, modern sport performance is measured by wins and losses and how individuals compare with their competition. Books, newspapers, and websites are replete with statistics and records from every sport imaginable.These performance measures provide valuable information and are studied by sport fans around the world. Performance records are well known by both fans and competitors, and an athlete’s value is linked with these records. Unlike previous centuries when successful performance led to survival, triumphant performances in the twentieth century, and moving into the twenty-first century, provide wealth, honor, and recognition. The athletes who perform at the highest levels make enormous salaries and are looked up to by thousands of fans. Thus, it is not surprising that many athletes use several methods designed to improve their performance, including proper nutrition, strength and conditioning, and mental training.
NUTRITION Recently, there has been increasing interest in the positive effects nutrition can have on performance. Athletes have begun to monitor their diets in attempts to stay in ideal physical shape and improve their performance. Proper nutrition has also been shown to reduce the risk of injury and help speed injury recovery.
The two major categories of food that athletes use for energy are carbohydrates and fat. Athletes report receiving 45 to 55 percent of their energy intake from carbohydrates and 35 percent from fat. Nutritionists suggest meals high in carbohydrates eaten three to four hours before exercise can improve performance. In addition, carbohydrate intake during activity can further enhance endurance, work output, and performance. Despite opinions to the contrary, no evidence indicates that carbohydrate intake thirty minutes or less before exercise has adverse effects but, rather, often has a positive effect. Diets high in carbohydrates have been shown to have the most positive effect on endurance sports. Fat is twice as energy dense as carbohydrates and is the predominant source of energy for those engaging in moderate levels of activity for extended periods. Despite the predominance of low-fat diets, many nutritionists have suggested that diets high in fat can improve performance for athletes who engage in regular activity. However, several studies have shown that diets high in fat provide no more positive effects than high carbohydrate diets do. Over time, high-fat diets have been shown to have negative effects on performance when compared with diets high in carbohydrates. Therefore, many nutritionists have concluded that there is no performance advantage to high-fat diets when compared with high carbohydrate diets and, thus, suggest that athletes should be getting 60 to 65 percent of their energy intake from carbohydrates.
STRENGTH TRAINING Strength has always been synonymous with survival and athletic success. Since 2500 BCE, athletes have used strength training to improve performance. Strength training was initially used to improve health, strength, and performance on the battlefield; athletes competing in warrior games used strength training to increase their chances of survival. More recently, strength training has been used as another way for athletes to gain an advantage over their competition and improve their performances. Currently, every professional and college team and many high
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An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise. ■ RED AUERBACH
school teams employ at least one strength coach and encourage their athletes to take part in a strength training program. In recent years, strength training has become more sport-specific to improve performance in specific sports. Athletes competing in sports that require muscle mass and quick bursts of power (weight lifting, football, sprinting) employ different strength programs than do those competing in endurance sports (swimming, cross country). As a result, strength coaches have begun to specialize in different sports, helping athletes to improve their performance.
MENTAL TRAINING
Modeling the Soviet system of mental training, several Eastern European countries began to offer sport psychology services to their athletes. Noticing the success of Soviet Olympians (80 gold, 69 silver, and 46 bronze medals in 1980), the United States began to extensively integrate sport psychology into their athletic programs in the 1980s. The United States Olympic Committee now employs several sport psychology consultants to improve U.S. athletes’ performance. During the last twenty years, increasing numbers of athletes and coaches have begun to use sport psychology in attempts to improve their athletic performance. Sport psychology consultants work with athletes on various issues including concentration or focus, confidence, relaxation, goal setting, performance preparation, anxiety or arousal, positive selftalk, stress management, career termination, injury rehabilitation, burnout, dealing with distractions, imagery, leadership, and group or team dynamics. Sport psychology consultants teach various mental skills to athletes to help them become selfsufficient and have begun to branch out into other performance domains, such as working with business executives, surgeons, actors, and other performers to improve their professional enjoyment and performances.
Mental training, or sport psychology, is a relatively new field aimed at studying how people behave in sport and exercise.The aim of mental training is to help athletes achieve effective mental states and peak performance. In 1898, Norman Triplett began the first investigations into the psychological aspects of sport. Triplett studied why cyclists seemed to ride faster in groups than when they were alone. Coleman Griffith continued to study the mental aspects of sport performance and developed the first sport psychology lab in 1921. Griffith was also one of the first sport psychology consultants to conduct applied work with coaches and teams—he provided services to the Chicago Cubs Professional Baseball team and Notre Dame Head Football Coach Knute Rockne. In 1917, the Soviets began to study the psychological aspects of performance. Attempting to develop elite soldiers, the Soviets used mental training with their military personnel. After The inside guard plunge World War II, the Soviets began using play requires each player mental training to improve the perto perform his specific formance of their Olympic athletes. assignments.
The Future With the increasing emphasis on winning and the opportunities for earning money and fame in modern sports, it is not surprising that athletes have begun to seek out numerous performance enhancement techniques. Athletes at all levels
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When you stand on the victory stand, you must be able to ask yourself: “Did I win this medal? ■ KIP KEINO
have begun employing their own nutritionists, strength coaches, and sport psychology consultants to work with their sport coaches. In addition, many parents are sending their children to specialized sports camps and academies where they work with nutrition, strength training, and sport psychology specialists. Methods of performance enhancement have become an inextricable part of athletics and will continue to grow in years to come. Noah B. Gentner
Further Readings Andersen, M. B. (2000). Doing sport psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Baechle, T. R., & Earle, R. W. (2000). Essentials of strength training and conditioning. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Coakley, J. J. (2001). Sport in society: Issues and controversies. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Clark, N. (2003). Nancy Clark’s sports nutrition guidebook. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Guttmann, A. (1991). Women’s sports: A history. New York: Columbia University Press. Hartmann, J., Tunnemann, H., & Gaskovski, P. (1995). Fitness and strength training for all sports: Theory, methods, programs. Toronto: Sport Books. Kraemer, W. J., & Hakkinen, K. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of sports medicine and science: Strength training for sport. Oxford: Blackwell Science. Manore, M., & Thompson, J. (2000). Sport nutrition for health and performance. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Mechikoff, R. A., & Estes, S. G. (2002). A history and philosophy of sport and physical education: From ancient civilization to the modern world. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Orlick, T. (2000). In pursuit of excellence: How to win in sport and life through mental training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Rotella, B., & Cullen, B. (1995). Golf is not a game of perfect. New York: Simon & Schuster. Sawyer, T. H. (2003). A guide to sport nutrition: For student-athletes, coaches, athletic trainers, and parents. Champaign, IL: Sagamore. Singer, R. N., Hausenblas, H. A., & Janelle, C. M. (2001). Handbook of sport psychology. New York: Wiley. Thompson, M. A.,Vernacchia, R. A., & Moore, W. E. (1998). Case studies in applied sport psychology: An educational approach. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2003). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Wildman, R. (Ed.). (2002). The nutritionist: Food, nutrition, and optimal health. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Williams, J. M. (Ed.). (1998). Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Zatsiorsky, V. M. (1995). Science and practice of strength training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Performance Enhancement
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erformance enhancement in sports has taken on added importance during recent years as athletes try to gain an edge over opponents in an increasingly cutthroat sporting environment. In an effort to enhance their performance, athletes have turned to nutritional supplements, a variety of drugs, physiological agents, and even sports psychology.
Ancient Times The record of performance-enhancing drugs dates back to 400 BCE in Greece, when achievements in sports were first found to increase social status, political power, and economic well-being. Although the crown of olive leaves was the only “official prize” for an Olympic victory, records indicate that Olympic winners could gain great wealth from lucrative prizes awarded by their city-state. In addition to money, winners might receive homes, food, tax breaks, and even exemption from duty in the armed services. Because the stakes were high, athletes were open to any means that gave them the edge over opponents, such as ingesting mushroom extracts, plant seeds, or any concoction thought to enhance performance. During the Roman period chariot races and gladiator competitions filled the stands with spectators. Knowing that a victory could be their ticket to social and economic prosperity, competitors fed their horses potent mixtures of herbs and other plants to make them run faster. They also fed themselves herbal substances that acted as doping agents to make for a more intense and bloody battle, one that would satisfy the adoring crowds. Ancient games were ended during the Christian era in 396 CE when the Roman Emperor Theodosius banned all forms of “pagan” sports. People were encouraged to develop their minds during this time. Because physical development was viewed as a hindrance
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A hypodermic needle injecting steroids into a baseball. Source: istockphoto.com/imbarney22.
Steroids Become All the Rage
to intellectual growth, the popularity of sports diminished and did not recover until the nineteenth century.
Media’s Influence on the Reemergence of Sports During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sports in North America became increasingly popular because of coverage by mass media such as newspapers and magazines, and spectator sports such as football and soccer attracted hundreds of thousands of fans. As more stadiums were built and international play increased, sports became more than just a frivolous activity to be played during free time. Instead, the professional athlete was born, and with the professional athlete, a life of fame and fortune. During this time athletes began to use pain killers and stimulants to gain an edge over unsuspecting opponents. In 1886 cyclist Arthur Linton died from an overdose of the stimulant trimethyl during a race, the first recorded drug-related death in sports. Marathon runner Thomas Hicks nearly died during the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, after ingesting a mixture of brandy and strychnine, a drug used in “street” varieties such as LSD, heroin, and cocaine. Using a combination of alcohol and strychnine as a perceived performance enhancer was popular during the early twentieth century, along with heroin, caffeine, and cocaine, which were available without a prescription. During the 1930s amphetamines—stimulants that increase mental alertness, elevate mood, decrease the sense of fatigue, and produce a sense of euphoria—began to replace strychnine as the drug of choice.
Anabolic steroids were introduced during the 1950s. A synthetic form of the male sex hormone testosterone, anabolic steroids increase muscle mass, strength, and endurance capacity while facilitating in the recovery period after exhausting workouts or training sessions. In 1956 at the World Games in Moscow, U.S. doctor John B. Ziegler learned of steroids after watching Soviet athletes urinate using a catheter because their prostates had become so enlarged that urination was difficult. Overshadowing the negative side effects, Ziegler was more impressed as the Soviets shattered all of the weight-lifting records. When Ziegler returned to the United States, he helped a team of scientists develop the steroid dianabol, hoping to help U.S. athletes compete against the Soviets. Dianabol was immediately embraced by the athletic world, and use was widespread. Because succeeding in sports had reached new proportions in terms of political, social, and economic power, athletes were largely unconcerned with side effects of steroids and instead considered them just another sacrifice in reaching the top.
Steroids—A State-Sponsored Affair Some countries sponsored drug use as they strived for the international recognition that often accompanied achievement in individual and team sports. The former head of the East German sports federation, Manfred Ewald, and medical director Manfred Hoeppner gave what they called “vitamins” to unknowing athletes as young as eleven years old. The athletes later found that the “vitamins” were heavy doses of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. As a result, East Germany became a sports powerhouse during the 1970s and 1980s, but not without a price. The physical and psychological damage done to the more than ten thousand athletes who were systematically doped was
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Performance Enhancement Cocaine and Horse Racing Within a recent period cocaine has come into use on the race track, as a stimulant. Horses that are worn and exhausted, or are uncertain as to speed and endurance, are given ten to fifteen grains of cocaine by the needle under the skin at the time of starting, or a few moments before. The effects are very prominent, and a veritable muscular delirium follows, in which the horse displays unusual speed, and often unexpectedly wins the race. This agitation continues and the driver has difficulty in “slowing down” the horse after the race is over; not unfrequently the horse will go half round again before he can be stopped. The exhaustion which follows is not marked, except in the great thirst and loss of appetite. Sometimes diarrhea and trembling follow. But good grooms give unusual attention to rubbing and bathing the legs in hot water and stimulants. The general effect on the horse is depression from which he soon recovers but it is found essential to give cocaine again to make sure of his speed. The action of cocaine grows more transient as the use increases, and when a long period of scoring follows before the race begins, drivers give a second dose secretly while in the saddle. Sometimes the horse becomes delirious and unmanageable, and leaves the track in a wild frenzy, often killing the driver, or he drops dead on the track from the cocaine, although the cause is unknown to any but the owner and driver. Some horses have been given as high as twenty grains at a time, but this is dangerous and only given to worn-out animals, who may by this means win a race. It appears that cocaine is only used in running races, and as a temporary stimulant for the time. It is claimed that the flashing eyes and trembling excitement of the horse is strong evidence of the use of cocaine. Source: Use of cocaine on the racetrack. (1896, January 4). Scientific American, p. 9.
horrific. The long-term medical effects of steroid use included increased aggression, testicular atrophy, masculinization in women, personality disorders, liver damage, and cardiovascular disease. Some of the athletes died prematurely. East German shotputting champion Heidi Krieger eventually had a sex change because of the physical changes her body endured because of extensive drug use and now goes by the name “Andreas Krieger.” In July 2000 Ewald and Hoeppner each received suspended jail terms of one to twelve years. The use of steroids continued to grow despite increasing evidence of harmful side effects and the sanctions put into place by sports authorities. Nineteen athletes (including two U.S. athletes) willing to risk their health and reputation to earn a place on the medals stand during the 1983 Pan-American Games were disqualified for steroid use. Five years later Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson—who raced to a world record finish in the 100-meter dash—was stripped of his Olympic gold metal in Seoul, South Korea, after testing positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol.
Athletes Turn to Supplements In 1998 St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa of Major League Baseball broke New York Yankee Roger Maris’s home run record, a record that had stood for thirty-seven years. People later discovered that both players were using an over-the-counter supplement called “creatine,” a protein-based ergogenic aid that has been shown to increase strength and muscle mass. McGwire was also taking androstenedione, better known as “andro,” which is said to increase testosterone levels. McGwire’s home run record was challenged by opponents who said he did not earn the record without the help of a questionable substance, which is banned by the International Olympic Committee but not by Major League Baseball. After much debate officials resolved the issue by placing an asterisk next to his name in the record books, noting the use of supplements.
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Judo athletes pose in this poster to help combat doping.
national sports organizations followed suit by banning illegal substances so all athletes could compete fairly.
BALCO Debacle
Sports Authorities Take a Stand Although athletes today are well aware of the health risks of taking performance-enhancing drugs and supplements, many are willing to take those risks if the result is athletic success. During the late 1990s Dr. Robert Goldman surveyed 198 past and aspiring Olympians, asking them if they would take a banned drug with the guarantee that they would both win the competition and not get caught. Only three said they would not take the drug. In 1968 the International Olympic Committee was the first sports organization to compile a banned substances list and began testing athletes after years of drug use suspicion. Many professional and inter-
In June 2003 track coach Trevor Graham, who once trained Olympic sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, called the U.S. AntiDoping Agency (USADA) and told it that an anabolic steroid was being distributed to athletes by Victor Conte Jr., owner of Bay Area Laboratories Co-operative (BALCO) in San Francisco. Graham sent the agency a syringe of the clear liquid, which was identified by scientists as tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). Referred to as a “designer steroid” because it is synthetically created by chemical engineers, THG is a steroid that builds muscle mass and strength, allowing athletes to train harder for longer periods of time. Although not specifically banned at the time, THG was a derivative of other steroids that had been banned by the USADA. Although tests on possible side effects have been limited, the USADA has warned that THG can cause liver toxicity, excessive hair growth in women, and infertility and baldness in men, based on its similarities to other steroids. Although the athletes themselves were not under investigation, several Olympians, NFL players, MLB players, and even a professional boxer were subpoenaed to testify against BALCO, which was under investigation by federal authorities as to the source of numerous illegal performance-enhancing substances. Among those subpoenaed were Jones and Montgomery, Oakland Raiders linebacker Bill Romanowski, and All-Star San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds.
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If you don’t do what’s best for your body, you’re the one who comes up on the short end. ■ JULIUS ERVING
Ephedrine—A Deadly Risk Ephedrine, also known as “ephedra” or “ma huang,” is a stimulant that is often found in asthma medications and is structurally similar to amphetamines. Athletes began using ephedra in the form of pills or drinks during the early 1990s to lose weight and improve their athletic performance. In the sports world ephedra-containing products have been blamed for the death of several upand-coming athletes. In July 2001 Minnesota Vikings tackle Korey Stringer collapsed during a training camp session and later died after taking an ephedra supplement prior to practice. A month later Northwestern University football player Rashidi Wheeler collapsed and died during a workout after drinking an ephedra-based sports drink before practice. In February 2003 Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler collapsed on the mound and died after taking an over-the-counter ephedrine supplement sold to boost energy and help in weight loss. Ephedra was banned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), IOC, the National Football League, and minor league baseball, prior to a ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2004.
Human Growth Hormone Athletes also have used human growth hormone (hGH) as a performance enhancer, largely because it was undetectable by the International Olympic Committee until 2004. Produced by the pituitary gland, hGH was originally used to stimulate the growth of muscles and bones in children suffering from a deficiency of the hormone. Over time medical officials determined that hGH increases lean body mass and reduces fatty tissue, which was attractive to elite athletes. Some athletes also believe that hGH increases energy, a claim unsubstantiated by the limited research conducted on the hormone. Although it is expensive (reportedly in excess of $1,000 a unit on the black market), some elite athletes opted for the hormone because it was more difficult to detect than steroids. Marion Jones was accused by her exhusband, Olympic shot putter C. J. Hunter, of using hGH, an allegation she repeatedly denied.
Blood Doping— Elite Athletes’ Newest Rage Tempted by the lure of big contracts and lucrative endorsements, many athletes have also turned to blood doping. Athletes will donate their own blood months in advance, then receive a transfusion of their own blood prior to a major competition to increase the volume of red blood cells in their body. Studies have found that as little as one pint can increase the blood’s oxygencarrying capacity, resulting in increases in maximal oxygen uptake, time to exhaustion, and actual performance. This technique is particularly attractive to athletes in endurance sports such as marathon running or cycling. Blood doping can result in blood clotting or heart failure, challenging the popular credo of athletes that “more is better.” Erythropoeitin (EPO), a naturally occurring hormone that stimulates red blood cell production, is reproduced in a synthetic form that can be injected by a syringe. EPO has been the blood doping method of choice in the cycling world since it was introduced fifteen years ago. Although dozens of elite cyclists have died from complications attributed to EPO, many continue to take the risks that they believe are necessary to win. In the 1998 Tour de France bicycle race the grueling competition was overshadowed by drug allegations surrounding EPO after officials found bottles and bloody syringes near a hotel where several teams were staying. Seven people were placed under investigation, one team was expelled, and six teams dropped out in protest. Some high-profile athletes claimed they used the hormone and never tested positive for it because the test is effective only if given within seventy-two hours of an injection. At the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, a new blood-boosting substance, darbepoetin, was discovered by drug testers. A drug similar to EPO, darbepoetin in its medical form is used to treat anemia and severe kidney problems. Athletes used darbepoetin because of its longer-lasting effects and because they falsely believed it is undetectable by drug testing.
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Performance Enhancement Performance Enhancing “Medicine” in Alaska Like many other drugs, those that enhance performance can be found in nature. Below are anthropological accounts of “medicines” used by the Tlingit of Yakutat Bay in southeastern Alaska in the early 1950s. This magical root does not have to be procured from a shaman; in fact, some old men and women in Yakutat are reputed to know what plant to take and to have gathered it an Haenke Island, although our informants could not identify it for us. “If you know about it, you can go out, get it yourself before you eat.” It must be gathered early in the morning. “Just the way they say, that kayaní strong when you get it in the morning before you eat. After you eat it wouldn’t help you.” The gatherer did not have to fast the previous day, but was supposed to have refrained from sexual intercourse, although the informant did not know for how long. After the user has been successful, he must dispose of the root. This rule applies to all kayaní. “When he gets his wish, he puts it under a rotten tree. If he keeps it, it will bring bad luck.” It was never speci-
fied, however, whether the magical root could be used only for a single hunt or contest, or whether it might be employed for a whole season. Another medicine was used to shoot straight, although I did not learn its native name. It was effective for basketball. “I know a boy from southeastern Alaska. He graduated from college. He is thinking about his uncle, and about basketball dope. And his uncle said, ‘If you live right and take my word, you’re gonna make it.’ So he takes his uncle’s word. He told me all the story. By the time his uncle made it for him (in 8 months) he feel like he’s going to fly. He can catch the ball and put it in the basket from anywhere. And he wins two stripes at college. And after, when it was condemned for him (you must destroy it before it’s too late) he tried to play basketball and he couldn’t play it at all. . . . They wanted to make that medicine for the Yakutat Basketball Team, but they wouldn’t live pure 8 months keep away from their wives and keep clean, and so on.” Source: De Laguna, F. (1972). Under Mount Saint Elias: The history and culture of the Yakutat Tlingit. (p. 661). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Teens and Performance-Enhancing Drugs
Sports Psychology— A Safer Avenue to Athletic Success
Although the focus of illegal drug use tends to be on elite athletes, many athletes begin experimenting with performance-enhancing drugs during adolescence. Millions of athletes—both men and women—use steroids regularly, and the majority are in their late teens. Children as young as thirteen have been known to use steroids to enhance their performance at the high school level. No matter what the risk, teen athletes are even more likely to take performanceenhancing drugs and supplements as they strive to mimic their idols: Olympians and professional athletes who live lives of fame and fortune. Infrequent testing and peer pressure are additional factors contributing to teen use.
Sports psychology has been practiced since the turn of the twentieth century but has greatly increased in popularity during recent years. Sports psychology is a means by which athletes prepare their minds for competition, and successful implementation can give them a safe and legal edge over competitors. Ninety-five percent of athletes blame their mistakes during competitions on mental errors, although these same athletes say they prepare mentally for competition only about 5 percent of the total time they practice. Norman Triplett conducted the first known sports psychology experiment in North America in 1897. Testing cyclists during racing conditions, he obtained results that indicated that paced bicycle races result in faster
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You have to be suspicious when you line up against girls with moustaches. ■ MAREE HOLLAND
times than do individual efforts and that the presence of an audience enhances arousal levels of cyclists. During the 1920s Coleman Griffith opened the first sports laboratory at the University of Illinois, conducting psychological research on the psychomotor skills of athletes, as well as their performance, personality, and motivation. Later he served as a sports psychologist for the Chicago Cubs. Interest in sports psychology plummeted for decades, likely because of the Great Depression and World War II. Although sports psychology did not regain popularity until the 1960s, Griffith is often referred to as the “father of sports psychology.” In 1967 the sports psychology movement began to make headway, highlighted by the first annual meeting of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA). Bruce Ogilvie, a leader in the advancement of applied sports psychology, began to work with athletes one-on-one, helping them to understand that their minds are just as important as their bodies when it comes to performance. Ogilvie worked as a consultant with multiple professional teams, including the San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Athletics, Dallas Cowboys, Portland Trailblazers, and the U.S. Olympic Team. He was known for helping athletes make the necessary adjustments between collegiate and professional athletics as well as helping create facilitative team dynamics. By the 1984 Olympic Games sports psychology consultants were working with U.S. athletes from the track and field, volleyball, weight lifting, skiing, synchronized swimming, fencing, cycling, archery, shooting, and boxing teams. However, a rule stipulated that none of the consultants could provide on-site services for the athletes during competition because none was credentialed by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). That rule was changed for the 1988 Olympic Games. Sports psychologists, sometimes referred to as “head” coaches, work with athletes and teams on a variety of mental skills. Goal setting, self-talk, imagery, and relaxation are just a few of the techniques on which sports psychologists may focus to improve motivation, self-
confidence, mental toughness, and concentration while decreasing stress and anxiety. Team dynamics can be an ongoing struggle, particularly among professional athletes because they rarely remain with the same team throughout their career. Job security in professional sports is nearly nonexistent, trades are commonplace, and retirement because of injury is frequent.
Fear of the Sports Psychologist Although many athletes won’t think twice about trying a drug that could seriously harm them, those same athletes may be apprehensive about seeking help with their mental skills because they fear that their teammates will view them as weak or incompetent. This stigma has diminished slowly through the years, however, as more professional and elite athletes seek the help of sports psychology consultants. The USOC has its own sports psychologist on staff. Most Olympic sports teams have their own sports psychology consultant as well. Sports psychology also is popular in Canada and many parts of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Professional, elite, and amateur athletes are increasingly seeking the help of sports psychology consultants as they realize the importance that mental skills play in achieving a peak performance.
The Future Sports officials have faced an uphill battle in a quest for drug-free athletics. Although antidoping initiatives have reached an all-time high within the professional sports world, chemists are creating undetectable drugs faster than sports laboratories can create tests to detect them. Newer drugs mimic natural bodily processes and are becoming more difficult to detect. With the possibility of genetic enhancement (genetically stimulating muscle growth in athletes) in the years to come, detection and elimination of performance enhancement will become an even tougher challenge. More and more athletes will explore the world of sports psychology in an effort to hone their mental skills.
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However, if the current trend continues, they likely will do so in conjunction with performance-enhancing drugs, supplements, or physiological processes as they go for the gold. Libby Albers See also Nutrition; Psychology; Technology
Further Reading Baum, K. (1999). The mental edge: Maximize your sports potential with the mind/body connection. Berkeley, CA: Perigee. Bursztyn, P. G. (1990). Physiology for sportspeople: A serious user’s guide to the body. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row. Druckman, D., & Bjork, R. A. (Eds.). (1991). In the mind’s eye: Enhancing human performance. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Gould, D., & Weinburg, R. S. (1999). Foundations of sport & exercise science. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Hardy, L., Jones, G., & Gould, D. (1996). Understanding psychological preparation for sport: Theory and practice of elite performers. John Wiley & Sons: New York. Kuhn, C., Swartzwelder, S., & Wilson, W. (2000). Pumped: Straight facts for athletes about drugs, supplements, and training. New York: W. W. Norton. Lawson, G. (2000, June 11). The winner within: The coach who will put you in the zone. New York Times Magazine, 6, 84. Mack, G. (2001). Mind gym: An athlete’s guide to inner excellence. New York: McGraw-Hill. Musto, D. F. (Ed.). (2002). Drugs in America: A documentary history. New York: New York University Press. News,V., & Pelkey, C. (1998). The 1998 Tour de France: Conquests and crises. Boulder, CO: VeloPress. Orlick, T. (2000). In pursuit of excellence: How to win in sport and life through mental training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Pound, R. W. (2004). Inside the Olympics: A behind-the-scenes look at the politics, the scandals, and the glory of the games. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Robertson, J. R. (1996). Peak-performance living. New York: HarperCollins. Simson, V. (1992). The lords of the rings: Power, money, and drugs in the modern Olympics. Toronto, Canada: Stoddart. Tenenbaum, G. (2001). The practice of sport psychology. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Ungerleider, S. (2001). Faust’s gold: Inside the East German doping machine. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Voy, R. (1991). Drugs, sport, and politics: The inside story about drug use in sport and its political cover-up, with a prescription for reform. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press. Williams, J. M. (2001). Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance (4th ed.). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing. Wilson, W., & Derse, E. (Eds.). (2001). Doping in elite sport: The politics of drugs in the Olympic movement. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
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arathon runners are loners and introspective; football players are extroverts. Such stereotypes pervade popular thinking about personality and sports, but do these labels have any basis in fact? For decades people have debated whether aspects of people’s personalities influence their choices of which sports to play and their success in those sports. A bias behind part of this debate has been the idea that sports build character. Much research has been conducted to determine the role that personality plays in sports.This research has been framed within three major theories of psychological thought: psychodynamic, dispositional, and phenomenological. Although personality traits may be associated with sports in some way, thus far no conclusive evidence indicates that popular stereotypes have any validity.
Personality Defined Personality was defined in a variety of ways during the last century. Common aspects of these definitions include a focus on psychological aspects (thoughts, emotions, behavior, motives) that make up a person’s identity, on how people differ from one another, on behavior that is controlled from within people rather than from the environment, and on how different aspects of a person form an integrated whole. An example of a definition of personality comes from Lazarus and Monat, who defined it as “the underlying, relatively stable, psychological structure and processes that organize human experience and shape a person’s activities and reactions to the environment” (Lazarus and Monat 1979, 1).
Psychodynamic Theory Psychodynamic theory emphasizes the importance of early life experiences in determining current psychological makeup and the role of the unconscious. During the first three decades of the twentieth century the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud laid the foundations of psychodynamic theory, and theoretical
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Personality Are Athletics Making Girls Masculine? (1912) Some of the specific mental and physical qualities which are developed by athletics are increased powers of attention, will, concentration, accuracy, alertness, quickness of perception, perseverance, reason, judgment, forbearance, patience, obedience, self-control, loyalty to leaders, self-denial, submergence of self, grace, poise, suppleness, courage, strength and endurance. These qualities are as valuable to women as to men. While there is some danger that women who try to excel in men’s sports may take on more marked masculine characteristics . . . this danger is greatly lessened if the sports are modified so as to meet their peculiar qualifications as to strength, height, weight, etc.
development was continued by Adler, Erikson, Fromm, Horney, and Jung. Although some authors in sports psychology have speculated that psychodynamic theory may contribute to understanding why people tend toward participation in some sports and not others, no evidence has been provided to support their speculation.
Dispositional Theory Dispositional theory focuses on the characteristics of a person’s behavior that are relatively consistent through time and between situations. Personality represents a combination of these characteristics. Four theories that focus on a person’s stable and enduring characteristics are trait, dispositional state, biological, and motive or need theories.
TRAIT Traits are those internal characteristics of a person that are highly stable between situations and over time. Trait theorists (such as Allport, Cattell, Eysenck, and Guilford) contended that traits lie beneath people’s behavior. During the 1920s Coleman Griffith conducted some of the first research into personality and sports. To determine the personality profile of the successful athlete, Griffith observed and interviewed college and professional athletes. Eleven traits were common among them:
Inasmuch as the average woman is inferior to the average man in nearly all physical qualifications, all the apparatus used and the weights lifted, as well as the height and distance to be attained in running, jumping, etc., should be modified to meet her limitations. Considering also the peculiar constitution of her nervous system and the great emotional disturbances to which she is subjected, changes should be made in many of the rules and regulations governing the sports and games for men, to adapt them to the requirements of women. Source: Sargent, D. A. (1912, March). Are athletics making girls masculine? The Ladies’ Home Journal.
ruggedness, courage, intelligence, exuberance, buoyancy, emotional adjustment, optimism, conscientiousness, alertness, loyalty, and respect for authority. During the 1960s and 1970s research on personality in sports, based on trait theory, was prolific, with more than one thousand studies conducted. Research could be conducted relatively easily, with investigators administering personality questionnaires from mainstream psychology (such as Hathaway and McKinley’s Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Cattell’s 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire, Eysenck and Eysenck’s Eysenck Personality Inventory) to athletes. In 1969 a sports-specific questionnaire (Tutko, Lyon, and Ogilvie’s Athletic Motivation Inventory) was developed to assess eleven personality traits (drive, determination, leadership, aggressiveness, guilt proneness, emotional control, self-confidence, conscientiousness, mental toughness, trust, and coachability), which have some similarity to the traits that Coleman had identified more than forty years earlier. Using these questionnaires, researchers looked for differences between athletes and nonathletes, between athletes from one sport type and athletes from another sport type, and between athletes at different levels of ability. Although various studies have identified differences between groups (e.g., athletes versus nonathletes),
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Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary. ■ RAY KNIGHT
no consistent findings have come from this research. That is, no clear and enduring personality differences have been found between athletes and nonathletes, between athletes from different sports, and between athletes of differing ability. Some researchers have speculated that personality may be connected with various sport behaviors (e.g., successful sporting performance). To date, no evidence supports this claim. Another subject of research has been whether sports build character. Although a small number of studies have been conducted on this subject, they have consistently concluded that no relationship exists between sports and the development of character.
DISPOSITIONAL STATE Dispositional state theories consider the interaction between personal characteristics and the environment. Dispositional state theorists consider dispositions to be less rigid than traits. Both these personal dispositions and the environment determine personality.Two models that have received extensive research attention in sports are Morgan’s mental health model and the individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF) model, applied by Hanin and Syrjä in their research on emotion and sport. In 1980, with the mental health model, Morgan proposed that positive mood states facilitate higher athletic performance than do less positive mood states. Morgan and later researchers measured mood using the six subjective mood states of the Profile of Mood States questionnaire, developed in 1981 by McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman.These mood states include tension-anxiety, depression-dejection, anger-hostility, vigor-activity, fatigueinertia, and confusion-bewilderment. Through research with different athletic populations, a distinct athletic profile was developed. The profile was characterized as higher vigor-activity levels than the population norm and lower levels of tension-anxiety, depression-dejection, anger-hostility, fatigue-inertia, and confusion-bewilderment than the population norm. Based on the graphical representation, this pattern was named the “iceberg profile.”
The iceberg profile, however, is not related to sporting performance. Some athletes perform well despite having a profile that is considered to be “negative.” Issues that may confound the mood-performance relationship include athletes’ perceptions of their moods and the type of sports they play. Athletes’ perceptions of their mood as facilitative or deliberative may influence performance to a greater extent than does the mood itself. Some sports may require mood profiles different from those of the iceberg profile. The mental health model may be more useful for charting differences between athletes and relating these differences to performance than for relating the profiles of many athletes to performance. In 1995 Hanin and Syrja developed the IZOF model. With this model as a base, Hanin asked athletes to rate previous successful performances with regard to the intensity of a range of positive optimal emotions (i.e., eager, sure, determined), negative optimal emotions (i.e., tense, furious), positive dysfunctional emotions (i.e., calm, nice, content, pleasant), and negative dysfunctional emotions (i.e., slack, lazy, unwilling, tired). Greater success was associated with positive and negative optimal emotions of a high intensity and positive and negative dysfunctional emotions of a low intensity. The few studies that have been conducted have shown the IZOF model to be predictive of performance. Although not a personality theory, consistency of emotional state was being examined with the collection of data on successful and poor performances.
BIOLOGICAL Some theorists (e.g., Kretschmer during the 1920s and Sheldon during the 1940s) have contended that personality is related to bodily configuration. For example, people with lean, linear body types were suggested to be tense, inhibited, and introverted. Later researchers during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s reasoned that personality is related to nervous system function. Few biological studies have been conducted in sports. Studies have tended to investigate whether physiological and psychological processes are associated
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Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like muscles of the body. ■ LYNN JENNINGS
and whether physical and psychological measures, in combination, can predict behavior. A study conducted by Hardy, McMurray, and Roberts in 1981 exemplifies the first type of research. These researchers investigated whether people with type A personalities (i.e., people who tend to be strict, rigid, perfectionistic, and mindful of time) respond differently to exercise than do people with type B personalities (i.e., people who tend to be more relaxed). The results showed that people with type A personalities experience greater negative psychophysiological responses, at higher intensities of exercise, than do people with type B personalities. At light and moderate intensities, people with type A personalities had greater positive psychophysiological responses than did people with type B personalities.
MOTIVE OR NEED For motive or need theorists (e.g., Murray, McClelland, Atkinson), specific motives or needs are the drivers of personality. In 1957 Atkinson published his achievement motivation theory, which grounded later sports research. The need to achieve formed the basis of Atkinson’s theory. The theory has received some empirical support. For example, in 1965 Ryan and Lakie found that people with a need to avoid failure that is stronger than their need to succeed perform better in noncompetitive situations than do people whose need to succeed is stronger than their need to avoid failure. In competitive situations the reverse was true. Zuckerman’s work on sensation seeking, conducted during the 1970s, has been the foundation of several sports studies. Sensation seeking is the need for intense, novel, and varied sensations. Several studies have found sensation seeking to be higher in people involved in highrisk sports. Some evidence also indicates that sensation seeking can explain people’s degrees of involvement in high-risk sports as well as the sports they choose.
Phenomenological Theory Phenomenological theory emanated from the initial writings of Husserl in 1911 and is based on the premise that all people perceive the world and themselves dif-
ferently. Behavior is shaped by people’s subjective understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. Personality is assessed by asking people how they would feel or behave in a given situation. Three phenomenological approaches are actualization/selfdetermination, cognitive information processing, and social-cognitive.
ACTUALIZATION/SELF -DETERMINATION Theories developed during the 1960s, such as Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs and Rogers’s self theory, focused on people’s achievement of their own potential. Although Maslow’s theory does identify some basic human needs, experts assumed that everybody has the same needs. The emphasis was on the fulfillment of those needs in an attempt to achieve self-actualization. In sports, research has been based on the cognitive evaluation theory of motivation, which Deci developed in 1975 and elaborated on with Ryan in 1985. Core to their theory is the idea that people have an innate psychological need to show competence and selfdetermination. Competence is people’s perceptions of their ability to interact successfully with their environment. Self-determination is the degree to which people perceive that they are free to choose their own behaviors. People will be intrinsically motivated (that is, engage in an activity for the pleasure associated with the activity itself) to the extent that they are able to show competence and that they are free to choose to engage in an activity.
COGNITIVE INFORMATION PROCESSING Cognitive information-processing theory emphasizes the individuality of how people actively make sense of their own behavior and the world around them. In 1955 Kelly developed the personal construct theory, in which he hypothesized that the dimensions of personality are constructed on an individual basis. These dimensions act as lenses through which people view the external world. If people’s lenses continue to help them to predict the world around them, then people see no need to change these lenses.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Few studies have been conducted on personality and sports using the personal construct theory. In 1976 Lerch explored how four track athletes perceived their preseason, in-season, and postseason experiences and found that each athlete had unique perceptions of his or her athletic involvement. In sports a greater amount of research has been conducted using Weiner’s attribution model, which he developed and refined during the 1970s and 1980s. The central aspect of this model is that, following achievement behaviors, people will search for causes of those behaviors. The three general causes that experts have identified are controllability, locus of causality, and stability. Controllability is the degree to which the cause of the achievement behavior is under the control of the person making the attribution or under the control of other people. Locus of causality is whether the cause of the behavior is internal or external to the person making the attribution. Stability is the consistency of the cause over time. Sports researchers have also investigated cognitive consistency theory. The premise that underlies this theory is that people strive for consistency in their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Sports performance has been associated with less cognitive conflict and the greater use of methods to reduce conflict, whereas dropping out of sports has been associated with cognitive conflict.
SOCIAL -COGNITIVE Social-cognitive theories explain behavior as the interaction between behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors. In 1986 Albert Bandura described self-efficacy theory, which is a social-cognitive theory that has, during the last twenty years, underpinned more research than any other personality theory. Self-efficacy is people’s perceptions of their ability to perform desired tasks. Much of the research using self-efficacy theory, however, was not directed toward investigating differences in people’s personalities. Reminiscent of researchers conducting trait studies during the 1960s and 1970s, researchers using socialcognitive concepts have outlined the characteristics of
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successful athletes. These characteristics include selfconfidence, the ability to stay focused, the capacity to regulate arousal, positive emotions and thoughts toward sports, high commitment to excellence, and determination.
Implications People harbor popular notions that personality traits are connected to sports, and maybe in some ways personality traits and sports are connected. No evidence indicates, however, that our popular notions have any basis in reality. With the lack of a “sports personality,” the common argument that sports build character also seems tenuous. People with a broad range of personality characteristics participate in and are successful in sports. Cadeyrn Gaskin See also Motivation; Psychology; Psychology of Gender Differences
Further Reading Apitzsch, E. (1995). Psychodynamic theory of personality and sport performance. In S. J. H. Biddle (Ed.), European perspectives on exercise and sport psychology (pp. 111–127). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Gill, D. L. (2000). Psychological dynamics of sport and exercise (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Lazarus, R. S., & Monat, A. (1979). Personality (3rd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Morris, T. (1995). Psychological characteristics and sports behaviour. In T. Morris (Ed.), Sport psychology: Theory, applications and issues (pp. 3–25). Brisbane, Australia: John Wiley. Vealey, R. S. (2002). Personality and sport behavior. In T. S. Horn (Ed.), Advances in sport psychology (2nd ed., pp. 43–82). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Physical Education
H
ealthy People 2010, published by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, placed physical activity at the top of its list of leading health indicators. Articles in the International
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Physical Education Extract from Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes (1857) In the extract below from this classic English novel, Tom Brown—the main character—wonders about school customs for a type of English football that evolved into rugby (the name of the school Tom attends). “But why do you wear white trousers in November?” said Tom. He had been struck by this peculiarity in the costume of almost all the School-house boys. “Why, bless us, don’t you know? No; I forgot. Why, to-day’s the School-house match. Our house plays the whole of the School at football. And we all wear white trousers, to show ‘em we don’t care for hacks. You’re in luck to come to-day. You just will see a match; and Brooke’s going to let me play in quarters. That’s more than he’ll do for any other lowerschool boy, except James, and he’s fourteen.” “Who’s Brooke?” “Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure. He’s cock of the school, and head of the School-house side, and the best kick and charger in Rugby.” “Oh, but do show me where they play. And tell me about it. I love football so, and have played all my life. Won’t Brooke let me play?” “Not he,” said East, with some indignation. “Why, you don’t know the rules; you’ll be a month learning them. And then it’s no joke playing-up in a match, I can tell you—quite another thing from your private school games. Why, there’s been two collar-bones
broken this half, and a dozen fellows lamed. And last year a fellow had his leg broken.” Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of accidents, and followed East across the level ground till they came to a sort of gigantic gallows of two poles, eighteen feet high, fixed upright in the ground some fourteen feet apart, with a cross-bar running from one to the other at the height of ten feet or thereabouts. “This is one of the goals,” said East, “and you see the other, across there, right opposite, under the Doctor’s wall. Well, the match is for the best of three goals; whichever side kicks two goals wins: and it won’t do, you see, just to kick the ball through these posts—it must go over the cross-bar; any height’ll do, so long as it’s between the posts. You’ll have to stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls behind the posts, because if the other side touch it they have a try at goal. Then we fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of goal here, and have to turn the ball and kick it back before the big fellows on the other side can follow it up. And in front of us all the big fellows play, and that’s where the scrummages are mostly.” Tom’s respect increased as he struggled to make out his friend’s technicalities, and the other set to work to explain the mysteries of “off your side,” “dropkicks,” “punts,” “places,” and the other intricacies of the great science of football. Source: Hughes, T. (1856). Tom Brown’s schooldays (Part 1, Chap. 5).
Journal of Epidemiology, European Journal of Applied Physiology, British Journal of Sports Medicine, and scores of other publications now provide extensive evidence that validates physical education’s importance. The basic components of healthful living remain those set forth in the writings of Hippocrates and the GrecoRoman physician Claudius Galen: exercise, proper diet, rest, cleanliness, control of the emotions. The field that historically has been most concerned with exercise—
and with related health and developmental matters—is physical education, now often called kinesiology, exercise science, or one of several other designations. Earlier referred to as gymnastics or sometimes physical training, physical education has a long, albeit uneven, tradition. In the Republic, Plato set forth two branches of education: that over which the Muses preside for the mind, and gymnastics for the body. The desired goal was balanced development of the two.
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Although it may not be readily apparent, contemporary physical education retains certain aspects of classical approaches to health and hygiene. Since the late 1800s, as physiology and psychology took form as experimental fields, efforts have been made to incorporate relevant findings into the various programs that have been designed for children, youth, and sometimes adults. National interests, cultural traditions, politics, the economy, matters pertaining to class and gender, and much more have influenced views of physical education. Efforts to integrate it into the school curriculum have been affected by contending beliefs regarding what is the best form of exercise, issues related to public health, long-standing beliefs that matters pertaining to body are less important than those pertaining to mind, and many other things. During times of conflict such as World War I and World War II, physical fitness (especially muscular strength and endurance) has received particular attention. In the 1930s and 1940s, Fascist regimes promoted both sport and physical education for military preparedness and to advance their authoritarian goals. At Rugby, Harrow, and other English “public schools,” athletics (which were believed to develop “manly character”) became part of the school experience considerably earlier than elsewhere. By contrast, the typical form of exercise in British state-supported schools was gymnastics/calisthenics. Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), which romanticized games-playing at Rugby, was enormously popular for decades on both sides of the Atlantic. Although Archibald MacLaren, director of the Oxford Gymnasium, acknowledged their value, he was concerned that athletics did not adequately develop all parts of the body—a belief that many American physical educators held in the late 1800s. In most English-speaking countries athletics remained the province of students, but in the United States highly organized intercollegiate programs with “professional” coaches were well established by the 1890s. Interscholastic programs (for boys), which sought to emulate these, grew rapidly in the twentieth century.
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Although they may seem similar, physical education and interscholastic/intercollegiate athletics differ in their goals and in other significant ways. By 1920, organizations such as the philanthropic Carnegie Foundation became concerned about commercialism and various excesses associated with intercollegiate sports. The 1923 formation of the Women’s Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation, which had been created the previous year, provided a useful focus for those who already were rejecting the male model in favor of a broadly based “A Sport for Every Girl: Every Girl in a Sport” approach and the creation of play days and sports days in place of intercollegiate/interscholastic contests. Although not accepted by all female physical educators, this philosophy dominated during the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Eighteenth-Century Antecedents As new ideas about human nature emerged during the Enlightenment, a remarkable number of treatises declared that exercise appropriate to a child’s age was an essential part of education: ■
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John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), which opens with the words mens sana en coropre sano [a sound mind in a sound body], was frequently cited. Physician Jean Charles Desessartz’s Traité de l’Éducation Corporelle des Enfans en Bas Âge [Treatise on the Bodily Education of Young Children] (1760), which some suggest influenced Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile (1762), would have boys engage in activities such as running, jumping, shuffleboard, skittles, swimming, and fencing. Desessartz and the Comtesse de Genlis (Leçons d’Une Gouvernante à ses Élèves, 1791) were among several who declared that girls should receive much more exercise than their education typically provided. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft insisted that girls should be allowed to engage in the same exercises as boys.
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How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser. ■ LOU HOLTZ
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Johann Basedow’s Philanthropium (1774) gave three hours a day to recreations. Gymnastik für die Jugend (1793), one of several books written by Johann Christoph Friedrich Guts Muths (a respected teacher at the Schepfenthal Educational Institute), divided exercises into three classes— gymnastics, manual labors, social games—and was influential in several countries.
Nineteenth-Century Developments Seeking to revitalize the strength, will, and patriotism of the German people following victories by Napoleon’s armies in 1806, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn established a program of outdoor exercises (e.g., running, jumping, vaulting over apparatus, games) to which he gave the name “Turnen.” Adolph Spiess, who is usually credited with introducing gymnastics (Schulturnen) for girls as well as boys into German schools, emphasized their pedagogical rather than political aspects. Ferdinand A. Schmidt—physician, Turner, and an early leader of the sport movement in Germany—subsequently challenged what he considered to be the empiricism of Spiess’s system and began to advocate the value of folk games and English sports. By the 1920s, large numbers of German youth and adults were engaging in sports and recreations in natural settings. Following the Revolution of 1848, many Turners immigrated to a number of countries. The Cincinnati Turnverein (Gymnastic Society), founded in 1848, was the first of more than 150 Turnvereins that were established in the United States, where Turners campaigned vigorously to have their form of gymnastics become the basis of the public school program. The major competition was from the Swedish system Per Henrik Ling created in 1814. Educators and physicians in several countries considered this system better designed to systematically exercise each part of the body and more appropriate for females. Nils Posse and Claes Enebuske (who both taught at the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics) brought this Swedish system to American attention. During a several-month tour of Europe, where he investigated various aspects of medi-
cine and physical training, Edward M. Hartwell (PhD in biology from Johns Hopkins University; MD from Cincinnati’s Miami Medical School) visited Stockholm’s Royal Central Gymnastics Institute (RCGI). Following Hartwell’s appointment in 1890 as director of Physical Training for the Boston Public Schools, Swedish gymnastics became the basis of the program. Hartwell’s contemporary Lillian Welsh, MD, Director of Physical Training at Goucher College, recruited her instructors from the Stockholm’s RCGI and from England’s Dartford Physical Training College, founded by Martina Bergman-Österberg and built upon the Swedish system. (Women trained in Swedish gymnastics were among the first to become “reconstruction aides”—a precursor to the physical therapist—following World War I.)
Links to Health Reform and Public Health In 1826, the American Journal of Education declared, “The time we hope is near, when there will be no literary institution unprovided with proper means of healthful exercise and innocent recreation.” Although it would take decades before anything approaching this goal was attained, numerous antebellum physicians and health reformers urged parents and teachers to pay attention to the laws of growth, health, and exercise. Articles appeared in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (today’s New England Journal of Medicine) as well as in educational and literary publications. Catharine Beecher’s popular Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families (1856) included chapters on the circulatory and other systems of the body and described (with illustrations) many schoolroom exercises for girls and boys. Men and women with medical training were directors of many college and university departments organized before 1915; one example is Harvard Medical School graduate Edward Hitchcock who headed the Department of Physical Culture, which opened at Amherst College in 1860, for nearly fifty years. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, as public health received increasing attention in several
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Students in nineteenth century Europe line up in physical education class.
countries, sections dealing with physical education were included in meetings such as the International Hygiene Congress held in connection with the 1878 Paris International Exposition. Physician Eugène Dally spoke favorably of developments in Belgium and Germany and called on his compatriots to create normal schools to prepare teachers of gymnastics. The final report of a French Gymnastic Commission headed by physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey was published in 1889. That same year, the well-attended Conference in the Interest of Physical Training was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to assess which “system” of exercise was the best: German gymnastics, Swedish gymnastics, that devised by Dudley Allen Sargent, MD (director of the Gymnasium at Harvard University), or military training. The opening remarks by United States Commissioner of Education William T. Harris, who observed that an important aspect of physical education was to understand how involuntary functions (e.g., heart, lungs, digestion, nervous system) “may be assisted and influenced by voluntary action” (muscles, skeleton) reflected embryonic efforts to bring experimental science to the study of exercise. The American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education (AAAPE, but today known as the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance) was founded in 1885. Nine of the first ten AAAPE presidents possessed medical degrees. Among active members in the late 1800s and early 1900s were individuals like the neurologist D. F. Lincoln and the anthropologist Franz Boas. Membership of Britain’s small National Society of Physical Education (founded 1897) consisted largely of teachers in government schools and commercial establishments;
the Ling Association (founded 1899) was open to women who had completed the two-year course at Dartford Physical Training College or Stockholm’s RCGI. In France, the Ligue Nationale de l’Éducation Physique (1888) competed with the hygiene-oriented Ligue Girondine de l’Éducation Physique, founded by physician Philippe Tissié, and the Comité pour la Propagation des Exercises Physiques dans l’Éducation , created by Pierre de Coubertin to advance what would become his Olympic ideal.
Connections with Many Fields Over the decades, physical education has developed important connections with other fields and organizations, but the nature and extent of these vary from country to country: ■
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Luther Halsey Gulick (president of the American Physical Education Association, 1903–1907) was the first president of the Playground Association of America (founded in 1906), and for several years secretary of the Physical Department of the International YMCA of North America. In 1913, the YMCA sent Charles McCloy to China, where he trained teachers, founded the journal Tiyu jikan (Physical Education Quarterly), and developed physical ability tests for boys and girls, among other significant contributions. Programs that he devised during the 1920s were used in Nationalist Chinese Schools through the 1940s. In 1878, the Japanese Ministry of Education established the Gymnastic Institute to train instructors for primary schools. Its first director, George Leland, had been a student of Hitchcock at Amherst College. In Russia, the biologist Pyotr Lesgaft founded the Society for the Encouragement of the Physical Development of Student Youth in 1892. Its courses were reorganized following the 1917 Revolution and became Leningrad’s Physical Culture Institute.
Physical educators also have been associated—more in some countries than in others—with organizations
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Physical Education First Day’s Order at Harriet Trask’s School (1904) Attention! Class—stand! One! Two! Three! Order. Class—attention! Left foot in place—rest! Leg. Class—attention! Feet—close! Feet—open! Right foot in place—rest! Head. Head backward—bend! Raise! Arm. Hips—firm! Position! Breathing. Deep breathing—One! Two! Class—sit! One! Two! Three! Rest! In sitting, “attention” means to sit well back in the seat, but not to lean against it, back erect, hands on top of the desk. Class—stand! One! Two! Three! On “one” bring the hands to the sides; on “two” the left or right foot into the aisle; on “three,” stand in the fundamental position. Order. Class—attention! Brings to the fundamental standing position, which is: heels together and toes turned out, knees straight, body erect, with chest high, head up and hips back, arms, straight at the sides, fingers straight and close together, palms toward the body. “Class—attention!” is always given after “In place—rest!” to call the class to the fundamental position. Left foot in place—rest! Place the left or right foot diagonally forward and stand at ease, but never in a lounging position. Do not give the rest position with one foot more often than with the other. “In place rest” must always be given after each exercise—after
whose declared focus is sports medicine. During the late 1800s, German-speaking countries led the world in experimental physiology. Ferdinand Schmidt’s comprehensive Unser Körper (1899/1909) was more informed by relevant scientific findings regarding the effects of exercise on the body than any book in English-speaking countries would be for a number of years. American naval surgeon Henry Beyer considered the 1911 Dresden International Hygiene Exhibition superior with regard to the study of hygiene and physical education to anything that existed in the United States. It included a sports division, organized by physician (and Olympian)
the order, the leg, the head, etc. It is always taken from the fundamental standing position. Legs. Feet—close! Bring the inner sides of the feet together. In doing this, raise the balls of the feet and use the heels as pivots. The feet must not slide along the floor; the heels must be kept together; there should be a little motion of the body as possible. Head. Head backward—bend! Start by pulling the chin back and then bend the head back as far as possible without relaxing the neck muscles. In raising the head, stop at the highest point. “Head backward bend” may be given in a lesson whenever it is needed to correct a bad head position. Arm. Hips—firm! Place the hands upon the hips, thumbs back, fingers together, to the front and pointing obliquely downward, wrist straight and elbows back. Position! Brings to the fundamental standing position. Breathing. On “one” inhale, on “two” exhale. Give this movement, always in the rhythm of deep breathing, several times. The arms may be turned, palms forward, as the breath is taken in. Class—sit! One! Two! Three! On “one” place the foot toward the seat, on “two” sit, on “three” take the fundamental position, which is the position of attention. “Rest!” is the word for ending the lesson. Sit as ease. Source: First day’s order. (1904). Badminton, p. 29.
Arthur Mallwitz, with a special laboratory where things like the effects of exhausting exercise could be studied. The Deutscher Ärztebund zur Förderung der Leibesübungen [Association of German Physicians for the Promotion of Physical Exercises] (founded 1924) preceded by three decades the British Society of Sports Medicine (founded 1953) and the American College of Sports Medicine (founded 1954). ACSM membership, a substantial portion of which consists of dieticians, physical therapists, sport psychologists, physical educators, and so on, now exceeds 20,000. The Deutsche Hochschule für Leibesübungen [German College for
FILE NOT FOUND (FNF)
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Physical Education], which opened in Berlin in 1920 with the physician August Bier as director, offered perhaps the most comprehensive training program that was then available. The inspiration for its founding had come from Carl Diem, whose membership on the German Olympic Committee in 1906 began his many significant contributions to physical education and sport. Diem was instrumental in reopening it as the Sporthochschule (sports College) in Köln in 1947. The Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur in Leipzig (DDR) received the right to award the Pedagogical Doctor degree in 1955.
A Multidisciplinary Field Physical education draws from both the biological and the psychosocial sciences. Like medicine, physical education has significant applied aspects. At the 1890 AAAPE meeting, Gulick delivered a paper titled “Physical Education: A New Profession” setting forth a message that is remarkably similar to that which Franklin Henry (a major contributor to motor control research) articulated three-quarters of a century later in his influential paper, “Physical Education—An Academic Discipline.” This “new profession,” Gulick declared, offered “a large and broad field of intellectual activity, involving . . . physiology, anatomy, psychology, history, and philosophy.” The achievement of the research bases Gulick called for—now an essential component of departments of physical education, kinesiology, human performance, and so forth at major universities in several countries— was not easy to accomplish. One and two-year courses offered by teacher training schools were the norm. These involved, at best, very limited study of physiology and psychology. An exception was the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics (1891), which subsequently became the Department of Hygiene and Physical Training at Wellesley College, which called on faculty from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard to teach courses in anatomy, physiology, and sanitary science and required some laboratory work of its female students.
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The four-year BS degree that George Fitz, MD, established at Harvard in 1892 (terminated in 1898/99) to prepare men to be gymnasium directors or enter the third year at the Harvard Medical School was rigorous even by late twentieth-century standards. Belgium’s Higher Institute of Physical Education, founded in 1908 at the University of Ghent within the faculty of medicine, offered candidate, licentiate, and doctoral degrees. The University of Birmingham initiated physical education as an academic study in 1946; however, British teachers of physical education continued to be educated at specialist colleges until the 1970s when several were incorporated into polytechnics. In the United States, the University of California and the University of Nebraska created programs to prepare teachers of physical training in 1897. In 1929, thirty-six state universities and colleges, forty-nine endowed colleges, and thirty state teachers colleges were preparing physical educators; the emphasis was training teachers, supervisors, and administrators. Fifteen institutions offered graduate work. New York University and Teachers College, Columbia University had the largest enrollments. By 1942, fifty-six institutions of higher learning had master’s degree programs; of these, twenty offered doctoral work.
Conceptional and Curricular Changes During the twentieth century, games, sports, and dance increasingly replaced gymnastics/calisthenics as the focus of the curriculum. In the 1890s psychologist G. Stanley Hall and his students at Clark University began investigating psychosocial aspects of childhood play. In 1891, Hall initiated The Pedagogical Seminary (today the Journal of Genetic Psychology) to disseminate the results of numerous diverse studies. Inspired by Friedrich Froebel’s “kindergarten,” cities in several countries developed playgrounds, cités-jardins, and similar facilities. Young people found the activities these offered to be more appealing than routine exercises. Gulick established the New York City Public School
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Dumbbell exercises for young women and men.
Athletic League in 1903 to provide “educational athletics” for large numbers of boys and girls. “Health and Education,” which Thomas Denison Wood, MD prepared for the Ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (1910), has been credited with helping to establish the rationale for what became known in the 1920s as “the new physical education.” This gave particular attention to personal and social development. Clark Hetherington’s School Program in Physical Education (1922) and other writings set forth the objectives: organic, psychomotor, intellectual, and character development. Wood (for many years an officer of the American Child Health Association) was one of several physical educators who developed important connections with the school health movement of the 1920s and early 1930s. Thomas Storey MD, the first State Director of Physical Education (New York in 1916), was among those who believed that the goals of school hygiene and physical education (which put textbook information into practice) were identical because the object of both was health. By 1930, thirty-six states had enacted laws requiring physical education in public schools. Rhythmic activities (e.g., folk and clog dancing) had been taught in the early 1900s. Following World War I, modern dance increasingly became an important part of the curriculum for college women and at some high schools. Visits by noted artists such as Germany’s Mary Wigman helped foster its growth. Margaret H’Doubler created the first dance major in the United States in 1926 at the University of Wisconsin. During the 1950s, “movement education,” which drew from Rudolph von Laban’s approach to dance, attained a notable following among British physical educators. In the United States, followers considered its experiential approach (especially for young children) a palliative to the overemphasis on routine activities and the competitiveness of sports. A 1953 report that asserted that European and Japanese children had scored
better than American children on a series of flexibility and power tests, as well as Soviet successes in space and at the Olympic games, prompted a resurgence of “physical fitness” during the 1960s.
Early Research Efforts During the late 1800s, considerable attention was given to anthropometry, the assumption being that a symmetrically developed body was important for health and that proper exercise could help achieve this. Over the decades, a small, but growing, number of individuals associated with physical education conducted exer-
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cise and pulse rate, reaction time, metabolic, growth, motor development, and other investigations. Articles appeared in a variety of journals, including the American Physical Education Review (1896–1929). The Research Quarterly (today the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport) was initiated in 1930. In 1949, the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (AAHPER) Research Council published Research Methods Applied to Health, Physical Education, and Recreation to assist the growing numbers of faculty and graduate students who now were engaging in such work. The comprehensive 1960 book Science and Medicine of Exercise and Sports, which brought together contributions from leading researchers on topics ranging from physiological, psychological, and therapeutic dimensions of physical activity to cultural and historical aspects of sports, opened with the observation that physical education, like medicine, “reaches into many fields for much of the data upon which it bases its practices.” Henry’s 1964 article “Physical Education—An Academic Discipline” launched two decades of discussions and disputes about the nature of such a discipline. As more physical educators began to engage in research in a particular area (e.g., exercise physiology, sport psychology, biomechanics), concerns arose that faculty were abandoning what had once been a reasonably unified vision—and that this could lead to fragmentation and the ultimate demise of the field. Similar concerns were occurring elsewhere (e.g., Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands). The first international discussions of such matters appear to have been in Israel at the Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sport in 1974. Agreement has not yet been achieved. Since the 1970s, the volume of research across subdisciplines has increased enormously, as have the number of national and international organizations and journals (e.g., Journal of Sport Psychology, International Journal of Sport Biomechanics, International Review of Sport Sociology, International Journal of the History of Sport) dedicated to the various scholarly and scientific
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areas that constitute what was once known as physical education.
Outlook During the last three decades, the opportunities for females to participate in highly competitive sports have grown rapidly, at least in some countries. Paradoxically, this same period has witnessed a decline of opportunities and incentives for large numbers of children and youth. Since 1990, growing concerns have been expressed in many countries about obesity. These frequently are accompanied with proclamations about the importance of regular physical activity (e.g., “Epidemic Increase in Childhood Overweight, 1986–1998,” Journal of the American Medical Association [2001]). Although the data supporting the importance of regular physical activity are now extensive, the programs to put “theory into practice” seem too often to be missing. The title of an article published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine in 2000 aptly reflects current needs: “The Integration of Clinical Practice and Research: The Challenge of the New Millennium.” Roberta J. Park See also Human Movement Studies; Kinesiology
Further Reading Dambach, J. (1937). Physical education in Germany. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. Fletcher, S. (1984). The female tradition in English physical education,1880–1980. London: Athlone. Gerber, E. W. (1971). Innovators and institutions in physical education. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. Grover, K. (Ed.). (1989). Fitness in American culture: Images of health, sport, and the body, 1830–1940. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Hackensmith, C. W. (1966). History of physical education. New York: Harper & Row. Haley, B. (1978). The healthy body and Victorian culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Henry, F. M. (1964). Physical education—An academic discipline. Journal of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, 35(7), 32–33, 69. McIntosh, P. C. (1968). Physical education in England since 1800. London: G. Bell & Sons. McIntosh, P. C., Dixon, J. G., Munrow, A. D., & Wiletts, R. F. (1981). Landmarks in the history of physical education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Massengale, J. D., & Swanson, R. A. (1997). The history of exercise and sport science. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Means, R. K. (1962). A history of health education in the United States. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. Park, R. J. (1976). Concern for health and exercise as expressed in the writings of eighteenth century physicians and informed laymen (England, France, Switzerland). Research Quarterly, 47(4), 756–767. Park, R. J. (1989). The second 100 years: Or, can physical education become the Renaissance field of the twenty-first century? Quest, 4(1),1–27. Park, R. J., & Eckert, H. M. (1991). New possibilities, new paradigms? The Academy Papers: American Academy of Physical Education Papers No. 24. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Renson, R. (1989). From physical education to kinanthropology: A quest for academic and professional identity. Quest, 41(3), 235–256. Sport and Gender. (1991). Journal of Sport History, 18(1). Special Issue. Van Dalen, D. B., & Bennett, B. L. (1971). A world history of physical education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Verbrugge, M. H. (1988). Able-Bodied womanhood: Personal health and social change in nineteenth-century Boston. New York: Oxford University Press. Vertinsky, P. A. (1990). The eternally wounded woman: Women, exercise and doctors in the late nineteenth century. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Pilates
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ilates (pronounced Pi-LAH-tes) is a body conditioning system that focuses on strengthening and lengthening muscles while alleviating back pain and protecting against injury. Often described as a cross between yoga and weight training, pilates works to bring balance to the body, promotes correct alignment, and improves muscle strength, balance, coordination, and flexibility without dramatically increasing muscle mass. Pilates is seen as useful for both men and women of all ages, however, it has been noted as an effective antiaging exercise because it strengthens muscles with very little stress on the joints. Pilates has also been used as an effective rehabilitation aid for hospitalized patients. Recently, the benefits of pilates on pregnant women have been widely discussed. In addition to its traditional benefits, pilates can help pregnant women improve their concentration and balance as well as improve their muscle tone after pregnancy.
From a Fragile Childhood to Hollywood Born in Germany in 1880, Joseph Pilates was a fragile child who suffered from several physical limitations. He was able to overcome his physical shortcomings through vigorous exercise and strength training and became accomplished in several sports including gymnastics, skiing, boxing, and diving. In 1912, he moved to England and became a self-defense instructor for detectives working at Scotland Yard. At the onset of World War I, Pilates was detained in England because of his German heritage. During this ordeal, he shared his beliefs on exercise and strength conditioning with his fellow detainees. In addition, he helped those suffering from disease and physical injury with their rehabilitation by focusing on improving their abdominal and lower back strength. His ideas were based on principles of yoga, Zen, and physical fitness programs used in ancient Greece and Rome, and they later became the foundation of his pilates exercise program. He returned to Germany after being released from England and continued to refine his methods of exercise. His methods became very popular with dancers in Germany, and in 1926, he decided to bring his techniques to the United States. Pilates opened up his first studio in New York in 1926. By the early 1960s, his studio became very popular with actors, dancers, and athletes. Two of his students, Carola Trier and Bob Seed, opened their own studios in New York in an attempt to further the growth of pilates. Pilates died in 1967, but his exercise method continued to gain followers. In 1970, another of Pilates’ students, Ron Fletcher, opened the first studio in Los Angeles where the pilates method became very popular with Hollywood celebrities. With an increasing number of Hollywood stars practicing pilates, its notoriety began to swell. By the late 1980s, pilates started to reach the mainstream media. Currently more than five million Americans practice pilates.
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A back stretch over a Pilates ball. Source: istockphoto/lovleah.
Pilates Principles Borrowing from both Eastern and Western philosophies, pilates focuses on breathing, balance, coordination, body movement and positioning, and strength. Similar to yoga, pilates promotes individual improvement in a nonthreatening, noncompetitive environment. Pilates includes more than five hundred exercises based on the following eight principles: (1) concentration; (2) control; (3) centering; (4) stabilizing; (5) breathing; (6) alignment; (7) fluidity; and (8) integration. Pilates instructors generally assess their clients’ posture and movements during their initial meetings and then design a specific program to fit their client’s needs. Exercise sessions generally last twenty to fortyfive minutes and focus on smooth movement and breathing. The two primary exercise machines used in pilates are the Universal Reformer and the Cadillac. These machines allow people to perform several different exercises from varying positions, including lying down, so they are effective for bedridden patients.
Benefits of Pilates Pilates offers a viable alternative to traditional strength training and conditioning, as well as improvements in flexibility, core (abdominal and lower back) strength, balance, posture, circulation, coordination, range of motion, mobility, agility, stamina, injury prevention, rehabilitation, increased strength without unnecessary muscle mass, and reductions in stress.
Pilates is seen as a safe alternative to traditional methods of exercise because it puts very little stress on joints, and people who practice pilates report very low incidence of injury. Unlike most exercise and strength methods, which tend to increase muscle strength of the already strong muscles while ignoring weaker muscle groups, pilates focuses on creating an evenly toned and conditioned body. Muscular imbalance can cause undue stress on joints and can lead to injuries and chronic pain. Therefore, pilates aims to balance muscle tone throughout the entire body, thus promoting proper posture, balance, and flexibility. The breathing exercises included in pilates exercises support a mind-body connection that improves body awareness, relaxation, and levels of stress. Those who practice pilates become more aware of how their bodies feel and how to control their movements in an efficient and powerful manner.
Implications Although widely accepted as a beneficial exercise and rehabilitation technique, pilates is not recommended as a substitute for physical therapy. In addition, because of its low-impact nature, pilates does not provide a truly effective cardiovascular workout. However, pilates can be an effective method of general fitness because it offers an effective alternative to traditional exercise and strength training for a variety of individuals including athletes, dancers, and those looking to get in shape and avoid the effects of aging. Noah B. Gentner
Further Reading Dillman, E. (2001). The little pilates book. Lebanon, IN: Warner Books. Knaster, M. (1996). Discovering the body’s wisdom. New York: Bantam Books.
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Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold. ■ JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE
Menezes, A. (2000). The complete guide to Joseph H. Pilates’ techniques of physical conditioning. Alameda, CA: Hunter House. Pilates, J., Miller, W., & Robbins, J. (1998). Pilates’ return to life through contrology. Ashland, OR: Presentation Dynamics. Seligson, S. V. (1997). The perfect workout. Health, 11(3),42–43. Siler, B. (2000). The pilates body: The ultimate at-home guide to strengthening, lengthening, and toning your body—without machines. New York: Bantam Doubleday. Stewart, K. (2001). Pilates for beginners. New York: Harper Resource. Ungaro, A., & Sadur, R. (2002). Pilates: Body in motion. New York: DK Publishing.
Play vs. Organized Sport
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lay is exercise or other action for amusement or recreation. The sociologist Jay Coakley provides a more enlightened definition: “Play involves expressive activity done for its own sake; it may be spontaneous or guided by informal norms” (Coakley 2004, 23). In considering physical activity that people engage in as play, as opposed to physical activity organized as sport, the key element is the idea of engaging in play for its own sake. All children engage in play—society sanctions childhood as a time when play is appropriate. As one grows older (into adolescence and adulthood), play is less appropriate, seen as not serious enough to warrant taking time from other pursuits.Yet, play is important at all ages—the idea of doing something for its own sake, for the pure fun and enjoyment of the activity, seems a necessary part of life whether one is a child or an adult. Although one can discuss play in terms of childhood activity with dolls or trucks or building sand castles or playing hide-and-seek and the like, the focus is on physical activity. People often talk about playing a sport, clearly integrating the two concepts of play and sports into one entity. Many of the games and other activities that people play as children quickly become sports at an early age. Coakley defines sports as “institutionalized competitive activities that involve rigorous physical exertion or the use of relatively complex physical skills by participants
motivated by internal and external rewards” (Coakley 2004, 21). Activities such as baseball, softball, soccer, basketball, and football are most commonly played by children and adolescents. At seemingly earlier and earlier ages (T-ball leagues for four- and five-year-olds), sports become institutionalized by the following characteristics: (1) The rules of the sports become standardized, (2) official regulatory agencies take over rule enforcement, (3) the organizational and technical aspects of the sports become important, and (4) the learning of sports skills becomes formalized. Although these characteristics are not all seen among four- and fiveyear-olds, by the time children reach adolescence, the leagues in which they play (e.g., Little League baseball, Pop Warner football) do reflect these characteristics.
Good Old Days The distinction between play and organized sport is seen more clearly in differentiating between what Coakley calls “informal, player-controlled sports” and “organized, adult-controlled sports.” Sports psychologists and sociologists wax nostalgically about the “good old days” when children were engaged in informal, player-controlled sports to a much greater extent than they are today. Informal, player-controlled sports are close, if not identical, to what people generally think of as “play.” Children would just hop on their bikes and ride to the nearby schoolyard or play in the streets outside their homes for hours, adjusting games such as baseball or basketball or football to meet their needs in terms of number of participants, playing field available, equipment, and so forth. Informal, playercontrolled sports are “primarily action-centered,” whereas formal, adult-controlled sports are “primarily rule-centered” (Coakley 2004, 139). A considerable amount of action always results when children engage in informal, player-controlled sports. Coakley and his students identified four elements as characteristic of informal, player-controlled sports: “(1) action, especially leading to scoring, (2) personal involvement in the action, (3) a challenging or exciting
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A young girl swinging her doll. Source: istockphoto.com/vhsrt-just.
supervised by adults, so that they know where the children are at all times. Even the possibility that keeping one’s children inside the home might lead to a more sedentary lifestyle (with the attractions of television, computers, and video games) seems to outweigh the perceived risks of letting one’s children play outside. Scheduling comes into consideration with both parents working in many households, having several children, and all family members having different activities at different times and needing to keep track of one another. Knowing that Johnny or Susie is at soccer practice from four to six o’clock on Tuesday is more comforting and fits into people’s seemingly more organized lifestyles than does the idea that Johnny or Susie is off playing in the neighborhood somewhere until dinner.
Stars in Their Eyes experience (for example, a close score in a competitive contest), and (4) opportunities to reaffirm friendships during games” (Coakley 2004, 139). This is play at its best—sports being engaged in for their own sake. Children (and adults, too) engage in these activities to have fun, to be active, to meet the challenges of the activities, and to be with friends. One learns to get along with others (otherwise one cannot play), organize a large group of children (if lucky enough to have many children playing), adjust rules as needed to account for varying skill levels or changing environments, change teams in the middle of the game if the score is lopsided, negotiate disagreements as they arise, solve problems as they come up, and so forth. Why does it seem that today only formal, adultcontrolled sports exist and that we rarely see informal, player-controlled sports? The issues of safety, scheduling, and scholarships come into play here. Parents are more worried about letting their children just play “in the neighborhood,” be it out front of the home or at the local playground. They would rather have their children inside the home or in the backyard or at a game
Visions of college scholarships and even professional careers also drive parents to sign up their children for sports leagues in the hopes that their children will be the ones lucky enough to “make it.” Making it means not having to pay for college (a considerable expense these days) or even reaping the benefits of a professional career. Of course, few children receive scholarships, and even fewer make it to the professional ranks, but each parent thinks that her or his child might be “the one” and that participating in an organized league, rather than letting Johnny or Susie just play in the neighborhood, is the path. Formal, adult-controlled sports take on the characteristics of the institutionalized sports noted earlier. This is not to imply that anything is wrong per se with formal, adult-controlled sports. They have their place in society and can serve an important function in teaching children and adolescents the rules of games, helping children develop skills, teaching children how to work together as a team, and other aspects of “learning the game.” However, formal sports leagues are only as good as the parents and coaches who organize them, and too often parents and coaches adopt an almost professional sports model, emphasizing winning above all else and
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Play vs. Organized Sport Sacrilegious Sunday Baseball In the 1908 poem below, author William Kirk pokes fun at the proper lady who is outraged by the “frolicking urchins” who play ball on Sunday. The East Side Terrors were playing the Slashers, Piling up hits, assists and errors. Far from their stuffy tenement homes That cluster thicker than honeycombs They ran the bases ’neath shady trees And were cooled by the Hudson’s gentle breeze. Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray, Coming from church, chanced to drive that way. She saw the frolicking urchins there, Their shrill cries splitting the Sabbath air. “Mercy!” she muttered, “this must stop!” And promptly proceeded to call a cop, And the cop swooped down on the luckless boys, Stopping their frivolous Sunday joys.
behaving in ways (Little League Parent Syndrome) that would be embarrassing even in professional contexts. Administered correctly, with coaches and parents emphasizing having fun, participating, learning skills, and being active, organized sport can be a wonderful adjunct to the informal, player-controlled sports that are so important in the psychosocial development of children. Ideally, the goal should not be debating play versus organized sport, but rather achieving a combination of the two wherein children and adolescents reap the benefits of both to facilitate their psychosocial, physical, and skill development. Michael Sachs See also Youth Sports
Further Reading Coakley, J. (2004). Sports in society: Issues & controversies (8th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray Spoke to her coachman and drove away Through beautiful parks and shady roads Past splashing fountains and rich abodes. Reaching home, she was heard to say “How awful to break the Sabbath day!” The Terrors and Slashers, side by side, Started their stifling Subway ride Down through the city, ever down To the warping walls of Tenement Town. Reaching their homes, the troublesome tots Crept away to their shabby cots, And thought of the far off West Side trees And the cool green grass, and the gentle breeze, And how they had played their baseball game Till the beautiful Christian lady came. Source: Kirk, W. (1908, May). Sunday baseball. Baseball Magazine, p. 29.
Play-by-Play Announcing
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ew sports fans in the twenty-first century could imagine watching or listening to their favorite sporting events without commentary. No matter whether they are listening in the car or glued to the TV screen, it is the voices of the announcers that take them to where the action is. On radio the announcers’ voices create the pictures that allow listeners to imagine the play. On television the announcers bring meaning to the kaleidoscope of images and sounds that make up live sports coverage. They turn the mix of slow motion, instant replay, and close-up images, graphics, and highquality sound into a coherent narrative that is a large part of the enjoyment of televised sports. As media scholar David Rowe summarizes: “What is required of the sports commentator . . . is to enhance the experi-
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Sports is the toy department of human life. ■ HOWARD COSELL
ence of watching by various means—through poetic powers of description and evocation . . . to provide supplementary information . . . to supply the kind of ‘insider,’ expert knowledge that is gained by playing sport at the highest levels” (2004, 122). In most Western nations today, more spectators experience their sports via television than attend events live. Advances in technology have also meant that viewing at home is a superior experience to watching live in the stadium. “Viewers may lose out on uniquely atmospheric moments of the sporting drama, but their perspective is enhanced in other ways which can make live spectating a humdrum experience” (Barnett 1990, 155).
The Broadcast Team Live sports television is a high-pressure, high-stakes environment, particularly for announcers who are the public faces and voices of the production team. Overall, their role is to describe and dramatize the action, provide historical and contextual information, and evaluate performance and game flow. Getting all this correct is a challenging task, made no easier by the knowledge that their every word is avidly picked over by fans who take great pleasure in noting mistakes. The usual mix includes two announcers—a play-byplay announcer and an expert analyst, also known as a color commentator. The play-by-play announcer is usually a trained broadcaster whose primary role is to anchor the narrative of the game, calling the action as it occurs, identifying key plays and players, and providing regular updates on the score and time remaining. The analyst, usually a former athlete or coach, contributes when play has stopped, adding insider information and taking the audience into the minds of the athletes and coaches playing the game. “The advantage in this practice, and one still put forward by media organisations, is that the expert knows what it is like to be ‘in the middle’ of high-class sports action” (Stoddart 1986, 94). Increasingly, televised major sports also include a sideline announcer, who may be either a trained broadcaster or former athlete, who explains the state of the playing sur-
face and the game-time atmosphere, provides updates on substitutions, chats with famous people in the crowd and, in sports like football and rugby league, conducts postgame interviews with players and coaches.
The Beginnings of Play-by-Play Announcing From their beginnings with radio broadcasts in the 1920s, announcers have tried to recreate the atmosphere of “being there” for their audiences. The first significant live sports broadcast—a heavyweight boxing match in the United States between Jack Dempsey and French champion Georges Carpentier—was broadcast in 1921 primarily to theaters across the United States and Europe because so few people owned radio receivers. Major J. Andrew White, the announcer, prepared for the event by shadowboxing in front of a mirror and singing out each move to himself. Realizing that he could not describe each blow individually, White devised the practice of “collecting” punches that remains familiar to boxing fans today. Historian David Halberstam argues that “the experiment was such a success and showcased radio in such a glittering and indispensable light that it resulted in a proliferation of radio stations and spiraling consumption of radio receivers” (1999, 3). Despite this early success, regular live announcing of out of town events did not occur until the mid-1950s, when telephone technology developed to the point that it was cheaper and easier to send an announcer on the road. Before that, much “live” commentary was in fact a re-creation in the studio, based on information transmitted by telegraph from hundreds of miles away and embellished by the announcer to create the illusion of actually being at the game. Former baseball broadcaster Byrum Saam said, “Re-creations planted the seeds of our coverage—they were the nectar from which most listeners drank” (Schultz 2001, 4). Australian radio announcers are credited with one of the most ingenious broadcasts in radio history—the 1934 ball-by-ball descriptions of cricket Tests held in England that were
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Books had instant replay long before televised sports. ■ BERT WILLIAMS
recreated in Australia by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. “Short, descriptive telegrams were sent from the grounds to the Sydney studio where they arrived approximately five minutes apart. Scores, weather, field placings and other aspects of the game were all included. A studio team of commentators then ‘described’ play to an enthralled audience. Sound effects heightened the dramatic impact—a pencil tapped against a piece of hollow wood reproduced bat on ball, a sharp click of the pencil did for a boundary” (Stoddart 1986, 93).
Early Resistance In the early days of announcing, when sports organizations resisted rather than welcomed the broadcast media, access to events was never guaranteed. Many sports organizations so feared the impact of live broadcasts on gate receipts that they denied announcers access to competition sites or at least tried to prevent transmission of home games to local audiences. This meant, for example, that early Australian horse-racing announcers went to extraordinary lengths in their attempts to cover events. “Many commentators had to describe races while clinging to trees outside club premises or perched on shaky scaffolding erected in the front yards of houses overlooking the course. Authorities switched the race order at the last minute to create confusion. The callers developed marvellous skills under these conditions” (Stoddart 1986, 96). Even when they gained access, announcers seldom had the best seats. Instead, they were located far from the play with a poor view of the action. In American football “simply following the ball and identifying the players correctly were achievements for the first football broadcasters” (Oriard 2001, 46). Since early announcers described only what they saw on the field, their commentaries bear little resemblance to what listeners expect today. Analyzing radio broadcasts from 1926, Michael Oriard writes, “What’s missing is most striking: no ‘expert’ analysis, no prediction, no comment on who’s favored, what the
teams’ records are, what the game means in the standings” (2001, 47).
An Entertaining Style Maintaining the right balance between information and entertainment has long provided a tension within sports announcing. As Garry Whannel describes it, “there is on one hand the impulse to describe the scene, show what’s happening, give the audience an accurate picture, and on the other the impulse to get people involved, keep up the interest, add suspense, shape the material and highlight the action (1992, 26). American announcers are credited with the fastpaced, entertainment-oriented style of sports broadcasting that dominates television coverage today. The seeds for this style emerged early in radio when the personality of the announcers became as important as the news they were conveying. Beginning in 1923, American announcer Graham McNamee attracted radio audiences for the next nineteen years with his vivid, breezy, and colorful delivery despite grumbles from experts that he did not know the sports he was describing. Time put him on its cover on October 3, 1927, noting that McNamee’s bosses felt that “colorful, general reports are more satisfying to the masses than accurate, technical descriptions” (Oriard 2001, 42). Such was the popularity of boxing in 1927 that McNamee spoke to “more people at any one time than any man ever had” when he called the Gene Tunney versus Jack Dempsey heavyweight boxing match. “Beyond Soldier Field, 50 million people gathered by their home radios as announcer Graham McNamee . . . blurted out the news in his cracked, quavering voice. . . . Nine people died of heart attacks listening to that broadcast, three of them during McNamee’s blow-by-blow of the seventh round” (Nack 1997). However, the market-driven American model was not the only influential approach to announcing. The public service environment of British broadcasting resulted in a slower paced commentary style that focused on educating the audience. In 1952 the BBC guide to
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A press box above the stadium. Source: istockphoto/Saturated.
As technology developed, television’s offerings improved from distant, black-and-white, blurry pictures to clear, close-up, and colorful images enhanced by slow motion and instant replays. By the 1970s, when color television became more widely available throughout the world, “TV wasn’t as good as being there anymore—it was better” (Sugar 1978, 287). the new practice of television commentary “stressed the need to watch the monitor, to add to the picture rather than interrupting it, not to be afraid of silence, to leave the picture to tell the story” (Whannel 1992, 28). British announcers also recognized that differences between sports required a variety of announcing styles. “Cricket . . . needed an adequate supply of background information and the ability to keep the commentary going without obvious padding, without making the listener feel bored. With rugby football, the difficulty was to keep up the pace—getting out the words swiftly and accurately enough to tell people what is going on without lagging behind the play” (Whannel 1992, 27). Early radio and television announcers in sports such as cricket, motor racing, cycling, baseball, and football have built lengthy careers, some spanning fifty years. Some, like British motorsport announcer Murray Walker who broadcast Formula 1 from 1949 to 2001, became so associated with the sports they covered that fans could not imagine the event without them: “The drivers and teams changed, but for as long as most people can remember, Murray Walker—fast, furious and very flappable—was the voice of Formula One” (Hankin 2002). Racing driver David Coulthard said, “Murray made every race like losing your virginity. It was always that exciting” (Henry 2001). By the 1950s television had challenged radio’s position as the national provider of live sports coverage.
Monday Night Football: Attracting Casual Viewers In many countries live sports played and broadcast at night are now taken for granted. Yet, when Monday Night Football debuted in 1970 during prime time evening viewing in the United States, it was a radical break from traditional weekend afternoon games and largely expected to fail. However, under the guidance of ABC head of sports Roone Arledge, Monday Night Football took the focus on spectacle and excitement to new heights. It introduced three announcers, rather than the usual two, including Howard Cosell, whose critical comments on the first broadcast drew thousands of angry letters from fans. Cosell—“the man Middle America loved to hate”—so polarized viewers that he received death threats and verbal and physical abuse from football fans, but at the same time became a celebrity in his own right (Sugar 1978, 280). As Cosell describes it, in order to succeed, Monday Night Football had to transcend sport in order to attract casual male viewers and women as well as those who already knew the game. “Survival would depend, in large measure, on the guys in the booth and the entertainment value of the show” (Cosell 1985, 86–87). The show became an American institution by dramatizing the event and humanizing the players and coaches through stories that brought them to life and allowed viewers to empathize with them.
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Men forget everything, women remember everything. That’s why men need instant replay in sports. They’ve already forgotten what happened. ■ RITA RUDNER
The success of shows such as Monday Night Football, Hockey Night in Canada, and events such as Australia’s one-day World Series Cricket that focused on a showy entertainment style quickly showed that television could use this approach to expand its core audience of committed sports fans. As Steven Barnett points out, channel-hopping American viewers are unlikely to continue watching games with little obvious action, “hence the need to exaggerate the artificial drama, to contrive excitement, glamour and spectacle where none might naturally exist” (1990, 127). However, Britain has resisted this approach with cricket announcers showing “no compulsion to fill in the action gaps” and commentary directed toward fans rather than “the sporting ignorant” (Barnett 1990, 168).
Former Athletes and Coaches in the Broadcast Booth There has been much debate over the practice of using popular retired athletes and coaches as announcers. As Jay Coakley describes it: “Some people complain that exathletes have few skills to make them successful broadcasters, but most television executives realize that media spectators identify with athletes and also with coaches. So they put former athletes or coaches in the broadcast booth for entertainment purposes” (1999, 355). Most athletes and coaches move into the expert analyst role where they are expected to take viewers “inside the game.” Successful analysts have both firsthand experience of their sports and the ability to explain to viewers what they can see happening. One example is Marcus Allen who became a studio analyst in 1998 after sixteen years as a top NFL running back. CBS Sports president Sean McManus said, “Ninety seconds into Marcus’ audition, you could see that he had all five of the qualities we were looking for: high credibility, deep understanding of the game, ability to express that understanding, star quality and personality” (Lainson, 1998). Those taking up the role of former-athlete-as-analyst have faced criticism for their lack of training in the basic principles of journalism. For example, in comparison with newspaper journalists, they are seldom critical of
sport or sports organizations, in part because of their loyalties to former teammates, teams, and leagues. With huge sums paid for television rights to prestigious sports and the need to retain the goodwill of the sporting organizations who grant those rights, television companies in the United States have often acceded to sports organization demands for input into the selection of announcers, further reducing the likelihood of critical commentary. This means the announcer’s role “is seen as more closely resembling an ambassador and enthusiastic follower of the sport than an objective reporter” (Barnett 1990, 163).
Women Announcers Announcing continues to be dominated by men although women have made some inroads, particularly in televised sports that women play such as swimming, tennis, netball, and basketball. Women in Sportscasting: A Brief History identifies eighteen women, including Gayle Sierens (NFL, 1987), Robin Roberts (NCAA basketball, early 1990s), and Suzyn Waldman (New York Yankees baseball, mid 1990s) who are among the first women to have done play-by-play announcing for major men’s sports. However, the general industry belief remains that “when women call games which do not include female athletes, the listening audience does not accept women sportscasters as readily as men” (Schwartz 1999).
Influencing Viewers Announcers have considerable power to influence audience interpretations and understandings of sport. American research in the late 1970s and early 1980s showed that commentary that stressed rough or violent play, even when it did not exist, led viewers to see the play as rougher than it actually was and appeared to increase their enjoyment. Other research consistently shows that although commentary differs by nation, as announcers unconsciously reflect the values that are important in their countries, in each case it tends to reinforce rather than challenge dominant cultural ideas about issues such as race, gender, and national identity.
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Poland Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 1 Silver, 1 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics: 3 Gold, 2 Silver, 5 Bronze
The Future While the visual presentation of live sports continues to push the boundaries of what is possible—such as miniature cameras worn by baseball catchers or suspended trapeze-like above open-air rugby fields—the basic expectations of television commentary have changed little. However, with growing media consolidation and satellite technology taking nationally produced broadcasts worldwide, it is possible that existing cultural differences will gradually disappear in favor of something approaching an international announcing standard. Toni Bruce
Oriard, M. (2001). King football: Sport and spectacle in the golden age of radio, newsreels, movies and magazines, the weekly and the daily press. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Rowe, D. (2004). Sport, culture and the media (2nd ed.). Buckingham, PA: Open University Press. Schultz, B. (2001). Sports broadcasting. London: ButterworthHeinemann. Schwartz, L. (1999). Women in sportscasting: A brief history. American Sportscasters Association Online. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from http://www.americansportscasters.com/ Smith, R. (2001). Play-by-play: Radio, television, and big-time college sport. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Stoddart, B. (1986). Saturday afternoon fever. North Ryde, NSW, Australia: Angus and Robertson. Sugar, B. (1978). The thrill of victory: The inside story of ABC sports. New York: Hawthorn Books. Whannel, G. (1992). Fields of vision: Television, sport and cultural transformation. London: Routledge.
Further Reading Barnett, S. (1990). Games and sets: The changing face of sport on television. London: BFI Publishing. Bender, G. (1994). Call of the game: What really goes on in the broadcast booth. Chicago: Bonus Books. Bryant, J., Zillmann, D., & Raney, A. (1998).Violence and the enjoyment of media sports. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), Mediasports (pp. 252–265). London: Routledge. Coakley, J. (1999). Sport in society: Issues and controversies (5th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby. Cosell, H. (1975). Like it is. New York: Pocket Books. Cosell, H., with Bonventre, P. (1985). I never played the game. New York: Avon Books. Guttmann, A. (1986). Sports spectators. New York: Columbia University Press. Halberstam, D. (1999). Sports on New York radio: A play-by-play history. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hankin, A. (2002). Review of Murray Walker: Unless I’m very much mistaken. Amazon.co.uk online. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007126972 Hedrick, T. (2000). The art of sportscasting: How to build a successful career. South Bend, IN: Diamond Communications. Henry, A. (2001, October 1). Murray Walker completes his final lap. The Guardian Online. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from http://sport. guardian.co.uk/formulaone/comment/0,10070,561021,00.html Lainson, S. (1998). Careers in sports television production. Sports news you can use. Issue 46. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from http://www.onlinesports.com/sportstrust/sports46.html Morris, B. S., & Nydahl, J. (1985). Sports spectacle as drama: Image, language and technology. Journal of Popular Culture, 18(4), 101–110. Morse, M. (1983). Sport on television: Replay and display. In E. A. Kaplan (Ed.), Regarding television (pp. 44–66). Los Angeles, CA: The American Film Institute. Nack, B. (1997, September 22). The long count. Sports Illustrated Online. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from http://sportsillustrated.cnn. com/magazine/features/si50/states/colorado/flashback/ O’Neill, T. (1989). The game behind the game: High pressure, high stakes in television sports. New York: Harper & Row.
Poland
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n Poland, sport fulfilled—and still fulfills—an important role as a means of national identification because the state’s sovereignty and the unity of the nation have been historically uncertain.The Republic of Poland is located on the Eastern border of Central Europe. In July 2004, it had a population of 38,600,000 people and the city of Warsaw as its capital. Since 1 May 2004, Poland has been a member of the European Union.
Physical Culture By the eighteenth century, during the last years of the Republic ruled by Polish nobility, the first European Ministry of Education, Poland’s Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Commission of National Education, 1773– 1794), required the development of physical culture in the school system. From 1795 until the creation of the second Republic of Poland in 1919, the country was divided between Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Russia. Each part of the country took part in the process of social and political modernization in a different manner according to the policies of the rulers. This was a determining prerequisite in the nineteenth century for the development of sport and physical culture. The cultural
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Poland Key Events in Poland Sports History 1780s Physical education is made compulsory in the schools. 1867 The first Sokol club is established. 1912 Poles participate in the Olympics as members of the Russian and Austrian teams. 1919 The Polish Track and Field Association is established. 1924 The Polish Olympic Committee is established. 1928 Poland wins its first Olympic gold medal, by Halina Konopacka in the women’s discus. 1945 Under Communist rule, sports are encouraged. 1974 Poland finishes third in the soccer World Cup. 1990 With end of Communist rule support for sports declines. 2000 Robert Korzeniowski wins the Olympic walking competitions for both distances— 20 and 50 kilometers.
autonomy was greatest in the Austrian part of Poland. In Galicia, a regional Board of Education (Rada Szkolna Krajowa), under Polish leadership, was created as early as 1867. In the city of Lwów, the first Sokol club for gymnastics was created the same year. The Polish Sokol followed the tradition of the Czech Sokol, which was created in 1862 with the goal of emancipation from the Austro-Hungarian predominance. By 1884, Sokol clubs had also been created in the parts of Poland ruled by Germany, but the clubs were forbidden in the Russian part of Poland, except for a short period following the 1905 revolution. The Sokol movement in Poland tried to follow the traditions of the German “Turnen,” of “Turnvater” Friedrich-Ludwig Jahn (1778– 1852), with its nationalistic revolutionary nature. At the same time, the Polish Sokol adapted an eclectic ap-
proach to physical activities. Whereas German “Turnen” was adapted by the army as well as by the school system, French and Scandinavian influences could also be found in the Sokol. In Galicia, paramilitary exercises were also added to the program. Especially in the Polish diaspora in Germany and in the United States, track and field as well as soccer entered the curricula as pioneers of modern sport. By the nineteenth century, sport clubs, not connected with the Sokol movement, were established in Warsaw, Kraków, Poznan, and Lódz. One of the most important pioneers of the Polish sport movement was the physician Henryk Jordan (1842– 1907) from Kraków, who established playgrounds for children and youth, according to the American model, and who fought for the introduction of mandatory physical activities in high schools and for the employment of school physicians. The “skauting” movement, an adaptation of the Boy Scouts movement, fulfilled an important role in the physical education of the youth. Given the partitioned country, representatives of Polish origin could be found in the Austrian and Russian Olympic teams in the 1912 Games in Stockholm.
Participant and Spectator Sports The Second Polish Republic, created following World War I, was characterized by high percentages of national minorities, Jews, Germans, Lithuanians, and Ukraines, representing about 30 percent of the total population. Sport was to assist in integrating those minorities, both in daily internal life and in representing the state in the international scene. Many modern sport clubs and associations, both national and ethnic in nature, were created. The Polish Olympic Committee (Polski Komitet Igrzysk Olimpijskich; since 1924, Polski Komitet Olimpijski) and the Polish Track and Field Association (Polski Zwiàzek Lekkiej Atletyki) were created in 1919. The first organizations of female sports catered to the spread of sports among women. Polish athletes of both sexes participated in the Olympic Games with success, gaining twenty Olympic medals between 1924 and 1936. The first Olympic gold medalist was Halina
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Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game. ■ MICHAEL JORDAN
Konopacka, who won the women’s discus throw in 1928. The long-distance runner Janusz Kusocinski, who won the 10,000-meter race at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932 and who was killed while fighting against the German occupiers of his country in 1940 near Warsaw, fulfills a special role for the cultural commemoration of Polish sports. An important international track and field meeting, the Kusocinski-Memorial, takes place annually in the Polish capital. World War II and the German occupation were a national catastrophe for Poland, including the sports movement. An enormous number of people were killed and murdered. Fifty percent of the athletic infrastructure was destroyed. Under the leadership of the Communist administration following 1945, however, a phenomenal rise of the sport movement occurred because of the centralized direction of sports and massive financing of them. ■
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The Polish track and field “Dream-Team” earned seventeen Olympic medals between 1956 and 1968. Irena Szewinska was the outstanding figure of female track and field from the 1964 Tokyo Games through the 1976 Montreal Games—she gained, in the sprints and in long jump, three Olympic gold medals and two silver and two bronze medals. Szewinska, who is now a vice-president in the National Olympic Committee and has been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1998, built the bridge between the Communist and postCommunist eras in Polish sports. A further positive example of the “state-sports” era were the achievements of the national soccer team, which captured third place in both world championships of 1974 and 1982. Grzegorz Lato, Kazimierz Deyna, and Zbigniew Boniek were the stars of the team, and Lato is credited with the title of the top scorer of the 1974 world championship.
Sports in Society Following the political changes of 1990, the difficult transition from state-run sports into sports financed by private financial sources and organized by nongovern-
mental bodies took place. Poland could not compete with the monies offered in other countries, so large parts of the youth training programs disbanded and an exodus of top athletes into the professional ranks abroad started. Accusations of corruption and hooliganism prevailed in the sport of soccer, which had previously been a positive example. As a result, spectators began to stay away from the games. Conversely, further improvements could be seen in individual sports. ■
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Robert Korzeniowski, who won four gold medals in the Olympic competitions of 1996 (Atlanta), 2000 (Sydney), and 2004 (Athens) soon turned into a national hero, especially when he became the first athlete to win the walking competitions for both distances—20 and 50 kilometers—which he achieved in Sydney in 2000. Adam Ma’ysz was world champion in ski jumping three years in a row (2001–2003) and winner in the famous international competition “Vierschanzentournee” in 2000/2001. In female sports, the swimmer Otylia J’drzejczak has captured world and European titles since 1999 and won the gold medal for the 200-meter butterfly in the 2004 Athens Olympics Games.
The Future The further development of sports in Poland will depend largely on the success of Poland’s economic integration into the European Market and political integration into the European Union, and this is being recognized by ever-growing parts of the population, including those responsible for sport politics.
Governing Bodies Sports in Poland are organized by the Ministry of Education and Sport (Ministerstwo Edukacji Narodowej i Sportu, www.menis.gov.pl), the Polish Sport Confederation (Polska Konferacja Sportu, www.pksport.pl), and the Polish Olympic Committee (Polski Komitet Olimpijski, www.pkol.pl). Diethelm Blecking and Bernard Woltmann
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Further Reading Blecking, D. (1991). Die slawische Sokolbewegung, Sport und Nationalismus in Osteuropa [The Slavic Sokol Movement, Sport and Nationalism in Eastern Europe]. Dortmund, Germany: Forschungsstelle Ostmitteleuropa an der Universität Dortmund. Gaj, J., & Woltmann, B. (1999). Zarys historii sportu w Polsce 1867– 1996 [Outline of the History of Polish Sport]. Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland: Polskie Towarzystwo Naukowe Kulturej Fizycznej. Rduch, R., & Zwicker, S. (2003). Sport. In A. Lawaty, & H. Orlowski (Eds.), Deutsche und Polen, Geschichte-Kultur-Politik [Germans and Poles, History-Culture-Politics] (pp. 465–476). Munchen, Germany: C. H. Beck. Woltmann, B. (1999)., Lekkoatletyka w Polsce 1919–1994 [Track and Field in Poland]. Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland: Polskie Towarzystwo Naukowe Kulturj Fizycznej.
Polo
P
olo is probably the oldest ball game in the world and is the only major “goal sport” to be played on horseback. It has been traced back to nomadic peoples from the steppes of Central Asia. From there it spread quickly throughout the Persian Empire, China, India, and as far as Japan. Usually played by mounted tribesmen, there were a number of brutal, local variations of the activity. Polo often enjoyed aristocratic support and was popular as a method of military training throughout Central Asia.
The Practicalities of Polo The dynamic spectacle of both rider and animal straining to remain controlled while striving to gain an advantage makes polo unique. The rules of polo are simple for the uninitiated to understand, yet the tactical side of the activity and the handicapping system are increasingly complex. In practice polo is a game played between two teams of four players with each player fulfilling a specific role in attack, midfield, or defense. Each player is on horseback, and using a mallet the player attempts to strike a ball between goalposts at opposite ends of the field of play. The best polo ponies are specifically bred and trained for use in polo as agility is as important as speed.
The basic rule in polo that contributes to the spectacle and the uniqueness of action, relates to “right-ofway.” This rule states that the right-of-way extends ahead of the player and in the direction in which that player is riding. Players must only hit the ball on the right side of the pony. Safety of both players and ponies are key to the application of this rule. Matches last between four and eight periods of seven minutes each, depending on the event. Players have an official handicap that corresponds to their general standard of play. Ten goals are allocated to the best players, with minus two being assigned to beginners. It should be remembered that polo still retains a traditionally amateur aura throughout its organization and participation.
Historical Background The first record shows polo being played in approximately 600 BCE, with the Turkomen defeating the Persians in what is considered to have been a diplomatic match. Indeed, many of Central Asia’s key historical figures are associated with the sport. Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia were both known to have played the game in the fourth century BCE.Variations on polo are known to have existed in China, Japan, and Russia, but it was in Persia’s ancient capital of Ispahan that a sixth-century BCE polo ground was found. The British in northern India first encountered polo during the 1850s. History credits Lieutenant John Sherer with further popularizing it with British planters and soldiers. The pastime and its accompanying social aspects rapidly spread throughout India. Indeed, the Indian ruling classes and the British on empire duty enthusiastically took up the game. After Indian independence in 1948, polo almost vanished entirely from the subcontinent. This was partly due to the costs involved as well as due to the activity’s associations with the British Empire. In the United Kingdom, civilian clubs were formed from the 1870s onward by many who had returned from service abroad. It was not long before they had established their own match dates, which eventually led to the rules of the game being formally instituted.
POLO
This Japanese woodcut from 1877 shows a British-style polo match.
International Diffusion The growth of polo was static throughout the years between the First and Second World Wars, but polo in the United Kingdom continued to be organized along clearly demarcated class-based lines. Nowadays in the UK at least, this is less rigid a divide than it once was. While polo has traditionally been a game of the affluent, it remains a popular sport for those who have a link with either the farming tradition of working on the land or those from a military background. Many participants are dedicated to polo due partly to the excitement involved, but also due to the social distinction associated with the sport. For many the high cost of involvement is simply accepted as the price of participating in their chosen activity. It is worth noting that since the 1880s, there have been attempts to promote a version of polo among the working classes, using bicycles rather than horses. Despite having peaks of popularity in the early decades of the twentieth century, and having an international federation since the 1960s, bicycle polo remains a largely peripheral pastime. The proprietor of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, is credited with bringing polo to the United States in 1876, where the sport developed quickly. The main polo centers are located in the north and east of the country. Polo continued to spread in countries that had
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been British or European colonies to such an extent that the game is now regularly played in more than forty nations across the world. In terms of an international ranking order, Argentina is consistently ranked first in the world, followed by the United States. The other notable polo-playing nations include England, Mexico, Uruguay, and Spain. Despite the ongoing process of cultural exchange, and while many of these nations view polo as a spectacular sport, it remains a relatively minor one in terms of ascribed importance within many societies. At the top level of competition are such events as world championships, and the different championships between nations. These are followed by national championships of which the Argentine, U.S., and British Opens are the most prestigious. At a lower level are many and varied tournaments, ranging from gold cups just below open level to more minor interclub events. The only world polo championship took place in Argentina in 1949 with a victory for the host country. The prevailing amateur character of polo seems to have affected the attempts by those in control of the sport to significantly expand the number of participants.
The Future The underlying tension between popularizing the sport and maintaining its distinctiveness is best illustrated in the attempts to have polo included in the Olympic Games. Notably, to date these efforts have not yet been successful. It is important to recognize the specific structure of the sport and the related experiences of amateur and professional polo players today. Despite the undoubted spectacle involved, economic and conceptual barriers act as fundamental structural issues that will affect any initiatives to promote polo to a wider international and less-class-based audience. Jonathan M. Thomas
Further Reading Chelabi, H., & Guttmann, A. (2002). From Iran to All of Asia: The origin and diffusion of polo. International Journal of the History of Sport, 19(2–3), 343–365.
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Grace, P. (1991). Polo. New York: Howell. Hobson, R. (1993). Riding: The game of polo. London: J. A.Allen. Laffaye, H. (2003). The polo encyclopedia. New York: McFarland & Company. McDevitt, P. (2003). The king of sports: Polo in Late Victorian and Edwardian India. International Journal of the History of Sport, 20(1), 1–27. Meisels, P. (1992). Polo. San Francisco: Collins. Rees, T. (2001). Polo: The galloping game. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press. Watson, J. (1986). The world of polo. Topsfield, MA: Salem House.
Polo, Bicycle
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n bicycle polo, which derived from pony polo, riders on specially adapted bicycles use long-handled mallets to move a ball along a grass field, scoring goals through a defended goalpost. Skill and daring are required to move the ball down the field and to avoid collision.
History The first reference to bicycle polo described a game played in the United States during the early 1880s by the trick cyclists Kaufman and MacAnney, who rode Star brand bicycles. Star bicycles, used for bicycle polo during that era, were invented by W. S. Helley in Burlington, Vermont. Similar to a high-wheeler bicycle but with the smaller of the two wheels at the front, a Star was treadle-driven at the rear, not driven by cranks, chain wheel, or chain and sprocket, as are modern bicycles. The Star driving mechanism consisted of two ratchet-and-pawl clutches, one on each side of the rear wheel. When the pedal was depressed, a leather connecting strap caused the drum to revolve. A pawl on the wheel spindle engaged with one of the ratchet teeth inside the drum, and the road wheel was rotated. On the upward stroke of the pedal, the clutch went out of action in a manner similar to that of a modern ratchetand-pawl free-wheel. Thus, both pedals could be at the top of the stroke, enabling greater thrust. In Ireland during the 1890s R. J. Macredy, editor of the periodical Cycling, took up bicycle polo after he re-
tired from bicycle racing. Macredy’s touring club, Ahne Hast (Hasten Slowly), first played bicycle polo on or about 5 October 1891, while on a Saturday trip in County Wicklow, near Dublin. Although some people considered it a dangerous pursuit, even women took up the new sport, complete with loop frames and fulllength dresses. Within four years bicycle polo had also become established in England. As it spread to other parts of Europe, an international match between Ireland and England was played at the Crystal Palace in London on 28 September 1901 (Ireland won 10 goals to 5). In 1908 Ireland played Germany at an exhibition match at Shepherds Bush Stadium in London as part of the Olympic Games. In the beginning European bicycle polo (played in France, Britain, Ireland, and Belgium) modified the rules of pony polo to accommodate the use of bicycles, whereas in the United Arab Republic, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Ceylon, and Malaysia the sport was based strictly on the rules of pony polo. During its early years bicycle polo was an exuberant game. One goalkeeper named “Andrews” frequently saved a sure goal by his uncanny trick of swinging the mallet behind his back and backhanding the ball out of the goal—with both feet on the pedals. Another player, Len Baker, would ride straight through a group of players, flattening opponents left and right. He would then return, pick up a winded and muddied opponent, and politely announce, “It’s all in the game, ol’ man.” Ching Allin of the Norwood Paragon cycling club in England possessed the ultimate ability: He would scoop the ball up onto his mallet, cycle with it the length of the pitch (playing field), toss the ball into the air, and smash it into the back of the goal; the goalkeeper was powerless to stop it.
Practice Bicycle polo is played on a pitch that is a rectangular grass field 100 meters long. At each end are upright bamboo goalposts 3.5 meters apart and 2.7 meters high. The pitch is divided by a center line and 23-meter
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Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every day, like those of a baseball player. ■ UNKNOWN
lines between the center and goal lines. A semicircular penalty area with a radius of 4.5 meters is located in front of the goalposts; in this area the goalkeeper is protected from being charged or obstructed. The mallet has an 81-centimeter or 86-centimeter leather-bound cane handle and a boxwood head that is 15 centimeters in length and 6.3 centimeters in diameter. Players must hold the mallet in the right hand. They cannot use wrist straps, and metal must not be incorporated into the mallet head, although this restriction does not apply to the shaft. The ball is made of bamboo root and is painted white; it must not exceed 112 grams in weight and 8 centimeters in diameter. Recently players have had limited success using a plastic ball, which tends to last several games, as opposed to a bamboo ball, which usually must be replaced every fifteen minutes. As many as eight players—of either gender—make up a team. An ideal number is six, four of whom take the field (the fullback, halfback, and two forwards) along with a goalkeeper. The referee (on foot) is usually assisted by two judges and two linesmen, who are necessary because of the fast pace of the sport. Periods of play are called “chukkers”; a game consists of six fifteen-minute chukkers separated by one-minute breaks. At the beginning of each chukker or after a goal is scored, the players from each team line up on their respective goal lines to the left of the goalposts. The referee places the ball at midfield (the sprinters’ line), and at the referee’s whistle one player from each team sprints for the ball while the other three players ride down the field in covering positions to intercept the ball or the opposing sprinter, if he or she should gain possession of the ball first. Players must not cross the sprinters’ line until one team has possession of the ball to avoid collisions. Players then drive the ball up the field toward the goal. Players can use not only their mallets, but also their hands (but not to catch the ball), their feet (only if the ball is in the air, not on the ground), and the front wheels of their bicycles to block the ball. Players must not be dismounted while playing the ball (not even a foot on the ground), and playing the ball includes any contact with bicycle or body. Defenses in-
clude tackling (with the bicycle), shoulder charging, hooking a mallet, and riding off an opposing player challenging for the ball. Strict rules of play help minimize collisions, and penalties are levied for stealing ground before the whistle, playing dangerously, and deliberately obstructing. The two teams change ends when a team scores a goal and at midgame. Speed and maneuverability are most important; thus, the modern polo bicycle has a shortened wheelbase, fixed wheel, no brakes, and a low gear ratio. Anthony Bush
Further Reading Bartleett, H. W. Bartleett’s bicycle book. Bartleett, H. W. (1938, November 2). The story of bicycle-polo. Cycling. Polo on bicycles. (1896, September 26). The Hub.
Polo, Water
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ater polo can be traced back to Great Britain, where it has roots in both England and Scotland. In November 1868 the heads of six London swimming clubs met and founded the Metropolitan Swimming Association (MSA). At the same time they drew up an inventory and established a code of rules for all issues relating to amateur races, notably including a number of aquatic games. In what was called “water derby,” for example, swimmers rode astride barrels with wooden horse heads attached and used a crude type of oars to move around. Other games like a so-called “water polo” imitated polo, where the players perched on barrels to compete for control of a floating ball, using their oars as a crosse. And then there was “football in the water,” which consisted of two teams competing to carry an object to a determined place (often a boat), however they could. On 12 May, 1870, those in charge of the MSA (which soon metamorphosed into the Swimming Association of Great Britain, or SAGB and, later on, the Amateur Swimming Association, or
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Polo, Water An Olympic Victory Becomes a Political Message The Hungarian men’s water polo team won medals in twelve successive Olynpic Games between 1928 and 1980. As the Athens 2004 Olympic website points out, among all these victories, the Hungarian win in the summer of 1956 over the Soviet team was especially important for Hungary’s national identity. That fall, Hungarian citizens would launch a heroic (though ultimately ill-fated) revolt against Soviet rule. The Magyar supremacy continued in Melbourne in 1956, in a tournament held in the shadow of the Soviet invasion of Hungary.The game between Hungary and the USSR was a bloodbath, with fighting breaking out between the two teams. The Swedish referee was forced to suspend the game, which Hungary won
ASA) more closely defined the rules for this last game, taking their inspiration from the “football of Rugby.” Even so, until 1888 clubs practiced “water-baseball” or “aquatic handball” games that often departed significantly from the rules set by the MSA. This relative failure to enforce MSA rules left the way open for other initiatives. In Glasgow the president of Associated Swimming Clubs of Scotland, William Wilson, sought ways to spark interest in the swimming competitions put on by local clubs. In 1877 he used his knowledge of popular games to invent a set of rules for aquatic football. Two teams of three players each competed to capture a bladder ball. As this initial experience was rather unimpressive, Wilson worked to make the game more interesting and spectacular, this time using a basin and fresh water and changing the rules somewhat. He introduced a goalkeeper based on the football association model, increased the number of players to nine, and barred standing on the pool bottom. In 1879 this set of rules was distributed to all Glasgow swim clubs. From 1885 to 1888, the SAGB worked to integrate the English and Scottish sets of rules. An analysis of the eleven rules from the original water-polo code shows the influence of both rugby and football (soccer). As the rules evolved, however, references to football (soccer)
4-0. It was a victory with a political message because, as the Hungarians later pointed out, they wanted to use the match to raise the morale of their people. For them, victory over the Soviets and winning the gold was a matter of life and death. They became Olympic champions without losing a single match. The political events of 1956 had their effect on the national Water Polo team as well. Half of the champions at Melbourne refused to return to their country, while the captain, Dezso Gyarmati, who opposed the regime, went into self-imposed exile in the United States in 1957, and was barred from re-entering the country for two years. Athens 2004. (2004). Hungarian men’s water polo. Retrieved November 29, 2004, from http://www.athens2004.com/en/HungaryMensWaterPolo
gradually won out over rugby. Handling the ball with more than one hand was prohibited, as in football (soccer), and the goals resembled those in football (soccer). Water polo became less of a combat game and more of a passing game as free throws and out-of-play rules were established and the number of players dropped to seven. With a more or less stabilized set of rules, by the 1890s the game was winning over countries where there was a tradition of aquatic sports meetings. It became an appealing and spectacular “extra” in swimming events. In Europe it became established in Germany (1893), Austria (1894), France and Belgium (1895), and Hungary (1897). In the United States, it was practiced in Boston as early as 1888, and later on the West Coast. However, since it focused on a rougher game and rules that were influenced by American football, American water polo (still also called “softball” water polo) began to move away from the original principles as the Federation Internationale de Nanation (FINA), the international swimming association, began in 1908 to enforce the British rules internationally.
Nature of Water Polo Although the techniques, strategies, and rules for water polo were initially modeled after rugby and then
POLO, WATER
football (soccer), since the 1970s the influence has come more from handball. Basically, the game features two teams of seven players each, competing in an area 20–30 meters long, 10–20 meters wide and at least 1.8 meters deep. The ball is 68–71 centimeters in circumference and weighs 400–450 grams. Two referees and two goal judges are required for a match, which has four periods of live time (actual play) lasting seven minutes each. Besides the offside rule, the major aspects concern the ball, which may not be held underwater or touched with both hands at once (except by the goalkeeper). It may be thrown or pushed during dribbling but kept no longer than thirty-five seconds at a time. Any direct action on a player without the ball is prohibited, but the ball handler may be pushed underwater. Fouls are penalized by a free throw or a penalty throw, depending on how serious they are. Water polo is a sometimes violent contact sport, and women were left on the sidelines for a long time. Women’s teams have existed since the early 1900s, but only the Dutch during the 1950s, the Australians during the 1960s, and the Americans during the 1970s were able to pull women’s water polo out of the torpor it went into in the period between the World War I and World War II.
Competition at the Top Water polo is the oldest Olympic team sport. Although it was already around in 1896, it was not actually organized before 1900. Given the geographical origins of water polo, it follows that the most difficult regional competition is the European championship (created in 1926). A world championship has been held every two years since 1976. Except for the Olympic Games held in Saint Louis in 1904, the major international competitions of the early 1900s were won hands down by the English, who were Olympic champions from 1900 to 1920, followed by the Belgians. The French briefly picked up the torch in 1924, and then the game’s techniques and strategies were totally renewed by the Hungari-
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ans, who powered their way past the ever-increasing competition (first from the Germans and Italians in the 1930s and 1940s, then from the Yugoslavians and Russians during the 1950s and 1960s) to become the world’s top players. In 1956 their legendary match against the USSR—after the invasion of Hungary by the Soviets—at the Melbourne Olympic Games contributed to reinforce the Hungarian national identity around the sport. From the 1970s up to now, besides the United States, the water polo elite include mainly the Central and Southern European nations: Hungary, Italy, Spain, Greece, Russia, and the Baltic states. These are also the countries where the sport is practiced the most and where the only professional players are to be found. Women’s water polo also follows this pattern, with the addition of Holland and Australia.
Governing Bodies In the different countries where it is practiced, water polo is governed either by an independent federation or the national swimming association. Since 1908 water polo has answered to the FINA at the international level. In 1928, however, the sport was provided with an International Water Polo Board, which was created for the purpose of unifying the rules. In 1951 the board made an important break in tradition by ending the obligation for players to stop moving after the referee blows the whistle. Before, as long as the players were immobile for a free throw, the only possible defensive tactic during play was to stay in contact with the offense’s players to avoid being left, in case of foul, with an isolated player to whom the ball might be passed. From then on it became possible to use a defensive style of play whereby the offense’s players without the ball theoretically had more incentive to distinguish themselves. Throughout the century most of the changes proposed by the board were influenced by preoccupations with decreasing the violence, accelerating the game, and making sure all action is seen by the referees. Thierry Terret
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Portugal Olympics Results 2004 Summer Olympics: 2 Silver, 1 Bronze
Further Reading Charroin, P., & Terret, T. (1998). L’eau et la balle. Une histoire du water-polo. Paris: L’Harmattan. Keil, I., & Wix, D. (1996). In the swim. The Amateur Swimming Association from 1869 to 1994. London: Swimming Times Ltd. Rajki, B. (1959). Das wasserballspiel. Budapest, Hungary: Corvina. Rinehart, R. (1996, Summer). Fists flew and blood flowed: Symbolic resistance and international response in Hungarian water polo at the Melbourne Olympics, 1956. Journal of Sport History, 23, 2. Sinclair, A., & Henry, W. (1893). Swimming. London: Longmans, Green & Company. Terret T., & Charroin P. (1997) Les heures de gloire du water-polo français. Contribution à l’histoire des modèles de domination technique. Sport History Review, 28, 2.
Portugal
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ocated in extreme southwestern Europe, Portugal has a population of 10.5 million, including its capital city of Lisbon. Portugal’s sport history reflects European aristocratic sport and leisure traditions, with influences from other nations such as Sweden, Belgium, and Britain. During the Estado Novo dictatorship, sport and physical education became a political tool of the state. The end of the dictatorship in 1974 began a new era with renewed interest in the Olympics and in international sports such as soccer.
Middle Ages Fencing and horse riding, as well as dance, were a significant part of education for the nobility, from the eleventh to the end of nineteenth century. Hunting on horseback (montaria), with birds (cestaria), or with hounds, was an important activity. During the Middle Ages several books recorded the lifestyle of the nobility for future generations. For example, Livro da Montaria by D. João I (1356–1433) describes hunting wild boar on horseback with spears and a pack of hounds. Falconry was a popular form of hunting, and falconry books were popular, each one rich with details about bird behavior, diseases, and feeding. Hunting also prepared men for battle by providing practice with the bow and arrow, and was encouraging especially for
young men. Horseback riding was another important activity and a noble duty. Tournaments and jousting were always accompanied by other activities such as horse races, running and jumping games such as páreo, canas, tavolado, or bafordo. King D. Duarte’s (1391– 1438) Livro da Ensinanca de Bem Cavalgar toda a Sela written in the 1430s is considered the first horse-riding book in European literature Archery, péla (throwing a small ball sometimes with secret love messages on it), hand-to-hand fighting, and bullfighting were common physical activities. Other common recreational activities were ball dancing, feasting, music and singing, and games like chess, dice, and playing cards.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Fencing was another physical activity of the nobility and a symbol of their high social status. Several books were written on fencing, and one of the more interesting was by D. Francisco Manuel de Melo (1608–1667) —O Fidalgo Aprendiz (1665). It was a satire about all those who without any noble ancestry or fortune sought to social climb by learning to fence. In the eighteenth century the image of the nobleman was central to a philosophical debate in Europe. In this context three Portuguese intellectuals expressed concern about the education of youth by the dominant group. Martinho de Mendonca e Melo (1693–1720), António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (1699–1783), and Luís António Verney (1713–1792) called attention to the need of developing a curriculum that valued experience. Dance, horse riding, fencing, and swimming were some of the activities presented as having a positive influence on character building and health. In 1761, the Real Colégio dos Nobres de Lisboa (1761–1837) was founded to teach young aristocrats the liberal arts as well as introducing them to new areas of study, like geography, physics, and natural sciences, to prepare them properly for a changing society. Dancing, horseback riding, and fencing were part of the curriculum.
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The country is full of good coaches. What it takes to win is a bunch of interested players. ■ DON CORYELL
Modern Sport Modern sport has evolved through five phases. The first period, from 1855 to 1875, was marked by the founding of the first sport association and the publication of the first sports newspaper. The second, from 1875 to 1900, was a period of rapid growth with the founding of more associations, the appearance of more newspapers, and the spread of sports across the nation. The third period was from 1900 to 1925 and was marked by the consolidation of rules and regulations and cooperation among sporting associations. It was also during this period, after World War I, when aristocratic influence in sports declined. During the fourth period from 1926–1974 the Estado Novo dictatorship took control and used sport as a tool for political and ideological control with a focus on youth and worker sports. The final period began with the 25th April Revolution in 1974 and continues to the present. As elsewhere in Europe, sports developed in the last half of the nineteenth century. By that time, concerns with health led aristocratic and wealthy people to the seaside. In 1850 they organized the first yachting race
and others soon followed. The first Portuguese sports club, the Real Associacao Naval, was founded in 1855 and others followed: Real Club Naval de Lisboa (1892), Liga Naval Portuguesa (1902), Grupo Náutico Português (1925), the Federacao Portuguesa de Vela (1927). Sport took a bit longer to attract large numbers from the lower classes. Cycling became popular in the 1890s and soccer in the 1920s. Several newspapers were devoted to cycling: O Velocipedista, A Bicicleta, O Ciclista. The União Velocipédica Portuguesa was founded in 1900. Sports associations then appeared in greater numbers. By 1902, Porto had five sporting clubs (hunting, rowing, sailing, gymnastics and fencing); in 1903 Lisbon had seventeen, and twenty-three one year later. Sports books also proliferated, from five in 1885 to eighty-eight in 1936. The Estado Novo dictatorship (1926–1974) considered health and education as the primary national problems. Hygiene, health, and physical education became one of the major areas of political ideology. The goal was to change the old order so that Portugal would remain independent. Sport was seen as an instrument of ideological action, both in national and international terms, and promoting youth and worker (men and women) sports was a main concern. An athletic elite was seen as the symbol of national power. Sports medicine was used to find and select the best materia prima backed by support for sports such as athletics, yachting, rowing, swimming, and gymnastics in the schools. The 25 April Revolution
A golf course on Algarve, Portugal. Source: istockphoto/silikonski.
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ended this approach and soccer and the Olympics regained a new importance.
Gymnastics and Physical Education In 1836 Dr. Guilherme Centazzi wrote Consideracoes Gerais Sobre os Exercícios Gymnasticos e as vantagens que delles resultão calling the attention to the advantages of regular exercise for health and education. This brought gymnastics to the attention of education officials and it was introduced into the curriculum in 1836. Through the influence of Jean Roger, Paulo Lauret, and then Adolfo Filipe Simões gymnastics became more popular and a component of the curriculum for boys and girls. For years, gymnastics was mainly military and acrobatic. In 1903 the Real Gymnasio Club Portugues (founded in 1875) adopted Swedish gymnastics. The publication of the Regulamento Oficial de Educacao Física. Gimnástica Educativa. Jogos. Gimnástica aplicada, in the year 1920, underlined the interest of the state in a gymnastics in public education to build national health and education. The plan followed closely the work of the Belgian Lefebure (Une Méthode de Gymnastique Educative), and was totally inadequate for Portugal, which lacked a central education system and adequate facilities. In 1932, the National Assembly established a new policy based on Swedish Gymnastics. Sport was considered to be too liberal with gymnastics preferred because it encouraged structure and discipline. In 1935 the Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho (FNAT) was founded to integrate gymnastics, folk dance, sports, and outdoor activities to control leisure activities. In 1936 the Junta Nacional de Educacao was created as the central sports authority with control over all aspects of sports and physical education. The agency utilized sports medicine to identify the best youth athletes. Arsénio Cordeiro and José Salazar Carreira were two of the best-known directors of this center. Carreira took part in athletics, fencing, swimming, handball, rugby, and tennis competitions. He was the Portuguese champion of 100m, 200m, 800m and 400m, as well as in
400m hurdles. In 1944, he was nominated Inspector dos Desportos da Direcção Geral de Educação Física, Desportos e Saúde Escolar. Carreira was also a physician and wrote several books on physical education, sport medicine, and athletic training. The Organizacao Nacional da Mocidade Portuguesa (ONMP, or simply MP) was created in the same year to promote civic and patriotic pride as well as physical and pre-military training. Girls were included, for the very first time, in the national organization through the female section, the Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina (MPF), created in 1938. Gymnastics, games, swimming, and outdoor activities such as camping, walking, snow skiing, were promoted until the MP closed in 1972. In 1938 the Swedish teacher, Anna Ingrid Ryberg, was hired to develop girls physical education for the MPF. In 1940, the Instituto Nacional de Educacao Física (INEF) was established to train physical education teachers. Half the students were women. In 1944 the Estádio Nacional was opened.
Olympics Portugal first participated in the Olympics in 1912 in Stockholm, with six athletes competing in track and field, boxing, and fencing. Since then, Portuguese involvement has increased, both in the number of sports and number of athletes. Women competed for the first time in 1952. The first Portuguese gold medalist was Carlos Lopes in the marathon in 1984 and the first woman gold medallist was Rosa Mota in the marathon in 1988.
Sports Today Sports and physical activity is now important across Portuguese society. Soccer is the most popular sport and many Portuguese closely follow their favorite teams —Porto from Porto and Sporting or Benfica from Lisbon. Track and field, auto racing, wind surfing, yachting, and inline hockey are also popular. Watching sports on television is often a group activity in restaurants and bars. The government has been promoting golf to attract tourists and there are many courses near the
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Table 1. Portuguese Olympic Participation from 1920 to 2004 Number of Sports
Number of Athletes
Year
Location
1920
Antwerp
2
14
1924
Paris
8
24
1928
Amsterdam
8
32
1932
Los Angeles
3
6
1936
Berlin
5
19
1948
London
7
46
1952
Helsinki
9
71
1956
Melbourne
2
12
1960
Rome
11
65
1964
Tokyo
7
20
1968
Mexico City
6
20
1972
Munich
8
29
1976
Montreal
6
19
1980
Moscow
6
11
1984
Los Angeles
11
38
1988
Seoul
12
66
1992
Barcelona
18
103
1996
Atlanta
18
108
2000
Sydney
14
61
2004
Athens
16
79
Algarve and the Estoril coasts. Maintaining an ancient tradition, in the fall people hunt for wild boar, partridge, and pheasant. Swimming, boating, surfing, and wind surfing are popular summer sports. Portugal continues to host bullfighting, although it is far less popular than in Spain. It differs from Spanish bullfighting as the fighters ride on horses and the bull is not killed in the ring. Manuela Hasse
Further Reading Crespo, J. (1983, July). L’education physique, le sport et l’etat au Portugal (1932-1944). In Sports et sociétés contemporaines (pp. 75–80). VIIIe Symposium de l’ICSS. INSEP. Paris, July 10, 1983. Crespo, J. (1992). A História do Corpo. Lisbon, Portugal. Elias, N. (1975). La Dinamique de l’Occident (2nd ed.). Paris.
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Hasse, M. (1981). A Educacao Física no Real Collegio dos Nobres de Lisboa. Revista Ludens, 5(4), 21–28. Hasse, M. (1999). O Divertimento do Corpo. Corpo, Lazer e Desporto na transição do séc. XIX para o séc. XX, em Portugal. Livro da Ensinnça da Arte de Bem Cavalgar toda a Sela, que fez El-Rey Dom Eduarte. Edição crítica por J.M. Biel. 1986. p VIII. Martins, G. de Oliveira. (1981). A Sociedade Medieval Portuguesa (4th ed., pp. 185–208). Lisbon, Portugal. Sousa Viterbo. (1897). A Esgrima em Portugal. Subsídios para a sua história. Lisbon, Portugal. Vela. (1945). Enciclopédia Portuguesa-Brasileira. (Vol. 34, p. 453). Lisbon, Portugal.
Postmodernism
T
he term postmodern has become a buzzword, and people often declare that we live in a postmodern society. Despite the fact that theories of postmodernism have secured a prominent place in mainstream sociology, only recently have sociologists of sport turned toward such theories to explain sports or even the emergence of “postmodern” sport in society.
What Is a Postmodern Society? The term postmodern refers, at its simplest, to an era after modernity. The term originated in the artistic world, in which postmodernism emerged as a term that expressed dissatisfaction with traditional literary models, art, and dance. In terms of academia, and in particular sociology, the term was borrowed from the artistic world to express a concern, dissatisfaction, and frustration with existing modernist theories and modernist thought. Modernism refers to an era when people tried to organize society rationally, an era that has been referred to as the “enlightenment period.” It was an era when people thought that we can easily categorize society and that one truth exists about how society functions. In contrast, a postmodern society is considered less regimented. Social life and culture are deemed disjointed and fragmented. Some theorists celebrate this aspect of a postmodern society because it means in
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Postmodernism Postmodernism and Sports In the extract below, writer Nathan Bierma muses about being a postmodernist and a sports fan. Can a true postmodernist yell at the refs? Isn’t that forcing your beliefs on others? Is there such a thing as a bad call in the age of virtual reality? Or does it all depend on your point of view, your background, your bias, as so much supposedly does these days? Could it be that sports are the last part of society where objective truth is the norm? I’m not kidding around: I’m wondering what it says that the solid, fixed foundations of organized sports, where baselines and sidelines are columns and pillars of certainty, have endured in an age of questioning, satirizing and reimagining our basic assumptions about the rectitude of social institutions. Organized sports were established in the 19th century in schools as a way to teach discipline, morality and character. With their straight lines, umpires and thick rulebooks, sports are now a throwback to an age of reason, staying alive in an age of relevance.
society “anything goes.” This suggestion would indicate a mixture of tastes and cultural lifestyles as well as alternative lifestyle choices that have been widely accepted.
Sociology and the Postmodern Invasion We might fairly say that no definition of postmodernism exists, the term is so diverse that one author declared that “postmodernism is like jelly, not at all easy to nail down.” The term means different things to different people; however, certain ideas in postmodern thought differ from ideas in modernist thought. Sociology, including the sociology of sport, during modernism was dominated by the theories of the German political philosopher Karl Marx, the German sociologist Max Weber, and the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. These theories are known as “grand narratives” because they concentrate on how aspects of soci-
The court and the field are still rigidly rectangular. A first down is still ten yards, a made jump shot is still two points (except for the very postmodern threepointer, converted behind a brash curved line), and if you have a problem with that, you don’t play. [ . . . ] Sports have not been untouched by postmodernism. Changing stadium architecture, athletes recording rap albums, the rise of ESPN and the upheaval of gender roles have turned what was once a predictable, monotone, masculine sector of society into a maelstrom of change and a laboratory of social trends. Still, in a Western world that spells “truth” with a small “T” and where skepticism and skewed reality trump history and heritage, the pillars of sports stand firm. The sideline is still out of bounds and a swing and a miss is still a strike, no doubt about it. You either crossed the goal line or you were down at the one. No non-linear reality here. Source: Bierma, N. (2001, May 4). Two-point conversion: Sidelines, absolutes and postmodernism. Chimes, 95(27).
ety “fit” together as a whole, specifically the way people are constrained by the society they live in. As a result, these theories are often referred to as “macro” because they focus on the structure of society rather than on the individual. These theories have one grand theme or model, and this model is used to explain all aspects of society. For instance, theorists working within the Marxist paradigm (framework) would apply the ideas of Marx to understanding sports in the same way that they would apply them to making sense of, for example, the criminal justice system. Thus, what is being studied does not matter; the application of the theory remains the same. One model was followed because of the underpinning belief of modernism that one definite truth exists about society and that how it works is waiting to be discovered. After this discovery, a “better” society, one without inequalities such as class and race, can be created. How does postmodernism differ from modernism? Postmodernists reject these “grand narratives” because
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Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it. ■ CAMILLE PAGLIA
these theories are applied in order to find fixed meanings, certainties, and truths. Postmodernists do not believe that one all-encompassing truth is waiting to be discovered, and they criticize modernists for not understanding that society is too complex to be explained by one theory. Another shortcoming of modernism, according to postmodernism, is that it has failed to understand that different people experience different inequalities. Therefore, we cannot suggest that people from lower working-class groups have less access to sports because this suggestion ignores the fact that some working-class families may also face race and gender discrimination. The closest that we can come to defining postmodernism is to say that it is a rejection of the modernist search for truth and the era of “grand narratives.” For those people who embrace postmodernism, truth is relative, and they suggest that we would more adequately speak of multiple truths, which are situational. The impact of postmodernism on, for instance, social research is to cause people to consider research to be a representation of a reality and at best a partial and biased one. However, as Best and Kellner have suggested, “there is no unified postmodern theory, or even a coherent set of positions. Rather, one is struck by the diversities between theories often lumped together as ‘postmodern’ and the plurality—often conflictual—of postmodern positions.”
Postmodernism versus Poststructuralism Some people have suggested that some of the influential postmodernist theorists are Foucault, Baudrillard, Jameson, and Derrida; however, some people disagree about whether these theorists should be identified as poststructuralists as opposed to postmodernists. Andrews criticizes the tendency of authors who use these two terms interchangeably. He argues that postmodernism is an ambiguous term that refers to changes in social life from art, architecture, and cinema to sociology. Poststructuralism, according to Andrews, is a distinctly intellectual movement, and despite the fact that
poststructuralist theories are postmodern in the sense that they reject objective truths, the extent to which they engage with postmodern philosophy differs. Andrews seems to be suggesting that poststructuralism is a more precise analysis of academic theories and that poststructuralism can perhaps be considered as a subdivision of the postmodern movement. Therefore, he argues that Baudrillard and Foucault are poststructuralists. Such an argument demonstrates a lack of clarity and agreement among those working within the postmodern movement, especially with regard to defining terms.
Power, Sports, and Foucault The work of Michel Foucault has been influential in the sociology of sports because Foucault’s main work, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Modern Prison (1970), alongside The History of Sexuality, focused on understanding how bodies have historically become subjected to disciplinary procedures. According to Whitson, Foucault’s understanding of the “discipline and pleasure that surround the body in modern societies has much to offer students of sport” because sports can be seen as a product of a disciplinary society. Sports, according to Pronger, no longer promote freedom of movement. Sports are subject to and a product of scans, electromagnetic tests, training programs, and computer simulation. This fact means the sporting body has become strictly regulated by technologies, which in turn dominate the way physical educators and sports professionals practice. Markula, a sports feminist, uses Foucauldian concepts to understand the experiences of women who participate in aerobics. She discusses the way that these women, despite wishing to have an ideal woman’s body shape, ridicule the shape of women models and actresses as being unobtainable. This fact highlights women’s ability to resist dominant notions about them because they do not accept unquestioningly the notion of a perfect woman’s body. Power, according to Foucault is diverse and is operated in a variety of ways by a variety of people. Having total power is rare, and we
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Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men. ■ LORD BYRON
cannot create counter ideologies and therefore contest power. He also argues that power is not always negative because “where there is power there is resistance” (Markula 2003, 93). In every relationship power exists; yet, power, although it may appear unequally, is never uncontested and can be resisted. The work of Rail and Harvey offers an in-depth understanding of Foucault’s concepts, especially in relation to sports, power, and the body. They highlight the fact that in France a number of theorists use Foucault to analyze the nature of sports; yet, these theorists have been ignored by English-speaking sports sociologists. They also highlight the four strands of research utilizing Foucauldian concepts, which are cited in Andrews as (1) work that highlights the importance of Foucault’s work to academics working within the sociology of sport, (2) studies that use Foucault’s early work and archaeological approach, (3) research that uses Foucault’s concept of Panopticon and examines the way sports have become a “modern disciplinary power,” and (4) studies that examine Foucault’s work on technologies of the self and apply this to the study of sports. Foucault has become a popular theorist for those people turning to postmodernism to analyze issues of sexuality, power, and the body in sports.
Baudrillard, “Hyperreality,” and Sports Another major contributor to postmodern thought is Jean Baudrillard, whose research suggests that society has become so dominated by signs that nothing is real. As a result of the domination of signs he argues that everything that we think that we see is merely an image of reality and is “hyper real.” Hyperreality refers to the problem of distinguishing between reality and appearance. Baudrillard uses Disneyland in the United States as an example of hyperreality. Disneyland, he argues, is a place where nothing is real; it is made up of signs and images. Yet, because Disneyland presents itself as a fantasyland, people must assume that everything outside of Disneyland or any other theme park is real. Baudrillard argues that this assumption itself is an illusion because
U.S. society is so made up of images that each image is made up from a different image or from a variety of images. If this argument is true, then everything we understand about the society we live in, from the sports on TV or the Gulf War, is influenced by the images we are presented with. If we accept this theory, then we can’t distinguish between the reality of the game of football and the television, magazine, and billboard image of football. Because Baudrillard’s work has focused on examining and understanding events that are “mediatized,” and because we could argue that sports are a media spectacle, his work has attracted interest among sociologists of sports. For instance, Redhead says that because of the globalization of football, many people experience the sport only through television viewing. We may think that watching the sport on television is “better” than watching the sport in real life because of the benefits of replays and new technology such as Hawk Eye in cricket. Hawk Eye can “tell” the viewer whether the umpire’s “leg before wicket” (LBW) decision was correct. By computer simulation the program predicts whether the ball actually would have gone on to hit the stumps. This situation has led to media speculation about the role of the umpire in cricket and whether the umpire will be replaced by television cameras. Baudrillard, unlike mainly social theorists, comments directly on the culture of sports in relation to his theory. He cites a European match played between Real Madrid and Naples that, because of violence at previous matches, was played without spectators. Instead, the match was shown to fans on television. Baudrillard predicts that postmodern sport will have no spectators and that no one will experience the real event. Instead spectators will see only images of the real event. He is suggesting that sports will become “a pure event . . . devoid of any reference in nature, and readily susceptible to replacement by synthetic images” (Baudrillard 1990, 80). In some respects events such as the Olympics have already been replaced by “synthetic images.” Despite the fact that the Olympics are watched worldwide on television, because of the cost of traveling to the event and the cost of tickets, relatively few people are able to
POSTMODERNISM
experience the event itself. As a result, everything we think we know about the ethos (distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs) of the Olympic games is presented to us via the images we are given in newspapers, television programs, and magazines. These images, although presented as real versions of the event, are partial and themselves are based on other images and representations. Thus, Baudrillard would argue that we never truly know what it is like to experience the Olympics, that we experience only the image of the event. Baudrillard’s model suggests that the image has become the reality. For instance, from television programs that show live police officers in action, “real police” officers may get ideas about how to behave, so the virtual representation of what it is to be a police officer is simulated and becomes the actual model. If we relate this notion to sports, Baudrillard seems to be suggesting that the television model of sports has become the actual model that people would expect when they see live events. Researchers such as Rail have used the work of Baudrillard to look at sports culture and consumption. Andrews has used it to look at how the 1996 Summer Olympics were designed to encourage women viewers. Wenner has used it to study the hyperreal nature of sports bars. Despite the fact that these researchers have expressed caution about some aspects of Baudrillard’s theory, they insist that aspects of his work can help to explain the nature of certain aspects of postmodern sports.
Postmodern Controversies One of the main concerns that people have with postmodernism is the lack of consensus about what actually constitutes postmodernism. The term itself is “discontinuous,” and for this reason Dunning (1996) suggests that the term fails to “capture the balance between continuity and change in the processes which have contributed to the development of the present-day world” (Dunning 1996, 185). He goes on to argue that because social life will always change, why create
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a term such as postmodernism that suggests a static moment in time? Surely, he argues, to do so would mean that after social life changes again, soon we would have to speak of a post-postmodern society and then a post-post-postmodern society, and where would this end? Although careful not to dismiss postmodernism altogether, he criticizes the movement for being overly philosophical and theoretical and thus failing to provide research grounding for its claims. Do we really live in an “anything goes” society? Have the inequalities of modernism been overcome? In sports, in particular, we can point to continuing gender inequalities. Stereotypes remain about the capabilities of black and Asian people. Furthermore, homosexuality in sports is still considered a taboo. If these inequalities exist, then do we too soon speak of “postmodern” sports? To what extent can postmodernism explain these inequalities and ultimately eradicate them? These issues and controversies need to be addressed and clarified by scholars using postmodern theories.
The Future Researchers working in the sociology of sports inevitably will increasingly use the postmodern theories of Foucault, Haraway, Derrida, Butler, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Jameson to understand social issues in sports. Some theorists may continue to dismiss these theories and pursue a modernist agenda, whereas others may adopt certain aspects of postmodern theories and fuse them with modernist theories. The sociology of sports inevitably will follow in the footsteps of mainstream sociology in developing more eclectic ways of understanding the complexities and contradictions evident in “postmodern” sports. Philippa Cook
Further Reading Andrews, D. (2000). Posting up: French post-structuralism and the critical analysis of contemporary sporting culture. In J. Coakley & E. Dunning (Eds.), Handbook of sport studies. London: Sage. Baudrillard, J. (1990). Fatal strategies. New York: Semiotext. Brooks, A. (1997). Postfeminisms, feminism, cultural theory and cultural forms. London: Routledge.
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Dunning, E. (1996). On problems of the emotions in sport and leisure: Critical and counter-critical comments on the conventional and figurational sociologies of sport and leisure. Leisure Studies, 15, 185–208. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1988). The history of sexuality: Vols. 1–3. New York: Vintage Books. Jones, D. (2002). Contemporary theorising—Postmodernism. In I. Marsh (Ed.), Theory and practice in sociology. Essex, UK: Pearson Education. Markula, P. (1995). Firm but shapely, fit but sexy, strong but thin: The postmodern aerobicizing female bodies. The Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 424–453. Markula, P. (2003). The technologies of the self: Sport, feminism, and Foucault. Sociology of Sport Journal, 20, 87–107. Pronger, B. (1995). Rendering the body. Quest, 47, 427–446. Rail, G. (1998). Sport and postmodern times. New York: State University New York Press. Rail, G., & Harvey, J. (1995). Body at work: Michel Foucault and the sociology of sport. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 164–179. Redhead, S. (1998). Baudrillard, “Amerique,” and the hyper real World Cup. In G. Rail (Ed.), Sport in postmodern times. New York: State University New York Press. Wenner, L. A. (1998). In search of the sports bar: Masculinity, alcohol, sports and the mediation of public space. In G. Rail (Ed.), Sport in postmodern times. New York: State University of New York Press.
Powerlifting
P
owerlifting is an offshoot of weightlifting and weight training that emphasizes pure strength more than speed, flexibility, and technique. It is also an exercise format that promotes health and fitness, and its movements are utilized in bodybuilding and strongman competitions. At first limited to North America and Northern Europe, powerlifting achieved worldwide popularity by the late twentieth century.
History The historical roots of powerlifting are identical to those of weightlifting, traceable to strength feats that were practiced by the ancient Chinese and Egyptians and the Homeric Greeks. The legend of Milo of Crotona, the Greek strongman who devised progressive resistance training by carrying a calf daily until it became a bull, is also relevant to powerlifting. The powerlifter’s physique,
however, would resemble more the mythical representations of the Farnese Hercules than the streamlined musculature of Apollo, an archetype for Olympic weightlifters. Likewise, at the dawn of modern weightlifting in the late 1800s, the so-called strongman era, powerlifters would find greater inspiration in the ponderous strength of the Quebec colossus Louis Cyr than the more versatile showmanship of Eugen Sandow. But powerlifting as a separate athletic endeavor did not emerge until the mid-twentieth century. What did exist were various health, fitness, and training movements that resembled powerlifts. Most of them related to the dead lift. One of the earliest exercises was the health lift, introduced by Harvard-trained physician George Barker Windship in Boston in the 1860s. A partial dead lift, it utilized the large muscle groups of the hips and thighs. Later versions were often done with machines, using handles, yokes, and harnesses. Windship once harness-lifted 2,600 pounds. Another variation, once barbells came into general use, was the Jefferson lift, a dead lift done while straddling the bar. German-born Hermann Goerner was the greatest practitioner of the two-hand dead lift. At 6'1" and 220 pounds, “Goerner the Mighty” dead lifted 360 kilograms (794 pounds) in 1920. Only occasionally was the dead lift performed competitively. Similarly, the squat (deep knee bend) was never contested and rarely used to build basic lower body strength. One of the first weightlifters to realize its importance was Henry Steinborn who, as a German prisoner of war in Australia during World War I, became the first man to squat 500 pounds. Given the nonexistence of squat racks, he had to set the barbell on end, lean under the bar, and tilt it on his shoulders before executing the lift. Steinborn also performed a single leg squat with a 192-pound barbell. But the strongman most responsible for popularizing the squat was Joseph Curtis Hise of Homer, Illinois, in the 1930s. His technique of using squats to develop the lower and upper body was spread by Peary Rader, editor of Iron Man, in subsequent decades. Remarkably, the bench press, eventually the most popular barbell exercise, was not done.
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Powerlifting Costumes for Powerlifters on a Budget From the humor section of e-normous.biz, a website for and about powerlifters: Like anyone, I like a good Halloween party. Sometimes times get tight though, and you don’t have a lot of money to spend on elaborate costumes. Well we’ve got some good news for you. We have some great halloween ideas for powerlifters that won’t break the bank. We’re not suggesting that you go as a powerlifter, that’s too obvious. We do have some suggestions on how to incorporate your gear though. THE HULK: This one is very simple. 1. Buy some cheap green paint. 2. Throw on some clothes you used to wear before you started powerlifting and flex. 3. Paint any exposed skin once your clothes are sufficiently torn and you are instantly Lou Ferrigno himself.
Most resembling it was the supine press, with the lifter lying flat on the floor. Joe Nordquest of Ashtabula, Ohio, prone-pressed 388 pounds during the World War I era, but it was rarely practiced thereafter.
THE PRECOMPETITION ERA What brought the powerlifts into vogue after World War II was the increased popularity of bodybuilding. Then called the odd lifts, or strength sets in England, the squat, bench press, dead lift, and curl were utilized to develop the most fundamental (and showy) muscle groups of the thighs, chest, back, and arms, respectively. While they also promoted Olympic weightlifting (press, snatch, and clean and jerk) in their muscle magazines, Joe and Ben Weider of Montreal were the foremost proponents of this new approach to using barbells.
P OWERLIFTING BECOMES A SPORT During the 1950s the popularity of the Mr. America contest, sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and promoted by Bob Hoffman of York, Pennsylvania, drew further attention to powerlifting. But it was Peary Rader who first suggested the idea of a power-
FRANKENSTEIN: So you want to pull off a classic like it has never been done before. Powerlifters can pull this one off better than anyone. Break out that old suit of yours and a pair of work boots. Before putting them on, simply put on your squat suit, your bench shirt and knee wraps. Have someone help you get the suit on over top of this gear and you will have the Frankenstein walk down to perfection. To add to the effect, you’ll grunt every time you need to bend over to pick something up or sit down. The discomfort will eventually drive you insane until you take out your rage on all of the town’s people at the party. This could easily be the most frightening of all Halloween costumes this year. Source: Costumes for powerlifters on a budget. Retrieved March 8, 2005, from http:// www.e-normous.biz/powerliftinghumor _ 10.asp
lifting championship. By this time Hoffman, Rader, and the Weider brothers were marketing apparatus, squat racks, and benches with stirrups, for powerlift training. Finally, Georgia strongman Paul Anderson, a gold medalist at the 1956 (Melbourne) Summer Olympics, was a major source of inspiration. His unofficial 1,200pound squat, performed at a Reno hotel, had a profound impact on a generation of future powerlifters. The transformation of “odd lift” training into a sport occurred during the early 1960s, largely as a spin-off of Olympic weightlifting. In 1963 Hoffman launched Muscular Development as “the powerlifter’s organ,” and in the following year, he conducted a national tournament in York, consisting of the bench press, squat, and dead lift. At the first national powerlifting championships, sponsored by the AAU in 1965, superheavyweight Terry Todd of York narrowly defeated Gene Roberson of Birmingham, with a final dead lift of 740 pounds. By this time a national rules structure was in place, and powerlifting was administered by the national AAU weightlifting committee. The new sport grew rapidly, and the number of participants soon surpassed those engaged in Olympic lifting. In 1971 Hoffman hosted
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Powerlifting Powerlifters of Old These lines from Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake (canto V, verse 23) immortalize the prowess of the participants in an ancient contest of strength. Their arms the brawny yeomen bare To hurl the massive bar in air. When each his utmost strength had shown, The Douglas rent an earth-fast stone From its deep bed, then heaved it high, And sent the fragment through the sky A road beyond the farthest mark. Source: Scott, W. (1887). The lady of the lake. In H. Peek, (Ed.), Poetry of sport (p. 28). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
the first world powerlifting championships at York. The following year witnessed the formation of the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF), consisting of twelve countries, with Bob Crist of Hampton, Virginia, as its president. Increasingly, powerlifting was becoming popular in other countries, especially England, Canada, Scandinavia, Japan, and Australia. In 1975 the world championships took place outside the United States for the first time, in Birmingham, England. By the end of the 1970s, women were also becoming powerlifters. In 1977 Joe Zarella, AAU powerlifting chairman, organized the first women’s championships at Nashua, New Hampshire. It included twenty-seven lifters, the best lifter being Cindy Reinhoudt in the 165pound class, with a 360 squat, 210 bench press, and 375 dead lift. In 1978 women’s powerlifting gained official (AAU) status, with Jan Todd as first chair of the women’s committee. At the ensuing national championships, she deadlifted a record 453 pounds. In 1980 the first world powerlifting championships for women was staged at the University of Lowell (Massachusetts). Terry Dillard in the 114-pound class was the outstanding lifter with a 765-pound three-lift total.
GROWING PAINS Powerlifting, however, was plagued by image problems from the outset. As a result of its sudden growth and in-
formality, it was stereotyped initially as a junk sport whose participants showed up in bare feet, cut-off jeans, and tank tops. And since flexibility, speed, and free movement were not required, powerlifters adopted extensive knee and elbow bandages, oversized belts, stiff work boots, body wraps, and even bedsheets to add tensile strength and boost the number of pounds they could lift. Briefly in the early 1970s, the AAU national committee restricted such practices, banning knee and elbow wraps, but with the creation of the IPF, knee wraps were brought back at the insistence of the British. This compromise led to the addition of a host of other supportive aids over succeeding decades. No less serious was the problem of drug use, especially steroids, to induce strength. Although powerlifters were not subjected to the experiments of Dr. John Ziegler, “Father of Dianabol,” at York, steroid use rocketed through the sport during the 1960s. And not being an Olympic sport, powerlifting escaped the drug testing imposed by the International Olympic Committee in 1976. A 1983 report from the National Strength Center at Auburn University estimated that competitive powerlifting (at 99+ percent) had the highest ergogenic drug use of any sport. Not until the 1985 world championships in Espoo, Finland, did the IPF institute drug tests.
P OWERLIFTING ’S BREAKUP By this time drug and supportive apparel problems were exacerbated by a proliferation of powerlifting federations. This devolution of authority began when the National Sports Act (1976) separated weightlifting, powerlifting, and bodybuilding into autonomous bodies, with minimal AAU influence, resulting in the United States Powerlifting Federation (USPF). Then, in a dispute over lifter representation at the 1980 world championships, nine-time world champion Larry Pacifico formed a rival organization. Although a compromise was reached, further disputes over drug testing resulted in the formation of the more loosely regulated and lifter-friendly American Powerlifting Federation (APF) by Pacifico and Ernie Franz in the mid-1980s.
POWERLIFTING
The parent USPF remained more prestigious, with its IPF ties, but these internecine struggles led to the formation of other federations, including an American Drug Free Powerlifting Association, which, by the 1990s, had 5,000 registered lifters. When Franz relinquished his organization to Kieran Kidder in 2003, APF lifters were making the most spectacular gains, but by this time there were sixteen national and eleven international federations, including one for raw (nonsupportive apparel) competitors, vying for attention. Seemingly, their only common bond was Powerlifting USA, a periodical edited by Mike Lambert that covered all federations.
Prodigious Performances Despite drugs, supportive gear, and interminable controversies, the feats of individual powerlifters have been impressive. Most notable were those of Lamar Gant, who was world bantam/featherweight champion fifteen times from 1975 to 1990. At the 1979 world championships in Dayton, Ohio, Gant made a fivetimes-bodyweight dead lift of 617 pounds, nearly 70 above the world record. Ed Coan of Chicago was another all-time great, credited with a 2,403-pound total including a 959 squat, 545 bench press, and 901 dead lift (at 220 bodyweight), at the 1991 USPF nationals. But a three-time (1985, 1989, 1996) drug suspension in world competition hampered his brilliant career. Only in December 2000 was the 2,500-pound barrier broken by 375-pound Gerry Frank, with a 940 squat, 675 bench press, and 890 dead lift at an APF meet in Indiana. With continued advancements in supportive apparel, produced mainly by Inzer Designs of Longview, Texas, it is not surprising that records soared in the twenty-first century. In September 2000 Markus Schick, at 4'8", 152 pounds, bench-pressed 562 pounds, pound for pound the best bench press ever. At the 2003 Arnold Classic in Columbus, Ohio, Steve Goggins, weighing only 265, squatted 1,102 pounds, while Frank, in April 2004, squatted 1,085, bench-pressed 837, and deadlifted 881 for a 2,803-pound total. Most remarkable,
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however, is the 975-pound bench press performed by Gene Rychlak, 6'1", 380 pounds, at an APF meet in October 2004. Rapidly rising records were no less evident in women’s competitions. In December 2002 Becca Swanson, at 220 pounds bodyweight, laid claim to the title of world’s strongest female by squatting 705 at an APF meet in Nebraska, and Tina Rinehart, weighing only 132 pounds, bench pressed 402 at the Arnold Classic in March 2004. At the 2003 IPF women’s world championships, Svetlana Dedyulya of Russia totaled 1,449 pounds, exceeding Cindy Reinhoudt’s best lifter total in the same class at the first women’s competition by 504 pounds. Strongman competitions, an important spin-off of powerlifting, were first staged at Universal Studios in Hollywood in 1977 and broadcast on CBS Sports Spectacular for ten successive weeks. The first winner was Olympic lifter Bruce Wilhelm, but it was an IPF world champion powerlifter, Bill Kazmaier, who contributed most to the sport’s popularity by winning the title of world’s strongest man in three successive years in the early 1980s. Eventually, strongman events, featuring an international field of contestants and broadcast regularly on ESPN, exceeded Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting in audience appeal.
Powerlifting Basics The objective of powerlifting is to register the highest three-lift total in the squat, bench press, and dead lift. Each lifter gets three attempts in each lift, with the highest weights respectively added to his/her total. If a lifter misses all three attempts in either lift, he/she is eliminated from competition. In the event of a tie, the lighter bodyweight lifter receives higher placement. Officiating is carried out by a head referee and two side judges. At least two of three white signal lights are required for a passing lift. Strategy in powerlifting comes into play toward the end of the competition when each athlete tries to choose a final dead lift that will yield a total that other lifters cannot surpass. In the first lift, the squat, the lifter takes the weight on the shoulders from the racks and, on a signal from the
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referee, lowers it until the tops of his thighs break parallel. Then he or she lifts the weight to a standing position and, with a second signal, returns the barbell to the racks. The lifter may not move his or her feet, and the bar may not move downward during the lift. In the bench press, the lifter lies on the bench, removes the weight from the stirrups, and lowers it to the chest until it is motionless. On a signal from the referee, the lifter raises the barbell until the arms are locked out and, with a second signal, returns it to the stirrups. Feet, buttocks, and shoulders must remain in place, and the bar may not move downward while being pressed. In the dead lift, the lifter bends over, grasps the barbell with both hands, and pulls it until standing erect. On a signal from the referee, the lifter returns it to the floor.
Weight Classes and Equipment Men’s competitions usually consist of eleven bodyweight classifications: 52 kg (114 pounds), 56 kg (123 pounds), 60 kg (132 pounds), 67.5 kg (148 pounds), 75 kg (165 pounds), 82.5 kg (181 pounds), 90 kg (198 pounds), 100 kg (220 pounds), 110 kg (242 pounds), 125 kg (275 pounds), and over 125 kg. There are ten weight classes for women: 44 kg (97 pounds), 48 kg (105 pounds), 52 kg (114 pounds), 56 kg (123 pounds), 60 kg (132 pounds), 67.5 kg (148 pounds), 75 kg (165 pounds), 82.5 kg (181 pounds), 90 kg (198 pounds), and over 90 kg. Equipment employed in competitive powerlifting consists of the barbell, a steel bar that weighs 25 kg (55 pounds) and measures 2.2 meters (7 feet) to which cast-iron or steel disk weights are attached at each end on a revolving sleeve. The range of weights added are 50, 25, 20 15, 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25, .5, and .25 kilograms. All lifts are performed on a square platform that measures no more than 4 meters on each side.
Perspectives Since its emergence from Olympic weightlifting in the 1960s, powerlifting has attracted a large number of enthusiastic competitors worldwide. It has been dominated by the United States since its inception, the
twenty-first century epicenter of the sport being the Westside Barbell Club, coached by Louie Simmons, near Columbus, Ohio. Powerlifting has always been highly individualistic, attracting competitors who seek greater self-esteem, eschew team sports, and do not want to master the more technical Olympic lifts. Despite a promising beginning, the image of powerlifting became tarnished by problems involving drug use, supportive apparatus, and governance. And with an endless variety of federations and competitive subdivisions in the 1980s, the sport was trivialized, losing audience appeal and any possibility for television contracts or financial gain for its participants. Most seriously, as long as powerlifting is viewed by the general public as a subculture and a sport out of control, it will unlikely gain the status of an Olympic event. But as a training aid for athletes in other sports (including bodybuilding) and as a means to improve health and general fitness, powerlifting will continue to earn the respect it deserves.
Governing Bodies Powerlifting is administered by sixteen national federations in the United States and eleven international federations, the most notable being the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF, www.powerlifting-ipf.com) and the World Powerlifting Congress (WPC, worldpowerliftingcongress.com), with affiliations to the United States Powerlifting Federation (USPF, www. uspf.com) and the American Powerlifting Federation (APF, www.apa-wpa.com), respectively. Additionally, there are national federations in other countries and state committees in the United States. John D. Fair See also Weightlifting
Further Reading Anderson, P. (1975). The world’s strongest man.Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. Columbu, F. (1979). Winning weight lifting and powerlifting. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Fair, J. (1993). Isometrics or steroids? Exploring new frontiers in strength in the early 1960s. The Journal of Sport History. 78, 1–24.
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The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course. ■ BILLY GRAHAM
Fair, J. (1999). Muscletown USA: Bob Hoffman and the manly culture of York barbell. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Gallagher, M. (1999). Coan: The man, the myth, the method. N. p.: Coan Quest. Harder, D. (1993). Strength & speed ratings: How do you stack up? Castro Valley, CA: Education Plus. Harder, D. (2003, November). Dale Harder’s strength & speed newsletter. Castro Valley, CA: Education Plus. Hoffman, B. (1940). Mighty men of old. York, PA: Strength and Health Publishing. Pacifico, L. (1986). Champion of champions. Dayton, OH: Pacifico Enterprises. Radley, A. (2001). The illustrated history of physical culture. Preston, UK: T. Snape & Co. Strossen, R. (1989). Super squats. Larkspur, CA: IronMind Enterprises. Strossen, R. (1999). Paul Anderson: The mightiest minister. Nevada City, CA: IronMind Enterprises. Todd, T. (1978). Inside powerlifting. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Webster, D. (1976). The iron game: An illustrated history of weightlifting. Irvine, UK: John Geddes. Webster, D. (1993). Sons of Samson: Vo. I. PROfiles. Irvine, UK: Strength Games 90. Webster, D. (1997). Sons of Samson: Vol. 2. PROfiles. Nevada City, CA: IronMind Enterprises. Wilhelm, B. (n.d.). Pat Casey: King of the powerlifters. Daly City, CA: n.p. Willoughby, D. (1970). The super athletes. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes.
Prayer
P
rayer is a concept with many meanings. It can be a mental or spoken communication made to God or another object of worship. It can also be the asking of a favor, a petition, or a request to God or some other object of worship. Additionally, prayer may be initiated by individuals or groups and may be planned or spontaneous. People have responded to the implementation of prayer in sports with a wide array of emotions. Some people see prayer as an important part of the athletic experience, whereas others see prayer as pushing religion into sports environments, especially in public schools. In such instances the concept of the separation of church and state has built a large barricade on both sides of the issue. Coaches commonly have implemented the use of religious practices to supplement practical athletic tech-
niques or to help coaches and athletes deal with stressful situations. According to the sociologists D. Stanley Eitzen and George H. Sage, prayer is “perhaps the most frequently employed use of religion by coaches and athletes” (Eitzen and Sage 1997, 163). Prayer is used throughout professional sports, collegiate sports, interscholastic sports, and municipal adult and youth sports. People sometimes initiate prayer to develop a “we” feeling, using prayer as a form of team ritual, a means of dealing with the uncertainties of sport, a vehicle for bringing forth God’s intervention, or a way of making a variety of requests such as for safety in competition, good performance, and even victory.
Prayer and the Personal Freedoms The issue of prayer as it pertains to athletics is centered on the personal freedoms. We can trace efforts to establish the appropriate relationship between government and religion in the United States back to the nation’s origins. A central concept of the U.S. Constitution is that a civil society and civil religion need to be separate entities to function effectively. In issues of religion the federal government is to serve in a state of “benevolent neutrality,” establishing a foundation in which government is not to promote any specific line of religious participation, nor is government to stand in the way of people’s right to practice their religious beliefs.
Religious Freedom Clauses The First Amendment of the Constitution, as it applies to the protections of freedom of religion, provides two clauses: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. By establishing the freedom to exercise one’s religion and by prohibiting government’s establishment of religion, these clauses have established separate issues of case law (law established by judicial decision in cases). The basic concept of the establishment clause is that government is not to establish religion or force religion onto people. “The Free Exercise Clause embraces a freedom of belief and conscience that has close parallels in the speech provisions of the First Amendment, but the
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Prayer From an Ancient Tablet in Carthage I swear, whoever you are, invisible spirit . . . [horses’ names]. Bewitch their gait, their feet, the victory, the start, the life, their speed. Take away their victory, hobble their feet, trip them up, slice their sinews, cripple them, so that they can’t get to the circus tomorrow. They shouldn’t run or move about or win or make it out of the starting gates . . . nor should they round the turning column. They should crash together with their charioteers Dionysios of the “Blues” and Lamarus and Restituanus.
Establishment Clause is a specific prohibition on forms of state intervention in religious affairs with no precise counterpart in the speech provisions” (Sawyer 1997a, 355). The free exercise clause basically allows people to freely exercise their religious beliefs and “embraces the concepts of freedom to believe and to act.” These concepts establish that civil authorities are not to “intervene in affairs of the church from exercising its authority through the state” (Sawyer 1997b, 27).
Taking the Issue to the Courts “In the United States, many of the battles to establish the boundaries of religious influence on civil government have been fought on the playing fields and in the classrooms of public education” (Alexander and Alexander 2000, 130). The First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom, and more particularly the considerations pertaining to the establishment clause, were addressed in the court case Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe, et al. in 2000. Among the issues addressed by this case were the acceptability of “private speech.” The establishment clause protects speech by not allowing the government to endorse religion in the form of public speech. The Santa Fe case revolved around pregame prayers that were delivered over the public address system at
high school football games, administered by a studentelected student council chaplain. Two students—one Mormon and one Catholic—and members of their families objected to this use of prayer and filed suit under the establishment clause. In deciding the Santa Fe case, the U.S. Supreme Court made its most definitive decision to date pertaining to prayer in public school sports. In a 6-3 ruling the court held that public school districts are not allowed to let public, student-led prayers occur at high school games. The ruling established that prayers such as those at issue in the Santa Fe case are, in fact, public prayers and are not properly considered private speech. The court felt that even though the prayers were delivered by an elected student representative, they filled the role of public, rather than private, speech. The court’s decision was guided by the decision in the court case Lee v. Weisman (1992). That case held that a graduation ceremony prayer led by a rabbi violated the establishment clause. The court held that the government is not to coerce people to participate in or to support religion or the exercise of religion and that if such coercion were to occur it would establish a state religion of sorts. People have debated the role of the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. Many people feel that the abolishment of public prayer restricts people’s right to freely exercise their religious beliefs. Such was the feeling of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist in his dissent of the Santa Fe decision when he stated that the decision was flawed and contradictory. He stated that if that line of reasoning is used, even the national anthem would violate the First Amendment. The split in the court’s opinion is illustrative of the larger split in the public concerning the issue of prayer. Furthermore, the Santa Fe case concerned the rights guaranteed by the free exercise clause. People such as Attorney Misti Weeks (2000) stated that the Santa Fe decision shut the door on true freedom of religion as guaranteed by the Constitution. Some sports teams and organizations have attempted to maneuver around such court decisions. For example,
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An ancient prayer temple for priests at Tulum, Mexico, perhaps used in association with Mesoamerican ball court games. Source: istockphoto/
[email protected].
schools have ignored such decisions, fought them, and tried to invoke their own policies. People probably will continue to battle, ignore, and subvert the Santa Fe decision.
Additional Issues People need to address other issues that relate to school athletics and religion, particularly prayer in athletic settings—issues such as the risk of coercion, the risk of team conflict and disunity, and the risk of making students feel isolated and ostracized. Coercion has been a major issue in prayer in athletics. Courts have ruled against practices that are coercive, but coercion can be a double-edged sword. Coercion has been addressed in settings such as school classes that include subjects such as evolution—subjects that may be in direct conflict with students’ religious beliefs. In addition to the presence of team prayer, concern has also been expressed over silent prayer and casual religious conversation. Though individuals may decide to take part in private, silent prayer, such actions may be objected to if it is endorsed by team or league representatives. Such prayer may be viewed as a violation of the First Amendment if it promotes religion. Individuals should assess situations regarding tolerance and the acceptance in terms of the use of prayer and other forms of religious expression. Stifling religious ex-
pression opens the door to a variety of problems, including dissention, resentment, and administrative and even legal concerns. Concerns about the violation of constitutional rights, team disunity, individual isolation, and other issues have caused administrators to shy away from the issue of prayer, but administrators, as well as athletes and coaches, need to address the issue rather than ignore it. Prayer in sports is an issue of risk management. For example, denying people the right to pray could lead to litigation, as could leading a team prayer, game invocation, or other religious action. Indeed, the emotional and legal components of the issue of prayer in sports probably will create a tremendous “gray” area for some time to come. Jason Lee See also Religion; Rituals; Sport as Religion
Further Reading Alexander, F. K., & Alexander, R. H. (2000). From the gridiron to the United States Supreme Court: Defining the boundaries of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, 10(3), 129–137. Berry, L. (2000). When pray mixes with play. Athletic Management, 12(4), 22–30. Coakley, J. J. (1998). Sport in society: Issues and controversies (5th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby-Year Book. Colloff, P. (2000). They haven’t got a prayer. Texas Monthly, 28(11), 116–121. Dougherty, N. J., Auxter, D. A., Goldberger, A. S., Heinzmann, G. S., & Findlay, H. A. (1994). Sport, physical activity, and the law. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishing. Eitzen, D. S., & Sage, G. H. (1997). Sociology of North American sport (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Farber, D. A. (1998). The First Amendment. New York: Foundation Press.
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Sawyer, T. H. (1997a). Religious issues. In D. J. Cotten & T. J. Wilde (Eds.), Sport law for sport managers (pp. 349–361). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hall Publishing. Sawyer, T. H. (1997b). Separation of church and state: Are invocation and team prayers legal? An update. Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, 7(1), 24–30. Stone, G. R., Seidman, L. M., Sunstein, C. R., & Tushnet, M.V. (1999). The First Amendment. New York: Aspen Law and Business. Weeks, M. (2000). Establishment clause meets free exercise clause in Friday night football: With Supreme Court misguidance, Fifth Circuit drops First Amendment ball on the 1-yard line. Texas Tech Law Review, 31, 1803.
Court Cases Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe, et al. 120 S. Ct. 2266 (2000).
Professionalism
T
he level of professionalism within sports relates to status behaviors associated with the formulation of class and social groups within sports and is affected by the following: ■
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Eligibility criteria and status traditionally associated with sports Moral ambiguity Amount of commercialism Development and change within the historical context
In current notions of sports eligibility, merit often defines status, although not in every national, social, or sporting context. There is a significant degree of difference when comparing the practicalities related to professionalism. What further complicates this is that over time the emphasis on elements of eligibility has changed.
What Is Professionalism? Amateurism and the notion of the “gentleman” in sport became important at the turn of the twentieth century, particularly in Britain and the United States. The Henley-on-Thames Rowing Regatta was an annual
event that was patronized by the moneyed (or amateur) classes. The Henley Rowing Stewards were charged with ensuring the amateur and social standards of the event were upheld. The role of the Henley Rowing Regatta Stewards and the definition of eligibility criteria at the Olympic Games were crucial in separating notions of what constituted amateurism and, by extension, professionalism. The traditional notion of amateurism can be summarized in the following quotation: An amateur oarsman or sculler must be an officer of her Majesty’s Army, or Navy or Civil Service, a member of the Liberal professions, or of the Universities or Public Schools, or of any established boat or rowing club not containing mechanics or professionals; and must not have competed in any competition for either a stake, or money or entrance fee, or with or against a professional for any prize; nor have ever taught, pursued, or assisted in the pursuit of athletic exercises of any kind as a means of livelihood, nor have been employed in or about boats, or in manual labour; nor be a mechanic, artisan or labourer. (Lowerson 1995, 159)
In current usage, the term professional often acts as a compliment, although the specific use of the term can provide insights into the changing position of the professional within society. For example, golf retains some moral values and qualities related to amateurism while remaining openly professional in organization. The primarily English notion of the “gentlemen amateur” influenced the traditional Olympic notion of eligibility and, particularly, the status as described in the preceding quotation. The associations with the lofty ideals of muscular Christianity and the cult of athleticism developed within the English public schools during the late nineteenth century. The ongoing situation regarding the status and eligibility of athletes and performers was significant, in the sense that any infringements of the amateur code and its associated values usually resulted in banishment from competition. This was generally part of a haphazard process that emphasized the desirable aspects of getting involved in sport and doing so for the love of the game itself rather than
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It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. ■ LENA HORNE
for any particular result or reward that may accrue. These values became subject to change and adaptation at an increasing rate, especially as capitalism began to dominate the political economy of sport. As different sports federations began to establish their own eligibility criteria, however, inconsistencies and problems became obvious. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) attempts to control this issue were not always successful. Certain Olympic presidents have been notable in their stances regarding the eligibility criteria within world sports. ■
■
The founder of the modern Olympic Games and first hands-on president of the IOC, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, viewed sport as an end in itself. He believed that a person could not want more reward than to be able to participate in friendly and constructive competition within sports. This Corinthian ideal has looked increasingly dated once the different practices within affiliated nations became known, particularly following World War II. The American Avery Brundage, who served as IOC president from 1952 to 1972, was staunchly conservative in his views related to relaxing the amateur eligibility criteria. He even banned athletes for displaying sports logos on their clothing at the 1972 Winter Olympic Games in Sapporo, Japan. Brundage was a controversial figure because he displayed little flexibility in seeking to keep professionalism out of the games.
The situation regarding professionalism in different nations is directly related to how early in their histories each nation’s sporting structure incorporated an openly commercial emphasis. The precursor to open acceptance of a professional emphasis is the development of a commercial dynamic within the sporting context. Each sport has been influenced by professionalism in very different ways; for a significant number of sports and activities, professionalism is not an issue because they have not developed commercially orientated structures. Comparing fencing, archery, and rifle shooting
with the more high-profile professional sports such as tennis, baseball, and football shows that the former activities have not developed a commercially dynamic structure. This has been affected by the level of television and media coverage different sports enjoy and, in turn, has precluded some sports from developing professionalism. The quadrennial Olympic Games remain the pinnacle for those sports that have not yet developed a commercial emphasis. Current terminology suggests that something described as amateurish denotes that it is flawed or has obvious deficiencies. Notably, within sports reference it is occasionally made to a “model” professional, which refers to a talented player or competitor whose conduct on and off the field fits desirable values within society, invariably including fairness and politeness. Furthermore, reference is often made to the “professional foul” where cheating occurs in the interests of one’s team. The inference is that the professional foul is not something likely seen from a model professional. However, we should guard against transposing the situation at the elite level of sports to all those who participate in and clearly enjoy their sports. For many fans and occasional players, the act of competing is still the main pleasure of sports. Sports provide a means of detaching and distancing ourselves from the workplace and its environment. As sports performers participate in an event where revenues are generated, it is only a short step for them to demand recompense because those revenues depend on their involvement in the sport or activity. The process of change and adaptation within sports has been a slow yet inexorable one overall; however, the rate and acceptance of change has varied for different sports. In rugby, the split between the northern English clubs and the southern English clubs in 1895 led to the formation of two distinct sporting forms: a union of amateurs and a league of professionals. The eligibility criteria imposed by the southern amateurs were so strict that even playing on a rugby league pitch could lead to banishment from the union game. Given the fractured nature of class relations in late nineteenth century England, it is not surprising that attitudes hardened on both sides.
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The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination. ■ TOMMY LASORDA
Notably, almost 100 years following the split, the amateurs of the Rugby Union decided to open their sport and allowed professionals both on and off the field. There has since been an increasing amount of crossfertilization between the codes. The importance of this example, however, relates to the timescale involved.
Practicalities The exact relationship between the notion of professionalism and the development of commercialism within sports can be seen in the growth of professional organizations within the sports context. This process can be best described as the professionalization of the sporting structure. Many believe that amateurism within sports is still desirable. This is evident within the Olympic context, where the authorities still relate some of the robust and worthy qualities associated with amateurism to the ongoing Olympics project, even though the term amateur was officially removed from the Olympic Charter in 1972. Professionalism as a concept that affects the sporting context was first developed during the early stages of commodification and codification of sports in the United States.The team owners and governing bodies were quick to emphasize the business and commercial aspects of sport, but professional players in the main team sports have only had a significant role in controlling their careers since the early 1970s.The anachronistic position of the reserve system was partly perpetuated by the antitrust exemption enjoyed by professional sports and by the paternalist position of many sports franchise owners. The development of sports as an integral part of U.S. culture (as well as the association of particular sports and pastimes with notions of American citizenship) gathered momentum following World War I. The legal position of professionals in individual sports differs depending on the activity and even, on occasion, between athletes in the same sport. Their legal status often depends on what athletes must do to train and qualify for competition in their sports. This can depend on individuals such as a manager or promoter in boxing
or membership in a professional organization that restricts eligibility such as in golf or tennis. Professional sports make some pretensions to the notion of what constitutes professionalism within the wider society, with coaching certificates and a distinct language of technicality. As a distinct cash-flow dynamic develops, there is more open acceptance of commercial structures within sports. The lack of reverence associated with professionalism develops because the activity and its outcome are not ends in themselves. Traditionally, people are fearful of commercialism within sports because of an implicit belief that commercialism has the capacity to infect and destroy those institutions in which commercialism has become increasingly central to their culture. The centrality of gambling within East Asian sports places the commercial dynamic at the center of why sports are popular. The increased injuries in the Rugby Union since 1995 provide an interesting example of how this shift can have a detrimental effect on the practicalities of sport. Rugby World magazine has estimated that the incidence of incapacitating injuries in the English Rugby Union has risen fivefold since the open acceptance of professionalism. Current research suggests that a player’s livelihood can be affected adversely by not performing to a given standard. The implication is that a more professional emphasis in sports directly affects the practicalities of the sport itself. This example has significant implications for the players and the clubs, and, it can be argued, affects the ability of the sport to provide a spectacular product for the fans and spectators on television. Jonny Wilkinson’s ongoing absence from England’s international rugby team because of a recurring shoulder injury illustrates this issue. Of great concern is the reaction and attitude of younger, developing athletes because they must determine for themselves what is acceptable. Including professional athletes in the Olympic Games provides noteworthy examples. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, the U.S. basketball “Dream Team,” which included Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, signaled the end of amateurism as a philosophy influencing
PSYCHOLOGY
Olympic eligibility criteria. Notably, and rather predictably in this instance, the competition was little more than a procession toward the gold medal for the U.S. basketball team. However, the concessions made to tennis professionals at Barcelona meant that the quality of competition improved significantly, which the media coverage reflected. There are still differences in the practice of professionalism, with specific governing bodies of each sport determining their own rules and regulations. Although greater regulatory consistency within sports will remain an issue, it is not the biggest issue in this area. The status issue that underpins this topic and the significant influence of social control between the diverse groups within the sports context directly influence the development of amateur and professional practices. In many ways, the uneven distribution of revenues associated with professional sports forces a decline in the unpredictability of outcomes. This uncertainty remains vital to the success of sports and crucial to the revenues that sustain them. Without a broad range of uncertain outcomes, sports become predictable. The role of the amateur in sports is still significant, if only to provide some form of perceived moral strength and legitimacy for those professionals who, by implication, may have lost their moral direction and sense of sportsmanship.
Implications Professionalism within sports remains only a minor dimension in the decline of amateurism, especially compared with the more comprehensive opposing force of commercialism. Significant differences between national cultures usually affect those values related to sport. The professional emphasis in sports has led to increasing specialization by athletes. The downside of commercialism, and the attendant concentration of revenues at the peak of sports, means that to achieve success and access the associated rewards, some participants may consider trying to enhance their performances by resorting to illegal means. The effect of such professionalism on the actual daily practice of sports varies. Yet, the influ-
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ence of professionalism on sport is largely negligible— most participants will continue to remain involved because of their love of the game. Jonathan M. Thomas
Further Reading Allison, L. (2001). Amateurism in sport. London: Cass. Glader, E. (1985). Amateurism and athletics. West Point, NY: Leisure Press. Huggins, M. (2004). The Victorians and sport. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lowerson, J. (1995). Sport and the English middle classes 1870–1914. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Smith, A., & Porter, D. (Eds.). (2000). Amateurs and professionals in post-war British sport. London: Cass. Smith, R. (1988). Sports and freedom: The rise of big time college athletics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Staudohar, P. D., & Mangan, J. A. (Eds.). (1991). The business of professional sports. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Thibault, N., Slack, T., & Hinings, B. (1991). Professionalism, structures and systems: The impact of professional staff on voluntary sports organisations. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 26(2). Vamplew, W. (1988). Pay up and play the game: Professional sport in Britain, 1875–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Psychology
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he rapid evolvement of individual and team sports, as one of the most popular human activities in modern society, has attracted the attention of researchers as well as practitioners in a variety of domains such as education, medicine, psychology, sociology, industry, and, more recently, molecular biology and genetics. Sport and exercise psychology is the scientific study of individuals and their behavior in sports and exercise contexts—the academic discipline and profession in which the principles, methods, and findings of psychology are applied to sports and exercise settings. Sports as a worldwide cultural phenomenon has stimulated individuals to study its ancient roots, impact on human behavior, and contribution to human
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Your body hears everything your mind says. ■ NAOMI JUDD
development. However, formal sports such as basketball, boxing, soccer, and track and field are only part of active human life. Individuals also take part in other activities that demand physical and mental effort, such as scuba diving and mountain climbing. These individuals are searching for new adventures and challenges to meet their unique personal goals. Other individuals show interest in moderate physical activities such as yoga, Feldenkrais, and tai chi, or in recreational and leisure activities such as walking and fishing. Researchers and practitioners want to understand the motives for participation in these types of activities and their influence on the active participant’s behavior. The increased number of individuals who have become active in sports and exercise has led to other worldwide phenomena: The number of spectators who watch sports events, either at the stadium, gym, or pool or on their home TV screens, has increased dramatically, and large parts of the population—male and female and young and adult—now spend a great deal of time watching sporting events, many of them on a daily basis. Given that the annual number of national and international sport events has gradually increased, and that many of these events are frequently televised worldwide, many individuals from countries all over the globe have become addicted to watching sporting events. Researchers and practitioners are interested in studying why sport has become such a powerful attraction for sport spectators and have attempted to explore why, for many spectators, sport has emerged as a secondary or even a primary religion. The physical activities of the body are planned, directed, and controlled by the human mind. Thus, biological and physical factors must be involved in any theoretical discussion aimed at understanding why individuals decide to participate in a sports activity or in any activity that requires exercise. Sport scholars agree, however, that psychological factors are also involved in the selection of the activity and in other decisions made by the individual that are related to the selected activity, such as the following:
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Number of activity sessions in which the individual participates Amount of time he or she spends on the selected activity Intensity level involved
The discipline of sport and exercise psychology attempts to study those psychological factors involved in sports and exercise, as well as in other modes of physical activity to understand the following: 1. Why individuals and groups are eager to invest so much time and energy in improving their kicking, jumping, running, throwing, and other sporting skills 2. How individuals who are involved in sports activities can enhance the physical, motor, cognitive, and social skills that are related to sporting activities 3. What the impact of the sports activity is on those individuals and teams
Scope During the second half of the twentieth century, sport psychology began to emerge from its origins in the academic interests of physical educators. Slowly at first, and then ever more rapidly, sport psychology influenced elite sports and mass participation before expanding more generally into exercise and physical activity. Starting largely in Western countries known for their high involvement in sports, sport psychology has spread around the world, closely following the globalization of sport. The discipline of sport and exercise psychology denotes a subcategory of psychology that focuses on athletes, exercisers, and physical activity participants. Researchers and practitioners aim to identify principles and guidelines that can be applied by professionals such as coaches, physical educators, consultants, and administrators in helping individuals benefit from the experience of sports and exercise. Sport psychology knowledge is applied to a broad range of individuals. Elite athletes have benefited from theoretical and practical knowledge in sport psychology, as have children, youth, disabled individuals, children-at-risk, seniors,
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and individuals who participate in sports and exercise “just for the fun of it.” Theoretical and practical knowledge in sport and exercise psychology is necessary for those involved in sport and exercise settings, as the following examples show: ■
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Case 1. Tom is an eighteen-year-old basketball player on a high school team. In the final games of the season, he did poorly when standing on the line; he made the basket only five of seventeen attempts. His self-confidence dramatically decreased, and he realized that poor free-throw performances would lessen his chances of playing for the team. Case 2. Natalie is a nineteen-year old soccer player and a member of the college team. During her first year, she was highly motivated to excel. She performed well on and off the court and became a role model for the other players. However, at the start of the second year, she had lost her mental energy for playing. Her motivation was low; she missed many practices and arrived late at many others. Case 3. David is a forty-five-year-old pharmacologist. He had been working in a large firm and had become a manager of a large pharmacy store in his hometown. He knew most of his clients personally and used to spend a few hours each day talking to them. However, during the last several weeks, he preferred to be left alone in his office. He started to feel unhappy about his body and gained 15 kg during the last two years. Although he had started to exercise in the local fitness club, he did not lose any weight.
Sports and exercise psychologists could help the performance of these individuals and help improve their attitudes and mental outlooks.
Research, Teaching, and Consultation Within sport and exercise psychology subdivisions, contemporary sport psychologists pursue and serve three major professional roles: conducting research, teaching, and consulting
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RESEARCH To advance theoretical and practical knowledge in the area of sport and exercise psychology, laboratory and field investigations have been conducted on a variety of issues, including the following: ■
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Motivation in sports and exercise—intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, achievement motivation, and attributions in sport Psychological techniques for individual performance —goal setting in sports, imagery, self-confidence, and self-regulations techniques Skill acquisition—feedback, attention, and developmental stages in motor learning Psychological characteristics of high-level performance —modeling, personality and the athlete, development of talent in sports, stress and anxiety, self-efficacy, and psychophysiology of sports and exercise Exercise and health psychology—physical activity and mental health, injury risk and prevention, and injury rehabilitation Life-span development—moral development and behavior in sports, career termination among athletes, and psychological considerations in youth sports
Research findings emerging from laboratory and field inquiries can be found in a variety of international scientific journals in sport and exercise psychology, including the following: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology Journal of Applied Sport Psychology Sport Psychologist International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology Psychology of Sport and Exercise
Scientific and applied texts on sport and exercise psychology are also widely available today for sport psychology students, professionals, and the public at large.
TEACHING Academic programs in sport and exercise psychology exist in almost every country. Students can study courses
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in many areas related to sport and exercise psychology, such as the following: ■ ■ ■ ■
Sports psychology Exercise psychology Psychology of coaching Applied sport psychology
These courses are taught at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Certification in sport and exercise psychology can be obtained in only a few countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, Germany, and Italy). The reason for the low number of certification processes is that many countries have disputes about which organization may provide certification in sport and exercise psychology: Psychology departments within the academic institutions insist that the certification process should be under their academic representation, whereas the human movement departments believe that they should provide the certification process.
munication. Another educational objective is to emphasize a fair play approach among competitive athletes and teams, as well as among spectators. Educational sport psychologists are not required to be clinical psychologists. Instead, they should have extensive training in sport and exercise science, physical education, and kinesiology. In addition, they are advised to take advanced classes in psychology and counseling.
Sport Psychology Societies Interest in sport and exercise psychology can be found all over the globe. Interaction between sport psychologists from different countries is frequent, often occurring at scientific and applied conferences. A few active worldwide and continental societies provide professionals from different parts of the world with opportunities to exchange ideas, promote theoretical and practical knowledge, present new research findings, and seek new, effective interventions, strategies, and techniques.
CONSULTATION
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF SPORT P SYCHOLOGY (ISSP)
Athletes and coaches have become aware of the benefits that can be achieved by effective implementation of sport-enhancement psychological techniques such as imagery, goal-setting, focusing attention, and biofeedback. These techniques provide the athletes with instructions as well as training directions regarding the use of effective strategies during practices and competitions. Sport psychology consultations are not only for the benefit of elite athletes. Clinical sport psychology consultations are available today for all athletes and exercisers, even those who develop serious emotional disorders such as depression and suicidal tendencies. Clinical sport psychologists are trained in clinical psychology but specialize in sport and exercise. In addition, educational sport psychology consultations are available for young athletes and exercisers as well as for school-age participants in physical activity. The main objective of these psychological consultations is to assist young sport participants in developing basic psychological skills, such as anxiety management, confidence development, and com-
ISSP, the major international professional organization for sport psychology, was founded in 1965 at the First World Congress of Sport Psychology in Rome to promote the development of sport and exercise psychology around the world through a wide range of activities. The principal activity of ISSP is the organization of the World Congress of Sport Psychology every four years. World Congresses have been held in Washington, D.C. (1968); Madrid (1973); Prague (1977); Ottawa (1981); Copenhagen (1985); Singapore (1989); Lisbon (1993); Netanya, Israel (1997); Skiathos, Greece (2001); and Sydney (2005). The International Journal of Sport Psychology (IJSP) was first published by ISSP in 1970. In 2003, the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (IJSEP) was established and became the major scientific communication of ISSP. The IJSEP provides an opportunity for sport psychologists from all over the world to publish their work and provides opportunities for communication, whether it is face-toface or in print, and has been and remains the major
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Sport inevitably creates deadness of feeling. No one could take pleasure in it who was sensitive to suffering; and therefore its pursuit by women is much more to be regretted than its pursuit by men, because women pursue much more violently and recklessly what they pursue at all. ■ OUIDA
mechanism by which ISSP encourages the development of the field internationally. More information on activities and initiatives of ISSP can be found in its website: www.ISSPonline.org
EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF SPORT P SYCHOLOGY (FEPSAC)
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF APPLIED SPORT P SYCHOLOGY (AAASP)
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AAASP is an independent, multidisciplinary organization of professionals and students interested in applied sport research and service. AAASP is the largest sport psychology organization in North America and encourages membership of professionals and students from around the world. The Association’s annual meetings and publications (such as the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, a biannual journal that focuses on empirical and applied articles highlighting the application of research to practice) provide a forum for discussion on applying psychology and sports science research to promote performance excellence in the athlete, the performer, and the person. See the AAASP website (www.aaasponline.org) for more information.
ASIAN SOUTH PACIFIC ASSOCIATION OF SPORT P SYCHOLOGY (ASPASP) ASPASP is a relatively recent addition to the roster of regional organizations that aim to coordinate the development of sport and exercise psychology across a number of countries within a specific geographical area of the world. The mission of ASPASP is to promote sport psychology in Asian and South Pacific countries and territories. Among its purposes are to 1. Facilitate information, documentation, and dissemination services among members with respect to sport psychology, 2. Organize regular ASPASP congresses and support the organization of symposia devoted to topics in sport psychology, 3. Advise and facilitate the establishment of national societies of sport psychology. For more information about ASPASP, contact
[email protected].
FEPSAC is composed of national societies for sport psychology in European countries; its mission is to
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Promote scientific, educational, and professional work in sport psychology; Maintain social and scientific relations between individuals and groups working in sport psychology; Encourage young scientists in sport psychology to be productive and active in the field.
FEPSAC organizes a European congress of sport psychology every four years, which is the most important scientific function of the federation. Visit the FEPSAC website (www.fepsac.org) for more information.
SOUTH AMERICAN SOCIETY OF SPORT P SYCHOLOGY (SOSUPE) SOSUPE helps organize and lends its support to the various sport psychology congresses that occur in South America. The society also organizes introductory and advanced seminars for psychologists, physicians, physical education teachers, trainers, coaches, and physiotherapists. Most of the academic activities of SOSUPE relate to providing introductory courses in sport and exercise psychology and seminars in psychology of coaching. For more information on SOSUPE, contact
[email protected].
The Future Sport scientists and sport scholars have predicted that sport will continue to be a worldwide cultural, economical, and political phenomenon. Sports, as well as any other type of physical activity and exercise, will probably maintain and even strengthen its highly regarded status within the modern society. Therefore, researchers and practitioners in sport and exercise psychology will continue their quest to provide athletes, exercisers, and the sport community at large with updated theoretical and practical knowledge through the following avenues:
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Success must be felt within before it can be seen on the outside. ■ UNKNOWN
1. Sport psychology will be actively marketed to professional athletes, professional teams, young athletes, and exercisers of all ages, particularly the middleaged and elderly population. 2. Graduate programs in applied sport psychology will become accredited. More certification programs will be available for professionals in the future. These programs will enable professionals to provide athletes, coaches, teams, and exercisers with theorybased psychological services. 3. Technology will play a major role in the practice of sport and exercise psychology. More athletes and exercisers will use microcomputers and minicomputers to record their psychological responses before, during, and at the end of the activity, and to be provided with instant feedback and advice about enhancing performance. 4. Sport and exercise psychologists will emphasize a health-related approach. Particular interest will be directed to the youth and the geriatric populations, with attempts to promote healthy lifestyles in early years that will be maintained in later years when exercise often decreases. Ronnie Lidor See also Motivation; Performance Enhancement; Personality; Psychology of Gender Differences
Further Reading Burke, K. L., & Brown, D. (2002). Sport psychology library: Basketball. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Duda, J. L. (Ed.). (1998). Advances in sport and exercise psychology measurement. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Lidor, R., Morris, T., Bardaxoglou, N., & Becker, B. (Eds.). (2001). The world sport psychology sourcebook (3rd ed.). Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Moran, A. P. (2004). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction. London: Routledge. Singer, R. N., Hausenblas, H., & Janelle, C. M. (Eds.). (2001). Handbook of sport psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Van Raalte, J. L., & Siver-Bernstein, C. (1999). Sport psychology library: Tennis. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2003). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Weiss, M. (Ed.). (2004). Developmental sport and exercise psychology: A life span perspective. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.
Psychology of Gender Differences
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n a television advertisement a few years ago young women argued that they would be better physically (have less risk of cancer and heart disease, for example), mentally (experience less depression), and socially (enjoy better grades, less teenage pregnancy, and greater career success) “if you let me play sports.” That ad indicates the corporate world sees females as athletes and athletic consumers. Moreover, a growing research base documents these claims and supports the many benefits of sport participation for women. Women’s sport participation has exploded in the last generation. Still, the numbers of female and male participants are not equal, and, more important, women athletes are not the same as men athletes. Gender does make a difference. To fully understand the psychology of gender in sport one must look beyond numbers, biological sex, simple sex differences, and individual differences between women and men to the powerful, gendered social context of sport.
Gender in Women’s Sport The Olympic motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“swifter, higher, stronger”), calls attention to the physical and biological nature of sports. That motto also defines sport as competitive and hierarchical. So defined, sport emphasizes sex differences, but most scholars who take a feminist or social dynamics approach to gender and sport argue that sport does not have to be higher, faster, stronger—on the contrary, sport might call for fun, flair, and friendship. Gender is a key feature of social context and social processes in sport. Gender varies with culture, and in fact, culture defines gender. Although biological sex is innate, all the meanings, social roles, expectations, standards of appropriate behavior, and ideas of beauty, power, and status are created by culture. Women are not born to wear high heels or high-top sneakers. And gender also varies with other cultural categories. For
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example, in the United States, field hockey is almost entirely a women’s sport whereas in India field hockey is largely a men’s sport, and in Australia and New Zealand both women and men play. To illustrate the influence of gender on social context, consider how gender affects interpretations, responses, and the possible approaches to the following athletes: ■
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A soccer player who lacks control and is prone to angry outbursts, A basketball player who is tentative and lacks confidence, and A sixteen-year-old figure skater with signs of an eating disorder.
Would a coach, sport psychologist, trainer, or parent behave the same with a female as with a male athlete? Trying to be nonsexist and treat everyone the same ignores the powerful influence of gender. Gender is so pervasive in society that it is impossible to pinpoint that influence. Sport is no exception, and anyone seeking to understand the psychology of women in sport must consider gender influences in the larger society and within the sport world.
Sport Psychology Research Research on gender in sport psychology largely follows gender research within psychology. Generally, that research has progressed—from sex differences, to an emphasis on gender role as personality, to the more current social psychology model that emphasizes social context and processes.
SEX DIFFERENCES The early sex-difference work, summarized in Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin’s classic 1974 review, assumed dichotomous biology-based psychological differences— male and female are opposites, and in practice we should treat males one way and females the other way. Today, however, most experts hold that psychological characteristics associated with females and males are neither dichotomous nor biology-based, and that even most biological factors are not dichotomously divided either.
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For example, while the average male basketball center is taller than the average female center, the average female center is taller than most men. For psychological characteristics such as aggressiveness and confidence, even average differences are elusive, and the evidence does not support biological dichotomous sex-linked connections. Serious criticisms of the sex-differences approach were made, and the failure of this approach to shed light on gender-related behavior led psychologists in the 1970s to turn to the study of personality.
PERSONALITY AND GENDER-ROLE ORIENTATION Psychologists focused on gender-role orientation as the relevant personality construct, with Sandra Bem’s 1978 research leading the way. The basic proposition was that gendered personality is not a function of biology. Instead, both males and females can have masculine, feminine, or androgynous (both) personalities. Advocates of androgyny argued that “masculine” and “feminine” personalities should be encouraged in all people. However, the masculine and feminine categories and measures were widely criticized as imprecise, and in a 1993 book Bem herself moved to a more encompassing gender perspective. However, most sport psychology gender research is still based on her early work. Overall, this research suggests that women athletes possess more masculine personality characteristics than do women nonathletes. This conclusion has been criticized as not particularly enlightening. Sport, especially competitive athletics, demands goal-directed assertive behaviors, and the higher masculine scores of female athletes probably reflect an overlap with competitiveness. Today most psychologists recognize the limits of earlier sex-differences and gender-role approaches, and look beyond the male-female and masculine-feminine dichotomies to social processes for explanations. For example, gender issues emerged in 1993 research by the author that used a multidimensional measure (competitiveness, win, and goal orientations) to examine competitive orientations. As might be expected,
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Tough-guy boy football players. Source: istockphoto.com/ pbcpa.
males were more competitive than females in almost all the samples tested. Male college and high school students were more competitive, and especially higher on win orientation, than females, but females were just as high, and sometimes higher, on goal orientation. Research on high school students who participated in competitive sports, noncompetitive sport activities, or nonsport activities showed similar results. Boys were more likely than girls to participate and have experience in competitive sports, but girls were just as likely or more likely to participate in noncompetitive sports and nonsport activities, and scored as high or higher on general achievement orientation. Overall then, the gender differences in competitiveness did not seem to reflect either achievement orientation or an interest in sport and physical activity per se, but a specific emphasis on competitive, win-oriented sport competition. Extension of the research to intercollegiate men’s and women’s athletic teams, elite athletes in Taiwan, and ultramarathoners found the same trend. Athletes were much higher than nonathletes on all scores, and overall men were higher than women on competitiveness and win orientation. But those gender differences were minimal with the athletes. The women athletes were higher on competitiveness than male nonathletes and similar to men athletes. Gender differences were greater for nonathletes. Similarly, in Taiwan, intercollegiate athletes were higher than nonathlete students, and international caliber athletes were even higher. Moreover, gender differences were minimal in Taiwan. The ultramarathoners, a unique sample in many ways, were competitive, extremely high on goal orientation, but quite low on win orientation in comparison to other samples. And there were not the same gender differences as in the other groups. In fact, the women ultra-
marathoners were slightly higher than the men on competitiveness and win scores. Overall, the gender message from the competitive orientation work is that experience and opportunity have a much greater influence on competitive orientation than does gender. When women and men have similar sport experiences, the competitive orientation is similar. But the catch is that women and men rarely have similar sport experiences, even when it appears that they do.
GENDER AND SOCIAL PROCESSES In the 1980s gender research moved away from the sex-differences and personality approaches to a more social approach that emphasized gender beliefs and stereotypes. The basic proposition was that how people think males and females differ is more important than how they actually differ. Although actual differences between females and males on such characteristics as independence and competitiveness are small and inconsistent, people maintain their stereotypes. People
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If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base. ■ DAVE BARRY
often exaggerate minimal differences into larger perceived differences through social processes. These perceptions exert a strong influence that may lead to further gender differences. This cycle reflects the feminist position that gender is socially constructed. These persistent gender beliefs and stereotypes are found everywhere. Socialization pressures are pervasive and strong and begin early. Parents, teachers, peers, and societal institutions treat girls and boys differently from birth. Overall, differential treatment is consistent with producing independence and efficacy in boys, and emotional sensitivity, nurturance, and helplessness in girls. Sport confidence provides a good illustration of the role of social context. Considerable research suggests that females typically display less confidence than males across varied situations (and sport is certainly one of those situations). Ellen Lenney, in the 1970s, concluded that the social situation was the primary source of gender differences—specifically, that gender differences emerged with masculine tasks in competitive settings when clear, unambiguous feedback was missing. Several studies with motor tasks, and some of the author’s own research, confirm Lenney’s propositions. But all this research involved experimental studies with novel motor tasks in controlled lab settings that purposely stripped away social context. In the real world sport is typically seen as masculine, competition is the norm, and males and females develop their confidence along with their sport skills and behavior patterns through radically different experiences and opportunities—in different worlds. If experience and opportunity are the keys to competitive orientation and, in turn, participation and behavior in physical activity, then we might expect few gender differences after more than thirty years of mandated nondiscrimination. The number of girl’s and women’s sport teams in public schools has exploded since 1972, and we see athletic shoe ads promoting the benefits of sport and exercise activities for girls and women. But the real world with its pervasive gendered social context continues to exert strong influence on both women and men in sport. The real world, and par-
ticularly the real world of sport, is not gender-neutral. According to noted sociologist Jessie Bernard in her 1981 book, women and men live in different worlds, even when the situation seems to be the same. For example, the world is different for starting centers on the men’s and women’s basketball teams, for the boy and girl pitching the Little League games, and for the woman and man jogging in the park. The real worlds of sport are gendered. Although the number of females in high school and university athletics has increased about six-fold since 1972, to about one-third of the total number of participants, the numbers are not equal. More telling, the numbers of females in other sport roles has not increased so dramatically, and in several ways women and girls have lost ground. Most dramatically, the number of women coaches and athletic administrators has decreased since Title IX. Competitive sport retains a gendered, hierarchical power structure. And it maintains the emphasis on and channels resources to competitive, elite sports, reducing the options and alternatives for both females and males. Even a casual review of media reports on sport reveals gender influence, and research evidence confirms the bias. Females received less than 10 percent of the media coverage in terms of column space, photographs, and television time. Moreover, coverage is different; athletic ability and accomplishments are emphasized for men athletes, but femininity and attractiveness are emphasized for women athletes. For example, a USA Today report on figure skating (20 March 1997) opened with the line, “Tiny Tara Lipinski, figure skating’s highjumping sweetheart, can become the youngest world champion in history Saturday.” The emphasis on young and petite contrasts with an accompanying photo insert caption reporting that Elvis Stojko (the male skater) hits quad, triple jump, and wins his third world title. Observations of recent Olympic and NCAA tournaments suggest less stereotyping and trivialization of female athletes, but institutional change is slow and overall, gendered beliefs seem alive and well in the sport
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Psychology of Gender Differences The Girl and Her Recreations The following excerpt describes an early attempt to explain the differences in recreational patterns between girls and boys. Some manifest differences have been noticed between the relation to play of women and girls and that of men and boys. Some plays are more natural to boys than to girls, possibly because of the fact that the fighting element does not enter into the play of girls. This is decidedly a boy trait, and comes perhaps from the early days when men engaged in battle while women superintended the work of the home. The team game has its place, however, in the sports of girls,—not for competitive excellence, but for that association and co-operative play which shall prepare the players for the place in social life which women are more and more destined to fill. Woman’s place in athletics and physical education is also different from man’s, for many of the more strenuous exercises helpful to men are not recommended for women, Elizabeth Burchenal, prominent in the physical education of girls in New York City, recommends as sports for women: Basket-ball, indoor baseball, field-hockey, tennis, golf, walking running, climbing, skating, horseback riding, snowshoeing, skiing, paddling, and
world. Sport activities are gender-stereotyped, and the sex-typing of sport activities seems linked with other gender beliefs (for example, physicality). Stereotypes are of concern because people act on them and thereby exaggerate minimal gender differences and restrict opportunities for both females and males. Overt discrimination is unlikely, and participants may not recognize the influence of gendered beliefs in themselves or others. Both girls and boys can participate in youth gymnastics or baseball, and at early ages physical capabilities are similar. Yet children see female gymnasts and male baseball players as role models, peers gravitate to sex-segregated activities, and most parents, teachers, and coaches support “gender-appropriate” activities for children. Similarly, many sport administrators and
coasting. At the same time she discourages participation in track athletics and record contests. Most women, however, are inclined to take too little physical exercise of the exhilarating sort. Our American girls need to cultivate that hearty love for the athletic which is shown in English women who walk miles for the love of walking “hike” are antidotes to the headaches caused by poorly ventilated rooms, and melancholia yields to the healthful association with congenial companions in the recreational life. Noting the further difference between girls and boys in relation to amusement, it is of value that we see the kind of organizations into which girls combine According to Dr. Sheldon, girls form three times as many secret societies as boys, five times as many social societies, three times as many industrial, twice the number of philanthropic, and three times as many literary societies, but only one-fourth as many predatory, and one-seventh as many athletic societies. Physical activity is found prominent in only ten percent among the boys. The study of the voluntary organizations of boys and girls shows that the two sexes seldom organize themselves together. Source: The girl and her reactions. (1915). The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes: Athletics/Football (p. 192–193). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
participants fail to recognize gender beliefs operating when athletic programs developed by and for men, stressing male-linked values and characteristics, are opened to girls and women. So the research does not support dichotomous sex differences; males and females are not opposites. But women and men are not the same and gender cannot by ignored. Gender is part of a complex, dynamic social network, and a particularly salient, powerful force within sport. Clearly, recognition of gender and diversity is critical to effective sport-psychology practice.
Sport-Psychology Practice Applied or practical sports psychology involves using psychological principles and methods to enhance sport
PSYCHOLOGY OF GENDER DIFFERENCES
performance or make it more meaningful. The gender social process approach to gender differences in sport has encouraged what can be called a feminist approach to applied sport psychology. Feminist practice incorporates gender research, emphasizes often ignored women’s experiences (for example, sexual harassment), and takes a more nonhierarchical, empowering, processoriented approach that shifts the emphasis from personal change to social change. The feminist approach suggests going beyond gender awareness in the scenarios presented earlier. An aggressive soccer player could be male or female, but a male soccer player is more likely to grow up in a world that reinforces aggressive behavior, and a male athlete is more likely to continue to have such behaviors reinforced. The less aggressive, more tentative approach is more typical of women. Even talented, competitive female athletes are socialized to keep quiet, be good, and let others take the lead. Moreover, most women athletes have a male coach, trainer, athletic director, and male professors, and deal with males in most other power positions. Overly aggressive, uncontrolled behavior is not exclusively male, nor are tentative styles exclusively female. Still, gender-sensitive sport psychology will work more effectively if gender influences in the athlete’s background and situation are recognized. Anger control or confidence building has a different context, and probably requires different strategies for women and men. Behavior is not just within the athlete, but within a particular sport context, and within a larger social context, and both the immediate situation and the larger context are gender-related. Consider a scenario with clear gender implications— a figure skater with a potential eating disorder. Information on psychological disorders and diagnoses indicates that females are nine times as likely as males to exhibit anorexia or bulimia. Moreover, the incidence is increasing, the disorders are more prominent in adolescence and early adulthood, and participants in certain activities, including dance and sport, may be at higher risk. The figure skater is much more likely to be female than male (as well as white, middle-to-upper-
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middle class, and adolescent). But personality and gender are not the only considerations; eating disorders are social phenomena and body image plays a major role. Those who take a more active feminist approach suggest that professionals might move to social action—by educating others and trying to change the social system that leads athletes to pursue an unhealthy body image.
The Future Gender makes a difference. Gender is a pervasive social force in society, and the sport world reflects society’s gender hierarchy. Gender is so ingrained in sport structure and practice that we cannot simply treat everyone the same. But neither can we assume that women and men are dichotomous opposites and treat all males one way and all females another way. Gender is a dynamic influence that varies with the individual, situation, and time, as well as with sociocultural characteristics. Diane L. Gill See also Gender Equity
Further Reading Bem, S. L. (1978). Beyond androgyny: Some presumptuous prescriptions for a liberated sexual identity. In J. Sherman & F. Denmark (Eds.), Psychology of women: Future directions for research (pp. 1– 23). New York: Psychological Dimensions. Bem, S. L. (1993). The lenses of gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bernard, J. (1981). The female world. New York: The Free Press. Gill, D. L. (1993). Competitiveness and competitive orientation in sport. In R. N. Singer, M. Murphey, & L. K. Tennant (Eds.), Handbook of research on sport psychology (pp. 314–327). New York: Macmillan. Gill, D. L. (1995). Gender issues: A social-educational perspective. In S. M. Murphy (Ed.), Sport psychology interventions (pp. 205–234). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Lenney, E. (1977). Women’s self-confidence in achievement situations. Psychological Bulletin, 84, 1–13. Maccoby, E., & Jacklin, C. (1974). The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Public Policy See Economics and Public Policy
Race Walking Racism Racquetball Radio
Race Walking
Religion Reproduction Revenue Sharing Ringette Rituals Rodeo Romania Rome, Ancient Rope Jumping Rounders and Stoolball Rowing Rugby Russia and USSR Ryder Cup
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alking is commonly known as a low-impact form of aerobic exercise that’s enjoyed by millions of people. It is also a competitive track and field event as race walkers compete in local 5Ks, college track meets, the Olympics, and ultramarathons.
Early Years Competitive walking traces its roots back to eighteenthcentury England. One notable “pedestrian,” as they were called at the time, was Foster Powell (1734–1793), who twice walked from London to York and back, a total of four hundred miles, in less than six days. Powell, who wore knee-length breeches, a jacket, and buckled shoes and drank brandy and water for sustenance, also clocked one hundred miles in twenty-one hours and twenty minutes. Another famous early pedestrian was Captain Robert Barclay (1779–1854), who, in 1809, accepted a challenge to walk one thousand miles in one thousand hours. Barclay rented a house in Newmarket, a town north of London, measured out a one-mile path through the heath, installed gas lamps to light his way at night, and walked that path once an hour. After each loop, he’d retire to his room to rest, eat, and be administered to by doctors. Thousands of people gathered, from dukes and earls to commoners, to watch the Scotsman, who had lost thirty-two pounds during the effort, walk the final mile. Barclay won the bet, earning the equivalent of twenty years’ income in just under
R forty-two days in what was hailed then as the “greatest ever sporting event.” In America, Edward Payson Weston (1839–1929) was the most famous walker. He had bet that Abraham Lincoln would lose the 1860 election. When Lincoln won, Weston made good on his bet by walking from Boston to Washington, D.C., in 1861 to witness the inauguration. Although he arrived in the capitol several hours after the event, that walk launched his career as a professional pedestrian. He went on to earn $10,000 in 1867 for walking from Maine to Chicago in a month. Weston, who never walked on Sundays, trekked from coast to coast several times, earning thousands of dollars each time. He even had a business sponsor: the makers of Weston Heel and Toe Walking Socks. Up into his seventies, he was still walking long distances, including a sixty-day walk from New York to Minneapolis at the age of seventy-four. These solo feats led to races between multiple competitors. Of note are the numerous Six Day Races that took place on indoor tracks. The winner was the person who walked the most miles over the course of six days. These events drew thousands of spectators, many of whom had wagered on the outcome. Bands provided live music as walkers logged more than five hundred miles. These races were a top spectator sport in Europe and America during what’s now known as the “Pedestrian Age” (1860–1903).
Twentieth Century During the 1900s, the sport of walking lost its spot as a popular spectator sport and became more formalized
with international competitions and rules. Two walking races were added to the 1908 Olympics with Brits taking home five of the six medals. Four years later in 1912, a Canadian won the one Olympic walking race and the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), the organization that governs international walking events, established a Walking Commission to develop rules for the sport. There are two rules in race walking: one foot must always be touching the ground and the advancing leg must remain straight while striding forward.These rules are designed to make sure competitors are walking and not running. During official events, between five and nine judges closely watch the walkers. If a judge sees a loss of contact with the ground or a bent knee, the judge cautions the athlete either verbally or by holding up a card or paddle. If three different judges warn the same competitor, that athlete is disqualified. Race walking differs from ordinary walking.The arms are bent at the elbows and pump back and forth while the hips are pushed forward to gain extra inches with each step. This unusual-looking stride earned walkers the name “wobblies” in the nineteenth century. Still today unflattering things are said about race walkers. A Sports Illustrated writer reporting on race walking at the 2000 Olympics wrote, “It isn’t fast. It isn’t graceful. It isn’t even natural. It’s a Fourth of July picnic event.” However, journalists in countries that win walking medals don’t dismiss the sport. The Greek press lauded Athanasia Tsoumeleka’s gold in the 20K in 2004; one article in the Athens News hailed her and a medal-winning female hurdler as “Greco-Girl power at its best.”
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Race Walking Endurance Records In the 1800s race walking often took the form of endurance contests in which a single walker would walk for many hours back and forth over a short course. The following is a newspaper announcement of an upcoming endurance walk to be performed by the well-known pedestrian, Mrs. Bentley. In our last we stated that Mrs. Bentley has arrived in town, and would perform a pedestrian feat in a few days, but her agent not furnishing the information, we were unable to say where. It was announced in one or two of the morning papers, at the close of last week, that the female pedestrian would perform the laborious feat of walking thirty consecutive hours, without rest, at the Broadway tabernacle, commencing at 4 o’clock, Monday evening, April 27th, and closing at 10 o’clock Tuesday evening, the 28th. She commenced the feat at the appointed time, under the care of Mr. And Mrs. Post, of Ohio, her attendants, and walked through the night, and up to our present writing—late Tuesday afternoon. She is, however, greatly fatigued, and illustrates the peculiar and manifest effect upon exhausted nature, by outward circumstances such as the elivening music of the band, the cheerful conversation of friends, and other seductive influences. We have but little doubt but that she will succeed in completing the thirty hours, as she is a woman of proverbial fortitude and untiring energy. Source: Kirsch, G. B. (Ed.). (1992). Sports in North America—A documentary history. Vol. 3: The rise of modern sports 1840–1860 (pp. 329–330). Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
and twenty kilometers the standard for women. The men’s 50K is the longest event in the Olympics, outdistancing the running marathon by five miles. The first Olympic 50K in 1932 was walked in four hours and fifty minutes. By 1992, the winning time was three hours and fifty minutes, a full hour less. From walking’s first Olympic showing in 1908 through the 2004 games, Russia, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Mexico, and Sweden have claimed the most medals in the men’s events. Repeat winners include Italy’s Ugo Frigerio (two golds in 1920, a gold in 1924, and a bronze in 1932), Russia’s Vladimir Golubnichiy (a gold in 1960, bronze in 1964, gold in 1968, and a silver in 1972), and most recently Poland’s Robert Korzeniowski, who won three straight 50K races (1996, 2000, and 2004) and also won the 20K in 2000 in record-breaking time. Women’s races entered the Olympics in 1992, first as 10Ks and then lengthened to 20K in 2000. In the first four Olympic contests for women, China won one-third of the medals. Race walking world championships have been held every other year since 1961 for men and 1979 for women. Walking races are also held during regional competitions such as the Asian, European, and Pan American Games. Since race walking entered the Pan American Games in 1984, Mexico has dominated both the men’s and women’s events. Two standout American walkers are Ron Laird, the four-time Olympian who won sixty-five national championships, finished third in the 1967 and 1973 world championships, and wrote an early textbook on race walking, and Larry Young, a two-time Pan American gold medalist and the only American to win two Olympic medals, taking the 50K bronze in 1968 and 1972.
The Future Walking races range in distance from 1,500 meters to 50,000 meters and take place on indoor tracks, outdoor tracks, and roadways. College athletes typically compete in three-kilometer and five-kilometer races while twenty kilometers and fifty kilometers are the standard distances in men’s international events and ten kilometers
The future will likely bring more controversies about how race walking events are judged. In the 2000 Olympic games, Mexico’s Bernardo Segura crossed the 20K finish line first, completed a victory lap, and was being interviewed when the judges notified him that he had been disqualified. In the women’s 20K that same year, the first three athletes to enter the stadium for the
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Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you. ■ SATCHEL PAIGE
final stage of the race were disqualified before the finish line. The possibility of using video cameras or installing an electronic device on the competitors’ shoes to detect loss of contact with the ground may become a reality by the 2008 games when walking begins its second century as an Olympic sport. Kelly Nelson
Further Reading Gray, J. (1985). Racewalking for fun and fitness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Laird, R. (1972). Race walking. Los Altos, CA: Tafnews Press. Radford, P. (2001). The celebrated Captain Barclay: Sport, money, and fame in Regency Britain. London: Headline. Ward, E. (1996). Masters racewalking. Pasadena, CA: N.A.R.F.
ism, often linking certain characteristics with negatively valued social, psychological, or physical traits. Racism in sport is often closely linked to notions of prejudice and the unequal distribution of power resulting from racist behavior. It is crucial not to generalize and in this sense it is important to be aware of racisms.
Influences of Racisms Racisms in world sport have shaped both the literature and practice of sport in a number of ways (Bass 2002, McRae 2003, Plowden 1996, Remnick, 2000). The following introductory list includes some but not all of the most prominent areas of print, discussion, legislation, and injustice: ■
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he term racism is used widely and in many cases loosely in accounts of world sport. This is one reason why it matters. It is often associated with many other terms, most notably, race, racial, ethnicity, multiculturalism, multiracial, and discrimination. The literature and research on racism in sport is also dominated by the use of certain terms such as black, white, AfroCaribbean, African, African-American, Asian, people of color, and many other terms that are used in campaigns to symbolize and assert differences between people in sport and in other areas of life (Coakley 2003, Eitzen 2003, Jarvie 2002). The terminology is in constant flux, and historically the generic term black has at times included and excluded different groups of people. There is also instability in the capitalized “Black” and “White” that has served as a reminder of the historical and social fluidity of the terms while at the same time being used to distance discussions of racism in sport from the logical and historical fallacy of treating “racial” terms as if they were natural categories. In the literature about racism and sport, the term racism then very specifically refers to a belief system or systems that sustain racial-
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In the period of apartheid sport in South Africa from 1948 to 1992, specific racial legislation that separated the practice of sport by racial groupings gave rise to the international slogan, “You cannot have normal sport in an abnormal society.” The practice of colonialism in many parts of the world formed the backdrop to sporting relations between many countries. For example, during the 1960s and 1970s the cricket rivalry between England and the West Indies reflected racial tensions and racism rooted in years of colonial struggle. Terms such as White Wash and Black Wash were used to refer to English or West Indian victories, while at the same time, sport took on the mantle of symbolic colonial/ anticolonial struggle not only in the rivalry between the two teams, but also in the selection of the West Indian cricket team, as is explained in C. L. R. James ‘s (1963) classic period account of West Indian cricket, Beyond the Boundaries. The popularity and worldwide coverage of sport has meant that sport as vehicle for protest has been a successful medium for drawing attention to racism— in the treatment of black Americans as second-class citizens in the United States and in American sport, for example, by the “Black Power” protests at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games; or the extent to which Aborigines or Inuit peoples have been marginalized
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Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can. ■ ARTHUR ASHE
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in mainstream Australian or Canadian sport, for example, by the fact that much of the coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games revolved around the coverage of the 400-meter Olympic gold medalist Cathy Freeman and the plight of Aborigine’s living in contemporary Australia. Legislation such as the Race Relations Acts of 1976 and 2004 in Britain provides the legal machinery of the law to investigate and act against racism in all walks of life in Britain, including sport.
SYMBOLIC MILESTONES Equally, there are important historical moments that can symbolize a prejudice, a protest, an ideology, or a breaking down of barriers. Historically, sport has been racist, but it has also provided some of the most poignant antiracist moments. In 1881 Andrew Watson became the first black player to play football (soccer) for Scotland. In August 1936, Jesse Owens won an unprecedented four gold medals at the Nazi Olympic Games in Berlin. Two years later, Joe Louis crushed Max Schmeling to signal the end of white supremacy in boxing. In 1967 Muhammad Ali, boxing’s world heavyweight champion, condemned the war in Vietnam, arguing that he did not have any quarrel with the Vietcong. One year later, in October 1968 three American black athletes protested from the Olympic medal rostrum against the treatment of black people in America and elsewhere, notably South Africa. Evonne Goolagong Cawley became the first aboriginal Australian to play in a Wimbledon tennis final in 1971, four years before Arthur Ashe became the first black American to win the Wimbledon Men’s Tennis Championship in 1975. In 1995 Nelson Mandela, following South Africa’s victory in the rugby’s World Cup, talked of sport as a force that could mobilize the sentiments of a people in a way that nothing else could. Three years later, when Zinedine Zidan lifted the football (soccer) World Cup for France, the French president talked of the French team as being symbolic of the new multiracial integrated France. In 2001 Pele, arguably the world’s greatest footballer (soccer player), endorsed a worldwide
antiracist campaign in his sport, saying that racism is cowardice, and cowardice comes from fear, a fear of difference. In February 2002,Vonetta Flowers became the first African-American to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympic Games.
Forms of Racism The popularity and social significance of sport has meant that it often has been influenced by a multitude of racial contexts and tensions at different points of time in different parts of the world. Sport itself has had to address and think about challenging specific problems emanating from at least three forms of racism. Structural racism refers to racism embedded within the history of societies and the extent to which this structural racism has had an impact on sport. Factors commonly associated with structural racism include gaps between different racial and ethnic groups in terms of income, education, health, and employment. Institutional racism refers to the practices and procedures within sport that discriminate against people. Areas commonly associated with institutional racism in sport include the gaps between different discriminated-against groups in terms of holding positions of influence and power in sport or the extent to which tensions between different groups become visibly crystallized at sports events because of institutional racist practices and procedures. Individual racism refers to the actions and attitudes of individuals toward members of ethnic or racial groups. Such actions and attitudes support and often reproduce discrimination and racism through sport.
Racism and Ethnicity There is no simple answer to what constitutes racism and yet it is important not to confuse the two terms racism and ethnicity, which are often used interchangeably. Both ethnicity and racism have been used in a multitude of ways. Even those who argue that ethnic minorities are united by a common experience of racism often fail to be sufficiently alert to the diverse ways in which racism has an impact on different social divisions in sport.
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Racism Native Americans as Mascots Resolution to eliminate the use of depictions of and cultural references to American Indians as mascots, logos, and team nicknames in Wisconsin public schools. WHEREAS, The Great lakes Inter-Tribal Council, Inc., is a consortium of twelve federally recognized Indian Tribes native to the region of the North American continent and the area around Lake Superior; and WHEREAS, the strength of GLITC lies in the resolve of the tribes to be independent, yet to come together in a unified forum to address those issues which require intertribal unity and attention, and WHEREAS, “Indian” mascots and logos are offensive, disrespectful, and demeaning; “Indian” logos mock Indian people, cultures, and traditions; “Indian” logos contribute to a societal environment that is racist, oppressive, and harmful to harmonious relationships between people; and WHEREAS, all children in schools depicting “Indian” stereotypes are encouraged to tolerate, perpetrate, and maintain racist practices against a group of people, and WHEREAS, children in Wisconsin schools have been exposed to this form of racial, ethnic discrimination since the early 1920’s, and continue to be exposed to such racism today, although other forms of stereotyping such as blackface minstrel shows have long since disappeared from the American landscape, and
The case of Hassiba Boulmerka—a much loved ArabAfrican sportswomen who was forced at a particular point in her career to leave Algeria for France in order to escape a backlash from Muslim zealots—may be illustrative. Winner of the women’s 1,500-meter final at the 1991 World Athletic Championships, Boulmerka became the first Algerian, first Arab, and first African woman to win a gold medal at any world athletic championship. On her return to Algeria, the then-president, Chadli Benjedid, greeted her as a national heroine. But Muslim zealots denounced her from the pulpit for bar-
WHEREAS, the presence of these symbols in state-supported schools, at the expense of Indian and non-Indian taxpaying constituents constitutes state-supported racism, and WHEREAS, appropriate means of recognizing Native American people exist through teaching Native American history accurately, by treating Native American students with the same respect afforded other students, and by removing “Indian” mascots and logos, and WHEREAS, Native American Indian Tribes and other organizations have voiced their condemnation of such images by adopting similar resolutions, providing education, and taking political action. NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, condemns the use of “Indian” logos as offensive and will work alone and in concert with other organizations to eliminate the use of depictions of and cultural references to American Indians as mascots, logos, and team nicknames in Wisconsin public schools. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that this form of racism which damages Native American children and cultures be removed from Wisconsin Public Schools before the new millennium. Source: Resolution of the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, Inc. (1999). Retrieved from http://aistm.org/glitc _ resolution.htm
ing her most intimate parts (her legs) before millions of television viewers. President Benjedid was himself publicly denounced for embracing a woman in public. The row at the time underscored the clash between modernity and Islamic fundamentalism. It was a clash that was all the more surprising given Algeria’s position in the Arab world as the torchbearer of modernism, socialism, and the successful struggle for independence from colonial rule. Hassiba Boulmerka moved to France, and Islamicists lost an opportunity to promote national unity in Algeria during the early 1990s. What
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There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all. ■ LOU GEHRIG
is the best way to study this event, from the standpoint of ethnicity or gender or colonialism or racism—all of which would only provide a partial explanation?
The “New Politics” of Race Mention must also be made of what came to be called in the early 1990s the “new politics” of race and racism. A number of commentators suggested that while black physical prowess had in the 1990s been acknowledged and exploited as a fertile zone of profit within American society, the symbolic dangers of black sporting excellence needed to be highlighted (Cashmore 1997, Dyson 1994, Markovits 2003). Because of the marginalized status within the overall sphere of American sports, black athletic activity, argued Dyson (1994), often acquired a social significance that transcended the internal dimensions of the game, sport, and skill. Black sport then becomes an arena for testing the limits of physical endurance and forms of athletic excellence, while repudiating or symbolizing the American ideals (often mythical) of justice, goodness, truth, and beauty. It also becomes a way of ritualizing racial achievement against socially or economically imposed barriers to sporting performance. That is to say that many sports celebrities or athletes of color may be equal when they line up at the start of an Olympic final, but the social, economic, political, and emotional struggles that any given athlete has to overcome to get to that final are far from equal. There is a danger too in celebrating uncritically any black or other sports industry. The question that is posed in both Hoberman (1997) and Cashmore (1997) is whether there can be such a thing as an authentic black sports culture when so many white-dominated corporations control the sports industry that produces it. Is this a form of institutional racism? In developing a history of black culture in the West from 1960s to the present, Cashmore (1997, 172–181) argued that inflating the value of a commodified black sports culture may actually work against the interests of racial justice. Black entrepreneurs, when they have reached the top,
have tended to act in much the same way as their white counterparts in similar circumstances. They failed to destabilize the racial hierarchy and yet remained part of an African-American elite. Add to this the fact that Arthur Ashe used to be critical of any policy that specifically channeled minorities into particular sports because it often closed off other channels of social mobility. In that same year, Ashe pointed out that of the 3 million black kids in America who committed themselves to the athletic dream, only 900 managed to make a professional living from sport. Thus the “sport as a field of dreams” thesis has to be qualified because for many it can lead to dangerous fantasies. Empirically, there is also the danger of overstating the athletic, physical dominance of black athletes in American sport. Statements such as those made by John Hoberman in Darwin’s Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race— that “there is not a white star left in the National Basketball Association” (1997, 64) or that “the idea of a white quarterback in today’s National Football League” (1997, 85)—have to be treated as historically specific to a particular year or phase or even sport. Both statements, several years later, are untrue, with Jason Sehorn, the white defensive back of the New York Giants up until March 2003, being known for his natural athletic ability, while a white player, Brent Barry, won the 2002 National Basketball Association’s annual slam dunk competition, the league’s purest test of exuberant physical creativity. The influx of white European stars into American basketball has also offered renewed evidence that athletes are produced by complex cultural, social, and physical interactions and not simply racial differentiation. Thoughtful black and white players have taken the occasion to dispel racial/ethnic myths. At the end of the 2001 season, Chris Webber said of Turkish guard Hidayet Turkoglu, “This summer I am taking Hedo the hood with me to play. By the end he will be the god of my hood” (Markovitis 2003,153). Of course to the extent that such claims perpetuate the stereotype, the white player’s brilliance can only be viewed in
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the context of black athleticism. The point guard Jason Williams was dubbed “white chocolate” to reflect what was seen as an element of African-American improvisation in his style. Yet the point to be made is that such examples may belong to transitional stages of hybrid sports that may eventually dissolve rather than reinforce notions of racial differentiation. At times it may be useful to think of forms of racisms in sport in terms of the politics of identity and differences. First, there is racism as legitimizing identity produced by the dominant institutions of society aimed at extending and rationalizing their domination. Second, there is racism as resistance identity generated by people concerned with challenging and freeing sportspeople from the logic of racism that supports legitimizing racist identities. Finally, there is racism and antiracism as project- or social-movement identity through which actors or collective groups aim to build new types of identities through specific projects such as the “Kick Racism Out of Football” campaign in Britain (www.thefa.com/TheFA/ EthicsAndSportsEquity/RacialEquality/).
What Can We Say About Sport and Racism? Many popular arguments about sport and racism have contributed to a number of racist beliefs about different peoples’ sporting abilities. A number of popular arguments have contributed to particular explanations of race relations within discussions of sport, culture and society. The coverage of sport and racism in this article is by no means exhaustive, but it might be suggested that core arguments have tended to rely on some of or all of the following arguments: that sport (a) is inherently conservative and helps to consolidate patriotism, nationalism, and racism; (b) has some inherent property that makes it a possible instrument of integration and racial harmony; (c) as a form of cultural politics has been central to processes of colonialism, imperialism, and postcolonialism in different parts of the world; (d) has contributed to unique political struggles that have involved black and ethnic political mobilization
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and the struggle for equality of and for black peoples and racial minority groups; (e) is an important facet of racial identities; (f) has produced stereotypes, prejudices, and myths about groups that have contributed both to discrimination against and an underrepresentation of ethnic minority peoples within certain sports; (g) is not immune to the cultures of racism and antiracism, and that race and ethnicity continue to affect peoples’ decisions to join or not join certain sports clubs; (h) needs to develop a more complex set of tools for understanding the limits and possibilities that influence and combat sport and racism, in particular the ways in which such categories historically articulate with other categories and social divisions. Grant Jarvie See also Multiculturalism
Further Reading Bass, A. (2002). Not the triumph but the struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the making of the black athlete. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cashmore, E. (1997). The black culture industry. London: Routledge. Coakley, J. (2003). Sports in society: Issues and controversies. Boston: McGraw Hill. Coakley, J., & Dunning, E. (Eds.). Handbook of sports studies. London: Sage. Dyson, M. (1994). Be like Mike? Michael Jordan and the pedagogy of desire. In H. Giroux, & P. Mclaren (Eds.), Between borders: Pedagogy and the politics of cultural studies (pp. 119–127). New York. Routledge. Eitzen, D. (2003). Fair and foul: Beyond the myths and paradoxes of sport. New York: Rowan & Littlefield. Giroux, H., & Mclaren, P. (Eds.). (1994). Between borders: Pedagogy and the politics of ultural studies. New York: Routledge. Hoberman, J. (1997). Darwin’s athletes: How sport has damaged black America and preserved the myth of race. New York: Houghton Mifflin. James, C. L. R. (1963). Beyond a boundary. London: Stanley Paul. Jarvie, G. (2002). Sport, racism and ethnicity. In J. Coakley & E. Dunning (Eds.), Handbook of sports studies (pp. 334–344). London: Sage. Markovits, B. (2003, July/August). The colors of sport. New Left Review, 22, 151–160. McRae, D. (2003). In black and white: The untold story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens. London: Scribner. Plowden, M. (1996). Olympic black women. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company. Remnick, D. (2000). King of the world: Muhammad Ali and the rise of an American hero. London: Picador.
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any people consider racquetball to be the fastest racquet sport in the world. Indeed, some have called it “high-speed tennis in a box.” At the elite level the speed of a serve can near 320 kilometers per hour, but even in amateur competition diving retrievals and heated rallies characterize the sport. Players use a strung racquet to serve and return a ball. The objective is to win each rally by serving or returning the ball so that the opponent is unable to keep the ball in play. A rally ends when a player (or a team in doubles) is unable to hit the ball before it touches the floor twice, is unable to return the ball in such a manner that it touches the front wall before it touches the floor, or when a “hinder” is called. Only the serving side scores points—when it serves an irretrievable serve (an ace) or wins a rally. Losing the serve is called a “sideout” in singles.
History Joe Sobek invented racquetball in 1949 on a Connecticut handball court. He designed the first short strung paddle, created rules combining the basics of handball and squash, and called his modification “paddle rackets.” The sport caught on and evolved into racquetball as we know it today. By the early 1970s every state had court clubs, and the sport enjoyed a steady rise in popularity. When the fitness craze began, and people in the United States began searching for challenging athletic activities, the timing was perfect for racquetball; court clubs were available throughout the country, and racquetball was easy to learn and fun to play. During the late 1970s and early 1980s racquetball became one of the fastest growing sports in the United States; thousands of racquetball courts were built to satisfy the demand. However, the sport saturated the market and reached its peak during the mid-1980s; the sport’s popularity waned, and many clubs either closed or began converting courts to other uses. By 1987, however, the
decline leveled off, and racquetball regained a steady growth rate. The growth of the sport during a short time can be attributed to the relative ease with which the sport can be enjoyed. It has been designated one of the best allaround sports for aerobic development. People use racquetball as a conditioning sport for swimming, football, basketball, track and field, and many other Olympic sports. A tournament-caliber player burns more than eight hundred calories per hour. Courts are located all over the world, and equipment is easily accessible at minimum cost. Internationally approved competition sites are located near major metropolitan areas throughout the world, and the number of courts worldwide is estimated at fifty thousand. During racquetball’s formative years its leadership recognized the need for international development and decided to try to have racquetball recognized as an Olympic event.The first racquetball world championship was held in 1981; one year later the United States Olympic Committee recognized the American Amateur Racquetball Association (AARA) as the national governing body for the sport. Racquetball continued to advance in the Olympic structure and in 1989 became the youngest sport to achieve full member status on the U.S. Olympic Committee.This status brought new levels of exposure to the sport, which is now featured in U.S. Olympic Festivals and in the planning phases of future Olympic Games. More recently racquetball debuted as a full medal sport in the 1995 Pan American Games.
Practice Power and speed aside, racquetball in its basic form shares strategies with other racquet sports. For example, as in tennis, a player retrieves each shot on one bounce. Unlike in tennis, points are scored only by the server. As in squash, players use the walls strategically to place the ball, and themselves, in scoring position. Unlike in squash, the lower the shot, the better. To begin, the server stands between two solid lines at midcourt that mark the service zone. The service motion is limited to that area, and the ball is put into play after
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A state-of-the-art racquetball court. Source: istockphoto.com/Empath.
contacting the racquet, hitting the front wall, and passing into the back court. During its course, the ball can touch one side wall but no more. If the ball hits three surfaces (including the ceiling or back wall) before bouncing, a “long” or fault serve is called. A serve that does not carry beyond the midcourt service line is “short” and is also a fault.The server is given two chances to put the ball into play (although international rules permit only one serve to put the ball into play). After the ball is put into play, no limit exists on the number of walls that can be used for shot variation during a rally. A side-wall-to-front-wall shot is called a “pinch,” and a slow series of high ceiling-to-front-wall combinations is called a “ceiling ball rally.” In a standard fifteen-point game players earn points or win the serve by ending a rally. “Good shots” hit the front wall so low that they can’t be returned before the second bounce. Errors, or “skipped” balls, hit the floor before reaching the front wall. Two or four players can play racquetball.When played by two, it is called “singles,” and when played by four, “doubles.” A nontournament variation played by three players is called “cutthroat.” A doubles team consists of two players who meet either the age requirements or player classification requirements to participate in a particular division of play. In tournament play a team with
different skill levels must play in the division of the player with the higher level of skill. A match consists of the best two out of three games. A game is won by the first player to reach fifteen points. If each side wins one game, the two sides play a tiebreaker game to eleven points. No human error is possible except when the referee makes a subjective decision, but this rarely happens. Time is not a factor. To study the play-by-play action, one should remember these basics: (1) Watch the ball, (2) players must retrieve the shot on one bounce, (3) only the server scores points, and (4) the ball must reach the front wall to remain in play.
Governing Body The American Amateur Racquetball Association (AARA) is a not-for-profit corporation that promotes the development of racquetball in the United States. Since 1968 the AARA has offered a broad base of programs for competitive and recreational players; state associations; certified instructors and referees; disabled athletes; junior, high school, and intercollegiate athletes; undergraduate scholars; and U.S. adult and junior national teams. The association also maintains programs for state, regional, and national rankings; elite training camps; court club facilities; a six-event series of national championships and U.S. team qualifiers; and a regional qualifying series. The International Amateur Racquetball Federation was founded in 1979 in Memphis, Tennessee, with thirteen charter countries and took over the leadership role in guiding the worldwide development of the sport. The federation dropped the word Amateur from its name after the phenomenal growth of the sport during the 1980s and thereafter was known as the “International Racquetball Federation” (IRF). The sport’s original base
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of fifty thousand players in the United States in 1968 has grown to more than 5.6 million in the United States and 14 million players in more than eighty-three countries on five continents. The IRF held its first World Congress in 1980 and its first world championships in 1981, attracting full teams from six countries. Worldwide growth has continued to be steady, with attendance increasing at each successive world championship. Racquetball complies with the Olympic Charter, particularly in regard to all competition being conducted under the auspices of the IOC and the spirit and letter of its rules and regulations. Racquetball is now a full medal sport in the Pan American Games, the South American Games, the Central American Games, the Pacific Rim Championships, and the Bolivian Games.
The Future Racquetball holds the promise of exciting competition well into the twenty-first century. With increasing exposure to a previously untapped market of recreational players, combined with the sport’s record of steady growth and the promise of becoming an Olympic event, racquetball is well positioned for the future. Linda L. Mojer
Further Reading Adams, L., & Goldbloom, E. (1991). Racquetball today. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing. Fabian, L., & Hiser, J. (1986). Racquetball: Strategies for winning. Dubuque, IA: Eddie B. Hogan, M., & Turner, E. (1988). Skills and strategies for winning racquetball. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press. Stafford, R. (1990). Racquetball: The sport for everyone (3rd ed.). Memphis, TN: Stafford.
Radio
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he relationship between the U.S. mass media and sports is a long and intimate one. Details of sporting events, athletes, and other people involved in sports fill the pages of newspapers, magazines, books, and In-
ternet websites as well as countless hours of radio and television programming. People in every community around the country form long-lasting bonds with sports teams and athletes. These bonds are exemplified by the inhabitants of “Red Sox Nation”: Millions of fans arrange their daily schedules around listening to, watching, and reading about Boston baseball games. The mass media play an important role in these bonds. All forms of mass media bring athletic events to the fans, no matter where the fans are. Conceivably radio has had more impact on sports and audiences than has any other form of mass media. Perhaps no other form of media covers the levels and varieties of sports more than does radio. Everything from high school basketball to professional auto racing fills the airwaves of many of the more than thirteen thousand radio stations in the United States and the newest creation, satellite radio. Radio also has traits that other forms of mass media don’t have. The first trait is the connection formed between the broadcaster and the audience. Former Major League Baseball (MLB) player and long-time announcer Bob Uecker says he prefers radio to television. “You paint a picture in the mind. It’s a kick to make baseball come alive to a guy hundreds of miles away who’s never seen your home park” (Smith 2001, 267). Jimmy Dudley, voice of the Cleveland Indians for twenty years, recounts a letter he received from a fan. The fan was a blind boy who wrote in Braille. “[The fan] signed off by saying, ‘Remember, Jimmy, you are my eyes. Don’t ever let me down.’ It taught me never to forget my obligation as a representative of the fan” (Smith 2001, 267). The second trait is accessibility: People can consume radio where they cannot other media. Besides being able to listen to radio at home, people can listen as they work, as they exercise, or as they drive. Other forms of media, such as television and the Internet, require unmanageable devices for use or are intrusive in their use. Kenneth Costa, former marketing vice president of the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), contends that “there are twice as many car radios in use (approximately 140 million) as the total circulation (60 million) of all
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daily newspapers” (Keith 2002, 1). Costa further asserts that radio reaches four out of five adults each week. Since the 1950s radio has splintered into many formats, most of them centering on music. However, during the last twenty years an explosion has occurred in the number of stations that specializes in sports-only content. “[T]he proliferation of the all-sports format has boosted the popularity” of nonmusic-format radio (Keith 2002, 90). Thus, we should ask when this relationship between sports and radio began, who some of the important people are, and where this relationship is headed in the future with the rapid development of digital television and the Internet.
Beginnings of Radio and Sports Programming Three sports and four electronics manufacturers/ communications companies dominated early mass broadcasting in the United States. According to Michelle Hilmes (2002, 106) sports were professional boxing, professional baseball, and college football and that the World Series attracted “by far the most radio attention” and inspired “the earliest networking experiments.” The four companies were Westinghouse, General Electric (G.E.), American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), and Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Much of the early sports content was scores of games or re-creations of games. The original radio technology did not allow live broadcasting from the site of an athletic event. Radio station operators had to rely on reports and scores of an event to be either telephoned or telegraphed to them after the conclusion. Historians consider experimental radio station WWJ, in Detroit, Michigan, to have been the groundbreaker in bringing sports to the U.S. public. Announcers from the station gave the results of the Jack Dempsey–Billy Miske heavyweight fight in September of 1920. Less than a month later the station’s listeners heard the first scores of a World Series to be broadcast. The era of commercial radio began in the autumn of 1920, and sporting events were prominent.Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad built the first nonexperimental
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licensed station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it began broadcasting on 2 November 1920 with music and presidential election results. Five months later the station broadcast a blow-by-blow account of the Johnny Ray–Johnny Dundee prize fight. RCA station WJY cemented the sports–radio relationship with the broadcast of the Jack Dempsey–Georges Carpentier heavyweight title fight in July of 1921. Smith (2001, 19) says this broadcast is “one of the two key events in the development of sports broadcasting” because it fixed the nation’s interest on radio. Westinghouse officials were not to be outdone as they introduced the national pastime to the airwaves. The seemingly unimportant game between the first place Pittsburgh Pirates and the last place Philadelphia Phillies ranks as one of the most historic events in broadcast history. Westinghouse engineer Harold Arlin sent details of the game back to KDKA for broadcast through a converted phone. “Arlin’s play-by-play demonstrated to the public that baseball could be brought into the American living room with immediacy and intimacy” (Sports Illustrated 1991, 19). WJZ in Newark, New Jersey, another Westinghouse station, was the first to broadcast the 1921 World Series. Tommy Cowan re-created the games between the New York Yankees and New York Giants from reports that were phoned in from the stadiums. The next year WJZ broadcast the entire series using renowned sports journalist Grantland Rice as lead announcer. College football games also produced a big impact on radio broadcasting. Although the first broadcast of a college football game occurred in 1912, a decade would pass before the impact would be felt. KDKA aired the 1921 game between the University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University, known as the “Backyard Brawl,” as a commercially sponsored game. This game is important for two reasons. First, AT&T-owned station WEAF is considered to have been the first station to introduce advertising in 1922, which this game predated. Second, most college football games in the 1920s were aired on what was termed “sustaining broadcasts.” This meant that colleges were not charged
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for airing rights, nor did stations receive income from advertising during the games. Smith points to the WEAF broadcast of the 1922 Princeton University– University of Chicago football game as one of the key events in the development of radio and college sports. He asserts that starting with this game “radio had made itself part of the nationalization of football, by making interregional competition immediately available to masses through the airwaves” (Smith 2001, 17). Chicago Tribune-owned radio station WGN (World’s Greatest Newspaper) began to compete with its East Coast rivals on a significant basis in 1924 and 1925. The station aired the 1924 Indianapolis 500 auto race, marking the first auto race broadcast in history. That autumn the station broadcast football games from all the Big Ten campuses, as well as University of Nebraska, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Southern California games. The next spring WGN brought the Kentucky Derby into homes across the Midwest. Concern over a U.S. government investigation changed the structure of U.S. broadcasting. AT&T used its ownership of phone lines to build a twenty-six-station network that stretched across the nation, with WEAF in
Diagram of a portable radio used by sportsmen in the 1920s.
New York City as its flagship station, by 1924. Because of fears of a monopoly in network broadcasting, AT&T sold its stations to RCA in 1926. David Sarnoff, RCA chairman, created the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the NBC-Red network. The network proved so successful that a second network, NBC-Blue, was created shortly afterward. The initial broadcast was the 1927 Rose Bowl game between the University of Alabama and Stanford University. This was the first coastto-coast broadcast in U.S. history. The relationship between sports and radio has not always been smooth. Major League Baseball owners and officials from various colleges and athletic conferences across the nation began expressing concern over radio’s impact on game attendance. Smith says that the emergence of radio sportscasting encountered hostility from baseball team owners. Many teams banned the broadcasting of home games in their cities, despite the increasing number of people who listened to regular season games and the World Series each year. By 1932 the owners saw the advantages of game broadcasts and voted to allow each team to adopt its own policy. The largest media market in the United States, New York City, did not have daily game coverage until after the 1938 season. The owners of the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers all felt that fans wouldn’t come to the games if they could sit at home and listen. Sponsorship of games by General Mills cereal changed their minds. College officials had no consensus about radio broadcasts of football games. Some colleges sold their rights to individual stations, whereas others voted on a conference-wide basis to restrict or ban broadcasts. The biggest argument against the broadcasting of football games was the shift by U.S. radio stations from sustaining broadcasts to advertiser-supported broadcasts. Prior to the 1930s colleges did not ask for compensation because they received free promotion during game broadcasts. Now people on both sides realized that broadcasters were making money; the issue was no longer promotion. The Southern Conference (now the Southeastern Conference) was one of the first to ban the broadcast of intersectional games. The ban had to be
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lifted so that the Alabama–Stanford Rose Bowl game could be aired on NBC. Because of the Depression, which began in 1929, game attendance began to decline, and many institutions and conferences banned radio broadcasts. In 1932 the Eastern Colleges Athletic Conference, the Southern Conference, and the Southwest Conference voted to ban or restrict game broadcasts. Individual colleges began selling game broadcast rights. The University of Michigan sold its rights in 1934 to WWJ for $20,000, and the next year the Big Ten Conference proposed selling its rights to all games for $100,000. By the end of 1935 all conferences had lifted bans and restrictions on radio game broadcasts, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) appointed a committee to study the effect of radio broadcasts on game attendance. The positive relationship between radio and sports would flourish for decades, despite the introduction of television.
Important Radio Sportscasters The historical landscape of sports broadcasting on radio is populated with significant people. The late President Ronald Reagan began his media career as an announcer of University of Iowa football games in 1932 and later re-created Chicago Cubs games for station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. Former CBS-TV Nightly News anchor Walter Cronkite’s first venture into broadcasting involved college football games on WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Many of the most important people involved with radio gained notoriety for their later work with television. Any discussion of the most prominent sportscasters has to begin with Graham McNamee. Lou Schwartz, president of the American Sportscasters Association, calls McNamee “the best in the business” and says that McNamee “started everything.” Although McNamee would become the preeminent radio sportscaster, spending decades covering sports for NBC, he intended to become a professional musician and had taken his first announcing job until a better music position opened. He was thrust into the spotlight when Grant-
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land Rice suddenly “retired” during the fourth inning of the third game of the 1923 World Series. McNamee never looked back as he brought events such as the Kentucky Derby, flier Charles Lindbergh’s return from France, and “one of his most vivid experiences”: covering both 1924 political party national conventions for AT&T. Ted Husing’s sportscasting career began in 1925 when he re-created the World Series for WJZ from ticker tape reports. He worked closely with Major Andrew White, another early and influential sportscaster. Husing joined the fledgling Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System (now CBS) shortly after it formed in 1927 and spent two decades with the network. He is best known for the creation of the annunciator or spotter board. This electronic device allowed the announcer’s assistant to quickly identify players on the field for the announcer. Husing claims to have first used the annunciator at a Princeton–Navy football game in 1926. Mel Allen’s familiar voice called out to TV viewers of This Week in Baseball for years, but older fans recall his decades-long radio work with the New York Yankees. His signature “How about that!” was familiar to baseball fans across the country. Allen called more World Series (twenty) and All-Star Games (twenty-four) on radio than anyone else in history. From 1939 to 1942, while working for CBS, he was the main radio announcer for both the Yankees and Giants baseball teams. Famed sportscaster Lindsey Nelson called Allen “the best ever to broadcast the game” (Smith 1995, 56). Bob Costas may be best known for his NBC television talk show or his documentary-style interview program on Home Box Office (HBO), but his work on radio is formidable. Costas began his broadcast career on KMOX-AM, the home of Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Buck, announcing American Basketball Association (ABA) Spirit of St. Louis games. He was the voice of University of Missouri basketball games and also did regional reporting on the National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA) for CBS radio until 1979. During his one season as the radio voice of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, Costas joined
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It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts. ■ SHIRLEY CHISHOLM
NBC. A repeat winner of the Sportscaster of the Year and Emmy Award, Costas has covered the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics and hosted a weekly sports-related radio call-in program.
Rise of Sports-Only Radio The concept of a radio station that caters to sports fans was a dream only twenty years ago. The RAB’s 2004– 2005 Marketing Guide and Fact Book lists all-sports radio as the seventh most applied format, with 470 stations. Brown says this “format has been on a recordbreaking pace for the past ten years” (Brown 1998, 50). The programming content of these stations ranges from game coverage to “sports news” updates and programs to call-in shows. Networks such as ESPN Radio, Fox Sports Radio, and Sporting News Radio have been created during the last decade to meet the growing demand for this type of programming. The two major satellite radio companies, XM and Sirius, have also joined the sports-content revolution by entering longterm agreements with major sports associations such as the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and Major League Baseball. The groundbreaker in the all-sports format was WFAN-AM in New York City, which went on the air in July 1987. In its first decade the station became the first to top $50 million in advertising billing. Its website boasts that WFAN is the flagship of four New York professional sports teams. The explosion of this format is not limited to large cities/markets. All-sports radio stations have started in Gainesville, Florida; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, and none of these cities has major sports franchises. Perhaps the biggest surprise is Salt Lake City, Utah, where four radio stations have started or switched to the all-sports format. Salt Lake City has only one major sports team, and other cities/markets with multiple teams may have only two or even only one radio station with this format. However, when games aren’t being played, what is the programming content of all-sports stations? The answer is simple: the fan and the host of the call-in show. We can compare this situation to “playing the
hits” if the station had a Top 40 music format. ESPN Radio executives Pete Gianesini and Bruce Gilbert believe that sports talk-show topics are like records and that stations have to keep finding the right one. The search for the “hit” is even more difficult when one considers the amount of sports-talk programs or what is called “sports chatter” in the market today. The Dan Patrick Show, the Jim Rome Show, the Mike and the “Mad Dog” Show, and the Mike and Mike Show are just a few of the nationally syndicated programs. Radio stations also have local sportscasters who host programs to give their stations local appeal for the audience.
The Future The future of the all-sports radio station looks bright. Lou Schwartz of the American Sportscasters Association says that although “no one knows the impact of satellite radio,” radio may “increase its influence.” Griggs says “sports radio fills a growing demand . . . for sports scores, news and analysis around the clock” (Griggs 2004, D1). The satellite radio companies will continue to expand the available content, which includes a new contract for NFL and MLB games. The Internet will be available on cellular phone to deliver messages about the latest trades. Despite these developments, sports radio will thrive because people like to talk to each other, especially about sports. Eric Covil See also Media-Sports Complex
Further Reading Belanger, B. (2004). Early radio announcers. Radio and Television Museum News, 10(4), 1–7. Brown, S. (1998). Sports radio: It pays to play. Broadcasting and Cable, 128(30), 50. Griggs, B. (2004, December 7). Jock talk: Sports radio: Bruising battle for listeners. Salt Lake Tribune, p. D1. Hilmes, M. (2002). Only connect: A cultural history of broadcasting in the United States. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Keith, M. (2002). The radio station (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Elsevier/ Focal Press. Moore, D. (1992). The 1924 radio election. Retrieved March 28, 2005, from http://www.swl.net/patepluma/genbroad/elec1924.html
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70 years ago, a signal event (Baseball on the radio). (1991). Sports Illustrated, 75(18), 9. Smith, C. (1995). The storytellers: From Mel Allen to Bob Costas: Sixty years of baseball tales from the broadcast booth. New York: Macmillan. Smith, R. A. (2001). Play-by-play: Radio, television, and big time college sport. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Tucker, K. (2005, January 7). Feeding the fanatics of sports. Billboard Radio Monitor, 1–5.
Religion
A
s the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and other evangelical sports groups thrive, chaplains have become a fact of modern life for professional sports teams of all kinds. Displays of religion abound at every level of sport and in every discipline, from amateur high schoolers to elite professionals, from the golf course to the boxing ring. Signs with biblical references sprout like mushrooms among the fans; coaches and athletes participate in highly visible pregame and postgame prayer, in pious gestures of supplication, and in televised nods to God for games won. Religion and sport march hand in hand, each reinforcing the other.
Old Gods and Games Although this union of religion and sport manifests itself in a uniquely modern form, it represents nothing new in world history. Except for rare moments of antagonism, sport has always been closely aligned with religious mythology and ritual. Through ceremonial dances and competitive games, the ancients sought to appease their deities in order to win fertile wombs, good crops, successful hunts, and victorious wars. Native Americans surrounded various kinds of ball games and foot races with religious ritual; Central American Mayans and Aztecs built elaborate stone courtyards adjacent to their religious temples, and on those courts they competed fiercely with a solid rubber ball that they could hit only with their hips. Ancient religious myths often explained the origins of things with stories about competitive games. For example, some Central and South Americans accounted
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for the existence of the sun and moon with a bizarre tale about a ball game that took place at the dawn of civilization. Twin brothers challenged the gods to a game. The brothers lost the game, then their heads on the sacrificial altar. One of the heads was placed in a tree, and it began spurting a stream of sperm when a virgin girl passed that way. Impregnated, the girl bore twins. After they were grown to young manhood, the twins challenged the gods to yet another ball game. This time the gods lost the game, whereupon the severed heads of the two original twins ascended into the heavens and became the sun and the moon. Ancestor worship joined fertility rites to produce funeral games in honor of deceased kin and chieftains. Feasts, music, prayers, and tests of strength and speed celebrated the vigor of the departed; commemorative festivals kept fame alive. In a portrayal of Greek life around 1000 BCE, the Greek poet Homer’s Iliad gives a richly detailed account of some funeral games held in honor of a Greek soldier slain in battle at the gates of Troy. As young warrior-athletes engaged in chariot races, boxing and wrestling matches, and discus and javelin throws, they affirmed life in the face of death. In Homer’s rendition the gods took active interest in the events. Like modern athletes who chalk up wins or losses to “the will of God,” those ancient young Greeks blamed or praised the gods depending on the contest’s outcome. An archer supposedly missed his target because he had failed to promise the god Apollo a sacrificial offering. Presumably, Apollo begrudged him victory. When a chariot driver dropped his whip in the midst of a race, he blamed Apollo for knocking it out of his hand but thanked the goddess Athena for helping him retrieve it. As early as 1000 BCE athletes looked to their deities for assistance. Eager to win the prize for a foot race, the Greek leader Odysseus charged down the stretch praying to Athena, “O goddess, hear me, and come put more speed in my feet!” Old funeral games and religious festivals provided the basis for the first organized sport in ancient Greece. Hundreds of local religious-athletic festivals thrived around the Greek-influenced rim of the Mediterranean, each one in honor of a Greek god. For
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Religion Character Through Recreation Various influences have led the Church to a larger regard for the play life of mankind. The Young Men’s Christian Association was probably the most effective teacher of the need of a gospel that reached the physical and the social side of young men and boys. For many years past it has appealed to the physical side of young life with gymnasiums, and to the social side by an active interest in sports and amusements. It may be said that with the organization of the wide-spread young people’s movement in our churches began the first serious effort to furnish an all-round development of the youth under Christian auspices. Though there were several organizations more or less local in character previous to that time, the new era of the Church’s interest in youth began with the rise of the Christian Endeavor movement in 1881. A number of denominational societies also sprang up, each, in common with the Christian Endeavor, having a department of work specially devoted to the directing of the recreation of its members. Valuable suggestions concerning proper amusements are constantly given in the periodicals of these young people’s societies, and various books of games and plays furnish the basis for a healthy amusement life. Source: Badminton. (1915), p. 30.
all their emphasis on rationality and human achievement, the Greeks were polytheists; they looked to specific gods for assistance in specific spheres of life. They appealed to Artemis to help them in the hunt, to Poseidon to help them sail the seas, to Aphrodite to help them in matters of love.The Greeks firmly believed that all the gods, whatever their specialty, look with favor on the male warrior virtues of physical strength, agility, and endurance. These warrior skills were best taught and practiced in athletic contests such as wrestling, chariot
racing, and throwing the discus and javelin. By the fifth century BCE four major festivals dominated the Greek athletic circuit: (1) the Pythian Games at Delphi in homage to Apollo, (2) the Isthmian Games honoring Poseidon at Corinth, (3) the Nemean Games in Nemea, and (4) the Olympic Games at Olympia, the latter two in the name of the mighty Zeus. Zeus, reckoned to be a vigorous warrior god who cast thunderbolts like javelins from the sky, bestrode the Greek pantheon just as surely as the Olympic Games dominated the athletic circuit. Sometime around 1000 BCE myth and ritual established him as the patron deity at Olympia.The actual origins of the games are shrouded in mystery, but one legend depicts Zeus and a rival god, Cronus, engaged in a wrestling match in the hills above Olympia. Zeus won the tussle, inspiring religious ceremonies and quadrennial athletic contests as testimonies to his prowess. By the supposed authority of Zeus, athletes, trainers, and spectators were guaranteed safe passage every four years to Olympia, even in times of war. After they arrived at Olympia, athletes had to swear by Zeus that they had been in training for the past ten months and that they would play fair and obey all the rules. If they broke their oaths, they were required to pay fines, which went toward the building of statues in honor of Zeus. During the fifth century BCE a huge temple was erected of local limestone for the worship of Zeus. Shortly thereafter the most famous sculptor of the day, Phidias, constructed a magnificent statue seven times larger than life, encased in gold, silver, and ivory. It depicted Zeus sitting on a throne in the inner chamber of the temple.Visitors never failed to comment on its memorable finery and proportions. Admirers thought it to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World; critics complained about its outlandish size. If Zeus stood up, they noted, he would poke his head through the roof. Of the five-day program of Olympic events that became fixed during the fifth century BCE, athletic contests consumed only two and a half days. The entire first day was devoted to religious rituals—a kind of prolonged opening ceremony when religion mattered more than patriotism or commercial glitz. Athletes and
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As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport. ■ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
their trainers offered oaths, prayers, and sacrifices to Zeus. They presented gifts at the statues of past Olympic victors who had been deified, at the shrines of various lesser gods, and especially at the altars and statues of Zeus. Well into the first evening, Olympic participants marched in solemn processions and sang hymns of praise and devotion. Then came a full day of athletic contests: chariot races and horse races in the morning, the pentathlon (discus and javelin throws, a broad jump, a sprint, and wrestling) in the afternoon. As soon as the sun set, however, attention shifted back to religious activities. By
the light of a midsummer full moon, a ram was slain and offered as a burnt sacrifice to the accompaniment of prayers and hymns. On the following morning priests led Olympic judges, Greek city-state officials, athletes and their kin, and trainers in a colorful procession to the altar of Zeus, where one hundred oxen were ceremoniously slain. The legs of the oxen were burned in homage to the gods; their carcasses were roasted for a big banquet on the last day of the festival. Confirming this conjuncture of religion and athleticism, the Greek poet Pindar lauded “the expense and toil” that enabled the athlete to take advantage of his
The pillars of the temple of Zeus, collapsed in an earthquake, 2003.
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“high gifts shaped by the gods.” Olympic laurels set an athlete “on the farthest edge of bliss,” insisted Pindar, “and the gods honor him.” Long before the Greek Olympics came to an end in the fifth century CE, faith in the old gods waned to such an extent that Olympia’s religious trappings lost much of their original meaning. Other gods beckoned in the Greco-Roman world. The Romans largely took their gods from the Greeks, changing merely the names. In Roman hands, Zeus became Jupiter, but with a difference: Jupiter never became associated with competitive sport. Although some Roman “entertainments” were also based on ancient religious festivals, religion and sport momentarily parted company in the brutality of the Colosseum and amid the gambling frenzy that surrounded the Circus Maximus.
Sport and Spire Early Christians largely accepted Greek athletics. The apostle Paul frequently mentioned them to illustrate the spiritual race to be run and the incorruptible prize to be won by Christians. Roman sport was another matter. For well more than two centuries, Christians were unwilling participants in Roman spectacles. Thrown into the arena as punishment for their unorthodox religious beliefs, they inevitably lost the lionsversus-Christians game. Yet, even when the persecution ceased, Christians continued castigating Roman sport’s “pagan” basis, its open association with gambling and prostitution, and its inhumane brutality. The North African theologian Tertullian was the harshest critic of all. In a treatise entitled On Spectacles, written around 200 CE, he urged Christians to have “nothing to do, in speech, sight, or hearing, with the madness of the circus” or “the savagery of the arena.” With the collapse of the Roman empire, the interaction of religion and sport shifted to northern Europe. Ancient games such as German kegels (bowling), French soule (association football), and the stick-and-ball games of Irish hurling and Scottish shinty all had religious associations akin to the competitive fertility rites of Native Americans. Light toyed with darkness, warmth with cold, and life with death in the pre-Christian mytholo-
gies of Europe. Muslims contributed during the eighth century when they brought old Egyptian fertility rituals across the narrow neck of the Mediterranean into Spain. For several centuries Muslim, Christian, and preChristian practices blended harmoniously, especially around the annual rites of spring renewal that Christians called “Easter.” Various forms of ball play became an integral part of Easter season ceremonies all over Europe. Colorfully garbed French priests near Paris chanted a traditional liturgy and passed a ball back and forth as they danced down the church aisle celebrating springtime signs of Christ’s resurrection. An archbishop near Lyon, France, regularly led a ball game immediately after an Easter meal. As late as 1165 a theologian at the University of Paris protested church-sponsored ball play at Poitiers and Rheims. It derived from old pagan customs, he insisted. He was right, of course, but no one seemed to share his alarm. While incorporating ball play within its religious program, the medieval church helped to popularize ball games and other recreational activities. The church provided a time for parishioners to play. For six days of the week peasants and household servants worked. On Sunday they were expected to worship at the village church, yet no puritan pall hovered over Sunday. After the morning sermon and sacraments, villagers lounged or played in the afternoon. Because the church’s holy days aligned with ancient seasonal holidays, villagers also played at festive occasions around Easter, during the harvest season, and at Christmas time. On such holidays various regional versions of competitive sport flourished. Italians regularly scheduled palio (horse races) on several of their many saint’s days; each spring in England peasant football thrived around the food, drink, music, and dance of Shrove Tuesday, just before the onset of Lenten austerity. In addition to providing a calendar that allowed time for play, the medieval church provided physical space. In that time before public parks, playgrounds, and schoolyards, villagers usually played on a village green or some other “commons” normally set aside for grazing cattle. In
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Religion Tossing on the Walrus Hide The extract below describes a sports ritual of the Chukchee of Siberia: The “tossing on walrus-hide” forms among the Maritime Chukchee, and especially among the Asiatic Eskimo, an extra ceremonial, which is arranged in early or middle summer in order to ward off danger from contagious diseases or to assuage too long and violent tempests. The “tossing on the walrus-hide” is considered akin to the races, and the family who arrange the ceremonial are called simply “racers” or “masters of the race” . . . On the day chosen for the ceremonial, numerous guests gather at the house of the “racers.” The women of the family bring sacrifices to “all the directions.” Then a feast follows, at the end of which the housemaster, or still better a shaman from among his nearest relatives, if there be any such, paints with red ochre the faces of all those who have recently been taken ill; also those who look sickly, and concerning whom there might be apprehension of an attack by ke’let [evil spirits]. Small children, with hardly an exception, are painted. The marks of the painting are varied, and closely resemble those of the painting with reindeer-blood in the “slaughtering-ceremonials” of the Reindeer Chukchee. After that [the painting with red ochre], the tossing begins. Men and women seize a big walrus-hide (split in two; make it thinner), grasping it firmly by loops
those villages that had no commons, the churchyard or cloisters often served as the venue for mass recreation. Spires and stained-glass windows served as backdrops for wrestling matches, juggling exhibitions, and board games. A fourteenth-century English clergyman unintentionally admitted the popularity of these practices when he attempted to banish “dancing,” playing at quoits (throwing iron rings onto a peg, similar to the U.S. frontier game of horseshoes), bowling, tennis, handball, football, stoolball, and all sorts of other games on church property.
cut around its outer edge, and lift it from the ground. Then the young men and girls, one by one, or in pairs consisting of a man and a woman, try their skill. For this, the performer plants himself firmly in the middle of the hide, and with a sudden jerk those who hold it send him upward, often to the height of five metres. After that involuntary jump, he falls back on the skin, and is safe from harm. The greatest skill is in coming down on the feet without losing one’s equilibrium. Women are more clever than men at this, and there are those who can keep upright for three successive jumps. The “tossing on walrus-hide” often assumes the character of a contest, in which a prize is offered to the winner. Every one who has taken three jumps successfully may stop, and wait his turn to compete with a performer who has achieved a similar success. . . . Like the reindeer-races of the Reindeer Chukchee, the “tossing on walrus-hide” of the Maritime people takes on the character of a sport, and is frequently arranged merely for amusement, without connection with any religious or superstitious purpose. From the Maritime people the “tossing on walrus-hide” spread to the Reindeer Chukchee, among whom it is, however, much less in use, and serves only for a merry social exercise. Source: Bogoras, W. (1904–1909). The Chukchee: material culture [part 1], religion [part 2], social organization [part 3] (pp. 410–411). Memoirs, American Museum of Natural History; vol. XI. New York: G. E. Stechert and Co.
Medieval football, an ill-organized, uncodified game that had no physical boundaries or limits on team size, required open land. That land was also owned by the church and rented out to wealthy landlords, who traditionally turned it over to peasant sport shortly before spring crop planting and just after the autumn harvest. English and French clergymen frequently complained about property being damaged by hordes of drunken football players. A few critics pointed to the roughness of the game. In 1440, for example, a French bishop denounced football as a “dangerous and pernicious”
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I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure. ■ IAN CHARLESON AS ERIC LIDDELL IN “CHARIOTS OF FIRE” (1981)
activity that caused “ill feeling, rancor and enmities” under the guise of “a recreation pleasure.” He banned football games within his diocese. Medieval church leaders looked more benignly on upper-class sport. Like modern ministers who cater to early Sunday morning golfers, priests happily dispensed “quickie” communions at the break of dawn to aristocrats eager to get to the fields for hunting and hawking. Bishops sat jowl to jowl with the castle crowd at ceremonious jousting contests. Churchmen especially looked with favor on royal tennis because the game apparently originated with French monks, abbots, and priests in monastic and church cloisters as le jeu de paume (palm game). Players hit a small ball with their open hand over a rope stretched across the middle of the space available.They played the ball off walls and onto sloping roofs that efficiently kept the ball in play. According to legend, a French king visited a monastery, saw a game of tennis, and admired it so much that he had it copied in his royal palace. The term tennis court probably derives from the game’s early location in the courts of European monarchs. Renaissance churchmen enthusiastically linked tennis to the Renaissance ideal of well-balanced mental and physical skills. The Christian humanist Desiderius Erasmus, a former monk, lauded tennis as an ideal game for exercising all parts of the body; England’s Cardinal Thomas Wolsey arranged the construction of an indoor tennis court for King Henry VIII at Hampton Court. An Italian monk, Antonio Scaino da Salo, produced a treatise in 1555 that established the first simple set of written rules, a standard court size, and a scoring system. Tennis was “the most appropriate sport for the man of letters,” Scaino insisted.
Puritans Make Their Mark Protestant reformers gave a more mixed message about sport. The German Reformation leader Martin Luther encouraged his followers to participate in “honorable and useful modes of exercise” such as dancing, archery, fencing, and wrestling. For his own exercise, Luther engaged in the old German game of bowling. When the bowling ball banged against the pins, it reminded him
of the Christian’s duty to knock down the devil. The French reformer John Calvin, too, enjoyed bowling. He also played quoits, but he was critical of most other sports. Zealously devoted to the task of cleaning up the morals of the city of Geneva, Switzerland, he saw sport as a hindrance to holy living. Most games seemed too intimately associated with carnal pleasure on the one hand, idleness on the other. Competitive games also meant gambling and desecration of the Christian Sabbath, two of Calvin’s great taboos. For Geneva’s public policy as well as for private piety, Calvin was quite prepared to lump most sports with thievery and prostitution and to ban them all. Protestant exiles from England, Scotland, and Holland flocked to Geneva, where they imbibed Calvin’s ethical mandates as well as his theological beliefs. Most of all, they partook of his supreme self-confidence that came from believing in the notion that each human being acts as an agent of divine redemption before acquiring eternal bliss. When they turned northward to home, they put their shoulders to the task of moral reform. English Calvinists led the way. Their zealous crusade to purify both church and society provoked people to call them “Puritans.” This Puritan sect represented no monolithic bloc of opinion or practice. Its members often disagreed with each other over specific evils that needed to be eradicated. Puritan merchants and businessmen thought and acted quite differently from village farmers; ministers sometimes preached one thing, while their congregations did another thing. When a preacher in the 1600s denounced “wakes or feasts, may-games, sports and plays, and shows, which trained up people to vanity and looseness, and led them from the fear of God,” one could be sure that many people in England were still finding pleasure in these traditional pastimes. Popular or not, folk games closely resembled old preChristian fertility rites and Roman Catholic holy days, inspiring the Puritans all the more to suppress them. The Puritans first tried moral preachments in the home, at church, and in the marketplace. When sermonizing met with negligible success, they went after the political
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This woodcut from 1488 shows Lidwina from Schiedam at the age of fifteen having fallen on the ice. She is probably the only saint in sports history.
means of reform. English Puritans during the early seventeenth century put themselves forward as city councilors, mayors, and members of Parliament. They also seized positions of power in the army and rode that horse to victory in a civil war that appropriately began while King Charles I was on the links of Leith, near Edinburgh, Scotland, playing golf. Briefly in power for a decade or so during the midseventeenth century, the Puritans appointed army officers to serve as guardians of public morality. They struck at the heart of old church festivals and folk games by leveling fines and imprisonment against any display of public intoxication or gambling and against any desecration of the Sabbath. People, however, clung to their playful ways. Rigid prohibitions occasionally stirred hostile protests. According to a report from an Essex village, when the local Puritan vicar began the Sunday morning service in the parish church, “the people did usually go out of church to play at football, and to the alehouse and there continued till they were drunk, and it was no matter if they were hanged.” This rural resistance to Puritan reform finally won the day. English villagers continued living out their lives in seasonal cycles with periodic festivals and games compensating for times of intense agricultural labor. Puritanism, largely confined to urban merchants and business classes for whom moral discipline and the
work ethic made sense, was to enjoy a renewal in Victorian England, but it was much too ethically rigorous for the more traditional, casual life of preindustrial England. In the end only the Puritan Sunday survived the Restoration of 1660. Until late in the twentieth century, Sunday remained sacrosanct in a fashion uniquely English, free of public amusements and sports as well as commercial activity. Puritanism also met with mixed success in the English colonies of North America. Passions waxed and waned against activities reminiscent of old village pastimes. Moreover, in their prohibitions against gambling and Sunday amusements, New England clergy were joined by Pennsylvania Quakers and New Netherlands Dutch Calvinists. Only those diversions that demonstrably led to the fulfillment of one’s “call” to work found favor in earnest colonial eyes. Eighteenth-century Bostonian John Adams phrased it best in his diary entry on 24/25 May 1773: “I was not sent into this world to spend my days in sports, diversions, and pleasures. I was born for business; for both activity and study.” The Great Awakening, a religious revival during the middle years of the eighteenth century, produced an even dimmer view of sports, as did the Second Great Awakening during the early years of the nineteenth century.
Muscular Christianity Finally, rapid industrial and urban growth fostered a reassessment of the relation of religion and sport in Victorian England and the United States. Medical as well as moral concerns prompted liberal Anglicans Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays) to articulate a “muscular Christianity” for Britain; Boston Unitarians Edward Everett Hale and Thomas Wentworth Higginson did the same in the
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An ancient statue at Olympia depicting the Hydra, a mythical many-headed monster, slain by Heracles, son of Zeus.
United States. All the while a new international organization, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), added health programs and competitive sport to its pietistic, evangelical purposes. Exposure to the YMCA convinced a Canadian ministerial student, James Naismith, that “there might be other effective ways of doing good besides preaching.” While at the YMCA training college in Springfield, Massachusetts, Naismith invented the game of basketball. Sport and recreation programs became central features of the social gospel espoused by turn-of-the-century liberal churches. Ministers as diverse as Washington Gladden, a Congregationalist pastor in Columbus, Ohio, and William S. Rainsford, rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church on the Lower East Side of New York City, nudged their churches to sweeten the gospel with
church gymnasiums and bowling, softball, and basketball teams sponsored by the church. The movement for urban parks and public playgrounds, too, stood high on the social gospel agenda. Whereas the social gospel was largely a Protestant commodity in most U.S. cities, in Chicago it was primarily associated with the Roman Catholic Church. By 1910 Chicago’s Catholics boasted the largest churchsponsored baseball league in the United States; two decades later Bishop Bernard J. Sheil founded the Catholic Youth Organization with the intention of using boxing and basketball programs to prevent juvenile delinquency. During the 1920s a nearby little Catholic college, Notre Dame, emerged as a national football power. Religious and sport mythology mingled freely in the virtual canonization of all-American
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halfback George Gipp and coach Knute Rockne; the famous metaphor of the Four Horsemen came right out of a biblical text. For American Jews, too, religious traditions blended with the immigrant need to adopt sport as a means of Americanization. Jews especially took to the favorite immigrant sport of prizefighting, frequently with the Star of David emblazoned on a boxer’s trunks. Less predictably, they also competed enthusiastically in the YMCA game of basketball, particularly in the New York City area. For purposes of becoming fully American, however, the “national pastime” of baseball was essential. Many Jewish authors feature baseball games and allusions to the game in their stories. Two Jewish baseball stars—Hank Greenberg in 1934 and Sandy Koufax in 1965— established themselves as ethnic heroes by refusing to play ball on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Until shortly after World War II, Protestant evangelicals refrained from mixing religion and sport. Southern Baptists and Methodists especially had a long history of hostility toward competitive sports. They saw college athletic contests as occasions for raucous partying; they viewed professional sport as a Yankee invention for purposes of gambling, strong drink, and desecration of the Sabbath. After 1945, however, southerners took the lead in yoking sports to evangelical Protestantism. The evangelist Billy Graham initiated the practice of having star athletes publicly “share” their conversion experience. Graham appropriately thought of his evangelistic organization as a “team” and frequently used sports stories and metaphors in his sermons. For purposes of association as well as mere space, he selected famous sports venues such as Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, Wembley Stadium (London), Boston Garden, and the Los Angeles Coliseum for his early crusades. Mixed with Cold War rhetoric and a market mentality that hawked Jesus as if he were a breakfast cereal or bar of soap, this marriage of sport and born-again religion produced several new organizations. Sports Ambassadors (founded in 1952), the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (1954), and Athletes in Action (1966) are merely the top three of many booster
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groups that capitalized on athletics as a means of winning converts to Christ. These groups catered primarily to high school and college athletes, but by the 1960s the evangelical spirit had also invaded professional locker rooms. It began with National Football League (NFL) teams, then moved to Major League Baseball. By 1975 every major professional football and baseball team employed a chaplain or at least scheduled religious services of worship prior to Sunday games. A small but prominent group of athletes has turned from Judeo-Christian traditions to a Black Muslim allegiance to Allah. Heavyweight champion Cassius Clay led the way during the 1960s, changing his name to “Muhammad Ali.” College basketball great Lew Alcindor similarly converted to Islam and took the name “Kareem Abdul Jabbar” for his professional career. In the spring of 1995 boxer Mike Tyson emerged from prison wearing the garb and speaking the language of Islam. Racial pride apparently weighs heavily in the decision to become a Black Muslim.
Religion, Sport, and Women Religion also determines what opportunities and barriers women encounter in physical education and sport. Women play particular roles in each religion, and those roles influence if and how women may be physically active. Among Christians for centuries the attitudes of the Catholic church toward sports in general and women’s sports in particular determined whether women participated in sports and, if they did, when and how. During the Middle Ages, for instance, a strong strain of asceticism physically immobilized many women in convent cells, but the church had no objection to other women participating in Whitsuntide ball games or in aristocratic pastimes such as falconry. In early modern times the church tended to adopt conservative attitudes toward social change. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the latter half of the twentieth century, the church demonstrated mistrust in sports. The church viewed the body with suspicion and perceived sports as sensual if not positively sinful. Church doctrine, too,
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prized the soul above the body; consequently, the church had little interest in physical education for boys and even less for girls. Today the influence of the Catholic church in sports has greatly diminished. Recent popes have softened traditional views of human sexuality, and the sensuality evident in sports is now widely accepted—within limits. Protestant churches were, on the whole, quicker to accept sports, including women’s sports, as a legitimate activity. Seventeenth-century Puritans admitted that men and women needed “lawful recreations”—as long as the Sabbath was not disturbed. During the eighteenth century Anglican ministers looked kindly upon women cricketers (but disapproved of lower-class women boxers and wrestlers). Although the “muscular Christianity” of the nineteenth century was meant primarily for men, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the church-related women’s colleges of Great Britain and the United States advocated field hockey, basketball, and other appropriate sports for young women. Jewish women’s participation in sports has changed through time and still differs within the Orthodox and more liberal sectors of the religion. Orthodox Jewish attitudes are sticking to the same rules they had a hundred years ago—even turning on the lights is forbidden on the Sabbath. However, most Jewish women and girls who are not Orthodox would generally participate in any sporting event, even those that might take place on the Sabbath. Islam has no general interdiction of sport, even for women, and the Prophet Muhammad apparently favored physical activity for girls and women. However, through time, this early openness has been transformed to a far more restrictive outlook.
Perspective Religion has certainly weighed heavily in the history of sport through the ages. Religious folk have frequently supported and even lauded sport as an ally that supports social cohesion and moral principles. Sometimes they have protested sport’s specific violations of current religious principles; occasionally they have lambasted
sport in its entirety. Yet, never have religion and sport been totally separate or indifferent to each other. William J. Baker See also Prayer; Rituals; Sport as Religion
Further Reading Aitkin, B. W. W. (1989, Autumn). The emergence of born-again sport. Studies in Religion, 18, 391–405. Baker, W. J. (1988). Sports in the Western world. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Baker, W. J. (1994, April). To pray or to play? The YMCA question in the United Kingdom and the United States, 1850–1900. International Journal of the History of Sport, 11, 42–62. Cavallo, D. (1981). Muscles and morals: Organized playgrounds and urban reform, 1880–1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Henderson, R. W. (1947). Bat, ball, and bishop: The origin of ball games. New York: Rockport. Higgs, R. J. (1995). God in the stadium: Sport and religion in America. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Hoffman, S. J. (Ed.). (1992). Sport and religion. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Hopkins, C. H. (1951). History of the Y.M.C.A. in North America. New York: Association Press. Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo ludens: A study of the play element in culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Levine, P. (1992). Ellis Island to Ebbetts Field: Sport and the American Jewish experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Mangan, J. A., & Walvin, J. (Eds.). (1987). Manliness and morality: Middle-class masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Mathisen, J. (1990, August). Reviving muscular Christianity: Gil Dodds and the institutionalization of sport evangelism. Sociological Focus, 23, 233–329. Miller, D. L. (1970). Gods and games: Toward a theology of play. New York: World Publishing. Novak, M. (1976). The joy of sports: End zones, bases, baskets, balls, and the consecration of the American spirit. New York: Basic Books. Oriard, M. (1993). Sporting with the gods: The rhetoric of play and game in American culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ownby, T. (1990). Subduing Satan: Religion, recreation, and manhood in the rural South, 1865–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Prebish, C. S. (1993). Religion and sport: The meeting of sacred and profane. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Scarborough, V. L., & Wilcox, D. R. (Eds.). (1991). The Mesoamerican ballgame. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Sperber, M. (1993). Shake down the thunder: The creation of Notre Dame football. New York: Henry Holt. Stern, T. (1949). The rubber-ball games of the Americas. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Wagner, P. (1976, Summer). Puritan attitudes towards physical education in 17th century New England. Journal of Sport History, 3, 139–151.
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It’s a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired you quit when the gorilla is tired. ■ ROBERT STRAUSS
Reproduction
T
he reproductive health of women participating in sport has been a controversial area of discussion for many years. One such controversy was the issue of jumping. Based on myths and theories, the medical profession suggested that jumping displaced the uterus and caused reproductive abnormalities (Lenskyj 1986). Because of this medical advice, it was 1992 before women were able to compete in the triple jump at the Olympics. As modern medicine advanced and scientific evidence accumulated, this issue has been somewhat resolved. Exercise in moderation can be beneficial, and more women are leading active, healthy lifestyles with little or no problems with reproductive health. An active lifestyle is important for women of all ages, particularly because regular physical activity has been associated with the prevention of osteoporosis, breast cancer, heart disease, and depression (Charkoudian and Joyner 2004). Regular activity does not affect the menstrual cycle, and it is only when rigorous training is coupled with inappropriate energy-intake compensation, in which reproductive hormones are affected, that problems with the menstrual cycle are observed (Harber 2004).
Benefits of Exercise During Pregnancy For women with a normal menstrual cycle, moderate physical activity should play no role in preventing conception. Once conception has occurred, recreational activity in moderation has not been linked to early pregnancy wastage or miscarriage (Clapp 1996a). Traditional medical advice has been for women to rest during pregnancy (Wolfe et al. 1994).That outdated medical advice does not address the increasing participation of pregnant women in sports and recreational activities; in addition, there is a growing population of women who work throughout pregnancy in strenuous, nontraditional occupations (such as police work, firefighting, and military service).
Because pregnancy is a unique process in which almost all of the physiological systems of the body are modified in an attempt to maintain the maternal and fetal environment, the addition of exercise may represent a significant challenge to maternal and fetal wellbeing, especially at higher intensities of physical work. The scientific literature suggests, however, that mild- to moderate-intensity exercise in a healthy pregnancy can be beneficial to mother and baby. Some of these benefits include improved physical fitness and muscular endurance, improved stamina for labor and delivery, the promotion of appropriate maternal weight gain throughout pregnancy (Kardel and Kase 1998; Wolfe et al. 1994; Wolfe and Mottola 2002), improved mood and decreases in states of anxiety and depression following pregnancy (Koltyn and Schultes 1997).
Guidelines for Exercise during Pregnancy According to recent medical advice from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG 2002), a woman with a low-risk pregnancy can participate in moderate exercise for thirty minutes or more a day on most, if not all, days of the week. Although this advice is more modern than the traditional advice of “resting,” it does not give pregnant women concrete guidelines for exercise. No formal guidelines for exercise during pregnancy existed until 1985, when ACOG published a bulletin that suggested guidelines for exercise during pregnancy. The most controversial guideline for exercise was that a pregnant woman should not let her heart rate rise above 140 beats per minute (ACOG 1985). Even though these guidelines caused quite a discussion amongst physicians and health care professionals, ACOG was the first organization to put any guidelines for exercise during pregnancy in writing and to publish and distribute them to other organizations. In 1994, ACOG released another bulletin on guidelines for exercise during pregnancy. The controversial issue of exercise heart-rate guidelines is ignored in this bulletin (ACOG 1994) and also the latest (ACOG 2002), so
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there are now no guidelines in the United States for target exercise heart rates during pregnancy. In Canada, exercise and pregnancy guidelines are found in the “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document, developed by Dr. Larry Wolfe from Queen’s University and Dr. Michelle Mottola from the University of Western Ontario, which was published by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) in 1996, endorsed by Health Canada, and revised (Wolfe and Mottola 2002). The “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” includes a medical prescreening questionnaire to identify contraindications to exercise during pregnancy, a list of safety considerations, and aerobic- and muscle-conditioning guidelines. The “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document was endorsed by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC) (Davies et al. 2003) and the CSEP (Davies et al. 2003a). These documents are available on the CSEP website: www.csep.ca, which also includes the “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document, free of charge. Recently, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has also endorsed the SOGC/CSEP joint position paper, “Clinical Practice Guidelines for Exercise in Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period” (Davies et al. 2003a), in which the “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document is highlighted (ACSM 2004).
Need for Medical Prescreening It is important to confirm a healthy pregnancy with a physician or midwife before engaging in an exercise program. In the “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document there is a list of contraindications to exercise for the health-care professional to check. Medical prescreening is recommended due to several potential risks that have been identified in the early scientific literature, and each appears to have a dose/response relationship to the intensity of maternal exercise, in that, as the intensity of maternal exercise increases, the risk of the hypothetical effects also is augmented. Wolfe et al. (1989), Wolfe et al. (1994), Clapp (1996b) and Wolfe and Weissgerber (2003) provide excellent reviews on the effects of maternal exercise on maternal and fetal well-being. In a healthy pregnancy, mild- to moderate-intensity exercise
appears to pose no threat to mother or fetus (Wolfe et al. 1994). Since no threshold has been determined for intensity and duration of maternal exercise above which problems occur, it is important that medical screening take place before maternal exercise begins to ensure a healthy pregnancy. Guidelines promoting exercise intensities of 60 to 70 percent of maximum oxygen consumption (moderate aerobic exercise) are within accepted levels for healthy pregnancies (Wolfe and Weissgerber 2003). The “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document provides guidelines within these intensities. “Aerobic activity” is defined as exercise in which large muscle groups are being moved to improve heart and lung health, such as walking, stationary cycling, swimming, aquatic exercise, or low-impact aerobics.
Monitoring of Intensity Monitoring of intensity of exercise is extremely important for pregnant women. The “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” form provides three ways to check that the aerobic activity is not too high. The first is through a chart of exercise heart-rate (pulse-rate) guidelines based on the age of the pregnant woman. Women who are younger than twenty should exercise between a target heart rate of 140 and 155 beats per minute; women twenty to twenty-nine years old should exercise between the ranges of 135 and 150 beats per minute; women between the ages of thirty and thirty-nine should exercise from 130 to 145 beats per minute target heart rate; and women forty and older should stay within the range of 125 to 140 beats per minute (Wolfe and Mottola 2002). The second way to ensure the appropriate intensity for exercise is to ask the pregnant exercising woman how hard she perceives she is working. On a 20-point scale (rating of perceived exertion scale, Borg 1962), she should be within 12 to 14, which is labeled as “somewhat hard” (Wolfe and Mottola 2002). The final check for intensity is called the “Talk Test,” in which the exercise intensity is excessive if the pregnant woman cannot carry on a verbal conversation while she is exercising (Wolfe
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and Mottola 2002). If she is out of breath, is breathing heavily, and cannot talk, she must reduce the intensity to lower her heart rate. A healthy pregnant woman who has not exercised before should begin at the lower end of the target heart-rate zone for her age (Mottola and Wolfe 1994) and monitor her intensity closely. A pregnant woman should exercise at a frequency of three times per week, especially if she is just beginning an exercise program, increasing to a maximum of four times per week. Caution is suggested with exercise frequency of five or more times per week, as this has been associated with an increased risk of delivering small-forgestational-age babies (Campbell and Mottola 2001). Perhaps the best way to begin an exercise program is to have a day of rest in between the exercise days to avoid undue fatigue. The time of each exercise session should be approximately fifteen minutes at the target heart-rate intensity, increasing the time of the exercise session by two minutes every week until a maximum of thirty minutes per session is achieved. Intensity and time of each exercise session should not be increased past the twentyeighth week of gestation (Wolfe and Mottola 1993) because of the possibility of fatigue. Many women in the third trimester decrease intensity and duration of each exercise session because they tire more easily. Each exercise session should start with five to fifteen minutes of warm-up and five to fifteen minutes of cooldown at a lower intensity of activity. All pregnant women should know the safety signs and consult a physician should any contraindications to exercise occur. These are listed in the “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document (Wolfe and Mottola 2002).
THOSE WHO EXERCISED PRIOR TO PREGNANCY Women who have been exercising prior to pregnancy have been advised by the medical profession to continue exercise during pregnancy. However, it is necessary to determine frequency, intensity, duration, and type of exercise before advising pregnant women to continue exercising. In addition, medical prescreening must occur to rule out contraindications to exercise.The aerobic guidelines presented above for women who have not exercised
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before pregnancy are also suggested for the recreational athlete, but the recreational athlete may be able to exercise at the higher end of the target heart-rate zone based on age, for the maximum of thirty minutes–three to four times per week. If a woman has been jogging before pregnancy, she may continue within the aerobic-exercise guidelines, unless she develops joint problems or is uncomfortable with this mode of exercise. Switching to a stair climber (with no jarring movements) or to bodyweight-supported exercise (such as swimming or biking) would be recommended. Muscular-strength or -conditioning exercise is activity that includes stretching, abdominal exercise, and resistance or weight-lifting exercise. The “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document also includes suggestions for these activities. The major precaution for muscularconditioning exercise is that no activity should be performed lying on the back past four months into pregnancy. This guideline has also been suggested by the ACOG (2002) because of possible blocking of the inferior vena cava or the abdominal aorta (major vessels in the abdomen) by the weight of the pregnant uterus pushing on them while the mother exercises on her back. The inferior vena cava is the major vein that returns blood to the heart, and the abdominal aorta is a major artery that supplies the lower body with blood, including the pregnant uterus. As a precaution, sit-up exercises for the abdominal muscles can be done in a side-lying, sitting, or standing position instead of lying on the back, past four months into pregnancy.
THOSE WHO DID NOT EXERCISE PRIOR TO PREGNANCY Previous medical advice suggested that women who have not exercised should not start an exercise program during pregnancy. However, recent scientific literature and guidelines would suggest that if no contraindications to exercise exist and if the pregnancy is healthy, women may start an exercise program in the second trimester (Mottola and Wolfe 1994). Exercise should not be started in the first trimester because of potential risks. In addition, many women do not feel well in the
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first trimester and may be discouraged from continuing to exercise if the activity program is started at that time. The best time to start an exercise program is in the second trimester, around twelve to thirteen weeks.
Athletic Competition Pregnancy is not the time for engaging in athletic competition or strenuous activity that would place the mother at risk for bodily injury (Mottola and Wolfe 2000). This includes avoiding activities or sports in which there is a potential for falls or body contact. Women who have been exercising strenuously prior to pregnancy should reduce the intensity, frequency, and duration of exercise to follow the exercise guidelines recommended above. There are no known benefits to the fetus from strenuous high-intensity maternal exercise. In this situation, the risks to the fetus far outweigh any maternal benefits, and reduction in intensity and duration are highly recommended. The literature describing the effects of strenuous exercise on mother and fetus are limited. Most of the studies presented are case studies that describe the efforts of one individual or are reports of past activity and not scientifically controlled experiments. Thus, no guidelines exist for pregnant women who engage in strenuous exercise, although scientific investigations are currently being conducted in this population group of pregnant athletes.
Effects of Strenuous Occupations The “PARmed-X for Pregnancy” document has a question about activity performed during the pregnant woman’s occupation, whether she is a homemaker or working twelve-hour shifts and lifting heavy objects. Determining the activity level of the pregnant woman as she performs everyday activities is important and must be considered when prescribing an exercise program. If the pregnant woman is engaging in high-intensity physical activities in her occupation, it is important that a recreational-exercise program complement the activities performed in everyday life. This will prevent unnecessary fatigue and overuse injuries and will decrease the potential risk to the fetus.
The effects of occupation on pregnancy outcome are reviewed in Wolfe et al. (1994). Additional recent studies suggest that physical activity on the job may play an important role in pregnancy outcome. Military women on active duty who gained less than twentyfive pounds during pregnancy developed an earlier labor more often (Magann et al. 1996). The risk of early labor was also increased in women who worked regularly in the evening or at night and had occupations with long hours of standing and who continued work through late gestation. These conditions increased the risk of delivering an infant before forty weeks (the due date) (Fortier et al. 1995). However, in an epidemiological analysis of 529 women, there was a lack of association with occupational exposures, physical exertion, and low birth weight (Campbell and Mottola 2001). In a national survey of U.S. nurses, factors significantly associated with earlier birth included number of hours worked per week, per shift, and while standing. Other factors were noise level, physical exertion, and occupational fatigue (Luke et al. 1995). In addition, Spinillo et al. (1995) associated moderate- to highintensity physical activity in the workplace with a twofold increase in the risk of severe high blood pressure compared to mild activity on the job. In a review article on physical work and pregnancy outcome, epidemiological evidence would suggest that occupations including prolonged standing or walking that continued into late gestation, as well as work encompassing several strenuous factors in combination, appear to increase the risk of earlier delivery (Ahlborg 1995). It was also recommended in the same article that working pregnant women avoid extremely heavy physical exertion (that is, close to maximum) in early pregnancy and late gestation. Studies on the results of heavy lifting on the job and the impact on spontaneous abortion are inconclusive and require further study. Thus, because of the varied conclusions on occupation and birth outcome, before exercise can be prescribed for pregnant women in the work force, it is important to determine how physically
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When you’re having fun, you have a lot of heart and desire. Winning breeds winning. Losing breeds losing, and when you’re losing, you don’t think of anything else. ■ ANGELINA WOLVER
active they are in their current occupation so that overexertion and undue fatigue are avoided.
Returning to Exercise after Pregnancy Many pregnant women are concerned about when they can safely return to exercise after the baby is born. The timing of return to exercise depends upon the number of complications during labor and delivery. If labor and delivery are uncomplicated, a postpartum (post pregnancy) woman normally can return to aerobic exercise once vaginal bleeding from delivery has stopped, and her postpartum check-up with her physician is normal (usually between six and eight weeks after delivery). It is recommended that she begin an exercise program at the lower-intensity heart-rate range based on age and follow the same guidelines as if she were pregnant (Mottola 2002). Avoiding unnecessary fatigue is an important consideration for any new mother, and starting off with walking while pushing a baby carriage is an excellent way to regain activity. If the postpartum woman has had a cesarean section or complications during labor and delivery, it is recommended to wait at least ten weeks or until labor and delivery complications have been resolved and the woman’s health has returned to normal. Muscular-conditioning exercises are also recommended for the postpartum woman, and returning to these exercises is suggested after the first postpartum checkup with the physician and vaginal bleeding due to delivery has stopped. Abdominal exercises can be started as well and may be performed while lying on the back (Mottola 2002).
Breast-feeding and Exercise Women who breast-feed and choose to exercise usually have no problems (Carey and Quinn 2001). Postpartum exercise of mild or moderate intensity has little adverse affects on milk quality (Carley et al. 1997), quantity, or infant weight gain (Dewey et al. 1994). Infants detect sweet and sour tastes (Wallace et al. 1992), and the literature has suggested that infants may refuse to nurse or
may fuss during a feeding after the mother has been exercising due to an increase in the lactic-acid content of the breast milk, which may produce a sour taste (Wallace et al. 1992). Maximal exercise has been shown to increase the amount of lactic acid in breast milk postexercise, which leads to decreased acceptance of the postexercise milk (Wallace et al. 1992). However, aerobic exercise of mild to moderate intensity performed four or five times per week beginning six to eight weeks postpartum had no adverse affect on breast-feeding (Dewey et al. 1994). In a more recent study that was well controlled, moderateor even high-intensity exercise during lactation did not change the infant acceptance of breast milk taken one hour postexercise (Wright et al. 2002). Thus, maternal exercise is well tolerated postpartum, but strenuous (near-maximum) aerobic activity should be avoided until breast feeding is terminated, due to the potential of fatigue of the new mother.
Making Lifestyle Habits Permanent Engaging in mild- to moderate-intensity exercise should not be a problem for the reproductive health of active women. Pregnancy is a time when women make beneficial alterations in health habits to provide a good environment for the unborn. These changes include adopting improved eating habits, abstaining from smoking and alcohol consumption, and starting or continuing an exercise program. All of these changes can be carried forward into the postpartum period, and many health professionals believe that pregnancy is a good time to incorporate healthy lifestyle habits that are permanent. Integrating activity into a healthy, active lifestyle leads to healthy moms and healthy babies. Michelle F. Mottola
Further Reading Ahlborg, G. (1995). Physical work load and pregnancy outcome. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 37(8), 941–944.
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American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (1985). Pregnancy and the postnatal period. Washington, D.C.: ACOG Home Exercise Programs. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (1994). Exercise during pregnancy and the postpartum period. ACOG Technical Bulletin. 189(Feb), 2–7. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (2002). Opinion no. 267: Exercise during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Obstetrics and Gynecology, 99, 171–173. American College of Sports Medicine. (2004). ACSM endorsements: Clinical practice guidelines for exercise in pregnancy and the postpartum period. Sports Medicine Bulletin, 39(5), 1. Borg, G. (1962). A category scale with ratio properties for intermodal and interindividual comparison. In H.-G. Geissler, P. Petzold (Eds.), Psychophysical judgement and the process of perception. Berlin, Germany: VEB Deutscher Verlag du Wissenschaften. Campbell, M. K., & Mottola, M. F. (2001). Recreational exercise and occupational activity during pregnancy and birth weight: a casecontrol study. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 184, 403–408. Carey, G. B., & Quinn, T. J. (2001). Exercise and lactation: are they compatible? Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, 26, 55–74. Carley, G. B., Quinn, T. J., & Goodwin, S. E. (1997). Breast milk composition after exercise of different intensities. Journal of Human Lactation, 13(2), 115–120. Charkoudian, N., & Joyner, M. J. (2004). Physiologic considerations for exercise performance in women. Clinical Chest Medicine, 25(2), 247–255. Clapp, J. F. (1996a). Pregnancy outcome: Physical activities inside versus outside the workplace. Seminars in Perinatology, 20(1), 70–76. Clapp, J. F. (1996b). Exercise during pregnancy. In O. Bar-Or, D. Lamb, P. M. Clarkson (Eds.), Perspectives in exercise science and sports medicine, Vol. 9: Exercise and the female—A lifespan approach. (pp. 413–451).Carmel, IN.: Cooper Publishing Group. Davies, G., Wolfe, L. A., Mottola, M. F., & MacKinnon, C. (2003a). Joint SOGC/CSEP clinical practice guideline: Exercise in pregnancy and the postpartum period. J. Obstet. Gynecol Can. 25(6), 516–522. Davies, G., Wolfe, L. A., Mottola, M. F., &MacKinnon, C. (2003a). Joint SOGC/CSEP clinical practice guideline: Exercise in pregnancy and the postpartum period. Can. J. Appl. Physiol. 28(3), 329–341. Dewey, K. G., Lovelady, C. A., Nommsen-Rivers, L. A., McCrory, M. A., & Lonnerdal, B. (1994). A randomized study of the effects of aerobic exercise by lactating women on breast-milk volume and composition. New England Journal Medicine, 330, 449–453. Fortier, I., Marcoux, S., & Brisson, J. (1995). Maternal work during pregnancy and the risks of delivering a small-for-gestational-age or preterm infant. Scandinavian Journal Work Environment & Health, 21(6), 412–418. Harber,V. J. (2004). Energy balance and reproductive function in active women. Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, 29(1), 48–58. Kardel, K. R., & Kase, T. (1998). Training in pregnant women: Effects on fetal development and birth. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 178(2), 280–286. Koltyn, K. F., & Schultes, S.S. (1997). Psychological effects of an aerobic exercise session and a rest session following pregnancy. Journal of Sports Medicine & Physical Fitness, 37(4), 287–291. Lenskyj, H. (1986). Out of bounds—Women, sport and sexuality. Toronto, Canada: Women’s Press.
Luke, B., Mamelle, N., Keith, L., Munoz, F., Minogue, J., Papiernik, E., & Johnson, T. (1995). The association between occupational factors and preterm birth—A United States nurses study. American Journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, 173, 849–862. Magann, E. F., Winchester, M. I., Carter, D. P., Martin, J. N., Nolan, T. E., & Morrison, J.C. (1996). Military pregnancies and adverse perinatal outcome. International Journal Gynecology & Obstetrics, 52(1), 19–24. Mottola, M. F. (2002). Exercise during the post partum period: Practical applications. In R. E. Sallis (Ed.), Current Sports Medicine Reports (pp. 362–368). Philadelphia: Current Science Inc. Mottola, M. F., & Wolfe, L. A. (1994). Active living and pregnancy. In H. A. Quinney, L. Gauvin, A. E. Wall (Eds.), Toward active living. Proceedings of the International Conference on Physical Activity, Fitness & Health (pp. 131–140). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers. Mottola, M. F., & Wolfe, L. A. (2000). The pregnant athlete. In B. L. Drinkwater (Ed.), Women in Sport (pp. 194–207). Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Science Ltd. Spinillo, A., Capuzzo, E., Colonna, L., Piazzi, G., Nicola, S., & Baltaro, F. (1995). The effect of work activity in pregnancy on the risk of severe preeclampsia. Australian & New Zealand Journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, 35(4), 380–385. Wallace, J. P., Inbar, G., & Ernsthausen, K. (1992). Infant acceptance of postexercise breast milk. Pediatrics, 89, 1245–1247. Wright, K. S., Quinn, T. J., & Carey, G. B. (2002). Infant acceptance of breast milk after maternal exercise. Pediatrics, 109(4), 585–589. Wolfe, L. A., Ohtake, P. J., Mottola, M. F., & McGrath, M. J. (1989). Physiological interactions between pregnancy and aerobic exercise. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, 17, 295–351. Wolfe, L. A., & Mottola, M. F. (1993). Aerobic exercise in pregnancy: An update. Canadian Journal Applied Physiology, 18, 119–147. Wolfe, L. A., & Mottola, M. F. (2002). PARmed-X for Pregnancy. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology. Wolfe, L. A., Brenner, I. K. M., & Mottola, M. F. (1994). Maternal exercise, fetal well-being & pregnancy outcome. Exercise Sports Sciences Reviews, 22, 145–194. Wolfe, L. A., & Weissgerber, T. L. (2003). Clinical physiology of exercise in pregnancy: A literature review. Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Canada, 25(6), 451–453.
Revenue Sharing
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n professional team sports leagues revenue-sharing rules are applied to gate revenue, local revenue (concessions, premium seating, parking, other venues, and local TV), and league revenue (national TV broadcast rights, team license fees, and league sponsorship). In the early years gate revenue was the dominant source of revenue, but in recent years other revenue sources have increased dramatically, especially TV revenue.
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Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. ■ VINCE LOMBARDI
Revenue sharing is undertaken by sports leagues for two main interrelated reasons. The first is to ensure financial stability of teams and the second is to improve competitive balance (the evenness of competition) by offsetting the inequality in market size in which teams are located. Revenue sharing improves the financial stability of teams (the ability of teams to survive financially), but the impact on the distribution of player talent and hence competitive balance is less straightforward.
Gate- and Local-Revenue Sharing The extent of gate-revenue sharing varies across sports, but teams in the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and European soccer and Australian leagues typically keep 100 percent of their home gate. In the National Football League the split is 60:40, where the home team keeps 60 percent of the gate with the remaining 40 percent pooled and distributed equally, a so-called straight-pool system. Prior to 2001, owners received an equal share of other teams’ contributions of 40 percent of their gate revenue, but not of their own contribution. The net result of the 2001 change was to lessen the amount of revenue redistributed from large gate-revenue teams to small gaterevenue teams. From 1995, Major League Baseball changed from the 80:20 home-visitor split of gate revenue in the American League and the 95:5 split in the National League to a more general revenue-sharing arrangement of all net local revenue (such as from local television, cable, radio, gate, concessions, premium seating, parking, and sponsorships, less stadium-operating, debt-service, and rental costs). There is a huge variation in local TV revenue of teams in MLB.This system taxes each team a percentage of its reported net local revenue (initially 17 percent in 1995), which is pooled and shared equally. Under the so-called split-pool system introduced in 2001, 75 percent is shared equally and the remaining 25 percent distributed to teams in proportion to how much their net local revenue is below the league mean. The immediate effect is to increase the contribution of large-revenue
market teams and the amount received by small-revenue market teams. But, competitive balance might actually worsen if it gives (profit-maximizing) small-revenue market teams the incentive to reduce payrolls, perform poorly on the field, underperform financially as a result, and so collect more from the pool. From 2003, a 34 percent net local revenue tax has been distributed equally on the straight-pool basis, with additional central MLB funds distributed on a split-pool basis. In English soccer, the net gate was split 80:20 from 1920 until 1983, but since 1984 teams have kept their home gate, as have teams in the Premier League, which was formed in 1992. Gate revenue constituted as much as 80 percent of total revenue in the 1950s, but by the 1990s had fallen below 40 percent. Another scheme was the payment of 4 percent of all national receipts into a pool that was distributed equally among the league teams, reduced to 3 percent in 1987 and abandoned for Premier League teams from 1993. Leaving aside the greater likelihood of financial survival provided for small-revenue market teams, economic theory suggests that no matter how gate revenue is divided, there is no effect on the distribution of talent and hence competitive balance in a league comprised of profit-maximizing teams. However, the greater the degree of gate sharing the lower is the value of acquiring extra talent (and hence wages) to win more because teams only capture a fraction of any increased revenue at home games. Moreover, this fractional increase in revenue is also offset by a loss of revenue from the away teams, which win less. The impact of local revenue sharing under profit maximization is less clear, but in general, unless the sharing involves revenue that depends on winning, local-revenue sharing will not improve competitive balance. By contrast, in a league comprised of win-maximizing teams, the greater the degree of gate sharing the greater is the move toward competitive balance. The effect of both gate- and local-revenue sharing is to decrease the average revenue of large-revenue market teams and increase the average revenue of small-revenue market teams thus tending to equalize teams’ ability to acquire talent.
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League-Revenue Sharing League-negotiated broadcasting revenue is typically pooled and distributed equally in the United States, Europe, and Australia. In the NFL the only TV contract is a league-negotiated national TV contract, which is shared equally. There is therefore much less revenue disparity between teams in the NFL than in other leagues, such as MLB, the NBA, and the NHL, where there are separate national and local broadcast agreements, and often significant variation in local broadcast revenue. Despite MLB’s sharing of net local revenue, the New York Yankees’ local TV revenue is so large the Yankees still have much greater revenue than other teams in smaller-revenue markets. In England’s Premier League, and some other European soccer leagues, revenue from the sale of broadcast rights is not shared equally but roughly split into three parts. About a third is shared equally, another third distributed according to the on-field performance of the team and the final third is distributed according to how many times each team has been seen on television. By contrast, in Italy’s Series A, every team sells its own broadcasting rights (to its home matches), while in the Spanish Primera League, the most popular teams sell their rights individually and the least popular teams sell their rights collectively. The effect of sharing league-negotiated (say, national TV broadcast) revenue is to change the distribution of revenue from what it would be if, for example, teams generated their own (say, local TV) revenue. Revenue from a league-negotiated contract is likely to be greater than that if all teams negotiated their own individual local contracts. Furthermore, large-revenue market teams, which contribute more than small-revenue market teams, subsidize the latter because each team receives an equal share of league revenue, thereby improving the financial stability of small-revenue market teams. However, an increase in shared league revenue should have no effect on competitive balance. A lumpsum transfer from the league will not change the incentives for a profit-maximizing team owner, leaving competitive balance unchanged. Under win maximization, however, the effect of a lump-sum transfer is to in-
crease the average revenue of small-revenue market teams more than it increases the average revenue of large-revenue market teams, with the result that competitive balance increases.
The Future Revenue sharing improves the financial stability of teams in the league, but the economic literature is less clear in its conclusion about the impact of revenue sharing on competitive balance in a league. In particular, exactly which factors affect teams’ revenue and whether teams are profit- or win-maximizers are both crucial in determining whether various types of revenue sharing will improve competitive balance. Ross Booth See also Economics and Public Policy
Further Reading Barros, C., Ibrahimo, M., & Szymanski, S. (2002). Transatlantic sport: The comparative economics of American and European sports. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Beech, J., & Chadwick, S. (2004). The business of sport management. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. Booth, R. (2004).The economics of achieving competitive balance in the Australian Football League, 1897–2004. Economic Papers, 23(4). Dobson, S., & Goddard, J. (2001). The economics of football. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fort, R. (2003). Sports economics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Fort, R., & Fizel, J. (2004). International sports economics comparisons. Westport, CT: Praeger. Kesenne, S. (2001). The different impact of different revenue sharing systems. European Sport Management Quarterly, 1, 210–218. Leeds, M., & von Allmen, P. (2005). The economics of sports. Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Szymanski, S., & Kuypers, T. (1999). Winners and losers: The business strategy of football. London: Viking. Zimbalist, A. (2003). May the best team win: Baseball economics and public policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Ringette
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ingette has adapted the aspects of older sports, including ice hockey, basketball, soccer, and team handball. It requires complex motor skills within an
RINGETTE
environment of explosive speed and finesse and is one of the fastest sports in the world. Ringette combines skating on ice in full equipment (helmet with face mask; skates; elbow pads; neck protector; girdle with genital, hip, and tailbone protection; shin pads; and gloves) with carrying a stick, controlling a ring, reading and reacting to a changing environment, receiving and delivering passes, and starting and stopping at full speed.
Origins Sam Jacks of Canada invented ringette in 1963 to provide girls with a safe winter activity that does not involve body contact but that they can play to develop their skills, court sense, and fair play. The first set of rules was developed in 1965 and has been revised during the past forty years. Ringette has evolved in response to the women who play it: Players today are faster, stronger, and more strategic than their predecessors were. Ringette’s inaugural season was 1963–1964, and the sport grew from slightly more than four thousand registered players in 1979 to more than twenty-one thousand in 1985. During the early and mid-1980s ringette was one of the most popular team sports in Canada and the winter team sport for females in Canada. That time was the height of ringette’s growth phase—the sport increased fivefold in seven seasons. During the mid-1980s Ringette Canada, the association governing the sport in Canada, used the slogan “the winter sport for females.” However, today, with more sports opportunities available, that slogan is not accurate. Nonetheless, Canada today has twenty-five thousand players. The rules of ringette have evolved to meet the needs of the players, and so have the events. The first Canadian Ringette Championships were held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1979. These championships have grown to become the annual elite ringette showcase. Players at lesser levels also compete in tournaments and other events. In all countries where people play ringette, most clubs offer or attend some type of organized tournament each season.
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In the 2002 Canadian Ringette Championships in Saskatchewan, Ottawa defeated Alberta in the open division (age nineteen and older), Alberta defeated British Columbia in the junior division (ages fourteen and fifteen), and Manitoba defeated Alberta in the belle division (ages sixteen through eighteen). The International Ringette Federation (IRF), ringette’s international body, was established in 1986 by six countries under the direction of Betty Shields, president of Ringette Canada. The IRF sanctions the World Ringette Championships, which have been held every other year since 1990. In the 2004 World Ringette Championships, Finland finished first; Canada, second; the United States, third; and Sweden, fourth. Along with Canada, Finland has long been an international leader in ringette. Finland was the first European country to play ringette—in 1978. A hockey coach, Juhani Wahlsten, developed the sport in Finland and helped found the first ringette club, Turku Ringette. Since then, ringette and its infrastructure have developed steadily. In 1983 the Ringette Association of Finland (renamed the “Finnish Ringette Association”—FRA) was formed, and in 1985 the Finnish Central Sports Federation accepted the association as a member, making ringette an official sport in Finland. The Finnish team won the world champion title in 1994 and the 1998 Summit Series. Three thousand members support the FRA and its national team program (since 1990), junior national team program (since 1996), and a strong grassroots youth leadership program, Nuori Suomi (Young Finland). Players age twelve and younger, called “E Juniors,” wear arm bands that determine with whom they play. This arm band system ensures that all players have equal playing opportunities. It teaches fair play and team skills. People in the United States have played ringette since at least 1986, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, hosted the 1994 world championships. The sport is also expanding in France, Sweden, Germany, and Russia, and all of these nations compete at the international level.
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In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing. ■ VAN MORRISON
Play and Rules Ringette has gained attention mostly for its scoring object and the method of controlling that object. Ringette is played without pucks or balls. Instead it is played with a ring, made of blue rubber for ice or hard plastic for gym and asphalt. Players control the ring with a straight stick whose shaft tapers slightly at the tip for better control. Many sticks are wooden with tips of aluminum, steel, or hard plastic. A ringette team has five players and a goaltender. Much as in indoor soccer or basketball, the five skaters or “out players” are broken down into two defense players, two forwards, and one center. Players wear long pants and loose-fitting jerseys. Most players wear smaller equipment to balance safety with agility. For example, hockey players may wear wide shin pads to help block shots, whereas ringette players lean toward narrower shin pads to allow better speed and agility. Regardless of the position they play, players must wear full face mask, helmet, padding, gloves, and skates. The object of the five skaters is to move the ring toward the opposition’s net with control, with the ultimate goal of shooting and scoring. The goaltender’s job is to prevent the opposition from scoring and to assist in the team’s defensive unit breakout. Ringette’s equivalent of a jump ball or face-off is the free pass. The free pass allows a player from one team five seconds of protection to make a pass from a predetermined spot on the ice. Many teams use this possession to key on set plays or skating patterns that enable the other four skaters to become open. One of the original ideals of ringette was team play. When Sam Jacks devised the first set of rules, he had the players pass over a blue line. In soccer or basketball players can control the ball and make their way down the court or field without having to pass to any teammates. In ringette players may not carry the ring from end to end. Players must pass over each blue line because they are not allowed to carry the ring across these lines. The ring must touch another player (of either team) before the player can again touch the ring on the other side of the blue line. Today that emphasis on team play continues.
The ring must be passed, shot, batted, deflected, or legally kicked to another player across each blue line. Ringette has received some attention because its target group is women. Although no competitive events exist for coed teams of any age, some recreational tournaments allow coed teams. Internationally, organizers have made few attempts to include male players, nor have any national or international events allowed male participation. Some proponents of ringette cite the lack of male participation as an explanation of why the sport is not more popular. Others disagree, pointing out the positive: Ringette has evolved from a slow and controlled sport to a fast-breaking, dynamic sport of ring skills and skating and has gained many female participants. For either argument, ringette is based on speed and finesse, not gender. Tamara McKernan
Further Reading International Ringette Federation. (2004). Retrieved December 30, 2004, from http://www.ringette.cc/
Rituals
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cholars in anthropology and the sociology of sport often tap into functionalist frameworks such as that of Durkheim (1976), which provide insight concerning the value of rituals in ceremonies. Faure (1996, 89) refers to Durkheim as “the zealous propagandist of national consensus” because of his interpretation of ritual as affirming group solidarity. In this sense, Durkheim identified the symbolic role of elite athletes as serving as a unifying and identification symbol for the collective imagination that conveys a collective identity for citizens and other aspiring athletes within a given social and cultural context. Acknowledging the “integration and consensus” framework, Light (2000) illustrated the interrelatedness of intra- and inter-group social integration through ritual activity in the sporting context.
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A baseball ritual in which players line up along the foul lines when introduced at the start of the game.
The strength of Durkheim’s interpretation of ritual lies in the reality of people acting together in rituals that bind them (Kertzer 1988). Durkheim’s discussion on rituals and Goffman’s theoretical work broaden the argument and interpret ritual activity in sport as social products that positively affect support and performance of sport teams (Ward 1998). The public expression of group solidarity, according to Bourdeau (1991), also signifies a contextual group identity that is ritually expressed and confirmed.The experience of “emotional flows” and the perception of togetherness, are thus affirmed through different ritual pathways (Maguire 1992, 104).
Behavior and Social Construct In From Ritual to Record (1978), Guttmann suggests that the ritual dimension of sports held special significance in primitive and ancient civilizations such as in the ancient Greek religious festivals in which artistic expressions and physical body culture were intertwined. In the traditional society, ritual life is centered in the religious belief of the ancestor cult in which ancestors were daily worshipped through offerings and rituals acknowledging their influence in the lives of their descendents. Rituals in the African traditional religion mainly include rites of passage, calendrical rituals, and crisis rituals (Olupona 1990). Calendrical rituals ensure the continuity of life force, whereas crisis rituals prevent annihilation of human life by supernatural agents. Well-
known rainmaking rituals, first-fruit ceremonies, and hunting rites were performed to symbolically demonstrate the significance of the worship and “magic power” to be evoked. In traditional African societies today, rituals are performed to mark special occasions, celebrations, and a change of lineage-composition, status, and identity during births, marriages, deaths, and initiation ceremonies. Traditional values and tribal laws are still taught and gender-specific roles are enforced through ritual behavior and specific rites. Rituals of kinship, also known as “ancestor rituals,” stressed kinship, and the local structure expressed “symbolically the unity of family and descent group and handling the problems of individuals in the specific domestic sphere” (Hammond-Tooke 1974, 354). Moving beyond the restrictive definition of ritual that carries overtly religious content and identification with the supernatural, ritual also refers to culturally standardized, repetitive activity that is primarily symbolic in nature and aims to influence human affairs; it may involve the supernatural realm or may be merely profane in nature (Kertzer 1988, 8–9). In a religious context, rituals with religious or supernatural content may carry symbolic meanings in which a god, ancestors, or a society worships it(self) and thus gives expression to a social dependence. Blanchard (1995, 54) suggests that “secular ritual” is such an “all-compassing category that it may have limited utility in understanding sport.” Despite the parallels between ritual and sports, ritualistic elements in sports are mainly symbolic statements that express a social message of significance to the structure and cohesiveness of a group or groups within a given society or context. The ritual symbol often provides an understanding of the cultural meaning of a physical
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Rituals The Ritual of Sport Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see—not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.
Lewis H. Lapham
contest such as in public hunting traditions (Blanchard 1995) or warlike nature and the celebration of masculinity in modern sports (Light 2000). The symbolic meaning of rituals and ritual behavior is imbedded in the culture of a particular group that is also referred to by Blanchard’s (1995, 51) description of ritual as “a facet of culture” to be “viewed as the symbolic dimension of social activities.” Sporting rituals are evident in the expression of “brotherhood” and within the global sphere of modern competitive sport, as seen at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games. At such events, the ritual content is mediated for entertainment as social theatre, and the ritualistic displays have become significant in portraying a contemporary social order in a global context, of awarding recognition for local and global order through cultural content and symbols of the host nation, and for Olympism as a global sporting culture. In this instance, a symbol such as the five Olympic rings signifies “unity between the contents” (Olympism) and simultaneously signifies the ancient “pattern of five intersecting rings inscribed on an altar at Delphi” where each ring represents a solar year between the Ancient Games in the worship of Zeus. The five rings instead of “four,” which were the cycle of the Games, were used because the Greeks reckoned inclu-
sively. It also referred to the eligibility of athletes to compete as boys (from ages seventeen to twenty) and then as men (four years later) (Robertson 1988, 22). Public rituals in Athens conveyed the rich heritage of Greek life through the ages and demonstrated the interconnections of ancient rituals with myth, magic, and the supernatural. In such secret ceremonies, “ritual power” was evoked for divination, healing, protection, exorcism of evil, and love (Meyer and Mirecki 1995). These rituals can be viewed as coping mechanisms in which the actors’ intention is to create order and seek assistance from a source beyond what is perceived to be humanly possible. Public rituals are more susceptible to social change than are secret ones—the latter are often based on faith because of the supernatural and sociopsychological implications for the participants (Akong’a 1987). In defining the concept of ritual, Thompson (1992) refers to meaning and form by discussing rituals as static repetitions of the social order in southwestern Nigeria which is increasingly being transformed through play and improvisation. Such ritual behavior reflects the cultural, political, and religious context in which symbolic meanings and forms are acted out to express ritualistic and ceremonial behavior. Kertzer also stresses the concept of social order by defining ritual as “an analytical category that helps us deal with the chaos of human experience and put it into a coherent framework” (1988, 8). The culturally standardized, repetitive activity that conveys meaningful symbolic content may thus be performed to evoke ritual power.
Symbols and Symbolism Kertzer described ritual behavior as “action wrapped in a web of symbolism” (1988, 9).The subjective world picture becomes a social reality through the meaningfulness of social symbols. The individuals’ subjective experience is thus molded by the social meanings ascribed to the rituals that stem from the social matrix with meaningful psychological dimensions that reflect the understanding of reality and significance of the ritual. As symbols represent other meanings by association, resemblance,
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or convention, according to Turner, they are “multivocal —speaking in many ways at once; multivalent, having various meanings or values, and polysemous, having or being open to several meanings” (1984, 16). The symbolic meanings are commonly understood and convey essential messages that may serve the strategic end or purpose of the ritual. Ritual celebrations provide the framework for identification, critique, and emotional involvement in which “meanings” are constructed (Platvoet 1995). The transmission of messages through ritual dramatization is powerful and persuasive and is thus a significant vehicle political or religious leaders employ to legitimate their authority. Through ritual, followers are
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guided, emotions are channeled, and loyalty and solidarity are created. “Insider–outsider” identities are established, such as is with the Palio celebration that is held in the central Italian city of Siena. In this celebration, different neighborhoods compete in various activities, building up to “a horse race through the centre of town.” In this competition, insider affiliations and bonds are strengthened as neighborhoods are ritually marked as people sharing the same social identity and who “express a sense of communion with others” (Kertzer 1988, 75). Ritual behavior thus finds an expression in social life, and because competitive sport has become a highly contested terrain in which success, identity, and excellence
A reconstruction of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
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are celebrated and rewarded, rituals have found special meaning in local and global sporting events. The constructions of culturally meaningful symbols in and through sports and the symbolism of sport competitions are constructed and deconstructed by a variety of stakeholders in all spheres of society. Pregame rituals, rituals on the field of play, and the ritualistic nature of sport events draw on shared meanings and symbols and present unique dynamics as cultural and global products.
Constructing Ritual Pathways in and through Sport The parallels between religious and sporting rituals and the ritualized practice of sports have attracted scholarly interest (Guttmann 1978; Light 2000; Maguire 1992). From the early roots of ritualized contests to the global idiom of modern sport, inherent meanings of the ritual have survived. Interaction rituals that convey a shared reality and rituals as coping mechanisms in which individuals (in the case of sports, athletes) use rituals to manage moments of stress and anxiety, are transforming the perceived reality and competencies of athletes and role players in the sporting sphere (Firth 1996; Giddens 1995).
PREGAME RITUALS Pregame rituals and ritualistic behaviors play an important role in the belief of creating a competitive edge. Such behaviors include the eating of specific foods, abstention from alcohol and sex (Fischer, 1997), and superstitious rituals of athletes that are practiced in all sports and across all cultures (Bleak and Frederick 1998). Such rituals are perceived to be effective in ensuring success in sporting competitions, or serve as a catalyst in relieving anxiety or gaining an advantage over an opponent or opposing team. Such rituals may include not stepping on lines, wearing only certain colors, or executing pre-performance routines (Jackson and Baker 2001). Set patterns of pregame preparations may include traveling arrangements, specific meetings, motivational sessions, sharing hardships or excursions to
promote “mateship,” and battle cries as expression of unity and “group power” (Light 2000). One of the most famous pregame rituals in the Rugby Union is undoubtedly the performance of the haka by the All Black (New Zealand’s national team) rugby players just before an international match. On the field, this ritual dance or routine symbolizes the “might” and “warrior tradition” of the indigenous Maori that are differently perceived by opponents (threat), supporters (affirm national identity and affirm group solidarity), and players (affirm identity as player and “warrior” in preparation of the contest) (Renner 1999). The significance of fanatical sport fans’ sport rituals is invariably linked to the supporters’ sense of associating and building identity through perceived bonding and affiliation with specific players, athletes, or teams. Bonds and ties (esprit de corps) are strengthened by creating an “us” and “them” or insider–outsider affiliation (Van Beek 1998).
GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT The creation of global entertainment, as in the case of the European Superleague by the English Rugby Football league in association with media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 1995, eroded the cultural attachments to the sport of rugby league (Falcous 1998). Global symbolism of sport consumerism and high entertainment are created through persuasive media images and messages. In this sense, sport events and competitions are symbols that carry multiple meanings and allow diverse association and identity formation of a broad spectrum of stakeholders.
Sport as Ritual Modern sports rituals carry functions of integration and resistance locally, nationally, and globally. Kertzer (1988) believes that the multivocality of symbolic behavior in sports relative to personal interpretations is less important than are the public declarations of solidarity and identity that are conveyed symbolically. Stevenson and Alaug discuss sporting contests “as secular rituals that engender local and national identity” (1997, 251), in which
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If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work. ■ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
case, social solidarity between players and supporters is expressed through shared symbols, ideology, and membership. Explicit or subconscious messages of insider’s affiliation may find expression in sport as a national entity. A national team symbolizes the aspired national identity of a nation, and team members are the bearers of national pride that is propagated by the playing of the national anthem and flag as significant national symbols if teams or athletes achieve success for their country in international competitions. High-profile male sports, which are most often considered the national sports, carry relatively more symbolic meaning of a nation’s prestige in the global arena, where competition is fierce and victory a token of ideological and political superiority. The rituals and victory celebrations go beyond a sporting victory to serve as symbols of excellence, self-determination, and unification. In many African countries, following independence from “foreign rule,” sport has become a political tool to national unity and nation building. ■
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In Yemen, football rituals were used to promote national identity, and the selection of the national team with equal representation from clubs in the South and North was an incentive to cultivate such unity (Stevenson and Alaug 1997). Similar policy implementations found expression in South African sports in which racial quotas were enforced in the Rugby Union (rugby is regarded as a predominantly white Afrikaner sport).
In both cases, severe local resistance was experienced, and cultural symbols were endorsed by various groups in those societies. More overt resistance is evident in the traditional sporting tradition of Ireland, known as the Gaelic Games, which predated the plantation and introduction of British colonial rule and British sports and pastimes (Sugden and Bairner 1993). These games became the symbol of sporting self-determination and an expression and ritual celebration of Irish culture as celebrated by the dominant Catholic inhabitants of Northern Ireland. The participants of such indigenous games and rit-
uals embrace the identity of local heroes and custodians of traditional body culture. They are often regarded as symbols of regional or nostalgic village identity and local resistance, for example, elderly, lower-class males participating in Belgium in traditional Flemish folk games such as Kaatsen (team handball), Struifvogel (bird darts), or Gansrijden (goose pulling) (Renson, De Cramer, and De Vroede 1997).
The Future Scholarly work in the construction and deconstruction of rituals and ritual behavior in sport and other social contexts provides an understanding of the meaningful role of symbols in evoking and portraying strategic ends. Since ancient times, rituals have signified group identity and affirmed solidarity within insider-outsider affiliations. Secret and public rituals found their way into sports through meaningful social symbols. These social messages and dramatized patterned ritual behavior are employed to: ■ ■ ■
Influence human affairs (religious content) Project communal identity Celebrate and propagate meaningful social, political, and cultural content
The symbolic transmission of messages through ritual dramatization is powerful and finds expression in pregame rituals and sporting practices for enhancing solidarity from the local to the international level or serves as symbols of resistance against hegemonic forces and practices embedded in commercialized modern sport forms. Cora Burnett See also Mascots; Prayer; Sport as Religion
Further Reading Akong’a, J. (1987). Rainmaking rituals: a comparative study of two Kenyan societies. African Study Monographs, 8(2), 71–85. Blanchard, K. (1995). The anthropology of sport. An introduction. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Bleak, J. L., & Frederick, C. M. (1998). Superstitious behavior in sport: Levels of effectiveness and determinants of use in three collegiate sports. Journal of Sport Behavior, 21(1), 1–15.
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Bourdeau, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Durkheim, E. (1976). The elementary forms of social life. London: Allen & Unwin. Falcous, M. (1998). TV made it all a new game: Not again—rugby league and the case of the “Superleague.” Occasional Papers in Football Studies, 1(1), 4–21. Faure, J-M. (1996). Forging a French fighting spirit: The nation, sport, violence and war. In J. A. Mangan (Ed.), Tribal identities. Nationalism, Europe and sport (pp. 75–93). London: Frank Cass. Firth, R. (1996). Religion: A humanist interpretation. London: Routledge. Fischer, G. J. (1997). Abstention from sex and other pregame rituals used by college male varsity athletes. Journal of Sport Behaviour, 20(2), 176–184. Giddens, A. (1995). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Guttmann, A. (1978). From ritual to record: The nature of modern sports. New York: Columbia University Press. Hammond-Tooke, W. D. (1974). World-view II: A system of action. In W. D. Hammond-Tooke (Ed.), Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern Africa (pp. 344–366). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jackson, R. C., & Baker, J. S. (2001). Routines, rituals, and rugby: Case study of a world class goal kicker. Sport Psychologist, 15(1), 48–65. Kertzer, D. (1988). Ritual, politics and power. Binghamton, NY: VailBallou Press. Light, R. (2000). From the profane to the sacred. Pregame ritual in Japanese High School Rugby. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 35(4), 451–463. Maguire, J. (1992). Toward a sociological theory of sport and the emotions: A process-sociological perspective. In E. Dunning & C. Rojek (Eds.), Sport and leisure in the civilising process: Critique and counter critique. London: Macmillan. Meyer, M., & Mirecki, P. (Eds.). (1995). Ancient magic and ritual power. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill. Olupona, J. K. (1990). Rituals in African traditional religion: A phenomenological perspective. Orita, 22(1), 2–11. Platvoet, J. (1995). Pluralism and identity: Studies in ritual behaviour. Studies in the History of Religions, 67, 376. Renner, S. (1999). Haka: Voice of the people. Journal of the International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance, 35(3), 30–35. Renson, R., De Cramer, E., & De Vroede, E. (1997). Local heroes. Beyond the stereotype of the participants in traditional games. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 32(1), 59–68. Robertson, N. (1988). The Ancient Olympics: Sport, spectacle, and ritual. In J. O. Segrave & D. Chu (Eds.), The Olympic Games in transition (pp. 11–26). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Stevenson, T. H., & Alaug, A-K. (1997). Football in Yemen. Rituals of resistance, integration and identity. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 32(3), 251–265. Sugden, J., & Bairner, A. (1993). Sport, sectarianism and society in a divided Ireland. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press. Thompson, D. M. (1992). Yoruba ritual: Performers, play, agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Turner, V. (1984). Introduction. In V. Turner (Ed.), Celebration: Studies in festivity and ritual (pp. 11–32). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Van Beek,W. E. A. (1998). Identity in African ritual. Focaal, 32, 119–137. Ward, R. E. (1998). Rituals, first impressions, and the opening day home advantage. Sociology of Sport Journal, 15(3), 279–293.
Rodeo
R
odeo developed in the cattle country of the American West during the post–Civil War era. An Anglicized version of the Mexican equestrian event charreada, rodeo became a professional sport during the 1880s, and became a modern, centrally governed sport during the 1930s. Today more than sixty thousand men, women, and children compete in nearly three thousand amateur and professional rodeos in North America each year. Men outnumber women approximately 10 to 1 at the top professional level; equal numbers of girls and boys participate in high school rodeo. Although the sport is popular with spectators in most of the United States and western Canada, more than 90 percent of rodeo participants come from the western half of North America. Rodeo events are classified as timed events, in which athletes try to beat the clock, and rough stock events, in which athletes attempt to ride a bucking animal for a specified time. The standard timed events are calf roping, steer roping, team roping, steer wrestling, and barrel racing. Rough stock events are bull riding, saddle bronc riding, and bareback bronc riding. In Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rodeos, riders must stay on the animals for eight seconds. Different organizations have different rules, and several have additional timed events. The most profitable rodeos are the more than seven hundred rodeos sanctioned by the PRCA, but part-time and amateur athletes far outnumber the full-time professionals. The richest rodeo in the United States is the PRCA’s National Finals Rodeo (NFR), held since 1984 at Las Vegas, Nevada. The nearly $3 million purse is six times larger than that of its closest rival, the Houston
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Livestock Show and Rodeo. Early stars competed for saddles and belt buckles, whereas today’s stars earn more than $100,000 annually. The PRCA, formed as the Cowboys Turtle Association (CTA) in 1936, is largely responsible for the professionalization and standardization of the sport and for the huge increases in prize money. The biggest issue that rodeo has faced throughout its history is opposition from humane societies and animal rights groups. Despite almost a century of opposition, efforts to shut down rodeos have largely failed, and rodeo organizations have enacted strict rules to protect their stock. Athletes are much more likely to be injured or killed than are livestock. During the wide-open days before the PRCA, integrity problems dogged some rodeos, but those problems were solved by the 1950s. U.S.-style rodeos also take place in Australia and New Zealand, and similar, related sports are popular in several Latin American countries. However, the sport thrives only in the cattle country where youngsters are born to the saddle. Elsewhere it remains largely a novelty or amateur hobby.
Origins All rodeo events except women’s barrel racing have counterparts in the charreada. U.S.-style steer wrestling, however, is radically different from the Mexican cola (bull tailing). Bull riding, an event whose origins have long baffled historians, was a central feature of the charreada and the Mexican bullfight. Those two sports had parallel and overlapping histories through the late nineteenth century. Charro contests came to the United States with the cattle business and were transmitted from Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) to Anglo and black cowboys along with the skills, terminology, and costumes of the range. Ranch-versus-ranch rodeos and informal contests among ranch hands helped spread the competition throughout the western United States and Canada. Western fairs and holidays often featured rodeo and charro contests in which persons of diverse ethnicities competed for prizes. The major impetus for the com-
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mercialization of rodeo came after the closing of the frontier when western communities began seeking ways to perpetuate their unique heritage. Historians credit Buffalo Bill Cody for staging both the first professional rodeo and the first Wild West show at North Platte, Nebraska, on 4 July 1882. Hoping to show spectators scenes from life in the “real West,” Cody hired cowboys, Native Americans, and Mexican ropers and riders to reenact stagecoach robberies, war dances, a buffalo hunt, and Pony Express rides. Merchants donated prizes for the winners of contests in roping and animal riding. This successful “Old Glory Blowout” drew the largest crowd in the history of the Nebraska territory. Cody then became a Wild West show entrepreneur rather than a rodeo producer, while western communities followed his lead in developing contest rodeo into a viable sport. Rodeo and Wild West shows enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for the next thirty years, with a majority of professionals active in both. The international popularity of the Wild West shows did much to create the audience for professional rodeo and make the once-maligned cowboy into a national hero. The term rodeo did not become standard until after World War I; prior to that time the contests had various names, including frontier days, stampedes, cowboy contests, and roundups. Early rodeos had much greater diversity than do their twenty-first-century counterparts. Women, Hispanics from both the United States and Mexico, Native Americans, and African-Americans participated. Because of similar rules, persons of all ethnicities and nationalities competed throughout North America during the preWorld War I era. Native Americans competed in events reserved only for those people who camped on the rodeo grounds and entertained the crowds but were also free to enter the other contests. Bill Pickett (1870– 1932), an African-American cowboy from central Texas, gets credit for inventing bulldogging or steer wrestling. Rodeo and charreada were quite similar until after World War I, when the charreada was reorganized into an amateur team sport, while rodeo remained an individual, professional sport.
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The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology. ■ RED AUERBACH
Development When Wild West entertainment expanded during the late nineteenth century, local cowboy contests gradually got more publicity and bigger prizes all over the West. Ranch-versus-ranch rodeos grew into community celebrations. While these contests multiplied, a few major rodeos came into existence. The Cheyenne Frontier Days, introduced in 1897, became the most prestigious of the early contests, followed by the Pendleton, Oregon Roundup and the Calgary Stampede in Canada. Competition often lasted for days, with as many as twenty events in a single day. Besides the rough stock and timed events, early rodeos included races, trick and fancy roping and riding competitions, and novelty contests such as nightgown races and wild-cow milking. Races, the most popular, included chariot races, chuck wagon races, stage coach races, and relay races in which riders changed horses after each lap of the arena. In the dangerous Roman standing race, riders stood with one foot on the back of each of a pair of horses. During this era cowgirls often competed against cowboys, enjoying unprecedented success in Roman racing. Trick and fancy roping contestants had to make figures and shapes with the lasso before unleashing it to capture one or several persons or animals. The most famous trick roper was unquestionably the humorist Will Rogers. The top rodeo trick ropers were Chester Byers (1892–1945) and Florence LaDue (1883–1951). Trick and fancy riders circled the arena on their speeding horses while performing a variety of gymnastic feats. Judging of both contests resembled that of contemporary figure skating or diving. Many call Leonard Stroud (1893–1961) the greatest trick rider among cowboys, while all-around cowgirl Tad Lucas (1902–1990) was the most successful woman in that event. Other stars of the pre–World War I era included Lucille Mulhall (1884–1940), a versatile athlete most famous for defeating cowboys at steer roping, Bill Pickett, Enos Edward “Yakima” Canutt (1895–1986), and Hoot Gibson (1892–1962). Rodeo was a hand-to-mouth existence for most performers, although combined with Wild West entertain-
ing it could provide a few with full-time employment. Many early hands had unsavory reputations for drinking and carousing, which made rodeo unwelcome in some communities. The economic outlook improved with the introduction of the Madison Square Garden Rodeo in New York City in 1922. Its success spawned a series of lucrative eastern rodeos that capped off the season and provided top hands with large paydays. The Madison Square Garden Rodeo soon became the foremost contest, but eastern indoor rodeos required adjustments of time and space, leading to the gradual demise of races, novelties, and trick and fancy competitions. Tex Austin (1887–1941) introduced rodeo to Madison Square Garden, but the major producer of the 1930s was Col. W. T. Johnson of San Antonio, Texas. His eastern rodeos set records for attendance that stood for years and enabled the sport to survive the Great Depression. Among the dominant stars of the 1920s and 1930s were Lucas, roper Bob Crosby, and all-around hand Bob Askin. Rodeo long defied modernization, lacking central governance, standard rules, or record-keeping. This situation led to a plethora of world champions and an environment in which fraud thrived. Of particular concern were unscrupulous promoters, who advertised staged events as legitimate contests, and “bloomers,” who collected entry fees, gate receipts, and services for their rodeos and then fled during the final go-round, leaving local businesses and contestants unpaid. These problems led western producers in 1929 to form the Rodeo Association of America. The RAA established regulations and official rules, devised the first official system for naming world champions, and published a blacklist of unscrupulous promoters. The RAA certified no contests for women, and Johnson and other big operators failed to join the organization, which was most influential in the West. Johnson himself became the target of the biggest controversy in rodeo history—the 1936 strike of cowboys against his Boston (Massachusetts) Garden Rodeo. The cowboys refused to compete unless Johnson increased their take. Although initially resistant, Johnson faced an
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ultimatum from the venue’s management that produced a settlement—the first time in U.S. sports history that athletes staged a successful strike and wrested control from wealthy businessmen. The jubilant cowboys formed the Cowboys Turtle Association (CTA) but struggled for years. Last-minute strikes caused chaos, leaving Turtles banned from some major contests. Ultimately, the CTA forged an agreement with the RAA that enabled the cowboys to take control of the sport by 1955. With the ability to sanction rodeos and decertify contestants, they eliminated the corruption in the sport and ultimately became the PRCA. By the end of World War II rodeo was a different sport, thanks to the influence of Gene Autry, the Hollywood singing cowboy who purchased most of the major rodeo companies during the 1940s. Stressing pride, patriotism, and masculinity, he produced elaborate rodeos with only six or seven contests. Autry played a key role in sustaining rodeo through World War II and establishing the tradition of headlining singing stars rather than athletes. His productions never included women’s contests, and cowgirls vanished from the bigtime circuit, where blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans had already become almost nonexistent. In 1948 a group of Texas women founded the Girls’ Rodeo Association (GRA), later renamed the “Women’s Professional Rodeo Association” (WPRA), and began working with both local rodeo committees and the PRCA to ensure cowgirls a place in the sport. In 1955 WPRA President Jackie Worthington and PRCA President Bill Linderman signed the agreement ensuring that all women’s contests at PRCA rodeos would have the WPRA sanction. Cowgirl barrel racing quickly became a standard contest at most PRCA-sanctioned rodeos. In order to provide women with opportunities to compete in roping and rough stock events, the WPRA sanctioned all-women rodeos. Extremely popular during the late 1940s and 1950s, these rodeos today draw limited crowds, making prize money insufficient to meet expenses. By the late 1950s the Madison Square Garden Rodeo had declined, and the PRCA decided to establish a le-
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A Western saddle and lasso. Source: istockphoto.com/Peter _ Liewellyn.
gitimate means of determining world champions. In 1959 the first National Finals Rodeo took place at Dallas, Texas. The NFR, run by the PRCA itself, is now the premier rodeo in the United States and certainly the richest. The top fifteen money winners in six cowboy events—bareback and saddle bronc riding, bull riding, calf and team roping, and steer wrestling—compete in the week-long rodeo. Women’s barrel racing joined the program in 1967. The total purse for the first two NFRs was $50,000. During the NFR’s tenure in Oklahoma City (1965–1984), its purse rose from $44,500 to $901,000. In 1984 Las Vegas made the PRCA a better offer, and the NFR moved to Nevada. There the 1985 purse was $1,790,000, reaching $2,886,269 in 1994. During that same period the number of PRCAsanctioned rodeos grew from 493 to more than 700,
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while the total prize money increased sevenfold to more than $23 million. Commercial sponsorship has become increasingly important since 1971, when the R. J. Reynolds Corporation contributed more than $100,000 in cash prizes. Today numerous sponsors and television contracts enrich successful contestants. Cowboy Jim Shoulders won his fourth all-around title in 1959, collecting a total of $32,905. The top single-event winner, calf-roping champion Jim Bob Altizer, won $24,728. Individual winnings rose along with purses and rodeos, and by 1995 fifteen athletes had reached the $1 million mark in rodeo winnings. Charmayne James, who won ten consecutive barrel racing titles before relinquishing her crown in 1994, is the lone cowgirl in the fifteen. James’ success is due in great part to the leadership of the WPRA, which in 1980 issued an ultimatum to more than six hundred rodeo committees that if women’s purses did not equal men’s by 1985, the women would not ride. The committees complied, and in 1985 James earned more than $150,000, triple her 1984 winnings. Tom Ferguson in 1976 became the first cowboy to surpass the $100,000 mark in annual winnings. Roy Cooper, who competes in steer wrestling as well as all three roping events, has the highest total career winnings, followed by rough stock specialist Ty Murray, the youngest man ever to reach the $1 million figure. In 1993 Murray set several records, including the most money ever won at the NFR ($124,821) and the most in a single season ($297,896). Murray, Ferguson, and Larry Mahan share the honor of having won the most all-around titles with six apiece, while Jim Shoulders’s total of sixteen world titles remains unsurpassed. Few African-Americans followed Bill Pickett into rodeo, perhaps because local committees and judges exhibited significant racism. Biographers suggest that Pickett would have been a major contestant had he been permitted to enter more often. Although PRCA records reveal no institutional racism, minority athletes, sometimes barred locally, often felt doomed, especially when events required subjective judging. Even today African-Americans make up less than 10 percent of
PRCA members and less than 1 percent of WPRA members. Only two black cowboys have ever won world championships—bull rider Charles Sampson in 1982 and calf roper Fred Whitfield, who won the title in 1991 and 1995, qualifying for every NFR since 1990. In an effort to help more African-American cowboys have successful PRCA careers, a series of Bill Pickett Rodeos takes place each year. Hispanic and Native American athletes also felt unwelcome at many rodeos. Hispanics who joined the major circuit concentrated on their specialty, roping, which is scored by the clock, not by judges. From 1972 to 1986, Leo Camarillo won the PRCA team roping title five times, making the top fifteen every year. He finished in a tie for the 1975 all-around title, thus earning a place in the National Rodeo Hall of Fame at Oklahoma City. Hispanics elected to that hall include pioneer roper Vincente Oropeza (1858–1923) of Mexico and Texas roper Juan Salinas (1901–1995). Camarillo, team roper Jim Rodriquez (b. 1941), and bronc rider James Charles “J. C.” Trujillo (b. 1948) are honored by the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame at Colorado Springs, Colorado. Both halls also honor Bill Pickett and cowgirl Tad Lucas, one of only two women honored at Colorado Springs. Lucas is also among the honorees at the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame at Fort Worth, Texas.
Organizations Numerous rodeo governing bodies exist in North America, each with slightly different rules. However, the richest and most powerful is the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which sanctions seven events and allows barrel races sanctioned by the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association as the only women’s contest at its rodeos. Other organizations include the American Junior Rodeo Association (AJRA) for contestants under twenty years of age, Canadian Professional Rodeo Association (CPRA), National High School Rodeo Association (NHSRA), National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (NIRA), National Little Britches Rodeo Association (NLBRA) for contestants eight to eighteen years old, Senior Pro Rodeo (SPR) for contestants forty
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years old or more, International Rodeo Association (IRA), Indian Professional Rodeo Association (IPRA) for Canada only, and All Indian Rodeo Cowboys for the United States. Although women make up less than 20 percent of all rodeo contestants, girls outnumber boys in the eight- to twelve-year-old ranks, and their numbers equal those of boys in high school rodeo. Regardless of the association involved, athletes must have membership cards or permits in order to compete and must limit their participation to rodeos sanctioned by their governing body or one having an agreement with their governing body. Local rodeo committees are the lifeblood of the sport. They pay sanctioning fees to the appropriate governing bodies and hire approved stock contractors, judges, announcers, clowns, and barrel men. For many small western communities, the annual rodeo is the biggest event of the year, and the Fourth of July is the biggest rodeo day in the United States.
Events The most popular timed events in rodeo are steer wrestling, calf roping, steer roping, team roping, and barrel racing. Barrel racers try to ride a cloverleaf path around three barrels placed at set distances around the arena without toppling them. Steer and calf ropers try to rope the animals, jump from their horses, and tie the animals so that they remain tied for a specified time. Team ropers work in pairs, the header roping the front of the animal, the heeler roping the rear. Steer wrestlers must jump from their horses, grab the steer’s horns, and wrestle the steer to the ground. Animals get a head start, and contestants must stay behind a barrier until released or be penalized. Some rodeo organizations have additional events such as goat tying and breakaway calf roping, in which animals are not tied; many organizations omit steer roping, which is illegal in some states. Rough stock events include bull riding, saddle bronc riding, and bareback bronc riding. In PRCA rodeos riders must stay on the animals for eight seconds. Those riders who succeed receive scores from the judges, who award scores of 0 to 50 points to both the animal and the rider, for a possible high score of 100 points. Dif-
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ferent organizations have different minimum time limits, and some organizations omit some of these contests. Most organizations regulate attire, and many conduct drug tests. World champions are typically decided at a finals rodeo. In the WPRA and PRCA the top fifteen money winners in each event participate in the finals, with money won there added to the year’s total to determine the world champion. High school and college rodeos have different means of determining finalists. Amateur organizations often award scholarships rather than money. Usually the athlete with the most money or points acquired while competing in more than one event is named the all-around champion, the sport’s highest honor. The biggest issue facing rodeo is opposition from animal rights groups. Rodeo has faced the wrath of humane societies in North America and abroad since the late nineteenth century. Producer Tex Austin had to drop some events from his famous 1924 London rodeo for this reason. The tactics of opponents have changed recently. Besides picketing and demonstrating, opponents have successfully lobbied state legislatures to outlaw certain contests, as happened with steer roping years ago. The PRCA has responded with educational programs and legislation. The PRCA now has more than sixty rules, endorsed by the American Veterinary Medical Association, to protect livestock. Administrators are quick to note that rodeo is much more dangerous to humans than to animals. The injury rate for animals is a statistically negligible .00045 percent. Although no one has calculated the injury rate for cowboys and cowgirls, rodeo deaths continue to make headlines. Two top bull riders, Lane Frost (1963–1989) and Brent Thurman (1969–1994), suffered fatal injuries at major rodeos.
Rodeo outside the United States U.S. rodeo is popular with international audiences. The 1887 European tour of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show generated great enthusiasm. During the next forty years numerous Wild West shows and exhibition rodeos
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traversed the globe, leaving behind pockets of interest on every continent except Antarctica. Ultimately, many equestrian, cattle-raising cultures devised their own similar sports rather than copy the U.S. model. Events that U.S. residents sometimes call “rodeos” take place in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, but these events have different rules and contests in each country and owe more to local developments than to U.S. rodeo. Little effort has been made to record their history. Chile’s la fiesta huaso contains but two events, and neither is like any U.S. contest. The older Mexican charreada maintains its popularity in both Mexico and the United States, but it is a different sport from U.S. rodeo. U.S.-style rodeos do occur sporadically in disparate locations such as Japan and France, but like the South American events and charreada, they are amateur amusements. The International Rodeo Association turns down numerous invitations annually to exhibit rodeos abroad because of expenses and logistical problems. U.S.-style rodeo is practiced primarily in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Inspired by the formation and success of the Cowboys Turtle Association, Australian hands formed the Australian Rough Riders Association (ARRA) in 1945 and have held national championships in the standard rodeo contests since that time. The ARRA changed its name to the “Australian Professional Rodeo Association” (APRA) in 1988. Also active is the Australian Bushmen’s Campcraft and Rodeo Association Ltd. Still, U.S. rodeo is the most lucrative in the world, and skilled athletes from other countries often relocate to the United States to compete on the PRCA, IRA, or WPRA circuits, hoping to become full-time professionals.
Rodeo Today Today the PRCA sanctions rodeos in forty-six states and four Canadian provinces. Although recalling a simpler time, major contests are sophisticated productions featuring computerized entry systems and electronic timing. Rodeos have long drawn big crowds in the major eastern cities. During the heyday of the Madison Square Garden Rodeo, cowgirls found they could not
even shop in Manhattan in western attire without attracting crowds of curious onlookers. However, rodeo’s appeal to the eastern urban spectator is much the same as the appeal of western films: nostalgia for a mythical past and a chance to see “real cowboys” in action. Rodeo is as much a part of life in the ranching West as skiing is in Norway. As they have done for more than 150 years, ranch children begin riding before they can walk, and many begin roping posts and household animals in early childhood. They are socialized into competitive rodeo at a young age through Little Britches and other youth rodeos with the enthusiastic support of their parents. They can progress to NHSRA and NIRA rodeo without moving far from home. Rodeo is also a family affair, with many current contestants representing the third or fourth generations of their families to be active in the sport. Most rodeos take place in rodeo country, where fans and contestants share a culture. Big-time U.S. rodeo does not flourish without community support, specially bred rodeo stock, and men and women born to the saddle. Mary Lou LeCompte
Further Reading Clancy, F. (1952). My fifty years in rodeo. San Antonio, TX: Naylor Company. Fredriksson, K. (1985). American rodeo. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Hanesworth, R. D. (1967). Daddy of ’em all: The story of Cheyenne Frontier Days. Cheyenne, WY: Flintlock. Haynes, B. C. (1989). Bill Pickett, bulldogger: The biography of a black cowboy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Johnson, C. (1994). Guts: Legendary black rodeo cowboy Bill Pickett. Fort Worth, TX: Summit Group. Kennedy, F. (1952). The Calgary Stampede story. Calgary, Canada: T. Edwards Thonger. King, B. (1982). Rodeo trails. Laramie, WY: Jelm Mountain Press. Lawrence, E. A. (1982). American rodeo: An anthropologist looks at the wild and the tame. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. LeCompte, M. L. (1982, Summer). The first American rodeo never happened. Journal of Sport History, 9(2), 89–96. LeCompte, M. L. (1985, December). Wild West frontier days, roundups and stampedes: Rodeo before there was rodeo. Canadian Journal of History of Sport, 12(2), 54–67. LeCompte, M. L. (1993). Cowgirls of the rodeo: Pioneer professional athletes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. LeCompte, M. L. (1994, Spring). Hispanic roots of American rodeo. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 13, 1–19.
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Romania Olympics Results 2004 Summer Olympics: 8 Gold, 5 Silver, 6 Bronze
Mackey, C. (1979). The cowboy and rodeo evolution. Dallas, TX: Cleo Mackey Publishing. McGinnis, V. (1974). Rodeo road: My life as a pioneer cowgirl. New York: Hastings House. Pointer, L. (1985). Rodeo champions: Eight memorable moments of riding, wrestling, and roping. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Porter, W. (1982). Who’s who in rodeo. Oklahoma City, OK: Powder River. Riske, M. (1984). Cheyenne Frontier Days. Cheyenne, WY: Frontier Printing. Rupp, V. (1987). Let ’er buck. Pendleton, OR: Pendleton Roundup Committee. Slatta, R. W. (1990). Cowboys of the Americas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. St. John, B. (1977). On down the road: The world of the rodeo cowboy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Romania
R
omania is located in southeastern Europe and its capital is Bucharest. It borders Russia on the north and east, Bulgaria on the south, Serbia in the southwest, and Hungary in the west. Although Romania is close to the Slavic region, the Romanian language belongs to the Romance family. In addition to the Romanians, there are Hungarian, German, and Ukrainian minorities among an estimated population of 22 million.
From Independence to World War II Modern Romania was born in 1859, when the princedoms of Moldavia and Walachia merged into one state under Russian influence. In 1879 European powers recognized the independent Kingdom of Romania. The development of a state based on agriculture with little industrialization progressed with difficulty until World War I, with Romania having continuously to balance its interests between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires and their expansion. The aristocrats loved horseracing, in particular flat racing and trotting, and Bucharest was a profitable venue for both. At the turn of the nineteenth century, cycling, football, and athletics were practiced in Bucharest, where
in 1904 a central sport club was established. In 1909 the Romanian Federation of Football was formed and a year later the first National Cup took place. In 1912, a national board assumed the control of all sports. In 1914 the first national championships for athletics took place. The Balkan Wars (1912–1914) and later World War I interfered with the development of sports. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) changed the borders of Romania and the new kingdom, soon renamed Greater Romania, encompassed Transylvania, formerly part of Hungary, and Bessarabia. The larger nation absorbed the town of Arad, which had two important clubs, one for gymnastics and one for football, which later would have great impact. Romania signed the Petite Entente in 1922, a treaty that connected it with France. This choice also had an impact on sport; as some middle-class people went to study in French universities and learned the rudiments of rugby, which then became popular in Romania. Moreover, the football federation changed its name and its internal organization and controlled handball, another sport that grew in the coming years. In 1924, Romania debuted in the Olympics. However, previously, in 1900, Georghe Plagino, one of Romania’s International Olympic Committee members, competed in shooting’s clay trap event. In the 1920s and 1930s, some Romanian professional boxers achieved success. On the occasion of the first World Cup of soccer in 1930, the best European teams refused to sail for the host country, Uruguay, but the Romanian football body accepted the warm invitation of the president of the International Federation, the Frenchman Jules Rimet, and took part to the finals. Romania also participated in the World Cups of 1934 and 1938. Romanian football became professional in 1933. In 1940, with Nazi support, General Ion Antonescu took power. In 1944 King Michael recaptured the throne and joined the Allies against Germany. During the Nazi period, the rising star of women’s table tennis, a Jewish player named Virgilia Rozeanu, was imprisoned. Later, she came back to reign in table tennis into the 1950s.
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Romania Key Events in Romania Sports History 1904 A central sports club is founded in Bucharest. 1909 The Romanian Federation of Football is founded. 1912 A national governing board assumes control of sports. 1914 The first national championship in athletics takes place.
1968 Romania wins its first European Cup in rugby. 1972 Tennis player Ilie Nastase wins the U.S. Open and then the French Open in 1973. 1976 Nadia Comaneci gains international attention for gymnastics performances at the Montreal Olympics.
1924 Romania competes in the Olympics for the first time.
1984 Romania breaks with other Soviet bloc nations and competes in the Olympics in Los Angles.
1933 Football is professionalized.
1989 Nadia Comaneci defects to the United States.
1947 Romania comes under Soviet control and sports is reorganized following the Soviet centralization model.
2004 Romanian women win eight gold medals at the Athens Olympics.
Under Communist Rule The Communist Party won the election of November 1946 and, under Soviet influence, forced King Michael to abdicate a year later. Sport was reorganized in accord with the Soviet Union model, with a large investment in facilities, compulsory youth participation, and more recruitment youth to sports.Women’s sport was promoted, with particular attention to team sports like handball and volleyball, but also gymnastics and rowing. Between 1950 and 1960, Romania industrialized. In 1965, Nicolae Ceausescu took power and, although maintaining the Warsaw Treaty, which connected Romania to other Eastern European Communist countries, he expressed disagreement on the occasion with Soviet policies such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and he also recognized West Germany. On the sport side, the boldest act of independence from Soviet influence was the decision to participate in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Romania gained attention in rugby when, in 1968 and 1975, it won the European Cup, defeating previously unbeaten France. On the other hand, some Romanian athletes were involved in scandals. One was the two-time Olympic champion and record holder in the women’s high jump Iolanda Balas who refused to take
a gender test before European Championships of Budapest in 1966. In 1969 and 1972 Romania reached the finals of the Davis Cup, both years against the United States. On the second occasion, the match took place in Bucharest and, according the unanimous judgment of international experts, the Americans were penalized by several unjustified decisions in favor of Romania. However, United States won the Cup. One of the Romanian players, Ilie Nastase, became an idol in Romania. Winner of the men’s singles in the U.S. Open (1972) and the French Open (1973), he displayed a mix of talent and a theatrical style. The greatest Romanian champion was the gymnast Nadia Comaneci. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, she astonished the world with her skill and earned seven judges’ scores of ten. In 1989 she defected to the United States and claimed to have been abused by the Ceausescu family. In 1986, the Steaua Bucharest club won the European Cup for National Champions, but some months later three players were injured and disabled by Ceausescu’s sons. One of first signals of the end of Ceausescu’s power was the unexpected protests of some Steaua players against the rigged refereeing of Romanian Cup 1989 in favor of Ceausescu’s preferred team, the Dynamo Bucharest.
ROME, ANCIENT
salute you.
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Hail Caesar, we who are about to die GLADIATORS’ SALUTE IN ANCIENT ROME.
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Romania after 1989
Ball Games
When Ceausescu fell from power on 25 December 1989, Romania began a difficult transition to democracy and capitalism. Sports continued to be popular and organizations remained active. Women’s victories, especially in gymnastics, rowing, athletics, and swimming, represent over the half of the honors won by this country in the Olympics. At the 2004 games in Athens women won all of the eight gold medals for Romania.
Ball games were popular with the ancient Romans throughout their history. They used different types and sizes of balls, some being filled with hair, others with feathers or air. Throwing or catching formed the basis of most games. Playing, catching, and juggling two or more balls in the air and similar activities were popular as light exercises. More active games played by Roman youth included “handball,” trigon, sphaeromachia, and harpastum. In “handball” the players attempted to hit a ball with their open hand so that it struck against a wall, then permitted it to bounce on the ground, and attempted to repeat the process as long as possible. Descriptions of trigon are confusing, but apparently three men stood at the corners of a triangle and played with two or more balls. Frequently they had to catch and toss simultaneously because the balls were not thrown in any definite order but rather at the caprice of the server. In sphaeromachia the ground was marked off somewhat as in lawn tennis, and the players took sides. Harpastum was played with a small ball filled with air. Two or more players threw the ball to one another in such a way as to avoid a player between them.
The Future No longer under state control, sport still has some privileges because it brings prestige. Professionalism now faces fewer restrictions and the state gives only limited assistance to many Olympic sports, encouraging private sponsorship. Some athletes emigrate, and in some cases change their citizenship so as to compete in betterpaying professional leagues and competitions. Gherardo Bonini
Further Reading Buchanan, I., & Mallon, B. (2001). Historical dictionary of the Olympic movement. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow. Grune, H. (2002). Lexikon der Europaische Fussball. Kassel, Germany: AGON Sportverlag.
Rome, Ancient
I
n contrast to physical education in ancient Greece, games and exercises in ancient Rome were intended only to make men strong and skillful warriors. The Romans of the republic and the early empire were selectively enthusiastic about Greek athletic contests. Emphasizing physical exercises for military preparedness, the Romans preferred boxing, wrestling, and javelin throwing to running foot races and throwing the discus.
Games and Politics Under the empire the Romans promoted games and festivals for political purposes rather than for athletic ideals. To win support, politicians vied with one another, attempting to produce the most ostentatious games to delight the thrill-hungry mobs. In later times noblemen maintained schools of gladiators, often with the idea that these men could be utilized as private armies. The state kept voting greater and greater sums to be spent on public games. To capture public favor, ambitious young politicians in charge of the holidays supplemented the government appropriations with funds from their own pockets and privately sponsored additional games. Frequently men incurred huge debts in this manner, but they hoped to recoup their losses by securing profitable political appointments to provinces as a result of their public popularity. With the increased
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It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness. ■ SENECA
interest in such lavish entertainments, new facilities were provided for the comfort of the pampered patrons of sporting events. Besides the Circus Maximus and Circus Flaminius, another racetrack was erected in Rome, and three others were constructed a short distance from the city. Usually these tracks consisted of tiers of seats built around three sides of a long, level track. At first they were built of wood, but after fire, decay, and accidents had wrought much damage, stone seats were provided. The Circus Maximus was about 600 meters long and 182 meters wide and in the times of the emperor Augustus could accommodate 150,000 spectators. The charioteers raced around a fence, or spina, that was built down the center of the arena.
Chariot Races The state or private citizens financed the races at the circuses, but racing syndicates provided the entertainment. Their stables housed horses imported from every part of the empire and employed a huge staff of trainers, coaches, doctors, and attendants. Each syndicate was identified by the colors its drivers wore. In the early days anyone could race, but by the end of the republic men of repute did not race. The drivers in the races were usually slaves, although a few won their freedom through exhibitions of skill. The more successful charioteers were the pets of society and received extravagant gifts from wealthy gambling fans.
Gladiatorial Combats The gladiatorial combats were more popular even than the chariot races because they provided the chief spectacles for the populace. Indeed, the munera, which pitted man against man, and the venationes, which pitted man against animals, became popular even in the Greekspeaking eastern empire, which historians once had thought immune to the lust for blood. The gladiatorial games, however, had a powerful religious dimension. The first Roman combats, in 264 BCE, where derived from Etruscan funeral games in which mortal combat
provided companions for the deceased. In the early days the gladiatorial combats were held at the graves, forums, or circuses, but none of these places offered the most convenient facilities. In about 50 BCE men began to experiment with building tiers of wooden seats around an oval arena in order to offer a better view of the hand-tohand fighting and the gory exhibitions. Later these amphitheaters were constructed of stone and served as public recreation centers resembling modern football stadiums. The Colosseum amphitheater covered 2.4 hectares, had walls 48 meters high, and could accommodate ninety thousand spectators. Its subterranean area contained chambers for gladiators, dens for animals, and labyrinths of pipes to flood and drain the arena for water battles. Its marble seats were covered with cushions, awnings protected the citizens from the sun and rain, the air was refreshed by perfumed fountains, and sixty-four exits minimized congestion as the crowd left at the conclusion of the combats. The editor who staged the games usually rented the gladiators from a lanista (the manager of a troupe of gladiators) and was required to reimburse him for losers executed in response to a “thumbs down” sign. The performers in the gladiatorial combats were slaves, criminals, or captives, but some voluntarily joined the schools of gladiators. During the reign of the emperor Nero (54–68 CE), women gladiators were introduced to the arena. The professional gladiators, most of whom were owned by wealthy men or dealers, received their professional education in private schools. Several of these schools received some support from public funds during the empire. At least four schools were located in Rome, and some were maintained in other cities. The emperor Caligula had twenty thousand gladiators in his school. The dormitories were constructed around a square exercise field where the gladiators received their strict training under the master and special teachers. Originally the combatants, attired in armor and employing various types of weapons, customarily fought man against man, but afterward the more thrilling mass bat-
ROPE JUMPING
tles were fought. Usually the fighting continued until death decided the victor, unless the mob gave the “thumbs up” sign, which indicated a popular decision to spare a wounded man’s life. In addition to the combats of men against men, combats of men against beasts and beasts against beasts were added. Even mock naval battles were instituted: The floor of an amphitheater was flooded. In one event nineteen thousand men were forced to participate in a miniature war in which hundreds lost their lives.
Late Antiquity The Roman circus and the Byzantine (relating to the ancient city of Byzantium, now Istanbul, Turkey) hippodrome (an oval stadium for horse and chariot races) continued to provide chariot racing long after Christian protests (and heavy economic costs) ended the gladiatorial games, probably early in the fifth century. The less obtrusive pagan religious associations of the chariot races helped them to survive centuries after the emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 337 CE. Angela Teja and Alberto Jori
Further Reading Cameron, A. (1976). Circus factions. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Fora, M. (1996). I munera gladiatoria in Italia [The “munera gladiatoria” in Italy]. Naples, Italy: Jovene. Fortuin, R. W. (1996). Der Sport im augusteischen Rom [Sport in Augustan Rome]. Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner. Golvin, J.-C. (1988). L’amphiteatre romain [The Roman amphitheater]. Paris: Boccard. Harris, H. A. (1972). Sport in Greece and Rome. London: Thames & Hudson. Humphrey, J. H. (1986). Roman circuses: Arenas for chariot racing. London: Batsford. Robert, L. (1971). Les gladiateurs dans l’Orient grec [Gladiators in the Greek east]. Paris: Champion. (Original work published 1940) Scanlon, T. F. (1984). Greek and Roman athletics: A bibliography. Chicago: Ares. Weber, C. W. (1983). Panem et circenses: Massenunterhaltung als Politik im antiken Rom [“Panem et circense”: Mass entertainment as a policy in ancient Rome]. Dusseldorf, Germany: Econ-Verlag. Wegner, E. (1938). Das Ballspiel der Romer [The ball game of the Romans]. Wurzburg, Germany: Mayr.
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Rope Jumping
R
ope jumping has been popular, especially among children, in many areas of the world, from the Polynesian islands to Korea to Colombia. In Europe, too, rope jumping has a long history. In 1657 Jacob Catsen published a book about pastimes of children in Zurich, Switzerland, and this book included a picture of a boy rope jumping. Rope jumping played an important role in the concepts of the so-called philanthropists who developed an educational program based on the ideas of the French philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau at the end of the eighteenth century. One of the most famous philanthropists was Johann Friedrich GutsMuths, who published his book Gymnastics for Youth in 1793. This book was translated into numerous languages and influenced the development of physical education in many European countries. However, “youth” for GutsMuths meant “boys only”—girls were excluded from gymnastics. GutsMuths devoted a whole chapter to “the dance in the rope and in the hoop” (GutsMuths 1793, 455). Rope jumping also had a place in the concept of German gymnastics (turnen), which was developed by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and his adherents at the beginning of the nineteenth century. German gymnastics, which had educational and political aims, included a variety of physical activities. In 1816 Jahn and his coauthor, Ernst Eiselen, published the “bible” of the German turners, Deutsche Turnkunst (Art of Gymnastics). This book contained many exercises, including short rope jumping with two swings of the rope, crossing the arms while swinging, running and jumping, and turning while jumping. Exercises with a long rope included running through or jumping above the rope. In the guidelines for the installation of gymnastic grounds, Jahn demanded specific places for rope jumping, and in his list of equipment he included long and short ropes. During the first half of the nineteenth century in many Western countries educational programs began to
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Each fresh peak ascended teaches something. ■ SIR MARTIN CONWAY
offer physical activities for girls to increase health and grace. Girls were to be “protected” from strenuous, dangerous, and immoral activities. Rope jumping did not offend propriety and femininity and thus was looked upon as especially suitable for the “weaker sex.” During the second half of the nineteenth century physical education began to be integrated in schools in Europe as well as the United States. Rope jumping was a popular exercise in physical education because it does not require expensive equipment or facilities and because all pupils can exercise at the same time. Rope jumping also was recommended in books about games published by the education, health, and lifestyle reformation movements at the end of the century. In Germany, for example, a games movement recommended games and other activities for young people in fresh air. One of the reformers was Adolf Netsch, who praised rope jumping in his book about games for girls. For him girls, ropes, and youthful joy were as closely connected as spring and flowers. However, he also warned against dangers if girls jump until they are exhausted or if “they stamp and throw their body from one leg to the other” (Netsch 1895, 49). Rope jumping was also recommended for boys. Bancroft, for example, wrote (1922, 117): “Jumping a rope is admirable for boys and girls, combining much skill with invigorating exercise.” After the turn of the century people employed rope jumping in new areas. Gymnastics schools used the rope in rhythmic exercises. Rope jumping also was used in other sports, such as in boxing, to improve endurance and mobility. During the 1970s rope jumping was rediscovered in the United States when people were Girls in Germany
encouraged to rope jump to strengthen their hearts and to improve their blood circulation. In addition, police officers and social workers used rope jumping to engage children in minority areas of cities. Rope jumping was an excellent way to support cooperation, strengthen self-esteem, and contribute to the resocialization of troubled children. Antidrug campaigns recommended rope jumping with the motto, “Rope is better than dope.”
Benefits Rope jumping is recommended for all age groups but attracts mainly young people, especially girls. Proponents say rope jumping benefits health and improves motor skills and coordination. Rope jumping not only increases gymnastic and acrobatic skills, but also supports strength and endurance. In addition, rope jumping allows people to be active with others. It also is inclusive: Anyone can participate and be part of a performance which is attractive to spectators. Last but not least, rope jumping does not require sports facilities or expensive equipment.
Rope Skipping
jumping rope.
Such initiatives were successful: Young people participated in rope jumping with increasing enthusiasm. They invented variations of jumps and swings; they loved the rhythm. Rope jumping received a new image, and a new sport was created: rope skipping. The most important difference between rope jumping and rope skipping is the rope, which has handles that allow the rope to turn, allowing faster and more precise swings. A plastic rope for individual jumping is lightweight and can be moved using only the wrists.
ROUNDERS AND STOOLBALL
Beaded ropes have been developed to allow people to jump in pairs. Beaded ropes have a slower and more regular swing. Cloth ropes are long and made of a heavier material; they are used for jumping in groups. Rope skipping uses music—the faster the better. The beat increases with the skill of the skipper. Beginners start with a slow rhythm and in the training process they increase the speed gradually with the aim to skip as quickly as possible. Rope skippers might start with basic skips and graduate to skips with a partner or to complex exercises with a group (up to eight partners) who performs routines. In addition, skipping can be combined with performing tricks (forms of swinging the rope), gymnastic exercises, and even with playing with a ball or with break dancing. The evolution of rope jumping to rope skipping was a sportification process. The process included the standardization of tricks, exercises, and routines; the development of systematic learning and teaching methods; the publication of teaching manuals; the education of trainers and teachers; and the organization of competitions. Clubs and federations were formed on the national level and the international level.
Competition at the Top Rope skipping as a competitive and performanceoriented sport is new. In individual competitions the number of double or triple swings is counted. In speed competitions contestants skip as fast as possible in a given time. In other competitions the number and difficulty of tricks are judged. The most spectacular events are group competitions with up to eight athletes using the long rope. In 1991 the first European championship took place in Ghent, Belgium. Since then, the number of national and international events increased and even world championships were organized. The last world championship took place in 2004 in Australia.
Governing Bodies The governing bodies of rope jumping and rope skipping are the International Rope Skipping Federation
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(IRSF) (www.irsf.ca), with headquarters in Canada, and the European Rope Skipping Organization (ERSO) (www.erso.org). Gertrud Pfister
Further Reading Bancroft, J. (1922). Games for the playground. New York: Macmillan. Bottcher, H. (2002). Rope skipping (4th ed.). Aachen, Germany: Meyer & Meyer. Diem, C. (1971). Weltgeschichte des Sports. Stuttgart, Germany: Cotta. GutsMuths, J. C. F. (1793). Gymnastik fur die Jugend. Schnepfenthal, Germany: Erziehungsanstalt. Jahn, F. L., & Eiselen, E. (1816). Die Deutsche Turnkunst. Berlin, Germany: Selbstverl. Kloss, M. (1861). Das Turnen im Spiel oder lustige Bewegungsspiele fur muntere Knaben. Dresden, Germany: Schonfeld. Masuger, J. B. (1955). Schweizerbuch der alten Bewegungsspiele. Zurich, Switzerland: Artemis. Netsch, A. (1895). Spielbuch fur Mädchen. Hannover, Germany: Meyer. Schwartz, R. (1992). Das Kinderspiel in western Samoa und Tonga. Münster, Germany: LIT. Wagner, H. (1912). Illustriertes Spielbuch fur Knaben. Leipzig, Germany: Otto Spamer.
Rounders and Stoolball
R
ounders and stoolball are bat and ball games that, like many of today’s sports, originated in Britain in the late eighteenth century. It has been claimed that rounders was the precursor of American baseball, and the games do have similar elements: a bowled (pitched) ball struck with a wooden stick (bat), a home base, four posts (bases) around which players run, and nine players. Rounders and stoolball were first played by men and women. They soon became primarily women’s sports and are played predominantly by women or mixed teams on a recreational level, or by students in physical education programs. Young women who can now play soccer (association football), basketball, or cricket associate rounders with old-fashioned school games. Rounders is played mostly in primary or elementary schools, while stoolball is a traditional English summer game for women.
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It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane. ■ CHARLES LINDBERGH
History Rounders and stoolball share a number of features in early history and styles of play, but diverge in the way their growth was stimulated in modern urban society. Both emerged as loosely structured spring and summer pastimes in rural England by the later eighteenth century. There have been several attempts at antiquarian reconstruction, as part of an attempt to locate them in broader national folk roots, but the earlier evidence is sparse and its terminology unreliable. One assertion that continues to provoke angry disagreement is that both contributed to the remarkably separate rise of cricket and baseball; it often seems to be the case that broadly similar activities are harnessed together to satisfy a hunger for origins.The use of wooden bats and wickets and thrown balls on grass fields may well be all these two games have in common with their supposed descendants. In England they often share the same grounds as cricket but are physically as well as symbolically marginalized because of their assumed feminine domination.When compared with cricket they fall into an uneasy divide between sport and pastime. Both sports owe their modern followings to late Victorian attempts to reconstruct an imagined country past and, particularly, to improve the health and leisure activities of young girls and married women. Both owe a subsequent rise in popularity to a growing emphasis on physical recreation as an essential part of education in English state schools after World War I; their relative cheapness and team involvement made them particularly attractive, as did the fact that they could be played on asphalted urban yards if necessary. But they were never quite wholly gender-limited; at times there have been confusion and even conflict as to whom they were designed for and that is still far from resolved. The actual scale of participation, which is probably in thousands, is very difficult to reconstruct because relatively small national organizations exist alongside a wide range of informal participation.
8.5 meters. The bat holder stands in an approximately 2-meter square at the junction of one of the longer with one of the shorter sides, opposite a bowler in a central 2.5-meter square. Each team has nine players, and the various roles, bowling, batting, and fielding, are rotated so that all share as a team; whatever the individual skills, play does not generate specialties. A game consists of two innings, in which each side bats twice. A hard leather ball up to 19 centimeters in circumference and weighing up to 80 grams is bowled underarm to a round wooden bat or “stick” about 46 centimeters long. After the strike, the bat holder runs, counterclockwise, round four posts 1.2 meters tall, hoping not to be caught or bowled out. Each successful run scores a “rounder” and the next team member steps forward until all have completed or been caught out. The team with most rounders wins.Two umpires watch for rule infringements. No special dress is required, although most players wear some version of decorous sporting wear and teams may wear sweatshirts. The rounders rules are reviewed every three years, with occasional minor revisions. In stoolball, two teams, normally of eleven a side, play with two wickets (30-centimeter square boards) mounted on poles 1.37 meters tall and 5 meters apart. Soft balls, derived from tennis, are bowled underarm from one wicket to a bat holder standing at the other. The bat is normally wooden, shaped like a rather heavy table-tennis bat—it is often claimed that the game’s name derived from the fact that the first bats were threelegged milking stools, from which modern bats were developed. After striking the ball, the bat holder runs between the two wickets unless bowled or caught out. The winning team scores the highest number of runs, hence the claimed similarities with cricket. There are two umpires who are normally male, whatever the gender of the players, who are predominantly female. The rest of the bowler’s team are spread out as fielders.
Modern Play
Formalization, Eccentricity, and Gender Confusion
Rounders is played on a five-sided pitch, three of whose sides are 12 meters long, whilst the other two are
Rounders had a relatively quiet history until the later nineteenth century, when it was adopted loosely as a
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useful game for younger boys and girls in some schools and as a team game for uniformed youth organizations. Some of the major new girls’ private schools, such as Roedean in Sussex, adopted it, but often as a poor second to games such as hockey, which were regarded as more character-forming. Despite its reputation as a girls’ game, it appeared in a number of contemporary texts as an option for “young sportsmen,” a gentle preparation for more demanding and manly games. Rather grandiosely titled governing bodies appeared in 1889, when proper rules were drawn up. In that year, in Scotland and the urban north of England, two bodies appeared, the Scottish Rounders Association and the National Rounders Association of Liverpool. They were joined eventually by the more rural Gloucester Association and concocted the rules more or less as they still stand. It was 1943 before a proper National Rounders Association was formed, well away from London, as the country’s governing body. It controls the rules and allows the formation of leagues for which a minimum of three local clubs is required; there are now forty leagues. The game also received a boost by being recognized as a useful way of keeping soldiers fit in both world wars, being cheap, easily organized, and requiring little specialized equipment. As such, it featured with stoolball in a number of military handbooks as a means of useful and impromptu morale building between bouts of fighting. There, an essentially female game was harnessed to become a lesser recreation for men when more complex sports were difficult to organize. Although it has had some success at national and even some international levels, particularly in Australia, where it proved popular in new private girls’ schools for the socially ambitious around 1900, it remains essentially a localized game in which fun matters as much as seriousness. The National Rounders Association continues to promote it as ideal for all ages and both sexes, but especially as a family bonding activity. Its literature shows young men playing, but it is difficult to see it as other than a pastime for young women, away from its value in primary schools. It is essentially amateur.
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Stoolball, by comparison, has a more checkered history. It was largely refounded in southeastern England in the 1840s by rural social matriarchs as a means of filling the little spare time of village girls with activities they could supervise. The daughters of the wealthy were also encouraged to play in teams, which were occasionally drawn from mixed social classes, using country house lawns as part of rural fetes. Some village clubs grew on the edge of cricket fields and men occasionally joined in, usually with one hand tied behind their backs. Small county organizations emerged, but most competitions took place between neighboring villages. It would probably have remained very localized had it not attracted the attention of an eccentric lawyer, country landowner, and part-time soldier, William W. Grantham of Sussex, who saw in it both a means of reviving a local patriotism threatened by social and cultural changes and a means of helping wounded soldiers recuperate in preparation for returning to the trenches of World War I. He organized hospital teams between patients and nurses and used his aristocratic connections ruthlessly to develop it as a fund-raiser for veterans’ charities. For some years it was even played in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, when the royal family was away. Grantham had it filmed and broadcasted, and took sets on his travels round the world. Reduced versions were played on ocean liners and scratch teams were formed wherever he turned up, in Geneva, Iceland, and the United States amongst others. He developed strong links with Japanese diplomats in 1930s London, who formed their own teams; and he made the mistake of seeing it as a means of generating international friendship to head off a Pacific war. Tireless as he was, Grantham made two serious mistakes in his attempts to revive stoolball as a national game. He used the game to promote a rather dotty revival of “Merrie England,” in which male players such as he played wearing idealized peasant costumes, opening the game to ridicule. Much worse, he alienated the social matriarchs, who regarded it as essentially a women’s game and found him autocratic.
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The real popularity of stoolball after 1920 lay with local women’s organizations, since it was offered as a game for virtually all ages and as a refuge from male interference. By the 1930s there were around one thousand clubs scattered throughout England, but the battle for control was fought out in the southeast of its roots. In 1923 Grantham formed a Stoolball Association of Great Britain, but it was male-dominated, and women in local federations fought shy of it, even pushing Grantham out of his own county federation. They did not, however, bother to found a rival national organization, leaving Grantham to flounder on; when he died in 1942 his creation died with him. England’s postwar revival saw stoolball reemerge rather more quietly. Most of the international dimension had gone but the game was still played occasionally in schools throughout the country as part of a diet of physical recreation. The main focus was in local clubs and leagues in southeastern England, some village-based, others attached to employers as distinctive as banks and food factories. At the end of the twentieth century mini stoolball was introduced for children and an indoor version was developed to allow year-round play.
Further Reading Crawford, R. (1987). Moral and manly: Girls and games in early twentieth century Melbourne. In J. A. Mangan & R. J. Park (Eds.), From fair sex to feminism. London: Cass. Lowerson, J. (1995). Stoolball: Conflicting values in the revivals of a traditional Sussex game (Sussex Archaeological Collections 133). Lewes, UK: Sussex Archaeological Society. Lowerson, J. (1996). Stoolball and the manufacture of Englishness. In G. Pfister, et al. (Eds.), Spiele der welt in spannungsfeld von tradition und moderne. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia. McCrone, K. E. (1988). Sport and the emancipation of English women, 1870–1914. London: Routledge. National Rounders Association. (1994). Know the game, rounders. London: A. & C. Black.
Rowing
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owing is the method of propelling a boat across water along a set course, involving the use of the whole body to work a pivoted oar, with various combinations of participants in the boat. Its geographical spread is only limited by access to suitable water and extends across the world, reflecting the sport’s distant origins as a means of transport.
The Future
History
In the late 1970s a new National Stoolball Association emerged, dealing largely with the southeast and some two hundred clubs—though many more clubs remained without affiliation, and do so to this day. One major difficulty continues; the new association recognizes the major changes that have taken place in both sporting practice and alternative attractions for young women, so it allows mixed teams. Some of the older members will not countenance this and insist on playing all-female teams, nor will they accept a change in catch rules. The memory of Grantham lives on as disagreement about gender-specific play thrives. Nonetheless, it remains as a much-loved amateur game primarily for women, as important a symbol of the English summer locally as cricket is for men. John Lowerson
Much of the history of rowing is uncertain; there are next to no reliable written records before about 1800, and even after that date, professional secrecy meant that much information was never passed on. The activity of paddling a boat as a means of transportation reaches back to Egypt and must predate the appearance of the first sails, that is, around 3500 BCE. Boat construction, rowing instead of paddling, and different uses for rowing boats, such as troop, cargo, and passenger transport, developed in many ways in a wide variety of locations. Probably the most noteworthy contributors to the development of rowing were the Athenians of the fifth century BCE, and the Vikings between roughly 750 and 1150 CE. Both relied on ships, either rowing or sailing as conditions dictated. The Athenians developed the trireme, with three levels of oarsmen, which en-
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abled the city-state to maintain its supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean from around 480 BCE. The technology was lost after the rise of Roman civilization, and only incomplete written records survived. The Vikings are notable for their wide-ranging expeditions to almost all the coasts of northern Europe, the inland seas of eastern Europe, parts of the Mediterranean, and even as far as the New World—to the popular and partially correct image of raiding parties associated with them should be added their contributions to trade and settlement. It is easy to conjecture about various informal competitions among those who made a living on a river or along a coast, but the first events on anything approaching a formal basis were Italian in the fourteenth century, hence the word regatta. The first recorded regatta to feature racing in England is believed to have been at Ranelagh (west of London) in 1775, although the term had for many years been used for a formal waterborne entertainment. The Doggett’s Coat and Badge was founded in 1715 by Thomas Doggett, an actor-manager, to be competed for by Thames ferrymen; still competed for annually, it is the oldest annual competition in the world.
Social Context In many countries the first rowing was done by workingmen as part of their livelihood and only “adopted” and reshaped comparatively recently. The first races were between professionals—people who made their living on the water—and once this practice died out toward the end of the nineteenth century, the sport remained amateur almost up to the present day.
COST OF EQUIPMENT The origins of “modern” rowing in English public schools and universities immediately imparted a class bias to the sport in that country that took more than a century to recede to any great extent. Such was not the case in other nations. However, it has always been the case that the equipment to compete at the highest levels is expensive by any measure; currently, typical prices
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for a top-quality eight are in the range $20,000– $25,000, for a single scull $7,000–$8,000, and a single oar approximately $300. The establishment of new clubs—calling for some kind of permanent structure and initial stock of boats —was and is expensive. It is therefore often the case that the most successful clubs are those with a long history that have managed to accumulate funds and boats sufficient to maintain stocks of equipment for top-class crews.
ADOPTION BY OTHER NATIONS Although the earliest developments toward the modern version of the sport took place in England, the ideas were quickly adopted abroad; the first clubs in New York being formed in 1834, and the first college club at Yale in 1843. The spread of the sport to other countries is a long and fascinating story. The first stimulus usually came from by rowing expatriates, mostly from England and usually involved in diplomacy, trade, or the Church. Among the countries so influenced were Germany, where the first club—the English Club—was founded in Hamburg in 1830, Australia (1835), France (1838), Russia (c. 1842), India (1845), Argentina (1857), South Africa and New Zealand (1861), and Japan (1866).
Evolution and Development of Construction and Materials Although many types of boats have been and still are rowed on rivers, seas, and lakes, four specific developments produced what is now immediately recognizable as a racing boat. All four changes occurred during the nineteenth century and were the results of intense research and experiment.
BOAT DESIGN Because the oar has to pivot about a fixed point, the most effective arrangement is for the portion of the oar on the rower’s side of the pivot to be about 30 percent of the total length. It had always been the case that the
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Rowing Shakespeare on Rowing THE TEMPEST, ACT II. SCENE I. Fran. Sir he may live, I saw him beate the surges under him And ride upon their backes; he trod the water Whose enmity he flung aside: and brested The surge most swolne that met him: his bold head ’Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oared Himselfe with his good armes in lusty stroke To th’ shore; that ore his wave-worne basis bowed As stooping to releeve him: I not doubt He came alive to land. Source: Peek, H. (Ed.). (1901). The Poetry of Sport (p. 48). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
pivot (the fixed, rigid oarlock) was mounted on the side (thwart) of the boat, but the development of a metal arm fixed to the side of a boat to hold the pivot meant that the hull width could be reduced. The next logical development was the sliding seat. With a fixed seat the stroke length is determined by the rower’s ability to bend the upper body forward and backward while keeping the lower body fixed. It was obvious to the earliest rowers that the ability to somehow move the seat by flexing the legs would extend the length of the effective stroke in the water; the Athenians sat on fleeces that allowed a certain amount of sliding movement along their fixed seats. The first fully sliding seat was devised in Chicago in 1857—as now, it involved small wheels fixed to the underside of a seat, traveling in metal grooves. These two changes naturally produced a longer and much narrower boat than previously, at the same time calling for a much-changed rowing technique to gain the maximum benefits. The least noticeable of the four developments (c. 1870) was to turn the fixed oarlock open at the top into a swiveling “gate,” with a lockable
mechanism to keep the oar in place; this gate is able to move around a vertical pin to allow maximum reach forward and backward. Finally, the removal of the keel made for a much smoother hull shape at the cost of a loss of stability— the result being a gradual modification from a rounded to a V-shaped cross section. These developments were specific to rowing; other general boat-building techniques were also adopted— smooth (carvel) replaced overlapping (clinker) construction, and internal load-bearing frameworks permitted thinner hulls. As with all waterborne craft, the precise design of any hull is a compromise between speed, weight distribution and stability, and manufacturers are continually seeking a “good” compromise for the mass market while being able to offer boats individually tailored to specific requirements. The most recent stage of development has involved plastics and carbon fiber to provide—according to the specific use—greater strength and/or lower weight.
OARS Oars underwent a later but equally remarkable series of changes. The traditional shape of the spoon (the part going through the water) had always been “pencil” or “barrel” shape—that is, long and thin. The oarloom (the long, thin section connecting handle and spoon) had to be comparatively thick to bear the stresses, but this implied extra weight and hindered boat speed by creating turbulence next to the spoon. Over the space of some twenty years beginning around 1950, spoons became broader and shorter, to reach the approximate proportions of a shield (Macon pattern) and then the wooden loom began to be reinforced with carbon fiber, until the wooden blade was finally abandoned. The next development in spoon shape, beginning during the 1980s, was the “meat cleaver”; approximately a broad rectangle, this specific, modern spoon shape is offset on the oarloom with the double result that only the effective part of the oar is in the water and greater effort can be applied at the start of the stroke.
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A female rowing team in Dorset, UK. Source: istockphoto/Gards.
The introduction of lightweight classifications to the Olympic program has provided a stimulus in many countries; the maximum weights permitted are men: 72.5 kilograms individual, 70 kilograms crew average; women: 59 and 57 kilograms, respectively. Across the four groups of events raced at world championships, there are a total of twenty-four events; men race all eight boats, women and lightweight men do not race in coxed pairs or coxed fours, and lightweight women race the three sculling events and the coxless pair. From this list fourteen events are offered at Olympic regattas.
TECHNIQUE AND STEERING
Nature of the Sport There are eight boat types in regular use, although pressure from Olympic authorities to reduce the size of the Olympic Regatta has resulted in a number falling-out of general favor since 1996: Single Scull (abbreviated 1x); Coxless Pair (2-); Coxed Pair (2+); Double Scull (2x); Coxless Four (4-); Coxed Four (4+); Quadruple Scull (4x); and Eight (8o).
EVENTS AND WEIGHT CLASSIFICATIONS Events may be offered for men, women, and mixed crews, for age groups such as Juniors (under eighteen) and Veterans/Masters (over twenty-seven), which are further classified by age.
In a sculling boat, each member of the crew has two oars, and each oar is pulled and controlled by a single hand and arm. In a rowing (sometimes called “sweep”) boat, one oar per crew member—with both hands controlling—allows a greater pull but requires rather more concentration on the balance of the boat as the action is asymmetric. The coxswain can sit either upright facing the rearmost rower (Stroke) or lie down in a small compartment between the bow of the boat and the leading rower (Bow). For the coxless boat, steering is achieved by the designated person looking over his or her shoulder at the end of the stroke and taking action by adjusting the amount of power delivered by the blade or blades; this action is generally preferred over the alternative of a movable footplate pulling rudder lines. On a straight course all that is necessary is to maintain a position midway between the two lines of buoys marking the lane.
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A boat without a coxswain will go faster than the equivalent with, but there is a benefit from the input of someone with a view of the course ahead and a prepared race plan, and steering in this situation—especially on a winding course—is much easier and more precise.
BOAT HANDLING Each boat type has its handling characteristics due to the weight distribution of the crew, the point in the stroke cycle at which maximum power can be applied and buoyancy requirements. Handling characteristics can be further modified by the hull profile and—for the four- and eight-oar boats—the amount of torque generated at certain points in the cycle that gives a slight side-to-side “wiggle.” To reduce the effects of torque, it is quite usual to see arrangements where two consecutive oars appear on the same side instead of in the more usual alternating scheme.
Racing The first racing distances were by mutual agreement— between landmarks and for one race only. The usual distance appears to have been a number of miles (the distance for the Doggett’s, referred to earlier, is approximately 5 miles [8 kilometers], from “London Bridge to Chelsea”). The practicalities of a regatta, involving a number of races over the same course within a day or an afternoon, would have forced adoption of a much shorter distance. Local—river—regattas now typically vary between 500 meters and 1,500 meters and have two or three boats racing abreast. The increasing popularity and availability of the multilane, international-standard 2,000-meter course, with facilities for six abreast, has drawn top-level domestic competition away from the smaller venues. Women compete over the same distances as men. Juniors are usually restricted to a maximum of 1,000 meters.
TACTICS AND PROBLEMS At the highest levels of competition, over 2,000 meters, given that boats are so closely matched, racing tactics are
a trade-off between strength and stamina, coupled with a strong element of psychology.The classic race-winning strategy is to start strongly enough to take a lead well within the first thirty to forty-five seconds—certainly by the 250 meter mark—and stay sufficiently clear of the opposition to be able to match any increases in their speed all the way down the course. This requires a welldrilled crew with sufficient reserves of energy to last the full distance—it is far from unknown for a crew to lead to 1,500 meters or even 1,750 meters but be overhauled when their reserves prove to fall slightly short. There are other complicating factors that may come into play. If conditions are windy, not only will the water surface be choppy, requiring concentration to be diverted to keeping the oarblade clear of the water on the return cycle, but the balance may well be affected as the boat is blown about. A headwind will slow forward progress and add a variable amount of extra time to a carefully planned expenditure of energy. If there is one crew leading and a chasing group in close touch, members of the latter are often able to use each other as pacemakers and wear down the leading crew by a number of attacks at different points, usually leading to a blanket finish.
OTHER RACES The other widespread type of event is the processional or “head of the river” format. This is a time trial, with competing crews given a rolling start, ten to thirty seconds apart, depending on the course, conditions, and skill levels involved. As “head” courses are significantly longer than those for regattas—typically being between 5–10 kilometers, but often much longer—overtaking will frequently occur, offering crews a chance to react to a challenge and raise the level of their performance. In this type of race, a new set of abilities is called for, primarily stamina and sustained concentration. The concept was the brainchild of Steve Fairbairn, an Australian coaching in England, who wished to create an event to encourage winter training, against the pattern of training and racing between May and September only. The Head of the River Race, on the Thames
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Rowing Rowing in the South Pacific The rowing races are the most beautiful and exciting. What zeal among the rowers, as if it were the most important thing in the world. The canoes come rushing along in a line. Quick as lightning the oars dip into the water. From the mouth of the crew is heard incessantly the “iefot, iefot.” The spectators on the shore shriek, run up and down, and express their opinion about the individual canoes. When the first canoe has reached the goal, the people lift the oars, and the steersman cries “ieko,” which everybody answers with “o.” One day from the veranda of my house I watched a rowing race by my Christians. Two canoes tipped over, and the whole crew fell into the water; the third one went on calmly, without bothering about the victims. But the latter knew how to help themselves. They turned the canoes over and emptied them by pushing them back and forth; then they climbed in and came to the shore, greeted with howling laughter. They also have many sayings which they shout at the opponent during the contest in order to provoke him. Thus, they say during a sailing race: Wotama wotam Sail only onward, only onward, Wodedotok fan i ebäb. Straight ahead under the canoe house. Sön nan fan? Who is there below? Uan nimo[unknown]ö bi. The canoe of the sand eater.
Tideway, was the first to be held in 1926. The longest race in Europe is an annual 160-kilometer international “Tour du Lac à la Rame, a full clockwise circuit of Lake Geneva, which generally takes from twelve to seventeen hours.
CREW CONSIDERATIONS A major factor in racing is crew selection. Not only must competitors possess both strength and stamina,
Here the opponent, whose canoe lags behind on account of his clumsiness, is mockingly called sand eater, because he scarcely seems to get away from the sand of the shore. During a rowing race they call out: Mei da äten, mei da sob. Smashed is the decoration, smashed the beak, Faben nigokop mei tere[unknown]ä[unknown]ä. The canoe of the nigokop is roaring. The canoe of the victor darts through the waves with such speed that it roars, and individual parts break due to the force of the pounding. According to our views, the defeated canoe should pay something to the victor. But it is different on Truk. The victor has the honor and must pay an epilas (literally: spot) to the vanquished. That is a consolation prize for the defeat. Namely, a true Kanaka is seriously hurt if a kuf or a su is said of him, both of which means “vanquished.” In former times women danced on the shore while the men rowed in races, in order to encourage them. Each woman naturally tried to show off in this and to impress her “lover,” which the latter’s wife did not want to permit. The jealous women insulted each other, tore each other’s hair, scratched and bit each other, until the men separated their darling wives. Source: Bollig, P. L. (1927). The inhabitants of the Truk Islands: Religion, life and a short grammar of a Micronesian people (pp. 151–153). Munster i W, Germany: Aschendorff.
but they must also have sufficient psychological resilience to adapt to changing circumstances during a race. In larger boats, also, individual attributes come into play. With all boats it is always the case that the lighter crew members must be toward the bow for the optimum progress through the water. At the same time, the rower in the Stroke (sternmost) position must be technically outstanding and have a good “racing brain” to set the pace for the rest of the crew. The person
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It is a sublime thing to suffer and be stronger. ■ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
behind the Stroke (usually designated “7” in an eight and “3” in a four), because his or her blade is on the opposite side, cannot see the Stroke’s blade action, so he or she must be able to pick up on body movement to transmit a reliable signal to the other rowers on that side. With this in mind, in an eight the next two to four places will be filled by the strongest individuals, and at the bow the requirement is for a “thinker” who can feed back useful criticism. Within the four the roles are less clearly defined, although the two central rowers are very much the powerhouse.
Social Rowing While social (as opposed to competitive) rowing is a well-established feature in Europe, with annual rowing tours offered by FISA (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Aviron), it should be noted that a great deal of rowing activity takes place in many other craft. Craft embodying traditional seagoing designs can be found in regular use around almost all the coastline of Europe, and on both seaboards of the United States; although the building and rowing techniques rarely died out completely, regattas and rallies have staged a revival in the last fifteen to twenty years. Boat types tend to be restricted to a single country or region, although handicapping parameters exist to enable fair racing at large, international events. At the same time, there has occurred a revival in oldstyle—sometimes rather obscure—racing craft such as the dongola (a wide, flat-bottomed rowing boat originally found in the Dongola province of the Sudan) and the randan—from the Far East—which requires two oarsmen to row with one oar each and a sculler with two blades in between them.
ERGOMETERS There has been an explosive growth in recent years in ergometer competition. Despite a number of “rowing machines” achieving limited success over the years, the ergometer was devised in the early 1980’s as a rowing simulator for training, and thanks to its combination of a sliding seat with a heavy flywheel producing a good
approximation to a rowing action, it rapidly became very popular. Ergometers were also adopted by (nonrowing) health clubs and private individuals, and national and world championships are held annually. The machine has the obvious advantage of being usable almost anywhere, and various PC-based options permit the user to compete against others, with relative placings displayed to an audience as the “race” progresses.
Competition at the Top The annual World Championships usually takes place in late August, although an Olympic regatta takes precedence over that year’s event, and a reduced program is offered a few weeks before the Olympics. Women’s events were introduced to the Olympics in 1976, when the standard distance for their races was 1,000 meters and moved up to the full 2,000 meters for the 1985 World Championships. ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
The Olympic events are as follows: Men: 8o, 4-, 4x, 2-, 2x, 1x Women: 8o, 4x, 2-, 2x, 1x Lightweight Men: 4-, 2x Lightweight Women: 2x
There are no restrictions on the numbers of entries for the World Championships, but at the Olympics there are quotas of entries allowed for each of the fourteen events. For example, in Men’s 8o the total entry is nine crews— seven of which qualify by finishing 1 through 7 in the previous year’s World Championships, and a further two crews via a qualifying regatta some two months before the Games. In Women’s 1x, nine qualify the previous year; a further twelve places are awarded via three continental qualification regattas for Asia, Africa, and Latin America; and the last three qualifiers come from the final qualifying event, making a total of twenty-four competitors.
REGATTA FORMAT The typical World Championships or Olympic regatta will extend over eight days and may possibly add on a spare day to allow for poor conditions. This time frame
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allows for two distinct groups of events to proceed in the sequence of heats, repechages, semifinals, and finals, with a day between each. FISA prescribes the number of races at each stage according to the total entry, and how winners are to progress to further rounds. Within the rules there is sufficient flexibility to cope with a number of days lost to the weather by, for example, rowing two days of events on the same day or arranging for an early start if the weather forecast is poor.
Team and Individual Successes The sport has been almost completely free of cases of cheating, and although the remarkable success of Eastern Bloc crews—most notably those from East Germany—in the period 1945–1990 was undoubtedly partially due to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, it was also the result of a great deal of very thorough and imaginative research into what is now referred to as “sport science.” The pattern of Olympic success over the years has followed three broad trends. These were echoed in the other annual competitions. The “old guard” countries— United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands—prevailed at first, although a significant factor for the first few Olympics was the difficulty of travel and so, for example, at the 1904 Olympic regatta at St. Louis, the Unites States and Canada were unchallenged, and in 1908 (Paris) there were no North American entries. After the 1948 Olympics, the USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries generally prevailed, although their success tended to be in the smaller boats (the first East German success in Olympic eights was in 1976, the United States having won the event 1920–1956 and 1964). Since the advent of doping controls and more recently the collapse of the USSR, success has been more evenly spread, with honors being shared widely, going to Australia and New Zealand as well as the European names from a century ago. A certain amount of this success is due to the diaspora of Eastern Bloc coaches who have found positions in other countries. In women’s Olympic rowing, the first successes (1976–1988) went overwhelmingly to East Germany
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and Romania; more recently other nations have come to prominence, although Romania continues to show strongly (three out of a possible six golds at Sydney 2000).
ROWING PERSONALITIES AND COMPETITORS Famous names in other fields who enjoyed fame or success in rowing include the artists Thomas Eakins (United States) and Alfred Sisley (France), Dr. Benjamin Spock (Olympic gold in eights in 1924), and Jack and John Kelly (father and brother of Grace Kelly, competitors at Olympics 1920–1924 and 1956). Given the extent to which each member is required to sacrifice some of their individuality to allow the crew to function as a single unit, it is perhaps not surprising that notable figures are few and far between, except in the area of single sculling—in this particular event the rivalry between Pertti Karppinnen (Finland) and PeterMichael Kolbe (Germany) in the 1970s and 1980s. A small number of oarsmen and oarswomen have won gold at three different Olympics. Steven Redgrave (Great Britain) established a unique record by winning gold at five consecutive Games 1984–2000 (plus a bronze in 1988); his record is paralleled by Elisabeta Lipa (Romania) who over the same sequence of Games won 4 golds, 2 silvers, and 1 bronze. Among coaches, the leading names have been Hiram Conibear (United States, from 1906), Karl Adam (East Germany, from 1952), and Thor Nilsen (Norway and Italy, from 1960).
Governing Body Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, the international governing body FISA (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Aviron), was founded by representatives from France, Switzerland, Belgium, Adriatica (now a part of Italy), and Italy in Turin, in June 1892; it is the oldest international sports federation in the Olympic movement. Andrew Ruddle See also Boat Race (Cambridge vs. Oxford); Henley Regatta
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I prefer rugby to soccer. I enjoy the violence in rugby, except when they start biting each other’s ears off. ■ ELIZABETH TAYLOR
Further Reading Dodd, C. (1992). The story of world rowing. London: Stanley Paul. FISA (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Aviron). (2004). Retrieved December 10, 2004, from www.worldrowing.com Halladay, E. (1990). Rowing in England: A social history. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. McArthur, J. (1997). High performance rowing. London: Crowood Press. Mendenhall, T.C. (1980). A short history of American rowing. Boston: Charles River Books. Meuret J.-L. (1992). FISA centenary book: 1892–1992. Lausanne, Switzerland: FISA. Page, G. (Ed.). (1990). The complete Steve Fairbairn. London: Kingswood. Wigglesworth, N. (1992). A social history of English rowing. London: Frank Cass.
ever, in Rugby League there are only thirteen men per side. There is also less distinction between forwards and backs. In terms of the practicalities of play, each team takes turns to complete a series of tackles. After each tackle, the player tackled “plays the ball” by tapping it back to a teammate. On the sixth tackle, possession reverts back to the opposition. Points are scored on a similar sliding scale to Rugby Union. Generally, Rugby League is faster than Rugby Union, with more open attacking and quick-break tactics. The use of a slightly smaller ball and the wearing of shoulder pads are a few of the more subtle differences between the codes.
Historical Development
Rugby
I
t is important to recognize the specific differences between Rugby Union and Rugby League. Rugby Union is a fifteen-a-side game played with an oval ball on a large rectangular pitch. It is a running, passing, tackling, and kicking game. Five points are awarded for a try (when a team manages to touch the ball to the ground across their opponents’ goal line) and two points for the following conversion. Penalty kicks and drop goals carry a three-point tariff each. A match lasts for two halves of forty minutes, and is played between two teams comprising backs and forwards. Generally the larger and slower the player, the more likely they are to be a forward. A forward’s job is to engage the opposition’s forwards, win possession for the team, and provide a controlled mode of attack. The backs remain the main attacking force as they are usually the quicker runners. Backs attempt to exploit the spaces outside the forward clashes; consequently, the backs usually top the lists of try-scorers. A key rule of note in both forms of rugby is that the ball can be kicked forward but must be passed backward. Rugby League has a similar look to Rugby Union, but there are number of significant differences between the two codes. Essentially the object of both codes is the same in terms of invasion of opposition territory; how-
Notably, there had been no attempt to codify generally accepted rules related to playing such games as rugby and other forms of football until the mid-nineteenth century. It was the English public schools that introduced formal practices and established codes of behavior and regulation for the form of games that they played. Initially, these rules differed from school to school, as they had been developed to suit the particular area on which the game itself was played. The codification of the sport into generally accepted norms of play was a key element in its development. More generally there was an ongoing process of the adaptation of traditional, folk modes of play into newer, more organized forms, as it was seen as a priority to attempt to regulate the increasingly violent behavior of players on the field–of play. As the game played at Rugby School grew in popularity throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, specific regional differences related to the interpretation of amateurism, although slight, began to develop. During this period, the Rugby Football Union (RFU, also referred to as Rugby Union) was formed in 1871 to act as the steward of the development of the sport in England. Initially, all of the rugby authorities in Britain sought to preserve the amateur ethos and its associated values of fraternity, innocence, fair play, and gentlemanly conduct as core values within the sport. However, to suggest that there was consistency or consensus in the stance taken by the governing
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bodies related to amateurism and player eligibility would be incorrect.
Power Struggles The RFU’s fear of working-class domination of the game was heightened by the growing success of northern teams on the pitch in the 1880s and early 1890s. There was a general fear that if the southern amateurs at the RFU could not hold their own against the northern working-class players on the field of play, then southern control of the game would inevitably come into question. This would in turn have fundamental and possibly terminal implications for the amateur code. The constant RFU search for “veiled professionals” put pressure on many clubs. Indeed, the clubs that relied on regular matches and a high attendance for their income had difficulty in reconciling that dynamic with the policy of the governing authorities. Survival in such an unstable and uncertain environment was a pressing issue for many clubs. Broken time acted as “opportunity cost” payments and was seen by the northern clubs as a measure solely to benefit working-class players by ensuring that they would not suffer financially from their involvement in the game. Crucially, the northern clubs attempted to provide assurances that the nature of the game would remain true to the amateur principles. Such notions, and the attendant uncertainty of the volatile industrial climate of the early 1890s, were viewed by some as inflammatory. The establishment of a governing body to act on behalf of the northern clubs began a process of differentiation and divergence that was to come to a head in 1895. The RFU clearly began to view the Northern Union (NU) as an extension of working-class unrest. The response of the RFU to the northern proposals was unambiguous. Arthur Budd, who was later to become the president of the RFU, stated, “If blind enthusiasts of working men’s clubs insist on introducing professionalism, there can be but one result—disunion” (Delaney 1993). It can be argued that the tensions giving rise to the subsequent split were directly related to the struggle for control of the sport, rather than the issue of pay-
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ments to players. The RFU soon drew up a list of activities that they viewed as protecting the amateur ethos. Seventeen specific acts were listed, whereby any player contravening such regulations would have violated the amateur code and would be banned from the Union game. In doing so, the RFU had forced the issue with battle lines effectively being drawn between the two rugby codes. Whilst there has undoubtedly been a process of diffusion and democratization downward within society, Rugby Union (particularly in the United Kingdom) since 1895 has developed under predominantly middle-class control. This was especially the case regarding the majority of administrators and participants. However, the working-class players in the north of England happily left the southern administrators to their own devices amid bitterness and recrimination. The Northern Union developed separately in an openly professional manner and became known as the Rugby League in 1922. From this point on the positions of the two different codes became increasingly entrenched.
Transition and Structural Uncertainty Immediately following the split of 1895, Rugby Union experienced a period of waning support and as spectator numbers declined so did the sport’s finances. During the interwar years there was a general growth in interest, which was in no small part due to the application of the amateur ethos and its associated robust yet desirable principles.The first decades of the twentieth century saw Rugby Union–playing businessmen and empire-builders travel extensively throughout the world, introducing locals to the sport and forming clubs as they went. However, the international spread of Rugby Union was not mirrored in the fortunes of Rugby League. Indeed, Rugby League became confined to a small number of nations and enjoyed only minimal growth. Clearly the two codes were now developing in very different directions. The largely passive role of the governing bodies in developing Rugby Union since the latter half of the nineteenth century is an excellent example of what occurs when a largely amateur leisure pursuit with a robust
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Rugby Trying to Understand Rugby In his novel Very Good, Jeeves (1930), the British writer P.G. Wodehouse muses on the complexity of rugby: Rugby football is a game I can’t claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squalch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.
and worthy image grows into a far larger and more seriously organized concern. The issue of gate money that accompanied the enclosure of Rugby Union grounds was something that fundamentally challenged the structure of the game as it had been originally constituted and codified. Throughout the 1980s, clubs and international unions began to benefit financially from the efforts of the players on the pitch and a distinct dynamic was in place. It would only be a matter of time before the players themselves sought some form of recompense for their efforts, which were providing profits for their clubs and Rugby Union’s governing bodies. While this developmental process occurred slowly over a number of decades, the die was cast early on. Paradoxically, the hard-line attitude and approach to eligibility taken by the RFU seemed to strengthen the integrity of the amateur ethos. It became viewed as increasingly robust and worthy in part due to the associations with gentlemen amateurs well into the 1970s. Rugby Union authorities bowed to pressure from an increase in spectator numbers in the post–World War II period by
initiating rule changes that were designed to make the game more spectacular. This indicates the gradual movement away from the previously ubiquitous and allpervasive amateur values. These rule changes took the form of new offside laws that provided a clearer demarcation between the participating teams. Furthermore, there was greater opportunity for teams to introduce more expansive running plays and more attacking enterprise in general with penalties now having to travel ten yards, and the modification of the “knock-on” law, meaning when caught, the ball goes forward from a hand or arm and hits the ground or another player before it is regathered. Unless the defensive team gains an obvious advantage, a scrum is awarded in favor of the defensive team. Modifications to this law were particularly notable during the 1950s. In part they related to enforcing the laws more tightly. This was likely to open out the field of play for the backs, by involving the forwards in a scrum. It was hoped by governing bodies that this would in turn lead to more expansive and exciting tactical opportunities. When coupled with the added incentive of the try now being worth four points instead of three, tactics and strategic planning became increasingly important. These changes allowed the game to develop into a more dynamic sporting event throughout the 1950s, which was reflected in a growth in both spectatorship and participation. Despite the expansion of revenues resulting from the growth in spectacle and popularity, Rugby Union became relatively stagnant in terms of equality of competition. A number of meaningless fixtures and one-sided results led to calls from many players and the media for centrally organized, national leagues. Given the tensions related to the issue of professionalism and payments to players, it is ironic that Rugby Union’s success as a spectator sport and the increasing importance of the Five Nations on television was to transform revenues. Notably, there had remained a close relationship between Rugby Union and the media throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s. The Five Nations championship comprised the nations within the UK (England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales)
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who were joined by France. More recently this has become the Six Nations, with the inclusion of Italy. Alongside the southern hemisphere tri-nations series (involving Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), the Six Nations championship is the most popular annual event in world rugby. The core amateur principles, upon which so much of this success was based, have come under increasing pressure since the mid-1980s as certain high-profile players began to benefit financially from opportunities outside of the game. As the public personas of many rugby stars had been developed following their rugby activities, the governing bodies believed that they should exert a degree of control over the earnings of top players. As the move toward open professionalism became a stampede, the governing bodies of the sport struggled to maintain control particularly in the southern hemisphere dominated by New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. Concessions to the new financial pressures have slowly changed the whole structure and bargaining position of the governing bodies. Gradual pressure was forcing a policy shift in the form of a move from player-structured to spectator-oriented amateurism. The officially stated rationale for actions taken by the governing bodies was that they were acting to preserve the validity of the amateur ethos. This approach of the governing bodies did little to enhance their position or image as guardians of the sport. For Rugby League, development was slow and largely confined to their traditional regions. Certainly, the fact that the majority of Rugby League players were working class hindered efforts at international diffusion. Whereas Rugby Union began to spread relatively quickly, Rugby League had neither the means nor the message to replicate such developments. Consequently, Rugby League has never attracted the same diversity and extent of funding as Rugby Union. Within Rugby Union, the almost constant pressures that were placed on the amateur philosophy were partly a result of the broad appeal that the amateur ideals had within the wider sporting society as well as society as a whole. Indeed, this appeal has allowed the governing bodies def-
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Rugby players in position for a scrum.
inite, unique commercial opportunities as the game has grown in sophistication. Those authorities affiliated to the International Rugby Board (IRB) have slowly embraced expanding revenues and forms of financing, including significant television rights.
International Spread Rugby Union’s inherent popularity among the more privileged within society undoubtedly helped to diffuse the game abroad. The adherence to the philosophy of amateurism can be viewed as hindering the progress that the sport could have made whilst also maintaining its distinctiveness from Rugby League. We should remember that the sport was globally structured in commercial and professional terms at an early stage. Being able to draw upon the popularity of the sport in the former Commonwealth territories was vitally important in terms of such international growth. There are now over 120 nations affiliated to the IRB, with nations such as Argentina, Fiji, Ivory Coast, Georgia, and Samoa having recently participated in the finals of the Rugby World Cup. During the 1980s the influence of sponsorship and the further promotion and selling of the sport was carried out in a more deliberate manner. Sponsorship of Rugby Union had only really become recognizable in a modern sense from the early 1970s. Initial deals were limited to
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Rugby Rugby in Somaliland A ball-game is the very last kind of game one would expect to find being played by a savage uncivilized race, and yet there is a game, which might be termed hand-ball in contradistinction to foot-ball, played by the Esa and Gadabursi tribesmen, which is quite as rough a game as our Rugby football. The game is called “Gonso,” and the ball used is very similar to the ball used for cricket on board an ocean liner. There are an equal number of men on each side, and the object of the game is for the third consecutive man of the same side who handles the ball, to bounce it on the ground, and catch it on the back of his hand; if the ball fails to pass through the hands of three members of the same side, the original thrower being one of them, it is handed over to one of the opposing team to throw to one of his friend; neither the original thrower nor the second is allowed to bounce the ball, nor is it allowed to touch the ground. The game starts by the winner of the toss going to the centre of the group of players and carefully marked by one of the opposing side who has to try to prevent him throwing the ball in the direction of one of his own side; immediately the ball is thrown there is a dash made for it, and if one of the thrower’s side gets it, he has to try to pass it to any one of his
international or representative matches and key international tours. By the early 1980s, the main Rugby Union– playing nations in the southern hemisphere (South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand) had been operating a well-established system of illicit payments to international players, thereby circumventing the amateur ideals. The IRB unsuccessfully tried to discipline them for infractions of the amateur ethos on a number of occasions. Indeed, most Rugby Union authorities were finding ways of paying players “in kind,” as nonexistent jobs and generous expenses were organized with friendly and accommodating companies. During this period there were also a number of instances of international rugby players
own side, who has, in his turn, to try to get away and bounce it on the ground, catching it on the back of his hand. Each time it is successfully done, it counts one, ten being the winning total, and each failure lets the opposite side in. Once the man with the ball is collared fairly, the ball must be at once handed over to the other side. The tackling is usually very good indeed, and at times gets exceedingly rough. It is a common sight, when a man has succeeded in bouncing the ball, to see him throw it into the air, leaping up at the same time and coming down, giving his thighs a severe smack with the palms of his hands. Not the least amusing part of the proceedings is the amusement and interest of the spectators who crowd round, gradually drawing, in their excitement, a regular cordon round the players, who have no compunction in running headlong through them, upsetting men and boys in their endeavour to either get away and pass the ball or bounce it. The game, so as to prevent intertribal conflict, is usually played by sides composed of the sons by mothers of the Esa tribe and sons by Gadabursi mothers, so that Esa and Gadabursi are mixed up. Source: Drake-Brockman, R. E. (1912). British Somaliland (pp. 135–137). London: Hurst & Blackett, Ltd.
being employed by the game’s sponsors. The sport star would be paid by the business for promotional work, while pursuing his rugby career full time. Indeed, other notable players were accepted into universities on rugby scholarships. What this period shows is the relatively ineffective position of the IRB, as they did little to halt such practices of creeping professionalism. International Rugby Board intransigence had allowed the sport to develop within its amateur parameters but the rate of change was still being stifled. What should be emphasized is that this was a relatively haphazard process with practices and structures that were pushing the limits of the amateur eligibility criteria.
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It was in 1987 that the first Rugby Union World Cup was held in New Zealand. It proved so popular that there was simply no going back in terms of the open acceptance of financial structures within the sport. It is crucial to recognize that in the face of such expansion, the sport has managed to maintain its link to the image of amateurism relatively intact. Even when full professionalism was accepted by the IRB in 1995, the sport still benefited from the notion that many of the positive and desirable values associated with a century of the amateur philosophy still remained. In many ways the Rugby Union authorities seem to have enjoyed success because of their commitment to amateurism and the values associated with that philosophy. It is clear that with a degree of well-positioned marketing, the Rugby Union game and its administrators can also benefit from such associations in future. The increasingly precarious financial position of many top clubs raises concerns for Rugby Union in the medium term. In Rugby League, the issue of cash flow was even more pronounced. Apart from Australia, where the league version of the sport remains more popular than Rugby Union, Rugby League has struggled to expand beyond its regional base. The limited success of the Rugby League World Cup series provides testament to some of the structural difficulties faced by the sport. When the Rugby League authorities in England moved the sport from winter to summer, partly to secure a lucrative television contract, this was accepted as a desperate and yet necessary measure. The additional rebranding of the sport as “Superleague” was far from universally popular and caused animosity among many in the Rugby League fraternity. However, this move has certainly secured the short-term future of the sport in the United Kingdom, especially when coupled with the growing popularity of the playoffs at the end of each Superleague season.
The Future Despite a degree of structural uncertainty over the form that the new professional sport is likely to take, the general process of change occurring within Rugby
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Union is best understood by considering the approach of the rugby authorities and the broader issues affecting the development of the sport. Even a cursory glance at the development of Rugby Union suggests that differing historical approaches by the sport’s governing bodies have clearly affected subsequent developments. While the situation in Rugby League is informative from a comparative point of view, it remains a less wellestablished or widely dispersed activity despite the undoubted strength and skills on display. Rugby League remains hugely popular in Australia but beyond that country and the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and France it is a largely peripheral pastime. There is little doubt that it was necessary for Rugby Union to move on from amateurism as a core value in the development of the sport. However, future development and expansion within the Rugby Union is to some degree still dependent on the appeal of the values associated with the amateur philosophy. Rugby Union and Rugby League will enjoy closer links in future. The crossover of players, coaches, and trainers began before the acceptance of professionalism in Rugby Union, but it is only now that freedom of movement is widely accepted. How this process is managed and how the amateur ethos is applied to the playing and organization of the game at all levels remain crucial for the future of the sport. Jonathan M. Thomas
Further Reading Collins, T. (1998). Rugby’s great split: Class, culture, and the origins of the Rugby Football League. London: Frank Cass. Davies, J., & Corrigan, P. (1996). Codebreaker. London: Bloomsbury Delaney, T. (1993). Rugby disunion. Leigh: n.p. Dunning, E., & Sheard, K. (1979) Barbarians, gentlemen, and players: A Ssociological study of the development of rugby football. New York: New York University Press. McRae, D. (1999). Winter colours: Changing seasons in world rugby. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Moorhouse, G. (1996). A people’s game: The centenary of rugby league football, 1895–1995. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Rugby Football Union Commission. (1995). Open rugby: The right to decide. Twickenham, UK: Rugby Football Union. Smith, D. (1980). Fields of praise: The official history of the Welsh Rugby Union, 1881–1981. Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press.
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Russia Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 6 Gold, 6 Silver, 4 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics: 27 Gold, 27 Silver, 38 Bronze
Titley, A. (1970). Centenary history of the Rugby Football Union. Twickenham, UK: Rugby Football Union. Vamplew, W. (1988). Pay up and play the game: Professional sport in Britain, 1875–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Russia and USSR
F
or much of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union dominated Olympic sport; it also pioneered a new pattern of sport with its main function being part of a program of “nation-building” as set and controlled by the state. Soviet sport had its roots deep in Russian history, in the people’s traditions, the climate, fears about internal and external foes, the organized sports pioneered largely by Britain, the gymnastics schools of Germany (founded by Jahn), Scandinavia (Ling and Nachtegall), and the Czech lands (Tyrs), and in Prussian military training. The pattern of Soviet sport was shaped as much by these factors as by political ideals. As an industrial society developed in nineteenthcentury Russia, liberal noblemen and native industrialists, with foreigners resident in Russia, began to set up private sports clubs in the major cities. They embraced sports such as yachting (the Imperial Yacht Club, dating from 1846), ice skating (the Amateur Skating Society, 1864), fencing (the Officers’ Fencing Gymnasium, 1857), gymnastics (the Palma Gymnastics Society, 1863), and even cricket (the St. Petersburg Tennis and Cricket Club, 1868). Commercial promoters were also providing, for spectators and gamblers, such professional sports as horse racing (the St. Petersburg Horse Racing Society, 1826), boxing (Baron Kister’s English Boxing Arena, 1895), cycling (the Tsarskoye Selo Cycling Circle, 1880), and soccer (the Victoria Football Club was the first established soccer club, founded by Germans, in 1894). Various displays of strength were popular in circuses, featuring such world-famous performers as the Estonian Georgi
Hakkenschmidt and the Russian Ivan Poddubny and his wrestling wife Masha Poddubnaya. At the turn of the century, there were several Russian sports associations and, on the eve of World War I, as many as 1,266 Russian sports clubs existed, with an average membership of sixty persons. Although many of these clubs were located in the principal Russian cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg), the industrializing provinces also accounted for a growing number of them. For example, the Ukraine had 196 sports clubs with 8,000 members, and Belorussia had 1,000 members in Sanitas, Sokol, Bogatyr, and the Jewish Maccabee sports clubs (Jews being barred from membership of many Russian and Ukrainian clubs). In 1912 the government set up its quasi-military Physical Fitness Committee under General Voyeikov, which took control of all major sports clubs. The Bolsheviks therefore would inherit a developing sports movement that was already largely centrally controlled.
Sport in Revolution The first steps to be taken after the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917 were by no means clear, for there was no pattern to follow.The changeover from criticism of czarist sport to action in an 80 percent peasant, illiterate country in the throes of a world war and civil war presented considerable problems. However, the crucial question being debated was not what form sport should take, but whether competitive sport should exist at all in the new workers’ state. After all, some revolutionaries argued, sports such as track and field, soccer, rowing, tennis, and gymnastics were invented by the industrial bourgeoisie for their own diversion and as character training for their careers as captains of industry and empire. It was thought natural by some after the Russian Revolution that a new pattern of recreation would emerge, reflecting the dominant values and needs of the new socialist state. The two main groups that regarded competitive sport as debasing workers’ physical culture and inculcating nonsocialist habits were the Hygienists and the
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Russia and USSR Key Events in Russia/Soviet Union Sports History 1826 The St. Petersburg Horse Racing Society is founded.
1928 The First Workers’ Spartakiad is held as an alternative to the Olympics.
1846 The Imperial Yacht Club is founded.
1931 The national fitness program is designed to train people for military preparedness and work.
1857 The Officers’ Fencing Gymnasium is established. 1863 The Palma Gymnastics Society is founded.
1946 The Soviet Union becomes more involved in international sports.
1864 The Amateur Skating Society is founded.
1951 The Soviet Olympic Committee is formed.
1868 The St. Petersburg Tennis and Cricket Club is founded.
1952 The Soviet Union competes in the Summer Olympics for the first time.
1912 The quasi-military Physical Fitness Committee is set up to control all major sports clubs.
1956 The Soviet Union competes in the Winter Olympics for the first time.
1920 The All-Russia Pre-Olympiads and the First Central Asian Olympics are held.
1980 The Summer Olympics are held in Moscow.
1925 “Physical culture” is placed under Communist Party control.
1991 With the demise of the Soviet Union, the teams of the now independent nations begin to compete separately.
Proletkultists (from “proletarian culture”). To the Hygienists, sport implied competition, games that were potentially injurious to mental and physical health. These included boxing, weightlifting, wrestling, and gymnastics, which were said to encourage individualist rather than collectivist attitudes. They condemned the emphasis on record breaking and the professionalism of Western sport, and they favored noncommercialized forms of recreation that dispensed with grandstands and spectators. To the Proletkultists sports that derived from bourgeois society were remnants of the decadent past and part of degenerate bourgeois culture. A fresh start had to be made through labor exercises and mass displays, pageants and folk games. In the decade after the revolution, many factory yards and farm meadows full of muscular men and women rhythmically swinging hammers and sickles, simulating work movements in time to music, could be seen. Essentially, however, sport during the first few years came to be geared to war needs. All the old clubs and their equipment were commandeered for the Universal Military Training Board (Vsevobuch) whose main aim
was to supply the Red Army with contingents of trained conscripts as quickly as possible. Vsevobuch took over the czarist Physical Fitness Committee and coordinated its activities with those of the education and health commissariats. A second major consideration then was health. Regular participation in physical exercise was to be a means of improving health standards rapidly and of educating people in hygiene, nutrition, and exercise. This campaign could only succeed, in the opinion of the Vsevobuch chief, Nikolai Podvoisky, if the emotional attraction of competitive sport was fully exploited. Competitive sports began to be organized from the lowest level upward, culminating in the All-Russia PreOlympiads and the First Central Asian Olympics of 1920. Sports were taken from town to country, from the European metropolis to the Asiatic interior, as an explicit means of involving as many people as possible in organized sport and exercise. A third function was integration. What was significant about the First Central Asian Olympics, held in Tashkent over ten days in early October 1920, was that for the first time Central Asian
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The first gold medal we [Gordeeva and husband Sergei Grinkov] had won for the Soviet Union. This one we won for each other. ■ EKATERINA GORDEEVA
peoples, as well as Russians and other Europeans, competed in sporting events together.
Sport against the Background of Forced Industrialization The big sports contest of the 1920s was the First Workers’ Spartakiad of 1928, with some 4,000 participants, including 600 foreign (Communist) athletes from twelve countries. In view of the fact that the USSR had few contacts with international sports federations and none with the Olympic movement, this Spartakiad was intended to be a universal workers’ Olympics—in opposition to the “bourgeois” Olympics held that year in Amsterdam, with roughly the same program of events. Although Soviet sports performance was understandably below top world standards, in some events the USSR did have world-class athletes. Yakov Melnikov (1894–1960), for example, had won the 5000-meter speed-skating event at the Stockholm World Championships in 1923. In 1925 the Communist Party made clear its views on “physical culture” and took it completely under party control. Physical culture was to be an inseparable part of political and cultural education and of public health. Sport was given the revolutionary role of being an agent of wide-ranging social change. Participation in sport was to develop healthy minds in healthy bodies; it stood for “clean living,” progress, good health, and rationality, and it was regarded by the party as one of the most effective instruments in implementing its social policies. The implications for the sports movement of the economic and political processes (industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, and political dictatorship) of the late 1920s–1930s were extremely important, for it was then that the organizational pattern of Soviet sport was basically formed—with sports societies, sports schools, a national fitness program, and a uniform rankings system for individual sports. The new society of the 1930s saw the flourishing of all manner of competitive sports with spectator appeal, of leagues, cups, championships, popularity polls, and cults of sporting heroes. All were designed to provide recreation and diversion
for the fast-growing urban population. The big city and security forces (Dinamo) teams, with their considerable resources, dominated competition in all sports (for example, the Premier Division soccer league of 1938 contained six Dinamo teams). The many sports parades and pageants that constituted a background to the sports contests were intended to create a “togetherness” and patriotic feeling (for the new unitary state, the USSR, overriding Russian/Armenian/Ukrainian allegiances). Significantly, sports rallies often began to accompany major political events and festivals (May Day, Anniversary of the Revolution, Constitution Day), thereby linking members of the public, through sport, with politics, the party and, of course, with their leader, Joseph Stalin. A relatively close link was reestablished in the 1930s between sport and the military, stemming from the conviction that a state surrounded by unfriendly powers must be militarily strong. Sport openly became a means of providing premilitary training and achieving a relatively high standard of national fitness and defense. The two largest and most successful sports clubs were those run by the armed forces and the security forces: the Central House of the Red Army—later the Central Sports Club of the Army, CSKA—and Dinamo, respectively. After 1931, moreover, the national fitness program (based on Baden Powell’s Boy Scout program) was expressly intended to train people, through sport, for military preparedness and work—the Russian abbreviation GTO (Gotov k trudu i oborone) standing for “Prepared for Work and Defense.”
Postwar Sports Competition With the conclusion of the World War II and the setting of a new national target—to catch up and overtake the most advanced industrial powers, in sport as in all else —Soviet leaders felt it possible to demonstrate the preeminence of sport in Soviet socialist society. Given the limited opportunities elsewhere, sport seemed to offer a suitable medium for pursuing this goal as an area in which the USSR did not have to take second place. This aim presupposed a level of skill in a wide range of
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sports superior to that existing in the leading Western formed and, in May, accepted by the IOC. The USSR states. Sport was seen as “one of the best and most made its debut at the Fifteenth Summer Olympics, held comprehensible means of explaining to people throughin Helsinki in 1952. Soviet athletes contested all events out the world the advantages of the socialist system with the exception of field hockey and, although they over capitalism.” gained fewer gold medals than the United States (22 to So, immediately after the war, Soviet sports associa40), they gained more silver (30to 19) and bronze (19 tions established affiliations with nearly all the major into 17), thereby tying with the United States in points alternational federations, and Soviet athletes competed lotted for the first six places (according to the system regularly at home and abroad against foreign opposiused in the Olympic Bulletin). tion. Soviet sport became an instrument of foreign polThe USSR took no part in the 1952 Winter Olympics icy, both to advertise the advantages of socialism among and made its winter debut in 1956 at Cortina d’Amcapitalist and the new socialist states in Eastern Europe pezzo in Italy. There it amassed most medals and and Asia and to influence Third World countries points. From the debuts in 1952 and 1956, up to its through the provision of assistance in building sports final participation in Barcelona in 1991 as the Unified programs. Between 1946 and 1958, the USSR joined Team, the USSR “won” every Olympic Games with the thirty international federations and, by 1975, as many sole exception of 1968 when it came second to Norway as forty-eight. Further, 236 Soviet officials held posts in in the Winter Games and the United States in Summer. international sporting organizations in 1978. It also provided the most versatile performance in the Not only were affiliations esOlympic Games. tablished, but Soviet athletes The Twenty-second Olympic also quickly achieved world Games were held in Moscow dominance, often on their defrom 19 July to 3 August 1980. but in world sport. In 1948 Despite a partial boycott led by Botvinnik won the world chess the United States over the title, and in 1949 Ludmilla USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan Rudenko won the women’s in December 1979, a total of world chess title. In 1945 the sixty-eight nations attended the Moscow Dinamo soccer team games; notable absentees with came to Britain and played four the United States were West matches without defeat against Germany and Japan. A number leading British clubs (Chelsea, of national teams participated Arsenal, Cardiff, and Glasgow against the advice of their Rangers). In weightlifting, wrestlgovernments. ing, volleyball, and ice hockey, Soviet teams established a suPost-Communist premacy that they were to Developments maintain. With the demise of the Soviet Despite these initial sucUnion in 1991, fifteen constituent union republics gained cesses, the USSR moved cauautonomy as independent natiously into Olympic compeThis magazine cover from the tions, henceforth competing tition. Only in April 1951 was Soviet Era encourages participation in sports competitions as a Soviet Olympic Committee in sports by men and women.
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Russia and USSR Folk Sport and Self-Determination in Tatarstan In the extract below, the sports historian Henning Eichberg discusses the folk sports of the Tatars, an ethnic minority group in Russia: We see a wrestler walking proudly around the arena, surrounded by thousands of spectators. He bears a sheep on his shoulders, the prize of his victory, he laughs and waves to the enthusiastic crowd. He has just won the final match in belt wrestling, the Tatar korash, where one puts one’s girdle or towel around the waist of the opponent, tries to raise him from the ground and to throw him down on his back. After old Tatar tradition, the winner of the last fight has won the ram, which he is bearing triumphantly through the crowd, as well as an embroidered towel. And he obtains the title of a batyr, a Hercules, a strong man. The triumph of the batyr is a central event in the springtime holiday which the Tatars call Sabantuy, the “ploughman’s festivity.” This ancient cultural event had been suppressed for generations as being “reactionary,” “religious” or “separatist,” anyway as “unSovietic.” But the peoples’ rising of 1989/91 brought it to life again. By the festivity, a people expressed its cultural survival. It showed that a new—and old— nation was striving for self-determination, Tatarstan. [...] The Tatar springtime festivity includes besides korash wrestling: running competitions and horse races, performances of strength (as weight lifting),
independent teams. All the state and trade union subsidies for erstwhile Soviet sports clubs were discontinued, and the sports system began to take on the same shape as commercialized sport in other capitalist countries. In the initial transition period, several sports than were not commercially viable, like chess and volleyball, swiftly lost ground, the top sportsmen and sportswomen went overseas to compete for the best-paying clubs in the West, and the “New Russians” (often Mafia) invested in domestic clubs that exuded the healthy odor
jumping and several types of games. Many of the competitions have a humorous character, provoking laughter and enjoyment. They display the grotesque sides of the human body—by sack race, pole climbing, balancing on a swinging beam. These performances do not only put on stage the success, but also the failure, the stumbling, the comic and the ridiculous. Some of the dances, too, are part of the popular culture of laughter. We see a woman showing vements, which a man tries to imitate—and all burst into fun. By this sexual parody, the tensions and unbalances between the genders in Tatar patriarchy [are] displayed and exposed to common laughter. Other dances have a more formalized and folkloristic character. This is reminiscent of the Soviet period when state ensembles demonstrated “living folk culture” by measured choreographies, theatrical pathos and reconstructed costumes. Again other performances are more sportive in character, such as parachute jump. The Tatar Sabantuy festivity, as it reappeared after 1990, is, thus, compiled from many elements and different sources, often in a contradictory way. Features from modern sport and from traditional folk practice clashed and mingled—competition, dance and folkloric arrangement—national demonstration and popular joke. Source: Eichberg, H. (1992). Traditions of the Tatar cultural minority. In L. Laine (Ed.), Sport and cultural minorities (pp. 282–284). Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Society for Research in Sport and Physical Education.
of sport and fitness. It is too early to predict the final contours of the new Russian sport. It is highly likely, however, that it will become an appendage of wealthier and stronger sports systems in the West, as well as developing the characteristics of sport driven by the profit motive and globalized competition. For the newly independent states (like the Ukraine, Belorus, Georgia, and Estonia), although they will not see so much success as they had when part of the mighty Soviet Union, at least they have the satisfaction of cheering
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Running in the Moscow Marathon. Source: istockphoto/barsik.
Origins
on their own teams under their own flags and national anthems. For the public at large, there is also the satisfaction of being able to pursue sports, whether as players or spectators, that are genuinely popular and not imposed by a bureaucracy in faraway Moscow. James Riordan
Further Reading Edelman, R. (1993). Serious fun: A history of spectator sports in the USSR. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Peppard, V., & Riordan, J. (1992). Playing politics: Soviet sport diplomacy to 1992. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press. Riordan, J. (1977). Sport in Soviet society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Riordan, J. (1980). Soviet sport: Mirror of the Olympics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Riordan, J. (1981). Sport under communism: USSR, Czechoslovakia, GDR, China, Cuba. London: C. Hurst. Riordan, J. (1991). Sport, politics and Communism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Riordan, J., & Cantelon, H. (2003). The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In J. Riordan & A. Kruger (Eds.), European cultures in sport. Bristol, UK: Intellect Books. Shneidman, N. (1979). Soviet sport: Road to Olympus. Kingston, Canada: Queens University Press.
Ryder Cup
T
he Ryder Cup is the trophy that professional golfers have played for since 1927 in a biennial competition between the United States and Europe.
Samuel Ryder (1858–1936) was a wealthy seed merchant from St. Albans, England, who took up golf at the age of fifty and became fanatical about the game. In 1926 Ryder announced that he would present a trophy for annual competitions between Great Britain and the United States, and in June that year at Wentworth, England, a match was held, taking advantage of the presence in England of many U.S. players who had come over to qualify for the British Open Championship. The British won the match by a margin of 9–3, but because not all members of the U.S. team were born in the United States, participants decided to view the match as “unofficial,” and no trophy was presented. After the match Ryder; the leading U.S. player, Walter Hagen (1892–1969); and the British players George Duncan and Abe Mitchell (1887–1947) decided to hold matches on a biennial basis, with the first match for the Ryder Cup taking place the next year in the United States. The famous gold trophy, which cost 250 British pounds, was produced in time for that match.
Prewar Era The playing format initially adopted was a two-day competition with four foursomes on the first day and eight singles on the second; all matches were over thirtysix holes. Some people have suggested that when the 1927 match was played, the British had not recovered their “land legs” after the Atlantic crossing, and the U.S. team won 91⁄2 –21⁄2. The British captain, Ted Ray, made a comment that would be repeated many times through the years when he ascribed the British failure to the superior putting of the U.S. team. The first four matches were all won by the home team, but 1937 produced the first away victory when the U.S. team won at Southport and Ainsdale.
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[Golf is] a sport for liars, drinkers and cussers who like to walk two or three miles belaboring an object 1/ 45th their size with a loaded cane. ■ VESTA M. KELLY
1947–1977: U.S. Dominance With Britain still suffering economic hardship after World War II, the Ryder Cup matches were resumed in 1947 largely because of the generosity of an Oregon fruit grower and canner, Robert A. Hudson, who funded the British team. The match was played at Portland, Oregon, and the U.S. team won 11–1. In 1947 U.S. golfers adopted a points system for selecting their team; the British followed suit in 1957. The selection methods have been revised frequently through the years; the basic aim has been to reward those players who have performed most consistently during the qualifying period while leaving scope to select a few players who are clearly among the best available but have not accumulated sufficient points. The 1949 match was closer, but even without several leading players, the U.S. team had sufficient depth to win the singles 6–2 and secure a victory. Comfortable U.S. wins in 1951 and 1955 bracketed a tight match in England at Wentworth in 1953, but in 1957 at Lindrick under the captaincy of Dai Rees (1913–1983) the British finally gained their first win since 1933, taking 61⁄2 points in the singles and winning 71⁄2 –41⁄2. In 1959, however, the U.S. team regained the cup with an 81⁄2 –31⁄2 victory. Beginning in 1961 all the matches were played over eighteen holes instead of thirty-six; in that year two sets of foursomes and singles were played, making the number of points available twenty-four, and in 1963 the match was extended to three days with two sets of fourball matches played on the middle day. The change to eighteen-hole matches was expected to help the weaker side, the British, but nevertheless the U.S. team won from 1961 to 1967 with some ease. The 1969 match produced the first tie in the cup’s history. Eventually, all depended on the last match between Tony Jacklin (b. 1944) and Jack Nicklaus (b. 1940). In a memorable act of sportsmanship, Nicklaus conceded a 60-centimeter putt to tie the match on the last green. After the excitement of the 1969 match, however, the old pattern was reestablished, and the United States won the next four matches by good margins.
1979–Present: Continental Europe Joins In For some time people had suggested that little point existed in continuing with such a one-sided competition. During the 1977 match the Professional Golfers Associations of the two countries discussed the possibility of including golfers from continental Europe.This inclusion was approved, and in 1981 the present format of twenty-eight matches was adopted, with two sets of foursomes on the first day, two sets of fourballs on the second day, and one set of twelve singles on the final day. The balance of power was not immediately altered; the U.S. team won comfortably in the United States in 1979; at Walton Heath in Surrey in 1981 the United States achieved its last overwhelming victory to date with what was perhaps the strongest team it had ever fielded: Among themselves these players had amassed forty-nine major championship wins. From 1983 onward the matches were all closely fought and highly competitive; in that year Europe came closer than ever to winning on U.S. soil, losing by only one point. Finally in 1985 in England, at the Belfry, Europe achieved its first victory in twenty-eight years, and Europe followed this victory in 1987 with its first win in the United States. Since then the cup has changed hands four times, and on three occasions the winning margin in the match has been the narrowest possible: 141⁄2 –131⁄2. The strict biennial pattern of the matches was broken because of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, after which the match was postponed for a year. In 2002 Europe won 151⁄2 –121⁄2, and in 2004 181⁄2 —91⁄2; those results mean that since continental Europe joined the fray, the United States has won six times, and Europe has won five times, with one match tied.
The Future The Ryder Cup has become one of the most keenly anticipated and closely fought sporting competitions between the United States and Europe. Indeed, some controversy surrounds the degree of fervor generated
RYDER CUP
among the spectators and even the participants; in one or two recent matches some players have not been shown the courtesy normally associated with golf. However, players in both continents strive to be selected for the teams; whereas the U.S. team usually has on average higher world rankings and favorites “on paper,” the Europeans sometimes appear to combine more readily into a bonded team. The Ryder Cup, as a competition that is played for prestige rather than money and that uses the gladiatorial match-play format, will continue to provide golfing excitement. Tony Sloggett
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Further Reading Bubka, B., & Clavin, T. (1999). The Ryder Cup: Golf’s greatest event. New York: Random House. Concannon, D. (2001). The Ryder Cup: Seven decades of golfing glory, drama and controversy. London: Aurum Press. Hobbs, M. (1989). Ryder Cup. London: Queen Anne Press. Jarman, C. M. (1999). The Ryder Cup: The definitive history of playing golf for pride and country. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Swales, A. (2002). Sporting Statistics guide to the Ryder Cup, 1927– 2002. London: Virgin Books. Williams, M. (1989). The official history of the Ryder Cup, 1927–89. London: Hutchinson.
Sail Sports
South Africa
Sailing
South East Asian Games
Salary Caps Scholar-Baller School Performance Scotland Senegal Senior Sport Sepak Takraw Sex and Performance Sexual Harassment Sexuality Shinty Shooting Silat Singapore
Spain Special Olympics Spectator Consumption Behavior Spectators Speedball Sponsorship Sport and National Identity
Sail Sports
Sport as Religion Sport as Spectacle Sport Politics Sport Science Sport Tourism
Skateboarding
Sporting Goods Industry
Skating, Ice Figure
Sports Medicine
Skating, Ice Speed
Sportsmanship
Skating, In-line Skating, Roller
Sportswriting and Reporting
Ski Jumping
Squash
Skiing, Alpine
St. Andrews
Skiing, CrossCountry
St. Moritz
Skiing, Freestyle
Strength
Skiing, Water
Stress
Sled Dog Racing
Sumo
Sledding—Skeleton Snowboarding
Sumo Grand Tournament Series
Snowshoe Racing
Super Bowl
Soaring
Surf Lifesaving
Soccer
Surfing
Social Class
Sweden
Social Constructivism
Swimming
Stanley Cup
S
ail sports involve a wind-propelled sail that is either attached to a yacht or held by the sailor on sand, ice, water, snow, or other land surfaces. The following sail sports proliferated in the twentieth century throughout North America, Europe, and Australia:
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Social Identity
Swimming, Synchronized
Softball
Switzerland
Sandyachting, which uses wind power to propel wheeled yachts on sand Iceboating, also called ice yachting, a winter sport in which iceboats are sailed on frozen lakes, rivers, or bays Sailboarding, also called boardsailing and windsurfing, which involves attaching a mast and sail to a surfboard Parawing sailing, which takes place on diverse terrain while the sailor wears various sliding or rolling devices on his feet Ice skate, icewing, roller skate, and ski sailing, which all require hand-held sails propelled by wind, a standing sailor, and special footgear
Sandyachting—Origins Sandyachting can be traced back to sixth-century China, where the first wind-driven carriages and sail-powered chariots were developed for battle. Competitively, sandyachting began in 1898 in Belgium. Sandyachts were popular at French and Belgian beach resorts during the 1930s. Employees of the Detroit Evening News introduced a light, efficient yacht in the early 1960s that
S revolutionized the sport. In 1975, the Windskate, a tiny yacht of tubular construction, initiated a new phase of sandyacht design. Sandyachting competitions exist in most countries where there are suitable beaches for racing: the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Australia.
Iceboating—Origins Modern iceboating began in eighteenth century Holland, where people sailed wind-powered boats on the ice. In the nineteenth century, iceboating was practiced in the river regions of New York and New Jersey. The Poughkeepsie, New York, Ice Yacht Club, founded in 1869, was the first formal iceboating group in the United States. In the twentieth century, iceboating gained more widespread popularity with the development of small boats that were inexpensive and portable. Designs formulated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the 1930s made it possible to build small iceboats that were both fast and stable, known as Sketers. Among the most popular modern iceboat designs was the DN, which was created at the Detroit News in 1937. Iceboats are now sailed primarily in the northern regions of Europe and North America.
Sailboarding—Origins Sailboarding was invented in California, but it grew rapidly in Holland, Germany, and France during the 1970s. Adapting the sailboard to the big waves of Hawaii, Larry Stanley developed footstraps in 1977. Footstraps, along with shorter boards, made aerial maneuvers possible and changed the sport. Harnesses were
designed to fit around the chest or hips, thereby removing strain from the arms. Sails, wetsuits, and the variety of gear associated with the sport are often quite colorful. Popular places to sailboard include Oahu, Hawaii; the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon; Lake Garda and northeast Sardinia in Italy; Brittany and the Riviera in France; the Canary Islands; the west coast of Cornwall in Great Britain; and Perth, Australia.
Parawing Sailing—Origins German sports enthusiast Wolf Beringer invented parawing sailing in the early 1980s, when he developed the unique control system that allowed changing the angle of attack of a parafoil wing. He became a European legend with his graceful and athletic stunts, including airborne lifts, jumps, and glides, and along with other early parawing sailors, developed competition events and rules. In 1992, kite designer and builder Hans Schepler and skier George Theriault designed and produced parawings in the United States.
Skate Sailing—Origins Ice skate sailing is a Northern European and North American winter recreation exclusively practiced outdoors in the daytime. It began in the seventeenth century, when Dutch skaters began using sharp-edged iron blades, instead of broad bone blades. The Swedish botanist and explorer Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) sighted skaters “with sails like wings.” Skate sails in the mid-nineteenth century carried fowlers across the ice separating Denmark from Sweden, bearing the hunters to their prey. Organized races began near Stockholm in
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1887.Wally van B. Claussen devised the popular Hopatcong skate sail, named for the largest lake in New Jersey, in 1917. Skate sailors on Lake George, New York, hurtled at more than 110 kilometers (70 miles) per hour in the 1930s. Anders Ansar invented the icewing in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1973, which consists of two cloth sails, a solid top, and a rigid, curved leading edge. The icewing, a semi-rigid craft that is aerodynamically efficient, resembling the upturned tip of an airplane wing, encloses the sailor completely and represents the greatest twentieth century innovation in ice skate sailing. Roller skate sailing dates from the 1930s in the United States but takes place internationally. The sport is versatile because many hard surfaces are suitable for roller skate sailing. Ski sailing began as early as 1917 in North America and northern Europe. A variety of sail types are used, including the kite-like American Hopatcong, the dihedral Finnish Skimbat, and the inflatable German parawing.
What Are Sail Sports? Sandyachting uses the wind to propel a wheeled craft along a sandy surface at speeds of up to 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour. The sail is mounted on a wheeled framework capable of carrying at least one person. Modern sandyachts are either small or large, with the same basic three-wheeled configuration. Sandyachts can sail three or four times the speed of the wind. Serious, competitive sandyacht racing occurs during the winter months in Europe, when the beaches are less crowded but invariably wet. A typical race is thirty minutes long. Early iceboats were very basic, with crude skate-like runners, simple sails, and rigging. Some iceboats were merely conventional sailboats with runners attached. Larger and more complex boats were built in the midnineteenth century. Iceboats reach very high speeds, so their sailors wear helmets and other protective equipment. Iceboaters sit in a small cockpit in the hull or on a seat attached to its surface. Courses for iceboat racing are determined by the direction of the wind and are marked by buoys placed about a mile apart. Judging is
based on a combination of speed and the ability of the sailor to control the craft and follow the course as closely as possible. Sailboarding, a mix of surfing and sailing, requires a board, rig (sail, mast, and boom), wetsuit, and wet suit bootees. Some sailboards are designed for racing; competitors sail these around a series of buoys in a predetermined order and direction. Rules are similar to those of sailing. Other variations are the following: ■ ■
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Speed sailing Freestyle sailing, in which performers attempt intricate maneuvers Sailboard jumping, which is another branch of freestyle and sometimes competitive Sailing indoors, using jet engines to provide wind Tandem sailboards, with two or three sails and sailors
Parawing sailing provides a highly maneuverable way for people to sail on land during all seasons. The sailor uses the parawing as a sail for propulsion, converting the pull and “lift” of the wing to forward motion. The parawing consists of a ram-air inflatable soft-fabric wing attached by multiple lines to a control bar held by the sailor and sometimes attached to the sailor by a quick-release snap swivel and body harness. Parawings are sailed: ■ ■
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Over snow or ice with the sailor wearing skis or skates Over sand beaches or salt flats with the sailor wearing land or sand skis or foot-steered “buggies” Over paved surfaces with the sailor wearing in-line skates Over turf with the sailor using grass skis, buggies, or various roller devices
Parawing sailing appeals to many age groups and can be adapted to various skill levels. Ice skate sailors stand erect, wear ice skates on their feet, and hold sails with their hands and shoulders. They sail round trips, reaching speeds than more double the true wind velocity. Ice skate sailing requires smooth, thick, snow-free ice occupying at least ten acres, and steady winds. Frozen lakes, ponds, and reservoirs lend themselves to the sport, as do icy estu-
SAIL SPORTS
aries and the Baltic Sea. Stiff, high boots provide warmth and ankle maneuverability. The sport appeals to male and female skaters of all ages, who must be capable of skating without extending their arms. Flat, sharp, long blades on the ice skates minimize sideslipping and lend stability over rough ice or at high speeds. The shapes of many contemporary skate sails resemble parallel trapeziums. The icewing sailor also wears ice skates and sails on frozen lakes. Entering an icewing requires assistance because the craft lacks any opening except the bottom. Once a helper has placed the icewing over the squatting sailor, who faces into the wind, the sailor rises to his feet and steers by maneuvering a horizontal control bar located at waist height. Icewing sailors can move four times faster than the true wind speed. Most roller-skate sailors wear in-line skates with plastic wheels, smooth bearings, and rigid boots, and usually sail on paved lots and rural roads. Hopatcong skate sails, which are often homemade and are popular in the eastern United States, can be used with roller skates. Triangular roller-skate sails are popular in California. Ski sailors wear downhill skis and Alpine boots. Ski sailing requires a faster wind and a larger sail than ice skate sailing.Wind-packed snow 5 centimeters (2 inches) thick offers an ideal surface for fast ski sailing. Loose, deep snow reduces speed, and a hard, icy surface affords too little traction. Snow-covered fields and golf courses offer large suitable areas for ski sailing. Some ski sailors combine high speeds with horizontal leaps from platforms made of snow.
Important iceboating championships include the Hearst Cup, the Ice Yacht Pennant, and the Ford Cup. Ice sailors compete in local and regional races and in national and international championships, called regattas. Some races are open to all boats with similar sail sizes. One-design events are limited to a specific type of boat. The National Iceboat Authority establishes basic racing guidelines in the United States. Olympic sailboarding began in the Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984, with thirty-eight countries participating. The board chosen was the Windglider, and events were held for both women and men. Another major sailboarding competition is the Pan Am Cup, sailed off the Hawaiian island of Oahu. It has three competitions: races around triangle-shaped courses, a long distance race of 20 miles, and ins-and-outs (sailing back and forth through surf). Sailboards earned the world speed record for all forms of sailing craft when Eric Beale of Great Britain achieved a speed of 76 kilometers (47 miles) per hour in November 1988 at les Saintes Maries de la Mer. The World Ice and Snow Sailing Association divides its ice sailing competitions into three classes: open class (sailboard class), hand-held sails (free-sail class), and
Competition at the Top The International Land and Sandyachting Federation (FISLY) was formed in 1962 with representatives from France, Germany, Belgium, and Great Britain. The first official European sandyachting championships were held in 1963, with all yachts racing together in an open class. The fleet was subdivided in 1965 into three classes according to sail size. The speed record for a landyacht is 152.13 kilometers (94.55 miles) per hour, set by Frenchman Bertrand Lambert in May 1991.
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The “Icicle” for ice sailing.
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kites (such as parawings). In the world of icewing competitions, national icewing races take place annually, often near Stockholm on the Baltic Sea.
Governing Bodies Overseeing organizations include: International DN Ice Yacht Racing Association (www.sailingsource.com/ice); International Land and Sandyachting Federation (FISLY) (www.fisly.org); International Sailing Federation (www. sailing.org); International Windsurfing Association (www.internationalwindsurfing.com); Australian Windsurfing Association (www.windsurfing.org); New Zealand Windsurfing Association (www.winzurf.co.nz/ windsurf/nzwa/nzwa0000.htm); United States Windsurfing Association (www.uswindsurfing.org); and World Ice and Snow Sailing Association (www.wissa.org). Richard Friary, A. R. Parr, Shirley H. M. Reekie, George Theriault, John Townes, and Robin O’Sullivan
Further Reading Andresen, J. (1974). Sailing on ice. New York: A. S. Barnes. Catton, B. (1972). Waiting for the morning train: An American boyhood. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Claudy, C. H. (1910, February). Skate-sailing for life. St. Nicholas, 37, 298. Evans, J. (1983). Complete guide to windsurfing. London: Bell & Hyman. Forsman, T. (1996). Skate sailing section of the Swedish Ice Sailing Association. Retrieved March 29, 2004, from http://www.ludd.luth.se/ users/tomasf/skridske.html Friary, R. (1996). Skate sailing. Indianapolis, IN: Masters Press. Hollum, D. (1984). Equipment. In The complete book of speed skating. Hillside, NJ: Enslow. Knox-Johnston, R. (1990). History of yachting. Oxford, UK: Phaidon. Lieghley, E. O. (1938). Go like the wind. Popular Mechanics, 69, 114. Marchaj, C. A. (1988). Land and hard-water sailing craft. Aero-hydrodynamics of sailing. Camden, ME: International Marine. Parr, A. (1991). Sandyachting: A history of the sport and its development in Britain. Pembrokeshire, UK: Gomer Press. Roberts, L., & St. Clair, W. (1989 [1980]). Think ice! The DN ice boating book. Burlington,VT: International DN Ice Yacht Racing Association. Turner, S. (1986). Windsurfing. New York: Gallery. Winner, K., & Jones, R. (1980). Windsurfing with Ken Winner. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
“Mosquito” with roll foresail, designed in 1892.
Sailing
S
ailing is a way of moving across water by using wind to power sails on a boat. People likely invented sailing in a variety of forms across the world. Sailing first became a sport of the wealthy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It developed rapidly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, branching out into various forms. Some sailors choose the competitiveness of racing, and others choose the freedom of cruising. Today larger sailing boats can remain at sea for months, but many people sail smaller day boats, or dinghies, on lakes or close to the seashore. Mass production and use of new materials, such as fiberglass, have brought the price of small boats within the range of many buyers. In the Olympic Games yachting has been present continuously since 1908. Sailing is a sport in which women can compete against men and in which young and old and people with disabilities can compete. On windy days sailing is a physical challenge, but on calmer days the sport is an excellent form of relaxation.
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A ship in the harbor is safe. But that’s not what ships are built for. ■ ANONYMOUS
Sailboats come in a variety of sizes, rigs (mast and sail configurations), and prices. To people outside sailing, possibly the best-known aspect of the sport is the America’s Cup series of races in which extremely costly, state-of-the-art boats are used. Most sailors, however, sail smaller, much less expensive dinghies or keelboats. Sailing as a sport, being based on an ancient form of transportation, has a rich vocabulary of its own. Although sailing is usually not physically difficult, it requires an understanding of the forces and effects of wind and water. Rules are designed to keep boats from colliding with each other. A more detailed set of rules for racing has been developed to cover the closer encounters of competition. An understanding of when a boat has the right-of-way and when it must yield is crucial to safe sailboat handling.
Origins Possibly the first type of sailboat was a simple raftlike structure from which people raised a mast on which they hung a cloth sail. Many cultures developed their own kinds of sailing craft. People of the Middle East sailed boats made of reeds about 3500 BCE and today still sail the distinctive dhows; Greeks and Romans sailed galleys about 1000 BCE; the Chinese developed the distinctive junk about 300 CE; and the Vikings sailed longboats from 700 CE. The rig gave each type of sailing boat unique and recognizable characteristics. Each sailboat was designed to work well in the prevailing conditions of wind direction and strength, number of crew members available, and locally available construction materials. Sailing as a sport, as distinct from a mode of transportation, possibly began in the Netherlands. Many words (including yacht) are derived from Dutch words. During the 1660s a race took place in London between King Charles II’s boat (a gift from Holland) and a boat owned by the duke of York. The first regatta (a rowing, speedboat, or sailing race or a series of such races) was organized in 1720 at the Water Club of Cork, Ireland. Sailing as a sport remained the province of the wealthy, however, until the late nineteenth century, when smaller
dinghies were built and raced. Certainly the sport had, and continues to have, patronage from the royal families of Europe and the socially prominent and wealthy families of the United States, so that the sport has always had somewhat of an aura of wealth and exclusivity. The oldest sailing club in continuous existence was founded as simply “the Yacht Club” (the first to use such terminology) in London in 1815. It received royal patronage and became known as “the Royal Yacht Club” in 1820 and “the Royal Yacht Squadron” in 1830. Before sailboats were mass produced, each was completely unique; consequently, people developed systems of handicapping (assessing the relative winning chances of contestants) to obtain some kind of meaningful racing. The first successful system was developed in 1886 by the yacht designer Dixon Kemp. A boat’s waterline length in feet was multiplied by the sail area in square feet and divided by 6,000. In 1907 handicapping by rating was replaced by handicapping by meters, in which the handicap was determined by boat length, sail area, and a variety of other measurements.Yachts were 6-, 8-, 12-, and 15-meters. The 12-meter yachts survived to become the prototype for much of the twentieth-century America’s Cup boats, and various meter classes became early Olympic classes.
Boats Boats are made in a variety of sizes, shapes, rigs, and costs, each designed for a different purpose. People have designed boats for children as young as six to sail and race alone; children’s requirements are clearly different from those of a wealthy business owner taking out clients for a day’s sailing. Sailors with disabilities include people who are blind, who often have a keen sense of wind direction (and who have a sighted crew member on board), and quadriplegics, who sail in a wheelchair on board boats designed for their needs. Regardless of differences, however, certain principles apply to all types of sailing boats. One way to understand the principles of sailing is to first examine the earliest boats and then see how modifications during the
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Sailing Rules for the N. Y. C. C. Challenge Cup of 1886 1. The canoes competing must come within the limits defined by the N.Y.C.C. rules. 2. The cup is to be held as a perpetual challenge trophy. 3. The competition is open to not more than three authorized representatives of any canoe club sailing under foreign colors, as many canoes representing the club holding the cup as the challenging club. 4. Two victories to be necessary to either win or hold the cup, the same canoes competing in each. 5. The races to be sailed on the waters of the club holding the cup. 6. Races sailed in the United States to be contested on waters in the vicinity of New York city under the auspices of the N.Y.C.C. 7. The distance sailed over in each race must not be less than eight nor more than ten miles, and within a time limit of three hours. The course to be mutually agreed upon. 8. The races must be sailed at a time mutually agreeable to the challengers and the holders of the cup; but one series of races to be sailed in any one year.
years have enabled sailboats to increase the range and efficiency of what can be achieved. Early boats were probably able to sail only in the direction that the wind was blowing. This direction, or point of sailing, relative to the wind is called “running.” The boat was merely blown along, and the direction of travel was wherever the wind blew. It is still a relatively slow direction to sail because although the sail is pushed along by the wind, the sail also encounters much resistance from the air in front of it. The sail works most efficiently when it is out at 90 degrees to the boat to catch maximum wind. Through the years advances in rig design allowed sailors to sail perpendicularly across the wind. This point of sailing is called “reaching.” Although the sideways force on the boat is quite great, the boat’s hull
9. The N.Y.C.C. rules to govern the races. 10. The club holding the cup to be responsible to N.Y.C.C. for its sage keeping. Should it dissolve its organization, the cup will then revert to the N.Y.C.C. 11. The representatives of the holders of the cup must be selected after a series of trial races open to all members of canoe clubs in the United States. The regatta committee of the club holding the cup shall have the right to select the competitors for the international races irrespective of the result of the trial races. 12. Should the cup be won by the American contestants in the international race: First, an active member of the club holding the cup must score one victory to entitle that club to retain it. Second, if a member (or members) of any other club wins two races, his club will hold the cup. Third, should the two races be won by members of two clubs, neither being the holder of the cup, the tie will be sailed off subsequently to determine which club shall take the cup. Source: Conditions governing the races for the N.Y.C.C. Challenge Cup. (1886, November). Outing Magazine, p. 171.
(body), plus the centerboard or keel (central underwater fin) and rudder (a pivoted underwater fin at the back that allows the boat to be steered) all help to redirect the sideways force of the wind into forward motion of the boat. The most efficient sail position is half out; any farther out, and the sail would luff, or flutter; any farther in, and the sail would not catch so much wind. Eventually boats were designed to be capable of making forward progress in a direction 45 degrees to the wind. This forward progress is called “beating” or “sailing close hauled.” This term is used because the most efficient sail position is hauled in close to the boat; any farther out, and the sail would luff and lose power. Again, the boat’s resistance to going sideways enables the boat to make some forward progress and also to slip
SAILING
slightly sideways (called “leeway”). No boat can sail directly into the wind because on that heading the sail would act like a flag, with wind on each side, and harness no power. Boats can, however, make indirect progress into the wind by zigzagging back and forth. The principle of the Swiss physicist Daniel Bernoulli, which explains how airplanes are able to achieve lift, can also be used to explain how a sail works. If one imagines the sail to be like a wing, the curved surface makes air travel over it faster than over a flat surface, so that in front (or on top in an airplane) of the curved surface is fast-moving air at low pressure, whereas the other surface has slower-moving air and higher pressure. This situation gives an airplane lift and a sail forward motion. In addition to knowing how to sail in the various directions of a run, reach, and beat (and all those in between) a sailor should know how to turn the boat around in two different ways that have crucially different components. The choice is to turn the bow (front) into the wind or to turn the stern (back) into the wind. The results may be the same, but the processes are different. When turning the bow into the wind (called “coming about” or “going about”), a time comes when the sail flutters like a flag, and only momentum allows the boat to complete its turn. In turning away from the wind (called “jibing” or “gybing”), the wind is always filling, thus propelling, the sail, first on one side and then, after the sail is forced by the wind to swing across, on the other side. Old sailing ships, such as square riggers, had to turn by this method (called “wearing ship”) because they were too heavy and slow to come about. Modern sailing boats can do either type of turn, and skippers usually choose whichever is the quicker or smaller rotation. To make the boat come about, the tiller (steering stick) is moved toward the sail side. The turn happens quite slowly, relying on the boat’s momentum. To make the jibe turn, the tiller is moved away from the sail side. The sail can swing across quickly, and unless the skipper knows what to do, jibing can put a lot of force on the boat, resulting in either damage or a capsize.
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Unlike many other vehicles, a sailboat has no brake. As long as wind is in the sail, the boat will move. To slow or stop, one must angle the boat or sail so that wind power is no longer caught by the sail. This can be achieved by either turning the boat into the wind or by letting out the sail. Either way, the sail loses power as a driving force and begins to act like a flag, with the wind passing over both sides. Getting started again involves trapping wind in the sail by angling the sail more across the wind. This can be achieved by either using the tiller and rudder to turn the boat or by pushing the sail out by the boom (the pole along the foot of the sail) at an angle to the wind.
Sailing Categories Sailing can be divided into several categories according to the type of boat and usage. All sizes of boat may be either raced or just sailed from place to place. Dinghies, considered to be day boats, usually stay close to shore. Larger boats, such as keelboats, cruisers, or ocean racers, may go far offshore. Cruising is a nonracing branch of sailing in which larger boats, usually with sleeping accommodation, are sailed on voyages ranging from short distance to around the world. Some smaller cruisers can be trailered, but usually cruisers are kept moored at anchor or in a marina. Most cruisers have fixed keels rather than movable centerboards. Keels are heavy and give the boat much greater stability than a dinghy has. After a knockdown, or capsize, a keelboat should right itself. Cruising requires not only sailing skills, but also knowledge of navigation, anchoring, meteorology, or indeed any fixing skill needed when out of sight of land miles from outside assistance. Cruisers are usually equipped with a variety of instruments, ranging from a compass and depth sounder to sophisticated Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation aids. Because of their size and weight, cruisers have a range of devices to help the crew gain a mechanical advantage in their work. These devices include winches for hoisting sails or pulling them in and capstans or windlasses (both are types of winches) for hoisting the anchor and chain. Most cruisers also are outfitted with engines.
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Cruisers usually carry a variety of sails. These sails are changed to suit the prevailing weather conditions. Generally, as the wind rises, smaller sails are used to keep the boat from being overpowered. Because cruising may include sailing at night, in fog, and on the open sea, the crew should know the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS). The first rules of sailing were probably developed by the ancient Romans, but the current rules were agreed to by international charter in 1972. These rules include the requirements to display and recognize appropriate lights at night, to make and understand relevant sound signals in fog or in close proximity to other boats, and to keep a good lookout at all times. Sailors must know when the burden is on them to take action to avoid other boats. Even though sailors generally understand that power gives way to sail, many situations exist where the sailboat must give way. Two examples are when the powerboat/tanker is dredging or in a narrow channel. In general, the boat with the greater maneuverability keeps out of the way of the boat with more restricted maneuverability. Three basic right-of-way rules apply to sailboats meeting other sailboats. These rules are the opposite tack rule, the overtaking rule, and the windward rule. In order to understand these rules, one must appreciate that when a sailboat has the wind blowing over its starboard side (and thus its boom is on the port side) the
A modern, racing sailboat. Source: Stephen Matthews.
boat is said to be on “starboard tack.” A boat with the wind blowing over its port side (with its boom to starboard) is said to be on “port tack.” When boats on opposite tacks meet, the one on port tack is required to keep clear of the one on starboard tack. When one boat is overtaking another, and they are on the same tack, the overtaking boat must keep clear. When two boats meet on the same tack, the one to windward (closer to the wind, that is on the nonsail side of the other) must keep clear of the one to leeward (downwind).
SAILING
You are what you are.
Some of the most popular designs of keelboats, some for racing and some for cruising, are the Catalina 22, Contessa 32, J24, and 12 meter. Many America’s Cup races of the mid- to late twentieth century were raced in the 12-meter class. The America’s Cup is probably the most famous yacht race. Ocean, or offshore, racing began in October 1866 as the result of a wager. Three boats raced across the Atlantic, from New York to the Isle of Wight, England. Henrietta (32.6 meters) beat Vesta (32 meters) and Fleetwing (32.3 meters) in a close race. Crews of early ocean racers were usually professional seamen, and sometimes the owner was not even on board. During the 1920s amateur sailors took over much of ocean racing, and the sport was not without controversy. Some sailors felt that racing in the open sea is too dangerous, and, as a result, ocean racing grew up as a sport somewhat removed from dinghy and inshore keelboat racing. The Offshore Racing Council (ORC), headquartered in England, organizes the sport. Ocean racers are divided into classes for racing purposes: Class I, 21–10 meters; Class II, 9.9–8.8 meters; Class III, 8.7–7.6 meters; Class IV, 7.5–7 meters; and Class V, 6.9–6.4 meters. A 1,014-kilometer race from Newport, Rhode Island, to Bermuda was first held in 1906 and since 1924 has been held every two years (except during World War II). Since 1925 the Fastnet Race has been held on the other side of the Atlantic in years when the Bermuda Race is not held. This race starts at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast, goes west past Plymouth, Devon, and up to the southwest coast of Ireland. Boats there round the Fastnet Rock and lighthouse and return to finish in Plymouth for a distance of 973 kilometers. The Fastnet Race has long had a well-deserved reputation for encountering heavy weather, but during the 1970s a series of races took place in light wind. However, perhaps designers forgot too soon the potential power of the sea because in 1979, after a light-wind start, hurricane-force winds blew over the largest fleet ever assembled for the race: 303 boats. The boats were scattered all over the southern Irish Sea, and many broke apart or were dismasted
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in the steep, breaking waves. Fifteen crew members lost their lives; only eighty-five boats finished. People learned many lessons about boat design, rescue operations, and life rafts from this notorious race. The Fastnet Race is one of a series of races in the Admiral’s Cup, one of the premier trophies in offshore racing. The 1,013-kilometer Sydney-Hobart, Australia, race, first held in 1945, is the third major offshore race. It always starts on Boxing Day (26 December). Another major ocean race is the Transpac, or Transpacific (held every two years in the odd-numbered years), which starts in Los Angeles and finishes in Hawaii, 3,580 kilometers away. An unusual feature of this race is that the wind usually blows in the same direction as the race, making it a run across the ocean. Sponsorship has become a major feature of offshore racing. The Volvo Ocean Race (first held in 1973 and 1974 when it was known as the Whitbread Round the World Race) is for fully crewed boats, whereas the Vendée Globe (begun in 1989) is for single-handed racing around the world. Single-handed sailing around the world began in 1895 when Joshua Slocum (1844– 1909), a U.S. sea captain born in Nova Scotia, Canada, started his voyage aboard Spray, a 11.2-meter boat. He went counterclockwise around, making use of prevailing winds and currents, and took three years, with many stops. His book, Sailing Alone around the World, has become a classic in sailing literature. Dinghies are the smallest, but most numerous, type of boats and are distinguished by having retractable centerboards. They are usually raced by one-design class, which means that all boats in the race fleet are of the same type and exactly alike. The oldest one-design centerboard dinghy class boat still raced is the 4-meter clinker-built (overlapping planks) Water Wag from Ireland. These boats date from 1887 but were redesigned in 1900 by Mamie Doyle, the daughter of the original designer. In 1897 the A Scow was designed and raced on the Great Lakes of North America, and several still race. The Seabird Half Rater, designed in 1898 but not raced until 1899, takes its name from the handicapping system then used. Continuously sailed, raced, and built
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without major redesign, a fleet of more than thirty is raced at Trearddur Bay, Wales, and all bear the names of seabirds. Some dinghies have a simple rig—one sail—but others have a mainsail (a jibsail), a spinnaker (a balloonlike sail used in front of the mast on downwind legs, often brightly colored), and even a trapeze (a device that allows crew members to hook on to a wire, stand on the edge of the boat, and lever their weight over the side to assist in keeping the boat upright in windy conditions). Some of the more modern and popular dinghies of the hundreds of classes worldwide are the Optimist, Mirror, Sunfish, 420, 5-0-5, Snipe (all one-hulled boats) and the Hobiecat 16 (a catamaran, or twin-hulled boat). Another branch of dinghy sailing is made up of restricted or development classes. Boats in these classes are definitely not like each other because, although certain restrictions apply to what may be changed, the whole point is to encourage change and development.
Racing Several types of sailing races exist. In fleet races boats of the same type race against each other. In handicap races boats of different types race against each other. Boats may start together, have their finish times recorded, and then work out who won on handicap. Sailors may use a visible handicap in which the slower boats start first and the faster boats start last at time intervals based on their handicap; the first boat over the finish line wins. Racing may also be subdivided into fleet racing, match racing (one-on-one races, such as used in America’s Cup races), and team racing (in which boats race as members of teams, instead of individually; tactics between and among teams add to the interest). A sailboat race is overseen by a race committee who issues instructions about the start procedure, the course to be raced, the finish, and the scoring. A sailing race is unusual when compared with races in other sports because the start is with competitors (boats) in motion. The race begins with a countdown (of ten, five, or three minutes) to the start, which is signaled to the boats by flags and/or sound. During this time the boats time and
practice starts and jockey for position, each one trying to be in the most advantageous place exactly on the start line, going fast in the direction of the first buoy, when the starting signal is made. The course is predetermined and is most often triangular. It is between a series of buoys that must be rounded in an agreed-upon order and direction for a certain number of laps. The point of sailing that requires the most skill and that gives the most opportunity for individually different courses is a beat. The start line is thus usually set perpendicular to the wind, giving a beat to the first buoy. The next leg may be a reach or a run. The rules for sailboat racing include the three basic right-of-way rules described earlier plus many others necessary for sailing at close quarters. Because the rules may seem complex and intimidating to beginning racers, officials have been attempting to simplify the rules since 1997. Rules are always revised in the year after the Olympic Games by the London-based International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU). The rules cover, for example, starting, handling an obstruction (such as a rock) and rounding buoys. Additionally, the rules include precise definitions, prohibitions on certain forms of propulsion (such as fanning or rocking), and details on penalties. For example, if a boat hits a buoy, the boat must execute a 360-degree turn (come about, then jibe or vice versa in the same direction) to give itself a time penalty before continuing. If a boat hits another boat and admits it was in the wrong, it may usually put itself right by completing a 720-degree-turn penalty. Another unusual feature of sailing races is that usually no referee is present. In fact, a referee would not be able to see every situation anywhere on the course. Instead, all competitors are honor bound to try to sail by the rules to the best of their knowledge and ability, but if one sailor thinks another has wrongly interpreted a rule, the only remedy is to protest. This protest involves flying a small flag on board and telling the other boat of the intention to protest. Protesting is not unsportsmanlike behavior because it is the only way, after the race, to get a ruling on a situation. At the protest hearing, a committee establishes the facts from the evidence
SAILING
of both parties and decides what action to take. This action can range from doing nothing to disqualifying a boat or boats. People also sail on land and ice, but the rules for these forms of racing are completely different from those of water sailing. Speeds in land-based sailing are usually much higher than those in water-based sailing because of the lower resistance needed to go over a hard, flat surface. Top speeds for sailing on land approach 110 kilometers per hour, whereas the top speeds for sailing on water in time trials are around 70 kilometers per hour. The fastest sailing craft are sailboards and catamarans.
Women in Sailing Superstition and folklore have long held that to have a woman on board a boat is to court disaster. In light of this and other arguments against women participating in sport of any type, perhaps one should not be surprised that women have faced difficulty gaining acceptance in some branches of sailing, notably among the larger racing yachts. Women have nevertheless long participated in sailing. Among the first women known to have sailed were a few women pirates. Alvilda, a Goth pirate from southern Sweden, went to sea to escape an arranged marriage and took with her an all-woman crew. During the seventeenth century, because of the relative inefficiency of sailing rigs, boats of all sizes often had to be rowed, making the all-woman makeup of the crew all the more remarkable. Around the same time, off the southwest coast of England, when the men of the villages were forced into King Henry VIII’s navy, women took over their fishing boats and continued to make a living for their families. The women sailors who have received the greatest recent publicity were those assembled by the America3 Foundation to try out for an all-woman crew in the America’s Cup of 1995.They were not the first women to participate in this event, however. In 1895 Hope Goddard Iselin participated in an America’s Cup race. She acted as timekeeper then and also in 1899 and 1903, when the U.S. defender boat was successful every time.
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Outlook The construction of sailboats has changed greatly during the last fifty years. Before then, most boats were built of wood, and the two major methods of construction were carvel (in which planks were laid edge to edge) and clinker (in which planks were overlapped). Next came the use of marine ply, and with that, boat building began to be something that people without great woodworking skills could do. Most boats today are made of fiberglass; some are made of aluminum or cement, and a few from expensive new materials such as Kevlar. However, many people continue to think that wood looks the best. Sails, traditionally made from flax or cotton, both of which tend to rot if left wet, have also become dependent on technology. Today sails are made from Dacron or sometimes Kevlar; the lighter spinnaker sails are made from nylon or Mylar. As a sport, sailing is enjoyed around the world, and 108 countries are affiliated with the IYRU. Until recently sailing has been a difficult sport to watch because the boats cover a wide area and sometimes take different paths to the next buoy, making it hard even for experts to know which boat is leading. As with so many other sports, television may hold the key to the sport’s increased popularity. Use of microcameras mounted high in the rigging or at deck level may be part of the solution. Another solution, long fought by some people in sailing but now seemingly here to stay, may be the growth of professional sailing opportunities. Shirley H. M. Reekie See also America’s Cup
Further Reading Bond, B. (1980). The handbook of sailing. New York: Knopf. Francis, C. (1977). Woman alone: Sailing solo across the Atlantic. New York: McKay. Johnson, P. (1989). The Sail Magazine book of sailing. New York: Knopf. Knox-Johnston, R. (1990). History of yachting. Oxford, UK: Phaidon. Reekie, S. H. M. (1986). Sailing made simple. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press. Richey, M. W. (Ed.). (1980). The sailing encyclopedia. New York: Lippincott & Crowell.
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I really don’t like talking about money. All I can say is that the Good Lord must have wanted me to have it. ■ LARRY BIRD
Salary Caps
A
salary cap limits the compensation an employer may provide to its employees. In sports, a salary cap is designed to restrict salaries for teams across an entire league—ideally creating an economic environment in which every team can be assured of cost containment as well as an opportunity to compete for player services.
NBA Salary Cap Although there had been unofficial and official salary caps in professional baseball before the 1930s, the first modern salary cap was implemented in the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1983. Numerous NBA teams had been struggling financially in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and concern existed that teams in larger United States markets (Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Philadelphia) would be able to outspend teams in smaller markets (Utah, Indiana, Cleveland) to the point that smaller market teams would cease operations and declare bankruptcy. NBA owners and NBA players agreed to a salary system that established a team salary floor (minimum amount paid in salaries per team) and salary cap or ceiling (maximum amount paid in salaries per team). Each year the NBA owners and players determine the league salary cap based on overall league revenues. The NBA salary cap was designed, in theory, to maintain a level salary field for every team in the league. However, given the nature of the sport of basketball, it quickly became apparent that the loss of one or two players from a twelve-player roster could radically alter the quality of a team’s performance. For this reason the NBA instituted a variety of rules that allowed individual teams to circumvent the cap. Most notable of these rules was the “Larry Bird” exemption, so named because the Boston Celtics were concerned that the potential loss of Larry Bird to free agency would devastate their team. The NBA allows teams, in most cases, to resign their own potential free agents for salaries that
may exceed the designated yearly salary cap. This exception has created an environment in which teams drafting quality players typically have an advantage in future salary negotiations, as free agents can usually resign with their original team for greater compensation than they can receive from other franchises. Under the salary cap system, NBA popularity and salaries grew tremendously in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1998, NBA owners, tired of rapidly escalating player salaries, locked out the players at the start of the season. The negotiations to end the lockout resulted in new components being added to the salary cap agreement. Not only would NBA teams have a salary cap, but also individual player salaries would be capped based on their service time in the league. Although a few prominent players such as Shaquille O’Neal and Kevin Garnett had salaries exceeding the newly established individual limits, the NBA elected to grandfather their contracts and those players can continue to exceed the maximum individual salary limits. However, for the vast majority of players individual salary ceilings cannot be exceeded.
NFL Salary Cap The National Football League (NFL) implemented a salary cap system in 1993 in an effort to maintain competitive balance among its franchises. The NFL cap system, similar to the NBA’s, has a minimum and maximum team salary and is based each year on the overall league revenues. Unlike the NBA salary system in which numerous loopholes exist to exceed the cap, the NFL cap has a “hard” ceiling that must be maintained each year. The NFL cap can be circumvented with the use of signing bonuses. If an NFL player signs a five-year contract worth $5 million, each year his salary will count $1 million against the NFL team’s salary cap, and the player will receive $1 million dollars each season. Unfortunately, since NFL contracts are usually not guaranteed, the player risks not receiving all of the money if he is hurt or is terminated by the club before each year of the contract is fulfilled. For this reason players like bonuses that are paid immediately on signing the con-
SCHOLAR-BALLER
tract. If the aforementioned example is augmented with a signing bonus of $5 million on top of the $5 million for the five year contract, the player receives $6 million in the first year of the contract, and the team is able to allocate $2 million a year to its salary cap total. Since a signing bonus in the NFL must be allocated to each year’s salary cap for the length of the player’s contract, the use of signing bonuses to circumvent the NFL cap is not without long-term repercussions. When a player who received a signing bonus retires, is cut, or is traded, his initial signing bonus must continue to be applied to that team’s yearly cap. In the 1990s the San Francisco 49ers and other teams utilized signing bonuses to pay numerous players large salaries in the hopes of winning championships. In the case of the 49ers, they were able to field successful teams in the short term, but as players retired, became injured, and so on, the team was unable to sign other players under the cap as they had “mortgaged” their future with signing bonuses in the present.
Future of Salary Caps Although not a perfect mechanism for limiting salaries and creating competitive balance, salary caps in the NBA and NFL have helped to create an economic environment in which all teams in the league have an opportunity to compete for player services. Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Hockey League (NHL) owners have attempted to create a salary cap system for each of their sports, but they have been rebuffed by their players associations. In 1994 MLB players went on strike to protest a potential salary cap, and in 2004 NHL owners locked out the players in the hopes of implementing one. In both instances a salary cap was not instituted. MLB owners have continued to insist that a salary cap is needed at some point in the future, despite the protests of the players. NHL owners have insisted that too many teams are losing money due to high player salaries, and in February 2005, the NHL cancelled its 2004–2005 season after the players’ association failed to accept the NHL owners’ final offer of a $42.5 million salary cap per team. In addition nu-
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merous NFL and NBA players have remarked that they do not like the current salary caps in their leagues. Given the financial climate in which owners want player cost certainty and players want to maximize their career earnings, salary caps and the fight to implement or maintain them are likely to remain important topics in sport business well into the twenty-first century. Mark S. Nagel See also Collective Bargaining; Revenue Sharing; Unionism
Further Reading Helyar, J. (1994). Lords of the realm. New York: Villard Books. Howard, D. R. (1999). The changing fanscape for big-league sports: Implications for sport managers. Journal of Sport Management, 13(1), 78–91. Howard, D. R., & Crompton, J. L. (2004). Financing sport (2nd ed.). Morgantown, WV: FIT. Miller, M. (1991). A whole different ball game. New York: Carroll Publishing. Quirk, J., & Fort, R. (1999). Hard ball. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Reese, J. T., & Nagel, M. S. (2001). The relationship between revenue and winning in the National Football League. International Journal of Sport Management, 2(2), 125–133.
Scholar-Baller
H
istorically the athletic talents of African-American male student-athletes were marketable as cultural capital only if they were founded on intellectual and academic achievement. Before formal integration, AfricanAmerican male athletes were not driven by money and commercial values but used their participation in sport to gain access to educational training and earn personal recognition. These early pioneers, who lived during a period of reconstruction and the legalized separation of human beings in society based on phenotype and skin color, have been called “scholar-ballers.” Scholar-ballers were young men with long-term goals and pursuits beyond their
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participation in athletics; they were known at their colleges for both academic and athletic achievements. William Henry Lewis (at Amherst College and Harvard University), Paul Robeson (at Rutgers University), and Ralph Bunche (at UCLA) are perfect embodiments of the African-American scholar-baller—student-athletes who successfully balance cultural elements such as family and community with athletic and academic excellence. Despite racist attitudes during the early twentieth century, African-American college students such as Lewis, Robeson, and Bunche were heavily involved in extracurricular activities, including the student newspaper and debate teams, and became part of an incrowd composed primarily of scholars who happened to be outstanding athletes. Though each of these men faced discrimination from his white teammates and opponents, each went on to become an accomplished athlete and the valedictorian of his class. African-American male student-athletes are no longer expected to combine academic excellence with athletic prowess. Somewhere on the continuum between Lewis and contemporary athletes like LeBraun James and Emeka Okefar, the expectation for black male studentathletes to succeed academically gave way to today’s dumb-jock stereotype.
From Scholar-Baller to Baller There are at least three major reasons for the shift in identity from scholar-baller to baller. The first one arises from the social and historical context, the second one reflects shifts in the structural context of intercollegiate athletics and higher education’s reward system, and the third reason concerns notions of occupational success for African-American males. A shift in structural and cultural factors may be signaling a return to the original scholar-baller identity for all student-athletes, particularly in higher education and revenue sports. This shift may also impact the retention and graduation rates that the NCAA Academic Reform Movement (ARM) and higher education seek to rectify.
SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT First, what has been the historical paradigm of AfricanAmericans in sports and higher education? Academic and athletic ideology shifted for African-Americans at the height of social integration in 1954. Previously only a selected few African-American male student-athletes— who were commonly referred to as “handpicked”— would grace the playing fields. By 1970, however, African-American athletes had power on the playing field. Their numbers were increasing at all levels in basketball, football, baseball, boxing, and track and field. As the mood of the country shifted slightly toward giving blacks access to educational opportunities, coaches with an eye toward the scoreboard took advantage of open admissions policies.
STRUCTURAL CONTEXT This shift led some to argue that African-American athletes in revenue sports were afforded a great opportunity in higher education while other, more critical observers of graduation and retention rates insisted that exploitation was the pattern and the outcome of participation in football and basketball. Some scholars have used empirical evidence to show that studentathletes in revenue sports were not unmotivated and negligent about their academic priorities but that their poor performance was rather the result of extrinsic barriers based on the current intercollegiate athletics model. While universities continue to benefit from the talent of African-American male student-athletes, the integration-without-education paradigm remains a tremendous challenge for athletes who do not perform beyond athletics.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN VISUAL LITERACY As one scholar described the phenomenon, “In the 1970s black players enabled college football players to field exciting teams that employed daring option and pitchout plays such as the ‘I’ and the ‘veer’ which often depended on the physical skills of African-American athletes. The freer and spontaneous celebration of black
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players after they scored provided almost as much entertainment as the scores themselves. The ‘Hi-Mom’ and high-fives soon embedded themselves into American culture” (Watterson 2000, 326–327). There is an important connection between the cultural production of black athletic talents for competitive teams, the commercial ideology of big-time college athletics (football and basketball), and the early failure of faculty interinstitutional control. Some researchers have argued that black athletes are more visible to black youths than, say, black doctors or black lawyers because racial discrimination has limited black access to the full spectrum of high-prestige occupational opportunities. What are the consequences of this media bombardment of blacks in sport and entertainment rather than in education, science, or business?
RETENTION AND GRADUATION RATES Between 1990 and 1991 nearly twice as many white athletes as African-American athletes graduated from college (52.2 percent versus 26.6 percent). Was the disparity due to social class, race, gender, or all three? A 1997 study of African-American male studentathletes found that 1 out of 9 African-American students at predominantly white four-year institutions was an athlete. It also found that half of football and basketball players came from the lowest socioeconomic quartile; most athletes came from homes headed by women and many were first-generation college students. These athletes had to face the negative stereotypes and expectations associated with both student-athletes and men of color. A 2003 study of over five hundred intercollegiate student athletes revealed a trend for black student athletes to choose between a strong athletic identity with a weak racial identity and a weak athletic identity with a strong racial identity. Unlike African-American scholar-ballers of the past who excelled in both sports and academics, the majority of modern black studentathletes choose between academia and athleticism and rarely focus on both.
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African-American male student-athletes are showcased as commodities on college campuses. While the median enrollment of African-American students at Division I universities is approximately 4 percent, blacks represent 12 percent of the student-athlete population (the overall population of blacks in the United States is 13 percent). As one researcher put it, “The problem is not that Blacks are overrepresented in college athletics, the problem is that African-American students are underrepresented in college” (Sellers 2000). The NCAA reported in 1995 that roughly 1 out of 9 AfricanAmerican males on Division I campuses were scholarship athletes, compared to a ratio of 1 out of 50 for white males. A 2003 survey by the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) found interesting differences based on race and ethnicity. The purpose of the survey was to provide information to college administrators and coaches to help them better understand college football players. Responses were received from 5,474 football players from sixty-six teams and represented a cross-section of the Division I-A membership. Here is a summary of some key findings: ■
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When asked who influenced them most in making their decision on which university to attend, 43 percent of white Americans said it was their father. Among African-American players, the mother had the greatest influence, 32 percent, with the father at 25 percent. Earning a degree is foremost on the minds of today’s college football players. When asked the importance of graduating from college, 95 percent, regardless of race or ethnicity, said it was very important. White American athletes earned higher GPAs than African-Americans. Forty-one percent of white American players and 14 percent of African-American players earned a GPA of 3.0 or better, while 25 percent of white American players and 53 percent of AfricanAmerican players registered a GPA of 2.5 or less. The relationship was similar for high school GPAs. Respondents from a two-parent family registered higher
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He who stops being better stops being good. ■ OLIVER CROMWELL
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high school and college GPAs than those who lived with one parent or with others. When asked why they play college football, respondents reported the following: 1. In 2002, 60 percent said enjoyment of the game, 15 percent necessity of aid for education, and 19 percent opportunity for a professional career; 2. In 1996, 66 percent said enjoyment of the game, 15 percent necessity of aid for education, and 15 percent opportunity for a professional career; 3. In 1991, 65 percent said enjoyment of the game, 20 percent necessity of aid for education, and 11 percent opportunity for professional career; 4. In 1986, 72 percent said enjoyment of the game, 16 percent necessity of aid for education, and 9 percent opportunity for a professional career.
Recommendations for improving the future of African-American male student-athletes include eliminating athletic scholarships, removing athletics from the university structure, and paying student-athletes. However, this data suggests that these recommendations might exacerbate the situation of athletes who already suffer from disparities of income and social class, family support, and educational and racial perceptions, as well as from the impact of popular stereotypes. An experiment at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, is attempting to solve these problems by working within the system.
Scholar-Baller: ASU Case Study Major Division I college football brings to mind sell-out crowds, great athletes, lots of money, and hard work in the weight room and on the football field. Competing in the classroom at the highest level is never part of the image. However, in classrooms at Arizona State University, the scholar-baller paradigm is challenging Sun Devil football student-athletes to tap into the same competitive fire that makes them great athletes. In urban hip hop vernacular, a “baller” is someone who excels in a given activity (for example, sports or earning money). A baller competes for the highest prize
and wins. At ASU the academic support staff and football coaches work together to set high standards for the performance of football student-athletes in the classroom. The term “scholar-baller” was coined in 1996 by C. Keith Harrison, director of the Paul Robeson Research Center for Leadership, Academic and Athletic Prowess at ASU, and the implementation of the scholar-baller program has been a collaborative effort of Harrison, Jean Boyd, assistant athletic director for student-athlete development, and Dirk Koetter, head football coach. The implementation involves rewarding ASU footballers in several ways for their academic success: ■
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The football team is divided into academic teams that compete against each other in the spring semester, with the winners earning scholar-baller sweat suits. Scholar-baller awards (such as T-shirts and backpacks) recognizing a GPA of 3.0 and above by studentathletes are given out every year at Camp Tontozona. Scholar-ballers are invited to a special dinner with the director of athletics. This year ASU will become the first Division I school in the country to acknowledge football student-athlete academic success with a scholar-baller patch designed to be worn on the front of jerseys at every game.
This system of rewarding academic prowess counteracts the notion that participation in college football is primarily a training ground for a career in the NFL and that academics is only important to maintain a player’s eligibility. The reality is that most college football student-athletes will not play the sport after college. The scholar-baller paradigm teaches that performing well in school and earning a bachelor’s degree are victories that last a lifetime. ASU’s scholar-baller paradigm serves as a model for what Myles Brand, president of NCAA, called a “landmark academic reform package aimed at dramatically strengthening the educational success of studentathletes and holding universities and teams accountable. This comprehensive, three-year effort to improve the academic progress, retention and graduation of
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student-athletes is the most far-reaching effort of its kind in the history of the association” (NCAA 2004, 1). Robert Hemenway, chair of the NCAA Division I board of directors and chancellor of the University of Kansas, summarized the synergy of the scholar-baller and the NCAA’s new academic policies in this way: “The reform package fulfills the NCAA’s mission of making the education of student-athletes paramount in collegiate sports. With these proposals, institutions, teams and coaches will know exactly what they need to accomplish to ensure their student-athletes are progressing in a timely fashion toward completing a degree. If they do not meet the requirements, they will suffer consequences” (NCAA 2004, 1). Since implementation of the scholar-baller concept, ASU football has experienced significant improvement in the retention rate of football student-athletes and in the academic performance of the entire team: ■
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ASU football’s retention rates for the 2001, 2002, and 2003 recruiting classes are significantly above the PAC-10 average (85 percent to 75 percent as of spring 2004). Retention rates for the 2000, 2001, and 2002 recruiting classes are also above the national average according to the American Football Coaches Association survey (80 percent to 73 percent). The cumulative GPAs for ASU football teams rose substantially from 2000 to 2004. In 2001 there were nine football student-athletes with a GPA of 3.0 or better, and in 2004 thirty-seven football student-athletes achieved a B average or better. Only 1 out of 63 football student-athletes recruited between 2000 and 2004 has been declared academically ineligible.
While winning on the football field is an important aspect of becoming a competitive team in the PAC-10 conference, the definition of success for a Division I football program should include the preparation of young men for life. Promoting the scholar-baller image does just that—it prepares ASU football studentathletes for the greatest competition of all, life. The ex-
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perience at ASU also suggests that the scholar-baller paradigm could bring similar benefits to young man on athletic teams in elementary and secondary schools.
The Future The scholar-baller paradigm is designed to help athletes escape the stereotyping that confines their talents to athletics and hinders their personal, social, cultural, and educational development. The new paradigm retains the current visuals but includes academic excellence. This transformation could lead to a different type of interaction between the public and the studentathlete. When asked, “Hey, are you a scholar-baller?” student-athletes—black, white, and brown—would be proud to say, “Yes, I am.” This reframing must be sensitive to the needs of the student-athletes themselves. Part of integrating them into the university community will involve fusing their desires, connections, technologies, and artifacts (including video games, language, and fashions) with academic reform initiatives and policies. A key component of the NCAA academic reform movement is the concept of contemporaneous penalties in which real-time evaluations will be made in order to improve the academic retention and matriculation rates of student-athletes in all sports. A contemporaneous reward system for academic achievement will also be established. Urban culture and hip hop have moved into the center of American popular culture.This makes it possible to imagine a synergy of education, sports, and entertainment creating a new paradigm in which athletics, education, and popular culture are united into an indissoluble whole. This is the goal of the scholar-baller covenant with the NCAA. C. Keith Harrison and Jean A. Boyd
Further Reading American Football Coaches Association. (2004). Survey of Division I Football Players. Waco, TX: Author. Boyd, J., Comeaux, E., Harrison, C. K., & Stone, J. (2004). Scholarballer intervention theory and practice: Impacting the mentalities
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Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy. ■ JOE PATERNO
and success of revenue producing sport student-athletes. Paper presented at the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics, Indianapolis, IN. Boyd, T. (2003). Young, black, rich and famous. New York: Random House. Boyd, T. (2004). The new H.N.I.C: The death of civil rights and the reign of hip hop. New York: New York University Press. Brown, T., et al. (2003). There’s no race on the playing field. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 2 (2), 162–183. Coakley, J. (2004). Sports in society. New York: McGraw-Hill. Edwards, H. (2000). Crisis on the eve of Black athletes. Society 37(3), 9–13. Gerdy, J. (2000). Sports: The all-American addiction. Oxford, MS: Ole Miss Press. Gerdy, J. (2004). Coaches and athletes: Assuming responsibility. Unpublished paper. Gilroy, P. (2000). Against race: Imagining political culture beyond the color line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harrison, C. K. (1997). Philosophy of African-American males in sport: Time for change. Paper presented at the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, St. Louis, MO. Harrison, C.K. (2002). Scholar or baller in American higher education? A visual elicitation and qualitative assessment of the student-athlete’s mindset. National Association of Student Affairs Professionals Journal, 5(1), 66–81. Harrison, C. K. (2004). Ralph Bunche and the scholar-baller paradigm: Academic, athletic and social transformation. Los Angeles: CAAS publications. Hooks, B. (2004). We real cool: Black men and masculinity. New York: Routledge. Lapchick, R. (1991). Five minutes to midnight: Race and sport in the 1990’s. London: Sage Publications. NCAA. (1995). Manual on membership schools. Overland Park, KS: NCAA Publications. NCAA. (2004). NCAA Softball tournament publication. Overland Park, KS: NCAA Publications. Person, D. R., & LeNoir, K. M. (1997). Retention issues and models for African-American male athletes. In M. J. Cuyjet (Ed.), Helping African-American men succeed in college (pp. 79–91). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sailes, G. (1993). An investigation of campus typecasts: The myth of black athletic superiority and the dumb stereotype. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 88–97. Sellers, R., & Chavous, T. (1997). Motivation vs. structure: Factors in the academic performance of African-American college athletes. African-American Research Perspectives, 3, 12–20. Sellers, R. (2000). Benefits or exploitation. In D. Brooks and R. Althouse (Eds.), Racism in college athletics (pp. 134–154). Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Smith, P. (1991). Killing the spirit. New York: Penguin Press. Smith, R. (1988). Sports and freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watterson, J. (2000). College Football. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wiggins, D. (1991). Prized performers but frequently overlooked as students. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 62(2), 164–177. Wiggins, D., & Miller, P. (2003). The unlevel playing field: A documentary history of the African-American Experience in Sport. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
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articipation in school-sponsored sports activities benefits students’ academic and non-academic achievement, particularly in high school. But this view is recent, and theoretical models of the effects of participation in sports lead to conflicting predictions. The zero-sum model suggests that time spent on sports detracts from time that is available for schoolwork. Historically, based substantially on this rationale, many educators were critical of participation in all extracurricular activities—but particularly sports. Subsequently, educational practitioners and researchers have taken a more positive perspective, arguing that sports participation may have positive effects on life skills and the total development of students (development perspective) that are not at the expense of academic achievement. According to the identification/commitment model, athletic participation enhances identification, involvement, and commitment to a school’s values and goals in a way that enhances both academic and nonacademic outcomes—a win-win situation. Following from this debate, research has evaluated the impact of high school athletic participation in relation to a wide variety of outcomes and policy implications. These results show that participation in sports has generally positive effects on a variety of academic, social, and psychological outcomes, whereas there is little or no evidence of negative effects.
Recent Studies There has been, however, a valid concern that some of the benefits attributed to athletic participation might simply represent differences that already existed in students who chose to participate in sports rather than being effects because of participation in sports. Hence, stronger studies are based on large, representative samples of students; employ longitudinal designs in which the same outcomes are measured on multiple occasions; and control for the effects of preexisting differences on background variables such as socioeconomic
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status (SES), ethnicity, gender, parental education, and type of schooling (e.g., private versus public, rural versus urban, large versus small school). Recent studies consistently support the identification/commitment model. In particular, students who participated in athletics were less likely to drop out of school. Participation in sports also had positive effects on school attendance, being in the academic track, taking more demanding coursework, spending more time on homework, and having more positive general, academic, and especially social self-concepts. Further positive effects of sports included liking school more and having better than expected school grades, higher educational aspirations, greater parental involvement, and higher expectations from parents and teachers. The positive effects also extend beyond high school. Students who participated in sports applied to more universities and were more likely to attend a university. Fifteen years after graduation from high school, students who had participated in high school sports had higher occupational status and income levels. Furthermore, the postsecondary benefits remained even after factors such as ability and secondary educational attainment were controlled. There was, however, some indication that benefits were larger for males and for students from lower SES backgrounds. Overall, however, the effects of athletic participation generalize reasonably well across the different student characteristics. An interesting pattern of results emerged when effects of sports participation were considered separately and in combinations for intramural, extramural, individual, and team sports activities: ■
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Participation in extramural sports was significantly more beneficial than that with intramural sports, particularly for more narrowly defined academic outcomes (e.g., grades, being enrolled in more demanding courses, time spend on homework, educational aspirations, and subsequent university attainments). Participation in extramural sports was also beneficial for internal locus of control, self-esteem, and parental expectations.
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To a lesser extent, there were more positive benefits associated with participation in team sports than in individual sports. Overall, there were more benefits associated with participation in extramural/team sport activities than in intramural/individual sports participation. The effects of in-school sports activities were more positive than were those of the out-of-school sports activities.
All these overwhelmingly positive effects appeared across different students’ characteristics and remained even after accounting for background characteristics and parallel outcomes in grades 8 and 10.
Reasons To understand these outcomes, it is important to consider the various influences of factors such as the following: ■ ■
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Peer and social network and the culture it reflects Opportunity to develop identification and commitment to school values Interaction with nonparent, competent adults Promotion of developmental benefits
INTERACTIONS WITH PEERS The interactions that students have with peers facilitate the development of self-identity, which in turn leads to adopting particular social roles and behaviors associated with a membership (or its absence) in a particular group. Not surprisingly, adolescents involved in delinquent social networks are more likely to drop out of school, have substance-abuse issues, and have disciplinary problems, and students without any group affiliation tend to suffer emotional problems and have a higher risk of suicide and dropping out. The identities that adolescents form have powerful effects on their behavior during high school and beyond. For instance, students were asked to describe their identities in terms of the characters of the popular movie, The Breakfast Club: the “Brain,” the “Jock,” the “Basket Case,” and the “Criminal.” Although the Jock and the Criminal groups
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ticipation itself predicted advantages better than the Jock identity did. Nevertheless, interaction with peers and values play an important role in students’ adopted patterns of behaviors. Participation in sports activities ■ ■ ■
A high school cloth letter for a letter jacket.
Fulfills students’ need for social relatedness Increases their social status Contributes to formation of their identities as valued members of the school community
Hence, sports participation generally, and participation in extramural team sports in particular, appears to provide an important positive network that reinforces school values and has positive effects on many academic and non-academic outcomes.
Source: istockphoto/seanami.
IDENTIFICATION AND COMMITMENT TO SCHOOL VALUES were similar in some ways (both consumed more alcohol than other students did), the two groups were radically different in their academic and future outcomes. The Jock type had the highest level of selfesteem and reported the lowest level of social isolation, whereas the Criminals were less likely to finish the school and had the highest level of depression. The two groups differed in the type of extracurricular activity they took part in—Jocks were predominately involved in sports, largely being engaged in a positive network and high status activities, whereas Criminals largely belonged to the groups that were engaged in some delinquent and low-status activities. In other words, Criminals did not belong to the school culture, were more likely to drop out of high school, and were less likely to attend college. Jocks were involved in a social network of peers who valued schooling and planned to go to college. Importantly, however—addressing concerns of psychological and social consequences of sport participation, that is, impact on image and stereotypes of social behavior of athletes—many students who participated in sports did not identify themselves as being Jocks. Furthermore, with respect to educational and occupational success and subsequent college attendance, sports par-
Participation in extramural high school sports provides a social context, socialization experiences, and social networks that lead to the following: ■ ■ ■
Stronger identification with the school Greater reinforcement of school values Stronger commitment to academic accomplishments
Participation in extramural sports is more intense— it requires higher levels of commitment and higher intensity of peer interactions—and may result in more support from teachers, peers, and coaches. Similarly, participation in team sports—through greater levels of shared interaction with school peers and emphasis on cooperation with the team and team leaders—should also result in more identification with and commitment to school than would participation in individual and, especially, out-of-school sports. Moreover, participants in team sports might be more willing to help each other and thus acquire different social skills than would participants in individual sports. All these factors should result in a greater identification with school and its values, providing mediative, positive effects on many non-academic outcomes but particularly on more narrowly defined, academic outcomes. Hence, representing one’s school in extramural, team sporting events is
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likely to engender a sense of commitment and identification with one’s school, leading to more positive effects than are other types of sporting participation across a diverse range of academic and nonacademic outcomes.
INTERACTION WITH NONPARENT, COMPETENT ADULTS Participation in extramural or structured sports is more intense, it requires higher levels of commitment, and its outcomes are perceived as more important for the status of the school than is participation in intramural and out-of-school sports. Many schools have adopted “no pass, no play” policies that limit participation in athletic activities if students fail courses or do not achieve sufficient academic standards. Such policies are designed to reinforce the connection between athletic participation and more narrowly defined academic values of schooling, particularly for disadvantaged students who might not otherwise value the maintenance of acceptable levels of academic achievement. This may result in more support from teachers, peers, and coaches. The interaction with competent adults— typically teachers and coaches who place a high value on education—who are outside of the student’s immediate family is particularly important for educational motivation in general, and especially for educational aspirations. Furthermore, extramural sports are typically coached and supervised by competent adults who are part of the school structure (e.g., teachers, coaches). This leads to a stronger identification with the school, greater reinforcement of school values, and a stronger commitment to academic accomplishments that may not be directly relevant to the specific goals of the particular sports activity. Participating in sporting activities outside of school, in contrast, may enhance many other values, but is less relevant to the commitment to school and the promotion of school values. Hence, in-school and outof-school sports activities differ not only the setting in which these activities take place but also in the values and goals that they promote.
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In addition, extramural sports participation increases student’s social connections and opportunities to a larger degree than does participation in intramural or out-of-school sports. That is, often school coaches and school counselors act as advisors and referees for receiving scholarships and college admission. These social networks are more developed with the extramural and, arguably, team sports, hence enhancing postsecondary outcomes.
PROMOTION OF DEVELOPMENTAL BENEFITS Participation in sports activities has positive effects on social self-concept, yet these effects are reasonably independent of the effects on other variables. In the studies, students perceived themselves to be more popular with peers, but these effects of participation in sports did not necessarily lead to more positive academic outcomes. The effects of participation in sports were actually smaller for academic self-concept and educational aspirations, but these effects appeared to be more important in mediating the effects of sports participation. Participation in sports led to higher levels of academic self-concept and educational aspirations, and these effects led to a variety of other positive academic outcomes (e.g., better school grades, greater likelihood of going to a university).
Too Much Participation and Potential Problem Behaviors Researchers have also been concerned that too much participation in sports may have negative effects—that small to moderate amounts of participation in sports up to some optimal level may have benefits, but that participation beyond this optimal level has diminishing returns. However, there is little support for these predictions; positive effects of participation in sports are evident for the entire range of typical levels of sports participation, with no evidence of diminishing returns associated with very high levels of participation. There are also concerns that participation in sports may be associated with problem behaviors such as eating disorders, drug use, and alcohol consumption. For
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example, increased consumption of alcohol might be a result of peer pressure or a particular culture present in some sports. Sports participation has been linked to eating disorders and drug use when the athlete feels pressure to lose or gain weight, to maintain an “ideal” weight or shape, or to achieve some higher level of performance. These pressures may be self-imposed, or may come from coaches, parents, or peers. Indeed, intense exercising and dieting may be seen as appropriate behaviors associated with some sports. Although such reports are often anecdotal and may be limited to very small number of athletes, schools need to realize the importance of preventative education as well as providing timely, effective, and confidential treatment options available to affected athletes. Coaches, trainers, families, and peers need to be aware of symptoms of such problem behaviors and to be informed of appropriate procedures to help athletes if such symptoms do occur.There is also a need for further research to determine how widespread such problems are, particularly among high school athletes, and how best to deal with such problems that do exist.
The Future A growing body of research shows that participation in athletics has many benefits in both academic and nonacademic achievements, both in high school and beyond. These results are consistent for students from different sociocultural backgrounds, races, genders, and school characteristics. The results are also evident even after controlling background variables and prior levels of achievement on the same outcomes. Participation in school-sponsored sports activities was more beneficial for academic and non-academic achievements than was participation in out-of-school sports. Consistent with the identification/commitment model, extramural and particularly extramural/team participation had more positive effects than did other types of sporting participation for a wide range of academic and nonacademic outcomes. Implications of this model for educational practice are that strategies to foster identification with school and commitment to school-related values are likely to have benefits across a range of academic as well
as non-academic outcomes. Particularly in times of tight educational budgets and achievement-test-score rationalism, it is important that cost-cutting measures do not force schools to eliminate sporting activities, especially extramural and team sports. The development of an exciting program of athletic activities is likely to benefit all students. Herbert W. Marsh and Sabina Kleitman
Further Reading Barber, B. L., Eccles, J. S., & Stone, M. R. (2001). Whatever happened to the jock, the brain, and the princess? Young adult pathways linked to adolescent activity involvement and social identity. Journal of Adolescent Research, 16(5), 429–455. Barron, J. M., Ewing, B. T., & Waddell, G. R. (2000). The effects of high school athletic participation on education and labor market outcomes. Review of Economics and Statistics, 82(3), 409–421. Bartko, W. T., & Eccles, J. S. (2003). Adolescent participation in structured and unstructured activities: A person-oriented analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 32(4), 233–241. Burnett, M. A. (2000). “One strike and you’re out”: An analysis of no pass/no play policies. High School Journal, 84(2), 1–6. Coleman, J. S. (1961). The adolescent society. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Cooper, H., Valentine, J. C., Nye, B., & Lindsay, J. J. (1999). Relationships between five after-school activities and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(2), 369–378. Eccles, J. S., & Barber, B. L. (1999). Student council, volunteering, basketball, or marching band: What kind of extracurricular involvement matters? Journal of Adolescent Research, 14(1), 10–43. Gerber, S. B. (1996). Extracurricular activities and academic achievement. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 30, 42–50. Gilman, R., Meyers, J., & Perez, L. (2004). Structured extracurricular activities among adolescents: Findings and implications for school psychologists. Psychology in the School, 41(1), 31–41. Holland, A., & Andre, T. (1987). Participation in extracurricular activities in secondary school: What is known, what needs to be known? Review of Educational Research, 57, 437–466. Mahoney, J. L. (2001). Children who participate in school extracurricular activity were less likely to drop out or have been arrested. Evidence-Based Mental Health, 4(1), 29–30. Mahoney, J. L., & Stattin, H. (2000). Leisure activities and adolescent antisocial behavior: The role of structure and social context. Journal of Adolescence, 23, 113–127. Marsh, H. W. (1992). Extracurricular activities: Beneficial extension of the traditional curriculum or subversion of academic goals? Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(4), 553–562. Marsh, H. W. (1993). The effects of participation in sport during the last 2 years of high school. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10(1), 18–43. Marsh, H., & Kleitman, S. (2002). Extracurricular school activities: The good, the bad, and the nonlinear. Harvard Educational Review, 72(4), 464–514.
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Golf: A plague invented by the Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man’s sins. ■ JAMES RESTON
Marsh, H., & Kleitman, S. (2003). Consequences of sport participation in high school. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 25(2), 205–228. McNeal, R. B. (1995). Extracurricular activities and high-school dropouts. Sociology of Education, 68(1), 62–80. Naylor, A. H., Gardner, D., & Zaichkowsky, L. (2001). Drug use patterns among high school athletes and nonathletes. Adolescence, 36(144), 627–639. Otto, L. B. (1982). Extracurricular activities. In H. J. Walberg (Ed.), Improving educational standards and productivity (pp. 217–233). Berkeley, CA: McCuthan. Sherman, R. T., & Thompson, R. A. (2001). Athletes and disordered eating: Four major issues for the professional psychologist. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 32(1), 27–33. Spady, E. E. (1970). Lament for the letterman: Effects of peer status and extracurricular activities on goals and achievement. American Journal of Sociology, 75, 680–702. Steiner, H., McQuivery, R. W., Pavelski, R., Pitts, T., & Kraemer, H. (2000). Adolescents and sports: Risk or Benefit? Clinical Pediatrics, 39(3), 161–166.
Scotland
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cotland is the most northerly nation in Britain. It has a population of 5 million people. Its capital city is Edinburgh in the east of the country, though the most densely populated center is around the Glasgow area to the west. In sporting terms, Scotland views shinty, a fast-moving game similar to lacrosse, as a unique indigenous activity, generally sees itself as the home of golf, the originator of the sport of curling, and the provider of some of Europe’s greatest footballers and highest-ever attendances at football matches. Partly through playing an integral role in the creation and sustenance of the British Empire, Scotland has acquired a significant place in the development of modern sports history and development.
History According to available records, King James IV (1488– 1513) is one of the first people associated with sport in Scotland. Around the time of his reign tennis became popular among the aristocracy. Hawking, hunting, horse racing, and shooting were fashionable, too. A game similar to modern putting was also played, though it remains debatable whether golf itself is Scot-
tish or Dutch in origin. Among the lower classes in pre-Reformation Scotland, a type of football was played, as were forms of handball. For many years, sports and games occupied religious and other holidays and celebrations. The distinctively Scottish activity of curling can be considered the first modern sport to be played widely there. It was the most popular sport in the country from about 1780 until late in the nineteenth century. One of the most important figures in curling history is John Cairnie (1769–1842); among his contributions to the sport was the introduction of the first artificial rink in 1827.
Sports Clubs and Spectators In the past, the influence of the national Church of Scotland in relation to sport was important. The Church decreed that no such activities should take place on a Sunday; the influence of the Kirk also meant that sports betting took place to a far lesser degree in Scotland than in England. It wasn’t until late in the twentieth century that sports became a part of regular Sunday activity in Scotland. As sport began to develop as a substantial social activity, sports clubs were initiated. The first sporting club in Scotland was the Company of Archers founded in 1676. Another landmark was reached with the instigation of Edinburgh’s gymnastic club in 1770. Activities such as these gradually took on a more regulated format, and playing codes and rules emerged to fit their growing popularity and importance. The activities of many sporting clubs increased and the size of crowds of spectators followed suit. A horse-racing meeting at Ayr in 1834 had twenty thousand people in attendance on one day. Highland Games, the origins of which are clouded in myth, expanded to the Lowlands of Scotland after 1820. Characterized by caber tossing, pipe playing, and other indigenous activities, Highland Games have come to symbolize images of sporting Scotland, especially among ex-patriot communities in North America. The importance that Highland Games increasingly enjoyed in the rest of Scotland serves as an opposite
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Scotland Scotland in New York City The Scot sporting tradition remained an important link to Scot culture in overseas Scot communities. The following is an announcement of an annual Scot games festival placed by the New York Caledonian Club in the New York Clipper in 1858. The second annual celebration of the games of the “New York Caledonian Club” came off on Thursday, the 23d., at Jones’ Wood. This club was only organized last year, on which occasion the games were held in Hoboken. So rapid, however, has been the progress of the club, and the accession of members; (who must be natives of “stern Caledonia,” and resident in New York,) so numerous, that this year it was determined to hold the festival on a larger scale, and more in accordance with the importance and high condition of the society. The grounds attached to Jones’ Wood were engaged for the purpose, and the members of the club assembled at their head quarters at the Mercer House, and at 8 o’clock a.m. proceeded to the place appointed. The day was remarkably fine, and although in the early part of the day there was a slight tinge of frost in the air, yet the sun’s rays soon dissipated it, leaving the weather all that could be desired for the enjoyment of the sports. The proceedings commenced shortly after 10 o’clock, a portion of the level ground having been enclosed thus forming a ring for the performance of the exercises. The sports opened with a Highland fling, reel and strathspey, in which both members and guests joined with the greatest spirit. The programmed of the games, and the rules for the government of the competitors, were as follows: 1. The Heavy Hammer is to be thrown without turning; each competitor [makes] the throw once before any one makes a second throw. Three throws to each competitor. 2. Putting the Light Stone—same arrangement as above; toe the mark, without a race, neither foot
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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
16. 17. 18.
to cross the mark before the stone strikes. Three trials each. Throwing the Light Hammer — same arrangements as heavy hammer—three throws to each competitor. Putting the Heavy Stone—arrangement same as for light stone—three trials each. Tossing the Caber, each competitor to make one trial after it is turned once. The Standing Jump—without weights—three trials to each. The Running Jump—without weights—three trials to each. The Running High Leap—without weights— three trials to each. The Short Race—100 yards. The Highland Fling, one dance each. The Scottish Song or Ballad, optional. The Long Race, say 600 yards. Ghillie Caltum, or Broad Sword Dance, over two broadswords, crossed—one dance each. Running Hop. Step, and Jump (omitted). Wheeling the Barrow Blindfolded. The competitors to be blindfolded with back to Barrow, then turned around and placed before it, starting at the third call. The Scotch Reel, one dance each. The Sack Race—the first at the winning post, by any means without assistance, to win the race. The Shinty—omitted.
The rules provided that no one shall be eligible to a prize without being a member of the club in good standing at the time of competing. The following are the results of the different sports, and the awards of the judges, Messrs. Gibson, Innes, Shillinglaw, Mason, and Lines, were in every sense most just and impartial. Source: New York Clipper. (1858, October 2), pp. 186–187.
SCOTLAND
example of how Highland culture was appropriated in the Lowlands and Borders to become a dominant part of Scottish national identity. The creation, sustenance, and expression of Scottishness and Scottish national identity have long been associated with sport. In the nineteenth century John Murdoch, a cultural and political activist, looked to sports like shinty as quintessentially Scottish and as the true expression of a Celtic past. In the twentieth century other sports were also given this role.
Women in Scottish Sports Notably, it wasn’t until the late twentieth century that women began to participate in sports; until then they were usually only spectators. A great Scottish sporting heroine in the mid-twentieth century was Nancy Riach from the Lanarkshire town of Motherwell. Riach won numerous Scottish and British titles and became a focus of Scottish national identity and pride until her untimely death from polio in 1947.
Policy, Young People, and Sport Today The participation in sports and physical activity of children and young people is viewed by policy makers and politicians in Scotland as an opportunity for encouraging personal and social development. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, increasingly materialistic and sedentary lifestyles have led to a decrease in the physical-activity levels of children and young people. Scotland’s health statistics are among the worst in Western Europe. A decline in the participant sports culture in Scotland, once characterized by mass activity in popular and accessible sports such as boxing, football, and swimming, has proved difficult to reverse. Numerous local and national programs have been created to reinvigorate sport in Scotland. Also created was the Scottish Sports Council, a national body dedicated to increasing participation in sports by all citizens, from primary school children trying a sport for the first time to elite athletes seeking success on the world stage. The Council plays a leading
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Tossing the caber at the Highland Games.
role in driving forward Sport 21, the national strategy for sport in Scotland, through partnerships with the public, private, and voluntary sectors. In this role, it has a relationship with the Scottish Executive, which provides exchequer funding. The Council combines resources to develop sports programs; for example, it advises Scottish ministers on how best to implement executive policy for sports and physical recreation; through consultation with partners, it provides an overview of sports development in the country; and it plays a major role in raising the profile of sports and highlighting their benefits to society.
Achievement and Change in Scottish Sports In Paris in 1924, Eric Liddell became the first Scot to win a gold medal at the Olympics. Born in China of Scottish Presbyterian missionary parents, Liddell was immortalized in the 1980s Hollywood film Chariots of Fire. He also became famous for his refusal to run in the 100 meter Olympic final because he believed that Sunday was a day for rest and worship and not for sporting activities. He died in a Japanese concentration camp in 1945. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sports stars such as Tommy Armour and Jessie Valentine (golf), Benny Lynch and Ken Buchanan (boxing), Jim Clark (racing), Bobby McGregor and David Wilkie (swimming), Finley Calder and Andy Irvine (rugby), and Helen Elliot Hamilton (table tennis) won national, European, or world titles in their respective sports.
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Scotland Key Events in Scotland Sports History 1060s Precursors of the Highland Games are being held.
1820 The Highland Games become popular in the Lowlands.
1457 Golf is banned by King James II.
1827 The first artificial curling rink is built.
1500s Curling is first played in Scotland.
1838 The Grand Caledonian Curling Club is founded.
1502 Golf is reinstated in King James IV. 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded. She is the first known woman golfer. 1627 The Company of Archers club is founded. 1754 St. Andrews Golf Club is formed. 1770 The Edinburgh gymnastic club is founded. 1780 Curling becomes a popular sport.
Possibly the greatest change to modern Scottish sport took place with the advent of soccer. One of the world’s first football clubs, Queen’s Park in Glasgow, was founded in Scotland in 1867. More than any other sport, Scottish football reveals national attitudes toward identity, class, geography, nationhood, ethnic identity, racism, immigration, religious prejudice, and discrimination; it also reveals many of the differences and distinctions that exist within Scottish society. The high points of Scottish soccer were displayed in the winning of European trophies by Celtic (representatives of the Irish Catholic immigrant diaspora in the west of Scotland) and Glasgow Rangers and Aberdeen during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. World-famous players and displays from Jim Baxter (Glasgow Rangers), Jimmy Johnstone (Celtic), and Kenny Dalglish (Celtic and Liverpool) have captivated millions, while European, national, and international record crowds at matches played in Glasgow reflect the traditional popularity of the sport within the country.
Challenges Contemporary social and economic challenges presented by modern living patterns and lifestyles have had a detrimental effect on the capacity of communities and
1867 The Queen’s Park football club is founded in Glasgow. 1924 Eric Liddell becomes the first Scot to win an Olympic gold medal, in track and field. 1968 Champion racecar driver Jim Clark is killed in a crash during a Formula 2 race. 1970 Boxer Ken Buchanan wins the world lightheavyweight title.
individual people in Scotland to continue to participate in sports and enjoy watching them. Despite some successes, Scotland’s performances on national and international stages have been in decline since the late twentieth century. Nonetheless, Scotland’s sporting history can never be erased and serves as a template for a more positive sporting future. Joseph M. Bradley See also Highland Games; St. Andrews
Further Reading Bradley, J. M. (1995). Ethnic and religious identity in modern Scotland: Culture, politics and football. Aldershot, UK: Avebury. Bradley, J. M. (2002). The patriot game: Football’s famous tartan army. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(2), 177–197. Bradley, J. M. (2004). Celtic minded: Essays on religion, politics, society, identity . . . and football. Argyll, UK: Argyll Publishing. Burnett, J. R. (2000). Revelry and rout: Sport in lowland Scotland before 1860. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell Press. Hill, J. (2002). Sport, leisure and culture in twentieth century Britain. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. Jarvie, G. (1999). Sport in the making of Celtic cultures. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press. Jarvie, G., & Burnett, J. (2000). Sport, Scotland and the Scots. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell Press. Jarvie, G., & Walker, G. (1994). Scottish sport in the making of the nation. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press. Reid, I. A. (2004). What about the flowers of Scotland? Women and sport in Scottish society. Scottish Affairs, 47, 58–78.
SENEGAL
Senegal
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enegal is located in West Africa and has a population of almost 8 million with its capital at Dakar. About 90 percent of the population is Muslim with the other 10 percent either followers of indigenous religions or Christianity. Senegal was a French colony from 1840 to 1960 and from 1895 it was the center of French West Africa. Senegal remains economically close to France, and many Senegalese citizens work there, including professional athletes.
French Dominance At the time of French colonization, the native Senegalese participated in their own forms of running and wrestling competitions. In the early twentieth century the French established a few cycling, soccer, and athletics clubs in Senegal, but the indigenous population remained outside this formal sports structure. In 1920, as French rule in the region intensified and became centered in Dakar, France sought to transmit French sports culture to West Africa. More sports clubs were founded as the French population in Dakar increased and also through physical education in the Senegalese schools, the French used physical education and sports to train good soldiers and good citizens. In 1927, Dakar became the center of the French West African Federal Committee for Sports. Perhaps the most memorable event from this period for the Senegalese took place in 1922 when the Senegalese boxer Battling Siki defeated the celebrated French champion Georges Carpentier, and took the French, European, and world professional light-heavyweight boxing title. The victory also raised questions about the negative opinions that the French press had about him and about black people in general. In the 1924 Olympics in Paris, Senegalese athlete Cire Samba represented France in the javelin throw. In boxing, another Senegalese athlete, Assani Diouf, won the French professional middleweight crown in 1939.
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The aim of the French to host the African Games in Dakar, which would have been open to other countries under other European colonial regimes, failed to materialize in 1929. The implementation of physical education and the related diffusion of sports facilities and the organization of competitions in football, gymnastics, basketball, swimming, and track and field was at first opposed but later accepted by Muslim leaders. In the 1930s, women were also allowed to participate in sports, especially in track, volleyball, and basketball. The first women’s national basketball tournament took place in 1955. Senegal’s first Olympic medal came in 1960, the year of its independence from France, when Abdouleye Seyé won the bronze medal in the 200-meter dash in Rome.
Independent Senegal At the time of independence, athletes came almost exclusively from upper classes and proponents of sports faced a major challenge in getting more of the population involved. This was especially true for women as Muslim customs defined sports clothing as being degrading to women. The first president of Senegal, the poet and intellectual Leopold Senghor (1906–2001), strongly encouraged sports for men and women, as a means to improve one’s health and physical appearance. The Senegalese Olympic Committee was formed in 1963 and since the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Senegal has competed in the summer games and also in three Winter Olympics. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) set up a center in Dakar, with track and field facilities and tuition-free training from instructors brought in from other nations in order to develop the most promising Senegalese youth. This process seemed to bear fruit in 1999 when Lamine Diack became chair of the IAAF. Diack was the first Senegalese person appointed as chief official in an international sport organization. In athletics, Senegal achieved international honors. Amadou Dia Ba took the silver medal in the men’s
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Senegal Key Events in Senegal Sports History 1922 Senegalese boxer Battling Siki defeats French champion Georges Carpentier.
1960 Senegal wins its first Olympic medal, a bronze in the 200-meter race.
1924 A Senegalese athlete competes at the Olympics for the first time.
1963 The Senegalese Olympic Committee is established.
1927 The Federal Committee for Sports in French West Africa is established in Dakar.
1987 The first Paris to Dakar motor race is held.
1930s Women are allowed to participate in sports.
400-meter hurdles in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, while Amy Mbacké Thiam won the women’s 400-meter dash in the Edmonton World Championships in 2001, taking the bronze medal in the World Championships of Paris in 2003. Women excelled in continental basketball, winning the Pan African Games three times and the African championships six times, but never reaching the finals of the Olympic Games. In 1987, commercial and economic interests opened the way for the inauguration of the Paris–Dakar motor rally. The short history of the rally was marred by several tragic accidents. Apart from ephemeral and superficial publicity during the rallies, Dakar did not benefit from the event. Work opportunities for the Senegalese are still limited and many emigrate to France and Italy seeking better opportunities. In sport too, some talented athletes acquire French citizenship so they can train and compete in Europe. In the 1990s, Jean Baptiste Mendy won the supermiddleweight professional boxing title of France. In recent years, having understood the immense impact of sport, Senegalese government leaders repeatedly asked leading athletes to maintain their citizenship, even while their training abroad.
The Future An impressive sign of Senegalese potential was seen the finals of the World Cup of football (soccer) in Japan and South Korea in 2002, when Senegal eliminated France in the first round and reached the quarterfinals. In a bow to Senegalese culture, the French coach of the Senegalese team, Bruno Metsu, in order to make the
1999 Lamine Diack becomes the first Senegalese to chair the International Association of Athletic Federations.
game more appealing to his players, ended the practice of pregame seclusion, and allowed wives and fiancées to visit their men on the eve of the match. Gherardo Bonini
Further Reading Deville-Danthu, B. (1997). Le sport en noir et en blanc. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Senior Sport
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porting opportunities for seniors (ages fifty and older) are growing rapidly as the population of older adults increases globally. Large-scaled multisport events draw as many as 25,000 senior athletes who compete in alpine skiing, archery, badminton, basketball, bowling, cross country skiing, curling, cycling, golf, horseshoes, ice hockey, race walking, racquetball, road races, shuffleboard, snow-shoeing, softball, swimming, table tennis, tennis, track and field, triathlon, and volleyball. These events are held on international, national, regional, and local competitive and recreational levels for senior (also called golden age, masters, or veteran) men and women.
Aging and Exercise As people age, many tend to view the process in negative terms. Physical fitness tends to decline as we become inactive. We think of getting older as losing our
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When I was 40 my doctor advised me that a man in his forties shouldn’t play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again. ■ HUGO L BLACK
attractiveness and good looks, gaining weight, becoming frail, suffering, and becoming dependent. Substantial scientific research evidence substantiates daily physical activity in improving overall health and delaying illness and disease as we age. “The National Blueprint: Increasing Physical Activity Among Adults Aged 50 and Older” was published in May 2001 by a coalition of forty-six organizations with expertise in medical, health, social and behavioral sciences, epidemiology, gerontology/geriatric, public policy, marketing, community organization, and environmental issues.The Blueprint outlined the following action steps: ■
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Organizations should identify which strategies they are already addressing or will address and collaborate with other groups that share an interest in those strategies. Organizations should work with existing coalitions and coordinate with other groups and organizations. Participating organizations should also identify and involve other organizations that are not working on this issue but that can play a major supportive role. Organizations, associations, and agencies working collaboratively should focus on activities that they can reasonably expect to accomplish. Organizations need to undertake detailed tactical planning to delineate the specific actions necessary to achieve the strategies. Organizations need to allocate money and people to help support coalition and collaborative efforts. Health organizations and government agencies must encourage the exchange and dissemination of best practices. These groups must establish systems to enable this. Evaluation should be a key tool in all implementation steps. In some cases, evaluation can be objective, based on measurable objectives. In other cases, evaluation will be a process or formative. (The National Blueprint 2001, 35)
The Blueprint’s major goal was to “identify the principal barriers to physical activity participation in older adults and to outline strategies for increasing physical
activity levels throughout the population” (ChodzkoZajko, 2001). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations, and other prominent organizations that maintain statistics, seniors (ages fifty and over) are the fastest growing population in the world today. Studies show there will be a growth of 223 percent in the older population from 1970 to 2025. At the Second United Nations World Assembly on Aging held in Madrid, Spain, in April 2002,WHO (2002, 6) reported, “In 2025, there will be a total of 1.2 billion people over the age of 60. By 2050 there will be 2 billion with 80 percent of them living in developing countries.” Those eighty years and older are the fastest growing segment of the older population.
Effects of Aging The effects of normal aging on physical fitness include changes in cardiovascular system, muscle mass, respiratory system, metabolism, and bone mass. Heart size decreases along with stroke volume and maximum heart rate. Heart valves and vessels become more rigid and thick with age. Normal aging also makes our hearts less responsive to the surge of adrenaline that occurs during exertion. The aging process can cause an increase in cholesterol and blood pressure as well as decreases in oxygen consumption. The lungs decline in their ability to move oxygen to the bloodstream. This affects strength and endurance. By age sixty-five, our aerobic capacity is about 30 to 40 percent smaller than that of young adults. Muscle mass declines between the ages of thirty and seventy by 22 percent for women and 23 percent for men (Knopf et. al. 1999). Type II muscle fibers that are responsible for high levels of strength decrease. Reduction in muscle mass results in the loss of strength, a decline in basal metabolic rate, muscle and joint flexibility and stability. As we become older, our metabolism slows down. Older adults need to eat fewer calories (about 100 calories less each decade) to maintain status quo. If we do not, then we risk adding more body fat especially if we are sedentary and do not exercise.
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If Jack Nicklaus can win the Masters at 46, I can win the Kentucky Derby at 54. ■ WILLIE SHOEMAKER
Bone mass declines as we age, more so in women than men: ■
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Women start to lose bone mineral mass during their thirties, and men start in their fifties. Women lose about 1 percent bone mass per year until menopause, and then lose 2 to 4 percent thereafter. Men lose about 0.5 percent bone mass per year.
Osteoporosis results in bones that have less density and tensile strength. Loss in bone mass leads to weakening of the musculoskeletal system, which in turn can lead to fractures and breaks. Aging takes it toll on the human body. However, a sixty year old may function like forty year old just as a twenty year old may function physically like a forty year old. The body is remarkable and responds positively to exercise. It is also very good at repairing itself despite the “wear and tear” of aging. A sedentary person will be more susceptible to health problems than will a physically active person. ■
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Endurance activities (such as cycling, walking, running, swimming) increase heart rate and breathing and strengthen the heart, lungs, and circulatory systems. Strength exercises (such as resistant bands, push ups, lifting light to heavy objects or dumb bells, bar bells, or machine weights) strengthen the body overall and allow an older person to do daily tasks with less effort. Balance exercises (such as one leg stands, toe and heel stands, knee lifts,) help prevent falls that are common among seniors. Flexibility exercises, commonly known as stretching (with or without a partner), include various body parts that are stretched slowly without bouncing. These exercises improve the body’s overall flexibility and keep the body limber.
Benefits of Exercise on Aging Exercise and sports for seniors offer a fun way to stay active, physically fit, and meet other older adults with the same interests. Participating in a daily regimen of exercise or sport enriches one’s life in many ways, in-
cluding relieving stress, helping one to relax, and enhancing self-esteem. Research studies show that older people who are active physically tend to be healthier. Exercise can help prevent or delay some diseases and disabilities, improve one’s mood, enhance one’s lifestyle, and increase one’s life expectancy. With respect to the aging process, many benefits can be derived from participation in regular physical activities, including the following: ■
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Cardiovascular System: Increases the heart’s work capacity, increases aerobic capacity, decreases resting heart rate, decreases total cholesterol, increases HDL (good) cholesterol, and decreases blood pressure. Musculoskeletal System: Increases muscular strength, muscular endurance, metabolism, lean body mass, joint flexibility, and bone mineral content. Nervous System: Increases the speed of reaction and movement time; improves response time, visual organization, memory, and mental flexibility. Pulmonary System: Increases in respiratory function and vital capacity; decreases minute ventilation and respiratory ratio.
Interest in physical activity for older adults has grown tremendously during the past twenty years. Many gyms and rehabilitation and recreation centers have started to tailor their programs to meet the needs of the older population. Some of these programs offer discounts and other motivating factors to get seniors moving physically. Environmentally, governments at all levels are building new parks and trails near areas where there are large populations of seniors to provide opportunities for physical activities in their neighborhoods.
National Senior Games— Senior Olympics Since the late twentieth century, there has been an explosion in competitive sports for seniors fifty and older. The earliest organized games were the Senior Olympics held in Southern California in 1969. Two hundred athletes over fifty-five years old competed in swimming, diving, and track and field events. This was followed by
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A female competitor clears the bar in the high jump at the Senior Games. Source: Phil Raschker.
the National Senior Olympics Organization (NSOO), established in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1985 by a group of seven men and women. The NSOO promotes healthy lifestyles for seniors fifty and older through education, fitness, and sports participation. There is no upper age limit. The NSOO hosted the first national multisport competition in 1987 in St. Louis with 2,500 senior athletes competing in thirteen different sports. As the organization grew, it became a member of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) in 1989. Under an agreement with the USOC, the NSOO changed its corporate name to the United States National Senior Sports Organization doing business as the National Senior Games Association (NSGA).The USOC permitted the NSGA to continue to use the word Olympic in its signature event: the National Senior Games—Senior Olympics (NSG-SO). The NSGA serves forty-nine states and the District of Columbia. It is a nonprofit community organization staffed by twelve fulltime employees and a volunteer board of directors. Originally headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, the NSGA is currently located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The NSGA sanctions senior games (more than 200) at the local, state, and regional levels. Senior athletes qualify for the national games at the state level in events that are organized in five-year age segments from 50 to 100-plus for men and women. Age-group records for both genders are kept by the NSGA. Rules for men and women are the same, although they do not com-
pete against each other. More than 250,000 athletes now participate in the National Senior Games–Senior Olympics, which makes it the largest multisport event for seniors in the world. The Senior Olympics are held every two years in host cities across the United States. The Summer National Senior Games are held in oddnumbered years, and athletes compete in eighteen different sports. The NSGA anticipates approximately 12,000 senior competitors in the 2005 and 2007 NSGSO to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Louisville, Kentucky, respectively. The Winter National Senior Games are held in evennumbered years, and athletes compete in Alpine skiing, cross country skiing, curling, ice hockey, snowshoeing, and speed skating. The inaugural Winter NSG-SO took place in Lake Placid, New York, in February–March 2000. A total of 239 athletes from twenty-two states competed in five winter sports. Another first for the NSGA was the Senior Olympic Hockey Championships that took place in Lake Placid in 2002 between twenty-three teams representing nine states. Age divisions are 50+, 60+, and 70+ and are divided into elite- and recreational-skill divisions. The 2004 Senior Olympic Hockey Championships took place 1–4 October in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The first-ever National Senior Games Championship Festival is slated for late October–early November 2005 in Mobile, Alabama. Approximately 2,250 senior athletes will compete in cycling, golf, sailing, and tennis. This is the first time the NSGA will offer sailing. This championship festival will be an annual event and is open to both men and women fifty years and older. Successful senior athletes who are world or national record-holders are eligible for induction into the NSGA Senior Athlete Hall of Fame. Senior athletes have been
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I’d rather wear out than rust out.
inducted in the Hall of Fame in several sports (adapted with permission from the NSGA): ■
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Bowling: Helen Duval, 79 (Berkeley, CA), the oldest woman to ever bowl a 300 game at age 65; and Joseph John Norris, 84 (San Diego, CA) Pentathlon: Melvin C. Bushman, 71 (Lansing, MI) Swimming: Dorothy Leonard Donnelly, 70 (Rutland, MA); Gustave Harold Langer, 88 (Milford, CT), who has been listed first among all-time best swimmers twenty-four times since 1988; Manuel Sanguily, 62 (Scarborough, NY); Aileen Riggin Soule, 89 (Honolulu, HI), who was the oldest living Olympic gold medalist for springboard diving when she was inducted; and Doris Cant Steadman, 71 (Monmouth Beach, NJ) Tennis: Dorothy “Dodo” Bundy Cheney, 79 (Santa Monica, CA) Track and field: Harold Chapson, 94; Helen Mary Darnall, 63 (Melbourne, AR); Clive Davies, 76 (Tillamook, OR); Frank Willard Furniss, 84 (Marion, OH); Sister Marion Irvine, 61 (Napa, CA), who is considered by the record-keepers to be the fastest female distance runner in the world; Payton Jordan, 74 (Los Altos, CA); and Shirley Matson, 55 (Moraga, CA) Ultra-endurance triathlon: Theodore “Ted” Epstein Jr., 55 (Denver, CO), who completed a grand slam of Ironman triathlons—a quintuple, a quadruple, a triple, and a double—within six months
Huntsman World Senior Games John H. Morgan founded the World Senior Games (WSG) in 1987 in St. George, Utah, to provide competition for seniors fifty years and older from all over the world. The WSG became the Huntsman WSG (HWSG) in honor of its corporate sponsor, Huntsman Corporation, in 1989. In 2005, senior men and women athletes will compete in twenty-three sports: basketball, bowling, bridge, cowboy shoot, cycling, golf, horseshoes, lawn bowls, mountain biking, pickleball, race walking, racquetball, reining, road races, softball, square
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dance, swimming, table tennis, tennis, track and field, triathlon, volleyball, and walking tours. The HWSG is governed by a board of directors, is run by a small staff led by an executive director, and includes a large number of volunteers. Since its inception, the HWSG has grown from 500 senior athletes to more than 7,000 in 2004 from all fifty states and forty-six countries. This annual event prides itself in fostering “health, friendship and world peace” by offering health screenings that include clinical breast exams for women; PSA testing for men; and blood sugar, bone density, cholesterol, glaucoma, hearing, blood pressure, and body compositions testing for men and women.
Alaska International Senior Games The inaugural Alaska International Senior Games (AISG) took place in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2003. Founded by Jim Madonna for seniors of all ages and abilities, the AISG differs from other senior games by dividing events into three different categories: ■
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Novelty games, including basketball toss, Frisbee throw, nail hammering, bean bag toss, miniature golf, softball throw, 100-yard walk, 440-yard walk, blanket toss, and high kick Leisure games, including bridge, checkers, chess, cribbage, dominoes, pinochle, and scrabble Sports, including archery, bowling, fly casting, racquetball, road races, softball, swimming, and track and field.
The first games had 150 participants, all from the United States. The oldest male was 104 years old, and the oldest female was 96 years old. The AISG’s goal is to establish a board of directors and make the event international.
Masters and Veterans Games Many sports organizations have established masters and veterans games for senior men and women since the late 1960s. The games are competitive at the international level. Some of these athletes tend to be former Olympians who continue to compete as they grow older.
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Senior Sport A “Fifty-Seven Years New” Phenomenon The New York Times has described Eileen-Philippa (“Phil”) Kersten Raschker (b. 1947) as “the most versatile track and field athlete in the world.” She has set more than two hundred U.S. and world track and field records, currently holds forty-four Masters records, named Outstanding Woman Masters Track and Field Athlete thirteen times, Outstanding Woman Masters Combined Event Athlete eight times (since the inception of this award in 1991), and Outstanding Masters Single Performance Athlete of the Year three times. This phenomenal athlete is only “fiftyseven years new” competes in 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, high jump, pole vault, long jump, shot put, javelin, discus, triple jump, hurdles, decathlon, heptathlon and pentathlon events in the USA Track and Field and international meets and in the National Senior Games/Senior Olympics. Born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, Phil competed in gymnastics, swimming and track and field during her youth but gave up sports when she moved to the United States in 1967 at the age of twenty. At thirty-three years old, she began competing again in the 100m, long jump and high jump. Never looking back, she has set world and national records in Masters Track and Field and Senior Olympics. Among her notable “firsts” are: first female masters athlete over 40 to compete in the U.S. Olympic trials, in the triple jump in 1988; first masters athlete to compete in the open women’s pole vault competition in 1995 at age forty-seven (Phil placed third and represented the United States at the world competition in England where she was the oldest female athlete to represent the United States in international open competition); she is also the oldest athlete to be recruited for a college track and field scholarship (at fifty years old). In 2004, Phil became the oldest athlete in the seventythree-year history of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Sullivan Award to be nominated for this prestigious award and one of five finalists that included
basketball standout Lebron James, Olympic speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, and college national basketball champion Diana Taurasi. Phil, an accountant residing in Marietta, Georgia, is motivated by her intense competitive spirit and desire for fitness and health. A humble individual with a wonderful sense of humor, she enjoys being an ambassador for senior sport. In being named as one of the five finalists of the 2004 Sullivan Award, Phil shared the recognition with “all the aging athletes out there, the ones who dare to keep testing the limits of their abilities and who DARE to stop time from robbing them of the pure joy of competing. Dreams really do come true! Proof is that I am not just a masters athlete but an athlete regardless of age.” During the 2003 competitive season, Phil set seven world and nine U.S. records in the pentathlon, heptathlon, 60m, 200m, 400m, high jump, pole vault and long jump. She won five gold medals at the World Masters Championships in Carolina, Puerto Rico; seven gold medals at the National Masters Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon and five gold medals at the Nationals Senior Olympics in Hampton Roads, Virginia. She stars in Racing Against the Clock (2004), a documentary film about five women track and field athletes, ages fifty to eighty-two, who compete in masters track and field meets around the word. The National Senior Games Association inducted her into its Senior Athlete Hall of Fame during the 2005 Senior Olympics. Phil believes that by lacing up her shoes, competing and setting records, she is breaking barriers for masters and female athletes and encouraging participation in athletics by people of all ages. She provides inspiration just by toeing the starting line for master and senior athletes. Becky Clark
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Growing numbers of baby boomers turning fifty years old are competing in these games in record numbers. Track and field was one of the first sports to offer masters-level competition at the first National Track and Field Championship in San Diego, California, in 1968 and the inaugural World Masters Track and Field Championship in Toronto, Canada, in 1975. Other masters sporting organizations include the following: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
United States Masters Swimming (formed in 1971) Masters Diving Masters Skier World Masters Weightlifting World Masters Softball Masters Basketball Seniors Hockey USA Cycling US Tennis Association (USTA) International Volleyball Senior Golf
World Masters Games The International Masters Games Association (IMGA) was established in 1995 from International Federations members to be the governing body of the World Masters Games (WMG). The IMGA mission is to “promote lifelong competition, friendship and understanding between mature sports people regardless of age, gender, race, religion or sport status” through the WMG. The minimum age to participate in these games is thirty but this is only a guideline. Different international sports governing bodies may permit participants as young as twenty-seven. There are no qualifying standards even though many of these masters’ events are very competitive. Mature athletes of all abilities participate in these games. Age group records are kept for each sport. All athletes participate for themselves because there are no national teams. For team sports, athletes are permitted to form multinational teams comprising several countries. Several teams from a single country are also permitted. The WMG began in 1985 in Toronto, Canada and are held every four years. After the 1989 WMG in
Denmark, the IMGA changed the event to be held in even-number years (1994 in Brisbane, Australia). The IMGA decided to return the WMG to its original oddnumbered year schedule in 2005 (Edmonton, Canada) to avoid conflicts with other major games. The first WMG had 8,305 participants competing in twenty-two sports from sixty-one countries. The 2002 WMG in Melbourne, Australia, set a record of 24,886 participants competing in twenty-six sports from ninetyeight countries. Edmonton, Canada, will host the 2005 WMG, then the event will return to Australia for 2009 in Sydney. These games are the largest international multisport competition in the world.
National Veterans Golden Age Games The National Veterans Golden Age Games (NVGAG) is a national multi-event sports recreational competition for military veterans fifty-five years and older who receive health care at Veterans Administration (VA) medical centers. The first NVGAG were held in Albany, Georgia, in 1985 with 115 participants. This annual event continues to grow as aging Vietnam veterans continue to enter the games. The Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Veterans of Canteen Services sponsor this event to promote physical activity and support the VA’s rehabilitation programs. There are thirty-four competitive events and categories with six age categories (55–59, 60–64, 65–69, 70–74, 75–79, and 80+) in three different divisions (open, wheelchair, and visually impaired): ■
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The open division offers bowling, checkers, cycling, dominoes, golf, horseshoes, nine-ball, pentathlon, shuffleboard, swimming, and table tennis. The wheelchair division includes bowling, horseshoes, nine-ball, pentathlon, shuffleboard, swimming, and table tennis. The visually impaired division offers shuffleboard, horseshoes, and bowling.
The NVGAG is considered a model adaptive therapeutic sports competition.
SEPAK TAKRAW
Significance As the world’s population becomes older, seniors fifty and older are more health conscious and active than ever before. Masters and senior sporting events are growing in record numbers. Seniors are defying the stereotypes of aging and breaking records along the way. Exercise and sports for the mature population are prolonging life expectancy, decreasing disease and disability, relieving stress and anxiety, increasing functional ability, enhancing socialization, increasing and maintaining independence, and improving the overall quality of life. Becky Clark
Further Reading American Senior Fitness Association. (2005). Retrieved February 3, 2005, from http://www.seniorfitness.net Barry, H., Rich, B., & Carlson, T. (1993). How exercise can benefit older patients: A practical approach. The Physician and Sportsmedicine, 21(2), 124–140. Bokovy, J. I., & Blair, S. N. (1994). Aging and exercise and health perspective. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, 2(3), 243–260. Chodzko-Zajko, W. J. (1998a). Physical activity and aging: Implications for health and quality of life in older persons. President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Research Digest, pp. 1–8. Chodzko-Zajko, W. J. (1998b). The physiology of aging and exercise. In R. T. Cotton (Ed.), Exercise for older adults. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Codzko-Zajko, W.J. (2001). A major national planning document for aging and physical activity is released. Retrieved June 6, 2004 from http://www.isapa.org/ISAPA _ Newsletter Goldberg, A. P., & Hagberg, J. M. (1990), Physical exercise and the elderly. In E. L. Schneider & J. W. Rowe (Eds.), Handbook of the biology of aging (pp. 407–423). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Hamilton, N. (2001). Senior sports. In K. Christenson, A. Guttmann, & G. Pfister (Eds.), International encyclopedia of women and sports (Vol. 3, pp. 988–992). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. International Council on Active Aging. (2005). Retrieved February 3, 2005, from http://www.icaa.cc Knopf, K. G., & Downs, S. B. (1989). Fitness over fifty. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing. Knopf, K. G., Hatfield, F. C., & Hobbisiefken, J. L. (1999). Special in senior fitness: A scientific approach. International sports sciences association, Santa Barbara, CA: ISSA Morley, J. E. (2000). Sports injuries and the aging athlete. Retrieved February 2, 2005, from http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/ articles/senior _ living/oldrath _ 9/ National blueprint: Increasing physical activity among adults aged 50 and older. (2001, Spring). International Society for Aging and Physical Activity Newsletter. Retrieved February 3, 2005, from http:// www.isapa.org/ISAPA _ Newsletter
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National Institute of Aging (2003). Fitness over fifty. New York: Hatherleigh. National Senior Games Association. (2005). Retrieved February 3, 2005, from http://www.nationalseniorgames.org Provost, C. A. (1981). The senior Olympics, preventive medicine with findings pertaining to health and longevity. Los Angeles: W.W. Blaney.. Rikli, R. E., & Jones, C. J. (2000). Senior fitness manual. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics,. Sideorenko, A. (1999). 1999—The international year of older persons. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, 7(1), 1–2. Westcott, W. L. (2002). Keeping fit: A positive approach to the aging process. Retrieved February 3, 2005, from http://www.seniorfitness. net/massachusetts _ governor.htm Westcott, W. L., & Baechle, T. P. (1999). Strength training for seniors. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Wolinsky, F. D., Stump, T. E., & Clark, D. O. (1995). Antecedents and consequences of physical activity and exercise among older adults. Gerontologist, 35(14), 451–462. World Health Organization (2002). Active ageing: A policy framework. Ageing and Life Course Programme, Second United Nations World Assembly on Ageing, Madrid, Spain, April, 2002. World Health Organization (1997). The Heidelberg guidelines for promoting physical activity among older persons. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, 5(1), 2–8.
Sepak Takraw
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ome people have called sepak takraw “the international ball game of Southeast Asia.” Sepak takraw is a team sport that people play with a rattan or, increasingly, plastic ball. Players are prohibited from touching the ball with their hands.
History The origins of sepak takraw are obscure. People played kemari, a sport similar to sepak takraw, in Japan from perhaps the seventh century. People also played a similar sport in southwest China in what is now Yunnan Province. However, the sport came into its own in Southeast Asia. All Southeast Asian countries where people play sepak takraw offer “national origin” myths for the creation of the sport, but none of them offers proof that sepak takraw had only one place of origin. Evidence of sports similar to sepak takraw dates from the eleventh century, particularly in Malaysia and
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Sumatra. These sports were apparently much like the sport of sepak raga (kickball) and were played in royal courts. Indeed, some connection between aristocracy and sepak takraw seems clear, but this fact could be only a reflection of the fact that only royal records provide surviving accounts of earlier times. However, if sepak takraw was not exclusively a sport of the royal classes, they at least played it seriously. For instance, a record of the Malay rajahs (princes) claimed that an heir to the sultanship of Melaka was insulted when a player knocked off his royal headgear and that the hapless offender was executed. The same record described Sultan Mansur as kicking the ball more than one hundred times before passing it on to the young nobles with whom he played sepak raga, kicking the ball for as long as it would take to cook “many pots of rice.” The ball that players use in sepak takraw and related sports is traditionally woven of rattan—a tough vegetable material from the climbing palm creeper of the genus Calamus. This fact, although it does not pinpoint any particular place of origin, may indicate that the sport is ancient. Rattan, used throughout the region to make everything from baskets to huts, was central to ancient Southeast Asian technology. Although rattan generally disappears quickly from the archaeological record—as does all vegetable material— traces of woven hexagonal patterns in ceramics indicate that rattan was used from neolithic (relating to the latest period of the Stone Age) times.Thus, although no direct evidence for the deep antiquity of sepak takraw exists, the traditional rattan construction of the ball—in either hexagonal or pentagonal patterns—shows that the sport may be old indeed. Unfortunately, none of this evidence helps to pinpoint a specific place of origin for sepak takraw. Sepak takraw-like sports may have had a variety of origins, and certainly the several versions of sepak takraw may indicate multiple origins.
Versions In hoop takraw, which is popular in Thailand, three large hoops are suspended over a circular court 16 meters in diameter, and players put the ball through the
hoops as many times as possible. The hoops, each with a radius of 20 centimeters, are made of wood, metal, or rattan and suspended from a high, tight rope so that the bottom of the hoops are 6 meters off the ground. Members of the team, usually seven, are cooperative, attempting to keep the ball “alive”—off the ground—and flying through the hoops as often as possible during a thirty-minute period. Style counts in hoop takraw: Simple shots score lower, and difficult shots score higher. For example, a plain kick through a hoop is the most humble approach and thus a low scorer, whereas firing the ball off the elbow, knee, or shoulder scores higher. Naturally the fanciest shots score the most. The top-scoring shot is executed as a player stands facing away from a hoop, feet together, then jumps up, executing a tandem back-kick and directing the ball upward through a loop formed by his arms—joined at the fingers behind his back—and finally through the suspended hoop. Hoop takraw was developed in Thailand during the late 1920s. People apparently played early versions with hoops of different sizes, with shots being scored differently depending on which hoop they went through. Another Thai version is flag takraw, which requires a player to move as quickly as possible along a narrow track 50 meters in length while keeping the ball aloft through kicks of the foot and jerks of the head and elbows. The sport, often played at village festivals, is won by the player who reaches the end of the track without either dropping the ball or veering off the track. People play sepak raga, the traditional Malay sport, on a six- or seven-man team. Men form a circle 15 meters in diameter and kick or head the ball to one another in a continuous round, the goal being to keep the ball from touching the ground. As in all versions of sepak takraw, elbows, feet, knees, shoulders, and head —all body parts except the hands and forearms—can be used. The winning team is the team that keeps the ball aloft for the required period of time—usually about thirty minutes—with the most kicks. In-carrying takraw requires a single player to catch and carry as many balls as possible without using his hands.
SEPAK TAKRAW
This version, which seems more a form of juggling, requires the player to be ingenious about holding onto the caught balls: He may hold them with his teeth or under an arm.Twelve balls are the standard goal, but expert players have caught and held as many as seventeen. Sepak takraw, one version of which is sometimes called “net takraw,” is the version that has achieved the highest international status, being played by amateur and semiprofessional teams throughout Southeast Asia. People play sepak takraw on a rectangular court that measures 13.4 by 6.1 meters. The court is divided by a centerline at either end of which is marked a half-circle with a radius of 0.9 meters. Across the centerline is stretched a net that is 1.52 meters from the ground. In each half-court a service circle is drawn, the center of which is 2.45 meters from the back line and 3.04 meters from either side.
Play The most important physical skills in sepak takraw are used in the striking movements. Team skills, however, are also important. Players compare the required teamwork to that required of the best volleyball or soccer (association football) teams. The sport is played between two teams—called “regus”—of three players each. Each team enters three regus during a formal competition, and the winning team is the one that hosts two out of three winning regus. A regu wins the set with fifteen points. As in volleyball, each team is entitled to hit the ball three times before sending it across the net, but the three hits can come from the same player. Points are won or lost when the ball touches the ground in or out of the court or does not cross the net after being played three times by the offensive regu. A game of sepak takraw begins when the ball is thrown by either the left inside or right inside player, standing in one of the quarter-circles at either end of the service line, to the back player. The back player, who stands with one foot inside and one foot outside of the serving circle, must kick the ball across the net. As soon as this service has taken place and the ball has crossed
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the net, all players are allowed to move about anywhere in their respective half-courts. Faults during service can be called against the serving side for a number of reasons, including moving out of the quarter-circle or serving circle before play or delaying when throwing the ball to the back for service. During play faults include crossing either over or under the net with any part of the body, stepping on the center line, holding the ball in any way—under the arm, for example, or between the legs—and touching the ball with a hand. Faults committed during play result in a point being awarded to the opposing regu. The net used in sepak takraw was introduced during the 1920s, and in general for many years the sport was played according to various local rules. In fact, some people for a time thought that no form of sepak takraw would survive to compete with the Western sports that were being exported to all parts of Asia. However, in Singapore before World War II, the main Malay form of sepak takraw was included in high school variety programs, and after the war the Singapore National Body of Sepak Takraw (PARSES) was formed. PARSES, with emerging sepak takraw organizations in Malaysia and Thailand, agreed in 1965 on a uniform set of regulations and on the term “sepak takraw.” These agreements were the result of negotiations that began in 1958 during the third Asian Games in Tokyo, where representatives from Thailand invited officials from Burma, Malaya (Malaysia), and Laos to consider the benefits of holding small regional events. These events, held more frequently than the Asian Games or the Olympics, would let athletes hone their skills for the more global competitions and would advance regional cultural interaction. They would also let interested countries pursue “traditional” sports—such as sepak takraw—that were virtually unknown in sports networks oriented to Western and Olympic standards. The result of regional negotiations was the formation of the Southeast Asian Games Federation, which sponsors competitive events such as the Southeast Asian Games in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1965, the first to feature what one could call “world class” sepak takraw.
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Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control. ■ TOM LANDRY
Since the mid-1960s sepak takraw has been a major competitive international sport in Southeast Asia. Wider acceptance of sepak takraw outside of Southeast Asia has been slow but steady. The Asian Sepak Takraw Federation (ASTAF) proposed in 1967 that the sport be included in the Asian Games, and it was but only as an exhibition sport. In 1984 ASTAF proposed that sepak takraw be accepted as a regular competition but was rebuffed. In 1988 ASTAF reorganized itself as the International Sepak-Takraw Federation (ISTAF) and began to campaign more vigorously for wider global acceptance of sepak takraw. This acceptance occurred in 1990 when sepak takraw was included in the eleventh Asian Games in Beijing, China. Clearly this inclusion was facilitated by the Asian Games’ Chinese hosts, who displayed their confidence in the international future of sepak takraw by supporting nineteen teams of their own and sending Chinese sepak takraw players to train in Malaysia and Singapore. In 2003 seventeen countries participated in the eighteenth King’s Cup Sepak Takraw World Championship in Thailand. Thailand won the men’s team event and the women’s team event; Malaysia won the men’s regu event, division 1; South Korea won division 2; Brazil won division 3. Thailand won the women’s regu event, divisions 1 and 2. Thailand also won the men’s and women’s circle event.
The Future Internationalization brings standardization, and, if sepak takraw continues to grow in popularity, the handwoven rattan ball—one of the sport’s most distinctive features—may become a relic. Unfortunately, the ball varies considerably in circumference and weight and is difficult to produce even within the flexible official guidelines—40 to 42.5 centimeters in circumference and 160 to 180 grams in weight. Trivial though such variations may seem, they are a challenge to the replicable criteria that increasingly govern modern sports. Not surprisingly, a company in Singapore now manufactures absolutely standard sepak takraw balls. They
are woven in the traditional pattern but of precisely milled plastic strips and not of rattan. The Thais are already playing competitively with such balls, and the acceptance of plastic seems inevitable. With the traditional rattan ball on its way to the museum, with international rules and established venues, sepak takraw seems established as an international sport. Longtime popularity in Southeast Asia and more recently in China ensures its survival as a major competitive sport. Whether it can move beyond its present level of popularity will depend more on commercial considerations and communications than on purely sporting values. Alan Trevithick
Further Reading Dunsmore, S. (1983). Sepak raga (takraw):The Southeast Asian ball game (Occasional Paper No. 4). Sarawak, Malaysia: Sarawak Museum. Public Relations Department of Thailand. (1968). Thai games and festivals. Bangkok, Thailand: Author. Wagner, E. A. (1989). Sport in Asia and Africa: A comparative handbook. New York: Greenwood Press.
Sex and Performance
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eople have debated the impact of sex (defined in published studies as heterosexual intercourse) on athletic performance for the past two thousand years. Writer Jeff Merron notes that the Roman historian Pliny the Elder tackled the issue in 77 CE. Pliny said, “Athletes when sluggish are revitalized by love-making, and the voice is restored from being gruff and husky.” The late New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel reportedly said, “The trouble is not that players have sex the night before a game. It’s that they stay out all night looking for it.” Several famous athletes claimed to abstain from sex for days or weeks before a race or other athletic event. The great U.S. miler Marty Liquori thought abstinence the best policy. “Sex makes you happy,” he said, “and happy people don’t run a 3:47 mile.” Lynn
SEX AND PERFORMANCE
Jennings, 1993 U.S. 10-kilometer title winner, said, “I found that sex the night before solidifies my core feeling of happiness” and helped her win. Testimonials aside, does any scientific evidence support either side of this debate? Researchers Boone and Gilmore studied the impact of sexual intercourse twelve hours prior to a treadmill exercise test to measure physical performance with a group of eleven sedentary men. The results from the test indicated that sexual intercourse had no impact on test results: Sexual intercourse did not diminish performance. Researchers Anderson, Wei, and Shyu studied the relationship between sexual activity and four other health measures on the marathon running performance of sixtyone men and fourteen women whose ages ranged from seventeen to sixty-five. On average the subjects were fortyone years old, had been running regularly for twelve years, and had run an average of fifteen previous events. Results showed that marathon runners’ sexual activity was not related to their relative running performance. Those who slept more and took in more calories, compared with the amount they slept and the calories they consumed in previous events, performed better in the marathon, compared with their performance in previous events. Drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes were not related to self-reported running success. Writing for the Western Gazette, David Lee noted that Dr. Earl Noble, a professor in the faculty of health sciences, believes no link exists between sex and decreased athletic performance. Although Noble stated that the research he was aware of was far from conclusive, he believes it points in the right direction. “Personally, I believe that anytime you start disrupting normal behavior, you’re going to start having negative effects in whatever you do, be it academics or athletics. Whatever you’re accustomed to is what you should do” (Lee 2004). In 1999 Italian scientists found that testosterone levels in men increased as sexual activity increased. These data could suggest that a rendezvous in the bedroom might lead to higher rates of aggression the next day— and enhance athletic performance.
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With little scientific evidence and conflicting opinions offered by coaches, pundits, and athletes themselves, how do athletes behave while competing? According to a report by Paul Hochman, at the 1992 winter Olympics at Albertville, France, condom machines in the athletes’ village had to be refilled every two hours. At the Olympics in Sydney, Australia, in 2000 the organizers’ original order of seventy thousand condoms went so fast that they had to order twenty thousand more. Even with the replenishment, the supply was exhausted three days before the end of the competition schedule. This anecdotal evidence does not mean that all the condoms were used for sex or that only athletes used them, but it may help us frame future research. In conclusion, James stated that despite the fact that sexual abstinence before an athletic event has been advocated by crusty football coaches, Olympic athletes, and even U.S. boxer Muhammad Ali in his prime, no one really knows how the practice got started or whether it is in an athlete’s best interest. Depending on the athlete’s frame of mind, the little scientific evidence available supports the notion that it couldn’t hurt and it might help. In view of the lack of scientific evidence on the subject and the conflicting testimonials, athletes these days seem confused about having sex the night before an athletic contest. Although the commonly believed benefits of sexual abstinence have a long tradition, the little scientific evidence available and the majority opinion among athletes, coaches, and physicians now are that sex has little or no effect on athletic performance. The psychosocial reality is that every athlete should do what works for him or her. To discover what works may take some experimentation and a willing partner. Peter B. Anderson
Further Reading Boone, T., & Gilmore, S. (1995). Effects of sexual intercourse on maximal aerobic power, oxygen pulse, and double product in male sedentary subjects. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 35, 214–217. Chidley, J. (1996). Sex and the modern athlete. Maclean’s, 109, 36–37.
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Fisher, G. J. (1997, June). Abstention from sex and other pre-game rituals used by college male varsity athletes. Journal of Sport Behavior, 20, 176–185. James, S. T. (1990). Sexual activity and athletic performance: Is there a relationship? The Physician and Sports Medicine, 8, 148–154. Lee, D. (2004, February 13). Sex and athletic performance—Good or bad? The Gazette, Western’s Daily Student Newspaper, 97(75). Retrieved September 21, 2004, from http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/ 2004/February/13/sports1.asp
deliberate planning, grooming, and execution. Within sports, the scenario is often the same: a conscious grooming of the family and victim to gain their complete trust. The overlapping stages of selection, building confidence, seduction, and abuse are known as the boundary erosion process. Some of the most relevant and important questions about sexual harassment and abuse are the following: ■
Sexual Harassment
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port symbolizes courage, fairness, and morality, but coaches’ sexual relations with their athletes diminish this image. Together, the existing literature on sexual harassment in sports; empirical data from studies of sports clubs, coaches, and athletes; and case material from court cases illustrate the complexities and controversies involved, the various stages of the boundary erosion process, and the relevant risk factors. There are, however, prevention strategies that can be adopted to help prevent sexual harassment and abuse of athletes by their peers, coaches, or other authorities. Most athletes are able to pursue their sporting aspirations with the positive feedback and support in their sporting environment, but others may experience various forms of sexual harassment and abuse (also named sexual exploitation as a collective term) such as initiation rituals, sexist jokes, and sexualized language, or unwanted touching, groping, or intercourse—either from peer athletes, coaches, or other sports authorities. Besides devastating sport careers, coaches’ sexual harassment and abuse is a degrading and painful reality in the lives of too many athletes—male and female, child and adolescents. The coach-athlete relationship is an asymmetric power relation based on trust that—if not carefully administered—may easily lead to emotional or physical exploitation. Research and clinical practice outside sports demonstrate that sexual abuse is neither accidental nor spontaneous, even though perpetrators often claim this to be the case. There are always precursors to the abuse, with distinct stages of
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How and why do coaches do it, and why doesn’t anyone see or do anything to prevent it from happening? What is the prevalence of sexual harassment and abuse in sports? Which risk factors predominate in detecting harassment and abuse? What choices and narrative components cause coaches to enter the path of deviant behavior?
What Is Sexual Coach Behavior? When speaking of sexual relations between a coach and an athlete, some of the most commonly used terms are sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual molestation, sexual misconduct, and abuse of trust. Within this article, sexual exploitation is used as collective term for both sexual harassment and abuse. Though often used synonymously and closely related, sexual harassment and sexual abuse are two different things with separate definitions.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT Sexual harassment is often referred to as forms of unwanted attention such as sexually oriented comments, jokes, or bullying based on sex, whereas sexual abuse is mainly associated with forced or coerced physical intimacy. The Australian Sports Commission (1988) defines sexual harassment as “behaviour that has a sexual element, that is unwelcome and that could reasonably be expected, in the circumstances in which it occurs, to offend, humiliate or intimidate the person or people at whom it is directed.” According to the Women Sport International Task Force (1998), sexual harassment may include the following:
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Written or verbal abuses or threats; sexually oriented comments; jokes, lewd comments or sexual innuendoes; taunts about body, dress, marital status or sexuality; shouting and/or bullying; ridiculing or undermining of performance or self-respect; sexual or homophobic graffiti; practical jokes based on sex; intimidating sexual remarks; invitations or familiarity; domination of meetings, training sessions or equipment; condescending or patronizing behaviour; physical contact, fondling, pinching or kissing; sex-related vandalism; offensive phone calls or photos; bullying on the basis of sex.
Sexual harassment is against the law, and it conflicts with the United Nations declaration on human rights and equal opportunity acts. In most countries, sexual harassment is criminalized by laws regarding sexual indecency or equal opportunity.
SEXUAL ABUSE Sexual abuse may be defined as an exchange of rewards or privileges for sexual favors, groping, indecent exposure, rape, or anal or vaginal penetration by penis, fingers, or objects. Summarizing the literature on abuse definitions, Riley points out, “In sexual abuse, the abuser is an adult or adolescent who uses the child for a sexual act to satisfy his need for power, bravado, tenderness and contact as well as his erotic desires to the detriment of the child. The child victim is sexually aroused or drawn into a sexual act, the meaning of which she (/he) does not completely understand, and in which is inappropriate for her age, her emotional development and her role within the family” (1991, 17). Sexual abuse violates criminal laws universally.
Sexual Exploitation Continuum The British sport sociologist Celia Brackenridge has placed the various forms of sexual coach behaviors— such as discrimination, harassment, assault, and rape— within a continuum of sexual exploitation, with mild and severe types of sexual exploitation at the ends of the continuum. The individual may experience the behavior as exploitative, though not criminalized by law.
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Such behavior may be construed to belong to a grey zone area, where the experienced behavior is highly dependent on context and individual interpretation. According to these definitions of harassment and abuse, a single accidental touch of an athlete’s arm, though unwanted, would not constitute sexual harassment. Many sport clubs do not have ethical guidelines or codes of conduct, so this may be considered as a grey area. Athlete-coach relations when athletes are older than the legal age of consent form another gray area. The legal threshold, however, defines the boundary of the laws regarding anything from sexual indecency to forced genital acts and rape. Although some athletes may feel hurt, wounded, or even abused long before the legal threshold, the opposite may also be the case— some athletes either put up with or accept behavior that is far beyond the legal threshold. Empirical data from a case study of 189 police reports validates this notion by showing that most sport-related sexual abuse cases are only detected and unfold years after the actual abuse. The typical pattern shows that old cases are regularly identified in relation to more recent abuse allegations. Research shows that some athletes, though admitting being abused, do not file a police report and avoid the emotional turmoil of going through a court process. These results illustrate that only a fraction of cases may lead to court convictions and that the problem of sexual harassment and abuse may be heavily underreported.
Myths and Taboos The phenomenon of sexual exploitation is shrouded in myths and taboos because it includes elements of private sexuality and types of perverse behavior. Sexual harassment and abuse is generally associated with physical force, threats, and the use of force, but the contradictive reality shows that most cases of sexual harassment and abuse happen after careful grooming, where the athlete is seduced or lured into believing that sexual involvement with the coach is acceptable, unavoidable, or a normal part of training or everyday behavior. When voluntary leaders or coaches who are thought to be
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representing a morally strong activity are accused of “molesting” a child, the most common reaction is disbelief or denial. The reactions to sexual exploitation often vary between extreme disbelief and the urge to punish the abuser. We want to believe that we are able to read people around us; subsequently, people ignore the fact that the abuse can happen to their children and that the abuser can be someone they admire and trust. This has to do with the way we perceive our surroundings and the cultural status of coaches and sports more generally.
Response of Sports Organizations to Harassment and Abuse During the past fifteen to twenty years, sports organizations around the world, including the International Olympic Committee, have gone through various stages of denial, subsequently causing sports to lag behind other public organizations in defining inappropriate behavior and developing child-protection policies. Initially, sports organizations have tried to deal with cases of sexual harassment and abuse as separate or “one-off cases,” rather than recognizing that sexual harassment and abuse arise from problematic power and gender relations. Why do some coaches make it their mandate to become the authority on everything for the athlete such as diet, weight, dress, and social behavior? In her book Spoilsports, Brackenridge points out, “In considering the social process by which athletes come to be exploited sexually, and how authority figures like coaches come to assume dominance and control over athletes, it is clear that these expressions of agency arise from long-term, collective, socio-cultural influences” (2001, 127). These collective, sociocultural influences are closely connected to the implicit values of sports, such as the following: ■
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Sports should be a carefree meeting place between adults and children with no or few restrictions. Being a volunteer in sports is a quality in itself, regardless of past qualifications.
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The fear of interfering with and regulating intimacy in sports is rooted in the understanding of sport as a morally sound and apolitical institution.
Previous Research Intrafamilial sexual abuse was established as a social problem as early as 1962, and literature on sexual harassment in the workplace and in educational settings started appearing in the early 1970s, but sexual abuse in sports was not discovered and described by academia until 1986. Since then, sport researchers have documented the problem of sexual exploitation in Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Norway, Holland, Germany, and Denmark. Currently, there are no reliable statistics or prevalence figures on sexual harassment and abuse cases, but apparently sexual harassment and abuse is a relevant issue in all sports disciplines—in individual as well as team sports, and from beginner’s level in recreational sports to the highest elite level. Based on the existing prevalence data, researchers are suggesting that between 2 and 22 percent of athletes experience severe forms of sexual abuse some time in their sporting careers. However, a Norwegian survey by Fasting, Brackenridge, and SundgotBorgen (2000) indicates that the risk of harassment and abuse in sports is not significantly higher than outside sports. In sports, bodily domain boundaries are often broken down, so it is likely that athletes become more tolerant toward intimate behavior than are people who are not involved in sports. Empirical data about the incidence of sexual abuse are difficult to collect and, because of heavy reporting, mostly unreliable. Adding to the methodological complexity are issues such as securing confidentiality for all involved informants and dealing with the problems of revelation and fear of reprisal. Furthermore, reliability and validity are flawed by differences in definitions of abuse, the source of reports, the purpose of the studies, ethics, and consent and sampling techniques. Several qualitative approaches based on interviews and smaller case studies have tried to explore important aspects
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If you are prepared, you will be confident, and will do the job. ■ TOM LANDRY
such as risk factors, abuse dynamics, and the personal experiences of both coaches and athletes from being involved in sexual coach-athlete relationships.
What Triggers Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Sports? In search of an explanatory model of what triggers sexual harassment and abuse in sport, Brackenridge has introduced the contingency theory. Adding to existing abuse theories by Finkelhor (1984), the contingency theory identifies three key factors of importance: 1. Coach inclination: The risk is related to the coach’s motivation to engage in a sexual relationship based on emotional congruence, sexual arousal, blockage, and disinhibition. 2. Sports opportunity: The risk is related to the normative cultures of sports and to constitutive structures. 3. Athlete vulnerability: The risk is related to the susceptibility of the athlete and coping with emotional pressure or sexual advances.
Who’s at Risk and Who Is the Abuser? The existing literature on child abuse suggests that one in four girls and one in nine boys will experience sexual abuse before the age of eighteen. Much of the literature on harassment and abuse in sports also suggests that these figures could apply in sports, particularly with adolescent athletes. Most existing literature has focused on competitive sports and male coach–female athlete relationships, and very little attention has been granted to recreational sports and homosexual relations or to the relations between male coaches and male athletes. Results from a recent case study of 189 police reports ( Toftegaard Nielsen, 2004), however, show that 63 percent of the abused athletes were boys compared with 37 percent girls. The average age of the abused children was found to be twelve years with a low of six years and a high of seventeen years. Even though most perpetrators target lonely children with low self-esteem, weak social
contact, poor family bonding, or who generally seek physical or emotional attention, well functioning children and adolescents may also be drawn into a sexual relationship with the coach.These characteristics appear to be more outspoken for heterosexual relationships, where coaches typically claim that the relationship is equivalent to any other romantic love affair based on mutual respect and understanding. Furthermore, the rationale used by coaches under such circumstances could also include a strategy of blaming the athletes for being flirtatious, taking initiative, or appearing to be older or more mature than their peers. According to the Danish researchers, approximately 20 to 25 percent of cases fell into the category of hebephile relationships—where coaches were sexually intimate with athletes older than the age of puberty. Conversely, 75 to 80 percent can be defined as pedophilia—where the coaches had been sexually intimate with children under the stage of puberty. In more than 99 percent of the existing abuse cases, perpetrators have been male. This does not mean that female coaches will not engage in forbidden zone intimacy, but there have been very few allegations and no convictions of female coaches. The existing case material indicates that 69 percent of the abusers are between twenty-five and thirty-seven years old. The average age is thirty-five, with a low of twenty and a high of seventy years. Drawing on the police interrogation material of the perpetrators, very little evidence indicates that these men have gone into sports solely to be sexually involved with children or adolescents. For some coaches, sexual misconduct may develop as the result of a reach and retreat process—in which the coach learns how to use power, position, trust, and persuasion as tools to overcome the athlete’s resistance. Empirical knowledge about risk factors and developmental stages is still rather scarce and needs further validation.
Context: Grooming of Athletes and Their Environments The relationship between a coach and an athlete may develop into an intimate relationship because of a
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Table 1. Grooming Phases, Coaches, and Behavior Grooming phases
Categories of coach behavior
Examples of behavior
Confidence and trust
Instruction related
Verbal or physical correction of technique, assisting landings, etc.
Seduction
Indirectly instruction-related
Training outside normal hours, at unfamiliar training settings, driving to and from training, competition, etc., injury treatment, massage.
Non–instruction-related
Meeting outside the sport context, discussing private matters not relevant for sports, drinking alcohol in a sporting context.
Verbal or physical advances
Asking the athlete out for dinner or movie or asking the athlete to massage the coach.
Exercising powerful behavior
Threatening or using physical force to obtain compliance.
Abuse
common interest and the strong commitment of both coach and athlete. Within the first phase of the relationship, the building of confidence is founded on various forms of instruction-related behavior such as giving feedback on technique, tactics, assisting on landings (gymnastics), or getting seated (horse riding). While making the athlete feeling comfortable through games and having fun, the coach will have an opportunity to spot the athlete’s level of self-esteem and his or her strengths and weaknesses. Whether at a conscious level or not, the perpetrator will chose his victim carefully, and within weeks, months, or years, subtly initiate more and more ambiguous behavior. The coach may start spending more time with a particular athlete, giving extra positive feedback, telling the athlete that he or she has special talents, and encouraging the athlete to consult the coach on personal matters. Because the sport is so important, the athlete may idolize the coach and present him in a very positive light, thereby legitimizing spending more and more time doing sports. For the coach, however, this may be the first stage in isolating the athlete by setting up difficult training regimes and demanding that the athlete put the sport before family and friends. If parents start complaining about this, the coach may tell the athlete that this is normal and that parents cannot understand what it takes to become a winner. The coach may also try to isolate the athlete from friends in or outside sports, by telling lies about teammate conspiracies or asking the athlete to keep their special friendship as a secret. Once the coach has selected and isolated the athlete, the overlapping stages of seduction and abuse may
progress. Empirical data show that this boundary erosion process often follows the same pattern (see Table 1): ■ ■ ■
From group-oriented to personal-focused behavior From verbal to physical behavior From instruction-related to non-instruction-related behavior
The climax stage of the relationship depends highly on the maturity and strength of the athlete and the persistence and sexual preferences of the coach. Most pedophiles prefer boys younger than eleven to twelve years old and may have several parallel relations at the same time, where most hebephile abusers seem to prefer girls older than twelve to thirteen years of age. Sexual abuse can happen in seconds or last for years. In 60 percent of cases, the athletes are subjected to the coach’s sexual behavior for between three and six months, and in 13 percent of cases for four to five years or longer. Many athletes who have experienced the consequences of losing access to a sporting environment, losing privileges, or being socially isolated have also experienced the revictimization of the coach. In most cases, athletes have been able to terminate the sexual relations by moving, becoming injured or sick, or simply standing up to the coach.
Personal Experiences of Athletes and Coaches The voices of both athletes and coaches are extremely important for understanding the complex structures of the coach–athlete relationship and for identifying effective prevention measures. Athletes who have not been in a sexual coach–athlete relationship generally
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have a wide tolerance toward instruction-related intimacy, whereas athletes who have come out of abusive relationships show little tolerance toward physical intimacy in sports. The following quotation from an abused athlete sums up some of the consequences and contradictive emotions after an abusive relationship: It strikes me how strange it is that one can look so good and feel so miserable inside. I was filled up with pain. It is only just now seeping out, sometimes while I’m lying down crying, quietly or hysterically, kicking into the wall or writing about how cruel he was to destroy me this way. Now I consult a psychologist. I feel pain in my stomach and a knot in my chest. I wonder why I time upon time went along with it and even begged for it, when so many resources inside of me were trying to fight it.
Generally, coaches seem to have more liberal attitudes toward non-instruction-related behavior such as touching and hugging an athlete, flirting, or being in an intimate coach–athlete relationship, particularly when athletes are older than the legal age of consent. The results of a questionnaire among 275 Danish elite youth coaches showed that 30 percent thought it was “yes— definitely acceptable,” 36 percent thought it was “yes— possibly acceptable” to engage in an intimate relationship with an athlete older than the age of consent, and 5 percent admitted doing so. Two percent admitted having an intimate relationship with an athlete less than fifteen years old (Toftegaard Nielsen 2001). Police records show that nine of ten convicted coaches initially denied the sexual abuse charges. It is difficult to obtain an objective version of what has happened if we only listen to one side of the story. Police interrogations with coaches do not represent an objective truth because stories and statements are collected for specific legal purposes. However, the inconsistencies between the statements made by coaches and those made by athletes illustrate that the perpetrating coaches seek instruction-related explanations for their criminal behavior and that coaches rarely feel responsible for the development of the case. Apparently, few coaches have entered sport for the reason of perpetrating; moreover, coaches likely
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shape their narratives to fit as they continue inappropriate behavior.
Preventing Sexual Harassment and Abuse Besides being fun, sports should provide important opportunities for personal achievement and development. Children and adolescents are often encouraged to join sports to improve their self-confidence and physical strength, and most athletes enjoy sports for their competitive, social, or physical aspects. Although not every intimate relationship between a coach and an athlete is based on an abuse of power by the coach, such relations are a danger area where consequences can be harmful to both the sport and themselves. From an ethical perspective, coaches should observe the professional responsibilities of being authority figures and act respectfully toward their athletes—regardless of age. However novel and obvious this may seem to most coaches, the problem of prevention work is how to direct information and secure compliance among those who become emotionally and sexually involved with their athletes. Several approaches with varying success have been used to prevent sexual abuse in sports: ■
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In general, those who are in favor of more regulation claim that requiring a coach’s license or a compulsory criminal background check will send an important message and keep perpetrators out of sports. Another approach is to make information campaigns about the potential problem of harassment and simultaneously reward democratic leadership and safe sports environments. Even though very little is known about the effect of prevention campaigns, the lack of evidence about their effect cannot be used as an excuse for not doing anything.
At the organizational level, it is important to facilitate an antiharassment policy and develop a complaints procedure to deal with breaches of the policy. To be effective, these must be combined with an information and education campaign for all participants in the organization. An antiharassment policy should include a
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statement declaring that the sports organization is committed to providing ■ ■
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A work that effectively will deal with the problem An outline of the organization’s objectives and strategies regarding harassment Clear definitions of to whom and under what circumstances the organization guidelines will apply
Individual athletes may find it difficult to talk about bullying, sexual harassment, or sexual abuse and even more difficult to stop the exploitation. Before the behavior gets too far, however, an athlete should tell the coach that he or she has crossed the athlete’s boundaries and simply ask the coach to stop doing it. If athletes are not comfortable doing this in person, then they should write it down, send it, and keep a copy of the letter as documentation. Athletes must also be willing to let other people see that there is a problem. Athletes who feel insecure, or fear that they may be misinterpreting something, should seek information. The more an athlete knows, the better the athlete will be able to understand the experiences—whether they are harmless or cases of harassment or abuse. Other actions athletes can take to deal with possible abuse or harassment are the following: ■
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Talk to a trusted adult or call a telephone hotline. Athletes should be told to provide an example of the behavior that they find unpleasant and tell how they feel and think about it. This may help them listen to themselves—athletes should not ignore their physical or psychological reactions. Seek professional help if the athlete continues to feel anxious, is unable to sleep, has eating disorders, or feels depressed. File complaints with the board of the sports club. If any legal boundaries have been crossed, the athlete may want to report it to the police. A court case does not guarantee that the abuser will be convicted, but this will likely deter the coach from continuing approaches to the athlete or fellow athletes.
Sexual exploitation is not about sex; it is about dominant power and the abuse of that power. Child
protection and athletes’ rights are relatively new issues on the sports agenda. To make sports safer and more enjoyable for everyone, more information, education, and dialogue is needed on critical issues such as coach-athlete intimacy, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse. Jan Toftegaard Nielsen See also Feminist Perspective; Gender Equity; Sexuality
Further Reading Brackenridge, C. H. (1997). Sexual harassment and sexual abuse in sport. In G. Clarke & B. Humberstone (Eds.), Researching women and sport. London: Macmillan. Brackenridge, C. H. (2001). Spoilsports. London: Routledge. Crosset, T. (1986). Male Coach–Female Athlete Relationships. Article presented at the first interdisciplinary conference of sport sciences, Sole, Norway. Fasting, K., Brackenridge, C. H., & Sundgot-Borgen, J. (2000). Females, elite sports and sexual harassment. The Norwegian Women Project 2000. Oslo, Norway: Norwegian Olympic Committee. Finkelhor, D. (1984). Child sexual abuse: New theory and research. New York: Free Press. Kirby, S. (1995). Not in my back yard: Sexual harassment and abuse in sport. Canadian Women Studies, 15(4), 58–60. Kirby, S., & Greaves, L. (1996). Foul play: Sexual harassment in sport. Article presented by the Pre-Olympic Scientific Congress, Dallas, Texas, USA, 11–14 July. Lackey, D. (1990). Sexual harassment in sport. Physical Educator, 47(2), 22–26. Leahy, T., Pretty, G., & Tenenbaum, G. (2002). Prevalence of sexual abuse in organised competitive sport in Australia. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 8(2), 16–36. Lenskyj, H. (1992). Sexual harassment: Female athletes’ experiences and coaches’ responsibilities. Science Periodical on Research and Technology in Sport, 12(6), 1–5. Riley, D. (1991). Sexual abuse of children. Oxfordshire, UK: Radcliffe Medical Press. Sence, M. (1997) Red card or carte blanche—Risk factors for sexual harassment and sexual abuse in sport, summary, conclusions and recommendations. Amsterdam: NOC*NSF (Dutch Olympic Committee). Toftegaard Nielsen, J. (2001, June). The forbidden zone: Intimacy, sexual relations and misconduct in the relationship between coaches and athletes. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 36(2). Toftegaard Nielsen, J. (2004). Idrættens illusoriske intimitet (The illusion of sport intimacy). Ph.D. thesis, Institute of Exercise and Sport Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Volkwein, K., Schnell, F., Sherwood, D., & Livezey, A. (1997) Sexual harassment in sport: Perceptions and experiences of American female student-athletes. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 32, 283–297. Volkwein-Caplan, K., & Sankaran, G. (2002). Sexual harassment in sport—Impact, issues and challenges. Sport Culture Society (vol. 1). Oxford, UK: Meyer & Meyer.
