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...
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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
4
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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BERKSHIRE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD SPORT
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
xi
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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SEXUALITY
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If the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn’t, it’s that girls should stick to girls’ sports, such as hot oil wrestling, foxy boxing, and such and such. ■ HOMER SIMPSON
Sexuality
A
s manifestations of human physical embodiment, sports and sexuality have always been intimately related. Depending on the historical era and the cultural context, this intimate relationship has been celebrated, acknowledged, condemned, or denied. These contradictory responses have often occurred simultaneously.
Greek and Roman Athletes The Romans were less obsessed with the athletic body than were the Greeks, but they, too, understood—and for the most part accepted—the association of sports and sexuality. Odd as it may seem to us, the gladiator who entered the arena and risked his life in armed combat was a sexually charged figure whose physicality excited Roman women of every social class. The gladiator with his sword or trident—not the orator and certainly not the poet—was the embodiment of Roman masculinity. As upper-class brides were prepared for the initiation into womanhood, it was customary to part their hair with a spear that had been dipped in the blood of a slain gladiator. The word gladius (“sword”) was often used as a slang term for the penis. Writing of sexuality and death in the Roman arena, the poet Ovid observed, in The Art of Love, “on that sorrowful sand Venus has often contested.” Gladiators were legally “infamous,” but Roman women responded nonetheless (and perhaps all the more) to their sexual attractiveness. Graffiti found in Pompeii proclaim that the gladiator Celadus was suspirium puellarum (freely translated: “the heart-throb of all the girls”). His colleague Crescens was the puparum dominus (“master of the girls”). Poets such as Juvenal were outraged when respectable women chose gladiators as their lovers: “The sword is what they dote on.” His anger was impotent. Propertius’ poems, which include rhapsodic references to athletic Spartan girls, testify that Roman men were also fascinated by the erotic dimension of women’s sports.
Christian Influences Christianity ended the pagan adoration of the athletic body. References to the human body as a prison, a charnel house, a grave, or a sink of corruption were ubiquitous in the religious literature of late antiquity as ascetic men and women were inspired to join the ranks of “those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19:2). Late in the fourth century or early in the fifth, Christian antipathy brought an end to the Olympic Games and to gladiatorial combats. Rather than looking to athletes and gladiators as icons of masculinity, devout Christians venerated saints like Simeon Stylites, who glorified God by spending thirty physically inactive years atop a sixty-foot-high Byzantine pillar.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TOURNAMENTS The medieval tournament was a stage for the ostentatious demonstration of martial skill and valor. It was the preferred place for aristocratic men to vaunt—and for aristocratic women to admire—proud masculinity. Tournament lists may seem far removed from the domain of Eros, but the relationship between feats of arms and the code of courtly love was strikingly direct. The sexual aspects of the tournament were glaringly obvious when the victor’s prize was a puellam decoram valde (“nicely dressed young girl”), which was the case at a tournament in the German town of Merseburg in 1226. Sexuality also played a central—if more subtle—role in later tournaments, at which knights demonstrated their prowess as warriors and suggested their potential as lovers. In time, tournaments became less bellicose and more theatrical, but the erotic dimension continued to play a major role. Tournaments became allegories in which men and women masqueraded as Lancelot and Guinevere, as Tristan and Isolde, or as other suitably romantic Arthurian figures. In the typical sixteenth-century tournament, bold knights rescued distressed damsels, after which they retired to a “Temple of Love,” where the gallant men
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doffed their battered helmets and received kisses of gratitude. Although the military functions of the tournament never wholly disappeared, the erotic function —properly conventionalized—became increasingly prominent. Conventionalization of the erotic did not diminish the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church, which repeatedly—and vainly—condemned the medieval and the Renaissance tournament. Clerical hostility was aroused by the un-Christian bloodshed that characterized the earlier tournament, but sublimated sexuality was also an abomination in ascetic eyes. Illuminated manuscripts frequently depicted medieval women engaged in fabulous jousts. A marginal illustration to Pierart dou Tielt’s Saint Graal shows a combat between two naked women armed with distaffs, one upon a goat, the other on a ram. The scene is imaginary, but it testifies to the association, in the minds of clerical misogynists, of Eros and sports.
■
■
■
■
Modern Reactions In the modern era, as sports once again assumed the central role that they played in pagan antiquity, Christian ascetics—Protestant as well as Roman Catholic— were initially hostile. Clerical critics were not motivated to condemnation simply by profanation of the Sabbath (although that was a common theme from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries). Sports were also deplored because of their sensuality and their ability to entice, excite, and sexually arouse participants and spectators alike. ■
In the Victorian era, presidents of evangelical colleges warned ominously that football games were orgiastic affairs more fit for pagan thickets than for the groves of academe. In 1892, for instance, the Wesleyan Christian Advocate complained that the violent game unleashed “the lower impulses of the physical man” and allowed young males to “find their pleasure in mere sensual energy.”
■
When Senda Berenson introduced basketball to the young women of Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, the students were chastely clothed from neck to ankle and the only man allowed in the gymnasium was the president of the college, a man whose age and dignity were thought to immunize him from the danger of sexual arousal. When the Australian press reported positively, in October 1907, on “the brown skinned specimens of manhood” and the “bronze Venuses” that were to be seen on the beaches and in the surf, there were immediate protests against “heaps of sprawling men and lads, naked but for a nondescript rag around the middle.” In 1933, when Sunny Lowry swam the English Channel, she was berated as a “harlot” because she exposed her bare knees. In 1934, Cardinal Rodrigue Villeneuve of Quebec, condemning the “pagan” cult of the body as manifested in sports, bemoaned the rampant concern for “hysterical strength, sensual pleasure, and the development of the human animal.” Meanwhile, his European colleagues thundered Episcopal anathemas against female gymnasts who performed before mixed audiences. Their denunciations are repeated today, almost verbatim, by Islamic fundamentalists horrified by the public display of female limbs.
In response to the recurrent charge that sports are a sensual if not a satanic indulgence, most athletes and spectators have defended their passion for sports as if the pleasure they derived from them had no connection whatsoever with human sexuality. Whenever outraged religious traditionalists have called attention to the erotic appeal of the human body at play, high-minded progressive reformers have blandly expatiated on the benefits of sunlight, fresh air, and unencumbered movement. In 1921, for example, the German gymnastics journal, Die Freie Turnerin, showed off its new logo—a youthful nude. The edi-
SEXUALITY
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tors distanced themselves from imputations of pornolife, for instance, attest to the continued prevalence of hographic intent by claiming the logo represented “a mosexuality among healthy adolescent football players free maiden, with a joyful sense of her strength and (soccer and rugby) tutored by naively moralistic menher trained body, whose nakedness is unashamed betors. The English critic and editor Cyril Connolly recause it is natural.” This kind of wholesome nudity called his early twentieth-century schooldays at was not, they emphasized, sexual. Countering allesports-mad Eton and added that homosexuality was “the gations of prurience, a contributor to Sport im Bild Forbidden Tree around which our Eden dizzily revolved.” announced in 1928 that sports participation actually (Like a typical first-year student, Connolly fell in love dissipated “the mists of the erotic” that had enveloped with a boy who was “good at games and older than I.”) German women. Thanks to sports, women were American physical educators seem never to have no“cleaner, more free, fresher.” ticed that the high-school romance of popular fiction YMCA workers, physical educapairs the most athletic of the boys tors, and coaches went beyond (the star of the football team) with mere self-deceptive denial. In rethe most athletic of the girls (the sponse to the critics’ exasperated captain of the cheerleading squad). insistence that sports can quite obviously be an occasion for erotic Sexualization play, enthusiasts for sports have of Sports propagated the modern myth that By the end of the nineteenth cena heated contest and a cold shower tury, mainstream Protestants had divert or diminish adolescent sexaltered their opposition to sports uality. With luck, they assert, sports to the point where YMCA workers may totally extinguish sexual were leading the way in inventing impulses. new sports (such as basketball and This was the conventional wisvolleyball) and in propagating dom in the heyday of “muscular sports—for girls as well as boys— Christianity,” when nineteenththroughout the United States and century sports were instrumenelsewhere. Similarly, in 1945, Pope Pius XII broke ranks with his predtalized in a misguided effort to ecessors and affirmed the positive dampen erotic ardor and to distract value of modern sports. By the end young people from sexual activity. of the twentieth century, religious Even as British games masters opposition to sports had all but and American physical educators disappeared. There is continued praised sports as a healthy alternaopposition to the association of tive to fornication and “self-abuse,” sports and sexuality, but the oppothe cult of athleticism that they ensition is motivated less by a rejeccouraged actually contributed to tion of “pagan sexuality” than by the sexual activity that was rife in A common sight at boxing distress at levels of promiscuity elite British and American boys’ matches, a ring girl holding and outrage at the incidence of sexschools such as Eton and Groton. a round card. ual predation. “Baseball Annies” Memoirs of English “public-school” Source: istockphoto/pcwfoto.
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Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire first. ■ REGGIE LEACH
and other young women eager for sexual unions with their athletic idols have, almost literally, thrown themselves at the feet of collegiate and professional athletes. Basketball star Wilt Chamberlain, who boasted of having slept with 20,000 women, is a notorious example of the athlete willing to accept sexual favors from adoring admirers. Champion boxer Mike Tyson and a number of other high-profile athletes have stood trial for rape. That a number of collegiate and professional athletes have been found guilty of rape and other forms of sexual assault, including domestic violence, has caused understandable concern. Although most athletes are not sexual predators, empirical studies have found that varsity athletes are more likely than are other college students to be accused of sexual offenses. The negative critique of sports and sexuality is no longer a prominent part of the Christian tradition. As mainstream churches took to celebrations of the joy of sports, to the construction of basketball courts, and to the establishment of church-related sports leagues, Marxist scholars began to deplore the “sexualization” of sports in capitalist society. Drawing from Sigmund Freud as well as from Karl Marx, these scholars blamed sports, which they defined as “the capitalistically deformed form of play,” for the psychological “castration” of the male athlete and for the deflection of male sexuality into sadism, masochism, narcissism, exhibitionism, and homosexuality. Radical feminists have also condemned sports because they enhance a female athlete’s heterosexual attractiveness and thus increase her “erotic exchange-value.” (The greater the value in the sexual marketplace, the more extreme the exploitation.) Although admitting that some women have benefited from sports and from the fitness boom, the sport sociologist Nancy Theberge (1987) nonetheless alleges that sports programs promising enhanced attractiveness represent “not the liberation of women . . . but their continued oppression through the sexualization of physical activity.” The assumption behind the charge of “sexualization” is that sports are not inherently sexual. The reticulation of assertion and denial has recently become even more bizarrely tangled as Brian Pronger,
Birgit Palzkill, and a number of other homosexual writers have condemned sports for their complicity in the social construction of “hegemonic masculinity,” “compulsory heterosexuality,” and “heteronormativity.”
The Ideal Body The discussion of sports and sexuality must include comments on the ideal body. Young men are judged not only by their sports prowess but also by the muscularity of their bodies (enhanced, in many cases, by anabolic steroids). Young women are exposed to daily exhortations to exercise and diet. Feminist critics believe these women are coerced into in a hopeless quest for an unattainably perfect body. Crippling injuries and eating disorders are said to be among the consequences of the overemphasis on sports and fitness. There is some truth to the critics’ indictment. Although no cultural absolute defines the ideal masculine body, the muscularity of the Greek athlete, celebrated in antiquity by sculptors and vase painters, remains the ideal promoted by modern mass media. That body seems functionally related to what were, until recently, the taken-for-granted male roles of physically active protector and provider. Although there is considerable agreement about the desirability of what might be termed the standard mesomorphic male body, cultural ideals for women have varied across a much wider range—from the sinewy bodies of Spartan girls to the debility of foot-bound Chinese brides unable to walk, much less run, on their mutilated feet. Despite the range and variation in cultural ideals, some scholars see a pattern cut by the determined scissors of patriarchal power: In their book Face Value: The Politics of Beauty (1985) Robin Tolmach Lakoff and Raquel L. Scherr argue that female desirability over time has stressed “feminine helplessness and passivity” while male beauty in art is rarely depicted that way. Other scholars see quite a different pattern. The anthropologist April Fallon suggests that focus on exotic extremes, like the Karen women of Burma, whose stretched and weakened necks require the support of
SHINTY
twenty-four brass rings, deflects attention from the nearly universal consensus that the ideal—at least for a young woman—is “roundness rather than angularity,” a firm rather than a flabby body, health rather than sickness. The athletic female body widely prized today in Europe and North America is quite similar to the women’s bodies valorized in ancient Sparta (if not in other Greek cities). This may or may not be the “natural” body, but it is, for the moment, the dominant ideal.
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Further Reading Guttmann, A. (1996). The erotic in sports. New York: Columbia University Press. Heywood, L., & Dworkin, S. L. (2003). Built to win. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hortleder, G., & Gebauer, G. (Eds.). (1986). Sport-Eros-Tod. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Miller, T. (2001). Sportsex. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pronger, B. (1990). The arena of masculinity. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Theberge, N. (1987). Sport and women’s empowerment, Women’s Studies International Forum, 10(4), 89.
Global Views Consideration of non-Western civilizations complicates speculations about physical ideals. In the Islamic cultures of West Asia, the Zurkhanah (“House of Strength”) attracts wrestlers and weightlifters whose powerful bodies are the cultural ideal. In East Asia, however, the ideal is very different. Mark Elvin, a scholar in Chinese history, notes that in traditional China the human body was not glorified, as was the case with the classical Greek culture with its statues of young unclothed male athletes. Images of the Buddha enthroned on a lotus leaf seem effeminate to European and American museumgoers. The gates to Japanese temples are often flanked by larger-than-life carved figures—the nio—whose hypermuscularity and weaponry symbolizes their role as threatening guardians, but these are lesser deities whose bulky bodies mark their inferior status in the heavenly order. Ordinary men and women may idolize sumo wrestlers, but the Japanese elite has long expressed a preference for unathletic elegance. The East Asian glorification of the cerebral scholar or the otherworldly mystic can best be understood as a futile attempt to transcend the physical, whose presence and power is acknowledged by the almost superhuman effort at its suppression. Asceticism is the bitter tribute that mind pays to body. Sports—and the sexuality that inheres in sports—are, in all likelihood, here to stay. Allen Guttmann See also Beauty; Feminist Perspective; Homophobia
Shinty
S
hinty is Scotland’s national sport. Shinty (from the Gaelic word sinteag meaning “leap”) is first mentioned toward the end of the eighteenth century in records of the Highlands and Inner and Outer Hebrides islands of Scotland. As with mob football, which was popular on the Scottish borders, shinty was a highly physical contact-and-collision sport played on a vast area with a minimum of rules or rest. Its primitive structure and its amalgam of unmasked violence and community festival are summarized in this description: Games were contested between whole clans or parishes without limit as to numbers or time until darkness stopped play among the walking wounded. The field of play was undelineated except by the occasional pail of visge-beatha (whisky). In an interclan match, a combatant who had failed to disable at least one opponent within a reasonable time had his curved stick (caman) confiscated as a punishment by the chieftain so that he could only kick the ball (cnaige) or his opponents. (McWhirter and McWhirter 1975)
Origins Historians do not agree on the origins of shinty. R. W. Henderson, a U.S. sports historian and expert on the evolution of ball games, wrote:
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It has been claimed that shinty came to Scotland by way of Ireland, but so far evidence is not conclusive. In Irish mythology Cuchulain, Fionn, and Fingall play huge club and ball games over the land of the Gaels, and many are the mythological men who are proficient with ball and club. Allowing for the fact that these legends date back hundreds of years B.C., we must again remember that they were written A.D. The highly imaginative, romantic, legendary accounts should not be taken as historical sources. (Henderson 1974)
Hugh Dan Maclennan, a shinty expert, has a differing view. He played shinty at Lochaber High School in Fort William, Scotland, during the 1970s and then gained a Blue (the equivalent of an athletic letter in the United States) at Glasgow University. After playing for Fort William and then Inverness, he turned to broadcasting and journalism. In 1990 he received the first Shinty Reporter of the Year Award. Maclennan underscores the fact that shinty (in Gaelic the word is camanachd) has a long history. In the United States baseball and football have histories of between 100 and 150 years. Shinty, by contrast, may have pagan roots and goes back thousands of years. Shinty was introduced to northwestern Scotland along with Christianity and the Gaelic language nearly two thousand years ago by Irish missionaries.
Development However, shinty is not a major sport. Scotland’s premier sport is soccer, followed by rugby. Many more Scottish children participate in golf, swimming, netball, track and field, basketball, and other sports than in shinty. Shinty players number only in the low thousands, but forty shinty clubs exist, and although the regional base continues to be in the Highlands and islands, that does not tell the whole story. For example, university clubs exist at Aberdeen, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh; Tayforth has a Lowland club; and emigre Scots can play for London Camanachd. Maclennan cautions that one should not see shinty as just a minor sport played regionally in Scotland. Wherever Scots
have gone, they have taken shinty with them as a part of their culture. For example, soldiers of the Lovat Scouts played shinty during the Boer War in South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before World War I shinty developed rapidly, and rules that all players could agree to were needed. Codifying those rules helped in the sport’s expansion. After World War I and up until the 1950s, however, socioeconomic factors led to the decline of shinty. Significant numbers of Scots moved away from the Highlands and islands and settled in industrialized Glasgow and the north of England. Maclennan quotes one shinty player, Roger Hutchinson, who says, “The game of shinty ceased to be played during the first four decades of the 20th century. It was an inexorable decline.” Originally shinty resembled hurling, which is Ireland’s premier sport. Today the sports, as played at an elite level, have major differences in technique. In shinty each team has twelve players, and seven officials are required. Unlike in most field games, in shinty the pitch (field) size is not fixed and varies greatly from club to club. The recommended size of a pitch is 155 meters by 73 meters. This area is considerably larger than the area required for U.S. football, rugby, or soccer (association football). The goal posts may seem similar to those used in U.S. football or rugby union football, but they are actually much narrower: The cross bars are only 3.6 meters wide. The crooked, broad-bladed shinty stick bears some resemblance to a field hockey stick.
Practice The twelve players on a shinty team are a hail-keeper (goalkeeper), a fullback, three halfbacks, a center back, a centerfield, a center forward, three half-forwards, and a full forward. A game lasts ninety minutes, with a halftime of five minutes. The game is essentially aerial, with the ball being tossed and flicked and passed. Only the goalkeeper may handle the ball. This rule is the major contrast to hurling, in which all players may catch and strike the ball. A goal is scored when the ball passes wholly over the goal line, between the goal posts, and under the cross bar, which is set at a height of 3 meters.
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I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on. In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter. ■ MICHAEL VENTRE
The ball is covered with leather and has a core of cork and worsted wool. The stick has a cylindrical shaft. The head must be able to pass through a ring 63 millimeters in diameter. A game of shinty is tough. Fouls such as kicking, catching, or throwing the ball, obstructing, charging, hacking, pushing, and jumping at an opponent are penalized. Shinty, like hurling, is a game in which the level of ball flow, spatial movement, and player fluidity create spectator exhilaration. Recently corporate sponsorship and segments of the tourist industry have helped to revitalize shinty. This revitalization has resulted in the United Kingdom’s Prince Edward associating himself with the development of a youth shinty league, and Diana, the late princess of Wales, was given a shinty stick at a meeting of the Bute Highland Games during the early 1990s. English cricket star Ian Botham has played the game, and in 1991 two Scottish teams (Skye and Kinguissie) visited Cape Breton and reintroduced the sport to Canada’s maritime region after an absence of 150 years.
The Future What is shinty’s future? Is it to be a modern sport or a relic of Celtic culture? Maclennan (1993) makes this observation: For life-force and continuing success, the game must continue to aspire to skill and spectacle at the highest level. If these remain the ideals of the greatest game in the world, and as long as the unique enduring comradeship “after battle” can be maintained, then shinty will maintain the traditions which were founded thousands of years ago and have stood the test of time. It will also remain one of Scotland’s truly national assets.
Scott A. G. M. Crawford
Further Reading Arlott, J. A. (Ed.). (1975). The Oxford companion to world sports and games. London: Oxford University Press. Cuddon, J. A. (1979). International dictionary of sports and games. New York: Schocken Books.
Henderson, R. W. (1974). Ball, bat and bishop: The origin of ball games. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company. Maclennan, H. D. (1993). Shinty: 100 years of the Camanachd Association. Nairn, UK: Balnain Books. McWhirter, N., & McWhirter, R. (1975). Guinness book of records. London: Guinness Superlatives. Smout, T. C. (1986). A century of the Scottish people, 1830–1950. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shooting
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odern shooting sports evolved from the use of arms for hunting and combat. Today, sport hunters lead conservation efforts and fuel a huge industry in shooting gear. A wide variety of competitions with rifles, shotguns, and pistols entertain shooters year-round. Some of the most skilled compete at the Olympic Games.
History Shooting sports arose from the use of weapons and hunting implements. Long before gunpowder, hunters defended themselves and killed game from a distance. Rocks and spears gave way to boomerangs, arrows, darts, and bolts. “Chinese snow” appeared in fireworks a couple of centuries before English friar Roger Bacon described gunpowder in 1249. In 1327, England’s Edward II used guns to invade Scotland, but their performance didn’t match their novelty. The first guns were heavy tubes that required two attendants. One held the tube while his partner lit a priming charge with a burning stick or rope. The first lock was a lever by which a smoldering wick was lowered to the touch-hole in the barrel. Such guns were called matchlocks. Sixteenth-century German gun designers replaced the wick with a spring-loaded jaw that held pyrite (flint) against a serrated bar. Pulling the bar across the pyrite showered sparks into a pan that held a trail of fine gunpowder leading to the touch-hole. Around 1515 in Nuremberg the bar was replaced by a spring-loaded sprocket wound with a spanner wrench. Pulling the trigger released the wheel to spin against a fixed shard of pyrite held against the wheel’s teeth. The
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Man poised to shoot clay pigeon. Source: istockphoto/Gards.
subsequent flintlock featured a cock or hammer with a clamped flint that struck a steel plate above the pan. In 1806 Scotch clergyman Alexander John Forsythe became the first on record to ignite a spark inside the chamber of a gun. He used an explosive fulminate to generate sparks. In 1814, sea captain Joshua Shaw of Philadelphia upstaged a host of experimenters to produce a viable percussion cap. Columbus reached the Americas while armed with a triggerless matchlock. Pilgrims carried long 75-caliber smoothbore flintlocks, although the superior accuracy of rifled bores had been proven as early as 1498 in Germany. Americans did come to favor the jaeger (hunter) rifle with a 61- to 76-centimeter barrel of 65 to 70 caliber. To conserve lead, frontier gunsmiths made jaegers with small bores. To shave weight, they trimmed the stock. The svelte “Kentucky rifle,” derived mostly from Pennsylvania-based German gunmakers, resulted. Undersize balls in greased patches speeded loading. As the frontier edged west, the needs of hunters changed. Grizzly bears, bison, and elk were hard to kill with Kentucky rifles, whose barrels were also awkward in the saddle. Brothers Sam and Jake Hawken of St. Louis developed a shorter rifle with a half-stock and heavy 50-caliber soft-iron barrel with a slow rifling twist. Mid-nineteenth-century mountain men coveted their Hawkens. In 1848, New York inventor Walter Hunt developed a repeating rifle with the charge in the base of his “rocket ball” bullets. Financier George Arrowsmith and mechanic Lewis Jennings made the rifle more reliable. In 1849 Arrowsmith sold this “Volitional” repeater for $100,000 to railroad magnate Courtland Palmer. With Palmer’s backing, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson developed a metallic cartridge for it. In 1855 a group of
forty New York and New Haven investors bought out Smith, Wesson, and Palmer to form the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. Their first director, shirt salesman Oliver F. Winchester, hired B. Tyler Henry to reengineer both rifle and ammo. In 1860 Henry came up with a fifteen-shot repeater that would later impress Confederates as the “damned Yankee rifle you loaded on Sunday and fired all week.” But the Henry lacked the punch needed by buffalo hunters, who favored Remington Rolling Block and Sharps 1874 dropping-block single-shots chambered for cigar-size cartridges. When the Sharps Rifle Company folded in 1880, the sustenance and market hunting was over. Human scavengers would glean more than three million tons of bison bones from the plains. The days of buffalo hunting were short and shameful. By that time Winchester had discovered John Moses Browning, a frontier gun genius working from a crude shop in Ogden, Utah. Between 1883 and 1900, Browning would deliver forty-four designs to Winchester’s New Haven plant. The Model 1886 lever-action brought Browning $50,000 in 1885. The first successful gasoperated guns came from Browning, whose machine gun cycled 1,800 rounds in Colt’s test lab without malfunction. It weighed half as much as a Gatling. A fearsome succession of weapons followed. Hermann Goering would remark that if Germany had had Browning .50s, it might have defeated Britain’s RAF.
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By 1900 three of every four guns used by American sportsmen were Winchesters of Browning design. Only Peter Paul Mauser, who developed the bolt-action rifle in Germany during the 1880s, has had such lasting impact on the design of modern sporting guns. His rifles would allow twentieth-century designers like Roy Weatherby to extend the reach of hunters, target shooters, and tactical marksmen. The period between 1820 and 1900 was the most active in the history of firearms design. From flintlock to caplock, muzzle-loader to breech-loader, single-shot to repeater, firearms became more effective and reliable. They also determined the games that would entertain sportsmen and women. While hunters established the rifle market on the western frontier, target shooting became popular in the East. German- and Swiss-style Schuetzenfests included beer, sauerbraten, and beautiful single-shot rifles. The first recorded Schuetzenfest occurred in New York the year after the Civil War ended. Most shooting was done at 183 meters, offhand. The rifles weighed from 5.5 to 7.3 kilograms, with 32- to 45-caliber bores and sophisticated aperture sights. Shortly after 1900, scopes were permitted in some events. By that time, riflemen were competing in long-range matches shot prone with rifles resembling those used by buffalo hunters. In fact, Lewis L. Hepburn modified the Rolling Block as he began work for Remington on a rifle that would help beat the Irish sharpshooters who had won at Wimbledon in 1873. The Irish had subsequently challenged “any American team” to another contest. The team would comprise six men who would fire three rounds of fifteen shots, one round each at 732, 823, and 914 meters, onto targets 3.7 meters high and 1.8 meters wide, with 91-centimeter-square bull’s-eyes. The Sharps and Remington companies soon came up with prize funds and promised rifles for the event. An Amateur Rifle Club was formed to conduct tryouts. A fledgling National Rifle Association and the cities of New York and Brooklyn put up $5,000 each to build a rifle range on Long Island’s Creed’s Farm. Deeded to the NRA for $26,250 in 1872, it would be called Creedmoor.
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Remington’s new target rifle, a .44-90 shooting 550grain conical bullets, came off the line in March 1874. On 26 September, a favored Irish team shooting muzzleloaders bowed to the Americans and their new Remington and Sharps breech-loaders. The score was 934 to 93l. Matches held in 1875 and 1876 were won more decisively by the U.S. team. Remington Creedmoor rifles posted the highest scores. Experiments to test and improve the inherent accuracy of rifles led, in mid-nineteenth century, to a sport that has since grown. Benchrest shooting started as a noncompetitive diversion for hobbyists in the northeastern United States. After the 1930s, when benchrest competition blossomed, participants took the science of rifle accuracy more seriously. Women participated too. Sharpshooter Mary Louise DeVito fired ten shots into a group of less than 20 centimeters at 914 meters, a world record during the Vietnam era. Shooters and rifles kept improving. In August 2003, Kyle Brown put ten shots into a 10.7-centimeter group at 914 meters. Laurels in benchrest shooting go to competitors with the most accurate rifles and ammunition, and to those who can best read wind and mirage. In the past, however, accolades went to the most flamboyant shooters, many of whom were employed by traveling shows and gun and ammunition firms for exhibitions during the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries. Annie Oakley was one of these talents. Phoebe Ann Moses was born in a log cabin in Darke County, Ohio, in 1860. She shot her first game, a squirrel, at age eight. Subsistence hunting refined her skills with a rifle. At a local rifle match, she beat visiting sharpshooter Frank Butler. She was only fifteen! A year later they married, and Annie joined his traveling show under the name of Annie Oakley. Later, she joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Sweet-tempered and petite, Annie became an instant star. The German crown prince, later Kaiser Wilhelm II, once asked her to shoot a cigarette from his lips. She obliged, remarking after World War I that a miss might have changed history. Her sharpshooting
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The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun. ■ P. G. WODEHOUSE
demonstrations included an exhibition in 1884 when she used a .22 rifle to shatter 943 glass balls out of 1,000 tossed. If Annie had an equal, it was Ad Topperwein, born in 1869 near New Braunfels, Texas. With a .22 Winchester 1890 pump rifle, young Ad began shooting aerial targets and wound up shooting for a circus. In 1894, he used a rifle to break 955 of 1,000 clay 5.7-centimeter disks tossed in the air. Dissatisfied with the score, he repeated twice, shattering 987 and 989. Standard clay shotgun targets proved too easy; he broke 1,500 straight, the first 1,000 from 9.1 meters, the last 500 from 12.2 meters. Ad was also a showman. Holding a Model 63 with the ejection port up, he’d fire a cartridge, then shoot the ejected case in the air. He could riddle five tossed cans before any hit the ground. He drew Indian-head caricatures in tin with up to 450 bullets fired at a shot a second. After shooting at a washer tossed aloft, he’d tell onlookers the bullet went through the middle. Challenged by the audience, Ad would stick a postage stamp over the hole, toss the washer again and perforate the stamp. Topperwein began working for Winchester, where he met, wed, and teamed with Elizabeth Servaty. To audiences, she became “Plinky,” a fine shot in her own right. In 1916 she blasted 1,952 of 2,000 clay targets with a Model 12 shotgun. Topperwein’s exploits drew exciting competition, culminating with the remarkable performance by Remington salesman Tom Frye when he shot 100,004 out of 100,010 5.7 ✕ 5.7-centimeter airborne blocks with Nylon 66 autoloaders. Frye missed two of his first 43,725 targets. Other exhibition shooters entertained American audiences during the first half of the twentieth century, but such events dwindled after World War II. Herb Parsons, the last gun wizard to shoot for Winchester, recorded his stunts on film during the 1950s. Tom Knapp, who now shoots for Benelli, upstaged Parsons’s feat of hand-tossing seven clay targets at once and breaking them all with seven shots from a Winchester pump. Knapp emphasizes that the autoloading Benelli he used to hit nine clays might have helped Parsons too.
What Is Competitive Shooting? There are three main categories of target shooting: (1) rifle and (2) pistol shooting, and (3) shotgunning.
RIFLE AND PISTOL SHOOTING The most common rifle competition now practiced in the United States is conducted by clubs affiliated with the National Rifle Association, which has published rulebooks governing all of its sanctioned shooting events. The “black bull’s-eye” matches developed for riflemen accommodate a range of shooters and equipment. A BB gun match limits competitors to smoothbore air- or gas-powered guns firing .177 steel balls. Iron sights only are permitted. Firing distance: 5 meters. A three-position match comprises ten shots each in prone, kneeling, and offhand; four-position matches add ten shots in a sitting position. Precision air rifle competitions are three-position events using iron sights at 10 meters with air- or gas-powered rifles. Sporter air rifle events mandate lighter-weight rifles. They can include four-position matches and optical sights. Several courses of fire exist for .22 rimfires, including three- and four-position matches, prone matches, and team events. Some are fired at 15 meters on indoor ranges, others outdoors at longer yardage. Some specify iron sights; others allow scopes. A two-day prone match comprises 160 record shots each day at 46 meters, 50 meters, and 92 meters. The first day is shot with iron sights, the second with a scope. High-power (centerfire) rifle matches require longer ranges. The National Match Course includes 183-meter offhand and rapid-fire sitting stages, plus prone stages at 274 and 549 meters, all with iron sights. Service rifle and open categories level the playing field and encourage practice with military rifles. International rules for rifles, targets, and courses of fire are generally more stringent than NRA rules. One Olympic event is free rifle, consisting of 40 shots prone, 40 offhand, and 40 kneeling at 300 meters with an iron-sighted centerfire target rifle. All bull’s-eye rifle competition (NRA and international) is by the clock, though the deadline for each shot comes much more quickly in timed and
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rapid-fire events. At 105 minutes, the standing stage of free rifle gives marksmen more than 21⁄2 minutes for each record round. Bull’s-eye shooting has little to offer spectators. But metallic silhouette matches entertain. In 1967 Roy Dunlap and fellow shooters at Nogales, Arizona, imported this sport from Mexico. Original course of fire: 10 shots each at steel gallinas (chickens) at 200 meters, guajalotes (turkeys), at 385 and borregos (sheep) at 500. Dunlap added a bank of javelinas (pigs), to be shot at 300 meters. On April 12, 1969, the first American metallic silhouette match unfolded at the Tucson rifle range. An entry fee of 30 pesos, or $2.40, included all the pit-barbecued beef you could eat. Matches that followed were for centerfire rifles only, with an increased maximum weight of 4.6 kilograms to accommodate scope sights. Still, all shots had to be taken offhand (standing), without a sling or artificial support. The National Rifle Association has developed metallic silhouette courses for black-powder cartridge rifle, long-range pistol, short-range pistol, small-bore (rimfire) rifle, even air rifle and air pistol. Target sizes and distances vary. In centerfire and rimfire rifle matches, competitors fire 40, 60, 80, or 120 shots in five-round strings, with no sighting shots. Approximately 17,230,000 shooters fire at paper targets each year in the United States, including 10,966,000 handgunners. Traditional bull’s-eye pistol matches call for one-handed shooting, typically with autoloading guns that can be reloaded easily for tenshot strings. The National Match Course includes a tenshot, slow-fire string at 46 meters, plus five-shot timed-fire (20-second) and five-shot rapid-fire (10second) strings, both at 23 meters. There are gallery events for indoor shooting, and matches for certain types of handguns (rimfire or centerfire, pistol or revolver). Most but not all matches specify iron sights. International rules apply to additional courses: rapid fire, center fire, sport pistol match, standard pistol, air pistol, and free pistol. The latter, like the free rifle event, showcases superaccurate equipment fired very deliberately. The distance in this case is 50 meters.
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A practical extension of bull’s-eye shooting is police combat shooting. The target is black-on-white, as in bull’s-eye shooting, but it is shaped like a human torso. Prone, sitting, kneeling, and standing positions are all included in police combat. Shooters hold guns with both hands, as they would in a real emergency. In some matches, shooters use small “backup” guns. In others, caliber designations apply. A notch up in excitement from police combat is action pistol, another series of contests emphasizing speed and precision in real-world shooting scenarios. The Los Alamitos Pistol Match includes five stages, for a total of forty-two shots at 6, 9, and 23 meters. The same distances apply to moving target, twenty-four shots. During barricade events, shooters fire from behind simulated wall corners at 9, 14, 23, and 32 meters, six shots each in five, six, seven, and eight seconds. Shooters feel the same urgency in the falling plate event, as they fire at 20centimeter round metal disks. In some courses, competitors must use their weak hand; in others, timing starts with a holstered gun. Action pistol events have spawned a cottage industry in “race guns” tuned and modified for superior speed and accuracy.The events are telegenic and carry substantial purses. Competitors earn national recognition and endorsement packages in highprofile championships like the Bianchi Cup. Cowboy action shooting was developed in 1979 by Harper Criegh, Bill Hahn, and Gordon Davis, who formed the Single Action Shooting Society, the sport’s organizing body. Matches feature various competitions using handguns, rifles and shotguns most typical of the American West from 1860 to 1900. The emphasis is on speed and accuracy. Shooting scenarios have a Wild West theme, born from actual incidents, movie scenes, or match designers’ imaginations. Participants enjoy dressing up in clothing of the Old West era, and each must have a pseudonym or “handle,” adding a historical and theatrical flavor to the sport.
SHOTGUNNING Hitting targets in the air with a cloud of pellets from a smoothbore gun was recorded as early as 1793 in
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England’s Sporting Magazine. Live pigeons were placed in shallow cavities in the ground and “trapped” there with old hats. At the gunner’s signal, a jerk on the line attached to a hat released the pigeon. The first formal trap shoot in the United States occurred in Cincinnati in 1831. The passenger pigeon, a wild bird but then plentiful and easy to catch, was the target of choice. By 1850, live pigeon shooting had drawn lots of interest—but also complaints from people who objected to wholesale killing. Also, wild pigeons had become scarce. States began outlawing the sport. Then, in 1866, Charles Portlock of Boston improved on a sling device or trap used in England to throw glass balls. The balls flew and broke inconsistently; nonetheless, the sport grew. Captain Adam Borgardus, market hunter and exhibition shooter, devised a better trap. George Ligowsky of Cincinnati developed a clay disk that flew flatter and faster. In 1880 he demonstrated the target at a live bird shoot on Coney Island. A year later his improved trap gave the disks even more appeal. An Englishman named McCaskey soon made them easier to break by substituting river silt and pitch for the ground clay and water used by Ligowsky. Limestone later replaced the silt. “Clay pigeons” or “clay birds,” as they’re known today, are still made of limestone and pitch. Initially, trap shooters using the new disks participated in teams of six, one man behind each of five trap houses and an “extra” that rotated out after position number five. In 1885, W. G. Sargent of Joplin, Missouri, changed the game to incorporate three traps. Two years later, five shooters were shooting from five stations behind one trap. So the game remains. In American or ATA (Amateur Trapshooting Association) Trap, the clay bird leaves the trap at about 65 kilometers per hour, its direction determined by the trap arm, which pivots in a 44-degree arc. The target typically sails 46 meters if not hit; most hits occur at around 32. Regulations call for the shooting pad or line to be 15 meters behind the trap. In handicap events, the starting distance is 25 meters. A round of ATA Trap consists of twenty-five shots, five from each of five stations.
Birds visibly broken, even of only chipped, count as hits. Experts commonly break twenty-five. Doubles trap challenges shooters by lofting two birds at once. However, unlike singles trap, the doubles routine puts targets on known paths. International double trap is different still: an Olympic sport that incorporates three traps with birds traveling 16 kilometers per hour faster than in ATA events. International trap for single targets, an Olympic event since 1900, places competitors 16 meters behind a row of fifteen traps in a bunker. Extreme angles and speeds of up to 177 kilometers per hour make these targets devilishly difficult. Skeet, a game not invented until about 1920, uses the same disks, about 10 centimeters in diameter. They streak from two traps, one in a “high house,” one in a “low house,” at either end of an arc-shaped firing line comprising seven stations. A final station, number eight, lies between the houses. Targets emerge on fixed flight paths, but jet across the line of fire instead of away from it. Various angles are provided by the array of firing points. On four stations, shooters must also take doubles. As in trap, a round of skeet is twenty-five shots. Charles Davies of Andover, Massachusetts, apparently came up with the first skeet field because trap shooting wasn’t giving him practice for the steep angles he encountered when hunting birds. A young friend of Davies, Bill Foster, published an article on the novel game in the February 1926 issues of both National Sportsman and Hunting and Fishing magazines. He asked that readers name the event, offering a $100 prize to the winning suggestion. Mrs. Gertrude Hurlbutt of Dayton, Montana, came up with skeet, an old Scandinavian word for “shoot.” Unlike trap targets that quickly test the reach of a shooter’s gun, skeet targets fly close. Neither a heavy charge of shot nor a tight choke, the constriction at barrel’s end that squeezes a shot column together as it exits is necessary. Skeet includes games for 12-, 20-, and 28-gauge guns, even .410s. International skeet is more difficult than American skeet for several reasons. First, shooters must start with the gun-butt at hip level. Second, the targets zoom by at
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An old sign warning against entry into a firing range. Source: istockphoto.com/eas.
89 kilometers per hour, not 65, and they go farther. Also, there can be up to three seconds’ delay for target release after the shooter calls for the bird—an impediment to timing. Finally, the six easiest targets in American skeet do not appear at all on the International skeet card; they’re replaced by doubles at the difficult middle stations. A game of more value to hunters than trap or skeet is sporting clays. Originating in England, it came to the United States in the early twentieth century and has become exceedingly popular since 1989, when the National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA) was founded. Sporting clays courses are all unique, usually laid out to include field, woodland, and, where convenient, marsh. Traps are installed to throw targets at tough angles, into the sun and through thick vegetation where gunners get only a small window for the shot. “Rabbits” add variety. They’re special clay disks made to launch on edge and
to scoot along the ground, bouncing unpredictably. Doubles are part of sporting clays. A “true pair” means a simultaneous toss. A “report pair” gives you the second bird at the sound of your first shot. A “following pair” puts one bird up at your call and the second target aloft at the pleasure of the trap operator. A round of sporting clays uses up fifty shot shells. Scores on most courses are much lower than on trap and skeet fields. About 5,393,000 shotgunners fired at clay targets in organized U.S. events during 2002.
Competition at the Top The first World Shooting Championships occurred in Lyons, France, in 1897, when a local club organized a 300-meter rifle event on its twenty-fifth anniversary. Women began to compete formally in 1958. Now, world championships for men and women are held every four years.
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Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds. ■ LARRY BIRD
French nobleman Baron Pierre de Coubertin arranged the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, a year before the historic Lyons match. A former French pistol champion, de Coubertin urged the inclusion of shooting as one of the nine featured sports. In 1907, l’Union des Federations et Associations Nationals de Tir was established. Its successor, the UIT (Union International de Tir or International Shooting Union), imposes competition rules. It is headquartered in Munich. The number of Olympic shooting events has varied from two (in 1932) to twenty-one (in 1920). Individual and team events were slated until 1948, when UIT eliminated team matches. Women from the United States began winning in 1976, with Margaret Murdock’s silver in three-position rifle. Eight years later in Los Angeles, the Olympic Games included three shooting events for women: air rifle, three-position rifle, and sport pistol. Since the first Olympics, men and women shooting for the United States have won ninety medals. Of the top U.S. Olympic performers of all time, three are shooters. Only track and field and swimming have garnered more medals for the United States than the shooting sports. In 2004, the Athens Olympics scheduled seventeen rifle, pistol, and shotgun events, in which 390 men and women competed. Ages ranged from fifteen to fifty. The Grand American World Trapshooting Championships, hosted by the Amateur Trapshooting Association, is perhaps the premier shooting event in the world. Only the modern marathon has more participants in a single day of competition. It debuted at the Interstate Park in Queens, New York, in 1900, moved to Chicago, St. Louis, and Columbus before settling in Vandalia, Ohio, in 1923. In 2006, however, the Grand will once again move, this time to the World Shooting Complex in Sparta, Illinois. Among the tens of thousands of shooters who have participated have been celebrities such as John Philip Sousa and Roy Rogers. Annie Oakley competed only once, at age sixty-five, breaking ninety-seven of one hundred clays. She passed away the following year.
The Grand hosts seven thousand competitors annually. The facility at Vandalia features one hundred trap fields set side by side, where 5 million traps are thrown and more than a million dollars in prize money is awarded. The National Sporting Clays Championship, hosted by the National Sporting Clays Association, attracts more than one thousand competitors annually to the San Antonio, Texas, event. The National Skeet Shooting Association hosts the World Skeet Shooting Championship annually in San Antonio, at its National Shooting Complex, the world’s largest skeet shooting facility. The NRA National Outdoor Rifle and Pistol Championships is an annual event at Camp Perry, Ohio, during July and August. Here, the national championships in pistol, small-bore rifle three-position, small-bore rifle prone, high-power rifle, and high-power long range are established. Each of these categories encompasses a variety of individual and team championship events.
Governing Bodies Olympic shooting in the United States got a boost in 1978 with passage of the Amateur Sports Act and establishment of national teams, national development teams, coaching staffs, and training sites and programs. In 1995 the United States Olympic Committee assembled USA Shooting, a nonprofit corporation, to be the national governing body for shooting events. Its mission: prepare athletes for the Olympic Games and promote the shooting sports at the local level. USA Shooting is headquartered at the Olympic Training Center, a sophisticated complex in Colorado Springs with 101 firing points and three 10-meter running-target ranges indoors. It is the largest indoor shooting facility in the western hemisphere. Outdoors are four trap and skeet fields. The 41-hectare Olympic Training Center hosts competitions as well as training camps, coaching seminars, and visiting athletes. The Amateur Trapshooting Association, headquartered in Vandalia, Ohio, governs that sport’s rules and regulations and seeks ways to further enhance the sport
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and increase participation. It oversees more than six thousand registered shoots each year conducted by more than one thousand affiliated gun clubs. The National Skeet Shooting Association, founded in the early 1930s, is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. The nonprofit NSSA, owned and operated by its approximately twenty thousand members, is the largest organization in the world dedicated solely to the sport. It is dedicated to the development of the sport at all levels of competition and meaningful fellowship within its membership. The National Sporting Clays Association was founded in March 1989 and serves as the official premier sporting clays association, dedicated to the development of the sport at all levels of participation. It, too, is based in San Antonio, Texas, a hotbed of competitive clay-bird shooting. With a total of seventeen thousand members, NSCA clubs host numerous tournaments for the serious competitor and the casual shooter. Despite the importance of those governing bodies, the two most influential organizations in the shooting sports are the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. A group of National Guard officers began the NRA in 1871 to emphasize better marksmanship in support of national defense. Civil War hero General Ambrose E. Burnside was chosen as the NRA’s first president. Money from the NRA and the New York state government secured a 28-hectare tract on Long Island, New York, called Creed’s Farm. Renamed Creedmoor, it was soon developed as a shooting facility. The first matches there commenced 21 July 1873. The NRA’s first annual matches were held 8 October of that year. The 1874 contest between Ireland and the United States made Creedmoor a legendary place. For financial reasons, the NRA deeded Creedmoor to New York state in 1890, and later moved the national matches to Sea Girt, New Jersey. In 1903 Congress approved a National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice. Subsequently, surplus arms were transferred to state militias to encourage shooting at the local level.
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When Theodore Roosevelt, an ardent shooter, became U.S. president, the NRA had an ally in its drive to bridge state boundaries. By 1905, it had introduced a rifle shooting program to public schools. Meanwhile, crowding at Sea Girt forced construction of a new range near the shore of Lake Erie. Just before the 1907 matches were held there, the facility was dedicated as Camp Perry, after the commodore who triumphed over the British on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. In 1994 the NRA moved its headquarters to Fairfax, Virginia. By 2000, the NRA’s membership had reached 4.3 million. In 1961, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) was established as a trade association for the hunting and recreational shooting sports industry. Now headquartered in Newtown, Connecticut, the NSSF promotes participation and safety in firearms use. Among the shooting sports it promotes are scholastic rifle and shotgun programs. The rifle program tests speed and accuracy. The shotgunning programs include trap, skeet, and sporting clays. These programs teach young people through high school age firearms safety and shooting fundamentals while bringing them through intrasquad practices leading to state and national competitions. The NSSF has also embraced novice shooters through STEP OUTSIDE, a program that reaches out to experienced sportsmen to introduce and mentor newcomers to the sport.The foundation owns and sponsors the annual Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show), which brings together all facets of the shooting sports industry. The NSSF has partnered with federal agencies and state and local law enforcement agencies to distribute free firearms safety kits, including gun locks, and to encourage safe firearms storage. The foundation, through its range division, the National Association of Shooting Ranges, has helped upgrade and standardize environmental and professional practices to maintain the physical and fiscal health of the facilities that host the shooting sports in the United States. Wayne van Zwoll See also Hunting
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Further Reading Anderson, R., & Buckner, B. (2002). Jack O’Connor. Long Beach, CA: Safari. Barnes, F. (1993). Cartridges of the world. Iola, WI: Krause. Fadala, S. (1990). Great shooters of the world. South Hackensack, NJ: Stoeger. Ferber, S. (Ed.) (1977). All about rifle shooting and hunting in America. New York: Winchester. Knopf, R. (1999). Wing and clay shooting made easy. Woodland, WA: Outdoor Management Network. Migdalski, T. (1998). The complete book of shotgunning games. New York: McGraw-Hill. Sharpe, P. B. (1938). The rifle in America. New York: William Morrow. van Zwoll, W. C. (2001). The hunter’s guide to ballistics. Guilford CT: Lyons. van Zwoll, W. C. (2002). The hunter’s guide to accurate shooting. Guilford, CT: Lyons. Venturino, M. (2002). Shooting buffalo rifles of the Old West. Livingston, MT: MLV.
Silat
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ilat, or pencak silat, is the general term for a wide variety of indigenous martial arts traditions of the Malay-speaking world, encompassing the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, and to a lesser extend some parts of the Philippines and southern Thailand. Since the late twentieth century, it also has been practiced in Europe, America, and Australia. Silat is a mixture of self-defense, athletics, and dance, with strong spiritual, aesthetic, and ritual qualities. Performed in a wide variety of sociocultural circumstances, its practice settings range from small family groups to large international athletic championships. The official name currently in use is pencak silat. However, regional differences persist, with the term pencak and its dialectic variations often in use in Java and Madura, and silat predominantly used in other areas of Indonesia and Malaysia. Another application is to use the term pencak for the more artistic movements and silat for the actual self-defense applications.
Origins and Historical Context Predecessors of what today is called pencak or silat were known under various names and go back hun-
dreds of years. Knowledge of martial arts traditions in the Malay world was predominantly passed on through oral tradition, hence there are very few reliable written sources about the early development presently available.
PRE-HINDU PERIOD Reaching the furthest back in time into the pre-Hindu period are vivid origin myths and legends. One of the more colorful ones links Alexander the Great to the urancestors of the Minangkabau ethnic group and to the emergence of silat in West Sumatra, at Pariangan near Mount Merapi. Many origin myths credit divine inspiration of a mythic or historic figure with the creation of silat; others weave tales of a legendary founder observing animals and nature and thereby learning the foundations of silat movement and spirit. One of the more widely accepted theories places the origin of silat in the Riau islands between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula at around the sixth century. From there it probably spread first to Sumatra and then to Sunda and Java. Typical of cultural processes in the Malay world, these early indigenous self-defense techniques adapted various streams of influence from major high cultures of mainland Southeast Asia, China, India, and the Middle East that continuously flowed through the Malay world along ancient trading routes. This process eventually created distinct local Malay martial arts through long periods of acculturation and synthesis—a process that continues to this day.
HINDU-BUDDHIST PERIOD Various historical and archeological sources indicate the presence of highly developed, distinct martial arts systems at the court of the Malay Srivijaya empire. From the seventh to thirteenth centuries, this Hindu-Buddhist empire, centered in Palembang on Sumatra, extended its dominion over large parts of the Malay area and controlled the strategic Straight of Malacca. It was eventually eclipsed by the mighty Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit empire on Java (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries). In both courts martial arts were practiced by the court elite, guards, and military forces. Both empires had a
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prolonged interchange with major cultural centers in India and Indochina, which most likely led to influences from Hindu and Chinese martial arts styles in the further development of silat.
ISLAMIZATION With the fall of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit empire and the ascent and spread of Islam throughout the Malay world, martial arts also underwent changes. Especially, elements of the early mystical Sufi Islam blended well with indigenous spiritual aspects of silat. Over the centuries many Islamic doctrines and teachings found their way into silat philosophy and practice. Silat training gradually began to emphasize the development of noble character and the pursuit of a righteous path, along with the mastery of effective self-defense techniques. The development of physical as well as mental strength, outer and inner control, became strongly connected to the practice of faith.
COLONIAL PERIOD During the early periods of Dutch colonization of Java and the British colonization of the Malay Peninsula, silat continued largely unaffected by the Western powers.With expanding Dutch colonization of the wider Indonesian archipelago in the nineteenth century, however, the colonial government tightened its control over its subjects, and silat became a source of concern as a likely source of anticolonial sentiment. Many silat schools were banned, but practice often continued in secret. When the Indonesian independence movement emerged in force in the early twentieth century, many silat masters and students joined and were subject to intensifying harassment by the colonial police and military. During the brief interlude of Japanese occupation of Indonesia toward the end of World War II (1942– 1945), silat was initially encouraged by the Japanese as a means to strengthen a native fighting force within its scheme for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere; influences of Japanese martial arts in silat stem mostly from this brief period. However, as initial enthusiasm for the Japanese presence changed to widespread re-
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sentment, silat practice in turn fell under a ban on public assembly issued by the Japanese authorities.
INDEPENDENCE AND BEYOND After the end of World War II, the declaration of independence by Indonesia in 1945, and the eventual recognition of the Republic of Indonesia as an sovereign state in 1949, the new nation sought to shape a postcolonial national identity to unify the country‘s many ethnic, religious, and cultural groups. Along with national efforts of the administration addressing issues of education and language, leaders also looked to pencak silat’s potential as a pan-Indonesian national art and sport. Efforts were undertaken to integrate silat education into the public school system. In the late twentieth century, silat also became a competitive sport in the international arena. The emphasis in silat was again shifted, this time onto the sport aspects. (see “Official Organizations” following). Malaysia reached independence from British colonial rule in 1957 and followed a similar path to make silat a national sport.
Social and Cultural Context The practice of silat is intricately interwoven with the cultural fabric of the Malay world. Its principles embody and perpetuate central cultural values, and silat plays an important role in the cultural identity and education of the younger generation. Proper silat practice aims at the following goals: mastery of self-defense, strengthening of mind and character, development of aesthetic/artistic sensibility, and enhancement of general fitness and athletic ability. Depending on the style or circumstance, one aspect might be emphasized more than others, however, all four aspects are always present. A master of silat is highly respected in society and often referred to by the honorary title pendekar. This title is reserved for masters who epitomize the core values of silat specifically and of Malay culture generally. They are recognized as elders and spiritual leaders in the community; often they are healers or believed to possess supernatural powers. In the ideal of the pendekar one often finds an intriguing synthesis of old animistic, Hindu,
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Silat practitioners in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Source: Kirstin Pauka.
and Islamic beliefs. Frequently, silat is performed as an integral part of traditional celebrations such as harvests, weddings, circumcisions, and many other community and religious festivals. In these cultural contexts the performances focus on the artistic and aesthetic aspect and are often accompanied by traditional musical orchestras such as gamelan, kendang, or talempong ensembles. However, it is not only viewed as entertainment, but also believed to bestow protection over the participants and community. Due to its inherent aesthetic qualities, silat elements have also been integrated into dance and theater genres, for example Randai dance-drama of the Minangkabau, various Malay and Sundanese dances, and Javanese Ketoprak theater.
Techniques, Styles, and Schools Traditional silat is practiced predominantly in rural areas all over the Malay Peninsula and Indonesian archipelago were many regional styles called aliran have developed. Hundreds of such regional aliran are still practiced today and their techniques and approaches differ greatly. These countless regional styles and variations have developed over the past hundreds of years, owing to different environmental conditions, varying exposure to other martial arts traditions, contact with multitudes of philosophies and religions, and support or suppression through political and social circumstances. Last but not least manifold styles resulted from the distinct skills, inventiveness, expertise, and genius of individual teachers and masters. Several basic characteristics however are shared among silat styles. Foremost among them is its general evasive or defensive quality, in which the aim is to unbalance opponents and diminish their advantage. All styles include basic postures, steps, and greeting etiquette that precede actual attack-defense exercises. Many styles favor circular ver-
sus linear approaches, and many feature positions low to the ground. Many styles or single techniques are inspired by animal movements or other elements in nature. The training is preferably held in a natural outdoor environment, often at night, in a practice area customarily called gelanggang. The foundation of all silat is specific footwork called langkah. Basic fighting techniques include kicks, punches, grabs, blocks, parries, locks, and throws, all with the aim to unbalance the opponent and bring him into a position from which he can no longer attack. More advanced training includes techniques aiming at vital points; on the next higher level special training for inner strength (kebatinan) is emphasized. True masters can eventually execute longdistance strikes without physically touching their opponent. The kind of approach used depends on the circumstance. Obviously, the techniques applied in a live-threatening self-defense situation are quite different from those used in a tournament situation with strict rules or in a public performance. Among all the martial arts styles in the world, silat employs one of the largest arsenals of weapons. Foremost among them is the keris. Expertly crafted, this long, wave-bladed dagger is the most important weapon in Malay and Indonesian cultures. It possesses deep spiritual and ceremonial significance. Straight-bladed versions exist as well, along with multiple other variations of knives, daggers, machetes, halberds, and swords of variable length and shape, augmented by a dizzying array of spears, staffs, tridents, chains, discs, whips,
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shields, and other handheld or throwing weapons. Quite a few of these were imported from mainland Southeast Asia, China, India, or the Middle East and then adapted, while many others are of indigenous origin, highly specialized and only used in a specific region. Costuming for silat practice, performance, and competition typically consists of a long-sleeve shirt and loose trousers, preferably of black or dark cloth, a bright colored sash, and a head cloth, wrapped in the various distinct local fashions. The various styles are taught in schools or clubs, called perguruan, ranging in size from very small groups with just a handful of select students to large organizations with memberships in the tens of thousands and branches all over Indonesia and abroad. Some schools teach only one style under one master, with the knowledge predominantly passed on through oral tradition. Others teach several styles separately or as a synthesis. The more modern types of schools have written rules and regulations. The master teacher of a school is referred to as maha guru (grand master) or pendekar. Silat students, called pesilat, owe loyalty and respect to their teachers and lifelong connections are typically formed between student and master.
Competitions There are two types of competitions: traditional ones within an aliran, and modern ones in the context of sports tournaments. The traditional ones are part of the standard training process and give students within a school the opportunity to compete against fellow students according to the rules of the specific aliran. Since the 1980s modern competitions are organized regularly by the national federations and every two years world championships are held by PERSILAT. Silat competitions have been included in the Southeast Asia Games. Efforts are underway as of 2004 to make silat part of the Olympic Games as well. World championships are attended by increasing numbers of member states and participants, as the worldwide appeal of this art and sport genre grows continuously. The Twelfth World Championship in Penang, Malaysia, in 2002, for instance, attracted over 150 participants from twenty nations.
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The tournament rules are set by PERSILAT to include one category for the sports silat (olahraga) variant of full-contact fighting and three for the arts silat (seni) variant. The sports competition, called tanding, consists of three 2-minute rounds of one-on-one full-contact fighting. The combatants wear protective gear; permissible targets include the torso and limbs, hits to the head, groin, and spine are illegal. Combatants compete in standard weight divisions for men and women. A referee and judges use a point system to determine the winner. The seni category is subdivided into three competition types. The first, tunggal, consists of choreographed forms, preset by PERSILAT, in which a single competitor performs one part empty-handed and two parts with weapons, using the golok and tongkat (a type of machete and staff respectively). The second type is the ganda, in which a duo of performers presents their own choreography, using empty-handed techniques as well as weapons. The third is the regu, a standardized threeperson sequence performing a set choreography. In all three seni categories the competitors are evaluated by a point system for accuracy of movement, level of skill, precision, and timing. In addition, the ganda category is also graded for creativity of the individual choreography showcasing beautiful and effective silat moves. All seni forms are three minutes long. Both arts and sports competitions are typically held concurrently at all major championships; male and female participants compete in both. Although silat was historically predominately a male activity, many notable female silat masters are known all over the Malay world. Since the 1970s girls and women also participate in increasing numbers in competitions on the regional level as well as in national and international tournaments. The vast majority of silat practitioners are amateurs. A small elite of professional athletes and trainers has developed along with efforts to make silat a national and international sport.
Governing Bodies In 1948 the first national silat organization was founded in Indonesia by Mr. Wongsonegoro and other leaders in the silat community. Called Indonesian
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Pencak Silat Federation or IPSI (Ikatan Pencak Silat Indonesia, www.pencaksilat.co.uk/psfIPSI.htm), its goals were the coordination and systematization of silat schools and practices within Indonesia, and the consolidation of silat as a national sport. In 1980 the International Pencak Silat Federation or PERSILAT (Persekutuan Pencak Silat Antarbangsa, www. persilat.net/persilat) was established in Jakarta in order to coordinate silat in the international arena. For this IPSI was joined by the official silat federations in Malaysia (PESAKA), Singapore (PERSISI), and Brunei Darussalam (PESIB). In addition to the four founding member states, the PERSILAT federation includes more than twenty other official member organizations in other areas, such as Pentjak Silat USA (www.pentjaksilatusa.com), the European Pencak Silat Federation (www.pencaksilat.co.uk/ epsfwlcm.htm), and groups in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North and South America, and the Pacific region. The main goals of PERSILAT and its members are to promote, develop, and disseminate pencak silat worldwide. PERSILAT issues guidelines and rules for training, promotion, and competition; organizes regular tournaments and championships; and trains and licenses coaches and judges. It also holds regular seminars and sponsors publications on silat. In 1997 the organization also established an official silat training center in Jakarta, known as Padepokan. It has to be added that there are numerous silat schools throughout Indonesia and Malaysia who do not join PERSILAT or the national federations in order to retain their individual style and training philosophy. Kirstin Pauka
Further Readings Alexander, H., & Chambers, Q. (1970). Pentjak-silat: The Indonesian fighting art. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Chambers, Q., & Draeger, D. F. (1978). Javanese silat: The fighting art of Perisai Diri. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Draeger, D. F. (1992). Weapons and fighting arts of the Indonesian archipelago. Rutland, VT: C. E. Tuttle. Mustaffa, K. A. (1978). Silat Melayu: The Malay art of attack and defense. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Oxford University Press. Notosoejitno. (1997). The treasury of pencak silat. Jakarta, Indonesia: Sagung Seto.
Wahab, A. A. (1989). Silat olahraga: The art, techniques and regulations. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia.
Singapore
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ingapore is an equatorial island city-state of four million people. Independent since 1965, it is a multicultural democracy, in which Chinese, Malays, and Indians are the dominant groups. Sport is seen as playing an ongoing role in nation building, with particular emphasis on sport for all, sports excellence, and sport as an industry. Most sports are of British origin with association football being accepted as the national game.
History The indigenous sports that exist are Malay in origin. A game played with a rattan ball (sepak takraw) is still a popular three-person team game. Sailing and silat (a martial art) are the other traditional activities. Colonization by the British brought with it the range of team and individual sport associated with middle- and late-nineteenth-century diffusion. The games were fully adopted by the 1930s, by which time many sports had local administrative associations. A love of gambling, a trait shared by the colonial power and the migrant Chinese, has long been a complementary activity. The colonial government paid little attention to sport, considering it a fundamentally amateur activity. Funding for representative competitive sport was often the sole responsibility of the individual athlete. The system of subscription and donation did ease the burden of finance before independence.
Participant and Spectator Sports Badminton and weightlifting were the most successful sports during the late colonial period, with Singapore sportsmen winning international honors in the Thomas Cup and Commonwealth Games respectively. Swimming, sailing, and, more recently, table tennis have been
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the most productive sports in the South East Asian (SEA) Games and the Asian Games since independence. The state-operated system now recognizes the status of core and merit sports. Track and field, badminton, silat, sailing, soccer, swimming/water polo, table tennis, and bowling now receive the most emphasis within the sports excellence program. Soccer operates a professional league, which includes an additional team each from Japan and China. The major venue for international games and contests is the national stadium. A wide range of sport is played at both competitive and recreational levels. Well-established team games (basketball, volleyball, rugby, hockey, and cricket) and individual games (golf, tennis, squash, and billiards) have been supplemented by martial arts (judo, taekwondo, and wushu). Outdoor adventure activities, water sports, and healthy lifestyle activities are available for all age groups. The most recent inclusion to the SEA games has been international chess, which has a wide following in schools. The quadrennial Asian Games and the biennial SEA Games are the most prominent regional competitions. Singapore has won only one medal in the Olympic games—a silver medal achieved in weightlifting by Tan Howe Liang in 1960. National identity in relation to sport has become an increasingly important issue as calls for success are made. Achievement in international games is promoted through direct policies and growing expenditure. The sports excellence programs are supported by initiatives to nurture young athletes, for example in a new sports school. Talented athletes from countries like China are encouraged to develop their talent in Singaporean programs, with a view to adopting citizenship.The dilemma now exists that foreign talent is not always seen to reflect the national sporting profile.
Women and Sport One concern has been the lack of Singaporean women’s participation in sport at all forms. The Women and Sport Group, working under the auspices of the Singapore Sports Council (SSC), has become one of the foremost bodies promoting sport for women in Asia. The
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pioneer female Olympian competed in Helsinki in 1952. Since then one in seven Singaporean Olympians have been women.
Youth Sports Youth participation in sport exists within the school system and among the clubs and associations. The People’s Association (a statutory body) provides extensive developmental programs at community clubs. Regional fitness and recreational centres provide a sophisticated range of facilities and amenities.
Organizations The major national organization is the SSC, which is a statutory board of the Ministry of Community Development and Sports (www.ssc.gov.sg/SportsWeb/index.jsp). The Vision of the SSC is to create “A Sporting Singapore! Our Way Of Life,” and the mission statement elaborates the need to “develop sports champions and create enjoyable sporting experiences for Singapore.” The individual National Sports Associations are affiliated to the SSC and to the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC, www.snoc.org.sg). The educational arm of the SNOC is the Singapore Olympic Academy, which organizes an annual session for trainee teachers of physical education. The Academy also links the Olympic associations within the South East Asian region and Asia beyond by inviting delegates to its residential course.
Sports in Society The general societal perception of sport is that as an institution it has to compete with the twin demands of education and employment. It has not been easy to provide a balance of emphasis. The local news media concentrate on international sporting events and leagues, while the homegrown professional scene enjoys only moderate support. Globalization has placed the English Premier League and the NBA into sharp relief for the local population. There have been periodic examples of illegal performance enhancement, but not to a significant degree.
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The most controversial issues in recent years concern the sports excellence program. Among these, the foremost has been the foreign-talent identification scheme, which is perceived by some observers to limit the potential of local-born athletes. Singaporeans do not find it easy to accept foreign talent as their own. The establishment of the new Sports School, which has a longterm plan to create champions, caused some concern about the policy to focus initially on potential entrants with above-average academic qualifications at primaryschool level. The relatively low status of elite sport and the relatively high status of educational achievement in society as a whole means that the combination of sports and academic excellence is often viewed with some scepticism.
The Future The most significant trend has been toward the creation of a sports hub as a component of a sports industry. Hosting major international sporting events has become an important item on the agenda. Sports for all remains an important pillar in the development of the culture of sport, but the perception is that excellence in competition, and the underlying commercial interest in sport, must generate gains that benefit the economy as a whole. Five hundred million dollars have been committed to the concept of “Team Singapore” over the next five years. The plan has been to steer the people toward accepting the concept of an identifiable culture known as Sporting Singapore. Nick Aplin
Further Reading Aplin, N. G. (2000). Beyond the Boundaries of Propriety: Singapore’s Pioneer Women Athletes. Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 9, 91–114. Aplin, N. G., & Teoh C. S. (2001). Singapore. In Karen Christensen, Allen Guttmann, & Gertrude Pfister (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports (Vol. 3, pp. 1013–11014). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. Aplin, N. G. (2002). To the finishing line: Champions of Singapore. Singapore: SNP Editions, SNP Corporation Aplin, N. G., & Quek, J. J. (2003) Celestials in touch: Sport and the Chinese in Colonial Singapore. In J. A. Mangan (Ed.), Sport and
Asian Society: Past and Present (pp. 67–98) London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Horton, P. A. (2001). Complex Creolization: The evolution of modern sport in Singapore. In J. A. Mangan (Ed.), Europe, sport world: Shaping global societies (pp. 77–104). London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Horton, P. A. (2003). Shackling the lion: Sport and modern Singapore. In J. A. Mangan (Ed.), Sport and Asian Society: Past and present (pp. 243–274). London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass.
Skateboarding
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kateboarding involves riding a wheeled board. The first skateboards were created by connecting roller skate wheels to a wooden plank. Thus, the terms “skate” and “board” were also connected to name the activity. Technology has dramatically improved from these first iterations. For example, the wheels have gone though numerous upgrades from clay wheels of roller skates initially used to polyurethane ones currently used. Even though skateboards are now massed produced, there is no “official” standard for the composition or shape of boards and wheels; instead, these vary according to techniques and styles within skateboarding. Part of this flexibility can be explained by skateboarding’s historical appeal to those seeking alternatives to formalized sport and its association with antiestablishment youth culture.
Brief History Skateboarding’s history began in southern California, and much of the industry is still located there.The initial popularity occurred in the early 1960s when skateboards were first mass produced. Since then, skateboarding has gone through many “boom or bust” cycles. These cycles are often linked to the legal status of skateboarding as well as the general health of the economy. During the first cycle of popularity, the infrastructure to develop safe and secure places to skate was weak. Thus, skateboarders commonly used sidewalks, school playgrounds, and parking lots as their parks. This caused concern from store owners and public officials because
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A boy at a skate park. Source: istockphoto.com/ csdesigns.
many skaters were disrupting commercial transactions and were incurring injury. City officials were concerned, and many medical associations warned people of the inherent danger of the sport. These two widespread concerns led to waning support and participation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Skateboarding made a comeback in the 1970s primarily through groundbreaking technology that allowed smoother and safer rides: the creation of the polyurethane wheel. The boards were long and skinny and most people rode in slalom style or freestyle. Downhill rides were common as were tricks such as doing handstands while riding on the board. Skateboarding’s commercial appeal increased as other youthoriented products, such as soda companies, began sponsoring competitions. During this cycle, privately owned skate parks started to spring up around the United States. These parks were a sea of cement, including toboggan like runs as well as pool-like “bowls.” Through its first two decades, skateboarding was primarily associated with suburban middle classes and gradually gained mainstream appeal. During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, however, there were widespread closures of skateboard parks because of liability issues. These legal barriers encouraged skateboarding to change in style and location, which, in turn, severed ties to the mainstream. Skaters continued to practice ramp
or bowl skating, but this occurred illegally in drained pools or at ramps located in private residences. Skateboarders embraced the punk rock movement as well. In a sense, skateboarding became more “underground” during the 1980s. In addition, the style became more airborne and was taking place primarily in urban settings. Christian Hosoi and Tony Hawk were considered the top ramp/ bowl skaters because of their ability to get height above and outside of the ramps (“to get air”) and because of their creativity. The other significant style developed in the 1980s was “street.” The crucial innovation for this style was the “ollie”: a technique that enables the skater to propel the board completely off the ground.This skill is essential for other more elaborate tricks that allow a skateboarder to “jump” onto a variety of objects. Once the board lands on an object, the skater will generally ride the board over it by sliding along the object. This style commonly takes place in everyday city settings rather than in commercially produced skateboard parks. For example, skateboarders often jump their board onto handrails, then slide their boards down those rails. The variations skaters create involving this jumping and sliding are the basis for current “street style” of skateboarding. Skateboarding’s association with legal problems, urban settings, and punk rock and grunge music effectively helped to distance itself from the mainstream. And this “edgy” connotation was used by the industry as commercial appeal to a worldwide youth market. One chief executor officer claimed that he was selling the “California lifestyle” abroad. In the late 1980s, skateboarding reached a peak in actual participation, but the economic recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s took a toll on skateboarding: the lowest participation rates were during the early 1990s.
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Twenty years ago you could win a world title with a double axel. Now they need at least seven triples. ■ ELLEN BURKA
Renewed Popularity and Cultural Appeal The advent of the X-games in the mid-1990s catapulted skateboarding back into mainstream consciousness. This made-for-television event was the idea of an ESPN (an all-sport network) executive. The goal was to reach a young audience by creating the “Olympics” of alternative sports. Ramp skateboarding became a central feature of these games. The X-games are now a global phenomenon with competitions held throughout the world. Another broadcast corporation created a similar event, the “Gravity Games,” to compete in that market. Skateboarding has evolved with many different styles, although ramp, pool, and street skating are still the most familiar forms. Even at its height of popularity, the underlying ethos of being alternative has fueled political struggles over whether a universal governing body for the sport should be formed. The most famous participant, Tony Hawk, represents the newfound popularity of skateboarding. In a poll conducted by a teen marketing research firm in 2002, Tony Hawk was voted the “coolest big-time athlete” ahead of more traditional sport athletes such as Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and Derek Jeter. The number of participants was at an all-time high at the turn of the twenty-first century, reaching approximately 12 million. Females constituted approximately 10 percent of those participants, and skateboarders such as Cara Beth Burnside and Jen O’Brien made livings as professionals. As the sport has become popular, the clothing and lifestyle have taken on greater cultural appeal to the youth market. Currently, more money is made from sales of shoes and specialty clothing to a general audience than from the sales of boards to core participants. Skateboarding and many other alternative sports became a symbol of the active, creative, independent, and ultimately, “cool” teenager in the later 1990s. The significance of skateboarding as a cultural marker of “cool” can be demonstrated by looking at the how many different corporations use the symbols of skateboarding to sell products not directly related, such as video games, music, fast food, and drinks.
The Future Skateboarding has historically been associated with youth who wanted to practice an alternative to mainstream sport. This is represented in the lack of formal structures and continual changes in style and technology. This alternative ethos evolved in the 1980s and 1990s to represent antiauthoritarianism. The direction of skateboarding will be affected by this most recent commercialization and use of skateboarding as a symbol of “cool.” It will be interesting to see if there is a backlash to this mainstream appeal, or whether skateboarding becomes accepted as a conventional sport. Becky Beal
Further Reading Beal, B. (1995). Disqualifying the official: An exploration of social resistance in the subculture of skateboarding. Sociology of Sport Journal, 2,252–267. Borden, I. (2000) Skateboarding, Space and the City. Oxford, UK: Berg. Brooke, M. (1999). The Concrete Wave: The History of Skateboarding. Toronto, Canada: Warwick. Davis, J. (1999). Skateboard Roadmap. London: Carlton Books. Davidson, B. (1976). The Skateboard Book. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Layden, T. (2002, June 10). What is this 34 year old man doing on a skateboard? Making millions. Sports Illustrated, 80–92. Rinehart, R., & Sydnor, S. (Eds.), (2003). To the extreme: Alternative sports inside and out. New York: State University of New York Press. Wheaton, B., & Beal, B. (2003). “Keeping it real”: Subcultural media and the discourses of authenticity in alternative sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38, 155–176. Wheaton, B. (Ed.) (2004). Understanding lifestyle sports: Consumption, identity, and difference. London: Routledge Press.
Skating, Ice Figure
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ce figure skating is a sport that combines athletic skills, musical interpretation, and choreography. Performances and competitions are organized in four categories: women’s singles, men’s singles, pairs, and ice dancing. A judged, aesthetic sport, ice figure skating spans the borders of art and entertainment. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ice figure skating was an elegant art practiced primarily by upper-
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class men in cold climates. Today ice figure skating is a middle-class sport in which girls heavily outnumber boys at all but the highest levels. Clubs are as likely to be found in Australia or California as in Oslo, Norway, or Toronto, Canada, and spectators are as likely to watch skaters performing in competitions as in highly staged television specials.
Early History Early skaters were sliders; they slid across frozen lakes and rivers on runners made from sharpened bone or wood, sometimes using poles or sticks to propel themselves and to maintain their balance. About the fourteenth century the Dutch replaced these runners with blades made of iron. Sharpened metal blades have distinct edges that grip the ice, allowing for stronger pushes and more speed. The edge of the blade cutting into the ice gives each stroke its distinctive sound and requires the curving step that is the basis of all modern skating. In the Netherlands skating was both transportation and recreation. Sixteenth-century Dutch paintings show men, women, and children of all classes skating on the iced-over canals. The integration of skating into everyday life seems to have been unique to the Netherlands, as was the democracy of Dutch skating. Apart from a few attempts to use skates in the military, skating evolved throughout the rest of Europe and North America as a form of recreation that took different forms among people of different classes. Until the late 1800s skaters were tied to the landscape in obvious ways. If no ice existed, no one skated. If the river was long, and the ice was solid, skaters might run races or use their skates to travel quickly and easily from village to village. On ponds where no distance captured their imaginations, skaters explored the technical possibilities of the blade on the ice. Different landscapes led to different forms of skating, and these different forms became associated with the people who practiced them. In the Fen District of England, for instance, where the still, flat water froze in great smooth stretches, farm laborers—mostly men—invented courses and formats for
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racing on skates, a pastime that would eventually turn into the formal sport of speed skating. In London and other big cities skating was a pastime of young boys and well-to-do gentlemen. While the boys played games on frozen ditches or canals, the gentlemen practiced a sedate and dignified style of gliding on small ponds and lakes in urban parks and estates.This “gentle art” was the style of skating that would eventually turn into ice figure skating.The product of elegant and noble manners, it became a popular court entertainment, honed at ice balls and masquerades and at other aristocratic gatherings across the continent. With few exceptions—Marie Antoinette (wife of King Louis XVI of France) being one—early practitioners of the gentle art were men. Women, bundled in fur robes, were more likely to be pushed about the ice in carved wooden sleighs. In Russia the first skating club, founded in 1865, had even a special department of “chaise” skating. Skating historians do not know why so few women outside of the Netherlands skated. Some historians suggest that feminine skating would have been considered too liberated or immoral. Others suggest that women were afraid of breaking through the ice or that women’s clothing made skating impractical. The world’s first skating club was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the mid-1700s. Until 1910 membership in the club was restricted to upper-class men. Potential members were vetted for social standing and given a test of their skating skills that required them to skate a circle on each foot and to jump over three hats stacked on the ice. Although later clubs in Europe and North America also catered exclusively to upper-class men, many began to offer memberships to women during the late 1800s. Women’s memberships, however, usually depended on the women’s ties to husbands, brothers, or fathers. In some clubs, if a woman ceased to live in the home of a male club member, her own membership would be terminated. During the second half of the nineteenth century technical developments made skating easier, more comfortable, and more accessible. In many cities skating was moved from frozen lakes and rivers to flooded urban
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fields to avoid the danger of drowning. Steel blades were developed in Philadelphia in 1848. The first covered rink (over natural ice) was built in Quebec City, Canada, in 1858, complete with gas lights to allow safe skating at night. Processes for making artificial ice were invented in London in 1876.With these improved conditions, the number of skating clubs increased dramatically, as did the numbers of women skaters.
Competing Skating Styles During the late 1700s and early 1800s the art of skating involved little more than long rolling edges that were sometimes embellished with expressive head and arm movements. According to Robert Jones, author of the first skating textbook, published in England in 1772, the primary goal of the skater was easy movement and grace. For Jones technique was far less important than aesthetics. Skaters in France also emphasized artistic movement and expressive poses, whereas Canadian and U.S. skaters were more inclined to focus on tricky footwork combinations and spins. In England and elsewhere in Europe stunts such as jumps and spins were frowned upon and were considered by many not to be true skating. By the mid-1800s British society was increasingly organized around industry and science. Skating reflected this organization. British skaters turned their primary interest from aesthetics toward technical innovation. What came to be called the “English style” emphasized long edges and turns, and this style is reflected in the English term figure skating. It demanded a stiff upright posture and tremendous control. Knees were not to bend. Arms were not to lift. Nothing fanciful was to interfere with precision. It could not have been more different from the flowing style of Robert Jones’s time nor the heavily choreographed performances of today. While British skaters were practicing this exacting ice science, skaters on the continent were pushing their aesthetic limits. In other languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, and German, this style is known as “artistic skating”; it has evolved into the music-based ice figure skating with which we are familiar today. A U.S.
skater, Jackson Haines (1845–1879), is generally credited with creating this style. Trained as a dancer, Haines saw in skating tremendous theatrical and artistic possibilities. He fit his skating to music, developed new moves (including the sit spin, which for many years was called a “Jackson Haines spin”), and invented a one-piece skate. Although nonskating audiences found him thrilling to watch, few skaters adopted his radical style. In 1864 Haines left the United States and traveled to Europe to find a more receptive audience. Evidence suggests that he skated to warm receptions in Norway, Sweden, and Russia and that his exhibitions in those countries prompted the founding of ice figure skating clubs and the building of ice rinks. However, in Vienna, Austria, Haines had his greatest success, and his performances changed the future development of skating. The book Tracks on the Ice, written in 1881 by Viennese skaters Demeter Diamantidi, Carl Von Korper, and Max Wirth, turned Haines’s technical accomplishments into a system that eventually served as the basis for international competition rules. The system provided the technical ground upon which skating could grow: edges, turns, and school figures. For the first time the turns were skated as part of large figure eights (school figures), a concept that revolutionized skating and remained fundamental to its practice until the late 1980s. Tracks on the Ice stressed the aesthetic component in both figures and free skating movements. The idea behind the system was that after skaters had mastered the basic techniques they could engage with ice figure skating as an art.
Institutionalization of the Sport Eager to promote their style of skating, the Viennese organized some of the first international competitions during the 1870s and 1880s. Thus, their artistic style, which was known as the “international style,” and not the stiff English style, came to be institutionalized as a sport. English skaters were, however, the first to be governed by a national organization. The National Skating Association (NSA) was founded in England in 1879 to curb gambling and professionalism in speed skating,
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but ice figure skaters joined the organization in 1880. The NSA became responsible for administering a series of graded tests to raise the level of skating skills. Such tests remain the foundation of instructional skating programs in many parts of the world today. Outside of England most national skating organizations were founded to standardize the rules of competitions. On the encouragement of the Dutch federation, fifteen delegates from European federations came together in 1892 to found the International Skating Union (ISU). Although the ISU immediately implemented rules for speed skating, it did not implement rules for ice figure skating until 1897, a delay that signaled differences of opinion and tense relations between some of the members of the organization. Before the founding of the ISU, competitions had been organized for women and men at both local and international levels in figure skating and free skating. In many competitions women and men competed against each other in the same events. Despite this tradition, ISU world championships, which began in 1896, were open only to men. In 1902 the English skater Madge Syers (1881–1917) challenged the ISU’s restrictions and became the first woman to compete for an official world title. Unable to imagine that a woman would ever dare to skate against men, members of the ISU had no rule with which they could block Syers’s participation. She went on to win the silver medal behind the great Swedish skater Ulrich Salchow (1877–1949). At the ISU Congress in 1903 members discussed (but never passed) a rule explicitly prohibiting women from competing. They argued that women’s long skirts prevented judges from seeing their feet. Not until 1906 did the ISU approve a women’s championship. Madge Syers took the first ISU women’s championship. She won the ISU title again in 1907. She also won the first Olympic title in 1908 when ice figure skating made its Olympic debut at the Summer Games in London, one of the first sports to allow women to compete. Not until 1924 did the ISU permit women to compete for the title of world champion. Women were not permitted to judge international skating championships until 1947.
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In the first ISU competitions school figures determined 67 percent of a skater’s final score, whereas free skating determined just 33 percent. During that era free-skating programs included single rotation jumps and various spins that were connected with long edges, dance steps, and turns. Carriage and flow were emphasized more than athleticism. In 1882 Axel Paulsen (1855–1938) first performed the famous one-and-onehalf rotation jump that would take his name. However, despite his spectacular jump and his ability to spin at blistering speed, he placed third. Dash and athleticism were not what counted most. Until about the mid-twentieth century competitive skaters were adults. Although men and women were generally capable of the same feats, decorum and long skirts limited women’s ability to practice jumps in public. The first jump by a woman in international competition was performed by bronze medalist Theresa Weld (1893–1978) of the United States during the 1920 Olympic Games. Weld was chastised by the judges for her unfeminine behavior. Some say her jump cost her the gold medal. However, her daring opened the door for further change. At the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, an eleven-year-old girl from Norway stunned the crowd and the judges with her youth, her combination of athleticism and artistry, and the shortness of her skirt. Sonja Henie (1912–1969), who would become the most popular ice figure skater of all time, finished last in this first international appearance. She would eventually win ten world championships and three Olympic gold medals. To say that she changed the face of ice figure skating is an understatement. As a child participating in what had previously been an adult sport, Henie introduced an athleticism that had not been seen in women’s skating. Because of her youth, she broke no rules of decorum by wearing the short skirts that allowed her to do jumps and innovative spins. She was also among the first skaters to choreograph a skating program as if it were a ballet solo. Prior to this innovation free-skating routines relied heavily on the turns and edges used in school figures, linked by a few special tricks. Henie’s programs
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The ten-step, showing the man’s steps.
told a story with jumps and spins worked into a seamless whole. Retiring from competition after the 1936 season, Henie toured with her own skating show before heading for Hollywood. There she rented a rink and gave a performance that helped to launch her career with Twentieth Century-Fox. The first of Henie’s eleven movies, One in a Million, was produced that same year. During the era before television, Henie’s films brought ice figure skating to a huge public for the first time. From its earliest days ice figure skating had been a pastime of the elite. Competitions took place in exclusive rinks and received only modest newspaper coverage—usually on the society rather than the sports pages. In such a context Henie was figure skating. Her sequined and bejeweled costumes, her use of toe-steps, and her often doll-like appearance led to popular understandings of figure skating as a feminine style of dancing on ice rather than a competitive sport. On the one hand, this shift led to a tremendous growth in the sport among young girls seeking to emulate their idol. On the other hand, this shift made skating seem too girlish for boys and men. Biographies of male skaters routinely speak of fathers being disappointed by their son’s choice of sport. Even today, after decades of loosening gender expectations in the general culture, many people consider ice figure skating to be an effeminate sport. In many ways women’s ice figure skating has not broken the “ice princess” mold that Sonja Henie set before World War II. For the past seventy years the idealized woman skater has been conventionally pretty and feminine and, until the 1990s, invariably white. She has skated with a graceful lyricism that masks the
tremendous difficulty of what she does. Male skaters have not been similarly locked into a single mold. The two men who dominated skating during the 1920s and 1930s, Gillis Grafstrom (1893–1938) and Karl Schaefer of Austria (1909–1976), were lauded for creating poetry on ice. After World War II U.S. skater Dick Button (b. 1930), Olympic gold medalist in 1948 and 1952, was lauded for his athletic prowess, especially for being the first skater to land a double axel (1947) and a triple jump in competition (1952). In Button’s wake some male skaters focused so much on the athletic content of their programs that they became wooden and uninspiring to watch. During this period jumps came to be the measure of a skater’s technical achievement. Critics continue to lament this trend, arguing that skaters focus on jumps to the detriment of their other skills. During the 1970s Canada’s Toller Cranston (b. 1952) and Britain’s John Curry (1949–1994) tried
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to return men’s skating to its more lyrical roots. Curry, 1976 Olympic champion, skated with an elegant and balletic style. His skating appeared effortless. By contrast, Toller Cranston, the 1976 Olympic bronze medalist, skated with fire and passion. His performances were full of odd angles and innovative moves. These two men were instrumental in expanding the range of acceptable styles in men’s skating. Today male skaters span the gamut from the artistic Canadian Emanuel Sandhu (b. 1980), who is a classically trained ballet dancer, to the fist-pumping, Lycra-wearing U.S. skater, Michael Weiss (b. 1976), who recently performed to music by the 1970s rock group Santana. Women’s skating can seem monochromatic by comparison.
pairs and ice dancing events are designed to highlight the social and physical differences between men and women—the man is required to lift the woman, he offers his partner up for display. In these events gender relations are a required part of the performance. Soviet skaters Ludmila (b. 1935) and Oleg (b. 1932) Protopopov were Olympic pairs champions in 1964 and 1968 and world champions from 1965 to 1968. They were known for extremely elegant programs that were reminiscent of ballet duets. The Protopopovs’ success with judges and popular audiences ensured that of the many ways that men and women might choose to skate together, heterosexual conventions would dominate pairs competitions.
Pairs
Ice Dancing
The first pairs skaters were men. They skated side-byside, executing dance steps and gliding movements while holding hands. When the ISU established rules for pairs, pairs could be composed of two men, two women, or one woman and one man. However, by the time the ISU inaugurated the first pairs championship in 1908, mixed pairs were the only ones invited to compete. At that time pairs performances were much like dances. However, as accomplished singles skaters turned to pairs skating, the routines grew more complex. In 1923 British skaters Mildred and T. D. Richardson introduced shadow skating to world competition, performing free skating movements in close unison, an extremely difficult feat to accomplish while moving at high speed across the ice. Lifts, the moves that currently define pairs skating, were introduced to international competition in 1924 by the French skaters Andrée Joly (1901–1993) and Pierre Brunet (1902–1991), to the dismay of some judges who called the daring new moves “circus tricks.” Joly and Brunet married in 1925. They won the first of four world titles in 1926. They were also Olympic gold medalists in 1928 and 1932. Ice figure skating is one of the few sports in which teams of men and women compete against other teams of men and women. However, unlike racquet sports, which also have mixed-gender teams, ice figure skating
Although ice dancers were admitted to the world championships only in 1952 and to the Olympic Games in 1976, ice dancing has been important to the history of ice figure skating. People’s fascination with waltzing on ice during the late nineteenth century led to the first significant increase in the number of skaters. Indeed, dancing was key to getting women onto the ice. The pleasure of dancing motivated many skaters to work hard to improve their technical skills. Their demands for reliable ice—for more than one or two months of the year— helped to prompt the invention of artificial ice. At first skaters tried simply to transpose ballroom dance steps to the rink. Before long they began to invent dances to take advantage of the unique properties of skating. Skating clubs hired rinkside orchestras, and social dances and formal balls became regular events on the skating calendar. In England the NSA held competitions to inspire the creation of new dances. Today’s skaters continue to learn the steps of some of the winning entries, in addition to those of more recent invention. These set pattern dances are called “compulsory dances.” They make up the first of the three components of contemporary ice dancing competitions. Initially no difference existed between pairs skating and ice dancing. The two disciplines split when pairs skaters started to incorporate lifts, jumps, and throws
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into their routines. Competitive ice dancers are not permitted to perform jumps or throws and may only perform small lifts. Although the specific rules of ice dancing have changed frequently through the years, the somewhat vaguely defined requirement to impart the feel of dance remains constant. Current competition involves three parts: the compulsory dances; the “original dance” which is a short program skated to prescribed rhythms (such as the rumba or the waltz or the foxtrot); and the long free program.
Judging Like gymnastics and diving, skating is an aesthetic, judged sport. Unlike running or shot put, ice figure skating includes no single objective measure by which to determine a winner. Consequently, the sport has always been plagued by judging controversies. At the European championship of 1893 Swedish and Austrian judges could not agree on the means by which the winner would be declared and the results of the competition were annulled. In many early competitions skaters were awarded points for each aspect of the competition. The skater with the most points at the end was the winner. It seemed to be a clear and simple system. However, assigning points to something as complex as a skating performance, either in school figures or in free skating, is not easy. Which should count more—flow, speed, technique, or the overall impression left by a performance? In 1897 the ISU passed regulations that would be followed for more than a century: The winner of skating competitions would be determined not by the total marks a skater received but rather by the total of his or her placings. The skater with the lowest total—the lowest number of ordinals—would win. These regulations recognized that skaters were not being measured against an objective standard but rather against each other. The relationship between the skaters (their placings) would determine the outcome. In 1901 the ISU introduced the famous 0–6.0 judging scale, in which a mark of 6.0 represented a “faultless” performance. In the most recent version of this scale, skaters received two marks: one for technique and one for presentation. Through the years
these marks have been called different things.The former was once called “sporting merit,” whereas the latter has been called “general impression” and the better-known “artistic impression.” Throughout its history ice figure skating has been rocked by all manner of judging scandals. At one time host countries would stack the judging panel with their own judges. During the Cold War countries on either side of the Iron Curtain commonly collaborated in voteswapping schemes with their allies: “I’ll give your skater a good placing in dance, if you give mine a good placing in men’s.” At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, a Canadian judge taped a phone conversation in which a Ukrainian judge asked her to agree in advance on the outcome of an event. For such a blatant breach of the rules, the Ukrainian judge received only a one-year suspension. Amazingly, the whistle-blowing judge was also suspended.The most recent scandal occurred during the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, where a French judge admitted to marking the pairs competition according to a deal made by the French and Russian federations. After being pressured by the International Olympic Committee, the ISU eventually awarded two gold medals in the event: the first on the evening of the competition to Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia, the second a few days later to Jamie Salé and David Pelletier of Canada, who had originally been awarded the silver. Notorious for ignoring the corruption in their midst, ISU officials could not ignore the public outcry that followed the events in Salt Lake City, especially the suggestion by the IOC that if ice figure skating were not cleaned up it could be pushed out of the “Olympic family.” As a response the ISU has approved a new scoring system to be implemented during the 2004–2005 season. Ironically, the new system returns to the points system rejected as unfair and unwieldy during the late nineteenth century. Judges will award points for each element of a skater’s program. The system leans heavily toward easily quantifiable technical skills rather than aesthetic achievements.Whereas some commentators believe the new system of scoring will make judging more objective and will
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help clean up the sport, others worry that the system will rob the sport of its creativity. Some frustrated skaters and officials believe the problems in the ISU are greater than the scoring system alone and have given up on the ISU entirely. In 2003 they started a new governing body—the World Skating Federation.
Recent Developments Skating continues to evolve technically and aesthetically. A slim technical gap remains between men skaters and women skaters, with women routinely performing the same jumps as men except the triple axel and quadruple jumps. If spins, for instance, were more valued than jumps, this gap would mean little. A handful of women have performed the triple axel in competition, and many more have performed it in practice. In December 2003 the first woman to perform a quadruple salchow (a jump with a takeoff from the back inside edge of one skate followed by one or more full turns in the air and a landing on the back outside edge of the opposite skate) in competition was fourteen-year-old Miki Ando of Japan at the Junior Grand Prix final in The Hague, Netherlands. For their part men at the highest levels are paying more attention to style and aesthetic concerns than they once did. Although stereotypes suggest that women are the more artistic skaters, in many instances men are pushing the bounds of the sport in artistry, for instance, by performing to a broader range of music and by designing more complex footwork. The technical advances in ice figure skating are, in part, a result of improved coaching techniques and better facilities and equipment. They are also a result of the now-commonplace tendency of elite athletes to begin training at a young age and to train full-time. However, more importantly, free skating has benefited immensely from the elimination of school figures from competition. Where figures once counted for 60 percent of a skater’s score, in 1968 they were reduced to 50 percent. In 1973 the ISU introduced the short program to singles and pairs events. The ISU was responding to public outcry after Austria’s Beatrix Schuba (b. 1951) won the 1972 world championships. Schuba, unmatched in her
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ability to trace school figures, placed ninth in the free skating portion of the competition—the only part of the competition seen by television viewers, who could not understand why such a lackluster skater was on the top of the podium. With the introduction of the short program, figures fell to 30 percent of the total mark. They were finally phased out altogether in 1990.Today’s competitors in all events perform a short technical program that includes a series of required elements. Each missed element leads to a deduction of marks. During the mid-1990s ice figure skating became tremendously popular as a consequence of the Kerrigan– Harding scandal. At the 1994 U.S. Nationals gold medal favorite Nancy Kerrigan (b. 1969) was hit on the knee by a pipe-wielding assailant hired by the husband of Kerrigan’s main rival,Tonya Harding (b. 1970). Harding went on to win the nationals after Kerrigan was forced to withdraw.The scandal made public the cutthroat side of skating and led to massive media interest in the women’s event at the 1994 Olympic Games. For competitive skaters the increase in media interest spawned an increase in the number of competitions and the amount of prize money offered. Professional skaters benefited from an increase in the number of tours, shows, and televised specials. More agents became involved in the sport, more promoters organized events, more sports journalists covered the skaters. This boom of interest lasted almost a decade. However, as television schedules became saturated with skating shows, audiences began to fall off. But while the traditional ice figure skating audience in North America and western Europe may have reached the limits of expansion, new audiences are growing in places such as Hong Kong and Brazil, where few people skate. Skating has become a global entertainment commodity, and the invention of materials that can substitute for ice now means that skating shows appear regularly in tropical environments without permanent ice rinks.
The Future Since the days of Jackson Haines ice figure skating has spanned the boundaries of sport, art, and entertainment. Although the dictates of sport have had the greatest
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Studio executives are intelligent, brutally overworked men and women who share one thing in common with baseball managers: they wake up every morning of the world with the knowledge that sooner or later they’re going to get fired. ■ WILLIAM GOLDMAN
impact on the structure of ice figure skating, the artistic and entertainment aspects of skating will ensure its future. They attract the imagination of skater and spectator alike; they set skating apart from other types of athletic contests. The future of ice figure skating will be determined not by the limits of the human body, but rather by the potential of the human imagination. Mary Louise Adams
Further Reading Malone, J. (1998) The encyclopedia of figure skating. New York: Facts on File. Shulman, C. (2001). Complete book of figure skating. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Smith, B. (1995) Figure skating: A celebration. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Whedon, J. (1988) The fine art of ice skating. New York: Harry N. Abrams
Skating, Ice Speed
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ce skating was born out of a need for rapid movement in the winter climates of the Northern Hemisphere. Scholars do not know the origins of ice skating. However, the oldest pair of skates found in Europe is thought to be more than four thousand years old; thus, we can trace skating to the pre-Christian era. Modern ice skating originated in the Netherlands. During winters in Amsterdam, markets were supplied by goods that were moved along frozen canals, including eggs carried in baskets on women’s heads. In the same way that cycling and running originated in practical usage, ice skating was often the only way for people to travel quickly and even to conduct business during the long winters. Most Dutch people learned to skate at an early age, holding themselves upright on the ice by pushing a chair in front of them. Probably because of its usefulness, ice speed skating developed about one hundred years before figure skat-
ing. Whereas figure skating tended to be the domain of town dwellers and the wealthy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ice speed skating was the domain of the lower classes. Members of the lower classes competed in races in which the goal was to reach the next town before other skaters.
Britain Imports Skating Ice skating was brought to Britain during the eighteenth century by people from the Dutch province of Friesland who came to build canals in the eastern part of England. Scholars think that the first ice speed skating competition was held on the Fens, a low-lying district in eastern England, in 1763. Skating was popular not only in England, but also in Scotland, where the first club was formed in 1742. Skaters held many competitions in Britain through the latter part of the nineteenth century, and almost every town in the north and the east of England had its own champion. British races were largely the domain of men. However, in the Netherlands women participated in touring speed skating races. In 1805 in Leeuwarden 130 women took part in such a race.Town-to-town races and touring races were open to women as separate events; women did not compete against men. However, women’s competitions became increasingly peripheral as the nineteenth century advanced, and speed skating became increasingly organized by men. People considered ice speed skating to be unsuitable and immodest for women. However, women continued to participate, and the first official women’s world record was set in Poland in 1929. Men had been setting world records since 1893 and competing internationally since 1885, but women had to wait until 1936 to have their own world championships recognized. Olympic recognition for women speed skaters came even later. Women’s speed skating was a demonstration sport at the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, but did not become a formal event until the games in 1960 at Squaw Valley, California. In contrast, men’s ice speed skating had been part of the Winter Olympics since the 1924 Games in Chamonix, France.
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Skating, Ice Speed Speed in Boston in the Early 1800s Several exciting races came off at the Skating Park, Boston, on Saturday, the 4th inst. The first was for ladies, with prizes of a silver goblet, valued at $25, and a pair of skates valued at $10, for the best time; distance, half-mile. The second race was for gentlemen, consisting of a goblet valued at $35, and a pair of skates valued at $10. For the ladies’ race there were entered, the Misses Lucy Crocker, Addis M. Fogg, Carrie St. Clair, M.B. Lunt, Eliza Yenehki, Alice Twombly, M.D. Lamb, and Mrs. John L. Brown and Mrs. Carrie Ashley of Boston; Mrs. Anna Walker, of Rosbury; Mrs.George Farnam, of Lowell; Miss W.A. Roberts, of Andover. These were Divided into two parties, Miss Alice Twombly, Miss M.D. Lamb, Miss Anna Walker, and Miss Addie M. Fogg first. After a pleasant contest, the latter won, making the half-mile in 3:11, and Miss Lamb in 3:35. The others were distanced. The
Ice speed skating has lagged behind figure skating in recognition as an Olympic-level sport for women. Figure skating fulfills the norms of femininity and was therefore acceptable, whereas ice speed skating has elements of strength and endurance that were regarded as less suitable for women. However, the participation of men and women in organized competition developed at the same pace in short-track speed skating. Although scholars have not documented the precise dates of short-track speed skating’s origins, they think it began in indoor skating halls. Interest in indoor skating peaked during the 1920s and 1930s. Those early competitions were unorganized circuit races. The first official short-track competition was held in Ayr, Scotland, in 1948, but not until 1967 did the International Skating Union (ISU) recognize shorttrack speed skating.The first ISU-recognized competition in which men and women were almost equally represented was held in 1978 in Solihull, England. Skaters from eight nations took part in that competition. Both men’s short-track speed skating and women’s short-track
next party consisted of Mrs. George Farnum, Mrs. John L. Brown, and Mrs. Carrie Ashley. The former won in 2:59, her companions being distanced. The prize was awarded to Mrs. Farnum, and the second to Miss Fogg. Next in order was the gentleman’s race, a distance of five miles, for which appeared Wm. F. Smith, F.G. Lawrence, Emory Lawrence, Gabrial F. Worden, Edward Spencer, and George E. Lawrence. The first mile was made well together in 4:24. On the fifth mile an exciting contest took place between the two Lawrences, which was decided in favor of George. Time, 22:46; his brother was two seconds later. The prizes were presented to the winners by the judges, Messers. Wheildon, Fuller, and Cumston. The affair passed off pleasantly, and gave great satisfaction to the large crowd present.
speed skating debuted at the same Olympics, appearing as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Calgary Olympics in Canada and as part of the official program at the 1992 Albertville Olympics in France.
Rules and Play The goal of ice speed skating is simple: to skate faster than competitors. All of the races in international competitions are spread over two days. Because most speed skaters compete in several races and because the sport requires high levels of speed and endurance, the number of races in which skaters compete during two days is remarkable. Their feat is comparable to runners competing in the 100-, 200-, 800-, and 1,500-meter races during two days. Long-track speed skating consists of two skaters racing on a two-lane, 400-meter track, but they race against the clock, not each other. Racing pairs are drawn by ballot. During the race the skaters must skate in both lanes; otherwise, one racer would have an unfair advantage. Lanes are changed at a point of the track called the
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“crossing line.” The rules for long-track speed skating were developed with the men’s competition in mind and were later adopted for the women’s competition. The only difference between the men’s races and the women’s races is the length. Women race in 500-, 1,000-, 3,000-, and 5,000-meter races, whereas men race in an additional distance of 10,000 meters but have no 3,000-meter race. People sometimes assume that short-track speed skating and long-track speed skating differ only in that shorttrack skating takes place indoors and long-track skating takes place outdoors, but this assumption is wrong. Short-track skating takes place on a much smaller track —only 111 meters. Skaters wear more protective gear than do long-track skaters; because short-track races are peloton races (a pack of skaters racing on the same track), the chance of collision or injury is greater. The short-track races at the 1992 Olympics at Albertville included a 500-meter individual race and a 3,000-meter relay. A 1,000-meter race was added at Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994. Spectators find the pack start and the sharply angled turns of the short-track skaters more thrilling to watch than those of long-track skaters. Shorttrack skating is popular in countries whose climate would ordinarily not allow residents to participate in winter sports. For example, South Korea, a country not known for its success in long-track skating, won the gold medal in the women’s relay at Lillehammer in 1994 and the women’s 1,500-meter race and women’s 3,000. meter relay in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002.
Dutch Treat Although people often associate ice speed skating with the Dutch, not until 1968 did Carolina Geijessen, a twenty-one-year-old Dutch secretary, win Olympic gold in the 1,000-meter race. During winters in Amsterdam Geijessen skated to work each day, a mirror of the seventeenth-century women carrying
A Friesland skate.
their eggs to market on the frozen canals. The Soviet Union, East Germany, and United States have dominated long-track skating. Lidia Skoblikova of the Soviet Union won two gold medals in the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics and gold in all four events at the next Olympics in 1964 at Innsbruck, Austria. Like runners, ice speed skaters must concentrate on their particular talents, and multidistance champions such as Skoblikova are a rarity. Bonnie Blair is the most successful winter Olympian for the United States, having won six medals during four Olympics. Although Blair won the same number of medals as Skoblikova, Blair won her medals over a greater number of Olympics. Blair dominated the 500- and 1,000-meter races. At the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, Utah, short-track speed skating gold medal winners were: men’s 500-meter, Marc Gagnon of Canada; men’s 1,000-meter, Steven Bradbury of Australia; men’s 1,500-meter, Apolo Anton Ohno of the United States; men’s 5,000-meter relay, Eric Bedard, Marc Gagnon, Jonathon Guilmette, Francois-Louis Tremblay, and Mathieu Turcotte of Canada; women’s 500-meter, Yang Yang of China; women’s 1,000-meter, Yang Yang of China; women’s 1,500-meter, Gi-Hyun Ko of South Korea; and women’s 3,000-meter relay, Min-Kyung Choi, Min-Jin Joo, HyeWon Park, and Eun-Kyung Choi of South Korea.
The Future Ice speed skating is a demanding and at times dangerous sport that is never likely to attract great numbers of participants of either gender. Women, however, after starting late, have begun to catch up with men in all aspects of the sport. J. P. Anderson
SKATING, IN-LINE
Further Reading Heller, M. (Ed.). (1979). The illustrated encyclopedia of ice skating. New York: Paddington Press. Pratty, J. (1998). Hinged blades skate through records. Sports Technology, 1, 5–9. Publow, B. (1999) Speed on skates. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Wallechinsky, D. (1992). The complete book of the Olympics. London: Aurum Press.
Skating, In-Line
I
n-line skating is a type of roller skating that uses skates that have wheels, generally four or five, that are set in a straight line, mimicking an ice skate. However, in-line skates are freed from the necessity of a frozen surface and sacrifice the precise control of dualaxle roller skates for superior adaptability to a variety of surfaces, greater speed, and easier mastery. The popularity of in-line skating developed in the United States and has spread to Europe and parts of Asia. The most popular form is recreational outdoor skating. Roller hockey, speed skating, and stunt or “aggressive” skating are other forms. As in other skating sports, in-line skaters receive the benefits of low-impact cardiovascular exercise and toning of all major muscle groups. In-line skating is open to people of all ages; industry figures indicate an even split between male and female skaters; the average age is twenty-seven.
History In-line skates are the oldest type of roller skate, although in-line skating did not have widespread popularity before the 1980s. The earliest recorded attempt to move skating from the winter ice was made by Joseph Merlin (1735–1803), a Belgian maker of musical instruments. He introduced roller skating to the public at a reception in London in 1760. As he played the violin and skated about for the crowd in front of a large mirror, Merlin discovered that he could not turn or brake on his new invention. Merlin survived the discovery. His violin and the mirror were not as fortunate.
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During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in-line skates were used in theatrical productions as a substitute for ice skates. Experiments with different configurations eventually led to the cushioned dualaxle roller skate with its superior maneuverability. The in-line form survived into the 1970s largely as an offseason training tool for ice skaters and skiers. It also benefited from the introduction of polyurethane wheels and plastic components. Scott Olson, a nineteen-yearold U.S. semiprofessional hockey player, in 1979 discovered the in-line skate as an off-season training tool. He modified the design for use in hockey and in 1984 sold the patent rights to a private investor. Rollerblade, the resultant company, began a major marketing campaign that popularized in-line skating and made the company’s name synonymous with in-line skates.
Development The modern in-line skate bears little resemblance to its nineteenth-century predecessor. Early in-line skates were wooden platforms mounting wooden wheels, attached to the skater’s feet with straps of leather or fabric. Modern in-line skates are made of space-age materials. The boot, or shell, encases the skater’s foot. Recreational in-line skates and their heavier stunt versions generally have a plastic outer shell and a removable lining for comfort, offering stability and support. Hockey skates and racing skates have leather or leather and nylon boots, which sacrifice some stability and support for decreased weight and increased flexibility. Beneath the boot is the frame, which mounts the wheels and can be constructed of metal, plastic, or nylon.The frame can incorporate a number of features depending on its purpose, including “rocker” features to enhance maneuverability, brake pads, and even active braking systems. A skater chooses wheels to suit the intended surface and activity, with variations in size and hardness. During the late 1980s and early 1990s in-line skating had an explosive growth of popularity. In 1993 in the United States an estimated 12 million people tried the sport at least once. Now in-line skates are found around the world and are used for both practical and
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recreational purposes. The U.S. Amish community, famous for its rejection of modern technology and recreational pursuits, has adopted in-line skates as a means of transportation. The Amish continue to shun the use of automobiles, electricity, and most modern conveniences, but they have accepted in-line skating because of its practicality and simplicity. However, the Amish still frown on use of the skates for pure entertainment. In-line skaters are not limited to tamely rolling down sidewalks and around skating rinks. Those uses, although the most popular activity, often serve as merely the introduction to a number of organized forms of inline skating. The least regulated form is “aggressive” skating—performing acrobatic stunts. Aggressive skating is similar to stunt skateboarding in its nature and its largely adolescent demographics. Aggressive skating also shares some of skateboarding’s negative reputation because of their close relationship and the damage each inflicts on public property through stunts and the often rebellious actions of youthful subcultures. In 1992 the in-line industry formed the Skatesmart program, which promotes skating safety, to improve the reputation of aggressive skating.
Competition The Federation Internationale de Roller Skating (FIRS) governs organized competitive roller skating internationally. The FIRS accepts in-line skates in all categories and has established hockey and speed divisions for in-line skaters. The regimented and codified nature of these forms of in-line skating stands in sharp contrast to the more informal world of stunt skating, as does organized skating’s popularity among people in a broader range of age groups. The introduction of in-line skates gave roller hockey a substantial boost in popularity. The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, featured an exhibition of roller hockey, the first roller sport featured in the Olympics. The sport is based on ice hockey, with a few modifications pertaining to the different surfaces involved. In-line roller hockey, in keeping with its early ties to the ice hockey community, has
formed professional leagues and includes professional ice hockey players. In-line skates quickly replaced traditional roller skates in speed competitions sanctioned by the FIRS and national governing organizations and in less formal competitions, which increased in number as the popularity of in-line skating increased. The configuration of in-line skates allows for larger wheels and a reduced area in contact with the skating surface, allowing greater efficiency and decreased drag in comparison with the configuration of traditional roller skates. In addition, larger wheels tolerate rough surfaces better, improving the appeal of outdoor and long-distance competitions. Artistic roller skating is the only form of internationally organized skating that remains untouched by in-line skates. Artistic roller skating remains dominated by dualaxle skates because of their superior control and maneuverability. However, artistic skating events are open to in-line skates, and inventors continue to improve in-line designs. One European innovation demonstrated at the U.S. national championships in 1994 featured a modified four-wheel in-line configuration designed for artistic skating. Perhaps in time even the conservative world of figure skating will welcome in-line skaters. The popularity of in-line skating may be attributed to its close relationship with the international ice skating and roller skating communities and to in-line skates’ outdoor adaptability. Beyond the appeal of exhilarating motion to young skaters, in-line skating offers a mode of transportation that is almost as efficient as bicycling but in a more compact form. That factor may help explain in-line skating’s urban popularity because it reduces the security and logistics concerns associated with bicycling.
The Future In-line skating has not spread far into cultures that are not familiar with ice skating or roller skating and/or bicycling. However, the sport continues to grow in popularity, with participants and manufacturers in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia. Jeffery Charlston
SKATING, ROLLER
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Sports do not build character. They reveal it. ■ JOHN WOODEN
Further Reading Joyner, S. (1993). Complete guide and resource to in-line skating. Cincinnati, OH: Betterway. National Museum of Roller Skating. (1983). First fifty years: American roller skates 1860–1910. Lincoln, NE: Author. Nesbitt, L. (1993, August). The in-line skating experience. Physician and Sportsmedicine, 21, 81–82. Powell, M., & Svensson, J. (1997). In-line skating. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Rappelfeld, J. (1992). The complete blader. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Wickelgren, I. (1994, September). In-line injuries soar. Current Science, 80, 8–9.
Skating, Roller
R
oller skating for sport developed from roller skating for transportation and recreation and is modeled on ice skating. In 1760 Joseph Merlin, a Belgian maker of musical instruments, created the first roller skates with metal wheels. He demonstrated his invention in London at a reception by skating across the floor while playing an expensive violin. Because his skates could not be turned or braked, he glided gracefully into a huge mirror and was seriously injured. In 1849 roller skates were first successfully seen in public when Louis Legrange of France used them to simulate ice skating in the play Le Prophete (The Prophet). He devised his skates by mounting tiny rollers to the center of ice skates. During the mid-1800s a number of inventors produced several types of roller skates. All of these skates, however, suffered the problem of Merlin’s skates—the inability to be effectively turned or braked.
Problem Solved In 1863 James Plimpton of New York solved the problem of controlling roller skates. His skates had a rubber cushion to anchor the axles. This cushion compressed when a skater leaned, enabling the wheels of the skates to turn slightly as the skater shifted his or her weight. Plimpton’s design is considered the basis of the modern roller skate. Plimpton opened a number of skating rinks across the United States and Europe, envisioning roller skating
as a pastime of the rich. However, soon after his patents expired, cheap imitations of his skates were produced, and skating became popular with all classes.
Development During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries organized roller skating sports developed as the popularity of roller skates increased. As early as 1901 roller hockey teams played throughout Europe. Although the popularity of roller hockey waned during World War I, it quickly regained its momentum, and in 1936 the first world championship of roller hockey was held in Stuttgart, Germany. A year later the first speed roller skating world championships were held in Monza, Italy. Although competitive artistic roller skating existed at the time, the first artistic roller skating world championships were not held until 1947 in Washington, DC. World championship competitions in all three recognized disciplines of competitive roller skating— artistic, speed, and hockey—have been held annually (with a few exceptions) ever since. The first U.S. speed roller skating championships were held in 1937 in Detroit, and the first world dance and figures championships were held in 1947. The United States Amateur Confederation of Roller Skating (USACRS) governs all three disciplines in the United States. USACRS is recognized by the United States Olympic Committee as the national governing body for all roller sports. The Federation Internationale de Roller Skating (FIRS) governs roller skating internationally. Artistic roller skating is further broken down into dance, singles and pairs freestyle, and figures. Dance skating requires skaters to perform preannounced dance programs, which are detailed series of steps at various points around the floor. Each dance has its own steps, rhythm, tempo, and progression. Judges evaluate skaters on their performance of the steps and their adherence to the music. Artistic skating—both singles and pairs freestyle—is similar to ice figure skating: Skaters perform difficult routines set to music. Judges evaluate skaters on their maneuvers, such as jumps and spins, as well as
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their use of music, appearance, flow of the program as has parabolic curves. The U.S. home track is at the 7a whole, and artistic impression. Figures skating stresses Eleven Velodrome in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Road fundamentals and is the oldest of the artistic roller skatcompetitions are held on a flat course, which may be a ing disciplines. Figures skating requires skaters to trace closed course or an open stretch of road. Distances of painted circles on the floor. Judges evaluate skaters on 300, 500, 1,500, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000 their carriage, their ability to stay on the lines, and the meters are skated and include a relay. On the road the degree to which they make their program look effortless. same distances are skated, but the relay is replaced by Speed skating is a noncontact sport that requires a marathon. Skaters may wear either dual-axle skates or skaters to maneuver cleanly through a pack of other in-line skates in outdoor speed skating, but in-line skates skaters and into winning position. Skaters are disqualified are the choice of most competitors. for engaging in unsportsmanlike conduct, such as forcing another skater out of position, blocking, or using their Separate Divisions arms, legs, or hands to impede the progress of other In-line skates are popular among recreational skaters, skaters. Speed skating is one of the fastest sports in the and their dominance over dual-axle skates in speed world in which speed is generated by human energy. skating competitions prompted USACRS to create sepSpeed skating is broken down into indoor and outarate divisions in indoor competitions. Recogdoor varieties, with indoor speed skating being an nizing the impact of in-line skates, USACRS almost exclusively U.S. pastime. Indoor speed also successfully lobbied FIRS to permit inskaters compete on a flat, 100-meter track in line skates in international competition. In individual and relay races. Indoor speed skat1992 in-line skates debuted at the world ing is broken down even further by equipspeed skating championships. ment (dual-axle skates or in-line skates), The popularity of in-line roller hockey gender, and age divisions. In individual has increased in the United States and competition skaters compete in three disthe rest of the world. However, dualtances, receiving thirty, twenty, or ten axle roller hockey has been popular points for first through third places, rethroughout the world for many spectively, in each distance.The winner years, most notably in Spain, Italy, is the skater who has the highest Portugal, and South America. In point total at the end of the compefact, in many of those countries tition. Relays are staged in combidual-axle roller hockey is second in nations of same-sex or mixed popularity only to soccer. Skaters play dual-axle roller groups. As skaters finish their leg of hockey with a hard, black rubber a relay, they tag the next team memball and a short, curved wooden bers with a push from behind to stick. Four players and a goalkeeper help accelerate the next skaters into on each team try to place the ball the flow of traffic. into the net of the opposing team Outdoor speed skating is the while attempting to prevent the internationally accepted form of opposing team from doing the speed skating. Skaters compete on same. Although the game is both banked tracks and road Prize-winning skating played with an essentially noncourses. The banked track is usucostume worn at a carnival contact principle, players have to ally about 200 meters long and in London in the 1890s.
SKI JUMPING
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I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of a hill. ■ ERMA BOMBECK
protect themselves from injury by wearing padding, helmets, and reinforced skates. A well-hit shot can propel the ball off a stick at more than 128 kilometers per hour. In-line roller hockey more closely resembles its ice hockey cousin in the equipment used, including the rubber puck, the amount of physical contact, and the high speeds. However, this form also is played with four players and a goalkeeper on each team. In-line roller hockey players also need to protect themselves because a puck can reach speeds of 160 kilometers per hour off a slapshot. Roller hockey accommodates young and old alike and both male and female players in co-ed and separate divisions. The dual-axle form of roller hockey was a demonstration sport at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. However, the international popularity of the inline form can be seen in the fact that the first world championship was held in Chicago in 1995. Andy Seeley
Further Reading Bass, H. (1958). The skating age. London: Stanley Paul. Phillips, A.-V. (1979). The complete book of roller skating. New York: Womman. Turner. J., & Zaidman, M. (1997). The history of roller skating. Lincoln, NE: National Museum of Roller Skating.
Ski Jumping
T
o spectators, ski jumping represents the height of skiing prowess, and the sport holds a central role in the winter sports life of nations such as Finland, Austria, Germany, Norway, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. In the sport of ski jumping, performers aim to float through the air on skis, as far as possible down a prepared, snow-covered hill, with both the flight and the landing in the performer’s control.
Origins Jumping on skis began as part of the Nordic (Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish) skiing culture, from which it has spread over most of the world, wherever climate or technology allows. However, ski jumping as a sport seems to be a specifically Norwegian invention. Early skiing had several local strongholds in Norway: from the southeastern inland all the way to the Lappish Finnmark. The early sagas of the Norse Viking era describe dramatic skiing challenges. Versatile Sami (Lappish) skiing was described in the seventeenth century.There is evidence of ski jumping among the Norwegian military ski companies around the turn of the eighteenth century. The first formal competitions were most often combined events, either downhill with a terminating jump, or cross-country with one or more jumps included. A local race in Trysil in 1862 is the first known pure jumping competition. During that decade, attempts to formalize the activity into a sport also emerged in the cities. From 1879, the annual Huseby races in Kristiania (Oslo) strengthened the urban hegemony. In 1892, the organizers (Foreningen til Skiidrættens Fremme) moved the race to the larger Holmenkollen hill, which has housed one of the major events in the sport ever since. Ski jumping spread from Norway to neighboring countries and to the countries to which Norwegians emigrated. Ski jumping came to Sweden through Norwegian soldiers posted in Stockholm as part of the union military system. Here the alleged first international ski jumping contest took place in 1886. The spread continued to Finland, where skiers rather hesitantly took up the “Norwegian habit” around the turn of the twentieth century. The original Finnish form of skiing at that time was cross-country. The Alps region also seems to have been introduced to ski jumping through Norwegian students and ski instructors, either directly or indirectly: ■
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In Austria, a Norwegian baker’s apprentice impressed the locals with a jump of six meters in 1893. In Germany, three Norwegians were among the founders of the Schneeschuhverein (skiing club) München, which organized a jumping contest in 1894.
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A ski jumper at the world championship. Source: istockphoto/clu.
In Switzerland, France, and Italy, the first real contests did not occur until the turn of the twentieth century. Czechoslovakia, Poland,Yugoslavia, and Japan also embraced the sport after 1900. As early as the middle of the nineteenth century, however, Norwegian immigrants had brought jumping to North America. By the beginning of the twentieth century, ski jumps had been performed in such remote areas as Australia and South Africa as well. As skiing and ski jumping were transplanted to new settings, the sport experienced important cultural and ideological changes. In North America, for example, the interest in “world records” was a new element in ski jumping.
Competitions, Sites, and Personalities Modern competitive ski jumping has been included in Olympic Games since the Winter Games in 1924. Today, these competitions comprise two individual (large and small hill) and one team competition. World championships were inaugurated in 1926 as parts of the championships in Nordic skiing. The German-Austrian “Springer-Tournee,” initiated during the winter 1952–1953 is a yearly big event that attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators. The New Year’s Day race in Garmisch-Partenkirchen has also become an international tradition on European television. The World Cup of ski jumping has sought to integrate as many as possible of the sport’s traditional sites, of which there are many:
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From 1924 until 1952, Norwegian jumpers won all Olympic races as well as a substantial number of world championships. Thereafter, the geographical distribution of medals has been more even. In recent decades, world-class jumpers have come from nations as varied as Finland, Austria, Germany (both East and West), Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Japan, Switzerland, and Italy as well as from ski-jumping strongholds in Canada and the United States. Matti Nykanen of Finland has won the most championships after World War II. He collected nineteen medals from Olympic Games and world championships. Earlier jumpers had less chances of gaining gold medals. Three Ruud brothers, however, were highly successful at winning gold medals from world championships and Olympic Games: ■
■ ■
■ ■
Around 1900, the Holmenkollen races were the main event. Finland began its Finnish “Ski-games” in Lahti in 1922. Sweden initiated “Ski-games” in Falun in 1947.
Central European events took place in Innsbruck, Oberstdorf, Bischofshofen, Zakopane, Harrachow, Kulm, and Engelberg, among others. Sapporo, Japan, and various hills in North America have also been traditional ski jumping sites.
Every Olympic jumping contest between 1928 and 1948 had a Ruud on the winners’ podium. The brothers won seven of ten available international titles between 1928 and 1938.
Of the three brothers, Birger stood out—he won the last two Olympic gold medals before World War II
SKIING, ALPINE
(1932 and 1936) and came back sixteen years after his first win to capture a silver medal in the 1948 Games at St. Moritz. His versatility is illustrated by his winning the downhill race—which counted as a part of the Alpine combination—in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936. Another modern jumper who made a remarkable comeback was the German Jens Weissflog who won a gold and a silver medal in the 1984 Games (representing East Germany) and came back after a ten-year Olympic medal drought to garner a new gold medal at the 1994 Games at Lillehammer. The achievement was all the more impressive because ski jumping in the meantime had gone through a virtual revolution in the shift to V-style. Jumping in very large hills, “ski-flying,” has in the last decades become a very popular sport. Planica in Slovenia recently holds the world record for the longest standing jump. In 2003, Matti Hautamaeki of Finland reached 231 meters.
preferred to see ski jumping as a way of mastering natural challenges in the snow-covered mountain terrain, rather than as a competition in skiing acrobatics. Even though this ideology has been steadily eroded, some of its elements have survived. Ski jumping remains an aesthetic sport—the skier who has the longest jumps does not necessarily win the competition—even if the norms for evaluating what is considered a correct jump have changed tremendously over the years. Ski jumping has been a male-dominated sport since its origins. Some girls and fewer women have tried to compete, but as a sport, ski jumping competition has been only for men until recently. Only in 2004 did the Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) officially recognize ski jumping competitions for women. Matti Goksøyr See also Holmenkollen Ski Jump
Further Reading
Controversies A competitive ski jump is evaluated through length and style points. The five referees assign style points from one to twenty. Norms and rules of evaluation have undergone dramatic changes. The historical tendency has been to diminish the importance of style. Modern equipment allows longer jumps and larger hills. As the hills grew, more aerodynamic styles forced their way in. The last big innovation was the V-style, introduced by the Swede Jan Boklov in 1986. His revolutionary idea was to jump with the skis spread in a V-shape (seen from behind), instead of jumping with parallel skis. This style today is the rule in competition. The telemark landing, with bent knees, one foot ahead of the other, has remained obligatory. The tendency towards bigger hills, as well as more differentiated competitions, means that ski jumping has gone through the same processes of modernization as most other modern sports have, leading to a deideologization of what was originally considered a national Norwegian sport. The traditional ski ideologues
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Allen, E. J. B. (1993). From skisport to skiing: One hundred years of an American sport, 1840–1940. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Bo, O. (1993). Skiing throughout history Oslo, Norway: Norske Samlaget. FIS Bulletin (journal of the Federation Internationale de Ski, Bern, Switzerland). Haarstad, K. (1993). Skisportens oppkomst i Norge. Trondheim, Norway: Tapir Forlag. Vaage, J. (1952). Norske ski erobrer verden. Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag.
Skiing, Alpine
A
lpine skiing consists of two types of skiing on snow: slalom (skiing in a zigzag or wavy course between upright obstacles) and downhill. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Alpine skiing developed and spread, especially during the 1930s, to every part of the world that had enough snow cover to support the sport. Slalom and downhill
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came to dominate recreational and competitive skiing on all levels.
History The word Alpine refers to the Alps mountain range of central Europe, but long before people skied the Alps, Siberian tribes, nomadic Sami, and Norwegians had skied fast down their local hillsides when necessary. When Norwegians first visited the Alps at the beginning of the twentieth century, they told their hosts that the Alps, with their steep, wooded hillsides, were no place to ski and that everyone should stick to the undulations of the forelands. Early skiers of Europe’s heartland read the book by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) about his 1888 crossing of the Greenland ice cap. The book contained a long chapter on the history of skiing as well as on his use of skis. This utilitarian aspect of skis motivated outdoor enthusiasts to try skiing for sport. From the start skiing appealed to the middle and upper classes of the heartland, in contrast to Norway, where skis provided a way of getting about in winter country. The wealthy of Europe found a new preoccupation for their winter days that promised exercise, health, and amusement. Only in the military was skiing taken up by recruits from mountain villages; in France, for example, only with difficulty were the local lads persuaded to leave their animal-heated dens and odorous dwellings for a breath of high country air. Until about 1900 skiers tended to slide around valley floors, occasionally making a trip to a pass or a col (a ridge connecting two higher elevations), and some of the more adventurous, often simulating their summer excursions, strove for a peak. On the return the exhilaration of the downhill rush was often commented upon. It was “the nearest approach to flying,” Arnold Lunn (1888–1974) confided to his diary in 1905. Whereas a Norwegian country lad skied out of his back door, the wealthy of Europe had to travel from the cities to the ski fields. The development of transportation was vital for skiing to grow into a sport. Many outof-the-way Alpine villages that happened to be on a rail
line experienced an economic upturn if they provided accommodation and guides. Mayors and innkeepers often promoted the development of skiing. Switzerland’s touristic infrastructure, already catering to an extended clientele with a large number of health stations, began to convert to winter use. In 1880 the bed count stood at 43,850. The number had doubled by 1894 and in 1912 reached 168,625, the year when 18,000 British visited for winter sporting. These Swiss stations were well served by the ease of railway connections in comparison with, say, Murzzuschlag, Austria, or Chamonix, France. The annual number of visitors to Davos in 1900 was thirteen thousand, almost exactly the number who visited the entire country of Norway.
Home Away from Home British visitors—men and women—came from the top drawer of society to enjoy strenuous leisure in two select clubs, stayed in hotels reserved for themselves, and re-created an England of public school and officers mess among the stunning vistas of the Swiss Alps. One of these clubs was the Ski Club of Great Britain, founded in 1903, which spent its time devising tests and running competitions. The key word is tests. These tests were supposed to produce an all-round skier. Arnold Lunn wrote about passing his third-class test in 1905: “Up and down 1,500 feet in two hours. Passed easily, though skis were coming off the whole way up. Came down with ski unfastened.” Style was important because skiing was perceived to be aesthetic: “He who habitually uses sticks [poles] to control ski is supposed to be disqualified.” Competent judges were hard to come by. The British were by no means the only people to enjoy the new sport. In the years before 1914 the wealthy of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Prague, Paris, Grenoble, and Turin also took to skiing and were tested by their own Kunstlauf (skill race), Hindernisluaf (obstacle race), and Stilgemssse Lauf (style point race).Viennese high society had easy access to the slopes at Potzleinsdorf. Later they took the train to Semmering, Murzzusclag, and particularly to Lilienfeld, where their instructor, Mathias Zdarsky
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Section of Alps in northern Italy.
(1856–1940), demanded discipline and orthodoxy from his followers, drilling thousands during the years in a military manner while teaching them a technique that allowed for a descent on a steep slope even though he insisted on the use of only one pole. On mountain ranges across Germany, in the Black Forest, Harz, and Riesengebirge, people who had read Nansen often inspired their friends to try skiing, and active clubs were formed. The same occurred in Austria. Such was the proliferation of skiing clubs that the Norwegians became concerned that the rest of Europe was corrupting what they considered to be their national sport. They organized the first international ski congress in 1910 to ensure that they controlled skiing. This congress was the forerunner of the Federation International de Ski (FIS), which was founded in 1924 and was, in spite of its French name, dominated by Scandinavians until after World War II.
Test of Skill Arnold Lunn, realizing that most Europeans were on skis only for short holiday periods and that the Alps required a different sort of skiing than the skiing that was
practiced in Norway, began proselytizing for a downhill race in 1913, claiming that it would be “the finest and most conclusive test of skiing.” The key word is—again —test. For Lunn the descent from the peak was as challenging as the climb up: The degree of slope, differing snow conditions, changing weather, and natural objects all tested the skier. Once in the trees, the skier had to negotiate the glades and run the curving paths and slippery logging roads while descending to the inn on the valley floor. In order to test a person’s ability to ski down from the high peaks, races down mountains were invented. Some races required elongated turns, others with sharper turns demanded more control of the skis. The downhill—often called the “down mountain race” or “straight race” (because the mark of an accomplished skier is a straight track)—was to simulate the speedy descent from peak or pass to tree line. The slalom tested the ability to take curves; it simulated tree running. Early downhill races were uncontrolled descents. In 1910, while leading the unmarked course for the Roberts of Kandahar Cup (often seen as the first major downhill competition), the eventual winner met spectating Arnold Lunn halfway down the course. They
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stopped for a chat and a drink. Then came 4.8 kilometers across a glacier, followed by 1.2 kilometers on windswept crust. The last 0.3 kilometer was “a test of tricky wood running.” This sort of amateur race has virtually no relationship to today’s downhills, where speeds can reach 112 kilometers an hour. The word slalom is derived from the Norwegian slalaam, but the modern race owes little to Norwegian influence. Norwegians had a variety of Laam (tracks): Kneikelaam (run with bumps), Ufselaam (run off a cliff), Hoplaam (run with a jump or jumps), Svinglaam (run with turns), and a dare-devil run mixing all obstacles, the Uvyrdslaam or ville lamir (wild run). The slalaam was a descent around natural obstacles. Although included in a race meeting in Norway in 1879, it had not proved popular. To define the course in early races, Lunn placed little branches, then flags, and, later, gates in the snow. He went on to publish debates, rules, and their changes during the years. Rules were first published for the 1922–1923 season, and further style regulations—such as ten-second penalties for sitting down at one flag before going on to the next—remained in force until the mid-1920s, by which time downhill and slalom were becoming events on the racing calendar. In 1930 they were finally accepted—with much Norwegian reservation—for inclusion in international competitions. By then their popularity could be attributed to the thrill of speed. All of a sudden, it seemed, people had found a way to travel as fast as other animals and with as much grace. But people had to be taught how to do it. That was the great life work of the Austrian Hannes Schneider (1890–1955), whose Arlberg technique— a low crouch and a lift and swing into the turn— enabled skiers with much practice to swirl down the mountain sides in an exhilarating schuss (a descent directly down a slope at high speed) equaled only by the beauty of the motion. Lunn and Schneider combined to set up the Arlberg-Kandahar race in 1928, and it soon became the premier Alpine racing event in the world.
Norwegians Spread the Sport Norwegian immigrants spread skiing in Canada and the United States; they joined the gold-fevered rush in Australia and New Zealand; they were in South America building railroads; and everywhere they went, when the snow came they made themselves skis and showed the natives how to enjoy themselves in winter. In these places a foundation of skiing was laid for the wave of Arlbergers who followed during the 1930s, some emigrating in search of work, others fleeing from fascist persecution. During this period non-Europeans, particularly people from the United States, journeyed to Europe to learn the Arlberg technique from the master himself. These wealthy people returned to their own countries and re-created the skiing style and technique back home. Some brought Arlberg experts back with them; thus, Schneider’s technique swept the Alpine skiing world during the 1930s. Otto Lang, one of Schneider’s leading instructors, found himself teaching in Spain and the United States; Ernst Skadarasy went to Australia and New Zealand. For the spring of 1930 Schneider traveled to Japan, where he taught hundreds via an interpreter. The Norwegians, longtime masters of cross-country (Nordic) skiing, had difficulty accepting the new Alpine skiing. Not only was the graceful Telemark (relating to a region of Norway) turn eclipsed by the Arlberg crouch, but also the whole philosophy was undermined by Alpine “hotel sport.” One U.S. instruction book written in 1935 listed eight foreign words “necessary for understanding a ski lesson.” Seven were German. A Japanese tourist booklet in English extolling Hokaido skiing listed the available Hutte (huts) and took particular pride in the Okura Schantze (jump). Although people had complained about the canonization of Schneider during the 1920s, his popularity soared with the release of Dr. Arnold Fanck’s (1889–1974) ski films: Wunder des Schneeschuhes (The Wonders of Skiing) and Der weisse Rausch (White Ecstasy) made in 1931 with Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) dazzled the ski world with the poetry of motion. Schneider himself attributed his success on a worldwide scale to these films.
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The best and fastest way to learn a sport is to watch and imitate a champion. ■ JEAN-CLAUDE KILLY
After World War I Alpine skiing became even more popular. Wartime experiments with over-the-snow vehicles, cable lift construction, and the use of strong and light metals and alloys were all adapted by the ski industry. Wooden skis gave way to more durable and faster metal skis, now designed specifically for downhill or slalom. Skiing also became easier with stiffer boots, release bindings, and lighter poles. Today’s Alpine parabolic ski, narrowing in the middle and widening at tip and tail, is the ski of choice. Speed has increased for both racer and recreational skier. As early as 1935 a giant slalom (a longer and steeper course) was tried in Italy: It became the third of the Alpine competitions sanctioned by the FIS in 1972. The faster super giant slalom, known as the “super G,” is run over a still longer course. It became part of the world racing circuit in 1987. In giant slalom the control gates are spaced farther apart than in a slalom. Both giant slalom and super G combine elements of downhill and slalom.
Snowboarding to the Rescue The current estimate of skiers worldwide is 25 million, but many people ski only three or four times a season. Since the early 1970s the growth in the number of skiers has been negligible, and only the advent of snowboarding has kept much of what used to be called the “ski industry” afloat. Skiing has given way to “snow sports,” which might include tubing, even riding bicycles down the slopes. Particularly in Europe people witnessing larger ski events can still number into the thousands, whereas in the United States, for example, ski areas hosting World Cup events sometimes have had to advertise cheap tickets just to get people to attend. Around the winner’s podium might be fewer than fifty admirers. Even though dual racing—in which one competitor races against another, rather than a decision being based on time—was invented for the professional circuit, the numbers of spectators did not rise appreciably. The Olympic Games are different because they go on for such a long time, are exactly organized, and have a following just because they are “Olympic.” The television audience for the winter Olympics runs into the millions.
During the years four major controversies have arisen. The first arose during the early twentieth century when arguments between people who supported Mathias Zdarsky and those who supported Norwegian styles almost produced a diplomatic incident. The second was the introduction of skis to aid in mountaineering in winter. Old-guard mountaineers tended to see skiing as some sort of acrobatic nonsense: all right, perhaps, on the sloping forelands but certainly not something that should sully the purity of high mountain peaks. Making the rift worse, as more skiers enjoyed the rush down from the mountain, they called for the Alpine clubs to build huts. Diehard mountaineers saw their subscriptions going for the wrong purpose. The third and fourth controversies were connected: They had to do with what constitutes professionalism, and much of that controversy took place over the position of the ski instructor. Of course, prize money and, after World War II, endorsement of products also entered into the controversy. Under-the-counter payments to top skiers became common. At the 1972 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, long-time International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage could have disqualified forty participants; the great Austrian Alpine skier Karl Schranz was sent home, providing a scapegoat.
Nature of the Sport On a recreational level Alpine skiing has no rules except those enforced by the ski area, such as what constitutes dangerous skiing and what the penalty might be. Competitions, on the other hand, are rule-bound by national bodies and by the FIS for international meets. Specifications are provided for equipment, clothing, length of courses, number of gates in the slalom, and so on. Women’s races are slightly shorter and less steep than the men’s courses. Facilities have kept pace with advancing technology. Before World War II, in the United States the rope tow was ubiquitous. After the war J-bars, T-bars, other up-ski devices, chairlifts, trams, and mountain railroads climbed what were once pristine snow fields to the peaks above. For example, skiers can make their way up
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A skier on a slope. Source: istockphoto/dra _ schwartz.
the Val Gardena, in Italy’s south Tirol, by taking eightyfour lifts. U.S. ski areas now vie with European Alpine resorts in popularity. The British often come to ski the slopes in the northeastern United States, and the trail signs at Snowbird, Utah, are written in Japanese. Western Canada is well known for its helicopter skiing, and Australia and New Zealand now promote their winter joys during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, as South America once did as well. However, the ease of global travel also has had a negative effect on Alpine skiing. Although a skier of means can ski on three continents in one season, he or she may be disappointed to find that ski resorts everywhere are much the same—the lifts are all made by the same few manufacturers, the ski equipment made by the same companies, and the clothing, food, drink, and even ski techniques are the same around the world. A rented condominium in Albertville, France, or Zell am See, Austria, is indistinguishable from a condo in Stowe, Utah, or Sapporo, Japan. Only the accent of the skiers (who frequently speak English) varies. Alpine ski development has urbanized and standardized the ski environment around the globe, outdoors and in.
Competition at the Top Alpine events became part of the winter Olympic Games only in 1936. The winter games have increased in size, spectator attendance, number of events, and geographical distribution. Eight of the first ten games were held in Europe. The United States and France have hosted the games three times, Japan twice. Downhill and slalom were the only Alpine events in 1936, and gold, silver, and bronze medals were awarded for a combination of the two. The winner of the men’s downhill was the Norwegian jumper Birger
Ruud, but he did poorly in the slalom, so the gold medal went to the German Franz Pfnur and the bronze to Guzzi Lantschner, who had switched allegiance from Austria to Germany. In the women’s downhill race the surprise competitor was the young Norwegian Laila Schou Nilsen, whose slalom was good enough to bring her a bronze medal. The winner was the one woman who had proved her superiority before the Olympics: Christl Cranz of Germany. She had fallen in the downhill and actually placed sixth, but her slalom was so good, beating the competition by more than seven seconds, that she won the gold medal. U.S. skier Gretchen Fraser’s unexpected slalom win at St. Moritz, Switzerland, in the first post-World War II games put the Europeans on notice that U.S. women were up and coming. At Oslo, Norway, in 1952 Andrea Mead Lawrence showed gold form in both the slalom and in the giant slalom the first time this race was on the Olympic program. The Olympics at Cortina, Italy, belonged to a triple gold medalist, Austrian Toni Sailer. He was superior to the runners-up by more than two seconds in the downhill, an extraordinary four seconds in the slalom, and more than six seconds in the giant slalom—something that Jean-Claude Killy of France repeated—albeit by small margins—on his home piste (downhill ski trail) of Grenoble in 1968. At Innsbruck, Austria, in 1976 Rosi Mittermaier of Germany won the downhill and slalom and missed first place in the giant slalom by .12 second.
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Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face. ■ DAVE BARRY
Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in 1984 produced surprise winners in U.S. skiers Bill Johnson and Debbie Armstrong, who won the men’s downhill and women’s giant slalom. The Alpine ski powers of Europe—Austria, France, Germany, and Switzerland—in the years from 1936 to 1984 won 72 percent of all medals given for the Alpine disciplines. By comparison, the United States won 13 percent. Spain and Japan have one medal each. Overall the Austrians have proved the most successful medal winners with seventy-seven. The Swiss come next with fifty and the French with thirty-eight. Today’s top athletes are comparable; .8 second separated the first eight racers in one downhill. At the Salt Lake City, Utah, men’s downhill in 2002, .22 second separated first place from second place, and .06 second separated second place from third place. Such a difference is difficult to detect, and the audience has to wait for the official time to know for whom to cheer. The Olympic program now includes running moguls (bumps in a ski run), aerials, and snowboarding, providing instant gratification that can easily be exploited by television.
Downhill Hero When Alpine skiing first took hold, the major figure on the slope was the instructor: Hannes Schneider was literally skimaster to the world. However, after World War II, partially because so many instructors were needed, and partially because so many people became adept at the sport, the racer became more of the hero. The first to turn his winning to major advantage was the Norwegian Stein Eriksen (b. 1927), whose spectacular downhill run at the Oslo Olympics added to his goldenboy image. He parlayed his victories into an economic gold mine and moved to the United States, where—in the manner of CEOs of large companies—he moved from Michigan’s Boyne Mountain to Sugarbush in Vermont, then to Aspen Highlands, Colorado, and then to Park City, Utah. Eriksen’s 1952 Olympic victory run has not been the only spectacular run, of course. Austrians remember their Franz Klammer’s (b. 1953) dare-devil downhill at Igls, Austria, in 1976. Skiers such as Sweden’s Ingemar
Stenmark (b. 1956), France’s Jean-Claude Killy (b. 1943), Austria’s Toni Sailer (b. 1935), and Italy’s Alberto Tomba (b. 1966) dominated Alpine competition and attracted large followings. No non-European has achieved this sort of hero status. The World Cup was first suggested by Serge Lange and organized by L’Equipe, a major French sporting journal, but is now managed by the FIS with input from the national associations. This annual competition rates skiers in downhill, giant slalom, and slalom with a point system so that at the end of the season the best all-round skier is clear. In 1966–1967 seventeen races were held; now the number is up to thirty as resorts and national federations see economic advantage in hosting a World Cup event. During the years the point system has been changed, with the result that the winning records of, say, Ingemar Stenmark and Jean-Claude Killy can never be compared.
Governing Body The Federation Internationale de Ski (www.fis-ski) via its many committees governs all facets of international ski competitions. The International Olympic Committee (www.olympic.org) has jurisdiction over the actual organization of the program for skiing, but the technicalities are left to the FIS. Every skiing nation has its national organizations, and local clubs belong to regional associations. Where club activities are strong, such as in Europe, the better skiers move from the club to regional championships and, if successful, to the national teams. In the United States university teams often produce the strongest skiers, and top skiers migrate to the national teams. E. John B. Allen See also St. Moritz
Further Reading Allen, E. J. B. (1993). From skisport to skiing: One hundred years of an American sport, 1840–1940. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Arnaud, P., & Terret, T. (1993). Le reve blanc, olympisme et sport d’hiver en France: Chamonix 1924 Grenoble 1968. Bordeaux, France: Universitaires de Bordeaux.
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Fanck, A., & Schneider, H. (1925). Wunder des Scneeschuhs. Hamburg, Germany: Enoch. Lloyd, J. M. (1986). Skiing into history 1924–1984. Toorak, Australia: Ski Club of Victoria. Lunn, A. (1927). A history of skiing. London: Oxford University Press. Palmedo R. (Ed.). (1937). Skiing: The international sport. New York: Derrydale. Polednik, H. (1969). Weltwunder Skisport. Wels, Germany: Welsermuhl. Ulmrich, E. (Ed.). (1992). 100 Jahre Skitechnik—40 Jahre InterskiKongresse. Planegg, Germany: Deutscher Skiverband. Vaage, J. (1979). Skienes Verden. Oslo, Norway: Hjemmenes. Vida, F. (1976). Storia dello Sci Italia, 1896–1975. Milan: Milano Sole.
only individuals but also clubs and even nations— formed the foundation of cross-country skiing worldwide. The more optimistic proponents of idraet believed that cross-country skiing could regenerate a nation, an especially important notion to Norwegians, who had won their independence from Sweden in 1905. Until Alpine (relating to competitive ski events consisting of slalom and downhill racing) skiing became popular during the 1930s, Norwegian styles and attitudes remained dominant.
“Rich Man’s Passion”
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eople have been skiing to get from point A to point B for more than five thousand years. Written records from ancient Scandinavia and China tell of informal skiing competition and the use of skis in warfare. Icelandic eddas (thirteenth-century collections of mythological, heroic, and aphoristic poetry) and Norse sagas also tell of early informal competition. However, not until the late eighteenth century were the first organized competitions held under the auspices of the Norwegian military, probably in 1767. Monetary prizes were awarded for shooting while skiing, for making the fastest downhill run, and for skiing in full equipment. When the Norwegian ski troops disbanded in 1826, local civilian clubs took up the sport and organized competitions. The competition near Kristiania (which became the Holmenkollen ski competition at Oslo) was first staged in 1879. By then emigrating Norwegians had taken their skiing style with them throughout the world. In Australia and the Americas they introduced locals to the use of skis for travel and enjoyment. Gold fever also infected immigrants who knew how to ski, and in the deep mountain snows of Kiandra (Australia) and California (United States), skis became common in mining camps. Skiing mail carriers there were often hailed as heroes. Thus, the Norwegian way of skiing and the concept of idraet—the belief that outdoor sports improve not
The Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) crossed southern Greenland on skis in 1888. When his book about his expedition, Paa Ski over Gronland (Across Greenland on Skis) was translated into German, it sparked an interest in skiing among wealthy outdoorsmen of Europe. By 1900 cross-country skiing was “a rich man’s passion” throughout Europe, and skiing clubs were formed. Visiting Norwegians became club mentors and set up competitions with ski jumping as the centerpiece. Organizations were founded on the local, regional, and national levels to organize competitions and establish rules as clubs were formed worldwide. Norwegians, to retain control of “their” sport, called for an international ski congress in 1910 and held the secretaryship until the Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS), the world governing body of ski competition, was founded in 1924.The FIS makes rules for competitions, approves courses for international competition, selects the sites for the biennial FIS world championships, determines eligibility, sanctions events eligible for FIS points, and approves the courses for Olympic competition.
Recreational Skiing Until the 1920s and 1930s, when the Alpine skiing craze put a premium on speed when skiing down a hill, cross-country was the only form of skiing.The first major recreational use of skis was for winter trips into the mountains, and more adventurous people attempted even higher climbs on skis. That tradition continues today as experienced cross-country skiers traverse the
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high mountains of the world from the Caucasus (Russia) to the Karakorams (Pakistan) and from the Wasatch range (United States) to the Atlas range (Algeria). The most committed cross-country skiers test their skill against the mountains of Patagonia, the rugged terrain of Greenland, the Haute Route of Switzerland, and even the North and South Poles. However, the majority of cross-country skiers today are less interested in a survival adventure than a 1900style ski outing: skiing through forests and across meadows. In 1900, though, such an outing would have been a club outing. Today a ski party is more likely to be made up of families or informal, small groups. Skiers today also enjoy amenities unavailable in 1900: machine-prepared loipen (trails) in the Alps, lighted pathways in Nordmarka near Oslo, and marked loops in North America. These amenities attest to the popularity of a winter sport that costs substantially less than a day’s Alpine lift skiing. Since World War II recreational cross-country skiing and skiing equipment have been aggressively marketed in the United States, possibly because the country’s fitness craze began as Bill Koch (b. 1955) won an Olympic silver medal for the 30-kilometer race at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1976. Recreational skis were not developed specifically for cross-country skiing until a different sort of ski had been developed for Alpine skiing. Skis made of wood have yielded to skis made of synthetic materials that require no waxing. Click-in bindings that require special boots have replaced the three-pin binding designed to hold the front part of the boot firm while leaving the ankle and heel free. Poles made of steel and bamboo are now found only in museums, replaced by high-tech poles with small disks, alloy shafts, and pointed davits. Fashions, too, have changed with these developments. Jumping was the high point of any ski competition around the turn of the century. In Scandinavia and particularly in North America local communities prided themselves on their jumping. In Europe jumping declined in popularity as skiing became a social activity, and although jumping was still admired, most skiers no
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longer attempted it. In Scandinavia many men continued jumping for recreation; in North America only the experts continued, and jumping became the great winter outdoor spectator sport. Telemark is a style of ski turn that peasant skiers from Telemark, Norway, first used. During the late nineteenth century skiers used it to turn and stop in crosscountry skiing and in jumping. Now the telemark turn is often used in Alpine skiing as well. Special boots, skis, and even competitions are designed for the “tele skier.”
Competitive Skiing Cross-country racing, first organized on national levels in the United States and Europe before World War I, observed Norwegian rules. The standard Norwegian races were 15 to 50 kilometers long, and the popular 50-kilometer race was called the “winter marathon.” However, the true hero was not the winner of these races. The true hero was the man whose combined points for crosscountry skiing and ski jumping showed him to be the best all-round skier. After World War II specialization became increasingly common as men and, from 1952 on, women trained for specific distances. Cross-country racing by the 1960s had become such a specialized sport
Three styles of old bindings.
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Skiing, Cross-Country Cross Country Racing, 1907 The extract below from the National Ski Association Report (7 February 1907) describes the first extensive cross-country ski run in the United States: It was a pretty sight to behold the uniformed members of Nor Ski Club, Chicago, starting from the headquarters with red, white and blue streamers to be posted along the nine mile course. A good natured and healthy looking lot of men, who would do honor to any regiment of infantry in Uncle Sam’s army. The men were distributed along the course to watch at difficult passes, and report on any participant, who should in any way disobey the laws governing the contest. It is a very strict rule in Norway not to allow any participant in a cross country run to remove his skis during the contest, and this rule was adhered to in every detail. The skis could not be removed in jumping a fence or in clearing any other obstacle that might seem rather hard to overcome. The practical use of the ski is learned in runs of this nature, and it takes but a short time to get accustomed to handling the skis to advantage over obstacles of every description.
that recreational and club skiers no longer even considered entering competitions. However, in China and other countries where skiing did not become so specialized, cross-country racing continued as a club activity. So-called citizen races (races open to all) are a recent development that benefits the better amateur crosscountry skier. These races are best known from the thirteen marathons held around the world. The Norwegian Birkebeiner and the Swedish Vasaloppet, commemorating military and national events of the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, hold pride of place among the venues: Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia. The biathlon—a cross-country race that includes target shooting—is an offshoot of cross-country skiing. It is derived from the military ski patrol race. Before World War I Western and Westernized military leaders (in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Italy, France, Austria-
On a level surface, the Finns are the masters of the ski, while in a hilly and brushy country, the Norwegians cannot be beaten. The course of this run (the National Championship) was laid over a territory consisting of about four miles of hills and brush, three miles on the level and two miles on snow covered ice, thus giving the participating Finlanders a chance to gain on the level what their long skis naturally would lose through the brush, and the world famous Asarja Autio certainly knew how to avail himself of these level stretches as he practically flew over the snow as soon as the open availed itself, and he sustained his reputation by covering the distances two minutes ahead of the sturdy Norwegian runners, Elling Diesen and Gustav Bye, in the good time of 47 minutes and 30 seconds. The participants were in good condition, when they finished their hard run, and were well taken care of at headquarters. Warm milk was served as refreshments. It is of great importance, that the men posted along the course have a supply of bits of oranges or lemons to give the skiers as refreshments as they pass.
Hungary, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, and the United States) equipped a few military units as ski units. International military ski competitions were held. The Alpini (Italy) and the Chasseurs Alpins (France) were particular rivals. Patrols of four to six men in battle gear competed for the best time traveling between two points. During the war troops on skis saw some duty on the major fronts in the Dolomites,Vosges, and Carpathians. After the war the Federation Internationale de Ski and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) considered adopting the biathlon. In 1909 proponents had called for its inclusion in the Olympic Games, but it remained only a demonstration event until it became part of the Olympic program at Squaw Valley (United States) in 1960. Women participated only peripherally in crosscountry skiing competition before World War II. Doubts
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Nordic skiing on the King Ludwig II course in Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany. Source: istockphoto/sack.
Gabriella Paruzzi of Italy; and women’s 4 ✕ 5-kilometer relay, Viola Bauer, Manuela Henkel, Evi Sachenbacher, and Claudia Kuenzel of Germany.
Style Controversies
about the ability of women’s bodies to withstand such competition prevented women from receiving serious consideration, and ski jumping by women was even more out of the question. However, the two world wars opened opportunities for women. In 1952 competitive cross-country skiing for women became part of the Olympic program at Oslo with a 10-kilometer event. At Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994 women’s events of 5, 15, and 30 kilometers, a 4 ✕ 5-kilometer relay, 7.5- and 15-kilometer biathlons, and a 4 ✕ 7.5-kilometer relay were held.The 5-kilometer and 30-kilometer events were skied in classical technique; the 15-kilometer event was skied in the free technique, better described as the “skating step.” At the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, Utah, cross-country skiing gold medal winners were: men’s sprint, Tor Arne Hetland of Norway; men’s 10-kilometer free pursuit, Johann Muehlegg of Spain; men’s 15kilometer classical, Andrus Veerpalu of Spain; men’s 30-kilometer free mass start, Johann Muehlegg of Spain; men’s 50-kilometer classical, Mikhail Ivanov of the Russian Federation; men’s 4 ✕ 10-kilometer relay, Thomas Alsgaard, Kristen Skjeldal, Frode Estil, and Anders Aukland of Norway; women’s sprint, Julija Tchepalova of the Russian Federation; women’s 5-kilometer free pursuit, Olga Danilova of the Russian Federation; women’s 10-kilometer classical, Bente Skari of Norway; women’s 15-kilometer free mass start, Stefania Belmondo of Italy; women’s 30-kilometer classical,
Arguments between proponents of the classical technique and proponents of the skating step are about twenty years old. The skating step— one ski in a track and the other used like a skate to push off—was introduced at the Holmenkollen 50-kilometer race in 1971, and the Engadine, Switzerland, marathon in 1975 was won by a skier using the skating step. The step proved faster over flatter terrain, but it also cut up the prepared track, was derived from another sport, and seemed to emphasize winning by use of a modern technique over honoring the classical technique. By the late 1970s Finnish skaters used the skating step so effectively that it was called the “Finnstep” or “Siitonenschritt” after Finland’s Pauli Siitonen. Today the classical technique and skating step are separate cross-country disciplines. During the past century ski jumping styles, too, have changed. At one time a squat position competed with the more upright position that is popular today. Skiers have become increasingly interested in aerodynamic styles since the mid-1920s. Ski jumping competitions are won or lost on the basis of two criteria: the distance traveled and the style of the jump based on positions at takeoff, flight, and landing. Rules for awarding points have changed. At one time points were awarded for the crouch and the leap, which ideally aesthetically stretched and poised the body in the air with arms forward, back, or at the side to allow flight guidance and balance on landing. The lift during the flight was achieved by parallel skis pointing straight out almost like the wing of a plane. However, during the late 1980s Jan Boklov of Sweden spread his skis in an outward “V”
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Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. ■ JOHN WOODEN
on taking off, and a hundred-year-old tradition was broken. Initially perceived as unaesthetic and accordingly discounted by judges, the “V” style was given official sanction before the 1992 Olympics and has replaced the classical ski jumping style. In 1962 jumps were regulated at heights of 90 and 70 meters, and ski flying, in which skiers attain distances of more than 183 meters, was sanctioned by the FIS in 1972. E. John B. Allen
Further Reading Allen, E. J. B. (1993). From skisport to skiing: One hundred years of an American sport, 1840–1940. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Berg, K. (1993). Ski i Norge. Oslo, Norway: Aventura. Bomann-Larsen, T. (1993). Den evige sne: en skihistorie om Norge. Oslo, Norway: Cappelens. Lloyd, J. M. (1986). Skiing into history 1924–1984. Toorak, Australia: Ski Club of Victoria. Lovett, R., & Peterson, P. (1999). The essential cross-country skier. Camden, ME: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press. Nansen, F. (1890). Paa Ski over Gronland; en Skildring af den Norske Gronlands-Ekspedition 1888–89. Oslo, Norway: Aschehoug. Nygren, H., Raevuori, A., & Maki-Kuuti, T. (1983). Pitka latu: vuosisata suomalaista hiihtourheilua. Porvoo, Finland: Soderstrom. Palmedo, R. (Ed.). (1937). Skiing: The international sport. New York: Derrydale.
Skiing, Freestyle
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reestyle skiing goes back to the 1930s and is a form of Alpine skiing that is divided into three disciplines:
Mogul Aerial Acro (short for acrobatic)
Each requires different athletic skills, terrain, and equipment.
Three Disciplines The roots of freestyle skiing cannot be exactly determined; however, most sources mention Norway as the cradle of freestyle skiing. There, in the 1930s, competi-
tive skiers used ski acrobatics for training and discovered their entertaining effect. Competitive freestyle skiing started in the United States in 1966. Beginning in the 1970s, other countries staged national championships and the sport was divided into the three disciplines with competitions for men and women. In 1973, the International Free Skiers Association (IFSA) was formed to protect athlete interests, develop judging and scoring rules, and help standardize events. In 1980, the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) established the Freestyle World Cup, and the first World Championships took place in 1986 in Tignes, France. Competitions were held in all three disciplines, including a combined competition in mogul and aerial skiing. Two years later, freestyle skiing was included as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Calgary Olympic Winter Games. However, only mogul and aerial skiing gained Olympic status: mogul competitions were accepted for the 1992 Olympic Winter Games in Albertville (France), and aerials for the Lillehammer (Norway) Winter Games in 1994. With the development of new gliding and skiing equipment, and the building of special snow parks for snowboarders that included various jumps and halfpipes, aerial skiing has become more common among recreational skiers, especially younger ones. Recreational skiers commonly try the “hot dogging” technique of the bump experts when skiing moguls. The least common, and popular, among recreational skiers is acro skiing mainly because special equipment and athletic skills are needed, whereas bumps and jumps can be done with normal skis and poles. Many ski schools around the world have also taken advantage of this raising interest by offering clinics and classes in the three freestyle disciplines. Because of this popularity, many ski federations include freestyle elements in their ski instructor training programs. For the entertainment business, freestyle skiing attracts spectators at snow festivals and ski school events. The film industry discovered the attractiveness of the sport as early as the 1930s when the first ski films were produced:
SKIING, FREESTYLE
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Skier doing a jump in Colorado. Source: istockphoto.com/DCEngland.
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Der wesse Rausch [The White Frenzy] (1931), a German silent film by Arnold Fanck, starring Hannes Schneider and Leni Riefenstahl, included many acrobatic and aerial skiing sequences that drew viewers into the movie theatres. Willy Bogner’s movie Fire and Ice (1986), with a superficial storyline, focused on all three freestyle disciplines and has become an icon for many skiers. The American producer Warren Miller also frequently shows glimpses of mogul and aerial moves in his extreme skiing adventure movies.
What Is Freestyle Skiing? The following sections will give a brief insight into the three unrelated freestyle skiing techniques.
MOGUL SKIING Mogul skiing is also known as “hot dogging.” The athlete skis through bumps, or moguls, keeping to the fall line.
Skiers compensate for the moguls with their knees while their upper bodies stay motionless. The skis should not leave the snow surface. Competitions take place on steep runs of 28 to 35 degrees for about 250 meters. The moguls are often artificially constructed, with two jump areas for aerial maneuvers in the course. Performed jumps must include two or three techniques but inverted maneuvers are prohibited. Usually two skiers compete in a parallel run against each other in a round-robin event. Style, time, and the performance of the two jumps are important for winning the competition. The winner is determined by the score, which is awarded by seven judges. The total score is split into 25 percent for speed, 25 percent for the two aerial jumps, and 50 percent for the overall technique and control during the performance. The skiers often wear special colored kneepads to draw the judges’ attention to their performance. The average ski length is 185 centimeters for men and 175 centimeters for women.
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AERIAL SKIING Aerial skiing is a form of ski jumping in which tricks are performed in the air. Aerial skiers use jumping areas, or kickers, of various sizes. Top competitors perform triple back somersaults with as many as four twists. These jumps are very similar to trampoline, which is used for training, moves. To perform these spectacular jumps, the skis should not be too long, usually only 160 centimeters long. The competitors jump over a tabletop where they hit the “Big Air,” meaning they are several meters high in the air, which helps them perform. Half- and quarterpipes are incorporated in aerial skiing. Here, the jumping and flipping occurs with less air. There are also combined mogul and aerial competitions.
these FIS events, the Olympic Games are the highest elite level competition for freestyle skiers The first Olympic mogul competitions were held 1992 in Albertville, France. The gold medalists were Edgar Grospiron of France in the men’s competition, and Donna Weinbracht of the United States in the women’s competition. Two years later at the Lillehammer Games, aerial events were officially included. Andreas Schönbächler of Switzerland won the men’s competition and Lina Cheryazova of Uzbekistan won the women’s.
Governing Body In most countries, the national ski federation governs freestyle skiing. International competitions are conducted by the FIS (www.fis-ski.com).
ACRO SKIING Acro skiing is more commonly known as “ski ballet” because of its similarity to dancing. Acro is performed on groomed runs that are about 250 meters long and not steep. According to the FIS, acro competitions include jumps, spins, flips, rotations, and inverted movements. Moreover, linking maneuvers blend all these elements into “a well-balanced program, performed in harmony with music of the skiers’ choice,” as stated by the FIS. The performance is judged equally on technique and artistic impression. This sport shares many similarities with figure skating on ice, and many acro participants originally competed in figure skating or gymnastics For these disciplines, the skis are about the length of 80 percent of the performer’s body; thus, they are easier to manage. Longer poles support jumping and lifting elements. Acro skiing has not yet become an Olympic event.
Competition at the Top On the international level, the FIS is responsible for organizing the Freestyle FIS World Cup every winter and the Freestyle World Ski Championships held every other winter since 1986 for all three disciplines, as well as combined mogul and aerial competitions. Other than
Annette R. Hofmann
Further Reading Allison, T. (2001). Skiing, freestyle. In K. Christensen, A. Guttmann, & G. Pfister (Eds.), International encyclopedia of women and sports (Vol. 3, pp. 1037–1042). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. Casper, P. (1996). Retrieved from www.sportbox.de/kompendium/ ktii1275.htm FIS: 6100 Acro. Retrieved from www.kinchans.com/junkie/rule/6100. html Loland, S. (1999). Skiing, freestyle. In D. Levinson & K. Christensen (Eds.), Encyclopedia of world sport: From ancient times to the present (pp. 360–361). New York: Oxford University Press.
Skiing, Water
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opular around the world, water skiing combines elements of several sports, including boating and snow skiing. Some 50 million people participate in water skiing internationally, most of whom are recreational skiers. The remainder are serious water skiers who compete in organized events. In the sport, a water skier is pulled along the surface of the water by a motorboat. In the basic style of the sport, the water skier wears a ski on each foot and
SKIING, WATER
holds a tow rope with both arms. As the boat moves forward, it pulls the skier at a speed that enables him or her to stand up on the skis and glide along the surface of the water. Variations include the use of only one ski, barefoot skiing, and jumping off ramps, among others. Water skiing appeals to people on many levels. It offers the opportunity to experience being on the water in a more direct sense than is possible in a boat, combined with the excitement of skiing along its surface at high speeds. The basic skills of water skiing can be learned quickly, and people with a moderate degree of physical proficiency can enjoy the sport on its simpler levels. Water skiing at more advanced levels is a very challenging sport that requires a great deal of physical skill and courage. Those who pursue the sport more seriously enjoy the opportunity to develop their skills, test their courage, and compete against other water skiers. Water skiing is also a popular spectator sport in competition as well as in noncompetitive entertainment shows. The skiers can accomplish physical feats that are quite impressive to watch, including intricate maneuvers on skis, high-speed runs, impressive leaps and flips in the air, and other demonstrations of prowess and courage. The name can be spelled as two separate words (water skiing), as one word (waterskiing), or with a hyphen (water-skiing). The primary water skiing organization in the United States, the American Water Ski Association, spells it as two separate words.
Origins and Development Water skiing is a twentieth-century sport, with origins in the ancient principle of using the power of one moving object to tow another. Throughout history people have used animals to pull wagons on land or sleds on snow and ice. On the water, people used one vessel to tow a raft or attached boat containing cargo. In addition to harnessing this concept to accomplish tasks, people have used it for recreational activities such as sledding. Although it is believed that people attempted earlier forms of water skiing using sailboats, the sport originated in its modern form only after 1900, with the development of the motorboat, which provided sufficient
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power and speed to reliably pull people along the water’s surface. As motorboats began to proliferate in the decades after 1900, people in various locations began to develop separately activities that evolved into the sport of water skiing, including towing sleds and other flat objects that people either sat on or stood up in. These activities were popular on the French Riviera and other bodies of water in Europe; Count Maximillian Pulaski is believed to have devised an early pair of water skis in Europe in the early 1920s. In the United States, Ralph Samuelson invented and demonstrated a pair of water skis in 1922 on Lake Pepin, Minnesota. At approximately the same time, near New York City, Fred Waller invented and marketed a style of water ski and also invented the bridle at the end of the tow rope that water skiers hold. By the 1930s efforts were being initiated to organize and promote the sport more widely. In the United States an enthusiast named Dan Haines formed the American Water Ski Association (AWSA) in 1939, and the organization held its first national championship at Jones Beach near New York City that year. Many of the pioneers of the sport came together under the umbrella of AWSA, and standardized rules and a structure of local clubs and competitions were established. Similar initiatives took place in other nations. In the late 1940s the World Water Ski Union (WWSU) was formed to coordinate the sport, sanction events and records, and formulate rules internationally. Tournaments and championship events were established throughout the world on regional, national, and international levels.
EMERGENCE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT Water skiing also captured the public’s attention as a spectator sport. Entertainment-oriented water shows became popular attractions that helped to boost the sport’s visibility. These shows featured spectacular stunts, beautiful women performing choreographed dance routines, and other crowd-pleasing activities on water skis. One of the first of these water-sports shows was held in 1928 at the Atlantic City Steel Pier in New Jersey sponsored by entrepreneur Frank Sterling.
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A boy water skiing at sunset. Source: istockphoto.com/Ju-Lee.
In Florida, Dick Pope featured a ski-jumping demonstration that same year. Pope and his family became leading promoters of water-skiing shows, especially after establishing a major ski show at Cypress Gardens, an aquatic theme park in Winter Haven, Florida. Similar attractions were established in many other locations. World War II inhibited recreational activities like water skiing that used fuel needed for the war effort. After the war, however, water skiing experienced steady and continued growth. It remained primarily an amateur sport, with trophies awarded more often than prize money. Many expert water skiers made a living by teaching, participating in shows, or holding other jobs connected to the sport. Professional competitive water skiing tours and events were eventually established, but the amateur emphasis remained. The distinction between amateur and professional aspects of the sport has been an ongoing debate. Water skiing continued to grow and become more diverse in the decades after 1970. In part this reflected the overall popularity of the sport of powerboating. Enthusiasts continued to accomplish new speed and distance records and to perform ever-more-spectacular stunts. New variations of water skiing were also devised. These included activities that combined water skiing with elements of other sports such as hang gliding and surfing. Both males and females participate in water skiing on a recreational and competitive level; tournaments and series often include categories for males, females, and mixed-gender events.
Practice In the basic form of water skiing, the skier uses two skis and holds a horizontal bar connected to the end of the tow rope, which is attached to the motorboat. The tow rope is typically 23 meters (75 feet) long, although the ropes vary in length depending on the particular activity. There are several basic ways to start a run. In a basic beach start, the skier crouches in the water with arms forward and knees close to the chest, with the lower legs placed so the ski tips are raised out of the water. As the boat moves forward, the skis are pulled
and lifted straight onto the water’s surface. The skier rises to a standing position and is pulled along. Variations include the dock start, in which the skier begins by sitting on a dock and is pulled into the water as the boat starts forward. The minimum sustained speed for water skiing begins at around 24 kilometers per hour (15 miles per hour). As water skiers become more proficient and confident, they can be towed at increasing speeds. In 1983, Christopher Michael Massey, an Australian, established a water-ski speed record of more than 230 kilometers (144 miles) per hour. Once beginning skiers are able to maintain balance while riding straight behind the boat, they can progress to turning independently of the boat and making other movements. Water skiers control their runs in various ways, including how they bend their legs; lean forward, backward, and from side to side; hold and tug the tow rope; and shift their weight and position in other ways. One basic move is crossing the wake, which is accomplished by attaining the momentum to swing beyond
SKIING, WATER
the waves that fan out behind both sides of the boat. In a more exaggerated form, this is known as wake jumping. Water skiers may advance to using only one ski and to more difficult and specialized tricks, jumps, and other challenging activities.
Ski Design The design of basic skis emphasizes stability and ease of handling. They are often between 1.5 and 1.8 meters (60 and 70 inches) long and come in pairs, with a binding that holds the foot securely but releases quickly to protect skiers if they fall or lose control. There are many other variations and types of water skis for specific purposes. Advanced slalom skiers use single skis with two sets of bindings, one for each foot. Skis designed for stunts and other purposes may be shorter or more rounded. Other types of skis include the kneeboard, which is ridden in a kneeling position, and boards that are ridden without bindings (similar to a surfboard).
Powerboat Concerns Many types of powerboats are used to tow water skiers. On a purely recreational level, a variety of generalpurpose motorboats are suitable. However, certain characteristics are important. Boats should have an appropriate size and body design and an engine that has enough power to tow a person but that does not create an excessive wake or overwhelm the skier in other ways. Certain powerboats are designed specifically for water skiing and are used by dedicated amateurs and in organized competitions and professional shows. The type of boat used is especially critical in competitions to ensure that the performances of individual skiers are based on their own abilities and are not the result of differences among towboats. The AWSA, for example, has very stringent criteria for boats that can be used in sanctioned events to ensure consistency, performance, and safety. Safety is an important concern, especially in the more advanced aspects of the sport, in which skiers travel at high speeds and perform flips and other potentially
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dangerous moves. Flotation vests are encouraged for all skiers, and helmets and other protective gear are often used in addition. Water-skiing clubs and events have strict guidelines for events to promote safety. Coordination between the driver and skier is crucial, and hand signals or verbal cues are often used to communicate. In many instances, a third person, or “spotter,” also rides in the boat to watch the skier and make sure the driver is aware of his or her status. Most often, water skiing has one person being towed by an individual boat. However, a boat may tow two or more people simultaneously. In water shows, for example, a team of performers may form a line with a single boat towing them. In 1986, the cruising vessel Reef Cat towed 100 water skiers simultaneously for one nautical mile in Queensland, Australia.
Competitions Individual competitions and overall rankings of competitive water skiers are based on age and gender, in addition to categories for specific events. Competitions are often organized by local clubs and are sanctioned and based on guidelines from national organizations and the International Water Ski Federation (the new name, as of 1993, for the WWSU). Traditionally, competitive water-skiing tournaments feature three main competitions: slalom, tricks, and jumping. In the slalom event, skiers maneuver back and forth on a course marked with buoys (usually six), while the boat follows a straight line down the middle. During the event the boat speed is increased and the tow rope shortened, which makes runs successively difficult. The ability of the skier to get as close as possible to all of the buoys during the run without missing one or falling is scored. In trick skiing, the competitors ski on a straight course and perform as many stunts as they can within their designated time (usually two 20-second passes). A panel of judges scores their performance based on the difficulty of their routines and their skill in executing them. Trick skiing can include a wide variety of moves,
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such as twirling in the water, removing skis while in motion, and flipping out of the water. In jumping, skiers go up an inclined ramp in the water, which launches them into the air. In addition to maintaining good form and control, skiers attempt to extend the length of the jump as far as possible before landing on the water. The standard ramp is approximately 1.8 meters (6 feet) high out of the water at its highest point for men’s adult competition and 1.5 meters (5 feet) for others. During the history of jumping, the distance records have gotten progressively longer. In 1947, a distance-jumping record was set at 15 meters (49 feet). By the 1990s, skiers were achieving jumps of 60 meters (200 feet) and longer. In 2004, competition reached a new level when the International Water Ski Federation began sponsoring a Water Ski World Cup event in 2004, with stops in Russia, England, China, and Qatar over a five-month period.
SPECIALIZED COMPETITIONS AND STUNTS The sport also encompasses more specialized competitions. Freestyle jumping emerged in competition after the 1950s. In freestyle, jumpers add midair flips and other variations to the basic jump. Barefoot skiing was introduced publicly as a stunt at Cypress Gardens in 1947 and has since developed into a separate branch of the sport, with competitions and other events. In 1989, Scott M. Pellaton achieved a barefoot skiing speed record of almost 219 kilometers (136 miles) per hour. In 1978, Billy Nichols established a barefoot duration record by skiing for 2 hours, 42 minutes, and 39 seconds. In 1989, Steve Fontaine skied backward for just over 1 hour and 27 minutes. Barefoot skiing and jumping were combined into an event known as barefoot jumping, and competitors have made jumps of over 26 meters (86 feet). In the 1950s water-skiing shows began to feature a stunt in which a water skier was connected to a large kite, which created air currents that carried him aloft as the boat gained speed. This facet of the sport gained popularity in the 1970s. A cousin of hang gliding and parachuting, it has been referred to by several names, in-
cluding parasailing, paragliding, and kite skiing. Although safety and insurance-liability concerns inhibited its acceptance in sanctioned water-skiing competitions in the 1980s, parasailing became popular among recreational water skiers. In the 1990s, a variation of this emerged in which water skiers attach tow lines to kites, which pull the skier along on the water.
Other Watercraft In the 1980s and 1990s, a hybrid of powerboating and water skiing became popular that involved motorized craft known as personal watercraft, Jet Skis, and other names. These watercraft are very small and are driven in a manner somewhat similar to water skiing, but they are self-propelled. Jet Skis are fast and maneuverable. In some instances, when riders have acted irresponsibly, Jet Skis have prompted concern and criticism about noise and similar disruptions to other boats and the environments where they are used.
Governing Body The International Water Ski Federation (www.iwsf.com) is the primary governing organization, with affiliate clubs in nations around the world. John Townes
Further Reading AWSA 50th Anniversary Edition. (1989). Water Skier. Winter Haven, FL: American Water Ski Association. Favret, B., & Benzel, D. (1997). Complete guide to water skiing. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Overton, Kristi. (1995, May). Kristi’s top tips.ˆ Motor Boating & Sailing Magazine, 12. A profile of water skiing in the United States. (1994). Winter Haven, FL: American Water Ski Association. Youngs, Jim. (1994, November). Ultimate ski boat test. Popular Mechanics, 48.
Skydiving See Parachuting
SLED DOG RACING
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Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. ■ VINCE LOMBARDI
Sled Dog Racing
I
n sled dog racing a driver, known as a “musher,” controls a harnessed dog team that races to achieve speed or distance. Frequently the challenge is a combination of speed and distance that involves crossing hundreds of kilometers of ice and snow trails during a period of days.
Development European sled dog racing originated in Scandinavia, where competitions can be traced back to the eighteenth century. In North America the development of sled dog racing was more recent, with the first races being held during the late nineteenth century. Early competition may have begun as rival groups of gold prospectors or fur trappers challenged one another to see who had the fastest sled and the best team of racing dogs. Although the sport has appeal in polar and subpolar regions, it has always had limited international appeal. The first organized race was the 1908 All-Alaskan Sweepstake, a round-trip race between the townships of Nome and Candle. The distance crossed was 656 kilo-
meters. The Hudson Bay Derby was instituted in 1916, followed seven years later by the Banff Alberta Dog Derby. In 1936 the Laconia Sled Dog Club of New Hampshire organized the first World Championship Sled Dog Derby. In 1966 the International Sled Dog Racing Association was formed and led to the development of a racing circuit. Sled dog teams also played a role in exploration, in particular in the exploration of the Antarctic. The progress of the Norwegian Roald Amundsen (1872– 1928) and the Englishman Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) toward the South Pole in late 1911 was seen by their respective nations and the world’s press as a race to be the first to reach the South Pole. Amundsen won, reaching the South Pole on 14 December 1911. Scott and his party died on the return journey, victims of starvation and the intense cold. Scott relied on ponies and primitive engines early during his trek, but at the end he and his exhausted team manhandled their own equipment. By contrast, Amundsen planned his trek around the use of dogs and sleds. In his party he had four companions and four light sleds, each pulled by thirteen dogs. In North America, although Eskimos used dog sleds for hunting, travel, and recreation during the precolonial period, regulated sled dog races did not appear until the late nineteenth century. The U.S. writer Jack London (1876–1916) was a major figure in introducing these dogs, and indirectly their sleds, to the mainstream of U.S. life. By the age of twenty London had held a variety of jobs: sailor, tramp, Klondike adventurer.
Sled dogs waiting in the snow. Source: istockphoto/isatis.
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His appreciation of the dramatic Alaskan gold rush area popularized the perception of the “man in the wild” constantly battling the elements and surviving in a tough world. With his novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang London described a wild dog (probably a composite of Siberian huskies or malamutes) and explored notions of a dog being tamed but never escaping its savage origins. However, the event that catapulted sled dog racing onto the front pages of newspapers around the world was a 1925 diphtheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska. Hundreds of people were at risk and could not be reached by road or air because of ground conditions and severe weather. The only way to get serum to them was by dogsled. This outbreak received worldwide media coverage and stimulated sled dog racing in Canada and northern New England. In 1928 the New York Times reported on events at the Saint-Moritz Olympics in Switzerland. Sandwiched between columns on skating and ice hockey was a report of a different contest, describing a three-day, 198kilometer sled dog race in which Emile St. Goddard’s of Manitoba, Canada, defeated Leonard Seppala of Nome, Alaska. The race consisted of three sections, one held each day. At the start of the final day, the lead of St. Goddard’s over Seppala was only forty seconds. As the race ended the lead of St. Goddard’s had increased to 3 minutes, 10 seconds. In light of the repeated successes by women mushers in Alaska’s Iditarod race during the 1980s and 1990s, the newspaper report of the race is interesting. Its tenor is in keeping with the social climate of the time: a gentlemanly concern for the competitive woman, liberally sprinkled with admonitions about the overwhelming nature of such physical challenges: Mrs. Edward P. Ricker Jr. of Poland Spring, Maine, did not start the last day. She is the only woman who ever had courage or skill to enter this race against the best men drivers of the continent. Two of her dogs tired last night and she dropped out to save them. (New York Times, 23 February 1928)
“Mush!” The Iditarod, inaugurated in 1973, is the most famous dog sled race. It begins in Anchorage, Alaska, and crosses the Alaska Range, turns west along the Yukon River, and continues up the Bering Sea coast to Nome. The race takes approximately eleven days. One of the most exciting Iditarod races was run in 1978. After more than two weeks of racing Dick Macky won by less than a dog’s length over Rick Swenson—one of the smallest gaps ever between winner and loser. In 1985 Libby Riddles was the first woman to win the Iditarod. Winner of the 2004 Iditarod was Mitch Seavey of Sterling, Alaska, with a time of 9 days, 12 hours, 20 minutes, and 22 seconds. Winners of the 2004 World Championship Sled Dog Derby in Laconia, New Hampshire, were: one-dog junior class, Breana Martin with a time of 31 minutes; Dick Moulton three-dog junior class, Eddie Gast, with a total time of 41 minutes, 9 seconds; Lyn Newell memorial six-dog classic, Hank Plaisted, with a total time of 1 hour, 26 minutes, 25 seconds; and open class, Real Turmel with a total time of 2 hours, 44 minutes, 21 seconds. Sled dog teams are traditionally composed of Siberian or Alaskan huskies. The number of dogs used varies, but seven or nine in a team is common. In the Iditarod as many as sixteen may be used. Although racing sleds are lightweight, they must be strongly constructed and able to carry equipment, provisions, or a sick or fatigued dog. Sled dog race courses are marked by red and green. Red flags indicate a turn. Green flags indicate a straightaway. Dog teams are inspected approximately ten minutes before the start of a race to make certain that the dogs are neither sick nor injured and are “up to scratch” for the demands of the race. Many sled dog races count only periods of racing time and not rest intervals, so the mushers—and, more importantly, the dog teams—are provisioned and rested. The International Sled Dog Racing Association (www.isdra.org), which governs the sport, has acknowledged the metabolism of a racing
SLEDDING—SKELETON
husky: “A sled dog at rest in the summer needs about 800 calories per day. In the middle of a cold winter’s long distance race the same dog may need up to 10,000 calories per day.” Scott A. G. M. Crawford
Further Reading Brown, G. (Ed.). (1979). New York Times encyclopedia of sports— Winter sports. Danbury, CT: Grolier. Cuddon, J. A. (1979). International dictionary of sports and games. New York: Schocken Books. Diagram Group. (1982). Sports comparisons. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Hickok, R. (1992). The encyclopedia of North American sports history. New York: Facts on File. Sled Dog Racing. (2004). Retrieved December 15, 2004, from http:// www.isdra.org Smith, N. L. (1979). Almanac of sports and games. New York: Facts on File. Woolum, J. (1992). Outstanding women athletes. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.
Sledding—Skeleton
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keleton is a winter sport in which an athlete lies face down and head first on a sled and races down a snow track. Such forms of sledding (tobogganing) spread in North America, Russia, and middle Europe during the nineteenth century. In Switzerland natives and foreign residents—most of them citizens of England and the United States—raced toboggans on artificial and natural snow tracks. In 1884 some British residents of the Swiss city of Saint Moritz, led by Major W. H. Bulpetts, built an artificial track with curves and banks at Cresta at the outskirts of the city. There, on 18 February 1885, the first Grand National race took place with twenty contestants. Racers from the Swiss city of Davos won.
speed. By 1890 all racers of the Grand National raced head first, and skeleton distinguished itself from luge, in which athletes races downhill feet first. The head-first style also spread to the International Race of Davos. In Switzerland skeleton soon had more competitors than had luge, which remained quite diffused. In November 1887 the Saint Moritz Tobogganing Club was formed, and this body governed the competitions of both sports. Eventually women were allowed to compete in the Grand National, and other races began to allow women and children as well. Ursula Weble, three-time winner of the Grand National in the traditional style, adopted the head-first style and added other six victories for a total of nine—a record. The word skeleton refers to the fact that, in comparison with a luge sled, a skeleton sled was reduced to minimal elements. Four pillars connected the sled’s seat to the sled’s running blades. In 1901 John Bott of the United States introduced the sliding seat, which allowed better management of the sled. In 1905 regional championships were begun in Austria and Germany, but luge and bobsleigh remained more popular in those countries. In 1910 at Cresta the Ashbourne Cup race, over a course of 887 meters, was begun. Women competed with men. Later the race was renamed the “Curzon Cup.” In 1913 in Dresden, Germany, an international body was founded to control all tobogganing sports. In 1914
Head Start In 1887 a Scot named McCornish raced head first in the Grand National. He did not win, but other racers began to imitate his head-first style because it allowed greater
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A gentleman on a sled at St. Mortiz.
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Sledding—Skeleton A Tribute to Hesta This amusing poem pays tribute to “Hesta,” a folk heroine who is said to have tobogganed down the Cresta Valley in 1882, three years before official construction of the run: Now Hesta rode the Cresta Midst the snows of ’82 Tho’ her mother had impressed her It was not the thing to do. She said “It’s nice, I like the ice, It thrills me thru’ and thru’.” In defiance of her mummy She slid upon her tummy.
in Davos the first European championship was held. A man named “Bernhoff,” a German resident of the Russian town of Riga, was the winner. The Federation Internationale de Bobsleigh et Tobogganing (www.bobsleigh. com), with headquarters in Milan, Italy, is now the international governing body. It was founded in 1923.
Cresta Run Tobogganing During the period between the two world wars, under the aegis of the Federation Internationale de Bobsleigh et Tobogganing, bobsleigh racing entered the Olympic program; skeleton racing appeared in the 1928 Olympics at Saint Moritz, where Jennison Heaton of the United States won. The Grand National and the Curzon Cup remained the two international races. In 1926 a woman competed for the last time in Cresta Run. In 1929 women were excluded from the race because organizers feared that the face-down style might injure the breasts of women racers. Skeleton came back to the Olympics in 1948 when the games returned to Saint Moritz. The winner was the Italian Nino Bibbia, a hero of the two big races at Engadin, Switzerland, where he won fifteen victories from 1948 to 1969. Jack Heaton was runner-up. In 1954 the International Olympic Committee decided to accept luge and to exclude skeleton.
In 2002 skeleton—open to men and women—was readmitted to the Olympics at Salt Lake City. The U.S. team won gold twice as John Shea won the men’s, and Tristan Gale won the women’s. During the last half-century, unlike luge, the style of skeleton has not changed significantly. Fiberglass is the material used most often for the sled. Clothing has evolved from pullovers, trousers, and mountaineering shoes to more sporting styles. Gherardo Bonini
Further Reading Bass, H. (1971). International encyclopaedia of winter sport. London: Pelham Books. Bonini, G. (2001). Europa, Mitteleuropa, Vaste Land. Florence, Italy: Rilegatoria Cecchi. Hake, O. (1909). Tobogganing. In J. M. Heathcote & C. G. Tebbutt (Eds.), Skating (pp. 395–414). London: Longmans Green.
Snowboarding
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he picture of alpine slopes has greatly changed over the last decades. One of the most obvious changes is the appearance of persons gliding down the snow on boards: the snowboarders. Male and female snowboarders can be found either on regular slopes, off the slopes in ungroomed and powder areas, and in boarder parks with various jumps and half pipes in which the boarders focus on airborne tricks and maneuvers. According to their preferred territory, the snowboarders are categorized as alpine or carving riders, freeriders, or freestylers, each equipped with specially designed boards, bindings, and boots. Presently there are more than five million snowboarders worldwide. Predominantly children and adolescents are learning this relatively new winter sport. For many snowboarders, snowboarding is more than a sport; it stands for a special philosophy and lifestyle, going back to the initial influence of surfing and skateboarding, and reflecting an easygoing youth culture
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A snowboarder pulling a sweet grab off a jump. Source: istockphoto/Mfpar35.
that strives to neglect all kinds of conformity and searches for individuality and freedom. These snowboarders can be considered a subculture, distinguishing themselves from alpine skiers not only by their sporting equipment, but also by fashion, hairstyle, body piercing and tattooing, as well as language, music, and off-slope appearance and behavior.
History Snowboarding has its roots in the United States. One of the early pioneers who greatly influenced the introduction of this winter sport was the American Sherman Poppen from Michigan. In the mid-1960s he developed a toy board consisting of two attached skis on which one had to stand sideways. He named his construction “snurfer,” a word mixture of the words “surfing” and “snow.” This board of about 1.20 meters in length had neither real steel edges nor bindings and was steered by a rope tied to its nose. Accordingly, it was difficult to handle on hard slopes. However, it was successful. At the end of the 1977, Jake Burton Carpenter modified the snurfer. He attached rubber straps to the board to facilitate standing, and founded his own company, Burton, for the production of snowboards, which has been successful until today. At about the same time the experienced surfers Dimitrije Milovich and Tom Sims, the latter world champion in skateboarding at the time, also started to improve the
snurfer by taking advantage of their experience in the making of surfboards. Sims started—just like Burton—to build boards consisting of laminated wooden layers. Although none of these constructions had steel edges, they made it possible to glide down mountains. However, neither Milovich’s “Wintersticks” nor Sims’s boards were very prosperous in the long run. Besides problems involving materials, this new sport had to face another difficulty: many ski areas did not allow snowboarding on their mountains. In the United States this was mostly due to security reasons, whereas in Europe the skiers were very reluctant to approve of this new winter sport. Meanwhile, the material dilemma was solved: snowboards began to be produced with steel edges; additionally, special bindings and special boots made it easier to control the boards. As a result, by the end of the 1980s many ski areas throughout the world had opened their slopes to snowboarding. This was also an economic chance for tourism and the ski-equipment-producing industry; especially the latter had reached a growth plateau at the time. The sale of boards in the winter of 1994–1995 was 471,000 and rose in the following year to over 1,200,000. In the 1990s, the strongest market was in North America, followed by Europe and, finally, Asia.
Competitions and Federations The acceptance of snowboarding as a sport can also be seen in the rise of the first competitions in the 1980s. During that decade, too, a number of snowboard federations in various European countries and North America were founded. The first governing body for competitive and grassroots snowboarding was the United States Snowboard Association (USASA), which goes back to 1988. On an international level the
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Snowboarding on sand dunes.
International Snowboard Federation (ISF), which developed out of the International Snowboard Association (ISA) initiated in 1989, was organized in 1991. The ISF started to organize a World Pro Tour in 1987. The Federation Internationale du Ski (FIS) introduced snowboarding as an FIS discipline in 1994. They hold the FIS Snowboard World Cup series and the FIS Snowboard World Championships, making snowboarding eligible for the Olympic Winter Games. At the Winter Olympics in 1998 in Nagano, Japan, both men and women participated as snowboarding competitions in giant slalom and half pipe were held for the first time. Presently there are six snowboard events on the program of the Olympic Winter Games: half pipe, parallel giant slalom, and snowboard cross, each held separately for men and women. Tension between the FIS and the ISF arose pertaining to the responsibility for this “new” sport, especially with regard to the Olympic Games. Although the World Cup under the FIS’s authority was financially less attractive than the IFS’s World Pro
Tour, in the long run the FIS survived as the sport’s official governing body. It had more expertise in organizing events and attracting sponsors and TV contracts. As a result, the IFS, which claimed to be more than a sport federation, but also stood for a special lifestyle and philosophy, had to fold in 2002. Annette R. Hofmann
Further Reading Hebbel-Seeger, A. (1997). Snow-boarding: Ausrustung, technik, fahrpraxis. Wurzburg & Niedernhausen, Germany: Falken. Humphrey, D. (1999). Snowboarding. In D. Levinson & K. Christensen (Eds.), Encyclopedia of world sport (pp. 365–366). New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lowenthal, K. (2001). Snowboarding. In K. Christensen, A. Guttmann, & G. Pfister (Eds.), International encyclopedia of women and sports (Vol. 3, pp. 1057–1059). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. Trosien, G., & Stetter, D. (1998). Globale ausbreitung des snowboardings und entwicklungen in Deutschland. In G. Trosien (Ed.), Globalisiserung und sport: Business, entertainment, trend (pp. 89– 102). Aachen, Germany: Meyer & Meyer.
SNOWSHOE RACING
Snowshoe Racing
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nowshoe racing is of recent origin, although snowshoes themselves are ancient. Informal racing is probably as old as the snowshoe itself, but serious racing only emerged in North America in the 1970s, after major improvements in snowshoes were introduced.
New World Beginnings Snowshoes have been used for the past 6,000 years, primarily by Amerindian peoples. Informal races have probably taken place for centuries, but for most of its historical career, the snowshoe had a primarily utilitarian life, enabling people to work and travel in snowy conditions. The trappers, hunters, and explorers of North America all used snowshoes. As a form of recreation, snowshoeing in Canada came into its own with “snowshoe clubs.” These clubs, some of them two hundred years old, were popular among both French- and English-speaking populations, but more so among French Canadians. The clubs were originally tied to communities, churches, guilds, and military units. A small number of the Quebec clubs are still active. In 1907, the Canadian Snowshoer’s Union was founded as a loose confederation of clubs. The union, though, never made a serious effort to transform snowshoeing from a recreation into a more competitive sport. Some snowshoe clubs, primarily among people of French ancestry, were formed in the United States and were found throughout New England and in New York. These, like the Canadian clubs, were mainly recreational, organizing only informal races. The long tradition of “social snowshoeing” continues in Quebec and New England. However, racing in the east has taken on a more competitive edge since 1988,
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when the first “North American Snowshoe Classic” was run. The newest centers of snowshoe racing are in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, and the neighboring mountain states. The races are increasingly more organized and competitive, but they still have recreational qualities.
What Is Snowshoe Racing? Snowshoe races are held either on groomed trails, as for most Nordic ski events, or on unbroken snow. When the “modern” phase of snowshoe racing first began, many races were run on groomed tracks. Some believed, however, that snowshoe racing might end up losing all its distinctiveness and become merely a sort of handicapped running activity. Races through unbroken snow were also problematic. When such races were staged, a typical strategy was simply to “hang back” while the leaders broke a more manageable path through the snow and then sprint at the end. In an attempt to do away with this “laggard’s advantage,” some recent races have featured a sequence of “primes,” rather like in cycling races, to improve the ambitions of the pack. The chief innovation has involved changes in the design of the snowshoe itself. The traditional snowshoe was primarily a snow flotation device and, as such, not suited for high speed. Traditional snowshoes were large and heavy, crafted of wood, leather, and vegetable fibers. Beginning in the middle 1960s, when aluminum and other alloy frames were introduced, weight has been reduced greatly, and the size of the shoe has become smaller. The snowshoe went through a process of drastic redesign, which reduced size and weight and allowed for the use of a real racing stride. The newer snowshoes allow considerable flotation, yet they are small enough to accommodate a stride that is more like that of a modern runner than that of a heavily laden trapper. The new shoes have
An old style of snowshoe, better for traveling than for racing.
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Snowshoe Racing Snowshoe Racing in Montreal in 1858 On Tuesday Afternoon, the annual races of the Montreal Snoe-Shoe Club took place at Ouimet’s race course, near Mile End. The day was rather cold, yet notwithstanding this, at least a thousand persons were present, to witness the feats of speed in this manly and exhilarating exercise. The grand stand was filled with ladies, and on the Steward’s stand we noticed Sir William Eyre, Commander of the Forces, with his staff. The first race was a distance of four miles, and nine Indians from Caughnawaga, entered it. The start was good, and for a considerable distance the same position was maintained. The first mile was accomplished in six minutes twenty seconds; the second in eight minutes twenty-two seconds; and the third in nine minutes thirty seconds; the forth was exciting, the contest being very close. The Indian who came in victor during the three previous miles and for a long distance on the fourth, was the third; but when within half a mile of the stand, he made a dash and took the lead, which he kept and came in some ten yards ahead of the second Indian, and fifteen ahead of the third. The last mile occupied by seven minutes and ten seconds, and the four miles were ac-
completely replaced wooden snowshoes in the modern races. The deck of the racing shoe has also changed. It is no longer webbed but solid, and generally made from rubberized or other treated nylon. The deck is no longer attached to the frame with rawhide lacing, but riveted or clipped to it. This preserves some of the flotation qualities of snowshoes but reduces overall size. Most modern shoes also feature a cleat at the toe or ball of the foot for traction, and some are cleated at the heel as well. The overall result is a much lighter and smaller shoe, with improved climbing ability, that still allows a certain amount of controlled sliding on down slopes. Binding, with the new shoes, seems to be still be evolving. Many of the best racers simply lace regular running shoes to the snowshoe.
complished in thirty-one minutes twenty-two seconds. The winner of this race seemed to feel himself a very important personage, for he immediately donned a fantastic head-dress, and strutted about his discomfited compeers with a very bombastic air. The prize for this race was forty dollars. The next was a hurdle race over four three feet hurdles; the prize being ten dollars. Preparations for this race were made by six whites and three Indians; it was a most exciting struggle—the first hurdle was leapt almost simultaneously by all the competitors, but between the first hurdle and the second, distances were changed, Mr. Brown keeping first, followed closely by Mr. Murray, who fell while clearing the third hurdle, an Indian who was following having trodden on his snow-shoe. He was up in an instant, however, But Mr. Brown, first—Mr. Murray, second, and an Indian third. A race of a half a mile by boys under 14 years of age, for a prize of $5, was easily won by Master Edward Whitehead. Source: New York Clipper. (1858, March 13), p. 372.
Competition at the Top Two prominent modern-style races are the John Beargrease in Duluth, Minnesota—a marathon of 25 kilometers run in conjunction with a dogsled race of the same name—and the Birkebeiner in Northern Wisconsin, associated with a prestigious cross-country ski event. There is also an annual event now being run on one of the original sections of the famous Alaskan Iditarod.The U.S. Snowshoe Association has been holding an annual National Snowshoe Championship (in a different location each year) since 2001. Snowshoe racing is not an Olympic sport, but proponents hope it will become one.
Governing Body The International Amateur Snowshoe Racing Federation sets the rules for snowshoe racing: The United
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Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points. ■ KNUTE ROCKNE
States Snowshoeing Association (www.showshoeracing. com) is a key organization in the sport, and there are groups promoting the sport in a number of countries, including Canada, Finland, France, and Japan. Alan Trevithick and Robin O’Sullivan
Further Reading Bauer, E. A. (1975). Cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. New York: Winchester Press. Osgood, W., & Hurley, L. (1975). The snowshoe book (2nd ed). Brattleboro, VT: Stephan Greene Press.
Soaring
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oaring is similar to gliding. Both sports are practiced by people who either fly for the sheer enjoyment of powerless flight (gliding) or compete as individuals or members of teams in glider competition (soaring). Many people do both.
To Air Is Human The theory of soaring dates to the first time people saw birds flying without flapping their wings. Babylonian cave etchings and Greek mythology tell of people’s dream to fly. The fifteenth-century Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer Leonardo da Vinci reflected on various kinds of flying apparatus, including parachutes. Balloons were the first devices that provided people with the means to fly. Then, in 1848, Sir George Cayley, a British scientist, built the first successful heavierthan-air device: a glider that was said to have carried a ten-year-old boy several yards after being launching from a hill. Although research continued during the interim, from the 1890s onward people in Germany, England, and the United States increasingly researched and developed gliders and flying techniques.
During the 1890s Otto Lilienthal of Germany is said to have made more than two thousand glider flights. In 1891 he was the first man to fly more than 100 meters. About that time Orville and Wilbur Wright in the United States and Percy Pilcher of England were working on similar glider developments. Near San Diego, California, John Montgomery also conducted experiments during that period and is said to have even flown before Lilienthal. Montgomery is credited with making a nine-minute unpowered flight that broke a record set by the Wright brothers. Montgomery, Lilienthal, and Pilcher all died in glider accidents. Octave Chanute, at sixty years of age in 1896, took the first of a reported two thousand flights without an accident. During the autumn of 1902 alone, the Wright brothers made more than one thousand glider flights, many involving turns and distances of more than 183 meters, before their first powered flight in 1903. World War I stalled glider development as the world went to war. After the war ended, however, the Treaty of Versailles prohibition on powered flight in Germany prompted great progress in the development of gliding. Three thousand German schoolboys enrolled in glider instruction during 1928 alone. Germans dominated world gliding throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Wolfgang Klemperer was the first to fly more than 1,000 meters in 1920, and Robert Kronfeld set the world distance record of 100 kilometers in the late 1920s. In 1934 Richard DuPont of the United States set the world distance record of 248 kilometers. By the late 1930s the record was 557 kilometers. Development continued but was slowed during World War II when military applications of gliding forced sport gliding into the background. Since then gliding as a sport has flourished, and several countries have large soaring communities. More than 150 pilots have flown flights farther than 1,000 kilometers.
How Does a Glider Glide? Understanding soaring requires understanding how a glider—an airplane without an engine—flies through
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the atmosphere. Air flows over the wings of a glider in much the same way as it flows over the wings of a powered airplane, which is propelled through the air by the force of its engine. However, a glider has no engine. Gliding flight can be achieved only by descending the glider, speeding it up, and causing air to flow around its wings and tail surfaces. Therefore, a glider (or sailplane, as it is often called) is always descending, usually at a rate of between 45 and 90 meters per minute in still air. The acceleration of air over the wings of the glider produces a lifting force that counterbalances the weight of the glider and slows its rate of descent. If not for the force of lift, gliders would fly straight down. They instead follow predictable glide ratios. A glide ratio is a measure of how far a glider will travel forward (horizontal distance) for each unit of altitude it loses (vertical distance). A 40 to 1 glide ratio, for example, means that a glider could travel (in still air, with no updrafts or downdrafts) 40 kilometers over the ground for each kilometer of altitude above the ground. Modern gliders have glide ratios of 20 to 1 to 60 to 1, or 20 to 60 meters forward for every 1 meter downward. Older gliders generally have steeper glide slopes. Glider pilots fly at specific speeds to obtain the performance expected of their gliders. Flying at “best glide speed” allows a glider to go the greatest distance possible. Flying at “minimum sink speed,” usually slower than the best glide speed, allows a glider to stay in the air for the longest possible time—but not glide the farthest distance. Although gliders are capable of rolls, loops, and other aerobatic maneuvers that enable them to climb for short periods, rather than to continually descend, a glider, in gliding flight, is always descending. Airplanes and automobiles must stop periodically to refuel. What makes soaring a sport is the challenge of finding and using ascending air currents to keep the glider aloft—to cause it to climb faster than it descends (which it always is)—so that distance, height, or flight durations that are not possible in still air can be achieved. In a sense updrafts are the fuel of gliders. Pilots who excel at finding and using the invisible ascending air currents
better than other pilots are the champions and record holders.
Classes of Gliders World competition generally recognizes three classes of gliders: 15-meter, open, and standard. A fourth class— the world class—has been approved, but it has yet to compete on any widespread basis.
15-METER CLASS Fifteen-meter class gliders have a maximum wingspan of 15 meters and a maximum weight of 525 kilograms. These gliders have control devices called “flaps” that enable them to fly a more controlled approach for landing and that enhance performance in other ways. The maximum glide ratio of most 15-meter class gliders is 45 to 1.
OPEN CLASS The only specification for open class gliders is that their maximum weight cannot exceed 750 kilograms. Open class gliders typically have wingspans of about 25 meters and a maximum glide ratio of 60 to 1.
STANDARD CLASS Standard class gliders are similar to 15-meter class gliders except that their performance is more restricted. In particular, flaps are not permitted, and standard class gliders have a maximum glide ratio of 42 to 1.
WORLD CLASS World gliding authorities recently approved the world class. Enthusiasts hope this class will result in a simple, cheap, easy-to-fly glider that can be economically produced in many countries.
Methods of Launching Gliders cannot propel themselves through the air with sufficient force to attain flying speed, which is normally 48–64 kilometers per hour. Some outside initial force must be applied to get the glider moving fast enough that adequate airflow passes around the wings to overcome the force of gravity and cause the glider to fly.
SOARING
Through the years people have used several methods to provide this speed, including dropping heavy weights on the ends of ropes to pull the glider into the air; pushing the glider down a hill until airflow over the wings is sufficient to produce flight; pulling the glider with elastic-like ropes and “slingshotting” it to flying speed; hooking it behind an airplane that takes off and pulls the glider to an altitude from which gliding flight can begin; pulling it into the air on long cables reeled in by engine-driven winches; and pulling it into the air on ropes behind automobiles. The Wright brothers launched their early gliders by using the slopes of sand dunes near the Atlantic Ocean. Other people used “shoulder launches” in which assistants held the glider aloft and ran with it into the wind until it flew. Today a glider usually is towed aloft by a rope attached to a powered airplane. This technique is called “aerotow.” Glider pilots using this form of launch must be able to fly safely and smoothly behind the towplane as it ascends until the glider release altitude is reached.
Types of Gliding After a glider reaches sufficient altitude and airspeed, the pilot pulls a release handle in the cockpit, the towing rope is released, and the glider is in free flight. If sufficient lift to sustain flight is not found rather quickly, the glider will usually be forced to land within a matter of minutes. The goal is to soar rather than to glide. Several methods of remaining aloft are used. All rely on pilot skill and knowledge in finding air currents rising at a greater rate than the glider’s “built in” rate of descent—between 45 and 90 meters per minute. These methods are mountain wave flying, thermaling, land and sea breeze flying, and ridge flying. An additional source of lift can be obtained by flying under or near developing cumulus clouds that owe their formation and sustenance to the updrafts found directly underneath them. During the early days of soaring, when people did not understand much about hazardous weather, pilots also used areas near (or inside) thunderstorms to propel themselves
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upward. That practice is recognized as very dangerous and little used in modern glider flying. The safe rule is to avoid thunderstorms.
MOUNTAIN WAVE FLYING For mountain wave flying, gliders find strong lift produced downwind of mountains as the mountains are struck by strong winds at near-perpendicular angles. These winds can propel a glider thousands of meters above the altitudes where it first encountered the mountain wave lift. Many world records have been set, particularly in the United States, where mountain wave phenomena lend themselves to strong updrafts and great altitude gains. Soaring in a mountain wave usually requires special equipment such as heated clothing, supplementary oxygen, and other high-altitude precautions. Expert mountain wave soarers say nothing compares with the views of a High Sierra or Rocky Mountain wave flight or the views of the European Alps.
THERMALING Thermals—rising columns of warmer-than-normal air —occur where the sun heats surface geographical features to temperatures hotter than the surrounding terrain. Such updrafts may rise hundreds of feet per minute faster than surrounding air. Gliders soaring in thermals are lifted, often thousands of feet. An instrument in a glider that shows the speed of rising air indicates entry into a thermal. The challenge of soaring in a thermal is to keep the glider in the narrow column of air by flying it in precise circles to maintain the greatest upward speed. The ability to find thermals, often extending thousands of feet up from the surface, allows pilots to move from one thermal to another, increasing altitude with each thermal, thus enabling great altitudes, distances, and durations.
L AND AND SEA BREEZE FLYING Land and sea breezes are caused by wind changes near the shoreline that create differential temperatures of the land and sea at different times of the day. In land and sea breeze flying, glider pilots, like birds that gracefully
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glide there, take advantage of these alternating breezes to soar into the headwinds they produce.
RIDGE FLYING In ridge flying pilots find updrafts that are produced when wind strikes the side of a vertical terrain feature such as a hill, mountain, or ridge line at an angle of about 90 degrees, producing updrafts on the side of the feature from which the wind is blowing. Gliders in such updrafts have flown in ridge “lift” without descending for hundreds of miles at great speeds. Flights of more than 1,000 kilometers are not unusual in the strong ridge lift behind fast-moving weather fronts.
Birds of a Feather The popularity of air sports generally, and soaring specifically, has increased significantly during the last several decades. Structure and uniformity in management were needed to develop the sport and devise accepted rules of competition among pilots and nations. As a result, most nations in which any organized air sport is conducted have formed National Aero Clubs to represent them to the world governing body for air sports, the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), headquartered in Paris. Each air sport is represented within the FAI by a group from member nations that participate in that sport. These groups make rules for their respective sports and administer their activities internationally. The representative group for soaring is the International Gliding Commission (IGC). The IGC makes rules by which world soaring competitions are conducted, approves claims for glider world records, awards badges to recognize skill and accomplishment by pilots, and otherwise administers international conduct of soaring as a sport.
World Competition Each country, through its National Aero Club, local glider clubs, and commercial soaring enterprises, conducts local, regional, and national competitions to reward skill and to select persons to represent it in various
levels of competition. Pilots who compete at the international level do so as representatives of their National Aero Club under the umbrella and sanction of the FAI. The first world championship of soaring was held in 1937 at Wasserkuppe, Germany. No championships were held during World War II or shortly thereafter. Now, during every odd calendar year, the FAI sanctions a world gliding championship for each of the three classes (open, 15-meter, and standard).The world championship is usually held during a three-week period, with the first week devoted to practice and the last two weeks to competition. At the twenty-sixth World Gliding Championship in Bayreuth, Germany, in 1999 Giorgio Galetto of Italy won the 15-meter class; Holger Karow of Germany won the open class; and Jean-Marc Caillard of France won the standard class. The Nation’s Cup Trophy went to the eight pilots of the German team. Phases of soaring competition are called “tasks.” Each day at the world championship, for example, pilots fly around a specifically assigned course comprised of clearly defined turn points on the ground. These turn points are prominent road intersections, the ends of airfield runways, or other distinctly identifiable geographical landmarks over which pilots must fly. During world championships before 1995 pilots were required to photograph turn points to prove they had flown the prescribed course. However, beginning in 1995, pilots carried a “data-logger” that electronically records time, position, and altitude using signals received from satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS). When pilots are ready to begin the day’s task, they fly over the landmark that defines the starting point. Then they fly each turn point, in order, until returning to the finish point. After the flight GPS data are downloaded into a computer for display, analysis, and scoring. The pilot with the fastest speed around the course is the daily winner. Other pilots are awarded points based on the ratio of their speeds to that of the winner’s. Points are accumulated during the competition to determine the champion in each class.
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Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that. ■ BILL SHANKLY
Levels of Accomplishment The FAI awards badges to recognize milestones in soaring: The Silver, Gold, and Diamond badges signify accomplishment for height attained, distance flown, and duration achieved. The Silver badge is the first level of international soaring recognition, intended to foster self-reliance in a new pilot. The requirements for this badge are completion of a flight of at least 50 kilometers over a straight course, an altitude gain of at least 1,000 meters, and a flight duration of at least five hours. The Gold badge requires a distance flight of at least 300 kilometers, an altitude gain of at least 3,000 meters, and a flight duration of at least five hours. The Diamond badge is awarded for completion of three separate tasks: a flight, flown in designated turn point sequence, of at least 300 kilometers over an out-andreturn course; a flight of at least 500 kilometers; and an altitude gain of more than 5,000 meters. Walter D. Miller See also Hang Gliding
Further Reading Allen, R. C. S. (1962). Theory of flight for glider pilots. New York: Barnes & Noble. Dank, M. (1977). The glider gang. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Dixon, P. (1970). Soaring. New York: Ballantine Books. Federal Aviation Administration. (1985). Commercial glider pilot practical test standards. Washington, DC: Office of Flight Operations. Federal Aviation Administration. (1987). Flight instructor practical test standards for gliders. Washington, DC: Office of Flight Standards. Federal Aviation Administration. (1987). Private glider pilot practical test standards. Washington, DC: Office of Flight Standards. Knauff, T. L. (1990). Transition to gliders. Reykjavik, Iceland: Prentsmidja Arna Valdemarssonar hf. Knauff, T. L. (1994). Glider basics from first flight to solo. Reykjavik, Iceland: Prentsmidja Arna Valdemarssonar hf. Kronfeld, R. (n.d.). Kronfeld on gliding and soaring. London: John Hamilton. Lowden, J. (1992). Silent wings at war. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. National Aeronautic Association. (1995). World and United States aviation and space records. Arlington, VA: Author. Piggott, D. (1977). Understanding gliding. New York: Barnes & Noble. Serjeant, R., & Watson, A. (Eds.). (1965). The gliding book. London: Nicholas Kaye. Soaring Society of America. (1991). SSA membership handbook. Hobbs, NM: Author.
Stewart, K. (1994). The glider pilot’s manual. Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife Publishing. Weiss, J. B. (n.d.). Gliding and soaring flight. London: Sampson Low, Marston. Welch, A., & Welch, L. (1965). The story of gliding. London: John Murray. Wills, P. (1974). Free as a bird. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Soccer
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occer—known as “football” in most of the world— is the world’s most popular sport. It involves two teams of eleven members trying to kick a ball into a goal, although it is often played in less organized ways. The modern sport was developed in England during the nineteenth century, evolving from older ball games that were played across the globe, with perhaps the oldest forms existing in China.
Origins Modern soccer evolved from games played in England’s elite “public” education system. Here ball games, usually known as football, were used to discipline boys and to build their character both as individual leaders and as socially useful team players. Underpinning the values that football was thought to cultivate were ideas of masculinity and Christian conviction. The notion of “muscular Christianity” deemed that men should be chivalrous and champions of the weak but also physically strong and robust. The belief that such qualities would create the right sort of men to lead the British empire led to a cult of athleticism within English public schools. Football thus came to be a prominent feature of life for these schoolboys, as evoked in Thomas Hughes’s 1857 novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Schools developed their own rules for football, which made interschool matches and games in the universities problematic. Thus, people attempted to draw up common rules; this attempt culminated in the formation of the Football Association (FA) at a meeting at a London inn in 1863. The FA drew up a set of rules that was to
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“The Association Game” in rural England.
become the basis of modern soccer. However, disagreements emerged at the meeting over the legitimacy of hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins) and the extent to which handling the ball should be allowed. These disagreements meant that the FA’s new rules did not find universal acceptance in all schools, and proponents of handling the ball and hacking, which were deemed more manly, formed the Rugby Football Union in 1871. Football was thus divided into soccer (alternatively known as “association football”) and rugby football. The term soccer evolved as public-school boys corrupted the word association into slang. As boys left school, they wanted to continue playing and thus formed clubs with their friends, either at college or in the wider world. Because these young men went into positions of influence in industry, teaching, the military, the church, and professions such as the law or colonial service, they had not only the resources to form such clubs but also the social influence to get other people, including workers, involved. Many former public and grammar school students continued to be driven by the values of the cult of athleticism that they had learned at school. They thus saw moral benefits to teaching the masses to play. In this way soccer quickly spread both geographically and socially. In the English provinces many of the early promoters of organized soccer were from the lower middle classes and even the skilled workforce. Soccer probably was taken up by the lower classes with such speed because of surviving traditions of ball games. Thus, the organized version of soccer that emerged from the public schools was not a completely alien cultural phenomenon to the lower classes. Integral to the sport’s development during the late nineteenth century was the development of cup competitions. The first such competition was the FA Cup, founded in 1871 and still the oldest soccer competition
in the world. It involved teams being randomly paired in rounds, with each winner progressing to the next round. This progression continued until just two teams were left to meet in the “cup final.” The FA Cup added some purpose and excitement to the emerging sport of soccer. At a time of growing urbanization, it drew on and fed rivalries between towns and was instrumental in turning soccer into something that people watched rather than just played. Cup competitions were also an opportunity for gambling and attracted upbeat newspaper coverage. Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as most of the English counties, soon followed the example of the FA Cup and established their own competitions, thus further cementing the sport’s popularity across Britain. Underpinned by the popularity of cup soccer, soccer emerged during the 1880s and 1890s as something resembling the modern sport, although the rules were subject to constant refinement. In the industrial north of England the growing crowds began to be charged for the privilege of watching and were hosted in purpose-built grounds. The first men to be paid to play were industrial workers who were offered jobs in return for playing for a club that sought to raise its reputation in the burgeoning sport. Other players were offered specific fees for matches. The response to such practices, particularly among the middle classes of the south of England, was not always favorable. Many people felt that playing for money undermined the sporting and manly characteristics of soccer. Such tensions were
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fed as the FA Cup showed that the northern professionalized teams were more effective and successful. Arguments over professionalism were thus tinged with class and regional prejudices and were essentially about the meaning and future of the sport. After northern teams threatened to break away and form their own association, the southern-dominated FA reluctantly legalized professionalism in 1885 in order to retain control of the sport. With clubs now committed to paying players and charging spectators, they sought new ways to raise their income. In 1888 the Football League was founded with twelve teams from the Midlands and northern England who played each other on a home and away basis. This arrangement ensured regular competitive soccer beyond the world of cup competitions and did much to raise the profile and popularity of soccer. Like the FA Cup, the Football League was also to become a model for national soccer competitions in every country of the world. By the end of the 1890s the leading Football League clubs could attract crowds of more than twenty thousand. Like the professional teams they watched and cheered, working-class men dominated these crowds, although small numbers of middle-class men and women supporters attended, too. Soccer thus came to be regarded as a “people’s game,” but the reality was more complex. The cost of attending matches put soccer beyond the reach of much of the unskilled and semiskilled workforce. The clubs and competitions were governed and administered by the middle classes, who kept a tight control over the contractual freedom and pay of their players. Thus, although soccer gave many working men much pleasure, the sport remained within the confines of wider material and political conditions.
Beyond Britain The foundations of modern soccer were firmly established in Britain by the end of the nineteenth century. While its popularity and gradual acceptance as part of national culture continued in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century, the sport also began to spread
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beyond British shores. There the role of British trade and the British Empire was key. Britain was the globe’s most powerful economic and political force during the nineteenth century. British men thus traveled the world and took their favorite sports with them, setting up clubs and teaching others to play. Similarly, many people from elsewhere in Europe came to learn or work in Britain, discovered soccer, and took the sport home with them. This popularity was not rooted just in the simplicity and excitement of soccer; it also owed something to the fashionability and prestige that British culture enjoyed overseas. As soccer established itself in urbanized western and northern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, its new continental proponents began to play a role in its diffusion. The famous team FC Barcelona, for example, was set up in 1899 by a mixture of Swiss, German, and British young men who had learned soccer at college. The spread of soccer across the rest of Europe was, of course, uneven, even within individual nations. In France, a country that pioneered the international administration of the sport, not until after World War I did soccer establish itself fully in the south of the country. In Germany and France soccer was often viewed as foreign and inferior to gymnastics. Some people saw the spread of soccer as a threat to established national, regional, and local traditions of play. In Bavaria soccer was actually banned until 1913. However, during the interwar years soccer became firmly established as the leading spectator sport across most of industrial Europe. The use of soccer as a means of entertaining troops during World War I was one important cause of soccer’s success. The development of international matches was another. The first international match took place between England and Scotland in 1872, but between the two world wars such matches became quite common on the continent and were used as a source of national pride and prestige, most obviously in the fascist dictatorships of Italy and Germany. As soccer’s popularity was cemented during the 1920s in continental Europe, the sport also became professionalized there. Again, this professionalization was neither universal
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Anyone can cook aloo gobi, but who can bend a ball like Beckham? ■ PARMINDER NAGRA AS JESS IN “BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM”
nor even. West German soccer did not become professional on a full-time basis until 1963. South America was the first continent beyond Europe where soccer took a grip. Again, the influence of the British was key. British emigres, brought to Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay by trade opportunities and links, set up teams, sometimes inviting the local population to play with them, sometimes seeing their efforts imitated by local elites. Other clubs owed their origins to members of the South American social elite who were educated in Europe. Traces of the British influence are still visible today, with some leading clubs, such as River Plate and Boca Juniors, having English names. Not until 1903 were the sport’s rules translated into Spanish and the Argentine Football Association began holding meetings in Spanish. As the sport shifted from its British origins, it became less socially exclusive, spreading to the urban masses and becoming an integral part of their popular culture. In 1916 a South American soccer association (CONMEBOL) was formed and the first South American championship, now known as the “Copa America,” competed for. Soccer also spread to other continents, but it did not attain the huge popularity that it achieved in Europe and South America. A short-lived professional league was formed in the United States in 1894, but its popularity was patchy and largely rooted in urban European immigrant communities. The sport’s diffusion in colonial Asia and Africa was hindered by local political and ethnic tensions, whereas in Australasia and North America soccer was overshadowed by already developed local versions of football.
Television Era In the post-1945 world the mass media drove soccer to new heights of popularity across the globe. Newspaper and magazine coverage continued to foster an interest in the sport, while radio coverage allowed those fans unable to attend matches to share in its excitement. Television took this immediacy even further, particularly from the mid-1960s when technical developments in close-ups and replays meant that watching a match on
television allowed a spectator to both see more of the action and not suffer the discomfort of being in a stadium that often was cold, dated, and uncomfortable. A realization of this fact made soccer’s authorities often distrustful of television’s interest in broadcasting matches. They feared that attendances would fall as people stayed home to watch rather than pay to attend a match. Such fears underestimated the appeal of the atmosphere and communal experience of a live match. The potential that television held for boosting rather than undermining the general popularity of soccer became apparent with the success of broadcasts of the World Cup and, to a lesser extent, European club competitions. Technical developments during the 1960s and 1970s allowed such matches to be watched live across the globe, turning the global sport into a shared global experience. Television also extended the potential for the commercial exploitation of soccer. Since the advent of professionalism, soccer had been run on business lines in capitalist countries, but rarely was profit a key motive for club owners. Instead, most financial surpluses tended to be used to improve the team or its ground. With television the potential for sponsorship and advertising increased significantly. Most obviously, during the 1980s sponsors’ names began to appear on team shirts, and competitions were renamed after sponsors. The large audiences that televised soccer attracted appealed to advertisers, pushing up the fees that broadcasters were willing to pay for the rights to matches. During the 1990s these broadcasting fees spiraled as the decline of hooliganism improved soccer’s image and as its owners and administrators developed more commercial mind-sets. Instead of using this increased income to secure their financial futures, clubs splurged the income on players’ wages, turning the sport’s stars into multimillionaires. Across the globe, apart from the most popular clubs such as Real Madrid or Manchester United, soccer’s financial base remains unstable. Accompanying such developments has been an increasingly fluid and globalized labor market for players. Leading clubs across the developed world hire the best
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players they can attract, regardless of their origin, turning their teams into multilingual symbols of globalization. Such cosmopolitan teams have furthered the trend that television began, as fans often support teams from places with which they have no personal connection. Although the fame and fortunes of players have risen, the social structure of supporters has remained more static. Soccer remains a sport of the masses across the globe, although it has also always drawn significant support from the middle class. In Europe during the 1990s clubs sought to pay for players’ wages and the modernization of their stadiums by increasing ticket prices.This practice priced live soccer beyond the means of some of its supporters, but the reach of the mass media meant that the sport’s emotional pull remains strong for such fans. Indeed, with increased television coverage, the age and gender boundaries of soccer fans perhaps expanded. An estimated 1.3 billion people watched the 1998 World Cup final on television. The level of commitment to soccer amongst members of this vast audience obviously varied significantly. However, for many people across the globe, soccer remains an integral part of life, a sport that, via the loyalty felt toward individual clubs, adds structure and meaning to life. Such loyalty has not always been for the good. Racism, crowd disorder, and violence have been a problem throughout soccer’s history. Before the 1960s soccer hooliganism was associated with continental Europe, but then people began to view it as the “English disease.” Hooliganism’s form varied across different cultures and periods, but it usually was characterized by fighting between opposing fans. Although occasionally resulting in deaths, hooliganism was more typically based on show and scuffles than serious violence. In 1980s Europe many hooligan groups developed fashionable dress codes and became clearly identifiable subcultures of their own. Sociologists have debated soccer hooliganism’s causes, with explanations varying from economically and politically oppressed young men venting their frustrations to people simply enjoying fighting. In Europe the growth of all-seater stadiums and closecircuit television has led to a decline in the overt hooli-
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ganism of previous decades, although it continues to take place on a reduced scale away from soccer grounds and at some international tournaments. For many men soccer has been a key part of their masculinity, something they were socialized into at young age, a sport that allowed them to gain the respect of their peers and display their emotions and a sense of communal identity in an uninhibited fashion.Yet, for all its association with maleness, soccer is also played and watched by women. The earliest women’s matches were played in England during the 1890s, but women players struggled against the characterization of soccer as something inherently manly. The disruption of social norms during World War I led to a temporary upsurge in women’s soccer in parts of western Europe, but not until the wider movement for the social liberation of women during the 1960s and 1970s did women’s soccer gradually, and often grudgingly, begin to win acceptance from soccer’s male authorities and supporters. Although a women’s World Cup began in 1991 and was included in the Olympics from 1996, across most of the world women’s soccer continues to struggle to escape the shadow of the men’s sport. North America is the one part of the globe where soccer has not dominated spectator sports. In North America soccer has struggled against the popularity of baseball, U.S. football, and basketball, all of which claim to be more authentically American. However, the fortunes of soccer in the United States seemed to increase during the late 1970s. Some clubs in the North American Soccer League (NASL), most notably the New York Cosmos, brought in great foreign talents such as Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer and attracted crowds comparable with those of the largest European clubs. However, the NASL failed to become financially sustainable and closed in 1985. The desire of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), soccer’s world governing body, to break into the North American market led it to hold the 1994 World Cup in the United States—a decision treated with some skepticism around the rest of the globe. The tournament was a success and led to the reintroduction of a national professional
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league in the United States but it did not lead to a major breakthrough in soccer’s overall popularity there. However, soccer’s North American profile (together with women’s soccer in general) was boosted in 1999 when the United States hosted and won the Women’s World Cup, with 40 million people watching the final in the United States alone. Today soccer remains overshadowed in U.S. culture by other sports, but its popularity as a participatory sport continues to grow steadily, especially among girls and middle-class children.
Nature of the Sport Soccer can be reduced to two teams trying to place the ball into a recognizable goal and outfield players being prohibited from touching the ball or wrestling or hacking each other. The field of play, numbers of players, and duration of a match can all be changed without destroying the sport’s essence. Furthermore, the basic skills of kicking and controlling the ball are not difficult to master. This simplicity and adaptability have underpinned the sport’s popularity and diffusion, allowing it to be played everywhere from the beach to the street. Even in its organized form, soccer has only seventeen rules. These rules have been subject to ongoing refinement, and their simplicity belies the intricacy of the skills, tactics, and ebb and flow of the sport. The adultorganized form requires eleven players on a team, with one player nominated as goalkeeper and able to handle the ball in the defined penalty area. It is played on a marked grass pitch (playing field) that is a maximum of 110 meters long and 69–91 meters wide, with goals 7.3 meters wide and 2.5 meters high and constructed of metal posts with nets. Matches last for ninety minutes, with the winner being the team who scores the most goals, although ties are permissible in league competitions. The settling of tied matches in tournaments and cup competitions has been a controversial issue. Replays, extra time, and penalty shootouts all are used. Yet, ties remain a normal part of soccer and separate it from many other sports. Of course, the tactics of soccer have evolved during its history. During its public school infancy soccer
was based around each player dribbling the ball toward the goal and then shooting or seeking to regain possession if tackled. As soccer took off with the British working class, it evolved into a more fluid passing game with the emphasis on team play. This led to a clear demarcation of different roles for players within teams and the gradual establishment of essentially attacking and defending roles. During the interwar years defensive positions began to take on more importance in tactics, despite a change in the offside rules in 1925 intended to create a more attacking game that would be more attractive to paying spectators. Stopping goals increasingly became easier than scoring them, putting creative players—those who were routinely able to pass the ball to a teammate in a goal-scoring position or dribble past defenders with a mixture of skill and speed—at a premium. Yet, not until the 1960s did teams begin to assign more players to primarily defensive duties than to attacking ones. Defensive play and the tight marking of opponents became particularly common in Italian soccer. A brief and entertaining departure from the emphasis on not conceding goals came from the Dutch national teams of the 1970s. Playing a system christened “total football,” all players were supposed to be able to both attack and defend, thus breaking down the rigidity of positional play. Today the 4-4-2 system (four defenders, four midfielders, and two attackers) dominates the professional sport across the globe. The nature of soccer fandom, like the sport itself, is based around oppositions: To support a team is also to have a rival. This dyadic role explains why soccer is such a powerful source of both individual and collective identities. Across the globe some of the strongest team rivalries are infused by wider ethnic, economic, religious, or political tensions. Fandom can take on religion-like qualities for many supporters, most of whom have an unrivaled passion for a single team. A team’s ground holds a deep emotional significance, players are worshipped (both as individuals and as team members), and rituals surround the match-day experience. The rituals of match day vary across cultures,
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Milan’s famous football stadium, Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, more commonly known as the San Siro. Source: istockphoto/AlamarPhotography.
but demonstrative show is central, with fans wearing team colors and singing or chanting to declare their support.
Competition at the Top Soccer’s most important competition is the World Cup, staged every four years and comparable to— maybe superior to—the Olympics in prestige. The first World Cup tournament was held in Uruguay in 1930 and was won by the host country, competing against just twelve other countries. The World Cup’s popularity grew quickly, and a qualifying competition was used for the next tournament in Italy in 1934. The extensive global television coverage that the tournament received from 1970 onward made it worthy of its title. By 1982 the final tournament was expanded to twenty-four teams, and, although still dominated by Europe, the allocation of places became somewhat more representative of the global spread of the sport’s popularity. The final tournament was expanded to thirty-two teams in France in 1998, when its sixty-four matches were watched by 2.7 million in the stadiums and a total of 37 billion people on television. For participating nations the competition often creates a temporary but strong sense of unity that cuts across class and regional divisions as people join to support their nation’s team. Brazil has been the outstanding nation in the tournament’s history, winning the cup five times. International competitions are also held by every continental soccer
confederation, although none matches the prestige or popularity of the World Cup. In Asia, and particularly Africa, these competitions are rooted in the spirit of the postcolonial era, as soccer began to flourish and to be used by newly independent countries as a symbol of national pride and of a wider sense of unity among such countries. In 2002 the World Cup was jointly hosted by South Korea and Japan —the first time it had been held outside Europe and the Americas. The 2010 World Cup will be held in South Africa—the first time either it or the Olympics have been held on that continent. Soccer was introduced to the Olympics in 1900. Olympic soccer enjoyed some prestige during the 1920s but was quickly superseded by the World Cup and suffered from the problem that the best players were increasingly professionals. Even after the Olympics were professionalized, FIFA has remained largely unsupportive of the Olympic game, fearing a rival for its World Cup. Since 1992 Olympics soccer has taken the form of an under-twenty-three competition. In club soccer the European Cup, now known as the “Champions League,” is the most prestigious event. It was begun in 1955 as a competition for winners of the various European leagues. European club games, played on midweek evenings and made possible by the growth of air travel and the development of floodlights, created a meaningful European soccer community. The lure of television money led to the competition expanding during the early 1990s, changing from a knockout competition to a mini-league format in its early rounds. The most successful European countries (where the television market was also the greatest) were awarded extra places, and England, Italy, and Spain now provide four teams each to the competition. The monetary rewards of qualifying for the Champions League have become
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The commonest jockey-boy in this company of mannikins can usually earn more than the average scholar or professional man, and the whole set receive a good deal more of adulation than has been bestowed on any soldier, sailor, explorer, or scientific man of our generation. ■ J. RUNCIMAN
so great that for most clubs it now takes precedence over domestic trophies. Like the history of all sports, soccer’s history is filled with stars who have excited crowds. The most famous player in history is Pelé (b. 1940). Raised in Brazilian slums, he embodied that country’s obsession with artistic soccer but he was also subjected to attempts by Brazil’s dictatorship to exploit his status to promote its own standing. Other stars who have influenced how people thought and played the sport include Stanley Matthews (1915–2000, England), Franz Beckenbauer (b. 1945, Germany), and Johan Cruyff (b. 1947, Netherlands).
Governing Body Soccer is governed by FIFA, formed in 1904 by a group of European nations. Its initial membership of 7 had reached 73 by 1950 and 204 by 2004. FIFA is responsible for organizing the World Cup, but responsibility for the rules of soccer lies with the International Football Association Board, consisting of four voting representatives from FIFA and one each from the soccer associations of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, a legacy of the early respect for Britain’s pioneering role. FIFA’s governance has not been uncontroversial. In particular, it has faced tensions over the relative power and influence of the different continental associations.The Union des Associations Européennes de Football has remained particularly influential, mostly because of the greater television money available in Europe. At the 2006 World Cup fourteen of the thirty-two places will be awarded to European teams. In contrast, Africa—which, like Europe, entered fifty-two teams into the qualifying competition—will receive only five places. Soccer is organized into continental confederations: the Asian Football Confederation (formed 1954), Confédération Africaine de Football (formed 1957), Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (formed 1961), Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (formed 1916), Oceania Football Confederation (formed 1966), and Union des Associations Européennes de Football (formed 1954). FIFA
has more members than the United Nations—a clear indication of the popularity of soccer. Martin Johnes See also Maracana Stadium; Wembley Stadium; Women’s World Cup; World Cup
Further Reading Darby, P. (2002). Africa, football and FIFA: Politics, colonialism and resistance. London: Frank Cass. Giulianotti, R. (1999). Football: A sociology of the global game. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Glanville, B. (1997). History of the World Cup. London: Faber & Faber. Hong, F., & Mangan, J. A. (Eds.) (2003). Soccer, women, sexual liberation: Kicking off a new era. London: Frank Cass. Lanfranchi, P., Eisenberg, C., Mason, T., & Wahl, A. (2004). 100 years of football: The FIFA centennial book. London: Weidenfeld Nicolson. Mason, T. (1995). Passion of the people? Football in South America. London: Verso. Murray, B. (1998). The world’s game: A history of soccer. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Russell, D. (1998). Football and the English: A social history of association football, 1863–1995. Preston, UK: Carnegie. Sandvoss, C. (2003). A game of two halves: Football fandom, television and globalisation. London: Routledge.
Social Class and Sport
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ports are activities often based on the physical capacity and strategy of participants involved and are intended to allow for competition among others that showcases talent and effort. Sport is an aspect of virtually all contemporary societies and is often viewed as an institution in modern countries. From a sociological viewpoint, sport as an institution in society serves as a system that often reflects broader issues by mirroring both the best and worst of human characteristics. Sporting competitions balance social inequalities because social injustices are rarely, if ever, displayed on the fields of play. Sport is also thought by many to even transcend societal boundary issues. However, while the pristine nature of competition exists on the field, extraneous factors affecting sport are nonetheless omnipresent.
SOCIAL CLASS AND SPORT
One sociological factor intersecting with sport is the stratification of social class. A social class refers to a category of people based upon a common economic and social position. Social class intersects with various aspects of sport including sport participation and social mobility through sport, which will further be discussed. Two important aspects should be noted concerning the intersection of social class and sport. First, there are sports that are popular and supposedly transcend class structure. Sports such as football and baseball are two examples of spectator sports that minimize class distinctions. These sports are enjoyed across social classes and participation restrictions are often minimal. However, spectators of these sports are separated by social class in terms of economics through quality of seats and number of attended games. Second, social class is difficult to define in terms of categorizing groups of people. Most people in the United States, for example, would classify themselves as middle class or belonging to a subtier of the middle class (upper, middle, lower). Therefore, this article will discuss more extreme levels of social class as a means of articulating specific differences.
Sport Participation Pierre Bourdieu, a social theorist who devoted his study to sport and leisure issues, observed that “sport, like any other practice, is an object of struggles between the fractions of the dominant class and also between social classes” (Bourdieu 1986, cited in Jarvie & Maquire 1994, 193). In essence, sport is an arena of society where struggles exist between social groups and it often perpetuates the status quo of class structure. Research on sport participation has revealed a relationship between social class and participation in sport. For instance, members of upper and upper middle classes are more likely to participate in sports than members of working classes. However, participants of the upper middle classes are limited to specific activities. These activities are usually individually based as op-
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posed to team sports and are consistent with general preferences and tastes of upper-class groups. These sports emphasize “highbrow” activities that are considered to distinguish the elite class from the rest of society. Examples of sports preferred by the upper middle class include golf, tennis, and skiing. These sports emphasize aesthetics and individualism and deemphasize team play and physical toughness. Research has also revealed that members of the working class are less likely overall to participate in sports than higher classes. When they do participate in sports, members of the working class are more active in team sports, often sponsored by local businesses, employers, churches, and recreation departments. In addition, members of lower social groups are more likely to participate in sports that emphasize utilizing the body as an instrument, in terms of strength and physical toughness. Examples of sports favored by the working class include basketball, auto racing, and boxing. These types of sports have previously been labeled as “prole” sports, after the term “proletariat.” There are various reasons for these differences in amount and choice of sport participation reflected in the different social classes. Two main concepts in social research literature that are important to examine are social exclusion and social capital. These concepts are not independent of one another but rather often intersect. This article examines factors that affect sport participation within the realm of social class.
Economics Social exclusion refers to “encompassing not only low material means but the inability to participate effectively in social, political, and cultural life” (Walker & Walker 1997, 8). Social exclusion or restriction in sport is caused by intervening constraints that reduce a social class’s participation in some sporting activities. Intervening constraints refer to obvious barriers to participation such as facility dues, transportation, and equipment expenses. These intervening constraints are reflected through differences in economic means. Higher economic means afford some groups the luxury of bypassing these barriers
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Social Class Althea Gibson—A Lady and a Tiger Those days, I probably would have been more at home training in Stillman’s Gym than at the Cosmopolitan Club. I really wasn’t the tennis type. But the polite manners of the game, that seemed so silly to me at first, gradually began to appeal to me. So did the pretty white clothes. I had trouble as a competitor because I kept wanting to fight the other player every time I started to lose a match . . . . After a while I began to understand that you could walk out on the court like a lady, all dressed up in immaculate white, be polite to everybody, and still play like a tiger and beat the liver and lights out of the ball. I remember thinking to myself that it was kind of like a matador going into the bull ring, beautifully dressed, bowing in all directions, following the fancy rules to the letter, and all the time having nothing in mind except sticking that sword into the bull’s guts and killing him as dead as hell. I probably picked up that notion from some movie I saw . . . . The Cosmopolitan members were the highest class of Harlem people and they had rigid ideas about what was socially acceptable behavior. They were undoubtedly more strict than white people of similar position, for the obvious reason that they felt they had to be doubly careful in order to overcome the prejudiced attitude that all Negroes lived eight to a room in dirty houses and drank gin all day and settled all their arguments with knives. I’m ashamed to say I was
and grant freedom to participate in any given sport. However, lower-income groups must confront and overcome these intervening constraints in order to participate. An example of intervening constraints that affect sport participation can be witnessed in public school athletic programs. An increasingly widespread strategy adopted by public schools is the “pay for play” approach. This philosophy requires all participants to pay specific athletic fees for each sport, which have sharply increased in previous years. According to records of two public schools in Ohio, fees range from $425 to
still living pretty wild. I was supposed to be looking for a job but. . . . the hardest work I did, aside from practicing tennis, was to report to the Welfare ladies once a week, tell them how I was getting along, and pick up my allowance. . . . I guess it would have been too much to expect me to change completely right away. Actually, I realize now that every day I played tennis and got more interested in the game, I was changing a little bit. I just wasn’t aware of it . . . One of the days I remember best at the Cosmopolitan Club was the day Alice Marble played an exhibition match there. I can still remember saying to myself, boy, would I like to be able to play tennis like that! She was the only woman tennis player I’d ever seen that I felt exactly that way about. Until I saw her, I’d always had eyes only for the good men players. But her effectiveness of strike, and the power that she had, impressed me terrifically. Basically, or course, it was the aggressiveness behind her game that I liked. Watching her smack that effortless serve, and then follow it into the net and put the ball away with an overhead as good as any man’s, I saw possibilities in the game of tennis that I had never seen before. . . . I had no way of knowing then that when the time came for me to be up for an invitation to play at Forest Hills, my biggest supporter aside from a handful of my own people would be this same Alice Marble. . . . Gibson, A. & Fitzgerald, E. E. (1958). I always wanted to be somebody. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.
$630 per sport. Imposing these fees reduces the involvement in sport of students from the working class. Thus, the possibility arises that teams could be mostly comprised of children from affluent families. These fees provide an example of an economic (intervening) constraint that reduces lower-income people’s opportunities to participate in sport and in many cases excludes working classes altogether. Social marginalization of the working classes in sport also occurs through economic constraints imposed upon them by higher-income groups. Higher-income
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groups perpetuate the status quo of class distinction in certain sports. Upper-middle-class sports including golf, tennis, rowing, and swimming are essentially “adopted” and promoted as select sports by the upper middle class. This restriction of sports by upper classes occurs because economic (intervening) conditions essentially bar participation from lower-income groups. Affluent groups often participate in these aforementioned sports through expensive private clubs in fashionable neighborhoods and the cost of participating in these sports through this avenue is high. Consequently, youth involved in these sports encounter equipment fees, travel expenses, and coaching costs.Youth from lower-income classes are often relegated to insufficient public facilities, lack of quality instruction, and poor equipment. Hence, the quality experience of youth in different social classes within the same sport helps perpetuate the status quo of participation in these types of sports.
Social Capital Social capital within the context of sport represents preferences, skills, and knowledge collectively possessed by a specific social class. Social capital is mostly derived from one’s education, upbringing, and lifestyle and these factors affect sport participation. The concept of social capital in many ways is a more powerful factor of participation in sport across social classes. While economic means allow members from the upper classes to indulge in various sporting activities, the concept of social capital confines sport participation within respective social classes. These limits of sport participation not only occur from a top-down perspective, but also occur across social classes. Antecedent constraints are a social class’s access to “economic, social, cultural, and symbolic forms of capital” (Bourdieu 1986, cited in Collins & Buller 2003, 423). Antecedent constraints differ from intervening constraints because most are obscure social differences that lead to specific sporting opportunities. Plainly stated, numerous antecedent constraints, in the form of lifestyle and upbringing, restrict access to other class values, thus denying involvement in certain sports.
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According to social learning theory, people acquire these preferences of sport through reference groups within their respective social classes. Reference groups (e.g., family, peers, coaches, teachers, etc.) serve as socializing agents, which establish a social class’s group norms and values. It is suggested that lifestyle differences among social classes affect the preferences and tastes of certain sports over others. Sports that are supported and encouraged by one’s immediate reference group are also reflective of the preferences and tastes of the overall social class. An example of the influence of social capital on sport consumption involves “prole” sports. Working classes are more likely to be involved with “prole” sports and are reflective of social class on the basis of access to social capital. Working class values and lifestyle choices emphasize sports that contain physical toughness, speed, and physical pose. These characteristics suggest that the preferences and tastes of working classes highlight and reward sports with excitement, aggression, and violent performances. The use of the body in sport also exemplifies working classes’ access to social capital. Working classes support prole sports that often view the body as a means to experience excitement. In this sense, the body is viewed as a tool to accentuate working class values of aggression and physical prowess in sport. Prime examples of sports that emphasize these characteristics include basketball and boxing. These physical sports emphasize the social capital of the working class consistent with rewarding excitement and aggression. Upper middle classes avoid prole sports because the preferences and tastes associated with these sports are not consistent with upper-middle-class values. Highincome groups favor sports that stress aesthetic performances and devalue sports of toughness and hard labor. Upper-middle-class values also assert that sports are viewed as an end in themselves, enjoyed for the sake of enjoyment, and are consistent with activities that highlight high culture. The social capital of upper middle classes is consistent with displaying one’s status and wealth. These acts of showcasing wealth on sport
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consumption involve the avoidance of certain sports associated with working classes. Thus, this avoidance of certain sports is an example of the upper-class snobbery exhibited toward “lower” sports classes. Social class participation in certain sports enforces the existing structure of society. In terms of access to social capital, this perpetuation of preferences and values of sport occurs through interactions with people similar to themselves. This direct link of social support and networking is one signifier of maintaining the social class’s ideals. This reinforcement of social capital occurs within working-class and upper-middle-class sports. The existing structure of sport in society is also reinforced through direct descendants. Within any social class, children are direct beneficiaries of the available reference groups of their parents. Children from lowerincome classes may gain entrance into sports that do not require extensive parental involvement, whereas children from upper-middle-class families have access to certain sports as a direct result of their parents’ involvement. Thus, children’s involvement with certain sports may be predisposed by the available access and involvement of their parents. It is interesting to examine how sports participation can in fact symbolically determine one’s social class. America’s large middle class has various tiers and sport as an institution may serve as a distinguisher of social class. In essence, participation in sports associated with specific economic and social capital access can be an indicator of a specific social class. The consumption of sports associated with a particular social class may redefine the boundaries of what is essentially defined as social class.
Basketball While traditional basketball often transcends societal boundaries, a form that is represented by lower-income classes is “streetball.” Streetball restricts participation from other social classes mostly through access to social capital. Streetball is essentially basketball, but maintains working-class preferences and values through the style, physicality, and location of the sport. The nature
of streetball stems from the way one wins as opposed to whether one wins. Style and originality are of utmost importance and are considered a barrier to entry if one does not have the physical “moves” required to participate. Creativity and expressiveness on the court, in the form of language, is also an important aspect of the sport. The language of streetball is synonymous with having a verbal repartee that enables players to articulate putdowns and demonstrate toughness. These traits are reflective of lower-income classes because of the appreciation of aggressive and physical play. The location of streetball is also a factor toward the exclusion of other social classes’ involvement. Innercity parks and playgrounds—havens for streetball—are often located in unsafe neighborhoods. Nonetheless, these courts provide a sense of community derived through people’s involvement. The court is seen as a place where respect is important and is earned through continuous play. Outsiders or people from other areas must play “hard” in order to be accepted. A court such as Rucker Park in New York City is an example of a court where legends of the street game were made and professionals still visit to showcase their talent.
Golf Upper-class involvement within golf is perpetuated by both economic means and access to social capital. Rich white males often construct the rules of exclusionary policies within the golfing community. These policies are designed to maintain the “grass ceiling” against people on the basis of race, gender, and socioeconomic status. These practices are commonplace in many golf clubs, which are able to do so under the moniker of “private.” This section will highlight the issue of social class, although there is an intersection of exclusion among these groups. From an economic standpoint, typical costs of participating in golf include clubs, bags, balls, and shoes. Even practicing golf costs money with the inclusion of range balls. These participatory costs of golf are severely opposed to other sports that require minimal space and supply costs. The median cost for a round of
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Social Class The Well-Dressed Hunter The following list of the clothing and equipment needed for a two-month-long expedition in a temperate climate illustrates the relative luxury that an upper-class hunter deemed “essential” in 1895.
Eight handkerchiefs: not white, but some dull colour which will not attract attention from afar, if inadvertently pulled out in sight of game.
Two tweed suits
One waterproof cape, such as is made by Cording; an armless contrivance, very light and portable, used I think by cyclists
One buckskin shirt Two tweed caps Four flannel shirts Four pairs of flannel drawers Six pairs of woolen socks or stockings Moccasins: the number of these depends entirely upon the nature of the shooting. After ibex, I have worn out a pair in a morning, but for ordinary work a pair of good thick moccasins should last four or five days
golf in the United States is around $40, while a round of golf at a premier public course can cost upwards to $110. By comparison, the first-year cost of membership at a private course (including initiation, ownership, and yearly dues) can exceed $30,000. In addition, advancing to higher levels in golf requires sufficient economic means for facilities, private instruction, and quality equipment. The high economic requirements of golf enable only those without economic restrictions to participate. Beyond economic means, upper middle classes also have access to the social capital surrounding golf, and these preferences, tastes, and practices are used to legitimize their position and restrict outside participation. These practices of the structure of golf include specific rules and etiquette, which are deemed essential to playing the game. In order to participate, one must therefore assimilate a role of supporting the existing structure. These specific practices of desirable behavior maintain influence over who participates. Lower-income groups often lack the network support needed to gain entry into golf’s culture. Without this direct link to a social support system, participating in golf is still viewed
One pair of short waterproof boots (gum boots)
Three pairs of blankets, one waterproof sheet, one aircushion One belt of webbing for cartridges One pair of loose buckskin gloves, one pair of woolen mitts One boating sweater Source: Phillips-Wooley, C. (1895). Big game shooting (p. 389). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
as a luxury often incongruent with the lifestyle of working classes.
Social Mobility Social mobility can occur in conjunction with sport and is defined as changes in social class through improved economic situations, education, and vocational advances. In view of this, does sport as an institution in society serve as a vehicle for upward social mobility? In this context, sport is examined as an institution for social mobility, and not viewed as a developmental, social, or character-building agent often common with sport participation.
Professional Sports Obvious financial rewards are present for athletes who “make it” to the professional level of the National Basketball Association, National Football League, National Hockey League, or Major League Baseball. However, the odds of becoming a professional in any of these sports is approximately 20,000 to 1. In addition, professional athletic careers are often short-lived, averaging between four and seven years.This is significant because
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The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. ■ OSCAR WILDE
after retirement from playing a professional sport, many years still remain in a person’s work life. Thus, while the dream exists for a professional career, the odds of upward social mobility through this avenue are slim. Interestingly, belief in the possibility of becoming a professional athlete mostly exists in the youth of the working class. Research supports that almost two-thirds of male urban youth assume this belief in the possibility of becoming a professional athlete. On the other hand, upper-income parents do not support such beliefs and are one-fourth as likely as lower-income parents to feel their child will become a professional athlete. These beliefs by parents and youth of working classes translate into focusing on achieving opportunities through sport, by developing the necessary skills needed for certain sports. On the other hand, upper-middle-class families concentrate on developing life and educational skills, which translates into better chances of upward social mobility.
Education College can serve as a link to upward social mobility. College graduates are more likely to earn more financially than non-college graduates and have more networking opportunities. Sports can provide a means for attending college by lower-income groups through athletic scholarships. Unfortunately, the majority of student-athletes are left without financial assistance through participation in sport. Only 15–20 percent of student-athletes achieve a full scholarship, and another 20 percent achieve a partial remittance. These statistics are worse for females, who comprise only 35 percent of student-athletes. Thus while these scholarships are achieved through sport, they are limited in number. The attainment of a college degree for student-athletes is an important factor for social mobility. Graduation rates for Division I student-athletes have increased in recent years to a national average of 60 percent. However, graduation rates remain low (42 percent for male basketball) for revenue-producing sports. Barriers to graduation for student-athletes also exist that are often not present for non-student ath-
letes. The demand and time required by one’s sport are not conducive to progressing toward one’s degree. Also, lower-income student-athletes may have to work separate jobs in the off-season, which adds to current demands. Another barrier to college graduation is the academic preparation required to complete college. Student-athletes who are less prepared academically are more likely to take classes that suffice academic requirements, but do not matriculate toward graduation. These barriers to graduating do not support sport as an institution for upward social mobility.
The Future There are relationships between sport as an institution and social class. However, most people do not constructively examine the role of social class and sport participation. Nonetheless, these differences of social class and sport are caused by access to both economic means and social capital. While we can easily view the way economic constraints can severely limit choices of sport participation, it is difficult to observe how access to social capital, in the form of preferences, values, and tastes, directs participation in certain sports. Social capital influences which sports are played by certain classes because these sports often reflect the values and preferences of a particular class in society. Streetball provides an example of how the lowerincome class’s preferences of aggression, excitement, and pose are reflected in the enjoyment of the sport, whereas golf is an example of upper-middle-class preferences of an aesthetic sport that also helps display one’s status in society. Participation in sport may also serve as a distinguisher of the type of social class that one associates with. Since the United States has a large middle class, sports may be a factor in deciphering social stratification. Striving for upward social mobility is often a common goal in the United States. Sport is also seen by many as an avenue of improving economic and social conditions.
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High salaries of professional athletes can serve as a way of reaching financial and social success, although odds are against such a venture and careers are often shortlived. Earning a college diploma is another means of achieving upward social mobility through sport. Yet educational skills are still required to achieve this goal and student-athletes often face tougher roads due to their various commitments. Rob Bell
Further Reading Bourdieu, P. (1978). Sport and social class. Social Science Information, 17, 819–840. Bourdieu, P. (Ed.). (1986). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste (R. Nice, Trans.). London: Routledge. Coakley, J. (2004). Sports in society: Issues and controversies (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Coakley, J., & Donnelly, P. (1999). Inside sports. London & New York: Routledge. Collins, M. (2002). Sport and social exclusion. London: Routledge. Collins, M., & Buller, J. (2003). Social exclusion from high-performance sport. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 27(4), 420–442. Eitzen, D. (1996). Classism in sport: The powerless bear the burden. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 20(1), 95–105. Eitzen, D. (1999). Fair and foul: Beyond myths and paradoxes of sport. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Eitzen, D., & Sage, G. (1989). Sociology of North American sport (4th ed.). Dubuque, IA: Brown. Gratton, C., & Henry, I. (2001). Sport in the city: The role of sport in economic and social regeneration. London: Routledge. Jarvie, G., & Maquire, J. (1994). Sport and leisure in social thought. London: Routledge. Luschen, G., & Sage, G. (1981). Handbook of social science of sport. Champaign, IL: Stipes. Majors, R., & Billson, J. (1992). Cool pose: The dilemmas of black manhood in America. New York: Macmillan. Nylund, D. (2003). Taking a slice at sexism. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 27(2), 195–202. Pay to play in high school sports. (2004, July 30). USA Today, p. 14C. Sage, G. (1997). Physical education, sociology, and sociology of sport: Points of intersection. Sociology of Sport Journal, 14, 317–339. Shropshire, K. (1996). In black and white: Race and sports in America. New York: New York University Press. Sleap, M. (1998). Social issues in sport. New York: St. Martins. Spreitzer, E., & Snyder, E. (1990). Sports within the black subculture: A matter of social class or a distinctive subculture? Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 14(1), 48–58. Walker, A., & Walker, C. (1997). Britain divided: The growth of social exclusion in the 1980s and 1990s. London: Child Poverty Action Group. Wilson, T. (2002). The paradox of social class and sports involvement. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37, 5–16.
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Social Constructivism
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ocial constructivism—a research paradigm (framework) and set of assumptions basic to much of the social sciences and the humanities for at least the last forty years—in general argues that humans and human culture are made, not born, that is, that human institutions such as language and the political and ideological assumptions that inform these institutions shape everything around people. To a social constructivist, “nature” does not exist. Only culture exists in that human ideas about “nature” and what is “natural” are themselves the product of ideological cultural assumptions. Often seen as the diametric opposite of biological determinism, which argues that human behaviors and institutions are predetermined by genetics, social constructivism set the stage for poststructuralist theory of all kinds, allowing for an investigation into every conceivable subject, including sports. Because sports are so closely linked with the body, and the body is so often linked with “nature” and genetics, for many years sports research did not examine the political and ideological assumptions that necessarily inform research paradigms, seeing those paradigms as an “objective,” neutral, and transparent tool for knowledge production. Particularly with the rise of feminist theory since the 1970s and the attention devoted to race and postcolonial studies since the late 1980s, social constructivist paradigms provide a necessarily self-reflexive, critical inquiry into the institutions of sports and research methodologies used to study sports. For the social constructivist reality is not predetermined, a fixed form that is universal and never changes. Rather, for the social constructivist human agents construct and reproduce reality through their daily practices, the way they think about things, the ways they live their lives. One can say, then, that reality is in this sense based on a social ontology (a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being)
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Football brings out the sociologist that lurks in some otherwise respectable citizens. They say football is a metaphor for America’s sinfulness. ■ GEORGE F. WILL
wherein human agents do not exist independently from their social environment or context. This idea is in contrast to the idea of rational choice individualism, in which the individual makes choices independently of the context in which he or she is embedded. In the structure/agency or nature/nurture debates, social constructivism insists that social structures and agents are mutually constitutive. While the social environment defines people, simultaneously human agency creates, reproduces, and changes that environment through people’s daily practices. Social constructivism marks a midway point between individualism and structuralism by claiming that the two are mutually constitutive. An athlete may choose to participate in the dominant corporate model of sports, for instance, using her celebrity and achievements to gain endorsements, but she may also be critical of that model and work to change it. Social constructivism became mainstreamed as a sociological paradigm with Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s 1966 book The Social Construction of Reality. The book argued that the purpose of this paradigm is to discover the ways social reality and social phenomena are constructed, naturalized, and institutionalized so that social phenomena appear to have some fundamental biological basis but don’t. Therefore, constructivist researchers focused on a description and analysis of institutions rather than on the individual. In this view reality itself becomes a social construction, an ongoing multidimensional process that is always historical and subject to change. Particular human subjectivities inform those “facts” that people take to be objective. Social constructivism describes subjective, rather than objective, reality and argues that the idea of objectivity is itself a construction often used to discredit other forms of research because for the social constructivist, objectivity is not possible because each researcher comes at his or her subjects from a particular, situated standpoint.
Standpoint Theory Evolves Standpoint theory evolved from this paradigm. For standpoint theorists such as Sandra Harding, the human
race, class, gender, religion, and other variables inform the standpoint or position from which people view the world, a position that determines what people focus on as well as what people don’t see. The social groups of which people are members and the identities to which people subscribe shape what and how people know, as well as how people communicate what they know. In this view societal inequalities such as those based on race, gender, and so forth produce a particular standpoint or perspective in the marginalized group that can provide a more rather than less objective view than the perspective from the lives of the more powerful because those people in power have a vested interest in the preservation of the status quo, and knowledge produced by those people will always be in service of that interest. Feminist standpoint theorists were influenced by the idea of German political philosopher Karl Marx and the German socialist Friedrich Engels that those people not in power can be society’s “ideal knowers.” Social constructivism is a central tenet of poststructuralism and has therefore been influential in the field of cultural studies, which breaks down traditional disciplinary barriers to combine sociology, literary theory, film/video studies, and anthropology to examine cultural institutions. Scholars working in cultural studies often emphasize how the structures of a given institution are informed by ideologies related to race, class, gender, and other variables. As such, it concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life in addition to forms of “high culture” such as literature or painting (cultural studies—through a social constructivist lens—break down the distinctions between “high” and “low” culture). Cultural studies attempt to explain why people do particular things (such as participate in sports) in a given culture and under what sets of assumptions they do so. Social constructivism as it has been applied through poststructuralism has therefore opened the door to a cultural analysis of sports and the particular meanings people give sports. It has made sports a legitimate subject of analysis in departments where they previously weren’t (such as English or history) and has vastly
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expanded the range of approaches to sports studies. Key to these forms of inquiry is a focus on language/ knowledge and power, which often in sports studies is influenced by the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, who asked the following questions about knowledge production and how people come to “know” what they know: What counts as “knowledge”? Who decides? Who is authorized to speak? Many sports researchers working from a constructivist set of assumptions have found Foucault’s work useful for conceptualizing how knowledge about athletes and various aspects of the institutions related to sports is produced.
Gender, Race, and Postcolonial Studies of Sports Feminist pioneers such as Helen Lenskji, Carole Oglesby, M. Ann Hall, Susan Birrell, Nancy Theberge, Mary Boutilier, Cindy SanGiovanni, and Lois Bryson began to look at gender as a socially constructed category that, rather than being a variable of the standard, can be conceptualized as a set of relationships that is constructed and maintained through human agency and cultural practices. Whereas perspectives based in biological determinism might argue that a fixed, given, biologically based reason exists for the social construction of women athletes, say, as weaker, a constructivist perspective would point to all the ideological assumptions that go into this perspective. In this view gender is formulated as a cultural construction, not just “nature” or biology. This is not to say that constructivists claim that biology does not exist or that genetics, hormones, endocrine systems, and basic physiological processes have no effect on human behavior. Rather, the idea is that biology is mediated, shaped, and given meaning by language and culture (a “constructionist” view). Whereas some earlier feminist views tended to fall into “essentialism”—the view that women are essentially different from men—gender studies are more common in the academy today. For gender critics gender difference is a symbol of oppression, a set of culturally constructed stereotypes that works to maintain and justify power imbalances be-
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tween genders. Gender criticism asserts that sexuality, which had previously been represented as a “natural,” private matter, is, in fact, constructed in, through, and by culture according to the political aims of the dominant culture. Gender criticism sees both gender and sexuality as existing on a continuum (some women are more “masculine” than some men, and some men are more “feminine” than some women). Gender criticism sees gender as a performance that people put on, as roles that they play rather than as something fixed, set, given, or natural. Gender critics would question the stereotype that women, for instance, are any more “naturally” nurturing than men or less competitive than men. In the jargon of the field, this idea is called “gender performativity”—gender is performed, not given. If, for instance, a girl chooses to participate in gymnastics because gymnastics is seen as a more acceptable sport for girls than is rugby, she is performing gender.
Everyone Has a Gender Like the emphasis on the fact that everyone, not just whites, has an ethnicity in postcolonial theory, gender studies would say that everyone has a gender. Therefore, discussions about gender should focus not only on women and “femininity” but also on men and “masculinity.” Particularly in sports studies in the pioneering work of, among others, Don Sabo and Michael Messner, masculinity has been formulated as a complex construct producing and reproducing a constellation of behaviors and goals, many of them destructive. Recently researchers have conducted a great deal of work from a constructivist perspective that focuses on culturally constructed assumptions about gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and other identity variables as these interact with each other to affect how particular athletes are represented, who occupies leadership positions, and how sports function as a cultural institution. These researchers ask how dominant cultural assumptions about race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect to produce social relations and to what extent people accept and/or resist these. For these researchers people’s beliefs
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A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide. ■ MICKEY MANTLE
about race or sexuality are not given “facts” or “truths” but rather cultural constructions that support inequitable power relations between groups. In Masculinities, for instance, R. W. Connell argues that race relations are central to the formation of dominant and subordinate masculinities, and sports are for him a highly visible site where this formation happens. Although the U.S. basketball star Michael Jordan was continually represented as having “no color,” David Andrews reads U.S. racial politics as determining, for instance, the representation of Jordan as a “natural” athlete, which reinforces historical racist linkages between blackness, masculinity, and the body. Pat Griffin and others have shown how negative social constructions of the woman athlete as lesbian and masculine have served to discourage homosexual and heterosexual women from sports participation and how sexuality remains a site for repression in the sports world. Postcolonial critics focused on women’s world sports, and scholars of globalization investigate how all the different axes of identity determine sports paradigms worldwide. Analyses of the global sports process examine the gendered, racialized, and ethnicity- and class-based nature of these processes and try to arrive at multidimensional models to accommodate these complexities. Increasingly focused on the global stage, social constructivism informs a wide range of theoretical approaches to sports that analyzes relationships of hegemony (influence) and representation and that looks at the intersecting variables of identity as these affect the construction of knowledge and social relations in sports as an increasingly powerful institution. Leslie Heywood
Further Reading Andrews, D. (2001). Michael Jordan, Inc.: Corporate sport, media culture, and late modern America. Albany: State University of New York Press. Andrews, D. (2001). Sport stars: The cultural politics of sporting celebrity. New York: Routledge. Andrews, D. (2005). Sport, culture and advertising: Identities, commodities and the politics of representation. New York: Routledge. Cole, C. L. (2003). The new politics of urban consumption: Hoop Dreams, Clockers, and sneakers. In R. Wilcox, D. L. Andrews, &
R. Pitter (Eds.), Sporting dystopias: The making and meanings of urban sport cultures (pp. 221–247). Albany: State University of New York Press. Cole, C. L., Giardina, M., & Andrews, D. L. (2004). Michel Foucault: Studies of power and sport. In Richard Gullianatti (Ed.), Sport and modern social theorists (pp. 207–223). London: Macmillan. Connell, R. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Griffin, P. (1998). Strong women, deep closets: Lesbians and homophobia in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Hall, M. A. (1996). Feminism and sporting bodies: Essays in theory and practice. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Kane, M. J. (1995). Resistance/transformation of the oppositional binary: Exposing sport as a continuum. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 19(1), 191–218. Maguire, J. (1999). Global sport: Identities, societies, civilizations. Oxford, UK: Polity Press. Sabo, D., & Messner, M. (1990). Sport, men, and the gender order. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Shogan, D. (1999). The making of high-performance athletes: Discipline, diversity, ethics. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Social Identity
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ince their humble beginnings as folk games, most sports have developed into formats that are almost unrecognizable in comparison with their ancestral forms. However, a theme that we can identify throughout the evolution of sport is its role in the expression of social identity. From the intense regional rivalries that characterized medieval ball games to the national, religious, ethnic, class, and political antagonisms that are present in modern sports, we can highlight the continued role of sport in processes of identity construction and maintenance. Although we should acknowledge that for some people —both participants and spectators—sport is sought purely for its intrinsic value, for many other people sport plays a far more significant role in their lives. For example, as the sociologist Joao Nuno Coelho states with regard to soccer, “it is fascinating, even though sometimes frightening, how a [soccer] team gains vast and complex social signification and symbolism which overtake the simple outcome of a sporting competition” (1998, 159). Furthermore, the social anthropologist Jeremy
SOCIAL IDENTITY
MacClancy says “sports . . . are vehicles of identity, providing people with a sense of difference and a way of classifying themselves and others, whether latitudinally or hierarchically” (1996, 2). As this statement highlights, sport-based social identities operate in a variety of ways, differing in content, function, and complexity. Fundamentally, possessing a particular social identity not only facilitates a feeling of shared identity with fellow members, but also acts as a means of differentiating oneself from other groups. In other words, identification with a particular sport-based social identity indicates what or who one is and, equally importantly, what or who one is not.
Social Identity Theory: A Summary The most substantial contributions to the study of identity have grown out of social identity theory, which was pioneered by the social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner during the 1970s. Tajfel defines social identity as “the individual’s knowledge that he/she belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him/her of the group membership” (1972, 31). The theory posits that a specific self-inclusive social category—for example, a sports team—furnishes a category-congruent self-definition that forms part of the self-concept. A person perceives this category as a social identity that not only describes but also prescribes his or her attributes as part of that group. The theory is based around two fundamental processes: categorization and self-enhancement. The former process elucidates group boundaries by manufacturing group normative and stereotypical actions and perceptions and allocates people to the contextually relevant group. The latter process ensures that in-group stereotypes and norms favor, in the main, that group. Thus, ultimately, as the social anthropologist Richard Jenkins states, “social identity is our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and, reciprocally, other people’s understanding of themselves and others (which includes us)” (1996, 5). In this regard, as the social behaviorist George Herbert Mead suggests,
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people cannot see themselves without seeing themselves as others see them. Simply asserting an identity is insufficient; significant others must recognize—or validate—it within any interaction. By the end of the twentieth century sociologists increasingly recognized that social identities are multiple and that people possess many identities. As Stuart Hall, cultural theorist, argues, “if we feel we have a unified identity . . . it is only because we construct a comforting story or ‘narrative of the self’ about ourselves . . . the fully unified, completed, secure and coherent identity is a fantasy. Instead, as the systems of meaning and cultural representation multiply, we are confronted by a bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible identities, any one of which we could identify with—at least temporarily” (1992, 277). The anthropologist Cris Shore, for example, proposes that we can view the components of a person’s identity as concentric rings, with each ring defining a separate identity. As a person undertakes various roles in life, different aspects of his or her identity will become more prominent depending on the situation and his or her position in relation to others. For example, a person from Northern Ireland might define herself in different contexts as Protestant, Unionist, or Loyalist, and “each apparently minor shift from one label to another in fact conveys messages of considerable magnitude and political complexity” (Shore 1993, 37). Social identities thus fluctuate depending on the context and are relative to the position of the observer. Indeed, as Hall reminds us, identities are never complete but rather are necessarily always in process— they are often fragmented and, at times, can appear seemingly contradictory.
Sports Teams as “Imagined Communities” Participation in sport can represent an important component of a person’s social identity. An oft-cited example is the high school football player whose sporting expertise is reflected in high social status within the school and local community. However, the concept of a sport-based social identity is arguably more applicable to
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More than a club: FC Barcelona, a symbol of Catalan nationalism. Source: Daniel Burdsey.
the collective identities shared by particular groups than to those of individuals. This fact is reflected in the academic study of sport, where an increasingly sizeable body of sociological inquiry has sought to establish how support for various sports teams acts as a significant source of social identity through the creation of a shared fan consciousness. We should not be surprised that soccer, as the most popular and played team sport in the world, is probably the primary sport in which certain teams are perceived to represent specific social identities. In the vast majority of soccer-playing countries the national team makes a considerable contribution to the construction and maintenance of national identity. Nevertheless, in other countries the relationship between soccer and national identity is more contested. For example, in Spain strong regional identifications and interteam conflict among supporters mean that the national team is a relatively ineffective vehicle for the expression of nationalist sentiments. Instead, soccer acts as a vehicle for social identity in the historic nationalities, where Barcelona represents Catalans and Athletic Bilbao symbolizes Basque identity. In Germany the successes of teams such as Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund have played a crucial role in constructing a positive regional identity for inhabitants of the industrial Ruhr Valley area, whereas in the city of Hamburg supporters of FC St. Pauli celebrate their perceived collective intellectual, antiestablishment identity. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the supporters of many sports teams reflect inveterate religious divisions and are strongly associated with either Catholicism or Protestantism. In Africa, the Middle East, and Australia large numbers of sports teams are associated with ethnic groups, whether they be indigenous or migrant. The preceding examples demonstrate the manner in which sports teams operate
globally as vehicles through which individuals and groups can strengthen their attachment to, and identification with, a particular community. A key contribution to the study of social identity has been professor of government Benedict Anderson’s work on nationalism. He refers to nations as “imagined communities,” a concept that can also be applied to supporter groups of sports teams. As John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson, sport sociologists, highlight, “sport in many cases informs and refuels the popular memory of communities, and offers a collective source of identification and community expression for those who follow teams and individuals” (1994, 3). In this sense the term community implies that the members of a group possess common features that significantly distinguish them from members of other groups. Membership of a community may be determined by a variety of criteria: People may be required to possess particular ethnic, social, religious, political, or national characteristics. Fans of sports teams can be similarly conceived of as comprising distinct communities that revolve around identification with a particular team. Central to Anderson’s argument is the notion that although a person may share elements of his or her identity with many other members of a particular social grouping, he or she likely will have had direct personal contact with only a small percentage of them. This fact is why the community is perceived as inherently imagined. In most cases one could not conceive of supporters of a particular professional team
SOCIAL IDENTITY
being aware of the existence of all others who share this element of their social identity, yet for the majority this fact is irrelevant. For them the knowledge that they form part of the vast interdependency networks that constitute membership of a social group is sufficient to procure feelings of pride and involvement, despite the absence of close personal relationships with other people in this group.
Sport, Postcolonialism, and Social Identity Sport also plays a significant role in the expression of social identity in relation to postcolonial populations. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the colonization of Africa and the Indian subcontinent was unequivocally connected to dominant European theories of racial and cultural difference. Colonialism enabled the European powers to contrast themselves with those populations that they perceived to be backward and inferior. One of the central tenets of this ideology was physicality, and whereas the British categorized themselves as a “healthy race”—that is, possessing strength, vigor, and bravery—the British categorized the Indian population, for example, as bereft of such qualities. The importance attached to the “games ethic”—that is, the role of sport and physical education—in colonialism led to the development of a mutually reinforcing cycle that maintained that the less civilized “races” lacked the characteristics needed to compete in sporting endeavors and that the sporting (non)performances of Indians were symptomatic of deficiencies in their all-round character. As the medical anthropologist Joseph Alter points out, sporting images are not just allegories of wider racial ideologies because the sporting body “may be seen, not simply as a signifier of meaning, but as a subject actor in a larger drama of culture and power” (1994, 24). Sport was thus a barometer by which the differing social statuses and identities of colonizer and colonized were measured. After the middle of the twentieth century many colonies began to achieve independence, and large numbers of people began to migrate from former
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colonies to western Europe and North America. Since this period sport has played a major role in the construction and articulation of postcolonial social identities for former colonial populations and members of their respective diasporas (scatterings). This development is particularly the case with cricket and former British colonies. Because of the relatively small number of nations that participate in first-class world test cricket, former British territories regularly play against and, with increasing frequency, defeat England. Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that cricket was a key instrument in British imperialism and colonialism, for the duration of a match or series former colonial peoples are afforded the opportunity to compete on equal terms with England and to literally “beat the masters at their own game.” Consequently, in international cricket the inherent ideological capabilities of sport are accentuated, and the game continues to operate as an arena where significant political and postcolonial symbolism can be achieved. This situation is apparent with both those people who remain in the former colonies and those who have migrated to England. By the end of the twentieth century people widely acknowledged that, in international cricket, a substantial number of British Caribbeans and south Asians support their country of ancestry, particularly when they are playing against England. Such patterns of fandom enable people to celebrate tradition and feelings of continuity with the nation from which they or their forebears migrated, together with an opportunity to distance themselves from those elements of British life with which they are uncomfortable. For example, as the anthropologist Pnina Werbner points out, “it is in the field of sport, through support of the [Pakistan] national team, that young British Pakistanis express their love of both cricket and the home country, along with their sense of alienation and disaffection from British society” (1996, 101). We find similar trends in other sports, such as soccer, where postcolonial populations have used the game to make symbolic gestures toward their former colonizers. For example, in 2001, nearly forty years after Algeria
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The medals don’t mean anything and the glory doesn’t last. It’s all about your happiness. The rewards are going to come, but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing. ■ JACKIE JOYNER KERSEE
had gained its independence from France, a soccer match between the two countries in Paris was abandoned after second- and third-generation north African migrants invaded the pitch (playing field) to protest their alienation from contemporary French society. Furthermore, during the 1998 and 2002 soccer World Cup events, large numbers of supporters in Cameroon developed an “anyone but France” mentality during matches involving their former colonizers.
The Future We should not assume that particular sport-related social identities are, or will be, necessarily bound to the locations where they developed. Certainly during the majority of the twentieth century social identities based on an affiliation to specific sports teams tended to be the preserve of those people living in the immediate location where the teams were based. Then, as a result of mass global migrations, by the end of the century allegiances to Glasgow Celtic or AC Milan, for example, formed part of the social identities of second- and third-generation migrants in the Scottish and Italian diasporas. However, the twenty-first century has brought new forms of sport-based social identities. The construction of these identities is a consequence not only of population migration, but also of the global interchange of ideologies, technologies, economies, and media. Rapid advances in global media have contributed to what many globalization theorists label a “time-space compression,” that is, literally a decrease in the time required for people to link distinct locations. Through cable and satellite television and the Internet people have access to “live” sporting events wherever and whenever they take place. Consequently—although this notion may be contested by those people who are more “traditional” in their fandom—one can be a fan of a particular team without ever seeing it play or even visiting the city or country where the team is based. For example, as a result of the team’s promotional tours, satellite TV, and marketing of merchandise in the Far East, the profile of the Manchester United team is as large in Malaysia as it is in England. Therefore, we must recog-
nize that being a Manchester United fan may be as important an aspect of social identity for a citizen of Kuala Lumpur as it is for a season ticket holder in Manchester itself. Furthermore, a cursory glance at the clothing of African migrants in European cities, such as Lisbon or Barcelona, reveals not only elements of traditional African dress but also important sporting markers, such as Chicago Bulls basketball vests or Auxerre soccer jerseys. These cultural attributes represent both an increasing access to modern consumer marketplaces and the significance of globally recognizable sport symbols in expressions of social identity. In such instances the referent still possesses its specific local roots, but the identities involved become based around a wider “imagined community.” The huge popularity of sport also means that, in the early twenty-first century, social identities are being created that are purely contiguous to the actual sporting experience. For example, the United States is witnessing the dawn of the “soccer mom” who derives status from, and structures parts of her identity around, the participation of her children in soccer. We should recognize that for different people association with a particular sports team is likely to represent different levels of significance in terms of the composition of their overall social identity. Whereas one person may perceive that his or her most prominent characteristic is “New York Yankees fan,” another person may rank this characteristic lower, in terms of perceived importance, than his or her role as a “citizen of New York.” Nevertheless, regardless of the degree to which it does so, support of a sports team clearly acts as a vehicle through which the other elements of a person’s social identity can be affirmed and articulated. Daniel Burdsey See also Athletes as Celebrities; Athletes as Heroes; Masculinity
Further Reading Alter, J. (1994). The wrestler’s body: Identity and ideology in north India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities. London: Verso.
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Armstrong, G., & Giulianotti, R. (Eds.). (1999). Football cultures and identities. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Bale, J., & Cronin, M. (Eds.). (2003). Sport and postcolonialism. Oxford, UK: Berg. Coelho, J. N. (1998). On the border: Some notes on football and national identity on Portugal. In A. Brown (Ed.), Fanatics! Power, identity and fandom in football (p. 159). London: Routledge. Dyck, N. (Ed.). (2000). Games, sports and cultures. Oxford, UK: Berg. Dyck, N., & Archetti, E. (Eds.). (2003). Sport, dance and embodied identities. Oxford, UK: Berg. Ellemers, N., Spears, R., & Doosje, B. (Eds.). (1999). Social identity: Context, commitment, content. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Hall, S. (1992). The question of cultural identity. In S. Hall, D. Held, & T. McGrew (Eds.), Modernity and its futures (p. 277). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Hargreaves, J. (2000). Heroines of sport: The politics of difference and identity. London: Routledge. Jenkins, R. (1996). Social identity. London: Routledge. MacClancy, J. (Ed.). (1996). Sport, identity and ethnicity. Oxford, UK: Berg. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shore, C. (1993). Ethnicity as revolutionary strategy: Communist identity construction in Italy. In S. Macdonald (Ed.), Inside European identities—ethnography in western Europe. Oxford, UK: Berg. Sugden, J., & Tomlinson, A. (Eds.). (1994). Hosts and champions: Soccer cultures, national identities and the USA World Cup. Aldershot, UK: Arena. Tajfel, H. (1972). Experiments in a vacuum. In J. Israel & H. Tajfel (Eds.), The context of social psychology: A critical assessment (p. 31). London: Academic Press. Werbner, P. (1996). Our blood is green: Cricket, identity and social empowerment among British Pakistanis. In J. MacClancy (Ed.), Sport, identity and ethnicity (p. 101). Oxford, UK: Berg. Worchel, S. (Ed.). (1998). Social identity: International perspectives. London: Sage.
Softball
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ach year, Thanksgiving marks an anniversary of one of the most popular team sports in the United States —softball. On that day in 1887, alumni of Yale and Harvard waited inside the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago, Illinois, for the outcome of the Harvard–Yale football game. When the alumni heard that Yale had defeated Harvard, one of the Yale rooters, so excited by the good news, took an old boxing glove and tossed it toward one of the Harvard alumni, who tried to hit the boxing glove back with a stick—thus giving George Hancock, a reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade, the idea for an indoor game of baseball. Hancock’s friends
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thought he was suggesting a game outdoors. But Hancock was serious about an indoor game and, using available materials, he tied together the laces of the boxing glove to make a ball. He marked off a diamond inside the boat club and divided the alumni into two teams. The game ended 17–8, but the final score was insignificant. What was important was that Hancock and his friends had played the first game of softball, which has become one of the most popular team sports in the United States. Hancock’s game eventually became popular in Chicago, with Farragut teams playing games against teams from other gyms. In the spring, Hancock took his game outdoors where it was played on fields smaller than baseball diamonds. His game was called indoor-outdoor, and Hancock was the recognized expert on the game. Over time, Hancock changed 19 special rules from his original set of indoor-outdoor baseball rules for his indoor game, which the Mid Winter Indoor Baseball League of Chicago adopted in 1889. Hancock’s game become popular throughout the Midwest, especially in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Lewis Rober, a Minneapolis Fire Department lieutenant needed a game to occupy the idle time of his firemen. Using the vacant lot near the firehouse, Rober placed bases 10.6 meters (35 feet) apart and used a scaled-down medicine ball for a ball. The players hit the ball with a bat 5 meters (2 inches) in diameter. Other fire companies began to play Rober’s game, and by 1895, he had transferred to another fire company where he organized a team called the Kittens. In the summer of 1900, the captain of Truck Company No.1, George Kehoe, named Rober’s version of softball, “Kitten League Ball,” which was shortened to “Kitten Ball.” Rober’s game remained Kitten Ball until the Minneapolis Park Board changed it to Diamond Ball in 1925—one of at least a half a dozen names the sport had before 1926.
Amateur Softball Association Leo Fischer and Michael J. Pauley established the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) in 1933, following a
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Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true. ■ HONORE DE BALZAC
Through its network of commissioners, many of whom were employed by parks and recreation departments, ASA expanded its program to include different classifications (Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class D) and divisions for national championship play.
CHAMPIONSHIPS Originally, the ASA had four national championships. By 2004, ASA had thirty-four divisions of championship play and seventy-eight classifications, amounting to more than eighty national championships. In 1974, the ASA added a youth program as the popularity of girls’ softball increased in U.S. high schools and colleges. Between 1963 and 1991, the number of ASA youth teams increased more than 750 percent and the number of adult teams increased 250 percent. With more female sports opportunities, and the popularity of the U.S. Olympic team, the number of female fast-pitch players increased 62 percent from 1990– 1991 to 2001–2002, according to the SGMA’s U.S. Trends Team Sports Report. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) fast-pitch softball grew 59 percent during the same period, making softball the fourth most popular team sport. More than 357,912 girls play fast pitch at 14,007 U.S. high schools (2002–2003), making it the fourth most popular female high school sport. Slow pitch is also offered in U.S. high schools, with 15,057 girls playing at 791 schools.
PAN AMERICAN AND OLYMPIC GAMES The ASA, which is recognized by the United States Olympic Committee as the national governing body (NGB) of softball in the United States, selects and trains the athletes who will represent the United States in the Pan American Games and Olympics and other international softball events through the International Softball Federation (ISF), the governing body of softball internationally. Softball is played throughout the world in 124 counties with the ISF located in Plant City, Florida, since 2000. ISF President Don E. Porter, former ASA executive director (1963–1998), was the driving force behind softball officially being accepted
into the Pan American Games (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1979) and the Olympics (Atlanta, 1996). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved the recommendations of the IOC Program Commission and its Executive Board during its general session in Birmingham, England, on 13 June 1991, to add softball to the Olympic program. Softball (women’s fast pitch) was highly successful in the 1996 and 2000 (Sydney) Olympics, with attendance of 135,564 people in 1996 and 197,139 in 2000. In 2004, women’s softball was again on the Olympic program with eight countries competing in Athens, Greece, with the heavily favored USA women’s team winning a third gold medal. The softball competition drew attendance of 54,616 in 32 games or an average of 1,706 people per game. Since women’s softball made its Olympic debut in 1996, 387,319 people have attended the competition. There is, however, no men’s softball in the Olympic Games. Pitcher Jennie Finch, former University of Arizona standout and a member of the U.S. Olympic team, brought the sport tremendous publicity in 2004, combining her glamorous looks with her unquestioned ability. She made People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” list in 2004, which marked softball’s third— and most important—appearance in the Olympics. Softball will remain on the Olympic program through 2008, with a decision expected in July 2005 at the IOC meeting in Singapore to determine if softball will be on the Olympic program for 2012. To keep the softball games in the Olympics moving, the ISF will use a 20-second clock that will provide a countdown visible to the pitcher, umpires, and the fans. If the pitcher doesn’t release the ball within 20 seconds, the umpire will call a ball on the batter. According to the SGMA’s Team Sport Report, softball ranked thirtieth out of the top fifty sports activities in 2004 with 17.9 million participants, including 14.4 million in slow pitch and 3.5 million in fast pitch. Softball participation was as high as 22.1 million in 1989 and ranked seventeenth with 18.1 million participants in 1994.
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What Is Softball? Softball is a well-established bat-and-ball game played by two teams of nine or ten players each on a diamondshaped field. Games generally are seven innings in length or until a winner is determined. All you need is the desire and the equipment to play softball. Like baseball, the objective of the sport is simple: The team that scores the most runs in the number of innings wins the game. An inning lasts until the team on defense records three outs against the team that is batting or is on offense. Each team alternates each inning between offense and defense, with the visiting team batting first and the home team batting last. A turn at bat or on defense completes the inning, with nine players in the starting lineup for fast pitch and ten in the starting lineup for slow pitch. A putout is recorded by the defensive team’s pitcher striking out one or all of the players on offense, an infielder fielding the ball and throwing the ball to first base or another base to retire the offensive player before he or she reaches the base, an infielder or outfielder catching a pop fly or line drive before the ball touches the ground, and a player being tagged out by the defense before reaching first base, second base, third base, or home plate. Softball’s identity is diverse because of the two different disciplines: fast pitch and slow pitch. Fast pitch also has a variation called modified pitch, which was added to the ASA program in 1975. Very popular in Chicago and other Midwest cities is 16-inch softball, which is played with a softball 16 inches (40.6 centimeters) in circumference; the distance between bases was changed from 55 feet to 60 feet (18.3 meters) in 2002 after softball was added to the national championship program in 1964. From the 1930s through the 1970s, fast pitch was the most popular discipline of softball played. In time, however, men’s fast pitch became games of double-digit strikeout totals. To give fast pitch a balance between offense and defense, the JRCOS changed the men’s pitching distance from the mound to home plate from 11.5 meters to 14 meters (46 feet) in 1950. The women’s pitching distance was changed from 12.2 meters to
13.1l meters (43 feet) in 2002. This distance is also used throughout U.S. colleges and ISF events, including the Olympic Games.
SLOW PITCH Slow pitch, which was part of the Chicago world’s fair tournament conducted by Pauley and Fischer, started to become popular after it was added to the ASA’s national championship program in 1953. In 1935, Lakewood, Ohio, formed a slow pitch league with four teams composed of city employees. Once slow pitch was added to the ASA program, ASA team registrations soared and different classifications and divisions of play were added. Coed slow pitch was added in 1982 and represents about 10 percent of the ASA’s membership of more than 230,000 teams. Classifications now exist for people from 45- and-over to 75-and-over. Each discipline is played on a diamond with different distances between the bases and from the pitcher’s mound depending on whether adult fast or slow pitch or youth fast pitch or slow pitch is being played. Slow pitch continued to gain in popularity and manufacturers were quick to take advantage of the large market share; more than 80 percent of all softball played was slow pitch at one time. But, because of advances in equipment, ASA, as well as other softball organizations, changed distances between bases, and from the pitching mound for men’s slow pitch, to strike a balance between offense and defense. By 2002, the men’s pitching distance was changed to 53 feet (16.15 meters) and the distance between bases was increased to 80 feet (24.34 meters) in 2004. The ASA Super Division, which was started in 1981, was eliminated in 2004 because of a lack of parity of the teams playing in that division. With the Super Division gone, the ASA focused its efforts on improving its Major Division of slow pitch in 2004 through a series of qualifiers nationwide and prize money of $25,000.
EXPANDING ORGANIZATIONS Although the United States Olympic Committee recognizes ASA as the national governing body for softball,
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Youth softball pitcher with a batter waiting for the pitch. Source: istockphoto/groveb.
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more than a dozen other organizations have been formed during the past thirty years to register adult and youth teams and umpires and to conduct tournaments. Some of these organizations are either regional or national in scope and concentrate on either slow pitch or fast pitch or both disciplines of the sport. Even traditional baseball organizations (Babe Ruth, Pony, Little League) have turned their attention to softball, especially girls’ softball, during the past twenty-five years to register teams and umpires as well as to conduct tournaments for different age groups. Ironically, there are more softball organizations than ever, but the overall market share of softball is smaller than it was a decade ago.
In 1965, the ISF held its first Women’s World Championship in Australia; the host country defeated the United States for the gold medal. The first Men’s World Championship was held in 1966 in Mexico City. The U.S. men won outright or shared (in 1976) five of the first seven championships. New Zealand is currently the dominant country in men’s fast pitch internationally, having won three consecutive world championships (1996, 2000, and 2004), the first time that this has been accomplished. New Zealand also shared the 1976 World title with the United States and Canada and won another world title in 1984. In Women’s World Championship competition, the United States is the undisputed leader with seven gold medals, including five in a row (1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002). The U.S. women’s team also has dominated in the Pan American Games, winning the gold medal all but once (1983) in seven Games. The U.S. men, however, have never won a gold medal in Pan American softball, instead taking seven silver medals behind gold medalist Canada. Besides these competitions, softball is on the program of more than a dozen multisport games, including the following: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
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Competition at the Top Besides the national championships conducted by the ASA each year, the ISF conducts world championships for
Men’s and women’s fast pitch Junior boys’ and junior women’s fast pitch Men’s, women’s, and coed slow pitch Men’s and women’s modified pitch
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All-Africa Games (women) Arafura Games (men and women) Asian Games (women) Bolivarian Games (men and women) Central American Games (men and women) Central American and Caribbean Games (men and women) Maccabiah Games (men and women) Micronesian Games (men and women) Mindanao Games (women) South American Games (women) Southeast Asian Games (men and women) South Pacific Games (men and women)
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Special Olympics (men and women) World Firefighters Games (men and women) World Masters Games (men and women)
PROFESSIONAL LEVEL Although softball is an amateur sport, attempts have been made to take the sport to the professional level, especially for female fast pitch. In 2004, the National Pro Fastpitch League was started with teams in six cities featuring top collegiate stars and past Olympians, including two-time U.S. gold medalist Michele Smith. The International Pro Softball Association operated between 1976 and 1979, then took a year off in 1980 and never returned. Another attempt at professional women’s softball was made from 1997 to 1998 with the league suspending play until the National Pro Fastpitch League (NPF) launched the NPF All-Star Tour in 2003, which was hosted by twelve major league baseball clubs that summer and gave people the chance to see women’s fast pitch in action through NPF exhibition games, clinics, and in-game promotions. In 2004, the league’s teams included the Akron Racers, NY/NJ Juggernaut, the New England Riptide, Texas Thunder, the Arizona Heat, and the California Sunbirds. The league is an official development partner of major league baseball for women’s fast pitch softball and signed a contract with ESPN to televise eleven games nationally in the 2005 season. In 2005, another pro league is scheduled to begin, headed by Dr. Dot Richardson, two-time U.S. Olympic gold medalist, and Lisa Fernandez, a member of the 2004 U.S. Olympic team.
The Future Softball will likely remain as one of the most popular summer sports. Future participation is expected to increase in girls, masters’, and seniors’ competition as the U.S. society gets older and people have the time and money to play softball. According to Senior SoftballUSA in Sacramento, California, an estimated two million people (men over 50 and women over 45) play senior softball in the United States. The average age of
the top 30,000 tournament players is sixty-four years old. These people have an average disposal income of $35,000 and play an average of seven tournaments each summer. Whether or not softball remains on the Olympic program beyond 2008 will certainly affect the continued growth of girls’ fast pitch in U.S. high schools, colleges, and universities. One professional league might eventually succeed, but with two leagues expected to operate in 2005, one or both could fail. Softball is a lifetime sport that people can play on a highly competitive level or for recreation and fun based on their abilities and, depending on where they live, almost year around. Because of this, softball “is the sport for everyone.” People make lifelong friends. Softball players spend an estimated $4.3 billion annually to compete, and people from all socioeconomic and ethnic groups play softball. Softball is the “ultimate class equalizer,” said ASA Commissioner Dan Saylor, “You can be a nobody and a star in softball or be a Ph.D. and go 0-for-4. No matter how good or bad you are, there’s a league for you.”
Governing Bodies Governing organizations include the Amateur Softball Association (www.ASAsoftball.com) and the International Softball Federation (www.internationalsoftball.com). Bill Plummer III
Further Reading Bealle, M. A. (1957). The softball story. Washington, DC: Columbia Publishing. Bealle, M. A. (1962). The new 1962 compact edition of softball history. Washington, DC: Columbia Publishing. Claflin, E. (1978) The irresistible American softball book. New York: Dolphin Books. Dickson, P. (1994). The Worth book of softball. New York: Facts On File. Indoor baseball. (1939, November 27). Time. Fischer, L. H. (1939 June).Softball steps up. Reader’s Digest. Fischer, L. H. (1940). How to play winning softball. New York: PrenticeHall. Johnson, C. P., Wright, M. (1984). The women’s softball book. New York: Leisure Press. Lee, M. (1983). A history of physical education and sports in the U.S.A. New York: Wiley.
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South Africa Olympics Results 2004 Summer Olympics: 1 Gold, 3 Silver, 2 Bronze
McCallum, K. (1979, May 28). “He can rise, drop and pop it at 104 mph.” Sports Illustrated. Meyer, G C. (1982). Softball for girls and women. New York: Scribner’s. Meyer, R. G. (1984). The complete book of softball: The Loonies guide to playing and enjoying the game. New York: Leisure Press. Michener, J. A. (1976). Sport in America. New York: Random House. Noren, A. T. (1940). Softball. New York: A. S. Barnes. Oetgen, A. (1986, June 1). Softball ranks as American religion for some. Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Perry, G. R. (1979). Slow pitch softball. South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes. Sobel, B. (1980). Fastpitch softball. Mountain View, CA: World Publications. Softballers. (1939, September 26). Time. Sullivan, G. (1965). The complete guide to softball. New York: Fleet. Thomas, L., & Shane, T. (1940). Softball: So what? New York: Frederick A. Stokes. Walsh, L. (1979). Coaching winning softball. Chicago: Contemporary Books.
South Africa
S
outh Africa is a large nation of varied geological regions and climates at the southern tip of Africa. In mid-2004 the population was estimated at 46.6 million people, 79 percent of whom classified themselves as African, 9.6 percent as white, 8.9 percent as colored (mixed), and 2.5 percent as Indian or Asian. South Africa’s history has been riddled with ethnic conflict, institutional and political racism, and unequal gender relations of power. However, after the demise of the political system of apartheid (established in 1948 and characterized by white supremacy and the oppression of black people) and the establishment of a democratically elected government in 1994, the new country was characterized as the “nonracial, nonsexist Rainbow Republic of South Africa.” Sports have held a significant place in South Africa’s stormy history, shaped by its people’s diversities and by social and political struggles. During colonial times sports were racialized and gendered: The powerful white male minority wielded the greatest power over the development of sports and had access to the best resources. The fact that South African sports have been the “national religion” enabled sports to be used to help
overthrow apartheid, and sports’ continuing grip on the nation’s psyche has provided impetus for their use in nation building in recent years. Writing in 2004 about developing nonracial sports in his country, President Thabo Mbeki pointed out the importance of “ensuring that the addiction to competitive sport serves to unite our people in a spirit of national reconciliation, rather than racial division and conflict.”
Sports before Apartheid Africans migrated south into present-day South Africa two thousand years ago, and the Dutch began to settle around Cape Town in 1652, but the British heralded the introduction of “modern sports” to the region. With their ethos (distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs) of fair play, self-discipline, and collective identity, the organized sports that emerged in Britain during the nineteenth century were brought to South Africa by immigrants who had annexed and settled in the country since the beginning of the century. Sports and British cultural values, especially those of the boys’ public schools, were thereafter inseparably linked and produced a colonial sporting system from which today’s sports have evolved. The British model of sports was exclusive and alienated the majority of Africans as well as the Boer settlers (white farmers of mostly Dutch descent). Nineteenthcentury Boers were men of the veld (a grassland, especially of southern Africa, usually with scattered shrubs or trees), their sporting activities confined largely to riding and shooting, whereas English-descended South Africans tended to organize themselves in clubs, a habit given impetus by the soldiers who came to fight Queen Victoria’s wars in South Africa. Some clubs were singlesport clubs for cricket, rugby, soccer, tennis, or cycling, and so forth. Other clubs, such as the Wanderers in Johannesburg and the Collegians in Pietermaritzburg, were multipurpose, with vastly superior facilities. Until rugby and soccer arrived during the early 1860s, hunting, horse racing (introduced in 1797), and cricket (introduced in 1808) remained the three principal sports, played essentially by British immigrants and
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South Africa Evolution of Sports in South Africa Date
Sports Clubs
1802 1843 1876 1879
Horse racing Cricket (Port Elizabeth) Rugby (Cape) Football (Pietermaritzburg) Athletics (Port Elizabeth) Cycling (Port Elizabeth)
1880 1881 1882 1882 1882 1882 1889
Tennis (Natal) Bowls (lawn bowling) (Port Elizabeth) Professional boxing Croquet Gymnastics (Johannesburg)
National Federations
Horse racing Rugby
1890 1892 1892 1894 1903 1904 1909 1923 1928
Mountaineering Football Cycling Athletics Tennis Bowls Golf Hockey Rifle shooting
1931 1937 1939 1940 1947 1948
Motor racing Roller skating Badminton Jukskei Squash Small-bore rifle shooting Archery Fencing Softball Gymkhana Clay pigeon shooting
1949 1949 1949 1951 1953 1954 1962 1962 1964 1965 1968
Equestrianism Judo Trampoline Body building Surfing Karate
the military. Other sports followed rapidly, their arrival coinciding with the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley (1867), the discovery of gold at Rand (1886), and imperial expansion. Colonial sports lent themselves to the racial segregation that characterized South African society. Most sports were exclusively white, but the civilizing mission of sports to build the empire was influential in the schools, colleges, and clubs for educated nonwhites and in missionary schools for poor black children. Games such as cricket and especially soccer were adopted within South Africa’s black communities; in comparison, the traditional skills of hunting, archery, spear throwing, wrestling, and dance were losing their appeal. From the start colonial sports were heavily gendered, emphasizing aggressive and chauvinist images of sporting manliness. Although the Boers eventually adopted British forms of sports—and in the case of rugby attached their own identity and meaning to it—they had practiced various folk sports prior to the nineteenth century. Many of these were nostalgically revived during the latter years of apartheid. Jukskei (a throwing game using the wooden pin from an ox yoke) was still being played in more than seven hundred clubs during the late 1970s, with the South African Jukskei Board boasting more than twenty thousand members. Vingertrek (a form of hand wrestling), now played by children, once was played by burly adults at the religious festival of Nachtmal. The horse also played a crucial role in Boer social and working life, featuring in many recreational activities. Increasingly, though, through rapid urbanization and exposure in schools—the two most powerful forces in the propagation of “British” sports in South Africa— young Boers also chose to take up team sports such as cricket and rugby. Before World War II people played a smattering of racially mixed sports, but most sports were segregated. However, no sports infrastructure existed for the majority of the population, which was black, and because of grinding poverty few blacks had money for education, recreation, or sports. In rural areas no facilities and
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Lehaha he Baroana rock painting of Bushmen with bows and quivers in Lesotho, 1977. Source: Roland Renson, Sport Museum Flanders.
opportunities existed. During the 1930s and 1940s the neglect of sports provision for nonwhites coexisted with racial practices that denied mixed-race social interaction and set the scene for the systematic political institutionalization of apartheid sports.
Sports during Apartheid Henrik Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa in 1948 when the Afrikaner Nationalist Party took power, is known as the “architect of apartheid” with its mandatory division of the nation into four racial categories: African (pejoratively labeled “native”), colored, Asian or Indian, and white. The nonracial term black was used by antiapartheid activists to describe all those groups characterized by the government as “nonwhite.” Apartheid was a violent form of racist repression enforced by the white minority so that the rights and opportunities of African, colored, and Indian people were reduced in all areas of life and culture, including sports. Although no official prohibition of mixed-race sports existed, little need existed to impose apartheid on the already established model of segregated sports. Nevertheless, the government passed laws that, among other taboos, prevented nonwhites from traveling freely and using white facilities. Although class differences existed, and poor whites had limited opportunities, the resourcing of middle-class white-male sports was superlative, and middle-class white women had access to excellent facilities as well. In Indian and colored areas far fewer fa-
cilities existed, and African areas were devoid of anything but the most basic facilities. Bureaucratic responsibility for sports was also assigned on a racial basis. During the early days of apartheid white sports federations were founded, increasingly patronized by the government, reflecting white South Africa’s prosperity and obsession with sports. Until 1979 African sports were administered by the Bantu Affairs Department (thereafter the Department of Sport and Recreation assumed partial responsibility); colored sports were administered by the Colored Affairs Department; and Indian sports were administered by local authorities and the Department of Indian Affairs. A surprisingly active sports movement in nonwhite communities existed throughout the apartheid period, and sports became a focus for cultural resistance and antiapartheid politics. During the 1950s nonracial national federations were founded for sports, including soccer, cricket, weight lifting, table tennis, and athletics. The South African Sports Association (SASA) was established in 1959. The establishment in 1963 of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) and in the early 1970s of the South African Non-Racial Sports Organization (SASPO) and the South African Council on Sport (SACOS) were significant developments in the eventual desegregation of sports. SAN-ROC, which relocated to England, was the leading organization in the international campaign against apartheid sports. Sam Ramsamy, in exile in London, became its president. Using the unifying slogan, “No normal sport in an abnormal society,” these organizations worked alongside the African National Congress (ANC) political party and with the support of international antiapartheid initiatives to oppose apartheid sports. The major method of opposition was
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to encourage and support a total boycott of South African sports. Also in the 1970s Prime Minister Vorster unveiled a “multinational” sports policy to persuade the international community to reverse the boycott decision. However, multinational sports clearly did nothing to dismantle the separate and unequal development intrinsic to political apartheid. In 1977 the commonwealth heads of government made public their condemnation of apartheid sports by signing the Gleneagles Agreement, and in the 1980s a militant organization, the National Sports Congress (NSC), was established. With the exception of rebel tours, South Africa was now totally isolated from international sports, including the Olympic Games. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) claimed to have a nonracial policy, it did nothing to oppose all-white South African participation in the Olympic Games from 1908 until 1960. However, united pressure from the new independent African nations—with the backing of the Soviet Union and other Communist bloc countries, the Supreme Council for Sports in Africa (SCSA), SAN-ROC, and other antiapartheid organizations—resulted in South Africa being banned from the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games and, in 1970, to the complete expulsion of South Africa from the Olympic movement. South Africa was banned from the Commonwealth Games at the same time. One of the aims of the African Games, the first of which took place in 1965, was to unite the countries of the continent against apartheid in South Africa. Another key event took place in 1976 when seventeen African countries boycotted the Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada (because the IOC had refused to ban New Zealand after its national all-black rugby team had played against South Africa). Responding to such international pressure, by the mid-1980s some public sports facilities became desegregated. However, white racism, black poverty, and gross inequalities of sports resourcing remained. For these reasons, and in parallel with an economic crisis and uprisings in the black townships, the sports boycott
tightened. Thus, in 1985, when the white South African Cricket Union (SACU) arranged a rebel Australian tour, it was strongly opposed by the nonracial South African Cricket Board (SACB) and all the opponents of apartheid in countries throughout the cricketing world. Nevertheless, in January 1990 another cricket rebel tour captained by Mike Gatting (former England captain) took place. This last-ever rebel tour attracted aggressive demonstrations and was cut short, reflecting the growing confidence that the antiapartheid fight was being won and coinciding with another watershed in South Africa’s history. President F. W. de Klerk announced in Parliament a reform program of deracialization, and the ANC leader, Nelson Mandela, was freed from prison. The international sports boycott was lifted, and negotiations between the white sports bodies and the nonracial sports bodies took place to establish single national sports organizations—a prerequisite for the reentry of South Africa into international competition. In 1992 the IOC invited South Africa to take part in the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain.
Sports after Apartheid In 1994 apartheid officially ended, South Africa achieved majority rule, the ANC was voted into power, a multiracial democracy was established under the Government of National Unity, and Nelson Mandela was its president. In 2004 the ANC was returned to power for the third time with President Mbeki winning his second term. The new constitution has been described as one of the most radical in the world, providing scope for ending discrimination and inequalities between races, classes, and genders. The Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) of the new government set out immediately to work toward this end. The government recognized the potential of sports to break down barriers between races, to foster national reconciliation throughout the country, and to work for international recognition. The antiapartheid National Sports Council (NSC) was the main facilitator of new democratic sports
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South Africa Ball Dances of the Bushmen of South Africa The 1905 enthnographic account below by George Stow describes two kinds of ball games as “ball dances.” Some of their dances required considerable skill, such as that which may be called the ball dance. In this a number of women from five to ten would form a line and face an equal number in another row, leaving a space of thirty or forty feet between them. A woman at the end of one of these lines would commence by throwing a round ball, about the size of an orange, and made of a root, under her right leg, and across to the woman opposite to her, who in turn would catch the ball and throw it back in a similar manner to the second woman in the first row; she would return it again in the same way to the second in the second, and thus it continued until all had taken their turn. Then the women would shift their positions, crossing over to opposite sides, and again continue in the same manner as before; and so on until the game was over, when they would rest for a short time and begin again. Another ball dance was played merely by the men. A ball was made expressly for this game out of the thickest portion of a hippopotamus’ hide, cut from the back of the neck; this was hammered when it was perfectly fresh until it was quite round; when finished it
structures, and the first minister of sports, Steve Tshwete, was appointed. The provision of sports facilities and opportunities in severely deprived areas was a priority of the RDP, and girls were regarded as an especially needy group. In 1997 Women and Sport South Africa (WASSA) initiatives were established in each of the nine provinces. The importance placed on sports as a symbol of national unity was exemplified during the 1995 rugby World Cup final when Nelson Mandela wore the springbok (a southern African gazelle) kit, instantly transforming it from a symbol of white (Afrikaner) superiority to one of national unity. The NSC was dissolved in 2001 and replaced by the South African Sports Commission (SASC), and
was elastic, and would quickly rebound when thrown upon a hard surface. In this performance a flat stone was placed in the center upon the ground, the players or dancers standing around. One of them commenced by throwing the ball on the stone, when it rebounded; the next to him caught it, and immediately it was thrown again by him upon the stone in the same manner as by the leader, when it was caught by the next in succession, and so on, one after the other passing rapidly round the ring, until the leader or one of the others would throw it with such force as to send it flying high and straight up into the air, when during its ascent they commenced a series of antics, throwing themselves into all kinds of positions, imitating wild dogs, and like them making a noise “che! che! che!” but in the meantime watching the ball, which was caught by one of them, when he took the place of leader, and the game was again renewed. The play was sometimes varied by two players being matched against each other, each throwing and catching the ball alternately, until one of them missed it, when it was immediately caught by one of those in the outer ring, who at once took the place of the one who had made the slip, and thus the play continued. Source: Stow, G. (1905). The native races of South Africa (pp. 8–9). London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co.
Ngconde Balfour was appointed the minister of sports and recreation. Today the overall responsibility for sports and recreation policy, provision, and delivery resides with Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) and the SASC. The key objectives are to increase participation, raise the profile of sports, increase the probability of South African success in major competitions, and place sports and recreation at the forefront of efforts to address national issues of unemployment, poverty, economic development, and health. In addition, the SRSA coordinates and monitors the creation and upgrading of sports and recreation infrastructures through the Building for Sport and
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South Africa Zola Budd on “Running Barefoot” South African distance runner Zola Budd achieved a certain notoriety in the 1980s for more than her record-breaking runs. Many in the international athletic community were outraged when she acquired British citizenship, a way to get into the Olympics when South African athletes were banned due to the apartheid policies of their government. Budd was also noted for running barefoot, which she describes in the extract below. Coming from a farming background, I saw nothing out of the ordinary in running barefoot, although it seemed to startle the rest of the athletics world. I have always enjoyed going barefoot and when I was growing up I seldom wore shoes, even when I went into town. The exceptions were when I went to school, or church or on special occasions, and it was natural when I started running that I should do it barefoot. I received my first pair of running spikes when I was thirteen and used them in a big inter-school athletics meeting. I found them uncomfortable and after that I decided to continue running barefoot because I found it more comfortable. Budd, Z. & Eley, H. (1989). Autobiography of Zola Budd (pp. 49). London: Partridge Press.
Recreation Project (BSRP). The new theme of sports and recreation in South Africa, namely, “getting the nation to play,” places the major responsibility on stakeholders (including all spheres of government and all sports-specific and recreation-specific organizations, including sports federations such as Disability Sport South Africa) to raise the levels of participation in sports and recreation, currently estimated at 7–20 percent in historically disadvantaged groups, including black South Africans, women, youth, people in rural communities, and people with disabilities. Sports and recreation are central features of the regeneration program funded by proceeds of the national
lottery and corporate sponsors. The contribution of sports and recreation to the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000 was around 2 percent, providing employment for 34,325 full-time and 6,140 part-time workers and 8,000 volunteers. South Africa also benefits from the national Sports Tourism Project, which estimated that the economic impact of the 2003 cricket World Cup attracted twenty thousand foreign spectators and generated thirty-five hundred jobs. Experts predict that when the 2010 soccer World Cup comes to South Africa in 2010, 2.72 million tickets will be sold.
Competition at the Top Another goal of the South Africa sports initiative is to promote the country to the rest of the world by hosting big events and to achieve success in elite competitions such as World Cups and the Olympic Games. Linked to the growing significance of commercialization, international sports receive support from both public and private sectors. A ministerial task team was appointed in 2000 to study high-performance sports, followed by the establishment of talent identification programs and the securing of corporate sponsorship. Immediately after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (NOCSA) inaugurated Operation Excellence, an initiative whereby elite athletes, in particular potential Olympic finalists and medalists, went to specialized training camps and were given financial assistance, medical care, and in some cases employment to improve their chances at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. In November 2002 Olympic House was officially opened in Johannesburg and described by Sam Ramsamy, president of NOCSA, as “the doorway to the hopes and dreams of all South Africans. . . . It is here where we will continue to hold a place for all races, age groups, income levels and genders” (Ramsamy and Griffiths 2004). The emphasis on the internationalization of South African sports is reflected in the country’s participation in the Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, and Athens Olympics; the promotion of the 1995 rugby World Cup; hosting of
SOUTH EAST ASIAN GAMES
the 2003 cricket World Cup; Cape Town’s bid to host the 2004 Olympics; and plans to host the 2010 football World Cup finals. However, some people oppose public spending on elite athletes and showcase sports events and are angered that elite sports in South Africa show signs of manipulation and corruption typical of elite sports in countries in the West. In spite of the focus on unification and equity, stark inequalities remain, and race, class, and gender discrimination is still evident. Radical critics continue to argue that sports cannot be developed democratically until more money has been spent on the general social fabric of South African society.
The Future With the approval of the cabinet, South African sports in the future will be governed by a two-tier system, comprising a fully fledged government department and a nongovernmental sports confederation.These two structures will take full responsibility for all levels of sports, including mass participation and high performance.The new system is expected to be implemented by April 2005. The goal will continue to be “unity out of diversity.” Representing members of the nonracial sports movement during the apartheid regime who worked to sustain the sports boycott and the isolation of South Africa, Cheryl Roberts (who was a member of the South African team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics) celebrated ten years of South Africa’s return to world sports when she wrote, “The sacrifices made were not in vain for today we are a non-racial, democratic South Africa and participate in world sport as a legitimate country.” Roberts went on to speak for many when she stated how eagerly South Africa waited hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup Finals and someday the Olympic Games. Dean Allen and Jennifer Hargreaves
Further Reading Archer, R., & Bouillon, A. (1982). The South African game: Sport and racism. London: Zed Press.
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Booth, D. (1998). The race game. Sport and politics in South Africa. London: Frank Cass. Grundlingh, A., Odendaal. A., & Spies, B. (1995). Beyond the tryline. Athens: Ohio University Press. Hain, P. (1971). Don’t play with apartheid. London: Allen and Unwin. Hargreaves, J. A. (2000). Race, politics and gender: Women’s struggles for sport in South Africa. In J. A. Hargreaves (Ed.), Heroines of sport: The politics of difference and identity (pp. 14–45). London: Routledge. Nauright, J. (1997). Sport, cultures and identities in South Africa. London: Leicester University Press. Ramsamy, S., & Griffiths, E. (2004). Reflections on a life in sport. Cape Town, South Africa: Greenhouse. Roberts, C. (1993). Against the grain: Women in sport in South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: Township Publishing.
South East Asian Games
T
he South East Asian Games idea began with informal meetings in May of 1958 during the Asian Games in Tokyo. Led by a proposal from Thailand, sports officials from Burma, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand met to discuss creating a competition that would strengthen ties between nations of the South East Asian Peninsula and give athletes an opportunity to prepare for Asian Games and Olympic competitions. Originally known as the South East Asian Peninsular Games, the first games were held in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1959 with Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam participating. The games have been held on a biennial basis, with the exception of 1963, since that time. The original intent was to rotate the games alphabetically by nation, thus removing any doubt over which nation was to be the next host. This would also eliminate complex bidding processes and allow nations to plan well in advance, as they knew when it would be their turn to host the games. This plan quickly fell apart at the third games when Cambodia was involved in a dispute over eligibility with the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) over Cambodia’s participation in the GANEFO (Games of the New Emerging Forces) Games and Cambodia was not able to host the games.
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South East Asian Games Locations of the South East Asian Games Bangkok, Thailand
1959
Rangoon, Burma
1961
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1965
Bangkok, Thailand
1967
Rangoon, Burma
1969
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1971
Cambodia had just hosted the Asian GANEFO Games 25 November to 6 December 1966, with fifteen nations present. The SEAP Federation met in May of 1967 and reawarded the 1967 games to Bangkok, to be held in December of that same year. Fortunately Bangkok had held the Asian Games just twelve months before in December 1966 and had a short list of tasks to finish to be ready for the games.
Singapore
1973
Bangkok, Thailand
1975
Organizers Change the Name
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1977
Jakarta, Indonesia
1979
The name South East Asian Peninsular Games was used up until 1975, when the SEAP Games Federation accepted Indonesia and the Philippines as members and the name was changed to South East Asian Games. Lord Killanin, then president of the International Olympic Committee, showed his support for the South East Asian Games movement when he was present at the 1977 games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The huge 100,000-seat Gelora Senayan stadium, originally built for the 1962 Asian Games, was host to the 1979 South East Asian Games held in Jakarta, Indonesia. The 1989 games in Kuala Lumpur saw the return of teams from Vietnam and Laos, who had last been at the games in 1973. Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 1995 was the first noncapital city to host the games. The games were part of the seven-hundredth-anniversary celebration of the city. The 1997 games in Jakarta were contentious. Disagreements over judging in gymnastics, boxing, and taekwondo and hostility to visiting athletes by spectators disrupted the friendly spirit of the games. During soccer games fans smashed and burned the wooden seats inside the stadium and overturned cars outside. The Asian Football Confederation threatened to cancel the football final if organizers could not control the crowds. The final was held, but was interrupted by violence and fans starting fires in the stands and throwing stones onto the field. The game was stopped for fortyfive minutes at halftime in an attempt to calm the crowds. After the games fans destroyed property and overturned cars in the streets.
Manila, Philippines
1981
Singapore
1983
Bangkok, Thailand
1985
Jakarta, Indonesia
1987
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1989
Manila, Philippines
1991
Singapore
1993
Chiang Mai, Thailand
1995
Jakarta, Indonesia
1997
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
1999
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2001
Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
2003
Laos was scheduled to host the next games in 1965 but was not prepared and had to decline. Malaysia moved up in the rotation and Kuala Lumpur hosted the games. Singapore was accepted into the federation in 1965 and all seven South East Asian Peninsular (SEAP) Federation members participated in the 1965 games. Alphabetic rotation was to be abandoned in 1967 when Cambodia was once again asked to host the games. Cambodia pulled out in February of 1967, withdrawing completely from the SEAP Games Federation, telling the other nations that they had other games to prepare for and did not have time to get ready for the fourth SEAP Games. This was met with skepticism and frustration by the other members, who pointed out that
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Spain Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 2 Gold 2004 Summer Olympics: 3 Gold, 11 Silver, 5 Bronze
The 1999 games were held in the tiny oil-rich kingdom of Brunei in Bandar Seri Begawan. Organizers expected little trouble with crowd control due to the strict Islamic laws enforced in Brunei and the Sultan of Brunei also declared that his subjects could watch the games for free. The 2001 games were held in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Johor in Malaysia, making both Thailand and Malaysia five-time hosts of the South East Asian Games. In 2003 at the games in Vietnam, East Timor participated for the first time, bringing to eleven the number of participating nations. Several Vietnamese citizens were arrested at the games for passing out religious materials, because they were not part of an organization that was sanctioned by the government. Several other countries complained when Vietnam added sports to the schedule that were considered minor and not well known outside Vietnam, such as capteh or shuttlecock kicking, the circle event in sepak takraw, and underwater fin swimming. The accusation was that Vietnam was simply trying to win the most medals with obscure sports, and Vietnam did in fact pick up an overwhelming majority of the medals in those events. The following year the South East Asian Games Federation passed new rules so that future hosts would not have as much freedom with the sports, and said that nations had to focus on sports practiced at the Asian and Olympic Games.
The Future The 2005 games are scheduled to be held in the Philippines, the 2007 games in Thailand, and the 2009 games in Laos. Daniel Bell
Further Reading Bell, D. (2003). South East Asian Games. In Encyclopedia of International Games. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Official report. (1967). Bangkok, Thailand: Organizing Committee for the Fourth SEAP Games. Official report of the tenth SEA Games, Jakarta 1979. (1979). Jakarta, Indonesia: Organizing Committee of the Tenth SEA Games. Pigao, V. (1982). The 11th Southeast Asian Games. Olympic Review, 172–173, 141.
Sixth SEAP Games report. (1971). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Organizing Committee of the sixth SEAP Games. Success in Singapore: The XVII South East Asian Games. (1993). Olympic Review, 314, 582.
Spain
S
ituated in southwestern Europe, Spain is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, the Cantabrian Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of 40.3 million people. It is a nation of contrasts with a rainy north and a sunny south and cultural variations that are reflected in differences in economic systems and political organization. Spain is divided into nineteen autonomous regions, including the Balearic Islands, the Canaries and three small possessions off the Moroccan coast. Each unit has an autonomous government and its own sports structure. Madrid, the capital, is located in the country’s geographical center. Soccer is the “king of sport” as it attracts an enormous percentage of the population to its teams.
History Spain has a long tradition of indigenous sports. A ball game whose origins go back to the Middle Ages was played by hitting a ball with the hand, a stick, or a bat. The game is noted in the Songs of Alfonso X the Wise One, in the thirteenth century and is considered to be a precursor of modern ball games. Bowling is a sport popular across the north. Water sports like the traineras, trainerillas of the Cantabrian cornice, the falucho of Valencia and lagut in Catalonia, are of popular origin, since it was fishermen who initiated these competitions by competing to return to port with their catch. Horse sports, probably of Arab origin, developed in the south and featured two teams on horseback who hurled bohordos (spears of wood) at one another and protected themselves with shields. Bullfighting, either on horse or on foot, survive today, although the latter is far more important. Bullfighting is seen as an art form
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A sampler containing four illustrations of Iberian Horsemanship (doma vaquera): a bull fighter on horseback (rejoneador), the costume show where a girl in a flamenco dress is carried on the horse, an Andalusian lance rider, and a horse standing on its hind legs (performing a levada). Source: istockphoto/Gaucho.
and is called the “National Festival,” although it is not immune to impassioned debates between adherents and critics. The aristocracy practiced horseback riding, shooting, and fencing, sports associated with the military. Modern sports were introduced by the 1870s by the many British residents in cities such as Huelva and Bilbao. They formed sports club to support such activities as tennis and soccer. It took until the first three decades of the twentieth century for these sports to spread from the British and a few Spanish aristocrats to the middle class. In 1902 the first National Championship of Soccer was contested. The event was covered by the press, which helped make it more popular across Spain. In 1936 the Spanish Civil War began, and a dictatorship was established by Francisco Franco (1892– 1875) that remained in power until his death in 1975. Under Franco’s rule sport was politicized and placed under centralized control. The role of sport was to bring national pride to Spain. Soccer was supported by the state and became the major sport, with one team, Real Madrid, associated with the state. After Franco’s death democracy was established, and the control of sport shifted to the regions. Each autonomous region has its
own sports council while a central agency, the Upper Counsel of Sports, is in charge of coordination.
Participants and Spectators Soccer is the premier sport. A national league encourages regional rivalries with the strongest teams being Barcelona and Real Madrid. The contests between these two teams accentuate regional rivalries. The basketball league runs in the same way, but without the same high level of fan intensity as soccer. Out of these sports emerge sports celebrities. Many are wealthy, foreign soccer players who draw adoring fans because of the Spanish team they play for. The other sport event that draws much attention is the Olympics, especially popular since the games were held in Barcelona in 1992.
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To succeed . . . You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you. ■ TONY DORSETT
Women and Sports In the early twentieth century beliefs about the body and health changed, creating a climate more open to women’s participation in sports. But, during the first years of the century, participation by women remained limited. Lilí Alvarez was the first Spanish athlete to participate in European and world competitions. During the Franco period, female participation was limited, as a woman was allowed to be only a mother and wife. Democracy brought change, but today only 19 percent of women mention sport as preferred leisure, although many mention a desire to participate.
then basketball, and much less popular are tennis, cycling, jogging and fitness exercise.
The Future Soccer is likely to remain a sport and a spectacle. Sports participation is expected to increase in the cities among men and women, although it is declining in the schools as less time is being given to physical education. There remains an interest in staying in shape and in pursuing in a greater variety of sports. Nevertheless, the overall growth of organized sport may well be hampered by remaining prejudices—passed on from the not very distant past—that favor intellectual supremacy.
Youth Sports Physical education is compulsory in the schools. Nevertheless, only 50 percent show an interest in participating.Youth championships at the national level exist, and youth compete in international championships through the International Confederacy of School Sport (ISF), of which Spain is member.
Organizations The Upper Counsel of Sports (www.csd.mec.es) is an agency of the Department of Education and Culture, and the central organization for administering sport at all levels—associations, universities, and schools, Olympic Games, world championships, etc. The Association of Olympic Sports (ADO) was created to support Olympic athletes.
T. Gonzalez Aja
Further Reading Bahamonde, A. (2002). El Real Madrid en la historia de España, Madrid: Taurus. García Bonafé, M. (1986). Notas para una historia del deporte en España, en Revista de Occidente, 62–63, pp. 35–49. García Ferrando, M. (1991). Los Españoles y el deporte. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. González Aja, T (2000). De antiguo al nuevo régimen: Apuntes para una historia del deporte en el Madrid de los Borbones, en Icd, n. 25, pp. 7–31. González Aja, T. (2002). Sport y autoritarismos. Madrid: Alianza. González Aja, T. (2003). La introducción del deporte en España. Madrid: Edilupa. Polo del Barrio, J. (1986). El fútbol español hasta la guerra civil, en Revista de Occidente, 62–63, pp. 84–101, Madrid. Riordan, J. And Krüger, A., (2003). Europena cultures in sport. Examining the nations and regions, Intellect, Bristol. Shaw, D. (1987). Fútbol y Franquismo, Alianza, Madrid
Sports in Society Sport as a leisure activity has become more popular over the last three decades. Involvement in sports is most common among young men, single and students, who reside in cities of less than 500,000 inhabitants. Some 27 percent of men consider sport their preferred leisure activity. Housewives and retired women, especially in the rural center of the nation show the least interest in sports. Swimming is the most popular participatory sport, followed by soccer (the most popular spectator sport)
Special Olympics
S
pecial Olympics is an international nonprofit organization serving 1.4 million children (over eight years old) and adults with intellectual disabilities. It is the largest sports training and competition program in the world for this population. It provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in twenty-six
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The Russia Special Olympics floor hockey delegation celebrates at the 2001 Special Olympics World Winter Games held in Anchorage, Alaska. Source: Special Olympics.
different sports and other opportunities for athletes of all abilities in more than 200 programs in over 150 countries. These programs are divided into seven regions: Africa, Asia Pacific, East Asia, Europe/Eurasia, Latin America, Middle East/North Africa, and North America. Athletes compete at the local, state, regional, national, and international levels. Special Olympics athletes compete in Alpine skiing, aquatics, athletics, badminton, basketball, bocce, bowling, cross-country skiing, cycling, equestrian, figure skating, floor hockey, football (soccer), golf, gymnastics, powerlifting, roller skating, sailing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, softball, speed skating, table tennis, team handball, tennis and volleyball. Special Olympics is governed by a board of directors and led by Timothy Shriver, chairman and chief executive officer, and 500,000 volunteers. Athletes serve on boards of directors of all Special Olympics programs, including the International Board. Special Olympics headquarters is located in Washington, D.C.
History Eunice Kennedy Shriver believed that persons with intellectual disabilities were far more capable than others believed. Mrs. Shriver invited thirty-five boys and girls to her home in Maryland to participate in sports and physical activities at Camp Shriver in 1962. Camp Shriver grew into an annual event sponsored by the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, for which Mrs. Shriver served as executive vice president. It expanded into more than 300 camps throughout the United States and served thousands of children with intellectual disabilities. From its humble beginnings as a day camp, the first Special Olympics Games, planned and underwritten by the Kennedy Foundation, together with the Chicago Park District, was held in Chicago, Illinois in the summer of 1968. Over 1,000 athletes from twenty-six states and Canada competed in athletics, floor hockey, and aquatics during this historic events. At those Games, Shriver announced a new program—Special Olympics
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Special Olympics Special Olympics Winter Games Year
Location
1977
Steamboat Springs, CO
1981
Smuggler’s Notch and Stowe, VT
1985
Park City, UT
1989
Reno, NV and Lake Tahoe, CA
1993
Salzburg and Schladming, Austria
1997
Toronto and Collingwood, Canada
2001
Anchorage, AK
2005
Nagano, Japan
—to offer people with intellectual disabilities everywhere “the chance to play, the chance to compete, and the chance to grow.” The first International Winter Special Olympics Games were held in 1977 at Steamboat Springs, Colorado with more than 500 athletes competing in skiing and skating events. Special Olympics World Games are held every four years, with Summer and Winter World Games alternating every two years in countries around the world. Nineteen different Olympic-type sports are offered in the World Summer Games: aquatics, athletics, badminton, basketball, bocce, bowling, cycling, equestrian, football (soccer), golf, gymnastics, handball, powerlifting, roller skating, sailing, softball, table tennis, tennis, and volleyball. In the World Winter Games, Special Olympics athletes compete in Alpine skiing, crosscountry skiing, snowboarding, figure skating, speed skating, snowshoeing, and floor hockey. Special Olympics mission is “to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities by giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in the sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympic athletes and the community” (Special Olympics website: www.specialolympics.org).
Special Olympics celebrated its thirty-fifth anniversary in 2003, holding its World Summer Games in Dublin, Ireland. It was the largest sporting event of the year, with 7,000 athletes from 150 countries competing in eighteen competitive and three demonstration sports. Athletes with severe disabilities or limitations who were not yet able to compete in official Special Olympics sports participated in the Motor Activities Training Program (MATP) at the World Games in Dublin. These individuals participated in the bean bag lift, ball kick, wide beam and bench, ball lift (small), ball lift (large), ball push, and log roll. Training and participation are the focus of MATP. These participants can transition into the introductory level of competitive sports as they reach the appropriate skill levels. The 2001 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Anchorage, Alaska, proved to be the largest sporting event ever held in the history of the state. Over 1,800 athletes representing seventy countries competed in seven Olympic-type sports: Alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, snowboarding, figure skating, speed skating, snowshoeing, and floor hockey. Special Olympics Sports Rules were created based on the rules of the International Sports Federations (ISF) and National Governing Bodies (NGB). Special Olympics uses ISF and NGB rules except when in conflict with Special Olympics rules, then the Special Olympics Rules are applied. A level playing field is ensured among competitors by placing athletes in divisions based on their age, gender, and ability. Every Special Olympics athlete, regardless of ability, is recognized for his or her performance. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) formally recognized Special Olympics in February 1988 and authorized the use of the prestigious word Olympics in its name. Special Olympics is the only organization approved by the IOC to use the word Olympics worldwide. Eligibility requirements to participate in Special Olympics are as follows: Athletes must be eight years old or older and have one of the following conditions: intellectual disability, cognitive delay as determined by
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Special Olympics Special Olympics Summer Games Year
Location
1968
Chicago, IL
1970
Chicago, IL
1972
Los Angeles, CA
1975
Mt. Pleasant, MI
1979
Brockport, NY
1983
Baton Rouge, LA
1987
South Bend, IN
1991
Minneapolis, MN
1995
New Haven, CT
1999
Raleigh, NC
2003
Dublin, Ireland
2007
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
standardized measures (i.e. intelligence quotient), or a development disability as identified by an agency or professional. All athletes must register to participate in Special Olympics. There is no cost for participation. All persons with intellectual disabilities, regardless of the degree of disability, are eligible to participate.
Significance Historically, society believed that individuals with intellectual disabilities were incapable of developing and functioning in any area of life. People avoided them out of ignorance and fear. Mrs. Shriver, who believed this population was capable of far more, including participation in sports and physical education, rejected this stigma and exclusion by society. Mrs. Shriver and her husband, Sargent Shriver, developed the Special Olympics into the largest amateur athletic organization in the world for people with intellectual disabilities. Under the Shrivers’ leadership, the organization grew from serving 1,000 to 1.4 million athletes since its inception in 1968. In 1996 their son, Timothy Shriver, was named president and CEO of Special Olympics; in
2003 he assumed the additional responsibility of chairman. Sargent Shriver, who was elected president of Special Olympics in 1984 and appointed chairman in 1990, stepped down as chairman in 2003 and was appointed chairman emeritus in recognition of his long service and dedication to the movement, which he continues to serve as an ambassador of optimism and goodwill. Mrs. Shriver remains a member of the Special Olympics Board of Directors and continues to lend her well-earned reputation as a visionary leader in improving the lives of people with intellectual disabilities to furthering the mission and expansion of the movement. Special Olympics Initiatives, such as the Athletic Leadership Programs, Family Leadership and Support, Healthy Athletes® and Special Olympics Get Into It™, enhance the mission of Special Olympics. The Special Olympics “Flame of Hope” is never extinguished, as Special Olympics athletes compete in 20,000 competitions around the world annually. The 2005 World Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, will be the first Special Olympics World Games held in Asia. The first-ever Special Olympics U.S. National Games are slated for July 2006 at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. The 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games will mark the first time the World Summer Games will be held in Asia and only the second time the event will be held outside of the United States.
The Future In June 2004 a bipartisan group of senators and congressmen announced the introduction of the Special Olympics Sport Empowerment Act of 2004, a firstever bill of its kind that will authorize $15 million for 2005 and “such sums” over the next four years to fund the Special Olympics movement. From its beginning with thirty-five athletes at Camp Shriver in Rockville, Maryland, to 1.4 million athletes in 150 countries around the world, Special Olympics continues to break down barriers by increasing public awareness, conducting research, increasing and expanding competitive and recreational opportunities, building family support, and promoting the phenomenal gifts of people
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The ultimate victory in competition is derived from the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best and that you have gotten the most out of what you had to give. ■ HOWARD COSELL
with intellectual disabilities. The Special Olympics athlete oath is one we all should pledge: “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” Becky Clark See also Adapted Physical Education
Further Reading Clark, Rebecca A. (2001). Special Olympics. In K. Christensen, A. Guttmann, & G. Pfister, (Eds.), International encyclopedia of women and sports (Vol. 3, pp. 1093–1094). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. DePauw, K., & Gavron, S. (1995). Disability and sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Janes, M. (1998). Special Olympics and women. In C. Oglesby, D. Greenberg, R. Hall, K. Hill, F. Johnston, & S. Ridley, (Eds.), Encyclopedia of women and sport in America (pp. 257–259). Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation. Retrieved December 20, 2004, from http://www.jpkf.org Shriver, M., & Spiedal, S (Illustrator). (2001). What’s wrong with Timmy? New York: Little, Brown Children’s Books. Special Olympics International fact sheet. (1998).Washington, DC: SOI Special Olympics International organization brief. Retrieved December 20, 2004, from http://www.specialolympics.org Spirit Magazine. Retrieved December 20, 2004, from http:// ww.specialolympics.org
Spectator Consumption Behavior
S
port consumption behavior includes such actions as purchasing, attending, spectating, or wearing products or using services associated with spectator sport. Consumption also includes reading about sports or teams in newspapers or magazines, watching sports events on television, buying clothing representing a specific team or sport, going to a game, or searching websites for sport statistics for a fantasy league. In 2001, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that individuals in the United States spent $10.1 billion attending spectator sports events and spent another $24.8 billion on athletic and sport apparel. Although there is a plethora of
actual sport consumption behaviors, managers and marketers of sport organizations, media professionals, and business managers of sport merchandise organizations are very interested in why people consume sport and the associated products. The aspects that influence people to consume sport products and services can be divided into four categories: demographic aspects, psychographic aspects, environmental aspects, and past behavior. If we think of sport products and services as the total pie, demographic variables would take up about 5–10 percent of the total pie, psychographic aspects about 40–45 percent , environmental aspects about 15–20 percent, and past behavior about 15–20 percent. There remains a small part of the pie that is unknown.
Demographic Aspects Numerous demographic variables have been studied. These include age, race, family size, gender, household income, level of education, and participation in sport. Although differences have been found on some of these variables associated with sport consumption, typically the differences are not meaningful. For example, although females have been shown to purchase more team merchandise than males, the difference in the amount spent on the clothing by women over men is small when compared with the overall amount spent on team clothing in general. Furthermore, in this case even though women purchase more merchandise, it is more often for their children, husbands, or boyfriends rather than for themselves. Similarly, although there are racial differences in sport consumption by sport, overall there is not a large difference in the total consumption of sport products by race. There have been conflicting results as to differences in household income and sport consumption. Although those with higher income levels have the ability to purchase high-priced tickets for some sports, such as professional basketball or professional football, when evaluating those who come to the games across all sports, there are few differences relative to number of games attended or watched on television between those with high incomes and those with
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low incomes. These are just a few examples of the lack of meaningful differences in demographic variables. This lack of differences is evident in the small percentage of the total that demographic aspects contribute to explaining sport spectator consumption.
Psychographic Aspects Psychographic aspects are made up of cognitive aspects (motives, points of attachment, and expectancies), affective aspects (mood and satisfaction), and conative aspects (intentions to consume sport products or services).
COGNITIVE ASPECTS Individuals are motivated to consume sport because of the reinforcing pleasures therein. Most of these pleasurable behaviors fulfill social or psychological needs.
Motives A number of motives that theoretically explain consumption behavior have been identified by previous researchers: acquisition of knowledge, aesthetics, catharsis/ aggression, drama/excitement, entertainment, escape (relaxing), family, physical attractiveness of participants, quality of physical skill of the participant, social interaction, supporting opportunities in sports, and vicarious achievement. Many of these motives are interrelated, but we will explain each separately. Many people read about, watch, or attend sport events because by doing so they learn about the sport or gain information about the team. This information may be used to interact socially, bet on a team in the future, or play in fantasy leagues. Some people may watch sport for the aesthetic qualities inherent in the game or event; for example, a beautiful pass in basketball, a triple jump in ice skating, or a spectacular dismount in gymnastics. On the other hand, some research has suggested that individuals may also watch sports because of the violence (e.g., boxing, hockey, or football). Another motive is the drama or excitement that may be present when a game comes down to the final seconds and either team could win or when the upset of a favored team is taking place (e.g., when the U.S. hockey
team beat the USSR in the 1980 Winter Olympic Games). The motive of entertainment may be an umbrella motive that includes many of the other motives. Some people are motivated by the potential to escape from the daily grind of work or home and just get a chance to relax by watching or listening to a game. Some research has shown that the motive of taking the family to a game is important to some people. In some instances the physical attractiveness of the participants may be a motive for spectating (e.g., beach volleyball or swimming and diving). As a motive the quality of the physical skills of the athletes is somewhat similar to aesthetics. Many people can appreciate the skill it takes to chip a golf ball out of a sand trap or hit a curve ball in baseball. The opportunity to interact socially is also a prime motive for people attending sporting events. Tailgating in football and socializing in in-arena restaurants (especially in professional basketball) are good examples of this, although many people just like interacting with others while sitting next to them in the stands. Another motive is the opportunity to support a certain segment of the population in their participation in sport (e.g., the Special Olympics or the professional women’s soccer league). Finally, probably one of the most important motives for sport consumption is vicarious achievement. Many people feel that the connection with a successful team allows them to achieve vicariously. Although some of these motives do impact sport consumption behavior directly, research has shown that motives in combination with various points of attachment are better predictors than motives alone.
Points of Attachment Sports teams can provide people with a sense of belonging to a specific community and thus people may identify with or become attached to the team. However, the team may be only one of several possible points of attachment. Individuals may be oriented to other parts of the whole sport consumption experience, not necessarily just a team. Some people may be fans of a specific coach regardless of what team he or she coaches. Others may be fans of a specific player even if that player is
SPECTATOR CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR
traded or switches teams. For example, when Michael Jordan went from the Chicago Bulls to the Washington Wizards, many people bought tickets to the Wizards games because of Michael Jordan. On the other hand, sometimes people will watch games or events even though they don’t necessarily like either team or any of the athletes, but instead because they just like the sport. However, sometimes the level of sport makes a difference as to whether an individual will watch it. Some people are only fans of college basketball and will not watch professional basketball, while others are just the opposite. Finally, sometimes people may not even necessarily like the sport that much, but because the team represents the community, home, country, or the alma mater, they will watch the event because of one or more of those points of attachment. Specifically, team identification/attachment has been found to be a very strong indicator of sport spectator consumption behavior.
Expectancies When going into events, fans and spectators often have expectations about the outcome of the event, individual performances, the competitiveness of the teams, their own level of enjoyment of the event, and so on. These expectations are either confirmed or disconfirmed by the event experience, and they can be either positive or negative. Thus, there is a continuum with negative disconfirmation on one end, followed by negative confirmation, then positive confirmation, and anchored on the other end by positive disconfirmation. For example, if an individual expects the team to win and it does not, then the expectation is disconfirmed in a negative way. If the individual expects the team to lose and it does, then the expectation is confirmed, but the outcome is still negative. On the other hand, if the individual expects the team to win and it does, the confirmation is positive. Finally, if the individual expects the team to lose, but instead the team wins, the expectation is disconfirmed, but in a positive way. Typically, the reaction of the individual is more acute when the expectation is disconfirmed, whether negatively or positively. For example, if a fan expected the team to lose and the team
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won, the fan would experience more enjoyment than if expecting the team to win. Thus, the motives, points of attachment, and the confirmation/disconfirmation of expectations are cognitive aspects that influence sport consumption either directly or indirectly. However, there are also affective aspects that are part of the psychographic content.
AFFECTIVE ASPECTS Much of the research on sport consumption behavior has shown that fans have an affective reaction to the advertising or promotion of a product and also to the consumption of a product or service. Positive mood items such as pleased, happy, energetic, satisfied, and confident, or negative mood items such as discouraged, frustrated, upset, angry, irritated, sad, and hostile have typically represented the affective reaction. Research has shown that people who are in a positive mood will more likely purchase a product than those who are in a negative mood, especially if they have never purchased the specific product before. Furthermore, and perhaps more obviously, consumers who are happy with their previous consumption experiences typically will repurchase the same product or service. Sometimes researchers have not made a distinction between satisfaction and the affective response to consumption. Although they are significantly correlated, satisfaction is distinct from the affective response because satisfaction typically has a cognitive component. For example, satisfaction typically has a point of reference, whereas mood is usually a more general indicator of affect. That is, I was satisfied with my venue experience because the beer was cold and the popcorn was hot, my site lines were good, and the rest room lines were short. An affective response, on the other hand, would be as follows: someone is asked directly after the game how he or she felt and replies, “I feel good.” Although there could be a point of reference (i.e., I feel good about the game), mood states are defined as not having cognitive evaluations, whereas satisfaction is usually a combination of both. In both cases, though, when individuals feel good and when they are satisfied,
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The Illustrated Sport Calendar for January 1924 by J. C. Clarke.
SPECTATOR CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR
they typically intend to repurchase the product or service that made them happy and satisfied.
CONATIVE ASPECTS Conation is the intent to do something. In terms of sport consumption behavior, it is the intent to purchase a sport product or service in the future. The combination of the cognitive aspects of motives, points of attachment, expectancy confirmation, and the affective aspects of mood and satisfaction influence the individual’s intentions to repurchase. However, even though an individual may indicate that he or she will repurchase, it does not necessarily always happen. Sometimes a better indicator of sport consumption behavior is the actual past behavior of the individual.
Past Behavior Previous consumption behavior has been shown to be a good predictor of future consumption behavior; that is, those who bought season tickets last year will typically buy season tickets this year at a much higher rate than those who didn’t buy season’s tickets for the previous season. However, there are other past behaviors that are also good predictors of whether people will repurchase merchandise or tickets or will consume media again. People react to event outcomes in different ways. Oftentimes individuals are motivated to create and maintain a positive self-concept through the strategic attachment or detachment to certain teams with which they identify. As we noted earlier, individuals may watch sports to fulfill achievement needs and hope to bask in the reflected glory (BIRG) of successful others. Being “a part of the team” when the team is successful allows them to glean status and self-esteem through their identification and association. The tendency to BIRG is an attempt to secure esteem from those who can perceive the connection. People will also distance themselves away from unsuccessful others in order to maintain self-esteem. That is, if a team loses or does not play as well as expected, many spectators will cut off reflected failure (CORF). Not all spectators BIRG only after victory or automat-
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ically CORF in defeat, though. Highly team-identified people often resist the temptation to CORF. The level of fan identification typically influences an individual’s reactions to event outcomes; that is, individuals high in team identification are much more likely to engage in BIRGing behavior after a victory and less likely to CORF after a defeat when compared with fans low in team identification. It may be that highly identified fans cannot bring themselves to CORF. For those individuals who cannot CORF and cannot BIRG because there is no successful other, they may have to engage in other coping mechanisms such as outgroup derogation and/or aggression (i.e., blasting). Thus, individuals, in trying to maintain their own levels of self-esteem in the eyes of others when faced with a potentially negative association, would often derogate or blast the negatively associated group.
Environmental Aspects Environmental aspects have been segmented into three areas: game attractiveness (e.g., athlete skills, team records, league standing, record-breaking performance, closeness of competition, team history in a community, schedule, convenience, and stadium quality), marketing promotions (e.g., publicity, special events, entertainment programs, and giveaways), and economic considerations (e.g., ticket price, substitute forms of entertainment, income, and competition of other sport events (Zhang, Lam, and Connaughton 2003, 33). The team’s record typically has an impact on both ticket sales and on merchandise sales, although there are enough exceptions that this is not a given. For example, the Chicago Cubs have had many seasons in which they have not won a lot of games, and they have not been to the World Series since 1945, yet they typically have one of the best attendance records in Major League Baseball. On the other hand, the Atlanta Braves won thirteen straight division titles through 2004 and have had difficulty selling out home playoff games. There has been conflicting research about the effects of promotions and advertising on increasing attendance. Although marketers and managers of professional franchises
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tend to believe that advertising is useful when the team is not winning, most spectators and fans have indicated that advertising has little if any impact on their ticket purchasing or attendance behavior. Research has also been contradictory about the impact of price on sports products and services. Typically, if prices are too high, then various market segments are priced out of the market. However, as the Cincinnati Reds found out in the 1990s, if ticket prices are too low, people won’t buy them either. The Reds priced the outfield bleacher seats at $1.00 and very few people bought them because they felt that anything that cheap must not be any good. Aspects of the venue also can influence attendance slightly. When a new stadium is built, there is often a novelty factor. People will go to a game just to see the new stadium, even if they have little interest in the game or sport itself. This factor tends to last a year or two at most, and then attendance returns to previous levels. Probably the largest venue effect is a negative one. When spectators are dissatisfied with the venue or levels of service at the venue, they tend to decrease their attendance. The opposite is typically not true. If the spectators are satisfied with venue aspects, it doesn’t mean that they will attend more games, just the same number they originally intended on going to. However, all of these environmental aspects have, as a whole, had little impact on sport spectator consumer behavior compared with psychographic aspects.
Implications for the Future Many working in the sport entertainment area in the late 1990s believed that the rapid expansion in sport spectator consumption would continue well into the new century. Unfortunately, economic factors in the early twenty-first century do not clearly point in this direction. Attendance figures for several professional sports leagues have plateaued or even shown a decrease between 2000 and 2004. The purchase of licensed sports merchandise has followed a similar trend. Consequently, as competition for the consumer increases, the need for a clearer understanding of sport spectator consumer behavior is great. Because team identifica-
tion is a strong predictor of sport spectator consumer behavior, understanding the social psychological mechanisms that foster sentiments of collective identification and feelings of attachment appear to be more crucial to marketing success than either demographic or environmental aspects. Galen T. Trail and Dean F. Anderson
Further Reading Baade, R. A., & Tiehen, L. J. (1990). An analysis of Major League Baseball attendance, 1969–1987. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 14, 14–32. Branscombe, N. R., & Wann, D. L. (1991). The positive social and selfconcept consequences of sports team identification. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 15, 115–127. Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 406–415. Fink, J. S., Trail, G. T., & Anderson, D. F. (2002a). Environmental factors associated with spectator attendance and sport consumption behavior: Gender and team differences. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 11, 8–19. Fink, J. S., Trail, G. T., & Anderson, D. F. (2002b, Summer). An examination of team identification: Which motives are most salient to its existence? International Sports Journal. 6, 195–207. Funk, D. C., Mahony, D. F., & Ridinger, L. L. (2002). Characterizing consumer motivation as individual difference factors: Augmenting the sport interest inventory (SII) to explain level of sport. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 11, 33–43. Hansen, H., & Gauthier, R. (1989). Factors affecting attendance at professional sport events. Journal of Sport Management, 3, 15–32. Madrigal, R. (1995). Cognitive and affective determinants of fan satisfaction with sporting event attendance. Journal of Leisure Research, 27, 205–227. Mahony, D. F., Howard, D. R., & Madrigal, R. (2000, Winter). BIRGing and CORFing behaviors by sport spectators: High self-monitors versus low self-monitors. International Sports Journal, 4, 87–106. Pan, D. W., Gabert, T. E., McGaugh, E. C., & Branvold, S. E. (1997). Factors and differential demographic effects on purchases of season tickets for intercollegiate basketball games. Journal of Sport Behavior, 20, 447–463. Sloan, L. R. (1989). The motives of sports fans. In J. H. Goldstein (Ed.), Sports, games, and play: Social and psychological viewpoints (pp. 175–240). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Snyder, C. R., Lassegard, M., & Ford, C. E. (1986). Distancing after group success and failure: Basking in reflected glory and cutting off reflected failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 382–388. Trail, G. T., Anderson, D. F., & Fink, J. (2000). A theoretical model of sport spectator consumption behavior. International Journal of Sport Management, 1, 154–180. Trail, G. T., Anderson, D. F., & Fink, J. S. (2002). Examination of gender differences in importance and satisfaction with venue factors at
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Tennis and golf are best played, not watched. ■ ROGER KAHN
intercollegiate basketball games: Effects on future spectator attendance. International Sports Journal, 6, 51–64. Trail, G. T., Fink, J. S., & Anderson, D. F. (2003). Sport spectator consumption behavior. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 12, 8–17. Trail, G. T., Robinson, M. J., Gillentine, A., & Dick, R. (2003). Motives and points of attachment: Fans versus spectators in intercollegiate athletics. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 12, 217–227. Wann, D. L., & Branscombe, N. R. (1990). Die-hard and fair-weather fans: Effects of identification on BIRGing and CORFing tendencies. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 14, 103–117. Wann, D. L., Royalty, J., & Roberts, A. (2000). The self-presentation of sport fans: Investigating the importance of team identification and self-esteem. Journal of Sport Behavior, 23, 198–206. Wenner, L. A., & Gantz, W. (1989). The audience experience with sports on television, sports, and society. In A. Wenner (Ed.), Media (pp. 241–268). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Zhang, J. J., Lam, E. T. C., & Connaughton, D. P. (2003). General market demand variables associated with professional sport consumption. International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, 5, 33–55. Zhang, J. J., Pease, D. G., Smith, D. W., Lee, J. T., Lam, E. T., & Jambor, E. A. (1997, Summer). Factors affecting the decision making of spectators to attend minor league hockey games. International Sports Journal, 1, 39–53.
Spectators
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nd the crowd goes wild!” This oft-repeated phrase represents the reality of twenty-first-century spectator sports, which are routinely watched by millions of people across a nation or across the world. It also represents a wide range of spectator behavior, ranging from rooting for the home team to rioting in the streets. The words rooter, booster, adoring multitude, football hooligan, soccer mom, hockey dad, and the viewers at home conjure images of fans watching sports with various levels of intensity. Some of these words have positive connotations and some negative, but they all describe a similar experience that touches the lives of a large segment of the world’s population. During the past millennium the number of people who watch sporting events has grown from a few inperson spectators to enormous television and live audiences, and as the audiences have grown, the pressure of fan (short for fanatic) expectations has modified sports and society, often eclipsing the action on the
field and distorting the purpose of sports. With the advent of mass communication mediums such as radio and television during the twentieth century, the base population that could experience sporting events in real time expanded exponentially.
Ancient Fans Fans have existed as long as sports. Sports require specialized skill, so not all people can participate. The unskilled have had to be content to watch. The ancient Olympic Games of Greece provided spectacle as well as a way of determining the best athletes and honoring the gods. The ultimate venue for sports fans in the ancient world was undoubtedly the Roman Colosseum, where sixty thousand spectators could watch gladiators battle to the death. Medieval jousting tournaments provided mass entertainment as well as military training and display. Large crowds also watched blood sports such as bear baiting or bullfighting, and these sports continued to be popular into the modern age. The crowds always went wild for those sports, but relatively few people actually witnessed them.
Stadiums During the late nineteenth century entrepreneurs built larger venues for spectator sports as leisure time and incomes grew for the middle classes, and by the 1920s seating capacity at some exceeded that of the Colosseum. These secular cathedrals to sports allowed thousands to watch their favorite teams at one time. Civic pride became invested in a city’s ability to provide venues for their citizens, and construction of these facilities outstripped that of other entertainment venues such as opera houses or theaters as the middle class absorbed working-class sports into their dominant culture. As the popularity of sports spread, fans in cities distant from the action could follow the fortunes of their favorites in newspapers and in periodicals such as the Police Gazette in the United States and the Sporting Life in Great Britain.Young boys were regaled with stories such as Tom Brown’s School Days in Britain or the popular Frank Merriwell series in the United States,
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which blended sports with morality tales to nurture manly virtue in readers. The wealthy abandoned popular sports, withdrawing behind the walls of golf, yacht, and tennis clubs, and held events with fewer, but presumably, more refined fans.
Radio When radio began to broadcast major sporting events such as the World Series and championship prize fights, the number of sports fans exploded. Prior to radio, fans clustered about businesses with telephone or telegraph connections where scores or updates were posted as an inducement to shoppers or as a public service. By the 1920s major sporting events such as boxing title matches, college bowl games, and the World Series could be enjoyed by fans a continent away from the action. The expansion of team loyalties meant that a fan of the Chicago Cubs might find a kindred soul in Florida or California, and the new medium also helped widen the appeal of sports within U.S. culture. Radio, people have argued, was the media that best suited baseball. The slow pace of the game allowed a sportscaster such as Graham MacNamee, who was at the microphone for the first broadcast of a World Series game in 1923, or Ronald Reagan, whose first job in the entertainment industry was as a baseball announcer, to fill the time between pitches with biographical and statistical information on the players or to discuss the finer points of baseball strategy. The lack of a visual image allowed creative radio personalities to embellish routine plays, which made the games more exciting for fans, who were compelled to imagine visual images to supplement the narrative coming over the radio waves.
Television After World War II television eroded radio’s dominance in sports broadcasting. In the United States sporting preferences shifted toward football, which was better suited to television as a spectacle. College football, formerly the province of the educated classes, reached out to new fans as first radio and then television began to broadcast the games to an often-nationwide audience.
The pool of fans grew to include those fans who never actually attended a school but who formed an emotional attachment to a school through the media. This attachment was especially powerful when the school embodied a particular cultural trait or existed in a region with little competition from other sporting activities. The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame University reached across geographic borders to win fans among U.S. Catholics. The team’s popularity among even nonCatholics also helped ease its full assimilation into the mainstream of U.S. culture. The University of Nebraska Cornhuskers provided a unifying symbol for an entire state whose residents had little in else in common. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) approached television gingerly, fearing that it would decrease gate receipts, but professional football embraced the new medium of television and in the process won a central place in the hearts of U.S. fans. The popularity of the National Football League and other broadcast sports in the United States began to draw enormous sums of money to the sporting world through television revenue, and television and sports formed a symbiotic relationship that created an upward spiral of popularity among fans.
PROLIFERATION OF CHOICES Television expanded the popularity of sports within U.S. culture, and programs such as the American Broadcasting Company’s Wide World of Sports introduced new sports that appealed to people who traditionally ignored sports. Members of the two-television family could now separate by viewing choices, with the males watching football while females watched figure skating. During the late 1980s the proliferation of cable television channels further diversified fan opportunities, with channels or pay-per-view packages devoted to major sports, as fans of poker, billiards, bass fishing, and a dizzying array of other sports enjoyed their own niche programs. The cable sports channel ESPN offered fans the chance to catch up on news from their favorite sports twenty-four hours a day, and ESPN Classic allowed young and old enthusiasts to watch the best
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A crowd cheering athletes gathered on the field at the Pan American Games.
games and matches from past years. For those fans who would rather argue than watch, or argue after watching, radio regained popularity by offering sports talk shows on which fans could comment on their favorite teams or sports, and television followed suit with celebrity argument and/or interview programs. Outside the United States football (soccer) reigns supreme, and the quadrennial World Cup matches are watched by a large percentage of the world’s population. Each nation has other folk sports, such as cricket in the United Kingdom, that have gained a wider following within and without its borders through television. Rugby, horseracing, and other sports are also popular among fans worldwide and have likewise benefited from television’s constant courtship of people eighteen to forty-nine years old, who spend the most money and therefore are coveted by advertisers.
FAN MOTIVATION Today even fans in remote areas can follow their favorite sports. However, why would they would want to? Fans watch sports, whether on television or in person, because it fulfills a need. Some fans watch a sport because they played the sport in their youth, and watching it allows them to relive past thrills and agonies. Young fans can sit at the feet of their elders and absorb the lore of the sport from men and women who played the sport when they
were young. The former athletes can remember, often with advantage, the exploits of their youth and recapture some small part of the joy they felt while competing. Such fan groups are often quite exclusive, being open only to the initiated, and members share the common language of the sport, which is typically incomprehensible to those who did not play. For some, spectator sports are social events and an excuse to hold gatherings of friends. The sports party has become a hallowed ritual for millions who gather with their friends to discuss the team’s chances before, during, and after the game while consuming elaborate feasts, which are no less impressive because of the simplicity of the fare. These parties may occur in a residence, at a tailgate party in the parking lot outside the stadium or field, or in a business constructed for such celebrations: the sports bar. Sports enthusiasts across the world charter buses, planes, or trains to carry them to contests. These groupings usually are less exclusive and attract a wide cross-section of fans, from the ex-athlete to the casual fan. Young fans can dream of one day taking their place on the field, and many visualize themselves making the moves of their heroes while playing in the backyard or on the street. A time-honored tradition is the crowd of young fans who surrounds athletes for autographs, although the value of memorabilia in the latter decades of the twentieth century gave rise to a more mercenary class of athlete and fan. When a fan party includes the initiated, it often serves as a rite of passage for young enthusiasts as they learn the folkways involved in spending a lifetime enamored with a sport. Following a team or sport also provides a venue for consumption, and the sports-memorabilia and licensedproduct markets bring in millions annually. During the 1990s economic boom, baseball cards and other
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memorabilia prices set record highs and spawned their own subculture. Every professional team, college team, and many high school teams offer a wide array of product choices from current uniforms to classic replicas and the hats, clocks, and other bric-a-brac to complement them. Finally, many fans use sports to escape from the drudgeries of everyday life. Following a team or a sport provides the opportunity to connect to something larger than the individual and to transcend everyday cares. When a player such as the U.S. basketball star Michael Jordan or the British soccer star David Beckham does the impossible, the escapist fan can forget for the moment his or her own powerlessness and the futility of a humdrum existence.
International Consequences Sports offer a thrilling way for teams or individuals to compete for dominance, but the result rarely carries permanent consequences for real life. Many people would dispute the latter point, and often civic, regional, or even national pride becomes intertwined in the action, which adds to the vicarious thrill gained from rooting for the home team. During the Cold War the quadrennial Olympic Games became a venue for competition that often served as an alternative to more serious conflict. Tremendous controversies surrounded how Olympic team points should be awarded or whether men’s and women’s results should be kept separate. The lofty goals of the Olympic movement descended to the level of a playground argument in the competition for allegiance among nonaligned nations in the global struggle, and fans from the opposing sides gleefully joined in the fray, questioning the amateur standing, the drug use, or even the biological sex of the athletes from the other side.
Fan Behavior By participating in sports as spectators, fans gain a feeling of belonging to something larger than themselves, and often times this feeling leads to extreme or bizarre behavior. During the 1996 World Cup finals, in a game
This poster points out the benefits to the fan of the enclosed Astrodome. Source: Brian S. Butler.
pitting the United States against Colombia, a Colombian defenseman inadvertently kicked the ball into his own goal, which counted as a score for the United States and led to his team’s defeat. A week later, the player was dead, gunned down in the street by an irate fan. Some British soccer fans are notorious for their violence, and these soccer hooligans, along with similar fans from other nations, often eclipse the headlines earned by the teams they root for. When a team wins or loses a championship or sometimes a regular season game, police often face a night of rioting. Parents watching their children’s games have often become irate and even violent when the breaks go against their children. In Chicago a man watching his son’s hockey game became so enraged by the decisions made by the team’s coach that he beat the coach to death. Even when fan behavior is not violent, it is often still bizarre, especially when television is present. Even
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Spectators A Women-Only Crowd, 1896 In the 1896 extract below, from a newspaper article about a game played between female athletes from Stanford and Berkeley, it’s clear that women hold their own as spectators—and players: In this connection it should be set on record that there appeared to be no predominant type of woman among the spectators. There were old women, and young women, and short-haired women, and long-haired women, and pretty women, and plain women, and new women and —well, there may have been middle-aged women. But the really remarkable thing about them was the immense volume of noise they managed to create. It did one good to hear their cheers, and “bravos,” and excited comments on the play. And as for the players themselves, they were simply vociferous. Their animal spirits would have been an object lesson to half the young men in San Francisco.Why, when the Stanford girls retired to their dressing-room after winning the game, nothing would content them but to turn handsprings on the floor—and fine, workmanlike handsprings they were. Source: Players Won by a Goal. (1896, April 5). San Francisco Examiner.
casual National Football League viewers have seen fans in northern cities standing bare-chested in subzero weather, and during the 1970s one fan with a multicolored Afro wig seemed to attend every televised game. The early years of Monday Night Football were marked by a carnival atmosphere in the stands as women, often exotic dancers in search of publicity, performed suggestively for the cameras. One fan has made a career of impersonating players or referees to gain access to the field at important sporting matches. Games in various sports have been interrupted by streakers running naked across the field while officials give chase, and Morgana the Kissing Bandit, a wellendowed woman, made a career of turning up at sporting events to interrupt the action by kissing players.
Brazilian soccer games often resemble giant parties, with drums being pounded throughout, the fans singing, and flags waving. Beach balls are bounced around stadiums by fans who, when not so engaged, often take time out to do the wave, a synchronized movement of fans standing up in sequence so that it resembles an ocean wave. At basketball games fans behind the backboard often have balloons or towels that are waved in an attempt to distract opposing players when they shoot foul shots. In the television age the fan has often become an integral part of the action, rather than a passive spectator, and the notion that their actions matter has spurred fans to ever-greater exertions. Sometimes fans suffer for their few seconds of fame. During a football game between the Baltimore Colts and the Miami Dolphins in 1971, an exuberant fan ran onto the field and passed close to the Colts defensive huddle. Mike Curtis, the middle linebacker for the Colts, proved his reputation for hitting by viciously knocking the fan to the ground. The man later lost his job and had to spend considerable time in the hospital because of the injuries he received. In a soccer game in Belgium in 1985, fans attacking the opposition crowd were held up at a barrier fence. When those behind continued to push, the fence collapsed, and thirty-nine were killed and hundreds injured. During the 2003 National League Championship Series between the Florida Marlins and the Chicago Cubs in Chicago’s Wrigley Field, a young fan named “Bartman,” hoping to take a souvenir home from the game, tipped a foul ball out of the Cub leftfielder’s glove, giving the Marlins another chance, which they exploited to win the game and the series. Bartman received tremendous attention from the media, and when his name became public, he received hate mail and death threats from other fans who were livid that the young man had helped extend the Cubs’ absence from the World Series. Such actions, and the emotions caused by them, have become part of the spectacle of modern sports, inseparable from the behavior of the true enthusiast.
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Sports provide a way for fans who are so inclined to act out their personal dramas. This behavior is not a modern phenomenon, however, and from the beginning of sports as a spectacle, fan behavior has often bordered on the psychotic. At the ancient Roman gladiatorial matches, when given the chance, fans screamed for the life or death of the unlucky loser of a match. Bullfight fans have attempted or succeeded in crippling the animal adversary of their favorites, and horseracing fans have likewise interfered with the performance of horses or jockeys. These actions most often occur in the context of gambling on sports, another area of participation enjoyed by fans. Early baseball games were often marred by the sound of gunfire as fans (known then as “cranks”) in the stadium attempted to distract players on the field, and in one case a war broke out between El Salvador and Honduras after a soccer game.
The Future Whether merely enjoying the action or reveling in the spectacle, fans transformed the act of watching games and in some cases threatened the meaning of sports. In the early twenty-first century the Internet has opened whole new vistas for fan participation. Fantasy sports are a multimillion-dollar business in the United States, and some people argue that fantasy sports hold the potential to alter the bond between fan and team that has been a mark of the sports fan in the past because lineups are assembled from players of various teams, weakening the traditional ties. Television’s need for new programming has also made sports of pastimes and will continue to influence the evolution of what it means to be a fan. Whatever the result, the fan occupies a central place within the world of competitive sports at all levels and in nearly all areas of the planet. With television few people cannot be a fan of some sport, and the growth of the fan base, along with the idea that the spectator is part of the action, has altered both sports and culture. Russ Crawford See also Fan Loyalty; Franchise Relocation; Mascots; Violence
Further Reading Andelman, B. (2000). Why men watch football. Lafayette, LA: Acadian House Publishing. Boyle, R. H. (1963). Sport: Mirror of American life. Boston: Little, Brown. Chudacoff, H. (1999). The age of the bachelor: Creating an American subculture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dunning, E., Murphy, P., Waddington, I., & Astrinakis, A. (Eds.). (2002). Fighting fans: Football hooliganism as a world phenomenon. Dublin, UK: University College Dublin Press. Lovinger, J., & Thompson, H. S. (2002). The gospel according to ESPN: Saints, saviors, and sinners. New York: Hyperion. Michener, J. (1976). Sports in America. New York: Random House. Oriard, M. (2001). King football: Sport and spectacle in the golden age of radio and newsreels, movies and magazines, the weekly & the daily press. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Putney, C. (2001). Muscular Christianity: Manhood and sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rader, B. (1983). American sports: From the age of folk games to the age of televised sports. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rader, B. (1984). In its own image: How television has transformed sports. New York: Free Press. Rader, B. (1994). Baseball: A history of America’s game. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Riordan, J., & Kruger, A. (Eds.). (1999). The international politics of sport in the 20th century. London: Spon Press. Royko, M. (1983). Sez who? Sez me! Chicago: Warner Books. Sperber, M. (1998). Onward to victory: The scandals that shaped college sports. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Tygiel, J. (2000). Past time: Baseball as history. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Wann, D. (2001). Sports fans: The psychology and social aspects of spectators. New York: Routledge.
Speedball
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peedball was a popular recreational and intramural game for girls and women in the United States until the 1960s. This recreational team sport combines kicking elements of soccer and football with passing elements of basketball.
History Speedball originated in 1921 when E. D. Mitchell, the director of intramural sports at the University of Michigan, decided to fill the need for a fall sport that was not as dangerous as football and that would interest students of average athletic ability. Basketball in
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the winter and baseball in the spring were games suitable for average players, but the fall lacked a game in which everyone could safely participate. Speedball was an ideal intramural game because it was safe and inexpensive, did not take a great deal of training or skill, was excellent exercise for the entire body, and was interesting because of the different ways to score points. The facilities were also simple because a soccer (association football), hockey, or football field could be used if goalposts were added. Speedball was successful from its inception. It had widespread use in the intramural departments of colleges and universities throughout the country but primarily in the Midwest. It was a popular physical education activity in secondary schools and even found its way into industrial recreation programs sponsored by city recreation departments in the 1930s. However, speedball lost favor with men’s recreational programs by the end of the 1930s and was no longer included in the intramural college men’s programs by the 1950s. Speedball also died in men’s high school programs by the end of World War II. More schools started to play flag football or soccer, and speedball became a forgotten sport. Meanwhile, by the 1930s, the game had proved itself to be particularly suitable for girls and had a larger following among women players than among men. By the 1950s, it had become a very popular sport for girls and women in colleges and high schools throughout the Midwest. California used speedball in many of its high school programs. In the East, however, private high schools and colleges played field hockey in the fall and moved directly to soccer later. Speedball remained an important game for girls and women only until the 1960s, when soccer took over.
During the game, played with seven to eleven players, touchdowns are scored by catching forward passes in the end zone. Players can’t run with the ball. A player is not permitted to touch a ground ball with his or her hands. A fly ball, defined as one that has risen into the air directly from the foot of a player, may be caught with the hands, provided the catch is made before the ball strikes the ground again. In advancing the ball, the player may use one overhead dribble—that is, he or she may throw the ball in the air ahead and run forward and catch it before it strikes the ground. The rules vary for high school versus college and intramural versus varsity competitions. Since the beginning, there have also been different rules for men’s and women’s games. Regardless of specific rules, however, the game is played in four periods of eight or ten minutes each, with the object being to score points by kicking the ball into the goal or though the goalposts, catching it in the end zone, or kicking out of the end zone. The standard field for men is 110 meters (360 feet) long by 49 meters (160 feet) wide; for women the field length is cut to 91 meters (300 feet). Players on each team are aligned across the field as forwards, backs, guards, and a goalkeeper. Free substitution of as many as five players is allowed. A soccer ball is usually used, although a basketball is sometimes used on smaller fields. Play involves moving the ball toward the other team’s end zone and scoring points by kicking and hand passing. Running with the ball is not permitted. Contact between the players is not allowed, although players may guard each other and try to kick the ball away from the offensive player. There is a key distinction between ground balls and aerial or fly balls:
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The game combines soccer, basketball, and football skills, using the catching and passing skills of basketball along with the kicking and punting tactics of soccer and football. The new skill needed is kicking a grounded ball up into the air. The player can kick the ball either to him- or herself or to another player.
A ground ball is one that has touched the ground and is stationary, rolling, or bouncing. It may be played by kicking, heading, or playing off the body. A ground ball may be made an aerial ball by passing to oneself. This play is unique to speedball, and swift, smooth conversion of a ground ball to an aerial ball is a skill that distinguishes the best speedball players.
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An aerial ball is one that is in the air, and it may be played by catching it and by then drop kicking, punting, or dribbling it in the air.
The three types of kicks allowed are punting (kicking the ball while it is in the air), drop kicking (kicking the ball after one bounce), and place kicking (kicking the ball while it is stationary). Scoring differs slightly for men and women. Today, speedball as a sport for women has largely disappeared, replaced by soccer, basketball, softball, and hockey. Joan Hult and Robin O’Sullivan
Sponsorship
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ponsorship has become commonplace in sports. Most definitions incorporate the concept of an exchange of value between the sponsor and the sport property. Commonly, sponsors are referred to as “partners.” In each case, the nature of the relationship is one in which a company with assets valuable to the sport property contracts to provide monetary support, equipment, technology, or a host of services in exchange for a commercial advantage. By marketing through sport, many nonsport-related companies have realized a significant return on investment (ROI). This contrasts with the early days of sponsorship, in which the gesture of financial support by a company for a sports event was most often philanthropic. In 1984, however, the Olympic games hosted by Los Angeles created the template for corporate sponsorship as it is known today.
Rationale for Sponsorship Sport today could not exist without sponsorship. For professional sports, being competitive requires high salaries, premium facilities, media coverage, and corporate sponsorship to offset the expenses. In return, sponsors expect to accomplish any number of market-
ing objectives. Examples include hospitality, image enhancement, exposure to potential consumers, product sampling, increased sales, and market share. The most successful sport-sponsorship relationships are the result of a blending between the corporate partners’ marketing objectives and the attributes offered by affiliation or association with the sport property. The least successful relationships result when a gap exists between the objectives the corporate sponsor had when agreeing to engage in a sport sponsorship and the benefits resulting from the partnership. Similarly, a lack of affinity or image fit between the message of the corporate sponsor and the sport property sponsored often leads to sponsor defection. A strong image link can relaunch or establish a brand via the sport association. For example, Mountain Dew created an image as a beverage that appeals to young, hip, extreme, or action-sport enthusiasts through its strong affiliation with ESPN’s X Games. As a result, Mountain Dew also experienced a commensurate increase in global market share.
Trends in Sports Sponsorship In 1976, the Montreal Olympic games created enormous debt for Canadian taxpayers. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC) understood the potential that reaching a global audience would have to companies who operated beyond the borders of a single country. The LAOOC plan called for only thirty-two sponsors that would each pay between $4 million and $13 million in cash, goods, and services to be affiliated with this one-of-a-kind global sporting event. The LAOOC produced a net profit of $222 million, which had never happened in the history of the Olympic games. Before the success of the 1984 games spurred corporate interest, the Olympics were feared to be heading to extinction. Instead, companies that became involved with the LAOOC—such as Coca Cola, IBM, Visa, and Xerox—expanded into new markets, improved revenue, and maximized their transnational reach via the Olympic sponsorship platform. The Olympic Partners (TOP), worldwide sponsors that contracted with the International Olympic Committee
SPONSORSHIP
Politics is a blood sport.
(IOC), numbered only eleven for the 2000 Sydney Olympic games, but this highest level of Olympic sponsorship required a minimum $50 million commitment for the rights to be an official Olympic partner. The TOP sponsorship fee will increase to $70 million for rights to the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. Yet, with an emerging market of 1.3 billion people, companies are expected to sign up without hesitation. In fact, most TOP companies have been involved with the Olympic games for years, even decades. One women’s sport property was initially launched because of the financial support provided by a company that saw the potential value in sponsorship. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) began as a result of disgruntled women athletes who believed their performances on the tennis court were worthy of tournament prize money similar to that offered the men’s tournaments. Virginia Slims, a cigarette brand created for women, became the WTA title sponsor in the 1970s, and a new sport property was formed. Early on, tobacco and alcohol sponsorship of sports was common because of advertising restrictions limiting their direct use of television or radio broadcasts. By sponsoring sports events, these companies gained tremendous exposure without violating the advertising bans. In the United States, intercollegiate athletics have become big business. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I colleges generate an average of $1.4 million in total revenue from corporate sponsorships. The average value of a typical corporate sponsorship deal for a Division I athletic program is currently $26,613, with the average value for highestlevel sponsors at $198,437 compared with the average of $4,755 for the lowest-level sponsorships. Division I schools also collaborate with an average of sixty companies. In 2004, the top ten schools secured $3 million in corporate sponsorships, the average value of the sponsorships among these schools was $90,500, and value of the largest sponsorship was more than $350,000 annually for each school. Nevertheless, typical sponsorship contracts in collegiate sports often in-
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clude women’s sports and Olympic sports only as afterthoughts. Traditional thinking has placed football and men’s basketball as the revenue-generating sports. Increasingly, however, women’s college sports have generated strong followings and audiences. The College Sport Network has helped create value for these traditionally nonrevenue-generating sports. With television coverage for sports such as soccer, volleyball, and softball, a completely new area for potential corporate sponsorship has been created.
Marketing Through Sport Sponsorship Meeting a company’s marketing objectives remains the primary reason sponsors are attracted to sport sponsorship. Organizations selling a sports product are in the business of trying to attract a large audience of fans who typically represent a diverse consumer base. Attracting more fans through major events has been an important goal of professional and collegiate sport teams. As a result, companies have become involved in sport and event marketing because they expect their message to reach their desired audience through the sport fan base. Traditionally, children were introduced to sports by their parents. Marketers have acknowledged that children who watch and take part in sports often grow up to become sport spectators. For this reason, Major League Baseball (MLB) has focused significant attention on building ballparks with family-friendly areas and engaging opportunities for kids. MLB recognizes that its future fan base comprises many of the children parents bring to games. Parents play a key role in children’s interest in sports. As a result, companies have become more interested in addressing mothers through marketing efforts. Women have been acknowledged as key decision makers in numerous household purchases. Women are also known to be more loyal consumers than men are. These phenomena explain the use of sport-specific advertisements in women’s magazines. By communicating with women, companies hope to influence a family outing to a major sporting event. Once
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families are at events, the sponsorship mechanisms can be employed on kids as well as adults.
Target Marketing Through Sport Sponsorship Since the early 1980s, the number of knowledgeable female sport fans has increased significantly, partly because of improved opportunities for women in competitive sports. Today, roughly 45 percent of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) and National Football League’s (NFL) audiences are women. MLB has had a similar gender representation for decades. The National Hockey League (NHL) and National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) have fewer female fans (41 percent), yet this represents a significant increase for NASCAR from 36 percent in 1995. The WNBA (women’s version of the NBA) maintains an audience of roughly 60 percent female. These numbers suggest that corporate sponsors of various sport properties can reach women, if they find the right communication strategy. Increasingly, reaching women has become important to marketers. Women today are responsible for 80 percent of all consumer goods purchases in the United States. Still, one of the difficulties corporations face in trying to communicate with a target audience is that no audience is homogeneous. Age, education, and income are just three characteristics by which fans vary. Typically, advertising and promotions have treated women as part of the family demographic. Thus, compa-
Advetisements above “The Green Monster” in Fenway Park, 2004.
nies that sell grocery products and children’s clothing, as well as car companies looking to promote their minivans, have used sponsorship of women’s basketball to reach the women who make such major decisions as what car to buy. In contrast, companies that want to sell products exclusively for men have been more interested in sports such as football, car racing, and hockey, whose audiences are almost 60 percent male. The NBA was reported to be the favorite sport among children ages seven to eleven, but teens preferred the NFL. Increasingly, marketers have targeted kids, often trying to bypass parental decision making. This can be challenging, given that sponsorship by beer companies has become pervasive in sport. The demographic most often sought through sport sponsorship is that of the eighteen- to thirty-five-year-old male. Affluent, white males control sport and are most often the target demographic. Nonetheless, recent attention has been placed on the Hispanic market with many professional sport teams in the United States employing staffs designated for this purpose. In MLB, Hispanic fans by percentage have equaled African-American fans at roughly 10 percent, whereas in both major league soccer and the NHL,
SPONSORSHIP
Hispanic fans actually outnumber African-American fans. As sport marketing grows in sophistication, corporate sponsors are looking for avenues to relate to diverse market segments often found in sport.
Corporate Sponsorship and Media The Olympic games are the platform of choice when it comes to reaching a global audience. Media rights for the Olympic games have escalated at an astronomical rate: ■
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In 1960, CBS televised the winter Olympics from Squaw Valley, California. The fee was $50,000, approximately equal to $310,000 today. CBS also purchased the 1960 Rome summer games rights for $390,000, approximately $2.4 million in today’s economy. In 1984, ABC paid $225 million ($398 million in today’s money) for television rights to the summer Olympic games in Los Angeles.
Media companies that purchase the rights to broadcast the Olympic games believe that the inventory of advertising time will offset the expense and that the network will ultimately achieve a profit. In corporate sponsorship, companies commonly spend twice the amount paid for rights fees and often more than five times the amount paid for rights fees in promoting their sponsorship of the sporting event or property. Given this understanding, the details of the latest Olympic television-rights deal are noteworthy. General Electric (GE) maintains ownership of several television networks, including NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC. In 2003, GE captured the U.S. rights to the Olympic games with an unprecedented $2.2 billion bid that included broadcast rights and a new global sponsorship category. Companies such as Disney (ABC/ESPN), News Corp. (Fox), and Viacom (CBS) had all bid for the contract. However, the winning bid made by GE/NBC agreed to pay the IOC $820 million for the rights to the 2010 Olympic winter games and $1.18 billion for the rights to the 2012 summer games,
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plus an additional $160 million to $200 million during an eight-year period to secure GE a place as one of the eleven existing members of TOP. With this deal, NBC has secured the Olympic broadcast rights continuously for more than a decade, 2000 to 2012. The NFL’s Super Bowl also commands a high price, second only to the Olympic games. There, however, the advertising rate has gained the corporate attention. With an American audience that reportedly tunes in as much to see the advertising as to watch the football game, the Super Bowl has become an event for thirty-second message competition: ■
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In the Super Bowl’s inaugural year, a thirty-second advertisement cost $42,500; this 1967 rate equates to $230,700 in today’s terms. In 2003, the average paid for a thirty-second advertisement was $2.2 million.
In 1967, the television rating was 17.8 or a 34 percent share. By 2003, the rating was 40.7 or a 61 percent share. Figures such as these dictate the value and equivalent price. Many companies believe they simply cannot afford to miss the opportunity to communicate with this dense an audience. The story of Master Lock illustrates the value of the Super Bowl for advertisements. In the mid 1990s when a thirtysecond commercial cost roughly $1 million, Master Lock reportedly spent its entire advertising budget on this one opportunity. Nonetheless, that one thirtysecond commercial remains memorable to consumers as long as ten years later. The World Series baseball broadcasts have gone from being shown in 20 countries in the late 1980s to more than 200 countries since the mid 1990s. In 2002, 224 countries received the World Series television broadcast. For corporate sponsors of MLB, this adds tremendous value. In Great Britain, the top televised sport broadcasts in 2001 were all soccer World Cup qualifiers. Only the broadcast of Britain’s top tennis athlete, Tim Henman, in the semi-final of Wimbledon rated competitively.
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Unique Attributes of Sport Sponsorship Sport marketing has two primary aspects: 1. The marketing of sports 2. Marketing through sports Sponsorship most often involves nonsport products or services that use images of sports to market to consumers. The primary industries involved in sport sponsorship include the automobile, credit card, beer, airline, soda, telecommunications, and fast food industries, but new industry categories are continuously emerging. The most lucrative sponsorship deals for teams today involve naming-rights deals for stadiums and arenas. Facilities that once were named after influential figures or historic community affiliations now bear the names of companies who were willing to pay a multimillion-dollar fee. Deals such as this often create controversy and can lead to resentment among fans. Nonetheless, the sponsorship pendulum has continued to swing in the same direction for many years. As endorsement commitments by companies such as Nike increase with the latest athletic achievements, and as the appetite for sports continues to grow, there appear to be no limits to using sport as a desirable marketing vehicle. Sponsorship allows companies to create a template of benefits that integrate communication strategies like no other medium. Still, the most attractive aspect of sponsorship to companies is often the price.When the cost of advertising time during major sporting events is compared with the array of benefits built into a sponsorship package, the decision is rarely a difficult one. Add in the opportunity to enhance a brand image, link with a beloved entity such as an athlete or sport, and potentially reach a global audience, and you can see why sponsorship of sport will be around for many years to come. Nancy L. Lough
Further Reading By the numbers 2003: The authoritative annual research guide and fact book. Sports Business Journal, 5(36). By the numbers 2004: The authoritative annual research guide and fact book. Sports Business Journal, 6(36).
Howard, D., & Crompton, J. (2004). Financing sport. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. Lough, N. (2000). Corporate sponsorship of sport. In H. Appenzeller & G. Lewis (Eds.), Successful Sport Management (199–207). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Mullin, B., Hardy, S., & Sutton, W. (2000). Sport marketing. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Sports Business Journal (2004, June 7–13), p. 34. Leisure products industry survey. (1999). U.S. industry & trade outlook. New York: U.S. Department of Commerce/International Trade Administration and McGraw-Hill.
Sport and National Identity
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nderstanding sport’s cultural significance in society requires considering how sports are tied to ideas about national identity. In the media, the link is most apparent during large sporting events such as the Olympic Games, where a country’s sporting successes (or failures) are visibly tied with nationalistic sentiment. Likewise, rugby in Wales, New Zealand, and South Africa, cricket in the West Indies, soccer in Brazil and Italy, and baseball in the United States are just a few examples of sports that are frequently constructed as constituting the character of a nation. Moreover, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine major professional or international sporting events without the presence of national anthems, national flags, and medal standings. Indeed, sport, and in particular televised sport, is often described as a “uniquely effective medium for inculcating national feelings” (Jarvie 1993, 74) because it provides a symbolic site for historical or current struggles and conflicts (Gruneau & Whitson 1993). Sport’s role in nation building is important to consider, but the reverse relationship is equally significant. Indeed, our collective understandings of national identity contribute to shaping sporting practices and, by extension, broader institutions. Thus, the imperative of fostering a national identity is often used as the justifi-
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A baseball cap with flag during the national anthem at the 2001 World Series held in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Source: istockphoto/ buckarooh.
cation for redesigning sporting relations, physical education in schools, and public policy. For example, had it not been for Australia’s poor performance at the 1976 Olympic Games (and the public perception of a tarnished national image), the Australian Institute of Sport might never have been established. Similarly, sport gained ascendancy in Canada’s federal policies because of its promise to promote national unity and a pan-Canadian identity amid an increasing divide between English-speaking and French-speaking territories.
What Is National Identity? The concept of national identity is notably difficult to define and its precise character has been widely interpreted in relation to a number of issues including geography, ethnicity, religion, language, and shared experience.
Generally speaking, national identity is expressed out of both similarity and difference with respect to such dimensions. For example, although Canadians define themselves according to their wintry climate and bilingual histories, they also distinguish themselves more simply as “non-Americans.” National identity is in effect a social construction constituted by historical processes and symbolic practices including the creation (and transmission) of myths, stories, images, and rituals to produce shared meanings and understandings of nationhood. Such narratives of the nation are told and retold to represent and differentiate a collective and unified “us” from a generic and often stereotypical “them” (De Cillia, Reisigl, & Wodak 1999). Anderson believes the nation is a distinctly cultural artifact and socially constructed representation that needs to be “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (1991, 6). Undoubtedly, sport plays a significant role in the social construction of distinct national identities and invented national traditions around the world (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983). International sporting competitions have been particularly useful for promoting national unity and international standing because they are competitive and have the potential to effectively and popularly mobilize “us” versus “them.” Moreover, collective national sporting identities or national sporting mythologies typically have deep popular roots that have been molded in relation to historically significant moments of national sporting prowess. For example, the United States’ 1980 Olympic win over the Soviets in ice hockey has been mythologized as a “miracle on ice” and a defining moment in U.S. sporting imagination and, by extension, a triumph of American values and capitalist democracy. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the nation’s iconic rugby team, the All Blacks, has historically idealized the relatively small and isolated nation as a classless, egalitarian, and racially harmonious society. In other words, because of the visibility and popularity
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of sport it is frequently promoted as embodying the naturalized and taken-for-granted values of the nation.
Why Study Sport and National Identity? The connections between sport and national identity deserve careful examination because of the sociocultural and ideological tensions they reveal. Indeed, a nation’s identity is never universally apparent, shared, or accepted but, rather, continuously is given meaning through cultural practices like sport. Sport can tell us who we are, where we came from, and what we collectively stand for. But the link between sport and national identity is ultimately contentious because it also suggests who we ought to be and what we should stand for. As Coakley writes, “It is important to ask critical questions about the long-term consequences of this emotional unity and about whose interests are being served by the images, traditions, and memories around which identities are expressed” (2001, 390). As a result, any consideration of national identity and sport involves addressing how these identities are constructed (e.g., through the media) and who has the power to influence their conceptualizations and understandings (e.g., corporate elites, the state). Likewise, to examine sport’s role in constructing or maintaining a nation’s identity reveals the contested nature of sport itself. For example, some have argued that the primacy given to creating national identity tends to favor elite sports over recreational forms because of elite sports’ affinity with notions of a competitive society. Thus, if nation building is an important goal, it follows that this is more apt to occur through sporting forms that support “we/they” identifications along national lines. Such arguments are ultimately important to us because they are often presented as common-sense interpretations of how sport, and by extension society, is (or should be) structured. In other words, examining sport and national identity helps reveal the inevitable tensions and divisions of our collective identities as well as the political nature of sport itself.
Issues Related to Sports and National Identity An extensive body of research compares and contrasts cases in sovereign countries and in other nations that, although not recognized by the United Nations, gain a sense of nationhood through sport events such as the soccer and rugby World Cups (e.g., Scotland). A second level of enquiry focuses on the cultural significance of sport in shaping national identities and how the media contribute to naturalizing particular interpretations of the “nation.” Given the breadth of these perspectives (and their considerable theoretical and empirical depth), we synthesize two broad, recurring themes underpinning the analysis of national identity and sport.
ONE NATIONAL IDENTITY? One of them most common themes from these scholarly works concerns the political implications surrounding the expression of a singular national identity. Within any country, there are multiple identities, drawn along lines of race, language, or religion, so the idea that sport can legitimately represent (or promote) a universal set of attributes is invariably problematic. Two closely related critiques emanate from this point. The first is that sport contributes to an overly narrow version of national identity that tends to privilege particular values over others. Specifically, these criticisms are aimed at the connections often made between a country’s “national sport” and the character of its citizens. Some have argued, for instance, that promoting the idea of a national sport often implies virtuous attributes such as manliness or respect for authority, thereby rendering alternate expressions (such as individuality) untenable. The idea that ice hockey is inherently “Canadian” or that rugby mirrors New Zealand culture represents a romanticized frame of reference that tends to ignore competing representations of what it is to be a citizen of these countries. Indeed, Bairner points out, “the concept of ‘the national sport’ is a slippery one,” as it may either “confirm the exclusive character of the nation or, more commonly, reflect a contest between ethnic and civic representations of the nation”
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Sport and National Identity Extract from Little Women (1868) The excerpt below from Chapter 12 of the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott describes a heated croquet match with teams composed of both Americans and English visitors. It was not far to Longmeadow, but the tent was pitched and the wickets down by the time they arrived. A pleasant green field, with three widespreading oaks in the middle and a smooth strip of turf for croquet. “Welcome to Camp Laurence!” said the young host, as they landed with exclamations of delight. “Brooke is commander in chief, I am commissary general, the other fellows are staff officers, and you, ladies, are company. The tent is for your especial benefit and that oak is your drawing room, this is the messroom and third is the camp kitchen. Now, let’s have a game before it gets hot, and then we’ll see about dinner.” Frank, Beth, Amy, and Grace sat down to watch the game played by the other eight. Mr. Brooke chose Meg, Kate, and Fred; Laurie took Sallie, Jo, and Ned. The English played well, but the Americans played better, and contested every inch of the ground as strongly as if the spirit of ‘76 inspired them. Jo and Fred had several skirmishes and once narrowly escaped high words. Jo was through the last wicket and had missed the stroke, which failure ruffled her a good deal. Fred was close behind her and his turn came before hers, he gave a stroke, his ball hit the wicket, and stopped an inch on the wrong side. No one was very near, and running up to examine, he gave it a sly nudge with his toe, which put it just an inch on the right side.
(2001, 167). Furthermore, given that such national sports have traditionally been the preserve of men, scholars argue that these reproduce powerful messages about “appropriate” conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Although women are clearly involved in national sports and compete internationally, discourses of national sporting identities are often unfavorable to
“I’m through! Now, Miss Jo, I’ll settle you, and get in first,” cried the young gentleman, swinging his mallet for another blow. “You pushed it; I saw you; it’s my turn now,” said Jo sharply. “Upon my word, I didn’t move it; it rolled a bit, perhaps, but that is allowed; so stand off, please, and let me have a go at the stake.” “We don’t cheat in America, but you can, if you choose,” said Jo angrily. “Yankees are a deal the most tricky, everybody knows. There you go!” returned Fred, croqueting her ball far away. Jo opened her lips to say something rude, but checked herself in time, colored up to her forehead and stood a minute, hammering down a wicket with all her might, while Fred hit the stake and declared himself out with much exultation. She went off to get her ball, and was a long time finding it among the bushes, but she came back, looking cool and quiet, and waited her turn patiently. It took several strokes to regain the place she had lost, and when she got there, the other side had nearly won, for Kate’s ball was the last but one and lay near the stake. “By George, it’s all up with us! Good-by Kate, Miss Jo owes me one, so you are finished,” cried Fred excitedly, as they all drew near the finish. “Yankees have a trick of being generous to their enemies,” said Joe, with a look that made the lad redden, “especially when they beat them,” she added, as, leaving Kate’s ball untouched, she won the game by a clever stroke.
them and exclusionary. As Rowe, McKay, and Miller note, “The individual achievements of women athletes (such as Chris Evert and Billie Jean King) may be of great significance, but 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
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Presentation of the flag and the national anthem before a baseball game.
men” (1998, 126). In this view, therefore, the definition of national identity through sport is never a neutral or benign statement of fact; rather, it has very real implications because it identifies particular characteristics or values and typifies them. The second broad critique relative to national identity and sport regards the claim that sport helps unite citizens and that it can effectively transcend other identities. Although most agree that on some level, sport has the potential to build a sense of national unity, the main point of contention is how this claim is ultimately taken for granted. In response, critics point to an inherent contradiction: that national identity represents similarity (through expressions such as “we” or “us”), but it paradoxically tends to be defined through “difference” by using stereotypes and myths to distinguish it from the “other.” In sporting lore, heroes are infused into a nation’s identity as much by their personal achievements as by whom they conquered and how. In referring to the particularities of a United Kingdom identity, where Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland contribute to blurred distinctions, Whannel points out, “the production [of natural belongingness] is not a neat unifying performance, but rather a process in which moments of apparent national unity have to be set against the divisions and tensions that may operate between national and local identities” (1998, 26). Beyond these divisions, conceptions of “otherness” also include those who might question the ideological foundations on which expressions of national identity are constructed. Indeed, the capacity for sporting stories, memories, and myths to unite is tempered by the very way in which they sometimes gloss over inequities and le-
gitimate dominant notions of a meritocratic or egalitarian society. Ultimately, the idea of national unity (through a common identity) is contradictory because national sporting identities can obscure internal (and very real) cultural and social divisions and the economic inequalities present in democratic societies.
SPORTS, NATIONAL IDENTITY, AND GLOBALIZATION A second level of analysis revolves around the visible challenges to national identity and the nation-state triggered by particular political, economic, and cultural social processes of globalization and an intensified sense of interconnectivity. Although scholars widely use the concept of globalization as a lens through which to analyze sport and national identity, they reach considerably different conclusions. The effects of globalization and the apparent declining importance of the nationstate feature prominently in recent analyses of national identity and sport. Some have argued, for example, that globalization has increasingly rendered the nation-state obsolete, particularly because of the heightened power of transnational corporations. Indeed, though nationalism clearly exists in conjunction with international sports, the boundaries and differences between national identities and corporate interests are becoming increasingly
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Aggressive fighting for the right is the greatest sport in the world. ■ THEODORE ROOSEVELT
blurred. For example, transnational corporations are increasingly sponsoring national sporting teams and appropriating national sporting identities in their global promotional campaigns: Nike sponsors the Brazilian soccer team, whereas Adidas sponsors the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. In this sense, national identity is being increasingly aligned with the interests of global corporations and consumption, such that sponsors often herald victories by “national” teams as conquests over rival transnational corporations. Such issues raise important questions about who “owns” and “controls” national identity. The notion of athletes as global migrant workers is another contemporary global political issue that indicates the permeation of national boundaries. In conjunction with the new international division of labor, the diversity and frequency of sporting labor migration patterns of athletes has increased substantially. Although highprofile athletes such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Martina Hingis are marketed to audiences around the world and have transnational celebrity appeal, borderless athletes routinely move between states, regions, and continents, raising important questions about the relevancy of national identity and national borders in the global sports arena. The degree to which their “host” countries embrace athletes varies substantially and can be closely tied to their sporting successes. In Canada, for example, European and Russian hockey players are still frequent targets of xenophobic and disparaging stereotypes by some cultural commentators who argue that skilled foreign players are incompatible with “Canadian values” of rugged toughness. In their totality, the impacts of globalization have often triggered identity crises within particular nations. This is particularly evident, for example, when a country loses in its “national game” in major international competitions, which effectively sets the stage for periods of national self-examination. In such instances, fans and citizens alike commonly retreat to the mists of nostalgic recollections of past sporting and national “victories.” Indeed, as Jackson and Ponic note, sporting crises serve “as a key site for the confirmation of a particular set of im-
ages, narratives, and social bodies upon which a selective social memory can be constructed” (2001, 59). Britain’s national identity, for example, is often argued to be “languishing” amid “dreams of an imperial past” because of processes of migration and competing nationalist claims from its “Celtic Fringe” (Tuck 2003). Meanwhile, in New Zealand, any loss by the All Blacks is regarded as a national crisis and greeted with intense anger, mourning, and nostalgic recollections of the rugged sporting legacy of the nation’s rugby team. In Canada, key sporting figures such as “The Great One” (Wayne Gretzky) have become standard bearers of “Canadianness” (Jackson 2001).
Sport and Popular Culture As an important part of popular culture, sport powerfully links “national symbols and myths of national character with the ordinary lives of people and with widely shared popular experiences” (Gruneau and Whitson 1993, 251). In this light, sport can advance feelings of national unity while paradoxically dismissing societal divisions along lines of class, race, language, religion, and gender. Consequently, the meanings of, and claims to expressions of sporting national identities are very much implicated in sustaining power and privilege within specific nations. Indeed, examining sport and national identity helps reveal the inevitable tensions and divisions of our collective identities as well as the contested nature of sport itself. Michael Sam and Jay Scherer See also Sport Politics
Further Reading Anderson, B. R. O. G. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Rev. and extended ed.). London, New York: Verso. Bairner, A. (2001). Sport, nationalism, and globalization: European and North American perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press. Blain, N., Boyle, R., & O’Donnell, H. (1993). Sport and national identity in the European media. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press. Coakley, J. (2001). Sport in society: Issues & controversies (7th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
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I gave it my body and mind, but I have kept my soul. ■ PHIL JACKSON
De Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (1999). The discursive construction of national identities. Discourse and Society, 10(2), 149–173. Gruneau, R. S., & Whitson, D. (1993). Hockey night in Canada: Sport, identities and cultural politics. Toronto, Canada: Garamond Press. Hobsbawm, E. J., & Ranger, T. O. (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire], New York: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, S. J. (2001). Gretzky nation: Canada, crisis and Americanization. In D. L. Andrews & S. J. Jackson (Eds.), Sport stars: The cultural politics of sporting celebrity (pp. 164–186). London, New York: Routledge. Jackson, S. J., & Ponic, P. (2001). Pride and prejudice: Reflecting on sport heroes, national identity, and crisis in Canada. In S. G.Wieting (Ed.), Sport and memory in North America (pp. 43–62). Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Jarvie, G. (1993). Sport, nationalism and cultural identity. In L. Allison (Ed.), The changing politics of sport (pp. 58–83). New York: Manchester University Press. Roche, M., Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences, & Chelsea School (University of Brighton) Research Centre. (Eds.). (1998). Sport, popular culture and identity. Aachen, Germany: Meyer & Meyer. Rowe, D., McKay, J., & Miller, T. (1998). Come together: Sport, nationalism, and the media image. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), Mediasport (pp. 119–133). London, New York: Routledge. Smith, A., & Porter, D. (2004). Sport and national identity in the postwar world. London, New York: Routledge. Tuck, J. (2003). The men in white: Reflections on rugby union, the media and Englishness. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(2), 177–199. Whannel, G. (1998). Individual stars and collective identities in media sport. In M. Roche (Ed.), Sport, popular culture and identity (pp. 23– 36). Aachen, Germany: Meyer & Meyer.
Sport as Religion
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s it possible to regard sport as a religion? Based on similar yet different definitions of religion, the answer is yes. The institution of sport is more than humans interacting in a playful manner; rather it is a civic religion, a social institution. According to French sociologist Emile Durkheim “religion is the tie that binds a collectivity together—it transforms the objects and activities of everyday life into the sacred. Planned gatherings paradoxically generate spontaneous expressions of group enthusiasm, even hysteria that bind the individual with the assembly” (cited in Mazur & McCarthy 2001, 124). Applying this theory to football, fan participation becomes a religious experience as denominations or team
supporters unite in chants and cheers, expressing their group enthusiasm. Using Durkheim’s definition, sport is, indeed, a religion. Sporting events unite athletes and spectators in a unique community in which sacred rituals and morals are reinforced. During sporting events congregational members are encouraged to express emotions through chants and songs. Clifford Geertz states that religion’s role is to shape the social order, to guide and shape behaviors (1973, 119). Again using football, athletes and fans learn favorable social behavior through rules and regulations. The structure of football demands dedication, with players executing their individual roles within the collective. A football team’s success depends on individuals working together to achieve a common goal. If each member acted independently chaos would arise. Sport congregations apply the social behavior of teamwork to everyday situations. The concept of sport as a religion is not new. In fact, the Olympics were originally portrayed as a religious event, a sacred festival of games and sport. Flags, drums, dances, songs/chants, and feasts all accompanied ancient religious/sport rituals. During these religious events, “the drummers beat their drums like those possessed and this it was believed signified the presence of the spirits who were the determinants in the results of the contest” (Obare 2003, 1). These same ancient rituals are present in modern sporting events, especially football tailgating. At weekend football services, college bands are entrusted to ignite the congregation and raise spirits through the beating of drums and blowing of horns. Charles Prebish (1993) likens the ritual of tailgating to that of eighteenth-century evangelical tent revivals, in which followers temporarily congregated and formed “pop-up” communities. Every college football weekend fans congregate in mobile homes and recreational vehicles and form these quasi minicommunities. The congregation reminisces over past glories and looks forward to future triumphs. Each new generation learns traditions of breaking bread as well as kinship/fellowship from the previous generation. Researcher Ruphine Obare (2003, 1) defines religion as “human beings relation to that which they re-
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gard as holy, sacred, spiritual, divine . . . worship is probably the most basic element of religion.” Obare regards sport as a natural religion because it reflects rituals, symbols, and a desire for perfection. Concurring with Obare, Coakley believes “sports are natural religions. All things human are proper to them—in sports, we meet our humanity. Assuming one begins with limited hopes, there is more to admire in sports—and in our humanity, and in our nation than to despise” (2001, 314).
Sport as Alternative Civil Religion There are two main reasons the religion of sport is significant to American culture. The first is simply offering an alternative civil religion, while the second consists of palpable implications within American society. Bellah classifies civil religion as a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals: “certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share. These . . . provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere” (Bellah et al. 1987, 3). Despite making distinction between civil religion and denominational religions, Bellah’s civil religion is closely linked to Protestantism throughout the nineteenth century. Some researchers argue that certain aspects of sport actually reflect the Protestant ethic of building strong moral worth through sacrifice and pain, one of the basic foundations of sport religion. To Geertz, religion (even a civil religion) provides meaning to an objective reality, which produces generational worldview or culture. Religious beliefs and practices, Geertz said, “represent a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs” (1966, 3). This theory is applicable to sport. For example, business ideology as portrayed through rhetoric involving individuals working together as a “team” to achieve a “common goal” exemplifies this theory. Although Bellah’s civil religion refers to America’s devotion to itself, his ideology can be applied to America’s love of sports. The functions of this civil religion include instilling proper respect for authority, stressing moral values, and the hard-work ethic.
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Milton Yinger (1963) suggests that these quasi religions are formed to compensate for traditional churches’ inability to achieve unity among groups with different values. Peter Berger suggests that a socially constructed world (a religion) “directs, sanctions, controls, and punishes individual conduct” (1967, 11). Rules and regulations within sports resemble this very same theology/ ideology. Sport teaches a “respect for limits and laws and rules—and the lust to develop the art of doing things perfectly” (Prebish 1993, 163). In other words, sport builds a fundamentally strong character base that is applicable to everyday life. The search for perfection becomes a self-transcendental journey. Berger refers to this journey as a religious phenomenon, one that is socially self-transcendent. In addition, Berger believes that religion “is a humanly constructed universe of meaning, and this construction is undertaken by linguistic means” (1967, 175). The nature of sport generates and constructs communities in which a unique language (or sports lingo) is used to both define and explain its society as well as the outside world. Expressions originating within sports such as “hitting below the belt,” “taking one for the team,” “spoilsport,” and “team player” translate to everyday life and help define certain actions and behaviors. Common use of football terminologies such as “offside,” “fumble,” or “time out” demonstrates the practical application of this religious theory. Members interweave these expressions and apply them to everyday life. Football creates a unique terminology that combines sign language with oral communication. Sport impacts our understanding of fair play and integrity, thus helping to shape the social order. Through rules and regulations, sport reinforces a reliance on a higher authority and a type of submission to a controlled social order. Again, using football as an example, the referee has ultimate say in determining fair play or settling disputes, thus reiterating this civil religion’s goal of instilling proper respect for authority. Sport resembles religion in the sense that both are organized institutions with disciplines and liturgies, stressing moral values of heart and soul. Sport as a social
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Sport as Religion Worshiping at the “Church of Sports” If there is a universal popular religion in America, it is to be found within the institution of sports. . . . Many Americans worship at the church of sports. Services are held for each personal belief, whether it be football, racing, golf, or driving. Prebish, C. S. (1993). Religion and sport: The meeting of sacred and profane (p. 57). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
institution, like religion, uses codes to guide moral conduct, which ultimately results in a deeper respect for authority. The religion of sport transcends the individual, thus molding and impacting personalities. Individuals or members identify themselves with certain characteristics or traits belonging to their beloved sport/team. This identification is especially true when devotion begins as a child. “By being born into the clan or raised a fan of a particular team, the individual is constituted by identification with the totemic symbol of the group” (Mazur & McCarthy 2001, 127). For example, Chicago Cub fans have endured years of disappointment resulting in a sense of hopefulness, a belief that this could be the year, which sets them apart from other team supporters (with the exception of Boston Red Sox fans before October 2004). In other words, one could argue that Cub fans are bred to endure pain and disappointment, making them more forgiving and more optimistic. Teaching endurance from generation to generation complies with Geertz’s traditional aspect of what constitutes a religion.
Religion and Sport Reflect Society Religion functions as a reflection of society, defining rules and explaining norms. Geertz argued that anywhere norms or models of society and/or models for behaving in society exist there is religion. If Geertz is right and religious motives are “liabilities to perform particular classes of act or have particular classes of feelings” (1973, 97), then emotional sporting rituals
such as chanting and festive tailgating classify sport as religion. According to Geertz, religious motives stimulate moods, which trigger certain behaviors. Sacred symbols then ignite moods ranging from “exultation to melancholy, from self-confidence to self-pity” (1973, 97). Depending on loyalty or devotion to a particular team or sport, symbols like the Stanley Cup, the Lombardi Trophy, or a World Series ring can either exhilarate or depress individuals. In addition, the playing of sporting anthems rekindles deep emotional ties, further uniting the individual with the sport community. This rekindling of emotions is especially true in regard to collegiate football anthems.Whether it’s the sound of “The Victory March” or the “Texas Fight” song, either the Notre Dame Stadium or Darrell K. Royal Stadium ignites in unified exuberance with fans rejoicing while partaking in the festivities. One consciously chooses a set of beliefs and attitudes that affect one’s behavior, or one’s spirituality. Eric Mazur and Kate McCarthy (2001) believe that a spiritual person seeks these beliefs, values, and practices to enhance their life and provide a sense of responsibility and orientation. According to researchers James Frey and D. Stanley Eitzen (1991) religion has several roles including emphasizing asceticism, repetition, and developing character. Institutional sports, especially American football, American baseball, and hockey possess these very qualities. Through self-denial and selfdiscipline, athletes learn to endure pain and to place the team above all. Common male expressions like “buck up” or “no pain, no gain” demonstrate the infiltration of this sport ideology into everyday life. Athletes seeking perfection through repetition set an example of good character for the rest of the congregation (or fans). According to Putney, and Frey and Eitzen, these same positive values of self-discipline, sportsmanship, a hard work ethic, and goal attainment through competition help qualify sport as religion. As found in traditional religions, sport relies on symbols, language, and rituals to both maintain order and help explain events of everyday life. According to Coakley, “the rituals of sport engage more people in a shared
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The ruins of ancient Olympia in 2003, a site associated with both sport and religion.
experience than any other institution or cultural activity today” (2001, 1). As early as the late 1800s Americans relied on sporting rituals to help promote moral values. In 1887, based on sports rituals, Luther Gulick transformed the YMCA’s goal of saving souls to building character. As a YMCA philosopher and director of physical training, Gulick believed that sport taught moral values of body, mind, and spirit, and through sport, people could tone and perfect their human character. Today’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ mission of using athletics to “impact the world for Jesus Christ” through values of integrity, service, teamwork, and excellence is based on this same principle. Routines and disciplines found in sport strengthen personal character. A stronger moral foundation/character better prepares an individual to combat everyday trials. When combating an aggressive opponent, football conditions defensive players to dig in, to remain tough and hold the line. In everyday situations, this conditioning translates to determination and perseverance both in the work force and within personal relationships. Through sport, children learn basic skills such as cooperation, self-esteem, altruism, loyalty, self-control, and obedience. Researchers Margaret Gatz, Michael Messner, and Sandra Rokeach argue that values and skills learned through sport help children develop so-
cially and emotionally, and further serve to prepare an individual for the rest of life. Sport teaches acceptance of authority and initiates youth in routines. In this manner, sport becomes a transmitter, translating societal goals or meanings from one generation to the next. Sport becomes a “symbolic liaison” that Berger refers to as an “ancient lineage [that is] grounded in the very antiquity of kinship institutions” (1967, 132). Sport, like religion, binds communities together. Sport educates society in responsibility and selfcontrol through its “demands for fairness and chivalry which must be respected even in the face of the strongest aggression” (Guttmann 1978, 130). According to Edwards and Coakley, sport shares numerous essential features of religion including formal statement of beliefs, testimonies that bring fullness and satisfaction to life, saints (or idolized people), ruling patriarchs (coaches), hierarchal/high council (NCAA or referees), reliance on scribes (records and journalists), seekers of the kingdom (fans), shrines and/or cathedrals, and symbols of the faith (trophies/souvenirs). Like traditional religions, sport provides structure and an opportunity for religious expression. This religious expression provides a chance to step outside of one’s daily routine and become part of the collective, especially through chants. Durkheim refers to this impetuous passionate release as “corrobbori” (as cited in Mazur & McCarthy 2001, 125). Sport is catharsis in that it “allows the release of emotions in a range of behavior including pre-game levity, frenzied cheering during the game, and post-game carousing” (Guttmann 1978, 134). In this community, “post modern religious expression is once removed, vicariously experienced by those who observe the ‘religious’ ritual. Spectating, therefore,
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Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand. ■ LEO DUROCHER
replaces participating” (Mazur & McCarthy 2001, 129). Fans, however, individually symbolize their faith through pennants, emblems, flags, hats, and whatever best characterizes the glory of their team (Prebish 1993, 67). During the sporting event (or service) members restate their belief by submitting to the hierarchal codes and rules. The sport congregation participates with both rookies (novices) and veterans (ordained clergy) as “pilgrims travel hundred of miles to witness a game [and invoke] traditional hallowed chants. Instead of salvation and redemption, the goal is now collective victory” (Rudin 1972, 384). Sports pages become sacred scrolls, read in daily devotions along with viewing ESPN. Applying researcher Catherine Abanese’s four components of religion adds validity to the claim that sport is, indeed, a religion (as cited in Prebish 1993). Abanese’s first component, creed, is defined as the shared viewpoints of a group. To some extent athletes, coaches, and supporters/fans define sport through their belief or viewpoint of its existence and/or meaning. Abanese bases her second component, code, on rules and regulations, which guide or govern this belief. Strictly enforced guidelines and rules define sport. Whether you are an athlete or a spectator, either ignoring or blatantly disrespecting rules will result in your expulsion or denial from participating in the game (or service). For example, hockey penalizes breaking the rule of high sticking with time in the penalty box, denying the “sinner” the glory of joining in the service.Third, Abanese gauges religion by cultus—or its ceremonies/rituals and tradition. Whether it is the singing of the national anthem, the traditional seventhinning rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Wrigley Field, or the official tossing of a coin at the beginning of a football game, ceremonies and traditions are mainstays in modern sport. Last, Abanese defines religion through community. Again, sport fits this criterion through its creation of unique communities that exist solely through sports and sporting events.Through hope and anticipation in their quest for victory/perfection, fans and athletes become emotionally united. According to Prebish (1993, 65), sport is a festive communion creating solidarity between players and fans.
Sport creates a second type of family or community, a support system, in which meaning and morals are shared and learned. Researcher Michael Novak believes football is such a community. “The liturgy of a football game is, indeed, a communal and statewide worship service, with a unitary cosmic scheme” (1988, 235). Mazur and McCarthy liken the passions of football to religious ritual. “Football doesn’t have just a incidental kinship of faith. On the contrary, football is fundamentally connected to religion” (Mazur & McCarthy 2001, 124). As in football, the community of baseball poses religious qualities, which include the American principles of merit and fair play. “The national game promotes respect for proper authority, self-confidence, fairmindedness, quick judgment and self-control” (Guttmann 1978, 96). In addition, sport possesses a messianic-millenarian ideology. Berger defines messianic-millenarian theodicy by “relativizing the suffering or injustice of the present in terms of their being overcome in a glorious future” (1967, 69). In this sense, players and fans look for redemption in the upcoming season. Again, Chicago Cub fans’ infamous expression “Wait till next year” exemplifies this type of “hopeful” redemption ideology. Sport religion maintains a type of optimistic ideology in which hope springs eternal. The ending of each sport season wipes the slate clean and provides a chance to start anew, rekindling hope for a better season, a better tomorrow.
What Does It Mean? So, what does this all mean? This form of civil religion has far-reaching implications. According to Barna Research, 66 percent of Americans polled contend that traditional religion is losing its influence in society. Supporting this theory, research also indicates a decrease in traditional church attendance. In fact, researchers Kirk Hadaway, Penny Long Marler, and Mark Chaves believe the “church attendance rate is one-half what everyone thinks it is” (1993, 750). And according to a study by the University of Michigan, the percentage rate of Americans who attend a weekly church service is forty-four. In some instances, devotion to sport has replaced or overpowered devotion to traditional religion. For example, the Dallas
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Sport as Religion Racing and the Supernatural This description of a racing ritual of the Dogon people of Maili points to the often close association between sports and religion. In the Ogols, a race was arranged between the Anakyê sanctuary and a point on the border of Lower Ogol. The route thus ran through the field between the two villages in the hollow where the baobabs were. The man with the torch started from the sanctuary, and ran down the slope through the stubble-fields, shaking his brand and scattering a shower of sparks and embers. For the smith in heaven dropped some of his fire as he ran, picked it up with his crook, and continued to run, losing it and picking it up again. On reaching the border of Lower Ogol the runner turned and ran back to the sanctuary, from which he at once started out again. This performance was repeated three times, and all the time the two masks pursued the fugitive brandishing a knife. They sym-
Cowboy legendary coach Tom Landry confessed late in his career, “football had been my religion for decades” (Mattingly 1996). Whether this devotion is made consciously or unconsciously depends on the individual. Bellah argues that people “are coming to depend less on established social sources of denominationalism and more on binding ties between the moral outlook and way of life to which persons actually hold” (Bellah et al. 1987, 326). As early as 1961, researcher Bernard Lazerwitz investigated the impact of societal forces on variations in church attendance. Recent community trends of holding children’s sporting events such as soccer on Sunday leads one to believe that sport is having an impact on church attendance. Unlike strict past guidelines, which discouraged the scheduling of youth sporting events on Sundays, modern trends appear to place sporting events above traditional religious events. Just a short time ago, professional players like Sandy Koufax honored blue laws by refusing to pitch on the Sabbath, an ideology that today’s societal standard would consider ridiculous. Blue laws are state or local ordinances that prohibit certain activi-
bolized the two thunderbolts launched by the Nummo against the guilty smith, and they never caught up with the torch-bearer till, at the end of the third course, he regained the sanctuary. He had by then made the complete circuit three times brandishing his torch all the while. ‘These three courses,’ said Ogotemmêli, ‘recall the flight of the smith and his search for a way into the celestial granary, where he could hide the embers.’ For in this ritual the circular Anakyê sanctuary represented the celestial granary. The pursuit ended when a smith scanned the rock and beat upon it with the iron of his anvil. And the live fire, pursued by the two dead fires, gave life again to the hearths of this world as well as to the blackened logs which protect the crops and the fruit of the trees. Source: Griaule, M. (1965). Conversations with Ogotemmêli (pp. 196). London: Published for the International African Institute by the Oxford University Press.
ties, like sports or drinking, on Sunday. Economics played a key role in overturning blue laws regarding professional sports. For instance, in 1933, after much heated debate, Philadelphia overturned its blue law regarding professional baseball to help promote the local economy. Social rather than economic desires guide today’s Sunday scheduling of youth sporting events. As mentioned earlier, sport’s influence among society includes several aspects of traditional religion. To offset growing social desires to partake in sporting events, churches have altered the timing of religious events. Numerous traditional denominations have altered Sunday services to accommodate sport congregations’ need to witness the kickoff. In addition to impacting religious schedules, sport has infiltrated religious architecture. For instance, a stained-glass window at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York is devoted to sports. According to the then-reigning bishop, “A well played game is as pleasing to God as a beautiful service of worship” (Farrelly 1997). Another main area of sport permeation is religious sermons. Perhaps the
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best example of this is Father Edward Rupp’s prayer before an all-star hockey game: Heavenly Father, Divine Goalie, we come before You this evening to seek Your blessing. We are, thanks to You, AllStars. We pray tonight for Your guidance. Keep us free from actions that would put us in the Sin Bin of Hell. Inspire us to avoid the pitfalls of our profession. Help us to stay within the blue line of Your commandments and the red line of Your grace. Protect us from being injured by the puck of pride. May we be ever delivered from the high stick of dishonesty. May the wings of your angels play at the right and left of our teammates. May You always be the Divine Center of our team, and when our summons comes for eternal retirement to the heavenly grandstand, may we find you ready to give us the everlasting bonus of a permanent seat in your coliseum. Finally, grant us the courage to skate without tripping, to run without icing, and to score the goal that really counts—the one that makes us a winner, a champion, an All-Star in the hectic Hockey Game of Life. Amen!! (Sammons 2002, 2)
The Future Sport is not a religion in the traditional theological sense, but rather civilly. As stated earlier, sport is a social institution that not only educates, but also provides structure and moral support for its members. This research indicates, therefore, that sport does, indeed, possess qualities and characteristics that coincide with religious ideology. Whether one is participating as an athlete or as a fan/spectator, sport has the ability to transcend an individual to a supernatural level of existence. As Charles Prebish notes (1993, 210): “What it all boils down to is this: if sports can bring its advocates to an experience of the ultimate, and this experience is expressed through a formal series of public and private rituals requiring a symbolic language and space deemed sacred by its worshipers then it is both proper and necessary to call sport itself a religion.” Mary Lou Sheffer See also Prayer; Religion; Rituals
Further Reading Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. M. (Eds.). (1987). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. New York: Harper & Row. Benne, R. (2002). Religion in sport. Journal of Lutheran Ethics. Retrieved January 28, 2005, from http://www.elca.org/jle/articles/ contemporary _ issues/article.benne _ robert _ 02.html. Berger, P. L. (1967). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Burstyn, V. (1999). The rites of men: Manhood, politics, and the culture of sport. Toronto, ON, & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press. Coakley, J. (2001). Sport in society: Issues and controversies (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Edwards, H. (1973). Sociology of Sports. Homewood, IL: Dorsey. Farrelly, C. (1997). The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Retrieved January 28, 2005, from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ medny/stjohn1.html. Fellowship of Christian Athletes. (1954). Statement of Faith. Retrieved January 28, 2005, from http://www.fca.org/aboutfca Frey, J., & Eitzen, D. S. (1991). Sports and society. Annual Review of Sociology, 17, 503–522. Gatz, M., Messner, M. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2002). Paradoxes of youth and sport. Albany: State University of New York. Geertz, C. (1966). Religion as a cultural system. In M. Banton (Ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (pp. 1–46). London: Tavistock. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic. Guttmann, A. (1978). From ritual to record. New York: Columbia University Press. Hadaway, C. K., Marler, P. L., & Chaves, M. (1993). What the polls don’t show: A closer look at U.S. church attendance. American Sociological Review, 78(6), 741–752. Hoffman, S. J. (1996). Sport and Religion. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Lazerwitz, B. (1961). Some factors associated with variations in church attendance. Social Forces, 39(4), 301–309. Mattingly, T. (1996). The religion of American sports. Gospelcom.net. Retrieved January 28, 2005, from http://tmatt.gospelcom.net/ column/1996/01/24/. Mazur, E. M., & McCarthy, K. (Eds.). (2001). God in the details: American religion in popular culture. New York: Routledge. Novak, M. (1988). The joy of sports: End zones, bases, baskets, balls, and the consecration of the American spirit. Lanham, MD: Hamilton. Obare, R. S. (2003). Can sports exist without religion? Sheffield University, UK. Retrieved January 28, 2005, from http://www.shef. ac.uk/socst/Shop/obare.pdf Prebish, C. S. (1993). Religion and sport: The meeting of sacred and profane. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Putney, C. (2001). Muscular Christianity: Manhood and sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reilly, R. (2004). Let us pray/play. Sports Illustrated, 100(17), 172. Rudin, J. (1972). America’s new religion. The Christian Century, p. 384. Sammons, D. (2002). Sports as religion. Retrieved from www.mduuc. org/PDFs/2002 _ sermons/sports _ as _ religion.pdf Thomas, M. C., & Flippen, C. C. (1972). American civil religion: An empirical study. Social Forces, 51(2), 218–225. University of Michigan. (1997). Study of worldwide rates of religiosity, church attendance. Retrieved January 28, 2005, from http://www. umich.edu/news/?Releases/1997/Dec97/chr121097a
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Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense. ■ LEWIS MUMFORD Warrington, B. (2001). The fight for Sunday baseball in Philadelphia. Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society. Retrieved January 28, 2005, from http://philadelphiaathletics.org/history/sundaybaseball.html. Wimberley, R. C., Clelland, D. A., Hood,T. C., & Lipsey, C. M. (1976).The civil religious dimension: Is it there? Social Forces, 54(4), 890–900. Yinger, M. J. (1963). Sociology looks at religion. New York: Macmillan.
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he world of sport in the age of mass media has been transformed from amateur recreational participation to spectator-centered business. The commercial incentives for sport to cooperate with television, film, radio, newspaper, and magazine to consistently expand the “spectacle” aspects of the event are ever increasing. Much more is at stake than material gain, however; the players and fans depend on sport as spectacle for esteem, honor, dignity, identity, and status. Today’s sporting spectacle presents an encompassing drama: actors, ritual, plot, production, masculinity, rage, pride, chance, and social message are all brilliantly choreographed in the sport spectacular. For the committed fan (derived, indeed, from the word “fanatic”) winning produces overwhelming exhilaration, defeat, deep depression.Yet even in defeat there is always hope for the next game or season. Fans and players become inseparable actors in the same drama.
Early Spectator Entertainment Evidence for organized sporting events can be traced to Egyptian culture as far back as 5200 BCE; however, evidence for sport spectatorship is extant only from the first century BCE. The Grecian Olympic Games were the first to offer dimensions of spectator entertainment as well as opportunities for civic and religious ceremonies. Grecian appreciation of athletic grace was soon to be usurped by the spread of the Roman Empire and the accompanying appetite for sport spectacles laden with violence, such as gladiator matches
and chariot races. The attendance records for Roman sporting events remained unchallenged until the period of the industrial revolution. As families moved into the cities, leisure time increased, and this, combined with concomitant developments in transportation and communication technology, allowed spectators to bond as a community and develop regional rivalries while regularly visiting distant stadiums and keeping track of “their” teams.
Impact of Technology on Spectator Sport In the mid-1800s, the steamboat and railway networks, soon followed by the electric streetcar, opened up the city to suburban areas, carrying sport crowds (and players) to horse races, baseball games, football matches, and intercollegiate rowing events. When Thomas A. Edison developed the incandescent bulb in 1879, he inaugurated a new era in the social nightlife of the metropolis. Within a few years sport arenas with electric lighting were hosting night games. The advent and expansion of use of the telegraph, newspapers, and radio during this same period fostered, for the first time, sport reporting and spectator following of distant, even international sport. As technology advanced, pictures of sporting events were added to newspaper articles; the still camera, a precursor to the video camera and televised sport, was first to provide visual information to millions of remote fans. With the broad democratization of television and televised sports in the 1960s, thousands of enthusiasts never had to leave their homes to take in a sporting event. The Internet, of course, has further complicated and fragmented the sport spectator experience. Beginning with the 2001 Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series, audiences could express their approval or disapproval of team managers’ decisions during the game via the Internet. Today every MLB game can be downloaded upon its completion, so fans are able to relive new and classic ballgames at any time. Sport spectatorship is inextricably linked to technology development.
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In contemporary Western society, sport is a spectacle in three noteworthy ways. Sport is (1) a public performance of a large scale or impressive nature, such as the grand exhibitions of the Olympic Games; (2) a regrettable public display, as in the deplorable behavior of destructive international soccer fans; and (3) a commodity, a tool of pacification, depoliticization, and “massification,” exemplified by professional football’s commercially exploitative Super Bowl.
SPORT AS AN IMPRESSIVE TELEVISED PERFORMANCE The transition to large-scale, extraordinary sport spectacles is directly connected to the widespread popularity of televised sport, which got underway in the United States the afternoon of 17 May 1939, when the first televised baseball game was put on the air by NBC. The picture impulses of a game between Princeton and Columbia University from Columbia’s Baker Field marked the beginning of a romance between the new medium and sport. Until the perfection of color television, slow motion, and replay shots in the 1960s, team sports could not easily be conveyed on the small screen and therefore constituted a small portion of network budgets and program time. When ABC decided to
The remains of the entrance way to the stadium in Olympia, Greece, the site of the ancient Olympics. During the Greek period, the Olympics were organized in honor of the Greek god Zeus, with a major temple on the site built in his honor.
make sport a centerpiece of its programming, other corporations had no choice but to follow, and an all-out war between networks for supremacy in sport television ensued. In the 1980s “superstations” employing transmission satellites also joined in the fray. The moguls of sport quickly began to package their games as even greater spectacles so they would be more appealing to television audiences. The National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) expanded their playoff formats so that sixteen teams (more than two-thirds) reach the championship tournaments. Halftime periods have been shortened so that television audiences will be more likely to stay tuned, and prearranged schedules of time-outs have been added to football, basketball, and hockey games to make time for commercials.
The Good and the Bad Even in the televised sport age, the anticipation of actually attending a sport stadium adds immeasurably to the excitement, evidenced by continued sellout crowds at Pakistan’s Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, the Dallas Mavericks American Airlines Center, or Manchester United’s
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Old Trafford. Once at the stadium, the sharing of emotions with other fans heightens the intensity of the experience. On one hand television cheapened and trivialized the spectator experience. Too many seasons, games, teams, and “big plays” have diluted the poignancy and potency of the sporting experience and have diminished the capacity of sport to furnish heroes, release people from the ennui of daily life, and bind communities. Television contributed to the rise of a new set of sporting ideals: nationalism, sportsmanship, and civility were replaced by self-indulgence, win-at-all-costs attitudes, and supremacy of commercial interests. On the other hand, television broadened and deepened the drama of the spectacle by stimulating an even broader audience, offering an exciting narrative text that begins long before the game, framing meaning, and setting a tone that hypes the contests and specifies the conflicts worthy of conjecture. Close-up, slowmotion, and replay shots add to the appreciation of beautifully executed plays, and many fans now prefer to watch sport on television instead of being in the stands because, ironically, they feel closer to their heroes. For instance, in the sport of soccer, the Premier League’s David Beckham not only scores goals and brings fame to his team, but televised sport has also helped him branch out into films (Bend It like Beckham) and product endorsements (Adidas, Marks and Spencer, and Gillette), bringing him into contact with his devoted fans more and more often. Made-for-media grand-scale spectacles, such as the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games or the National Football League’s (NFL) Super Bowl halftime show, have large television audiences and are only indirectly related to sport.
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spectacle, flames surrounded her as a choir sang and deafening orange fireworks illuminated Sydney’s sky. The spectacle was the grandest of opening ceremonies to that date and had significant political implications given the Australian government’s political relationship with the Aboriginal people.
SUPERBOWL No one at first expected the Super Bowl to far exceed all other sport spectacles in the size of its domestic audience (140 million people). In the twenty-first century nearly one billion people worldwide are routinely expected to view the exhibitions that the NFL and its advertisers have in mind. Advertisers use the broadcast as a way to roll out new products and pay over $2 million for a thirty-second commercial spot. The highlight is always the halftime show, and the 2004 version was the most spectacular and controversial yet. The finale was a duet with American celebrity recording artists Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, during which Jackson’s breast was (un)intentionally exposed. The sensationalism and shock value achieved was directly in line with the goals of the sport/media complex.
Sport as a Violent, Sexist Spectacle Sport is also a spectacle in the sense of being a regrettable display. As the task of attracting a sufficiently large audience to satisfy advertisers becomes more and more challenging, “mediatized” sport has wrought two negative features: (1) increased violence associated with (male) professional sport on the field, court, and rink; in the stands; and at home, and (2) the entrenchment of the trivialization of women’s sporting accomplishments, sexualization of women’s bodies, and overall subordination of women’s roles.
OLYMPIC GAMES Pageantry, political rhetoric, and showbiz extravaganzas now characterize today’s grand-scale sporting events. In September 2000 Australian Olympian Cathy Freeman, an Aborigine, carried the Olympic torch for its last leg up toward a vast waterfall before she ignited the cauldron. In an extraordinarily intricate and dangerous
INCREASING VIOLENCE In the game, brutal tactics have led to an epidemic injury rate in football, and similar license in other sports (hockey and basketball) has been well documented. More often, activities that lead to the temporary incapacitation, knockout, or injury of competitors are the norm.
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Sport as Spectacle An Ethiopian Horse Sport “The game of gugs is based on warfare, but where a cavalryman carried two spears, a light one for throwing, and a heavier job for infighting, the gouks [gugs] player uses only light wood wands. The object is for members of one team to gallop off followed by the others who are supposed to hit them with their wands, either by hurling at them or by catching up and hitting them. Those being pursued are protected with traditional circular shields in hippo or rhinoceros hide, some covered with coloured velvet and decorated with gold and silver. As they tear away across the plain, they may dodge, hang off the horse or ward off with the shield. The riders are often in traditional costume, or at any rate the cloak and gold-fringed lion or baboon headdress!!” Source: Baker, W. J., & Mangan , J. A. (1987) Sport in Africa—Essays in social history (p. 226). New York: Africana Publishing Company.
Mindless acts of violence intricately tied to win-at-anycost ethics and retribution have led to player indictments. For instance, in 2004 National Hockey League play, the Vancouver Canucks’ Todd Burtuzzi attacked the Colorado Avalanche’s Steve Moore from behind. Moore suffered a concussion and a fractured neck. Burtuzzi was indicted for assault causing bodily harm and plead guilty. In the stands, fan violence can be deadly. For at least two decades there has been a widespread tendency for English fans to be castigated for aggressive behavior, drunkenness, and open displays of xenophobia and racism. Spectators have cursed, yelled racial slurs, given death threats, and thrown objects onto the field. During Euro 2000, disappointment turned to violence in Charleroi, France, as supporters of the English team brought terror to the streets following a loss, resulting in 850 arrests. And in one of the most grotesque displays of human belligerence, over three hundred people were killed and one thousand injured in a Lima, Peru, soccer riot in 1964. Fans may feel so invested in the drama of sport and nationalism that losses become too painful to bear.
Empirical evidence supports the appeal of sport violence. One recent study found that more (perceived) violence in football matches led to greater enjoyment, so in addition to actual hostility between players, emphasis by commentators on athletes’ antagonisms augments audience enjoyment. Another study discovered that watching televised sport at home was connected to seemingly senseless and brutal attacks on the female partners of fans.
SEXISM Feminist sport critics who study the portrayal of female athletes in the mass media reveal the degree to which the sport media contribute to the oppression of marginalized groups, particularly women, by reinforcing “natural” sex differences through representations of sports that privilege and empower men over women. Female athletes are more often celebrated if they play “feminine” sports, those that depict females in aesthetically pleasing motions and poses, often emphasizing the erotic physicality of the female body with tight bodices and short skirts (e.g., gymnastics, tennis, and figure skating). Skating emphasizes artistry over athleticism, and its use of grace, music, and costume have a culturally influenced gender appeal designed to attract and sustain female viewers and titillate male viewers. International tennis sensation Anna Kournikova is one of many female athletes better known for her modeling career than on-court achievement. The spectacle of sport allows her to earn more in endorsements than any other female player, despite her indifferent performances, while women who have won recognized tennis tournaments on the international circuit gain much less income and attention. In mainstream sports women also play passive, supporting roles and conform to patriarchal standards of sport and femininity. Scantily clad female models (car racing), cheerleaders (gridiron football), or half-time dancers (basketball) secure a large audience of men by creating an atmosphere of hegemonic masculinity. Many more women are absent from televised sport because they are prevented from participating or because
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their sports are not considered sufficient audience draws and are therefore not promoted through mainstream media. Despite the fact that women’s athletic participation in modern-day Olympic Games exceeds their participation in any other major sporting event, a sexist ideology persists in the media which highlights and reinforces the supposedly natural differences between males and females and overwhelmingly favors men’s participation as they compete separately in the same sport (e.g., downhill skiing) or in sex-exclusive sports, such as synchronized swimming and softball (women) or boxing (men). Professional female athletes receive disproportionately less television, radio, and magazine coverage than their male counterparts. The sport spectacle in the twentieth century has given men an arena in which to create and reinforce an ideology of male superiority. The quintessential example of a violent, sexist, “mediatized” sporting spectacle is the pseudosport of professional wrestling. While discounted as a genuine sport by most, professional wrestling has evolved into a culturally powerful multimedia complex. Specifically, professional wrestling’s mandate is to excite audiences via contrived and hyperviolent athletic competition and to portray “hot babes of wrestling” as sexy props on the margins of the men’s matches or against each other in titillating showcases of “raw feminine energy.” It teaches lessons about masculinity and femininity to massive audiences who tune in for both sport and theater. The World Wrestling Federation, New Japan Pro Wrestling and Australian Wrestling Federation have prospered because they offer entertainment consistent with the entrenched interests of the sport/media/commercial complex.
Sport as a Commercially Exploitative Spectacle Finally, as a tool of “massification” and pacification, spectator sports appear to provide escape from the pressures or banality of the work world; however, patrons are subsequently trapped by corporations, which use sports as commodities to fuel desires, stimulate de-
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mands, and create new needs, essentially creating more work. Despite the fact that athletes’ performances can be breathtaking, a race won or a ninth-inning base hit hair-raising, these aspects of the spectacle are considered a “free lunch” or bonus of the commodity spectacle, which is one created purely for its market value; sport serves the purpose of providing audiences for advertisers. The strategic vision of using sport programming (produced cheaply and transferred easily across cultural and linguistic borders) to reach new international audiences is being aggressively shared by a growing number of media organizations: Eurosport, Sky, ESPN, Fox, and Japan Sports Channel, to name a few. The competition to secure the rights for seasons and finales has intensified to unprecedented levels of financial investment on the part of media outlets. For instance, BBC pays £105 million for the rights to Saturday and Sunday night Premier league highlights; Fox acquired the rights to MLB baseball’s playoffs, World Series, and All-Star Game for $417 million per year; and NBC pays $2.2 billion for rights to broadcast the Olympics.
RACISM Creating a “big-time sport” spectacle has led to big drug abuse, big recruiting briberies, and big academic cheating among major American colleges. Along this loathsome byway, the black athlete has been especially misused. The belief that people with dark skin are driven by brawn rather than brains was used to justify colonization and exploitation during slavery and continues today to justify manipulation and exploitation in “mediatized” sport. In the NFL and NBA the majority of the workers are black; yet the majority of the owners, administrators, league presidents, and network executives are white and make millions of dollars more than the average player. Many black athletes, although recognizing that pro sports are akin to slavery, refuse to let go of their share of the pie. Inflated contracts are confused with achievement and the end of racism, and audiences and athletes alike have been pacified and depoliticized. Some argue that greed has changed the spectacle into a circus. On the other hand, without
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Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting. ■ GEORGE ORWELL
media coverage and the considerable amounts of money paid by advertisers and corporations, the popularity and revenue-generating potential of commercial spectator sports would be seriously limited. Even without ever visiting a stadium, dedicated fanatics can experience the unpredictable drama, human transcendence, and joys of performance through newspapers’ daily sports pages, television and radio broadcasts, and Internet updates.
The Future Communication technologies have raised sport spectatorship more than a thousand-fold. Multichannel directsatellite services, and Internet sports give fanatics the ability to choose from numerous live sporting events any time games are being played, anywhere in the world. With increased awareness of sport-related violence and discrimination against women and black athletes, sporting spectacles will become increasingly more humane and fair, but the almighty dollar still reigns, and the media will continue to provide the type of spectacle that will maintain the biggest audience. The Western sport spectacle has been completely revolutionized in under a century and is now transmitted to and imitated by nations worldwide. Janelle Joseph See also Olympics, Summer; Olympics, Winter
Further Reading Bernstein, A., and Blain, N. (2003). Sport, media, culture: Global and local dimensions. Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Betts, J. (1953). The technological revolution and the 1rise of sport, 1850–1900. Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 40, 231–256. Gantz, W., & Wenner, L. A. (1995). Fanship and the television sports viewing experience. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 56–74. Rader, B. G. (1984). In its own image: How television has transformed sports. New York: The Free Press. Rowe, D. (2004). Sport, culture and the media: The unruly trinity. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Sansone, D. (1988). Greek athletics and the genesis of sport. Berkeley: University of California Press. Underwood, J. (1984). Spoiled sport: A fan’s notes on the troubles of spectator sports. Boston: Little Brown and Co. Vanderwerken, D. L. & Wertz, S. K. (Eds.). (1986). Sport inside out. Fort Worth: Texas A & M University Press.
Wann, D. L., Allen, B., & Rochelle, A. R. (2004). Using sport fandom as an escape: Searching for relief from under-stimulation and overstimulation. International Sports Journal, 8(1), 104–113. Wenner, L. (Ed.). (1998). MediaSport. New York: Routledge.
Sport Politics
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he late Avery Brundage of the United States, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, argued that sports and politics are and should always be separate. Yet, clearly even a cursory look below the surface indicates how sports are a heady mix of inspiration and representation, with the latter related to obvious forms of identification within the social context. When we consider politics in sports we must examine the internal, external, and peripheral influences on sports. Internally, the authorities and organizations that determine the development of their particular sport can be viewed as inherently political. The fact that key policy decisions are made by governing bodies and sports authorities makes this a political process. The issue of politics affecting the sporting environment from outside is more obviously dependent on the use of examples. The issue is particularly related to how during the twentieth century sports became increasingly affected by the political undercurrents within society. The interaction between sports and politics has also been partly a result of increasing international exchange at a diplomatic and sporting level. However, another key agent in this developing dynamic since the mid-nineteenth century has been peripheral influences such as the growth of the media. The provision of television as a mode of information transfer, since the mid-1960s, has further solidified the link between political processes and the sporting context.
History Sports and broader expressions of physical culture have played a role throughout history as a means of achieving political capital and increased popularity for
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political figures. The centrality of the ancient Roman coliseum to successive emperors is a good example of this fact. Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century the organization and development of sports were firmly in the hands of elite social groups. This fact suggests that the structure of the sociopolitical environment played a key role in popularizing the pastimes and activities that have since spread throughout society and across the world. More recently, the German chancellor Adolf Hitler’s use of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin cast a shadow over those particular Olympics as much for the political management of the event as for the subsequent horrors of that regime. Sports and physical culture were also significant in the former Communist countries. Indeed, significant political figures in Communist nations began to develop a highly utilitarian physical culture to support the needs of their society. Communist societies in particular needed fit and strong people to work to support the development of their society and also to defend the state if necessary. In China a long history of traditional pastimes and court games informs China’s more recent utilitarian system of physical culture. In command economies psychic income is received by the state and society from having an international champion. Cuba’s history of boxing success at the Olympics is a good example of the political importance of sporting success to Communist states. It provides vigor to their self-image and raises their standing in the eyes of the world. Although these examples illustrate the extent of state manipulation of sports for political ends, this issue is not limited to Communism.
Internal Politics of Sports We should examine the full extent of political processes involved in sports. They can operate at the international level, as detailed in the examples related to the Olympics. In the former USSR sports were little more than a tool of the state. They provided a focus for their achievements on an international stage, and the governing bodies operated under direct governmental control to further this goal. Certainly the full glare of the
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global media provides its own form of accountability for those people making political decisions at the level of international sports. At the national level more complex models exist for providing sports. The models can be affected by the national culture, climate, religion, economics, and, of course, society in general. Perhaps most difficult to distinguish is the often informal and occasional type of provision at a local level. What is not always clear is how different national political processes are supposed to act in the best interests of sports. In many respects the governmental policy toward sports (even the lack of a distinct policy) can inform our analysis of the provision of sports. Clearly the introduction of greater degrees of planning and organization related to school sports and physical education can affect notions of health and illness within society as well as have potentially positive effects on rates of crime and recidivism. The importance of such sports development initiatives will only increase in the future. At both the national and local levels accountability is provided by the democratic process; yet, perhaps the most powerful policy makers are not actually politicians. The role of the national governing bodies provides further information about how the national government interacts with its national sporting authorities. The role of the governing bodies can also be viewed as central to the character and nature of sports. An excellent example of this fact has been the stewardship of the Olympic Games by the International Olympic Committee. The application of political theories to sports can also provide a useful analytical lens. Pluralism and the traditional Western model of sports remain the consensus position for most developed countries. This position recognizes the fact that numerous agencies have a bearing on the practical aspects of sports. The provision of a consensus can also be relevant to the notion of hegemony (influence) within sports. A more controversial political ideology that has had a crucial influence on the way that sports are viewed within their socio-economic context relates to traditional Marxism. Although the German political philosopher Karl Marx did not actually
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focus on sports, an analysis of the sociopolitical context can be directly applied to the sporting context. Marx’s focus on the inequalities inherent within the structure of many societies is a perspective that continues to influence the growing study of how best to provide practical forms of sports development. Sports remain part of a policy-making process, and by definition politics and political structures are a central part of any policy-making process. Sports, by definition, have to be organized by decisions made within a particular nation’s politicoeconomic structure. Consequently, sports would not enjoy the popularity that they have if not for the influence and control provided by the varied efforts of political associations and organizations as well as politicians and policies throughout history. Indeed, Bruce Kidd, an expert on international sport, put it rather eloquently in the British series about the history of the Olympics, The Games in Question (1988): Politics have always been part of international sport and to suggest otherwise is ludicrous. Training and competition . . . everything connected with an international sports event are provided by a decision-making process that I would call political. They involve the allocation of resources towards sport and away from something else and that is a political process.
External Politics Affecting Sports After World War II the Cold War provided a backdrop to world sports between 1950 and 1990 and added a significant political aspect to the practice of international relations, including sports. However, not all instances of political intrusion at the Olympic Games were related to Cold War tensions. The black power salute of Tommy Smith and John Carlos at Mexico City in 1968 remains an enduring example of the use of the sporting arena for the expression of diverse political agendas, in this case regarding the issue of civil rights within the United States. An unintended consequence of the protest at Mexico City was to highlight to others with diverse and often radical political agendas how sports can be used as a vehicle to communicate a mes-
sage. This incident was to have terrible and far-reaching consequences after the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. The Palestinian terrorist group Black September used that global sports festival as a means to disseminate its message related to the prevailing political situation in the Middle East. Four years later the boycott of the Montreal Olympic Games by the Organization of African Unity (OAU)— after protests against sporting links with apartheid (racial segregation) South Africa—provided a global focus for examining and hardening attitudes toward that pariah state. Again the role of the media in providing a vehicle for disseminating such messages is significant. Clearly sports have the ability to act as a metaphorical background or a pressure-relief valve for both nations and individuals. On a number of occasions the sporting arena in general and the Olympic Games in particular have provided a stage where the two superpowers could compete in a sporting environment in front of the eyes of the world. In a number of instances politics has adversely affected the proceedings. Indeed, one can argue that without politics a broad interest in international sports would not exist today. The use of the Olympic Games as a tool in boycott politics during the 1970s and 1980s was possible only because of the influence of the mass media on global society during the latter half of the twentieth century. The Olympic Games during the Cold War provide examples of this inherent tension within the developing sporting exchange. The Moscow Olympic Games of 1980 and the Los Angeles Olympic Games of 1984 were tarnished by boycotts related to ongoing fractious superpower relations. Yet, in 1976 in Montreal the Olympic Games were boycotted by the Organization of African Unity in protest of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Although the 1976 boycott was clearly political, perhaps the best examples of Cold War tensions in sports were the boycotts of the early 1980s. At both Moscow and Los Angeles the Olympic Games acted as a showcase for the political ideologies of Communism and capitalism, respectively. Too often in the history of
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Until you’ve been in politics you’ve never really been alive; it’s rough and sometimes it’s dirty and it’s always hard work and tedious details. But, it’s the only sport for grown-ups; all other games are for kids. ■ UNKNOWN
the Olympic Games opportunities to learn about people in other countries and to develop a sense of social responsibility have been undermined by the subordination of sports and recreation to political and commercial goals. Some academics subsequently have argued that the huge success of the Los Angeles Olympic Games after the spectacular overspending at Moscow showed which political system worked better. Although this argument may be a bit simplistic to take at face value, we should realize the power of the media in providing a sufficient vehicle for the dissemination of political messages, whether positive or negative. Undoubtedly the media can operate more effectively in a market rather than a centralized command economy. In that sense it can directly affect not only the type of message disseminated, but also how that message is received. Indeed, we should remember that the media provide a means of data and information transfer for sports. In this respect we can view sports as a victim of their own success. The relationship between sports and the media is vital to this process. Sports are a uniquely cheap and effective programming resource, in relative terms, for different forms of media. In fact, this axis with the media must continue to provide a major revenue stream in support of both the organization and development of sports.
Sports as Representation Indeed, the influence of politics on sports, coupled with the development of media coverage, was one of the defining features of the development of international sports during the latter part of the twentieth century. The late U.S. President Richard Nixon used the pretext of a sporting exchange to nurture closer relations with hard-line Communist China. A table tennis match was scheduled between the two nations. This match led to a short period of high-level exchange, which became known as “Ping-Pong diplomacy.” The role that sports have played in the hardening of attitudes in tense situations should not be underestimated. In the former Yugoslavia prior to the war in the Balkans, soccer teams provided a focus for demonstration and even violent
conflict that served to challenge interethnic relations. Illustrative examples during the early 1990s were matches between the Red Star Belgrade (Serbia) and Dynamo Zagreb (Croatia), which took on a significant political element. These often violent, highly charged matches mirrored the tensions related to the slow, inexorable collapse of the Yugoslav state. As sports provide a focus for social interaction they inevitably come under pressure from those people seeking to use sports events (or success in an event) to highlight a particular political agenda. In many cases the attempt to control the political environment through sports results in a spectacular and contentious sporting outcome. Sports are undoubtedly a political endeavor when they involve national rivalries, and politics likely will continue to be central for sports on many fronts, both in a theoretical sense and in a practical sense. The strong representational element within sports (which in turn are supported by the political system) elevates sports within our social psyche and so makes them more important to our societies. Sports provide everyone from a head of state to a fringe ideologue with the ability to present his or her message to millions across the globe.
Separation of Power In most nations a separation exists between those people in charge of developing sports and those people in charge of funding sports. Even this separation of power on sound organizational principles is an example of politics affecting sports. Such separation fundamentally affects the interaction between groups related to the funding and organization of sports. Often as a result of the organizing and planning process, sports tend to exhibit characteristics related to a particular national identity and its perceived uniqueness. During this nonlinear process sports become increasingly relevant to societies in a representational sense. We should not underestimate the importance of the representational element of sports to policy and political groups. Politicians and political structures usually act to channel national resources toward certain sporting goals, particularly when
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Racing and hunting excite man’s heart to madness. ■ LAO-TSE
a sport has enjoyed success on the world stage. The potential of a feel-good factor provided by sporting success to sustain the popularity of politicians has been recognized since ancient Roman times. Despite the protestations of many administrators and sportspeople, the link between sports and politics was firmly established before sports became the all-pervasive element of popular culture that they are today. Jonathan M. Thomas See also Economics and Public Policy; Sport and National Identity
Further Reading Allison, L. (Ed.). (1993). The changing politics of sport. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Collins, M. (2003). Sport and social exclusion. London: Routledge. Hill, C. (1996). Olympic politics. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Horne, J., Tomlinson, A., & Whannel, G. (2001). Understanding sport: An introduction to the sociological and cultural analysis of sport. London: Spon. Kellas, J. (1991). The politics of nationalism and ethnicity. London: Macmillan. Kruger, A., & Riordan, J. (1999). The international politics of sport in the 20th century. London: Spon. Mandell, R. (1984). Sport: A cultural history. New York: Columbia University Press. Mangan, J. (Ed.). (1999). Sport in Europe: Politics, class, gender. London: Cass. Sage, G. (1990). Power and ideology in American sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Sport Science
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port science can be traced back to the ancient Greek physicians and philosophers, such as Herodicus and Hippocrates, who advocated following a proper diet and physical training to prevent disease. One of the first known definitions of exercise was written by the Greek physician Galen (131–201 CE): “To me it does not seem that all movement is exercise, but only when it is vigorous . . . The criterion of vigorousness is change of respiration.”
Through the Renaissance and into the twentieth century European and later U.S. doctors of physiology continued to expound on exercise physiology, focusing on exercise metabolism and physiology, environmental physiology, clinical pathophysiology, exercise and aging, nutrition, and assessment of physical fitness. In 1891 Harvard University founded the first exercise laboratory. Led by George Wells Fitz (1860–1934) and named the “Department of Anatomy, Physiology, and Physical Training,” it soon matured into the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory (1927–1946). Under the direction of David Bruce Dill (1891–1986), the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory was the source of groundbreaking research in exercise physiology and fitness assessment testing.
Classical Issues in Sport Science Research Sport science began as an observational science as researchers made careful notes of heart-rate changes, body-composition changes, work capacity adaptations, and oxygen consumption during exercise. It soon branched into the experimental realm as sport scientists began to ask questions on how to optimize performance and increase the quality of life for the general population. The early investigators were also noted inventors as they designed tools to better observe exercise physiology. Tools such as the calorimeter, a device to measure the body’s heat production, and closedcircuit spirometry, which accurately quantifies energy expenditure, are still used in exercise science laboratories. Sport-science technology is also used in medicine. The graded-exercise treadmill test is used to assess the ability to transport and use oxygen during exercise, called “maximal oxygen uptake.” Most physicians and exercise physiologists consider this test to be the most valid measurement of cardiovascular fitness.
Physical Fitness Assessment During the mid-1950s the U.S. government began to take a proactive (acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes) stance in the prevention of sedentary and obesity-related diseases. In 1955 U.S.
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, later renamed the “President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports,” to highlight the need for increased physical activity in schools, business, and industry. Along with the new council, the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (AAHPER) developed fitness assessment tests with national standards and norms that could easily be used in physical education classes throughout the country. Fitness testing for adults became commonplace during the 1970s. Along with the graded-exercise treadmill test, other specialized tests began to be used to assess cardiovascular health and to develop exercise programs. Cardiorespiratory fitness can be estimated using cycle ergometers or step tests in addition to treadmills.
Heart-Healthy Lifestyle Aside from the finding of a decline in physical fitness of youth in the United States, another finding stimulated the government’s interest in promoting physical activity during the middle of the twentieth century. Autopsy reports of young soldiers killed during the Korean War showed significant coronary artery disease. This finding coupled with the increasing death rate from coronary artery disease among middle-aged men spurred exercise scientists to determine the cause. Large epidemiological studies showed that the triad of a high-fat diet, cigarette smoking, and inactivity was the major risk factor in preventable coronary artery disease, prompting governmentsponsored programs to promote early initiation of healthy behavior, including diet and exercise, as the best defense against coronary artery disease.
Braving the Elements: Environmental Physiology Environmental physiology studies not only the obvious adaptations to hot-humid and cold weather, but also the effects of dehydration on performance, training at altitude, and the effects of gravity during space travel. The topics of hydration and exercise during extreme weather conditions have been in the news recently be-
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cause of deaths of professional and collegiate athletes attributed to heat stress, although research in these topics has been a staple of exercise physiology for some time. Much research in these topics comes from the military. The U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine and the Institute of Military Physiology at the Heller Institute in Israel are major contributors to research in these topics as they strive to keep their military personnel healthy and safe when traveling to different parts of the world. The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory was home to much of the early research in environmental and altitude exercise physiology. Landmark studies of acclimatization to hot and cold climates have given us a greater understanding of the adaptability of humans to survive. For instance, within fourteen days of exposure to a hot environment, physiological adaptations occur, via an improved control of cardiovascular function, to reduce cardiac strain. More recent research involves central nervous system adaptations, cell pathology of heatstroke, and even the role of clothing on the body’s ability to thermoregulate (regulate temperature). Likewise, in the study of hydration status and exercise, sport science research has clarified the profound physiological effects that dehydration has on physiological functions. The physiological effects of high altitudes are not often considered until people travel from sea level to a mountainous area and find themselves host to numerous physiological adaptations. Sport-science literature reports numerous short-term and long-term adaptations to altitude, including hematological (relating to blood), cardiovascular, and hormonal changes. This literature has helped to identify and alleviate several altituderelated illnesses, such as acute mountain sickness, through changes in physical activity and diet. In nearly all realms of science space is considered the last frontier. Sport science is no different. Early observation of space flight showed remarkable physiological changes in humans, including changes in posture, body composition, the musculoskeleton, and fluid shifts. To simulate a microgravity environment, researchers have used strategies such as head-down bed rest, cast
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The male muscular system. Source: istockphoto/LindaMarieB.
immobilization confinement, limb suspension, and water immersion to study physiological effects. To combat the numerous effects of space flight, exercise, particularly resistance training, is now a standard activity during all flights.
Strength and Resistance Training Although sport science has a history as old as that of sport itself, the main focus of research was usually on disease prevention, physical activity of the general and clinical populations, and scientific observation of physiological mechanisms. Recently the progression of training programs and nutritional design came from anecdotal evidence, passed from coaches to athletes in their quest to make and become champions. However, as the sports industry becomes more lucrative and as more emphasis is placed on people in the general population starting an active lifestyle, more research is focused on optimizing performance. During the early twentieth century strength and resistance training began to emerge from basement gyms and circus side-show exhibitions into the realm of science. In 1945 Thomas DeLorme introduced the concept of progressive resistance exercise. Three years later he teamed with A. L. Watkins and published a paper on long-term resistance training for rehabilitative purposes. Although research scientists were just beginning to recognize the importance of strength and resistance training, the popularity of lay publications dedicated to this new form of exercise was rising. In 1932 Bob Hoffman, founder of the York Barbell Company, published Strength and Health, a landmark magazine dedicated to weightlifting. In 1964 Hoffman published Muscular
Development, the first magazine dedicated to the sport of bodybuilding. Other magazines soon hit the newsstands, including Ironman and the modern Joe Weider publications such as Muscle and Fitness. These publications were instrumental in the popularization of resistance training. Despite the popularity of such magazines, resistancetraining research was uncommon until the 1970s. During the 1980s more research on strength and resistance training was published, and the focus shifted from athletes to women and men in the general population. Leading this new trend in science was the National Strength and Conditioning Association, which in 1987 began publishing the first journal dedicated to strength and conditioning research, The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. During the past twenty years tremendous advancements have been made in physiological adaptations and mechanisms, gender differences in training, and specificity of training. Most importantly, resistance training research has highlighted the importance of regular strength and resistance training to two important sections of our population: youth and the elderly.
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Future Athletes and Weekend Warriors The U.S. Centers for Disease Control report that 24 percent of high school boys do not engage in the recommended amount of daily physical activity. For high school girls the number is 38 percent. An average of 15 percent of children between the ages of six and nineteen are overweight.This number increases to 64 percent among adults, with those adults engaging in the recommended amount of physical activity at only 26 percent. The decline in physical-activity rates and the increase in obesity rates have prompted government-sponsored programs to promote youth fitness and sport scientists to publish research devoted to improving the fitness levels of children to prevent obesity and inactivity-related diseases later in life. Organized sport and physical activity aren’t the only recommendations for youth anymore; for many, strength and resistance training for children is an area of growing interest. Studies show that a moderateintensity strength-training program can help increase strength, decrease the risks of injury while playing other sports, increase motor performance skills and increase bone density, and enhance growth and development in children. As a result of research that dispels old myths that children should not lift weights, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a statement advocating strength training for children.
Golden Years The average life expectancy is 77.2 years, and life expectancy increases even more if a person reaches age fifty-five. Thus, much of the research in sport science is focused on improving the quality of life in the elderly. A major health concern for the elderly is osteoporosis, a disease characterized by low bone mass and structural deterioration of bone tissue, leading to bone fragility and an increased susceptibility to fractures, especially of the hip, spine, and wrist. The U.S. National Institutes of Health estimate that one in two women and one in four men will develop the disease.
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Researchers in several areas of the sport sciences, including nutrition, epidemiology, and strength resistance training, have published articles about this costly disease. Early research focused on increased calcium intake, hormone therapy, and daily exercise to prevent osteoporosis. However, strength and resistance training has come to the forefront as not only a preventive measure, but also as a possible treatment. Studies show that high-intensity resistance training not only can prevent osteoporosis when started at a young age, but also can increase bone density later in life. Resistance training can have several other health benefits in the elderly. Sarcopenia, the progressive reduction of muscle mass, is another health concern for the elderly. Resistance training can ameliorate and even reverse physical frailty in the elderly. When resistance training is combined with daily physical activity and aerobic exercise, the risk of developing sarcopenia and osteoporosis can be drastically reduced.
Putting It All Together The pioneers of exercise physiology built a solid foundation for modern theories based on a few principles. Arguably the most important principle is specificity, developed by DeLorme. Specificity of exercise is targeted adaptations of muscles, hormones, energy metabolism, and the cardiovascular system. For example, aerobic training increases aerobic capacity, whereas heavy resistance training increases muscular strength. Although seemingly simple, this principle serves as a basis for almost every sport-specific training program. Overload is another important principle. Overload refers to the fact that a system or tissue must be exercised at a level beyond which it is accustomed for a training effect to occur. The principle of progressive overload is equally important, especially in resistance training. Introduced by DeLorme, it is the principle of gradually increasing the amount of weight lifted over time to increase muscular strength. In addition to these two principles, one should consider several other variables when designing an exercise routine. These variables include frequency, intensity,
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duration, and volume. Frequency (how often one performs a specific type of training) and duration (the length of time the exercise is performed) have a direct impact on intensity. Intensity is defined in many ways and is different for different types of exercise. In aerobic exercise intensity often is defined as “a percentage of maximal heart rate.” Commonly the age-predicted maximal heart rate equation is used: 220 – person’s age = maximal heart rate The resulting maximal heart rate can then be multiplied by a desired percentage to get a target heart rate or the optimal heart rate a person should achieve for a given intensity. For instance, if a forty-year-old person wishes to exercise at 80 percent (a relatively highintensity workout), the calculation would be as follows: 220 – 40 = 180 × 0.80 = 144 Thus, the heart rate that this person would want to achieve and maintain for a given workout would be 144 beats per minute. The duration of this exercise bout would also affect the overall intensity. In resistance training intensity is a function of duration, frequency, volume, order of exercise, and rest time between exercise sets. Volume is a product of the number of repetitions performed and the amount of resistance used. The order of exercise in a bout of resistance training is equally important. As a general rule, exercises that utilize larger and more numerous muscle groups should be done in the beginning of the workout. Also, these exercises require more work and increase the intensity of the workout. The amount of rest taken between sets can also affect the intensity of a workout. In addition, individual differences and training states may affect intensity. For instance, an elite marathon runner may find a bout of heavy resistance training to be high intensity, whereas an Olympic weight lifter may consider the same bout to be low intensity. In all types of training staleness and overtraining can occur. Overtraining is a potentially serious and debilitating physical and emotional condition that can lead to
performance decrements and injury. To lower this risk, variations in training are essential.
Periodization During the past three decades a method of training called “periodization” has evolved to ensure progressive gains and to minimize overtraining. Periodization is the changing of program variables to continually elicit performance gains. Strength athletes initially relied on the classical periodization model, also called “linear periodization.” The concept of linear periodization is attributed to the work of Eastern Bloc sports programs during the early 1950s. It came about by trial and error as coaches tried to optimize sports performance. They noticed that decreasing the volume and increasing the intensity (in this case defined as “a percentage of nearmaximal effort”) during the weeks leading to a competition elevated performance. Early periodization models were built around four phases: (1) preparation, (2) first transition (end of the preseason), (3) competition, and (4) second transition (off season). The preparation phase involved increasing strength and muscle mass. Volume was high, and intensity was low in this phase. In the first transition phase volume decreased as intensity increased, with optimizing muscular power and skill-proficiency training being the goals. The competition phase is also referred to as “peaking,” leading to the second transition or off season. The off season was spent performing activities that would aid in recovery and rehabilitation but not lead to complete detraining. The terms mesocycle, microcycle, and macrocycle fit into these phases. A mesocycle is a small number of training sessions in which the goal (i.e., power) is the same. One or two weeks in any one phase would be a mesocycle. A microcycle is a run of mesocycles and is analogous with an individual phase. A macrocycle is a whole competitive season; all four phases are included in this cycle. Linear periodization also often utilizes progressive overload within in its phases. This utilization calls for gradual and linear increases in weights lifted from week
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Sport Science The New Value of Play Dr. Russell H. Conwell tells a beautiful story which illustrates this close connection between play and work. A pious old Arab, who lived to the age of a hundred years, made it his duty to go to the temple every day to pray. He got there safely each morning, for, as he came out into the city, a beautiful angel took him and led him by the hand. He went forth happy each day, but always returned home sad, for every night as he left the temple there came behind him a terrible form that followed him to his house, and filled him with fear and trembling. On one certain day,—the day before his death,—as he was making his last journey from the temple, the shadowform came up behind him, put her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke to him. The old Arab said, “I seem to recognize that voice.Yes, it is the voice of the lovely angel who guides me in the morning to prayer.” The form answered, “I am that angel who guides you every morning to prayer, and I would have guided you home every night, but you were afraid. You saw me in the morning in the light, but when you returned from the temple I was in the shadow.” The impulses that lead men to labor are the same that must lead them to play,—a vital interest in the personal well-being, and a desire for the best rounded life, of the social organism of which they are a part. Source: The new value of play. (1915). The Badminton library of sports and pastimes: Character through recreation (pp. 37–38). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
to week. Although the basic idea that a person wants to lift more weights from week to week seems inherently correct, progressive overload, in its simple form, is not the most effective method of enhancing performance over a long period of time. Its most notable downfall is the tendency to plateau in various phases of the cycles after a few macrocycles. Periodization has evolved beyond this downfall, and more modern forms can be manipulated to meet the special needs of athletes.
During the past decade undulating periodization has replaced classical periodization. Rather than sequentially increasing or decreasing volume and intensity, undulating periodization calls for more frequent changes —on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Recent research comparing undulating periodization to linear periodization has shown that making more frequent variations to a program elicits greater gains. Another important aspect of undulating periodization is the volume and intensity of the assistance work that a person does. Individual differences are also of consideration when designing this type of program.
Exercise Prescription Guidelines of the American College of Sports Medicine call for twenty to sixty minutes of intermittent or continuous aerobic activity three to five times a week. Activities can include biking, running, aerobic dancing, and swimming. Intensity should reach at least 55 percent of maximal heart rate. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, healthy adults should incorporate resistance training in their physical fitness routine at least two to three times per week. More advanced lifters should train with weights three to four times per week. A full body routine with progressive overload should be used by novices, leading to a periodized, split body (working different body parts on different days) routine as they become more advanced. The Human Genome Project (an international research project to determine the complete sequence of the 3 billion deoxyribonucleic acid subunits, identify all human genes, and make them accessible for biological study) has led to medical and scientific advancements that were unheard of even a decade ago. Some experts speculate that the knowledge gained from this project will lead to the ability to control human physiology. This speculation has led to the possibility of geneticengineered athletes in the future. In an effort to remain proactive, the World Anti-Doping Agency has already hosted a conference to stay abreast of potential problems that genetic engineering poses to drug-tested sports.
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Careers Sport scientists have a broad range of professional possibilities—from physical education teacher to professor and from research scientist to personal trainer. Many graduates further their education and become cardiac rehabilitation specialists, physical therapists, and physician assistants. In addition, well-trained sport nutritionists and strength and conditioning coaches are in demand. The founders of sport science could not have comprehended the impact that their research would have on society. Although sport science as we know it today emerged within only the past sixty years, the discoveries and technological advances have been integrated into the medical community and have affected children and adults alike. William J. Kraemer and Disa L. Hatfield See also Biomechanics; Human Movement Studies; Kinesiology; Physical Education
Further Reading Adams, G. R., Caiozzo, V. J., & Baldwin, K. M. (2003). Skeletal muscle unweighting: Spaceflight and ground-based models. Journal of Applied Physiology, 95(6), 2185–2201. American Academy of Pediatrics. (1990). Strength, weight and power lifting, and body building by children and adolescents. Pediatrics, 5, 801–803. Armstrong, L. E., & Maresh, C. M. (1991). The induction and decay of heat acclimatization in trained athletes. Sports Medicine, 12, 302–312. Armstrong, L. E., & Stoppani, J. (2002). Central nervous system control of heat acclimation adaptations: An emerging paradigm. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13(3), 271–285. Centers for Disease Control. (2003). Health, United States. Washington, DC: Author. Convertino, V. A., & Sandler, H. (1995). Exercise countermeasures for spaceflight. Acta Astronaut, 35(4–5), 253–270. DeLorme, T. L. (1945). Restoration of muscle power by heavy resistance exercises. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 27, 645. DeLorme, T. L., & Watkins, A. L. (1948). Techniques of progressive resistance exercise. Archive of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 29, 263–273. Dill, D. B. (1938). Life, heat, and altitude. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Evans, W. J. (1999). Exercise training guidelines for the elderly. Medical Science Sports Exercise,, 31(1), 12–17.
Fielding, R. A. (1995). The role of progressive resistance training and nutrition in the preservation of lean body mass in the elderly. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 4(6), 587–594. Fleck, S. J. (1999). Periodized strength training: A critical review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 13(1), 250–255. Guy, J. A., & Micheli, L. J. (2000). Strength training for children and adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, 1, 29–36. Heinonen, A., Sievanen, H., Kannus, P., Oja, P., Pasanen, M., & Vuori, I. (2000). High-impact exercise and bones of growing girls: A 9month controlled trial. Osteoporosis International, 12, 1010–1017. Hubbard, R. W. (1990). Heatstroke pathophysiology: The energy depletion model. Medical Science Sports Exercise, 22(1), 19–28. Hurley, B. F., & Roth, S. M. (2000). Strength training in the elderly: Effects on risk factors for age-related diseases Sports Medicine, 30(4), 249–268. Kraemer, J., Hatfield, D. L., & Faigenbaum, A. D. (2000). Strength training for children and adolescents. Clinical Sports Medicine, 4, 593–619. Kraemer W. J. (2004). Muscle and strength: An evolution of study. Medical Science Sports Exercise, 35(10), 1633. Kraemer, W. J., & Hakkinen, K. (2002). Strength training for sport. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science. Layne, J. E., & Nelson, M. E. (1999). The effects of progressive resistance training on bone density: A review. Medical Science Sports Exercise, 31(1), 25–30. McCardle, W. D., Katch, F. I., & Katch, V. L. (2001). Exercise physiology (5th ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Powers, S. K., & Howely, E. T. (1994). Exercise physiology: Theory and application to fitness and performance. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark. Rambaut, P. C. (1988). The prevention of adverse physiological change in space station crewmembers. Acta Astronaut, 17(2), 199–202. Tsuzuku, S., Ikegami,Y., & Yabe, K. (1998). Effects of high-intensity resistance training on bone mineral density in young male powerlifters. Calcified Tissue International, 4, 283–286. Vanitallie, T. B. (2003). Frailty in the elderly: Contributions of sarcopenia and visceral protein depletion. Metabolism, 52(10, Suppl 2), 22–26. Young, A. J. (2004). Environmental physiology in MSSE. Medical Science Sports Exercise, 32(12), 1957.
Sport Tourism
I
ncreasingly people travel—as individuals, as families, as organizations—to watch or participate in sports. Such sport tourists may travel for holiday or business (nonholiday) reasons. Sport tourists also may be active or passive. Active sport tourists may engage in “sports activity holidays,” during which sports are a main purpose of their trip, or
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Sport Tourism Sport-Event Tourism In the listing below, sports marketing expert Donald Getz notes the potential benefits and goals of sportevent tourism: ■
Attract high-yield visitors, especially repeaters
■
Generate a favorable image for the destination
■
Develop new infrastructure
■
Use the media to extend the normal communications reach
■
Generate increased rate of tourism growth or a higher demand plateau
in “holiday sports activities,” during which sports are incidental and not the main purpose. People take two types of sports activity holidays: (1) the single-sport holiday during which people enjoy a specific sport and (2) the multiple-sport holiday during which people enjoy several sports. The two types of holiday sports activities are (1) incidental participation in organized sports (usually in groups, as in competitive beach games) and (2) private or independent sports activities (e.g., walking or playing golf). We may further classify passive sport tourists according to how important sports are to the purpose of their trip. Connoisseur observers are extensively passively involved and discriminating in the sports they watch as spectators or officiators. Casual observers enjoy watching a sporting event and usually happen across it rather than plan their holiday around it.
Impact of Tourism on Sports Probably as many people have learned to swim on holiday as have learned to swim in their local swimming pool. Likewise, skiing prowess (except in Alpine countries) is virtually wholly attributable to holiday experiences. Skiing, the most popular of all winter sports, is the classic example of a sport-tourism sport. Every year skiing introduces 40–50 million visitors to the European Alps, with forty thousand ski runs and twelve thousand cable ways and lifts capable of handling 1.5 million
■
Improve the organizational, marketing, and bidding capability of the community
■
Secure a financial legacy for management of new sport facilities
■
Maximize the use of, and revenue for, existing facilities
■
Increase community support for sport and sport-events
Source: Getz, D. Trends strategies and issues in sport-event tourism (1998). Sport Marketing Quarterly, 7(2), 9.
skiers an hour.The ski market accounts for 20 percent of the total European holiday market. Tourism influences sports participation, and sports infrastructures have followed the example set by the tourism industry. For example, to complement the beach and to provide an attraction during inclement weather to extend the length of the holiday season, resorts have constructed indoor swimming pool complexes.
Impact of Sports on Tourism The Tour de France, France’s three-week bicycle race, claims to be the world’s largest annual sports spectating event, attracting several million spectators along its 4,000-kilometer route. In Britain 2.5 million people watch outdoor sports, and another 1 million watch indoor sports while on holiday in the United Kingdom. Research indicates that 88 percent of the 110,000 international visitors who traveled to Australia for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 returned to Sydney as tourists. Furthermore, the games were responsible for attracting an additional 1.7 million visitors, generating a $6.1 billion economic boost, between 1997 and 2004. The Olympics advanced Australia ten years in the awareness of people in other parts of the world, meaning that the world wouldn’t have “known about” Australia until 2010 had Sydney not hosted the games. The British Tourist Authority (BTA) reported in 1992 that 26 percent of its respondents cited sports as the
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A man ascending a Himalayan peak. Source: istockphoto.com/Caval.
main purpose of their trip. Gibson and Yiannakis found that 22 percent of respondents considered opportunities to participate in sports important when planning a holiday. In Belgium 27 percent of residents participate in sports during domestic holiday trips; this percentage increases to 30.4 percent for holidays abroad. Similar statistics are found elsewhere, namely in New Zealand and France. If we consider holidays in which sports are an incidental aspect instead of holidays in which sports are the main aspect, the participation rate rises to between 25 and 80 percent.
The Future Changes in the international travel market are leading to an increasing variety of tourist types, needs, and patterns. Adventure and activity holidays are a growing segment of the tourist industry, and sports training is an important process for which tourism can be the catalyst. Health care and body training also have created an important industry. Since the beginning tourism was promoted for its health-improving aspects. People went to seaside resorts because of the “presumed healthgiving properties of sea bathing” (Urry 1990, 37). Sea bathing led to sunbathing, but the risk of skin cancer has shifted the emphasis toward a fit body that is trained through exercise and sports. Sports as therapy are another growing segment of the tourism industry, with an estimated 15 million annual visits to spas in
Europe alone, a figure that compares well with that of similar markets in the United States and Asia. Sports as part of business hospitality are also profitable and growing, with most clients watching sports events miles from their place of work. Active sports associated with business tours are also becoming more popular. Professional sportspeople increasingly must travel to pursue their careers. Team tours are also popular with amateur clubs who engage agents to find events and arrange accommodations and transport.
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NOP Market Research. (1989). Activities by the British on holiday in Britain. London: British Tourist Authority/English Tourist Board/ National Opinion Poll. Redmond, G. (1990). Points of increasing contact: Sport and tourism in the modern world. In A. Tomlinson (Ed.), Sport in society: Policy, politics and culture (pp. 158–169). Eastbourne, UK: Leisure Studies Association. Rigg, J., & Lewney, R. (1987). The economic impact and importance of sport in the UK. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 22(3), 149–169. Standeven, J., & De Knop, P. (1999). Sport tourism: An international perspective. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Urry, J. (1990). The tourist gaze:Travel, leisure and society. London: Sage.
Sporting Goods Industry
C
Sledding down a track at Davos, Switzerland, in the late 1800s.
Travel agents are looking at new markets to broaden their base. At the American Society of Travel Agents World Travel Congress in Portugal in 1994, the sports sector of niche travel was recognized as a major growth market. Whatever the special interest, a company will organize a vacation around it. P. De Knop
Further Reading Australian Tourist Commission. (2001). Australia’s Olympics: Special post games tourism report. Sydney, Australia: Author. Benton, N. (1995). Taking the waters. The Leisure Manager, 13(4), 40. Burton, R. (1995). Travel geography. London: Pitman Publishing. Gibson, H., & Yiannakis, A. (1995). Some characteristics of sport tourism: A life span perspective. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Savannah, Georgia. Kleskey, A., & Kearsley, G. W. (1993). Mapping multiple perceptions of wilderness so as to minimize the impact of tourism on national environments. In A. J.Veal, P. Jonson, & G. Cushman (Eds.), Leisure and tourism: Social and economic change (pp. 104–119). Sydney, Australia: University of Technology Press. Mader, U. (1988). Tourism and the environment. Annals of Tourism Research, 1(2), 274–277.
ultural, political, and, especially, economic forces operating increasingly on a global scale have shaped the sporting goods industry. As sport sociologist George H. Sage (1998, 131) notes, however, contemporary sport “needs to be understood as a historical moment: today’s highly commercialised sport industry is not a cultural universal.” The sporting goods industry encompasses sports equipment, sports apparel, and sports footwear. The United Nations Statistics Division Classifications Registry using the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) Revision 3 (code number 894.7) defines “sports goods” mainly as equipment. This includes such articles as fishing rods and tackle, ice and roller skates, snow and water skis, surfboards and sail boards, golf equipment, tennis and badminton rackets, gloves and mitts, as well as other equipment used for physical exercise. Arguably, however, sporting goods should also include clothes and footwear designed for or that could be used in sports.
Global Sporting Goods Market The sportswear goods industry has been especially profitable during the past twenty years because of the rise of sportswear as fashion wear. Much of the athletic wear purchased—some estimates put it at more than 50 percent —is not actually used during active sports performance.
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These are my new shoes. They’re good shoes. They won’t make you rich like me, they won’t make you rebound like me, they definitely won’t make you handsome like me. They’ll only make you have shoes like me. That’s it. ■ CHARLES BARKLEY
Sports clothing and equipment each account for about 40 percent of the total sales of sporting goods and services. Footwear sales account for the other 20 percent. In 1999, the U.S. market for sports clothing alone was worth an estimated $32 billion, ten times the U.K. market and nearly half of the entire worldwide market of $70 billion (Buckley, 2000).Within the European Union in 2001, the leading countries by economic turnover of sporting goods and equipment were Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain. Together, these countries represented 35 percent of global sales of sports clothing and shoes, whereas the United States had 42 percent, Asia 16 percent, and the rest of the world 7 percent (Ohl and Tribou 2004, 142). The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association of the United States (www.sgma.com) reported that the U.S. market for sports clothing and footwear in 2003 reached $50 billion and that in Canada, it was worth $6.86 billion. In Canada, the largest category of sports equipment sold in 2003 was bicycles ($780 million).
Sporting Goods Industry Organizations and Associations Alongside national organizations such as the SGMA, the sporting goods industry has organized international trade fairs and had international organizations representing it since the late 1970s. The World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI), for example, was founded in 1976 following the first World Congress of the sporting goods industry. The WFSGI is an independent association of industry suppliers, national organizations, and sporting goods industry-related businesses. The membership has reflected many of the leading brands in the sporting goods world and has included industry leaders such as Armin Dassler, Kihachiro Onitsuka, and Masato Mizuno. The International Trade Fair for Sports Equipment and Fashion, which takes place in Frankfurt, Germany, is one of the largest annual trade fairs.
Sport and the Circulation of Goods According to historical and contemporary studies of consumption trends, the four major social influences
that have segmented the market for sporting goods are the following: ■ ■ ■ ■
Age Gender Place Social class
In the United States in 2003, for example, men spent twice as much as women did on sports footwear, and 40 percent of purchases of sports clothing were for children aged seventeen and younger. Modern sports developed at the same time as modern consumption practices and the mass market emerged (Fraser 1981). Developments in retailing, department stores, and chains of shops were accompanied by the growth of mass circulation newspapers and magazines. Sport offered one means of stimulating consumption and offered a means of stimulating and promoting the general consumption of other goods and services. Sport became part of the “magic system” that helped promote, market, and circulate goods in capitalist economies (Williams 1980). Participants in sports have increasingly lent themselves to becoming agents of the promotion of goods and services (“endorsees”) and “media sport stars” (Whannel 2002). Sport as a mass-mediated spectacle helps sell newspapers and other channels of communication while encouraging sports enthusiasm. This in turn creates a market for the products endorsed and sometimes worn by the athletes—for example, the Michael Jordan phenomenon (LaFeber 1999).
Emergence of the Sporting Goods Industry Where did this market come from? How did it emerge? Who buys sporting goods? The sporting goods industry arguably was “born in the USA.” The U.S. sporting economy overall was worth US$194 billion in 2001— ahead of chemicals, electronics, and food—amounting to more than 1 percent of the value of all goods and services produced in the United States, where there are 150 major sports franchises, a dozen professional
SPORTING GOODS INDUSTRY
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The “Xtradordinary” bicycle.
sports tours (such as the PGA), and hundreds of other commercial sports events. Sport can be seen as an industry with all the problems of conventional industrial relations—involving employers, workers, and consumers. Modern sport has been associated with business for a long time although the relationship has not always been a straightforward commercial one. In Britain, one hundred years ago, for example, the “entrepreneur was not attracted to sport for the profit that could be made out of it” (Mason 1988, 115). Hence, in England, (association) football clubs were limited liability companies with boards of directors and shareholders, but dividends were limited to 5 percent and directors were not paid. ■
■
■
■
By 1895, one estimate suggests that British expenditure on sport reached £47 million per year and that investment in sports represented 3 percent of gross national product (GNP) (Mitchell & Deane 1988, 828). By 1912, expenditure on golf alone was £7 million, with £600,000 being spent on 7.2 million golf balls annually. Growth of manufacturing in golf and cycling was also partly responsible for economic recovery in areas affected by economic depression. In 1892, 915,856 cycles were exported, but at “the height of the cycling boom, in 1896, the figure had increased to 1,855,604” (Lowerson 1995, 226).
Other sports required imported equipment, but many middle-class people seized the new investment opportunities offered by sport: “They generated not only in-
come and capital formation but also social prestige and opportunities for local influence, so that expected gains were not always expressed in economic terms” (Lowerson 1995, 226). Agreeing that many sport promoters in Britain were not directly in pursuit of profit, Vamplew (1988, 281– 283) notes, nonetheless, that the “industrialisation of British sport can be charted as the working out of supply and demand in the market place.” In the United States, by comparison, the profit maximizers won the battle between those “who saw sport as something separate from business and those who saw no reason not to make profit from sport” (Mason 1988, 115).
Contemporary Economic Significance of Sport One measure of the contemporary economic significance of sport is retail sporting goods sales figures. Table 1 illustrates that the consumption of sport is a preserve of the advanced capitalist countries. Sport Market Forecasts, an annually revised publication based on research conducted at the Universities of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam in England, draws on relevant official and independent research sources to compile a snapshot picture of sport-related consumer expenditure in Britain. Table 2 details the latest of these reviews. The following features are most noteworthy. Spending on sporting goods in Britain amounted to £5.706 billion in 2002—more than one-third (34.6 percent) of the total spent on sport in the United Kingdom. Of this: ■ ■ ■
■
Clothing and footwear amounted to almost 20 percent. Equipment and boats accounted for 11.5 percent. Walking and hiking clothing and trainers and running shoes accounted for the biggest share of sales of sports apparel and footwear. Golf and fitness equipment accounted for the largest share of sales of sports equipment.
Books, magazines, and newspapers are included in the category “publications,” and the SIRC report attributes a specific share of total expenditure on newspapers
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Table 1. Retail sports sales and outlets in selected countries in 1999 Australia Canada Denmark France Germany Japan Switzerland United Kingdom United States
Sales (US$m)
Sports shops
1,163
3,144
815
916
645
1,311
2,323
N/A
4,563
8,012
16,007
6,140
401
1,717
5,010
3,997
25,000
19,500
Sources: Euromonitor 2001a, 308, 317; 2001b, 456, 464.
to the sport market “based on the average share of sport in the total content of newspapers” (SIRC 2003, 4). The largest sector of the sport services market was gambling, which accounted for 15.8 percent. Of this, horseracing accounts for 70 percent of all sports-related gambling. Participation sports included admission fees and subscriptions to voluntary sports clubs and publicsector sports centers and swimming pools. Health and fitness includes fees for private health and fitness clubs and has been the second most rapid growth area since the late 1990s. Together, membership fees and subscriptions accounted for 24.3 percent of service expenditure. Sports-related TV and video expenditure— including subscriptions to satellite, digital and cable TV channels—included an estimate for the sports component of the TV license fee. This has been the most rapid growth area since the late 1990s. The other category included food, drink, and accommodation associated with participation, spectating, and other forms of involvement at sport events. The total figure of £16.488 billion was equivalent to approximately 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 2.5 percent of total consumer expenditure in the U.K. The SIRC report noted, “Although the media has emphasised the strong growth over the recent past in professional sport, and in particular football, consumer expenditure in the sport market consists in the main of expenditures related to the consumer’s own participation in sport rather than to sport spectating” (SIRC,
Table 2. Sport-related consumer expenditure in the U.K. in 2002 A. SPORT GOODS Clothing & footwear
£3.227 billion
19.6 percent
Equipment
£1.92 billion
6.6 percent
Boats
£0.816 billion
4.9 percent
Publications
£0.571 billion
3.5 percent
Subtotal
£5.706 billion
34.6 percent
Gambling
£2.601 billion
15.8 percent
Participant sports
£2.276 billion
13.8 percent
Health and fitness
£1.727 billion
10.5 percent
TV and video
£1.810 billion
11 percent
Travel
£1.042 billion
6.3 percent
Spectator sports
£0.861 billion
5.2 percent
Other
£0.465 billion
2.8 percent
Subtotal
£10.782 billion
65.4 percent
Totals (A+ B)
£16.488 billion
100 percent
B. SPORT SERVICES
Source: Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) 2003, 4–6.
2003, 4). One indicator of this is the increase in gym membership. ■
■
■
■
During the past ten years, private companies such as Cannons, David Lloyd, Fitness First, Holmes Place, LA Fitness, and Next Generation have developed their market. There are now about 2,600 private clubs in addition to the public-sector leisure centers. Despite warnings that some health and fitness clubs were locking their members into long contracts with large cancellation penalties, 18.6 percent of the U.K. population (8.6 million people) has joined. Turnover for private health clubs reached £1.85 billion in 2003, an increase from £1.23 billion in 1999.
Issues and Controversies Most sales of sporting goods occur in the developed world, yet the bulk of their manufacture is carried out in the poorer, less-developed countries for companies such as Nike, Reebok International, Adidas-Salomon, K-Swiss, and the Pentland Group. Perhaps the best way to understand the growth of the sports industry is by focusing on its global political economy (Miller et al. 2001). Sporting goods manufacturers and businesses
SPORTING GOODS INDUSTRY
are increasingly transnational corporations (TNCs) based in advanced capitalist countries. They have undergone consolidation through mergers and acquisitions. Global horizontal and vertical integration has occurred. The network approach to production and subcontracting has lead to several “flexible business networks” (Dicken 2003, 262–265) in the sporting goods industry. There has been a transfer of labor-intensive production to the less developed “South” or Third World. In some of these, “export-oriented industrialization” has created a New International Division of Labour (NIDL). Miller et al. (2001) suggest that in sport there is a New International Division of Cultural Labour (NICL), which occurs because developing countries provide the following: ■ ■
■
■
Lower wages and fewer worker benefits Fewer organized (unionized) workforces, resulting in greater management control over the labor process Less stringent or poorly enforced health and safety regulations Less stringent environmental and community health and safety regulations
Other researchers have drawn attention to the existence of “global commodity chains” in sporting goods manufacturing (Gereffi 1994). Hence, businesses such as Nike do not own production facilities, so strictly speaking, they are not manufacturers because they have no factories. Instead, they design and market the branded products they sell. The firm relies on a complex tiered network of contractors that perform all its specialized tasks. The commodity circuitry of the Nike shoe has been illustrated by Goldman and Papson (1998, 8). Many companies with well-known global brands have their headquarters in the United States, but a brief profile of the brands produced by the Pentland Group, which has its headquarters in the United Kingdom, is illustrative. The information is based on the company’s and its subsidiaries’ websites and material available from Mintel Research and Who Owns Whom in 2002. Pentland is an international brand management group involved in the sports, outdoors, and fashion
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markets. Founded in Liverpool in the early 1930s as the Liverpool Shoe Company, the company was floated on the London Stock exchange in 1964. It remained a public company for thirty-five years until November 1999 when it was taken back into private hands. As this is now a private company there is a paucity of information in the public domain. Although Pentland’s global headquarters are in the U.K., the group has offices in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam. The total number of employees was 2000. Robert Stephen Holdings Ltd., the Rubin family’s investment firm, owns Pentland. The chair of the company is R. Stephen Rubin, the CEO is his son Andrew K. Rubin, and the other director is R. S. Rubin’s wife, Angela. R. S. Rubin has been president of the WFSGI. In 1998, the last year before it went private, the company reported group turnover in excess of £500 million. The Pentland group owns several international sports, outdoor, and fashion brands, including Speedo, Mitre, Ellesse, Kickers (a 50 percent joint venture), Berghaus, Brasher, Kangaroos,Ted Baker, Grazia, and Red or Dead. Pentland also holds licenses from other brand owners, including a worldwide license for Lacoste footwear. In the late 1980s, Pentland also owned a 37 percent stake in Reebok. Pentland supplies private label footwear and clothing to well-known national and international retailers. Speedo is the clear market leader in branded swimwear with a 10 percent share of the market and a 75 percent share of performance swimwear. The group’s brands are sold directly by companies or licensees and distributors in more than 120 countries.
Corporate Social Responsibility Sports participants in the richer countries rely on the manufacturing, distribution, and circulation of goods from a global sports industry whose key characteristics, researchers suggest, are sweatshops, high profit margins, and the exploitation of vulnerable groups of workers. Researchers argue that the great excesses of
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capitalist commodification are just as likely to be found in sporting goods manufacture as anywhere else. The following illustrations show the circumstances and practices that lead to calls for greater corporate social responsibility among sporting goods industry firms: ■
■
Rawlings Sporting Goods Co. of St. Louis, Missouri, produces baseballs for the Major League Baseball. In 1953, Rawlings has moved manufacturing from St. Louis to Licking, Missouri (a non-union plant). In 1964, it moved to Puerto Rico (exploiting a tax “holiday” for inward investment). In 1969, it moved to Haiti (the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, where strikes were illegal). In 1990, it moved to Costa Rica where the factory sewers stitched 30– 35 balls a day for US$5–6 and pieceworkers at home earned 15 cents a ball (Sage 1998, 272). In 1995, research conducted for Christian Aid found the following in Nike and Reebok factories in Asia: ■ ■
■
■
■
Two-thirds were women under the age of 25. Typical workers in Indonesian plants were paid 19 cents an hour for 10-and-a-half–hour days, six days a week, and forced overtime. The monthly wage was 30 percent less than that required to meet “minimum physical needs.” Hence, a pair of trainers that sold for £50 in the U.K. was made in a production process involving 40 workers who were paid a total of £1 between them. The Nike Air Pegasus, which sold for $70 in the United States, incurred labor costs of $1.66.
In 2000, the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) published The Dark Side of Football—Child and Adult Labour in India’s Football Industry and the Role of FIFA. The report showed that agreements about labor rights reached between Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA), the world governing body for association football, and the football manufacturing companies who placed FIFA logos on their balls, were often violated. In 2004, an Oxfam report, Play Fair at the Olympics, also revealed details of poor working conditions in
factories run by the U.K.-based company Umbro producing sportswear, including excessive working hours and poor wages. Hence, concerns including child and labor rights, gender divisions, freedom of association, health and safety, the monitoring of conditions, and rehabilitation of those affected by the practices of some of the manufacturers has lead to a backlash against some of the best-known sports brands. John Horne See also Spectator Consumption Behavior
Further Reading Buckley, R. (2000). Globalised sport. Cheltenham, UK: Understanding Global Issues Ltd. Dicken, P. (2003). Global shift (3rd ed.). London: Sage. Euromonitor (2001a). European marketing data and statistics 2001. London: Euromonitor plc. Euromonitor (2001b). International marketing data and statistics 2001. London: Euromonitor plc. Fraser, W. H. (1981). The coming of the mass market. London: Macmillan. Gereffi, G. (1994). The organization of buyer-driven global commodity chains: How US retailers shape overseas production networks. In G. Gereffi & M. Korzeniewicz (Eds.). Commodity chains and global capitalism Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Goldman, R., & Papson, S. (1998). Nike culture. London: Sage. Kingsnorth, P. (2003). One no, many yeses. London: Free Press. Klein, N. (2000). No logo. London: Harper Collins. LaFeber, W. (1999). Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism. New York: Norton Lowerson, J. (1995). Sport and the English middle classes 1870–1914. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Mason, T. (1988). Sport in Britain. London: Faber & Faber. Miller, T., Lawrence, G., McKay, J., & Rowe, D. (2001). Globalization and sport. London: Sage. Mitchell, B. R., & Deane, P. (Eds.). (1988). British Historical Statistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ohl, F., & Tribou, G. (2004). Les marches du sport: Consommateurs et distributeurs (“The sports market: Consumers and distributors”). Paris: Armand Colin. Sage, G. (1998). Power and ideology in American sport (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Sage, G. (1999). “Justice Do It!” The Nike Transnational Advocacy Network. Sociology of Sport Journal, 16(3), 206–235. Sport Industry Research Centre (2003). Sport market forecasts 2003– 2007. Sheffield, UK: SIRC/Sheffield Hallam University. Vamplew, W. (1988). Pay up and play the game. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Whannel, G. (2002). Media sport stars. London: Routledge. Williams, R. (1980). Politics and letters. London: New Left Books.
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Winning is overrated. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war. ■ AL MCGUIRE
Sports Medicine
T
oday most elite athletes are provided with the assistance of physicians, physiologists, nutritionists, biomechanists, psychologists, and other medical and scientific experts in order to improve their performance. Athletes, physicians, and scientists have worked with one another both formally and informally for more than a century, and the history of sports medicine goes back even farther. The medical aspects of sport are founded on scientific research. One of the critical concerns in sports medicine, however, is how quickly new scientific results reach the practitioner. In fact, an even greater worry is whether or not the practitioner is utilizing newer results at all. Early trainers in sport often based their methods and practices on traditions passed down from trainers before them. However, over the past several decades, sports medicine has become increasingly tied to its scientific foundations. This should ensure that the latest research findings quickly reach the coach and athlete.
History The history of sports medicine goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks; many would argue that it goes back even farther to ideas passed down from the Ayurveda in India on exercise and massage between 1000 and 800 BCE. In China ideas about the “Five Elements [Wuxing],” from approximately the second and third century CE, were connected with many phases of life, including the organs of the human body. Acupuncture was practiced as early as the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) to treat symptoms of disease. A traditional starting point in the Western world is Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460–370 BCE), who is often called the “father of scientific medicine.” Hippocrates’s work focused on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, phlegm—and the necessity of creating balance among the four in order to achieve health. There were few drugs during this era, and treatments typically consisted of massage, bloodletting, or hydrotherapy.
INFLUENCE OF GALEN The next great figure in the history of sports medicine is Galen of Pergamon (c. 129–210 CE), who became a physician to emperors and gladiators. His important work, De Sanitate Tuenda [On Hygiene], analyzed the notion of the naturals versus the nonnaturals (he also discussed the contranaturals). The naturals were “of nature” while the nonnaturals were those things that were not innate and thus could be manipulated in order to create health. These nonnaturals included air, food/ drink, motion/rest, sleep/wake, excretion/retention, and the passions of the mind. Galenic theories borrowed heavily from Hippocrates, especially the notion that there was a need for balance in the bodily system. Exercise was a way of creating this balance. Galenic theory continued to influence thought on health and hygiene well into the medieval and Renaissance period. The early Renaissance (twelfth century) focused on the recovery of the writings and knowledge of the ancients. This included both literary and scientific work. The later Renaissance (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) was not only the rebirth of ancient knowledge but also an examination of ancient knowledge in a new context. A variety of scholars began to investigate the concept of hygiene in the mid-sixteenth century. Thomas Elyot’s (1490–1546) The Castel of Healthe (c. 1539), Cristobal Mendez’s (1500–1561) Libro del Exercicio Corporal [Book of Bodily Exercise] (1553), Girolamo Cardano’s (1501–1576) De Sanitate Tuenda [Care of Health] (1560), and Hieronymus Mercurialis’s (1530–1606) De Arte Gymnastica Aput Ancients [The Art of Gymnastics Among the Ancients] (1569) all set forth Galenic theories as the foundation for their ideas about exercise and health.
MOVEMENT AWAY FROM GALENIC THEORY Vesalius’s (1514–1564) De Humani Corpi Fabrica [On the Fabric of the Human Body] (1543) created a fundamentally new way of teaching anatomy. For Vesalius, the cadaver was a source of information about the body. Despite the fact that he found several hundred
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A leg in a brace shortly after knee surgery, a very common sports medicine procedure. Source: istockphoto/kcopperhead.
inconsistencies with Galenic theory, he was not interested in setting aside Galenic notions; in particular he continued to support Galenic physiology. William Harvey (1575– 1657), however, brought about a revolution. Although he did not make many discoveries, he did serve as a catalyst for change in the overall view of Galenic theory. The significance of Harvey’s De Moto Cordis [The Motion of the Heart] (1628) is that it substituted one way of thinking for another. These were not Harvey’s ideas; many were from his precursors. However, the entire nature of physiological research after Harvey was transformed. Harvey moved the focus in physiology from the liver, which had been the central organ for Galen, to a new focus on the circulatory system.
HYGIENIC AND MEDICAL ASPECTS The 1700s and 1800s saw an increase in awareness in the hygienic and medical aspects of sport through two basic avenues. First there was rising interest in somewhat more formalized sport and thus some concern about the training of athletes. In addition there was growing interest in the use of gymnastic exercise for therapeutic reasons. John Sinclair’s Code of Health and Longevity (1807), which was based substantially on the work of the ancients, provided information about training regimens during this time, particularly for boxing and pedestrianism. A diet heavy in red meat, which most resembled the muscle that it was supposed to build, and other training ideas based substantially on creating a balance in Galenic humoral theory through sweating, purging, and vomiting were the centerpiece of this work. The gymnastics systems emerging in Europe, in particular the Swedish system of Per Henrik Ling, had a
great deal of influence on medical and therapeutic attitudes toward exercise. Swedish medical gymnastics would serve as the foundation for a great deal of sports medicine, including physical and occupational therapy and athletic training. It appears that George Taylor was among the first to bring Per Henrik Ling’s system to America in the 1850s. Hartvig Nissen published his work in Practical Massage and Corrective Exercises with Applied Anatomy (1889). Other important texts on Swedish gymnastics included Baron Nils Posse’s Handbook of School Gymnastics and the Swedish System (1891), Anders Wide’s Handbook of Medical Gymnastics (1899), and William Skarstrom’s Gymnastic Kinesiology (1909), which first appeared as a series in the American Physical Education Review in 1908–1909. Widely practiced in physical education in Europe and America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Swedish gymnastics clearly is the basis for many of the allied health fields.
BRINGING TOGETHER SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND ATHLETICS By the middle decades of the 1800s a number of works emerged that attempted to look at the connections among science, medicine, and athletics. Scotsman Archibald McClaren published Training in Theory and Practice in 1866. In this work he applied his medical training and his knowledge of gymnastics and exercise to the emerging field of athletic training. By the early
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1900s training manuals appeared, including those from Michael C. Murphy and S. E. Bilik, whose Trainer’s Bible, first published in 1917, went through numerous editions. R. Tait McKenzie brought together medical and athletic knowledge in his 1909 work Exercise in Education and Medicine. Sports medicine in Germany was more organized than in many places including the first official sport Physician Congress in 1912. The interest of German physicians in sports medicine set the groundwork for the first meeting of FIMS (Federation Internationale de Médecine Sportive) at the II Olympic Winter Games held in St. Moritz [it was at first called Association Internationale Medico-Sportive (AIMS); the name was changed to FIMS in 1934]. A number of similar organizations were formed throughout the world in the twentieth century that focused on the topic of sports medicine, including the American College of Sports Medicine, founded in 1954. The connection between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and FIMS continued to grow, and FIMS was “officially recognized” by the IOC at its meeting in Oslo in 1952. The 1960 Olympic Games in Rome had a Medical and Scientific Committee that established a complete scientific study of the athletes taking part in the Games, and the Tokyo Games of 1964 included an International Congress of Sport Sciences. Doping was one of the major scientific/medical problems that confronted the IOC in the early 1960s. The suspicious death of a Danish cyclist during the 1960 Rome Olympics led the IOC to take action, and they created a Medical Commission that by 1968 would begin drug testing of Olympic competitors. Sex testing (or gender verification) was another scientific/medical problem that emerged in the 1960s. Although it took nearly 30 years, scientists and physicians who had protested the testing since its inception finally made inroads with the major sport organizations. By 1992, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had dropped genetic testing for female athletes. The IOC, however, moved at a much more deliberate pace. In 1992 they dropped the “buc-
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cal smear” chromosome test in favor of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing. In 1999 the IOC provisionally withdrew all sex testing beginning with the 2000 Games in Sydney. However, the IOC has not ended sex testing, because if anyone questions a competitor, tests will be conducted by what the IOC calls “appropriate medical personnel.” It is important to note that not one male posing as a female competitor has been detected since sex testing began in 1968.
Contemporary Issues in Sports Medicine Athletes in Galen’s time could never have predicted the issues on which sports medicine needs to focus in the twenty-first century. Injury prevention, environmental factors such as heat stroke and so-called “oxygen debt,” and new and increasingly difficult-to-detect performanceenhancing drugs are just a few of the thorny problems that sports medicine will be grappling with in the future.
SPORTS INJURIES Injury prevention, as a topic of inquiry, is slowly beginning to come to the forefront. Athletes, coaches, and researchers understand the potential benefit of preventing injury rather than rehabilitating it; however, little research has been conducted up to now in this area. Recent studies have looked at the beneficial impact of equipment such as facial protection in hockey and helmet use in pole vaulting and cycling. Although all injury in sport is potentially serious, injuries to the head, neck, and spine are considered to be the most significant. Thus, a great deal of research is concerned with preventing such injuries and treating and rehabilitating athletes with head, neck, and spine injuries. Recently, such research has focused on the issue of concussions in sport. This includes work on prevention of concussion via specialized equipment, the need for better diagnosis following injury, the impact of multiple concussions on an athlete, and the legal implications of allowing an athlete to return to competition following the concussion. Low back pain is another issue that is common to a variety of sports. Managing
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low back pain has become another topic of research interest. Topics studied in this subfield include warmup exercises, joint manipulation, and dynamic stability exercises. Treatment for sports injury no longer is isolated to full open surgery. Increasingly, athletes opt for arthroscopic surgery when possible and thus are able to begin rehabilitation much more quickly and return to competition much faster than ever before. Thus injuries to shoulders, elbows, knees, and other joints do not necessarily end an athlete’s season. After joint injuries, muscle and tendon injuries are the next critical issue in sports medicine. Sudden tears and, increasingly, overuse injuries are commonplace. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become a useful tool in evaluating musculoskeletal injuries. A better understanding of biomechanical and mechanical principles is giving us an enhanced understanding of how to better evaluate and improve performance. In addition, mechanics are contributing to the understanding of injury rehabilitation. Rehabilitation from injury increasingly includes active exercise.
ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS Altitude, heat, and pollution are all potential threats to athletes. The problems of altitude were exposed to the public as a result of the selection of Mexico City as the site of the XIX Olympiad. The greatest concern expressed by distance runners was that their bodies would not be able to overcome what they called the “oxygen debt” imposed by running at such a high altitude. The term oxygen debt was introduced in 1925 by the distinguished British Nobel Prize–winning physiologist A. V. Hill. As with many scientific and medical terms, use of the term oxygen debt has had a long duration, even as research has provided more appropriate terms. Altitude continues to be a topic of interest in sports medicine. Today, scientists believe that high altitude has a definite impact on performance, particularly on events after the return to sea level by altitude-trained athletes. When an athlete lives and trains at high altitude for an extended period of time, the body adapts in a number
of ways; most importantly for the elite athlete is the increased production of red blood cells. This allows the blood to carry oxygen more effectively, and it should lead to an improvement in performance. Technological sophistication entered the equation many years ago with the practice of blood doping and the production of drugs such as erythropoietin that increase the red-bloodcell count. In addition, as the latest theories now argue that the athlete should perhaps “live high and train low,” there have been a number of products developed that allow competitors to simulate different altitudes via breathing apparatus or in specially constructed tents and chambers. Heat-related illness, particularly sudden onset, is a serious problem in sport. Concerns have also developed that an individual who has had one occurrence of a heat-related illness is more likely to have successive episodes. There have, unfortunately, been numerous examples of athletes dying suddenly during a variety of sports, particularly in American football, but also in wrestling and soccer. Keeping athletes adequately hydrated and having them avoid dietary supplements that may exacerbate dehydration is of key importance. An additional environmental factor that impacts performance is pollution, although limited research is conducted in this area compared to the other two factors.
DRUGS AND SPORT There is no foreseeable end in sight to the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport. Doping continues despite the increasingly sophisticated detection techniques created by physicians and scientists. The Worldwide Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) attempts to control the doping problem within sport, but despite the support of most of the elite sport world is successful in only a limited way. New drugs are developed and are virtually impossible to detect. These new drugs are added to the list of banned substances as quickly as possible, but the rapidity with which they are created and distributed makes drug testing a seemingly Sisyphean task. The favorite doping methods of only a few years ago, such as nandrolone and EPO, are
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Sports Medicine Naming Sports Injuries As sports increased in popularity during the late nineteenth century, critics began to question the effects of sports on participants.The following account reveals the concerns of doctors regarding this new class of injuries. Mr. Charles Richards Dodge, in the February Outing, refers to the subject of the “pathology of Recreative Sports,” . . . based evidently upon articles which I contributed to the Medical Record and to Science of November last, . . . The “lawn-tennis arm” and “lawn-tennis leg” are accidents peculiar to tennis, and having a special train of symptoms. Therefore, we give them special names for purposes of convenience. We physicians do not create the disease, but simply name it, in which there certainly can be no harm. I must add, that, since my articles have been written, another tennis injury has been noted. It is called “lawn-tennis back.” In boys who begin to play tennis early, and keep up the
quickly replaced by designer steroids like THG. Concern is also raised because not only does doping create an uneven playing field in the world of sport, but it can potentially create and exacerbate health problems in training and competition.
Women, Children, Older Adults The basic research in sports medicine continues to focus on the elite male athlete, while women are categorized as different—as are children, older adults, people with disabilities, and people of color. As all of these groups are treated as special, there appears to be less research conducted on these groups and their medical issues within the world of sport. However, women do receive considerably more attention than all of the others and far more than they did only two to three decades ago. A variety of recent studies have looked at the decline in the level of physical activity among girls as they enter adolescence. In addition, researchers are also looking at the issue of bone loss in young girls in an effort to bet-
game continuously, there is sometimes observed a peculiar overgrowth of the muscles of the back on the right side. This causes loss of straightness and symmetry to the spinal column, amounting almost to deformity. It is, I believe, a rare condition. Mr. Dodge suggests a medical nomenclature with which to portray the injuries and idiosyncrasies of bicycle riders. There has already been one cycle-disease noted. In boys who ride much upon bicycles the continual pressure of the saddle upon the perinaeum sometimes causes irritation of the urinary passage and neighboring organs. Even a stricture may be developed, in this way, it is alleged. I believe this injury to be extremely rare, and am so far from being an alarmist, that I would freely permit young patients to ride bicycles as much, perhaps, as they wished. But it is always wise to know about possible dangers. . . . Source: Dana, C. L. (1885). Pathology of sports. Outing, June, 362.
ter understand the effect of exercise on bone mass in females throughout their lifespan. A series of studies have focused on the fact that females in some sport activities are three to four times more likely to have an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury than male athletes. Much of the research on this topic has examined the differences in the “Q-angle” (the direction of the quadriceps muscle force during a concentric contraction) between males and females. A number of researchers argue that ensuring the development of safer movement patterns among female athletes will potentially lead to a reduction in these types of injuries. Of particular concern among young children is the effect of activities such as weight training, competitionmodified diets, and certain types of physical activities such as pitching mechanics or high-impact training. Although some forms of impact training are crucial in the development of optimal bone density, caution must be exercised to not cause injury. There is still a great deal of research that supports the contention that children between the ages of nine and fourteen should not be
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taught certain sport activities such as how to throw a curveball or a slider in baseball. Over the past four decades, exercise has been utilized increasingly as a mode of recovery from coronary heart disease (CHD). Research is ongoing into the type and amount of aerobic exercise needed to be effective in cardiac rehabilitation. Additionally, there have been an increasing number of studies on the effect of training on the cardiovascular health of older women. Recent studies in older adults have focused particularly on the issue of gait function, a key issue in helping to keep the elderly active, mobile, and injury free. A number of researchers have concluded that strength and endurance training do have beneficial effects on older adults.
Encouraging Physically Inactive People to Exercise The vast majority of work in sports medicine has been devoted to elite athletes. However, today there is greater interest in the experiences of everyday people; in particular, there are grave concerns about the high levels of sedentary behavior among the general public. Thus, a number of researchers are trying to better understand the type, amount, duration, and intensity of aerobic exercise that the public needs in order to not only reduce weight but also to improve cardiovascular functioning. A variety of researchers are struggling with the issue of how to get the public to adhere to some sort of exercise program. This is not only a sport-medicine issue but a publichealth issue as well. In addition, increased physical activity will lead to a potential reduction in the incidence of cardiovascular disease and adult-onset diabetes. Alison W. Wrynn
Essays in the history of sports medicine. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Dickinson, B. D., Genel, M., Robinowitz, C. B., Turner, P. L., & Woods, G. L. (2002). Gender verification of female Olympic athletes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 34, 1539–1542. Dirix, A., & Sturbois, X. (1998). The first thirty years of the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission. Lausanne, Switzerland: International Olympic Committee. Green, H. (1986). Fit for America: Health, fitness, sport and American society. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Grover, K. (Ed.). (1989). Fitness in American culture: Images of health, sport and the body. Amherst, MA, and Rochester, NY: University of Massachusetts Press and the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum. Hoberman, J. (1992). Mortal engines: The science of performance and the dehumanization of sport. New York: The Free Press. Horvath, S. M., & Horvath, E. C. (1973). The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory: Its history and contributions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Johnson, W. R. (Ed.). (1960). Science and medicine of exercise and sports. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers. Massengale, J. D., & Swanson, R. A. (Eds.). (1997). The history of exercise and sport science. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Park, R. J. (1987). Edward M. Hartwell and physical training at the Johns Hopkins University, 1879–1890. Journal of Sport History, 14(1), 108–119. Park, R. J. (1990). Health, exercise and the biomedical impulse, 1870– 1914. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 61(2), 126–140. Rabinbach, A. (1990). The human motor: Energy, fatigue and the origins of modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ryan, A. J. (1968). Medical history of the Olympic Games. Journal of the American Medical Association, 205(11), 715–720. Ryan, A. J. History of the development of sport sciences and medicine, xxxiii–xlvii. In L. A. Larson (Ed). (1971). Encyclopedia of sport sciences and medicine. New York: The Macmillan Company. Shephard, R. J. (Ed.). (2003). Yearbook of Sports Medicine: 2003. Philadelphia: Mosby, Inc. Wilson, W., & Derse, E. (Eds.). (2001). Doping in elite sport: The politics of drugs in the Olympic movement. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Wrynn, A. M. (2002). The grand tour: American exercise science and sports medicine encounters the world, 1926–1966. International Sport Studies: Journal of the International Society for Comparative Physical Education and Sport, 24(2), 5–18. Wrynn, A. M. (2004). The human factor: Science, medicine and the International Olympic Committee, 1900-70. Sport in Society 7(2), 211–232.
See also Anemia; Diet and Weight Loss; Disordered Eating; Exercise and Health; Injuries, Youth; Injury; Injury Risk in Women’s Sport; Nutrition; Osteoporosis; Pain
Further Reading Berryman, J. W. (1995). Out of many one: A history of the American College of Sports Medicine. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Berryman, J. W., & Park, R. J. (Eds.). (1992). Sport and exercise science:
Sportsmanship
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air play in sport, more commonly referred to as sportsmanship, is demonstrated through ethical conduct by athletes during competition and a positive attitude toward the game by players, officials, and
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Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors. ■ FRANK GIFFORD
spectators. Advocates of sportsmanship consider the game worth playing only if all athletes have equal opportunity to win, if they use only their physical or strategic prowess to overcome their opponents, if they treat others as they would like to be treated, and if they refuse to accept a tainted victory. Many sportsmanlike behaviors have been abandoned of late, including congratulating opponents after defeat, personally checking on injured players, thanking referees for a job well done, refraining from use of profanity, and shaking hands, smiling, and moving on when the game is over, regardless of the score. Sportsmanship ideals can be extended from individual in-game behaviors to the behaviors of sports organizations. Are uniforms made in compliance with labor and human rights standards? Is the game available for all people to play regardless of classes, gender, age, sexual orientation, or race? Does the organization respond to the personal needs of the athletes and fans and reward or promote respect for self, others, and the game? All of these aspects of sportsmanship should be taken into consideration.
Sports Construct Ethical Character A broadly held assumption is that participation in competitive games prepares athletes for success in a cutthroat society. Athletes may learn to strive for excellence, persevere, sacrifice, follow orders, be selfless, work with others, and to be fair. With this assumption sports have gained a prominent place in school and community programs, and both amateur and professional sports are usually well supported by the media. D. Stanley Eitzen (1999) recounts many examples of outstanding ethical behavior on the part of coaches and athletes. For instance, a month or so after Rockdale County (Georgia) won the state basketball championship in 1987, the coach, Cleveland Stroud, found that he had unknowingly used an ineligible player in a game. Although the player in question was in the game only a minute or two and had not scored, Stroud notified the authorities of the infraction. As a result, the school forfeited the only state championship it had ever won. In a similar vein Andy Herr of Bloomington, In-
diana, chose to hold up and finish second in a 10-kilometer race in Toledo (Ohio), because the leader had accidentally taken a wrong turn. In these examples sports competitors showed respect for each other and for the game when they strictly adhered to rules set out by governing bodies, no matter how minor, in an attempt to maintain a “level playing field.” They acted as role models for many, teaching that a tainted victory is no victory at all. The essence of sports is competition governed by specific rules that structure and define the practice. Rules are designed to place constraints and conditions upon the competition in order to make success more difficult to achieve. Therefore, in order to “win” in a sport, a competitor must adhere to an illogical framework. In European handball players are restricted to carrying the ball a maximum of three steps before they must bounce or pass it. Slalom skiers are required to cross with both skis the imaginary line between the two poles of every gate of the slalom course. These strict rules demarcate sports from other activities and present a challenge to competitors. Historically, in sports that have maintained much of their amateur credo (i.e., golf, baseball, tennis, and cricket) an emphasis on fairness, recreation, and personal challenge has prevailed. Although these sports can be played at a highly competitive level and for considerably large purses at the professional level, scandals involving unethical behavior by athletes in these sports are rare in comparison with scandals in sports that are driven by the tenets of professionalism, and in particular those sports that highlight physical strength and physical domination over opponents. In sports such as association football and gridiron football, ice hockey, rugby, and basketball, the goal of gaining an advantage over rivals has prevailed, and in many cases a spirit of fair play and a respect for rules and personal well-being have been forsaken.
Sports Deconstruct Ethical Character According to Beller and Stoll (1993), although sports do build character if character is defined as “loyalty, dedication, sacrifice, and teamwork,” they do not build
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Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they’re in the game. ■ PAUL RODRIGUEZ
character if character is defined as “honesty, responsibility, and justice.” All levels of all sports, from youth leagues to professional ranks, are becoming more and more “professional,” with children as young as six years old adopting a “no place for second place” attitude. As the salaries and status associated with winning have increased, some athletes, coaches, and even spectators have accepted a “winning-at-all-costs” philosophy, which has led to the dehumanization of athletes and their alienation from their bodies and competitors. Under these conditions we should not be surprised that research reveals consistently that sports stifle moral reasoning and moral development. When coaches, athletes, and fans corrupt the ideals of sportsmanship in their zeal to succeed, they are likely to employ or condone similar tactics outside sports. They might accept the necessity of dirty tricks in politics or misleading advertising in business because the overall goal is to win even if winning requires moving outside the established rules. Rule violations that serve efficiency and team interests are widely accepted in many sports; however, problems arise when both teams have not consented to certain “interpretations” of the rules. The negative values learned in sports may include selfishness, envy, conceit, greed, hostility, and brutality. Athletes cheat, use profanity, performance-enhancing drugs, and violence to gain a competitive edge and see these unfair tactics as “strategy” rather than cheating.
Cheating in Sports Some illegal acts have become so commonplace that they are now accepted as part of the game. In basketball, hockey, and association football, for example, a player commonly pretends to be fouled or injured in order to receive an unmerited free throw, power play, or penalty kick with a relatively high certainty of scoring. In fact, these “penalties” are built into the structure of the game, and the concept of no contact, which is in fact, written into the rules, is completely ignored. Pitchers in baseball sometimes achieve an illegal advantage by scuffing the ball or by putting a foreign substance (i.e., saliva or Vaseline) on it so that it drops suddenly when pitched.
Batters, such as Billy Hatcher of the Houston Astros in 1987, Wilton Guerrero of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1997, and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs in 2003, countered by illegally corking their bats in order to hit the ball farther. On 3 June 2003, Sosa, known for hitting explosive home runs, grounded out but knocked in a run, breaking his bat on impact. The home plate umpire discovered the cork in Sosa’s bat, and Sosa was subsequently ejected from the game. Although Sosa denied the intentional use of an illegal bat, he and all players caught cheating instantly cast doubt on their entire prior sporting success.
Profanity in Sports Profanity is creeping into youth sports as a result of the antics of professional athletes in televised sports. The media continue to show adults out of control because to do so increases ratings. Television close-ups display college athletes and coaches mouthing obscenities in reaction to an official’s call. Cameras zoom in on athletes who lose their cool and provide intense interviews liberally interspersed with “bleeps.” Coaches who release streams of four-letter words to anyone within earshot are guaranteed to be featured in prime time. Bobby Knight, formerly of Indiana University, is the most infamous coach known for verbally abusing officials and his own players, throwing chairs, and even kicking his own son. Equally loved and hated by many, Knight was known for his vulgarities and his winning record. He acted as a role model to athletes and other coaches alike. Unbridled profanity can also be found in car racing. In 2004, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) president Mike Helton threatened to fine drivers and crewmen for “inappropriate” language and issued stern warnings for drivers to watch their mouths.
Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Sports The history of athletes using drugs to enhance their endurance, power, or strength is a long one, dating back to the Greek athletes who raised their testosterone levels
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by eating sheep testicles during the ancient Olympic Games. British cyclist Tommy Simpson died on a hill climb of Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France. A vial containing an amphetamine was found on his body. In 1988 Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for anabolic steroid use after winning the Seoul, South Korea Olympics men’s 100-meter race. His medal was revoked, and subsequently the International Amateur Athletics Federation banned him from competition for life. Despite the fact that drugs are illegal and cause harmful side effects, elite athletes in many sports, in particular sprinting, weightlifting, bodybuilding, and weight throwing (shot put, discus, hammer, javelin), are almost required to take steroids if they want to be successful and meet international standards.
Violence in Sports Violence has become a prevalent feature of contemporary sports, both in its instrumental and hostile forms. Instrumental violence helps an athlete to achieve the goal of winning a competition. Sports are one of the few settings in which acts of aggression are not only tolerated, but also enthusiastically applauded and even required from athletes. Hostile violence is intentionally harming another person, whether that person is a player, referee, or spectator, and its incidence is on the rise. In the past National Football League coaches (contrary to league rules) gave monetary awards each week to players who hit their opponents the hardest, and at least one, Kansas City Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer, offered to pay off any fines his team incurred for breaking the jaws of opponents or knocking down adversaries. This emphasis on intimidating violence is almost universal among gridiron football, rugby, and hockey coaches, players, and fans. The objective is not just to hit but to punish and even to injure. Sociologist Michael Smith has argued that violence in hockey, as in war, is a socially rewarded behavior. The players (and fans) are convinced that aggression (body checking, intimidation, and the like) is vital to winning. Spectators have been known to assault opposing spectators and players. In 2000 Los Angeles Dodger
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backup catcher Chad Kreuter was sitting in the bullpen when a fan hit him in the head and stole his cap. Kreuter and several other Dodgers went into the stands, and a mob scene ensued. Sixteen players and three coaches were given suspensions. The most notorious cases of fan violence have occurred in European football. In 1909 a riot that even today would warrant headlines internationally broke out in Scotland after officials declined the fans’ demand for extra-play time to settle a draw between Glasgow and Celtic. The riot involved six thousand spectators and resulted in injury to fifty-four policemen, serious damage to the grounds and emergency equipment, and the destruction of virtually every street lamp in the area. At Euro 2000 Brussels police arrested 850 fans during a street riot that erupted before a match between England and Germany. Fans of both nations began with chanting and taunting before throwing chairs and beer bottles at each other in the city’s main square. Riot police armed with a water canon eventually quelled the violence; however, European fans continue to bring the sport of association football into disrepute.
Lacking Ethics at the Organizational Level Immorality is not a matter of just breaking or bending the rules—the rules themselves may be unfair or even immoral. Powerful organizations such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have denied equality to women and have exploited athletes. During the 1960s the National Organization for Women (NOW) gathered data at the national and local levels on discrimination against girls and women in neighborhood and school sports. Armed with this data, the organization lobbied Congress, which ultimately passed Title IX, the 1972 education amendment that prohibits discrimination against women in U.S. federally funded education programs. Until that time, compared with men’s sports, women’s sports received less funding, fewer scholarships were awarded to women athletes, women had fewer opportunities to play, and coaches of
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Some critics of hunting do not consider it very sportsmanlike because the animals do not know they are part of the competition.
women’s teams received lower salaries. Although much progress has been made, more than thirty years later gender equity has not been reached. The NCAA has not effectively implemented the law and continues to uphold rules that exploit athletes. NCAA regulations require that athletes commit to a fouryear agreement with a school, yet schools make only a yearby-year commitment to athletes. This fact means that athletes can lose scholarships at the whim of their coaches, yet they cannot move to another school without sitting out a year. Meanwhile, coaches who break their contracts can coach immediately at another school. Coaches have physically assaulted and publicly belittled their players, but if their teams win, they are rewarded handsomely. “Big-time” college sports in the United States have corrupted academe by engaging in recruiting violations, waiving academic requirements, and actually preventing student-athletes from studying and attending classes. As more schools are seduced by the potential profits (several million dollars in revenue) from successful intercollegiate competition, they are treating athletes more and more as investment capital; many have forgotten that college athletes have been promised an education in exchange for their sports participation. Intercollegiate sports have become big business; athletic programs seek to remain competitive to maximize profits
and not only deny athletes access to an education, but also increasingly pervert the educational value of sports. The emphasis on sportsmanship by the leaders of the IOC tends to be nullified by questionable practices condoned by administrators. During the 1990s eleven International Olympic Committee members resigned or were expelled as a result of scandals over vote buying. IOC members demanded bribes of up to one million dollars from cities bidding to host the games. Marc Hodler, a member of the International Olympic Committee executive board at the time, claimed abuses in voting occurred for the 1996 Atlanta games and the 2000 Sydney games before unscrupulous IOC mem-
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bers were caught taking cash bribes, medical expenses, travel expenses, gifts, entertainment, and college tuition payments for their children during Salt Lake City’s successful 2002 Winter Olympics bid. During this same era, while other international sports organizations such as the International Amateur Athletics Federation were eliminating gender testing, the IOC continued to require all women competitors to “prove” their femininity, much to the chagrin of many women Olympians.
Returning to Ethical Sports Behavior The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the world governing body for soccer, has recognized that the world’s top teams and players have a responsibility as role models for young people taking up the game and fans in the stands. FIFA now obliges all players in the World Cup finals and other FIFA events to sign a “fair play declaration.” The number of occurrences bringing football into disrepute in European countries has been reduced as a result of close cooperation with the respective authorities and strict guidelines for match organization and “no standing room” stadium design. As well as rewarding its various world champion teams with cups and diplomas, FIFA also recognizes special acts of fair play by presenting individual and team FIFA Fair Play Trophies. The Citizenship Through Sports Alliance (CTSA) is the largest coalition of professional and amateur athletics organizations in the United States concerned with character in sports. CTSA promotes sportsmanship at all levels of sports to reinforce the positive values that sports can teach. Since 1997 CTSA has been building a sports culture that encourages respect for self, others, and the game. Fair Play for Children (FPC), an international organization based in the United Kingdom, promotes every child’s right to play with fair attitudes and activities worldwide. The United Nations has declared that every child has a right to engage in age-appropriate play and recreational activities, and FPC works to ensure that each child has equal opportunity for full participation, free
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from discrimination, brutal training tactics, and cutthroat competition.
The Future of Fair Play It has been said that unless we remind ourselves of the essentials of sportsmanship it will gradually fade, as have other traditional societal values. To return to a more ethical sporting ethos (distinguishing character, moral nature, or principled guiding beliefs), what is most important is the change that fans can bring about. Sports fans pay the costs of big-time college and professional sports, spending $100 billion a year on sports equipment, memorabilia, tickets, and the like. If enough fans withdrew their financial support of professional sports in protest, refusing to forgive and forget the irresponsible behavior of players, coaches, and owners, meaningful improvements might occur. Sports enthusiasts may also work within the system, volunteering to coach youth sports teams or serve on the board of directors of a sports league. Teachers and professors can become coaches, move into athletic administration, or serve on athletic committees. As people become insiders and move into positions of increasing power, they must fight against the status quo. Thousands of games are played worldwide every day without incident. Players and fans act appropriately, coaches and referees behave beyond reproach. Unfortunately, incidents of immoral behavior are more likely to make headlines, and professional athletes are always on display. The problems in sports are not solely the result of “a few bad apples.” Society demands that athletes remain drug free and, at the same time, honors only those athletes who win and break records. For those who triumph, the rewards for them (and perhaps their families and their coaches) are substantial, so instead of privileging sportsmanship, winning at any price has become the prevailing code of conduct. Sports psychologist Charles Banham put it simply: “Good sportsmanship may be a product of sport, but so is bad sportsmanship.” Examining issues such as trash talking, cheating, flagrant fouls, doping and athletes as role
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Years ago, the sports pages were the best-written, most lively, and most informative about the many cultures of this nation than any other pages in the paper. ■ MICHAEL NOVA
models will provide coaches and educators with effective tools for promoting sportsmanship. Janelle Joseph See also Values and Ethics
The Father of All Sportswriters Further Reading
Beller, J. M., & Stoll, S. K. (1993). Sportsmanship: An antiquated concept? Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 64, 74–79. Eitzen, D. S. (1999). Fair and foul: Beyond the myths and paradoxes of sport. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gough, R. W. (1997). Character is everything: Promoting ethical excellence in sports. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Loland, S. (2002). Fair play in sport: A moral norm system. London: Routledge. Ruskin, H., & Lammer, M. (2001). Fair play: Violence in sport and society. Jerusalem, Israel: Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Smith, M. D. (1983). Violence and sport. Toronto, Canada: Butterworth.
Sportswriting and Reporting
I
sportswriting is a record of sports reporters sometimes failing and sometimes passing the test of good journalism.
n the worldwide development and acceptance of sports, few institutions have played a more important role than the sporting press. In fact, the growth of newspapers in the nineteenth century coincided with the growth of modern sports, and although until the last decade of that century the sporting press existed and flourished somewhere beyond the pale of standard journalism, the traditional functions of the press applied to sportswriting and continue to do so. Journalism supplies information to the reading public and builds community; journalism sets an agenda for public discourse; and journalism serves as a social watchdog. These basic functions, some more powerful than others at different historical periods, shaped the development of sportswriting. As Stanley Walker of the New York Herald Tribune noted about sportswriters in City Editor: “[T]he best ones know that the test of good sports reporting is not substantially different from that of all other good reporting” (1934, 133). Walker and others agree that the history of
Beginning in 1787 and continuing until 1824, England became enamored of sports, especially bareknuckle prize fighting. In 1810 and again in 1811, the British champion Tom Cribb fought and defeated a freed American slave named Tom Molineaux, and although the fights were illegal and had to be held in the country to evade the authorities, crowds of approximately five thousand attended the fights and countless others awaited news of the outcomes in London and other cities. The followers of sports, all sports, were known as “The Fancy,” a subculture of males from all walks of society who gathered in taverns and who were enthusiastic about athletic contests. The man who supplied this subculture with information and thereby established a sense of a sporting community was Pierce Egan. Egan was born in Ireland in 1772, and he died in England in 1849. During the course of his journalism career, Egan became “the greatest writer about the ring who ever lived,” according to A. J. Liebling, who considered his collection of boxing stories, The Sweet Science, to be an extension of Egan’s work (Liebling 1956, 8, 12). In 1813 Egan published Boxiana, a book that can be regarded as a guide for both the novice and more experienced member of the Fancy who sought to learn more about the history and current state of the prize ring. Egan educated the public on the slang of the ring and other sports, but his particular genius and his claim to an influential role in the popularization of sports are based on the fact he was the first to recognize that an audience that craved information existed. Egan worked as a compositor for the London Weekly Dispatch, and in 1816 he joined the staff as a sportswriter. In 1820 he went on his own and began to publish and edit Bell’s Life in London, an all-sports weekly that virtually served as a template for other sports weeklies published in England and the United States until 1860. Egan covered sports and the social scene
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surrounding sports, and in doing so he provided a public record in print of a spirit of freedom and adventure that young men were beginning to experience.
American Sportswriting Pioneers Egan sold Bell’s Life in London in 1824, but its influence extended beyond that time and across the Atlantic. The first successful attempt to sustain a sporting publication in the United States was the work of John Stuart Skinner, who published the American Farmer in 1819 and the more sports-oriented American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine in 1829. Skinner included some articles on sports, recreation, and exercise in American Farmer, but for the most part he covered events that fell under the headings “Rural Sports” and “Sports of the Plough” (Berryman 1979, 46). As its title suggests, American Turf Register focused on horses and field sports. The initial issue of the first true sports weekly in America, William Trotter Porter’s Spirit of the Times, appeared on 10 December 1831. While covering a multitude of sports, Porter aimed his publication at an audience of America’s sporting gentry. He favored horse racing and field sports, and his most famous contributor was William Henry Herbert, who wrote outdoors sketches under the pen name Frank Forester. Forester’s work gained great popularity, but Herbert, who harbored loftier literary ambitions, was ashamed of what he considered his hack writing. Despite becoming, in the estimation of John Rickards Betts, “the first nationally famous sportswriter,” Herbert committed suicide in 1858 (1953, 42). George Wilkes launched the National Police Gazette in New York City in 1845, and in 1856 he bought the Spirit of the Times, which for a while was published simultaneously under slightly different names and with different owners. The more famous version of the National Police Gazette, the notorious “barbershop Bible” printed on pink paper, began in 1876 when Irish immigrant Richard Kyle Fox bought the weekly and turned it into the sporting paper with the greatest influence and largest circulation in the United States in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
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In 1853 Frank Queen began publishing and editing the weekly New York Clipper, the paper that inaugurated the baseball box score, an invention of the game’s first great chronicler, Henry Chadwick. More so than other publications of the period, Queen’s Clipper functioned as a booster, an educator, and a builder of an emerging American sports culture. The paper flourished until Queen’s death in 1882, and it continued to publish, although dealing primarily with theater news, until 1923 when it was bought by Variety. With the reading audience for sports news increasing annually, Francis C. Richter responded in 1882 by issuing Sporting Life, a weekly published in Philadelphia that included regular reports on baseball, track and field, cycling, yachting, tennis, and prize fighting. Devoted to the increasingly popular sport of baseball, Al and Charlie Spink’s Sporting News first appeared in 1886 in St. Louis, and by 1900 it usurped the Clipper’s title as the “Bible of baseball.” Richard Harding Davis became editor of Harper’s Weekly in 1890, and he retooled the magazine in an effort to attract an audience of young, primarily well-to-do men. Davis hired Casper Whitney to write a weekly column on “Amateur Sports,” and between them they introduced and helped popularize the “school sports hero” (Messenger 1981, 151–153).
James Gordon Bennett Jr. Promotes Sports Editors of daily newspapers were slow to acknowledge the surging importance of sports as news, but James Gordon Bennett Jr., whose father started the New York Herald in 1835, proved an exception. In the 1860s, after taking the reins of the paper from his father, Bennett consistently devoted space, if not specifically devoted pages, to sports news, covering baseball, prize fighting, and horse racing in particular. Bennett was also a self-promoter. In 1866 he used the newly laid underwater cable to wire back reports of the victory of his yacht in a transatlantic race in which each participant put up $30,000 in a winner-take-all challenge. Bennett’s win led to the reinstitution of the America’s Cup challenge in 1870, and his coverage led other
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Where is sport without the words that surround it? ■ BUD COLLINS
newspaper editors to increase their attention to sports. In 1878 Charles Wright was named sports editor of the Syracuse Courier, and he is believed to be the first American journalist to hold such a position. In the same year Francis Richter, who four years later launched Sporting Life, directed other reporters in a full-fledged sports department at the Philadelphia Public Ledger.
The Birth of Daily Sports Pages It was not until the 1880s, when professional baseball earned a spot in the national consciousness and heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan was becoming enormously popular, that daily newspapers began to experiment with the radical idea of including regular sports pages. In New York, Charles A. Dana of the Sun and Joseph Pulitzer of the World featured regular sports pages. In Chicago, a fiercely competitive newspaper town whose papers reflected the boisterous, bustling nature of the city, a crime reporter for the Inter-Ocean, Leonard Washburn, accepted an assignment to cover a Chicago White Stockings game. Washburn’s story, according to Hugh Fullerton, revolutionized the genre because he produced a story “interesting and entertaining enough to be read by all the patrons of the paper” (1928, 18). Washburn’s efforts in sports coverage were soon to be followed by another Chicago stylist, Finley Peter Dunne, and the sportswriter as storyteller, as opposed to a compiler of facts and statistics, was born. Sometimes the results of this style proved less than informative. Noting that the objective of the first American sports pages was to tell a reader who won and who lost, Randall Poe observed in his essay “The Writing of Sports” that “the scores often got in the way of rococo description and were lost” (1974, 173–174).
Grantland Rice and the Golden Age of Sportswriting Grantland Rice joined the sports staff of the New York Evening Mail in December 1910, and it could be argued that modern sportswriting reached an age of robust adolescence at the same time. Up to the day of his death on
13 July 1954, Rice continued to cover sports in daily newspapers, in his syndicated column, in film shorts, and in magazines. Rice was, in the estimation of Robert Lipsyte, “the prototype superstar sportswriter of the Golden Age” (1975, 170). For better or for worse, Rice spawned generations of journalistic imitators, prompting Lipsyte to claim that Rice’s influence was “the most liberating and the most destructive” in sportswriting history (1975, 170). Early in his career, Rice formulated his philosophy of sportswriting: “[G]ood sportsmanship should apply not only to playing sport but to writing about it as well. No cheap shots” (Harper 1999, 122). Rice never took a journalistic cheap shot at anybody. If an athlete or coach did something worthy of criticism, Rice’s approach was to ignore that person and event and devote his column inches to the more smiling aspects of the game. Stanley Walker determined that “two fairly definite schools” of sportswriting existed in Rice’s time, the “Gee Whiz!” and “Aw Nuts!” schools (1934, 123). Rice was the premier practitioner of the Gee Whiz style, writing that used classical metaphors and often used verse to mythologize an athlete or team. Ironically, W. O. McGeehan, who for a time in the 1920s was Rice’s sports editor at the New York Herald Tribune, was, along with Westbrook Pegler and Heywood Broun, the foremost practitioner of the Aw Nuts School, which sought to treat athletes as real people with human failings and games as business enterprises. McGeehan, for example, refused to refer to the people attending a sporting event as “fans,” preferring instead to label them the “customers.” Rice’s most famous story was his Four Horsemen report on the 1924 Army–Notre Dame football game. “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky,” he wrote, “the Four Horsemen rode again.” His story ran not only in the Sunday editions of the Herald Tribune, but because of syndication, in numerous papers around the country. With one deftly chosen sports-page trope, Rice romanticized and made immortal a Notre Dame backfield that was only a bit above average. More significantly, though, he romanticized and helped popularize
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Sportswriting and Reporting The Rise of Sportswriting Fred Lieb, a man who spent more than seventy years writing sports, recounts the tale of covering a midwinter baseball meeting in 1915 when the Federal League was challenging the established National and American leagues for economic supremacy. Lieb left the Manhattan meeting site with Heywood Broun, then the sports editor of the New York Tribune. Broun had been raised in a wealthy New York family and went to Harvard. Lieb grew up in decidedly more modest circumstances in Philadelphia and graduated from Central Manual High School. What drew these two men together was a mutual love for sports and sportswriting. Upon leaving the meeting, Lieb accepted Broun’s invitation to dine with him at the Harvard Club. “One of his old Harvard professors stopped at our table and chatted familiarly for several minutes,” Lieb writes in his 1977 book Baseball as I Have Known It. “As the professor started to move away, he stopped and said, `I forgot to ask, what are you doing now, Broun?’ Heywood replied, ‘I’m writing baseball for the Tribune.’ The professor’s face dropped. ‘Bah! Have you fallen to that?’” The professor’s reaction to Broun’s chosen profession in 1915 was not surprising. Sports reporting had a deserved reputation as a “backdoor trade” pop-
intercollegiate football, as well as other sports to which he turned his attention, most notably golf.
Ring, Runyon, and Other Luminaries American press boxes in the first three decades of the twentieth century were filled with some of the greats of the profession. Ring Lardner, Damon Runyon, Hugh Fullerton, Paul Gallico, Fred Lieb, John Kieran, Charles E.Van Loan, and John R. Tunis all were covering sports on a regular basis. Of that group, Lardner, Runyon, and Gallico are noted for their work as sports reporters and for the fiction, sports-related and otherwise, they
ulated by naive kids or “free loaders who long ago gave up their dreams and a healthy part of their morals,” as Seymour Krim observes in his essay “Sportswriting: Square and Avantgarde.” Too often, sportswriters were propagandists, mere shills for a promoter who could buy their coverage with a few dollars or a bottle of whisky. And sometimes both. While that may have been the case at the beginning of the twentieth century, the situation in the sportswriting business at the beginning of the twentyfirst century has changed completely. In his “Foreword” to the collection titled The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, Glenn Stout notes that in the past three decades “sports writing has become something of a respected genre of American literature.” Indeed, sprinkled throughout virtually all of the anthologies of literary journalism are stories written by sportswriters. What used to be a “backdoor trade” has emerged as an admired genre of nonfiction literature. Significantly, it is worth noting that Heywood Broun’s son, Heywood Hale Broun, followed his father into sportswriting and became one of the most respected writers and sports commentators of the latter half of the century. Dennis Gildea
produced. Lardner was born on 6 March 1885 in Niles, Michigan, and he initially built his reputation as an astute writer covering major league baseball, especially his beloved Chicago White Sox. Lardner earned a lofty place in American literature when his bitingly humorous You Know Me Al stories were published in book form in 1916. Written in dialect and from the point of view of White Sox rookie pitcher Jack Keefe, the stories were originally published in The Saturday Evening Post. Runyon, who grew up in Pueblo, Colorado, covered sports and wrote a column for the New York American from 1911 to 1946, but it was in 1931 when Guys and Dolls was published that he achieved literary
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Sportswriting and Reporting The Big Game Sportswriter Grantland Rice penned sonnets about a variety of sports. Here he captures the mood of a football game in 1924. You take the color and flash of the game, And the human gardens of rose-lip girls, And all the pageant that waits the call As the toe drives into the waiting ball But leave me the halfback’s driving might, The surging lines in a bitter fight, The sweat and smear of the warring soul As the tackle opens a two-foot hole; The roar of the crowds, with their beasts aflame, The ringing cheers, with their eddying swirls, The interference, the deadly pass, The grip and crash of the swirling mass. For the crowd fades out and the cheers dip low When the fourth down comes, with a yard to go, And in the struggle along the field The battle changes to sword and shield And the knightly tourneys that used to be In the golden era of chivalry. The world soft as the years advance Further and further from sword and lance, When the caveman, after his morning’s fun. Slew the mammoth and mastodon; But his ghost at the gridiron calls through space: “These, too, are worthy to build a race.” Source: Rice, G. (1924). Badminton (p. 136–137).
immortality. Runyon’s stories introduced readers to the characters, language, and the values of New York City’s underworld and sports culture, earning him the title “The Chronicler of Broadway.” Gallico was born in New York City on 26 July 1897, and he served as sports reporter and sports editor of the New York Daily News from 1923 to 1936. Gallico was a Gee Whiz writer who came to regret his journalistic style, as he notes in his 1938 book Farewell to Sport.
Gallico, McGeehan, and Tunis, who wrote eighteen sports-based novels for juvenile readers from 1938 to 1973, filled the role of journalistic watchdogs of sport.
The Fresh Eye of Red Smith Red Smith, a writer once observed, “has given sports what Monet gave sunrises—a pure and constantly fresh eye” (Poe 1974, 176). Smith began covering sports for the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1927 and was still writing a column for the New York Times when he died on 15 January 1982. He won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1976, becoming just the third sportswriter to achieve journalism’s highest honor. New York Times columnist Arthur Daley won in 1956, beating out Smith and Jimmy Cannon of the New York Post, and in 1951 Max Kase of the New York Journal-American won for his story exposing the college basketball pointshaving scandal. Like Grantland Rice, Smith spent his career in sports journalism, but unlike Rice and Rice’s many imitators, Smith never shied away from critiquing sports.When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Smith was the first sports columnist to advocate a United States boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. Ironically, the New York Times chose not to run the column because the editors felt it was politically inappropriate. However, the column ran in 350 papers that subscribed to the Times news service, and it helped draw national attention to the boycott issue. In 1968 he supported Tommy Smith’s and John Carlos’s right to make the black-glove protest on the medals podium at the Mexico City Olympics, and as early as 1957 he called baseball’s reserve clause a version of the “slave trade.”
Sports Illustrated and the Texas Sportswriters Sports Illustrated debuted with the issue of 16 August 1954.The brainchild of Time Inc. founder and publisher Henry Luce, the magazine at first fell considerably short of being a blockbuster success, an outcome that many in the Time Inc. business office ominously predicted. “Only males read sports magazines,” a prepublication business
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You can become a winner only if you are willing to walk over the edge. ■ DAMON RUNYON
office assessment read, and “most of the males are either juveniles or ne’er-do-wells . . . and that even having the word Sport in a magazine title may be financial folly” (MacCambridge 1997, 22). To offset that perception, one that could be traced to the beginnings of sport and sports journalism in the nineteenth century, the magazine’s editors made their product high-toned, aiming at a well-heeled, socially elite audience. Still, the magazine languished and seemed doomed for extinction. The turnaround of the floundering magazine began in April 1955 when Roy Terrell, an ex-Marine from Texas, was hired as a writer, and salvation was realized when on 19 March 1956 Time Inc.’s senior European correspondent Andre Laguerre was hired as the assistant managing editor and, shortly thereafter, the managing editor. Laguerre revamped Sports Illustrated, transforming it from a curious mix of high-society sports and cookbook recipes to a publication that showed a genuine affection for sports. Moreover, Laguerre hired more writers like Terrell—Texans, for the most part, “whose prose was lucid, irreverent, and unapologetic about the central role of sports in modern society” (MacCambridge 1997, 4). At the forefront of the infusion of Texas-trained sportswriters were Dan Jenkins and Bud Shrake, both of whom began their sportswriting careers at the Fort Worth Press under legendary sports editor Blackie Sherrod. Jenkins and Shrake led the way in making the magazine more mainstream in terms of sports coverage and cutting edge in terms of writing style.The Sports Illustrated style forged “the blueprint for modern American sports journalism” (MacCambridge 1997, 4).
Women Sportswriters As opportunities for women athletes increased in the final three decades of the twentieth century, so, too, did opportunities for women sportswriters, who, increasingly, have not been limited to covering just women’s sports. A survey of fifty American sports departments conducted by the Women’s Sports Foundation revealed that from 1991 to 2001 the number of women covering sports rose from 6 percent of staff to 13 percent. Mary Garber of the Winston-Salem (North Carolina)
Journal was a pioneering woman sportswriter. Garber began writing all sports in 1944 and retired in 1986. A short list of top women sportswriters would include Sally Jenkins, whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Women’s Sport & Fitness, and the Washington Post; Diane K. Shah, a former sports columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and a contributing writer for ESPN: The Magazine; Jackie MacMullan of the Boston Globe; and Joan Ryan, who covered sports for the Orlando Sentinel and the San Francisco Examiner, as well as writing the highly acclaimed book about young gymnasts, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes.
Murray and Liebling: The Past as Prologue While women continue to take their rightful place in the press boxes in the twenty-first century, sportswriters in general will continue to do what sportswriters have done since the days of Pierce Egan—work hard to get a complete story and write it as compellingly as possible. The instantaneous and virtually universal coverage of television and online reporting has liberated print journalists from being just reporters of fact and freed them to be writers who produce more personalized, atmospheric, and analytical pieces. A canon of contemporary writers of sport would include names such as Frank Deford, David Halberstam, Mike Lupica, Jon Krakauer, Roger Angell, Dave Anderson, William Nack, Sally Jenkins, and the late Dick Schaap, all of whom use or used the techniques of literary journalism—genuine storytelling. In that respect, they are like the best of their immediate predecessors, stylists such as Jim Murray and A. J. Liebling. Murray, who, as the West Coast correspondent, was one of the few bright lights on the beginning Sports Illustrated staff, wrote a nationally syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times from 1961 until his death in 1998. Murray won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990. Liebling, a reporter for The New Yorker for almost thirty years until his death in 1963, graced the pages of the magazine with his essays on boxing. Noting that editor Harold Ross tried to discourage him from covering
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such “low-life” events, Liebling persevered, insisting that, “Low-life was Ross’s word for the kind of subject that I did best” (1956, 6). Liebling’s pieces combined literary metaphors with blow-by-blow detail to lift a bout from the low-life to a genuinely courageous and heroic display. Liebling’s words did what good sportswriting should always strive to do—inform, entertain, and even inspire. Dennis Gildea See also Literature; Magazines; Newspapers
Further Reading Adelman, M. L. (1986). A sporting time: New York City and the rise of modern athletics, 1820–1870. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Andrews, P. (1987). The art of sports writing. Columbia Journalism Review, 25–30. Berkow, I. (1986). Red: A biography of Red Smith. New York: McGrawHill. Berryman, J. W. (1979). The tenuous attempts of Americans to “catch up with John Bull”: Specialty magazines and sporting journalism 1800–1835. Canadian Journal of the History of Sport and Physical Education, 10, 33–61. Betts, J. R. (1953). Sporting journalism in nineteenth-century America. American Quarterly, 5, 39–56. Dizikes, J. (1981). Sportsmen and gamesmen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Evensen, B. J. (1996). When Dempsey fought Tunney: Heroes, hokum, and storytelling in the Jazz Age. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fountain, C. (1993). Sportswriter: The life and times of Grantland Rice. New York: Oxford University Press. Frank, S. (1944). Sports extra. New York: Barnes. Fullerton, H. (1928, April 21 ). The fellows who made the game. The Saturday Evening Post, 18–19, 184–188. Gallico, P. ( 1990). Farewell to sport. New York: International Polyglonics. (Original work published 1938) Gildea, D. (1996). Cross-counter: The Heenan-Morrissey fight of 1858 and Frank Queen’s attack on the respectable press. Colby Quarterly, 32, 11–22. Halberstam, D. (Ed.). (1999). The best American sports writing of the century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Harper, W. A. (1999). How you played the game: The life of Grantland Rice. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Holtzman, J. (1995). No cheering in the press box. New York: Henry Holt. Inabinett, M. (1994). Grantland Rice and his heroes: The sportswriter as mythmaker in the 1920s. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Lieb, F. (1977). Baseball as I have known it. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Liebling, A. J. (1956). The sweet science. New York: Penguin. Lipsyte, R. (1975). Sports world: An American dreamland. New York: New York Times Book.
Lloyd, A. (1977). The great prize fight. New York: Coward, McCann & Geohegan. MacCambridge, M. (1997). The franchise: A history of Sports Illustrated Magazine. New York: Hyperion. Messenger, C. K. (1981). Sport and the spirit of play in American fiction: Hawthorne to Faulkner. New York: Columbia University Press. Nugent, W. H. (1929). The sports section. The American Mercury, 16, 329–338. Oriard, M. (1993). Reading football: How the popular press created an American spectacle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Orodenker, R. (1996). The writer’s game: Baseball writing in America. New York: Twayne. Orodenker, R. (Ed.). (1996). Dictionary of literary biography: Twentiethcentury American sportswriters. Detroit, MI: Bruccoli Clark Layman. Orodenker, R. (2001). Dictionary of literary biography: American sportswriters and writers on sports. Detroit, MI: Bruccoli Clark Layman. Poe, R. (1974). The writing of sports. Esquire, 173–176, 373–379. Rapoport, R. (Ed.). (1994). A kind of grace: A treasury of sports writing by women. Oakland, CA: RDR Books. Rice, G. (1954). The tumult and the shouting: My life in sports. New York: Barnes. Schilke, P. (1987). The pilgrimage of Pierce Egan. Journal of Popular Culture, 21, 1–9. Walker, S. (1934). City editor. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Woodward, S. (1949). Sports page. New York: Simon and Schuster. Yardley, J. (1977). Ring: A biography of Ring Lardner. New York: Random House.
Squash
S
quash is an indoor racket sport, probably the fastest sport inside four walls. Fifteen million people play squash on fifty thousand courts in 130 countries.
Origins Squash was invented at the Harrow school in England in about 1830 and spread to British colonies such as Pakistan, Egypt, India, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Canada and during the 1880s to the United States. The U.S. version differed from the international version in that the squash court was narrower and the ball harder. During the 1980s squash was standardized in accord with the international version. The British Open Championship, which served as the world championship until 1967, was first played in 1920. The Women’s British Open was first played in 1922
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and was dominated by British women until 1960, with Janet Morgan (1921–1990) winning the title ten times. Even more successful was Heather McKay of Australia, who won seventeen championships in a row, the last three from 1975 to 1977 after squash entered the open era, with amateurs and professionals competing in the same tournament. In the United States the first national championships were played in 1907, and the event was dominated by men and women from Philadelphia, Boston, and Wilmington, Delaware.
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occurred, and women and men now share leadership of the sport. A “women’s committee” was given responsibility for organizing the world championships for women and junior women, as well as advancing opportunities for women and girls in squash generally. This responsibility included encouraging women to join ISRF committees such as coaching, competitions, rules and referees, medical, and technical. In 1989 a ISRF survey identified the factors limiting women’s participation in squash. Member nations (almost exclusively administered by men at the time) Rules and Play funded men’s and boys’ championships but had no funds for women and girl players, who were less of a People play squash on a court measuring 9.7 meters priority. Few women served in administrative roles or long by 6.4 meters wide.Two players, each using a racket on governing committees. Professional women’s events approximately half the size of a tennis racket, strike a made up only 18 percent of the international tournasmall black ball alternately against the front wall of the ments and paid out just 8 percent of the prize money. court. The ball is soft and “squashes” on impact, causing In a number of nations separate men’s and women’s asit to bounce slowly and causing the players to work sociations managed the sport, with the inevitable duhard, both mentally and physically, to keep it in play. plication of resources. The women’s associations had Squash has been judged to be the toughest cardiovascular sport played with a ball, ahead of water polo significantly smaller player bases and limited capacity to and soccer (association football). generate financial support and development. When the International Squash Rackets Federation became known as the “World Squash Federation” the Women Take the Court new constitution provided for three vice presidents, one From the beginning squash was a men’s sport, and of whom was required to be of the “other sex,” rather men players outnumbered women by more than ten to than specifying a woman as one, with some nations such before—a subtle but imporas Egypt having no women tant change. Member nations players at all. Squash was run also were required to have a internationally by separate single governing body, which men’s and women’s associameant that men’s associations tions. In 1985 the men’s and and women’s associations women’s associations merged had to merge. under the banner of the InterThe World Squash Federanational Squash Rackets Fedtion took other steps to end eration (ISRF), with the name male control. Athletes were changed in 1992 to the now referred to as “he” or “World Squash Federation” “she” as appropriate, not as (WSF). Despite predictions simply “he,” as had been the that involvement by women practice. The rules of squash would disappear under male A man and woman playing an early were revised to make them leadership, the opposite has version of squash racquets.
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Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness. ■ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
gender neutral, and the content of federation publications was made gender neutral and gender balanced. During the late 1990s squash became more open to women around the world. For example, in 1997 Egypt hosted a women’s grand prix final in a court situated outdoors on a resort island—a spectacular event that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier in that Muslim nation. Another example is Malaysia, which initially supported women’s squash because people there recognized that a woman might be able to achieve international recognition more easily than a man. In 1998 Malaysia had two girls in the top eight world junior rankings, one of them just fourteen years old. In late 2004 Lee Beachill of England was first in the Professional Squash Association men’s world rankings. Australia’s Rachael Grinham was first in the women’s world rankings by the Women’s International Squash Players’ Association (WISPA).
Governing Body The World Squash Federation (www.squash.org) is the primary regulating organization for the sport. Edward J. (Ted) Wallbutton and Susie Simcock
Further Reading World Squash Federation. (1999). The rules of squash. Retrieved December 27, 2004, from www.squash.org
Early History Golf has almost certainly been played at St. Andrews on the links fringing the North Sea since the first half of the fifteenth century, but the first definite mention of golf at St. Andrews dates to 1552. After the Reformation (a sixteenth-century religious movement marked ultimately by rejection or modification of some Roman Catholic doctrine and practice and establishment of the Protestant churches), the ancient cathedral city of St. Andrews lost much of its importance, and after a period of decline, in 1754 twenty-two “Noblemen and Gentlemen of the Kingdom of Fife” founded the Society of St. Andrews Golfers and contributed to a silver club that would be played for annually over the St. Andrews links. These men were both founding a private golf society to enjoy the sport and good company and intending, by holding an annual competition for a valuable trophy, to restore the reputation of St. Andrews as the home of golf. This golf society was not the world’s oldest golf club; that distinction belongs to the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, who later became the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, but the latter had difficulty establishing itself at a satisfactory course and moved three times during the period when the prestige of St. Andrews was becoming firmly reestablished. By 1834 the leading position of St. Andrews was confirmed by the granting of royal patronage.
The Royal & Ancient Golf Club
St. Andrews
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t. Andrews golf club—officially called the “Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews”—is located in the city of St. Andrews, Scotland. It is the governing body of golf throughout the world except for the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Old Course at St. Andrews is the most famous golf course in the world and has been the venue for twenty-six Open Championships.
The title “Royal & Ancient Golf Club” was given to the club by King William IV in 1834, and agreement was later reached with the nearby Union Club to make use of its premises, which overlooked the course. In 1854 the original part of the present clubhouse was built, and by the end of the nineteenth century golf clubs throughout Great Britain looked to St. Andrews as the game’s leading authority. This role was officially recognized in 1897 when the growth of the game led to a demand for a standard set of rules as opposed to a variety of local regulations; the members of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club agreed, with perhaps some reluctance, to take
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The final hole at St. Andrews more than onehundred years ago.
control of the rules of the game, and the first Rules of Golf Committee was appointed. The role of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club steadily became more wide ranging and international, until today it has four main areas of responsibility. It administers the rules of golf, in conjunction with the United States Golf Association; it runs the Open Championship (generally known as the “British Open” outside the United Kingdom) and other key events; it fosters the development of golf throughout the world, using the profits from the Open Championship to do so; and it continues to operate as a private golf club with more than two thousand members.
The Old Course The well-drained soils, short grass, natural humps and hollows, and banks of whin (a European shrub) made St. Andrews’s links land next to the sea a natural ground for golf. Although many changes, both natural and human-made, have been made through the centuries, the basic qualities of the Old Course are the same as they were when golf was first played there. In the early days golfers played twenty-two holes, although only eleven existed, and they were played twice: first out toward the River Eden and then back into the city. Homeward players had priority, but after holing out they had to tee off within one club’s length of the hole. This practice created both a terrible surface for putting and considerable delays and confusion. In 1764 the first four holes were made into two, thus reducing
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the course to eighteen holes as they were played twice, and it was this change that led to the worldwide adoption of the eighteen-hole standard. In 1856–1857 separate holes were cut for those golfers playing the outward and inward holes, and soon afterward tees were introduced to replace the practice of starting each hole from the preceding green. The original clockwise route that players took around the course was eventually changed to counterclockwise, new bunkers were added periodically, and more recently six new championship tees were created to cope with the power of modern professionals. Although the Old Course is not the most difficult championship course in the world, it remains a unique and timeless challenge.
The Open Championship The Open Championship was begun by Prestwick Golf Club, and although the Royal & Ancient Golf Club and the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers soon became involved and contributed to the purchase of the famous Claret Jug first awarded in 1872, not until 1920 did the Royal & Ancient Golf Club take over sole management of the event and the first championship committee was appointed. The first Open Championship was held at St. Andrews in 1873, and hence the Old Course has been on the list of venues currently used for the championship longer than any other. In all, twenty-six Opens have been played there to date, and winners have included some of the greatest names in golf. J. H. Taylor (1871–1963) and James Braid (1870–1950) each won twice at St. Andrews before World War I; the U.S. amateur Bobby Jones (1902–1971) won in 1927; Sam Snead (1912–2002) won the first post– World War II Open in 1946; the Australian Peter Thomson (b. 1929) won the second of his four Opens in 1955; Jack Nicklaus (b. 1940) won consecutive St. Andrews Opens in 1970 and 1978; and in the Millennium Open of 2000 Tiger Woods (b. 1975) was the winner with the lowest winning score yet recorded at St. Andrews (269) and with one of the largest margins (eight strokes).
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The Future
Health Haven
The unique roles of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club and of the Old Course in the history and development of golf, combined with some willingness to adapt to changing times and requirements, are likely to ensure that St. Andrews will maintain its position of importance in the game and will continue to be regarded as “the home of golf,” where both playing and winning will have special significance for golfers from all over the world.
St. Moritz, initially one of many places known for its waters’ curative qualities, became an aristocrat’s haven. St. Moritz’s winter season started with the tale of Johannes Badrutt’s bet to a group of well-to-do Englishmen that the winter was as sunny as the summer. The village became a particularly English place with a resident parson and Anglican church to minister to the English colony. Summer guests could play tennis (the Palace hotel had one of the first indoor courts), golf, and croquet and could putt, bowl, sail, try their expertise on the archery range and badminton court, and keep in form in the cricket net. In winter, they could skate, toboggan, and ski. The village’s cachet was sufficient for it to host the II Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the first post–World War II Games in 1948. As a health resort, St. Moritz was not the easiest place to reach. The journey from London to Chur, Switzerland, took two days, then came the exhausting stagecoach ride over the Julier Pass to arrive in time for a late dinner. The Abula tunnel provided the railroad connection from 1904 on, cutting the journey time to less than two days. The locals built hotel after hotel to cater to the increasing numbers of royalty, aristocracy, and wealth. The Kurhaus opened in 1865, and in quick succession, the Beau Rivage, Bellevue,Victoria, Du Lac and, finally, in 1896, the Palace opened. With its vast and lavish appointments, and irreproachable service, the Palace set the standard and gave St. Moritz its mystique. The clientele came for the air, for skating, tobogganing and, in the years before World War I, for skiing.
Tony Sloggett
Further Reading Behrend, J., & Lewis, P. N. (1998). Challenges and champions: Royal & Ancient Golf Club 1754–1883. St. Andrews, UK: R & A Golf Club. Behrend, J., Lewis, P. N., & Mackie, K. (2001). Champions and guardians: The Royal and Ancient Golf Club 1884–1939. St. Andrews, UK: R & A Golf Club. Jarrett, T. (1995). St. Andrews golf links: The first 600 years. Edinburgh, UK: Mainstream Sport. Joy, D., & Macfarlane Lane, I. (1999). St. Andrews and the Open Championship: The official history. St. Andrews, UK: R & A Golf Club. Mackie, K. (1995). Golf at St. Andrews. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing. Muirhead, D., & Anderson, T. (2000). St. Andrews: How to play the Old Course. Edinburgh, UK: Mainstream Publishing. Olman, M. W., & Olman, J. M. (1995). St. Andrews and golf. Pinehurst, NC: Market Street Press. Stanley, L. T. (1987). St. Andrews, the home of golf: The course, the history, the players.. London: HarperCollins.
St. Moritz
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t. Moritz—named for a martyred saint—has built its reputation on attracting wealth and international high society, so much so that other like-minded resorts are now measured against St. Moritz. When Godfrey Dewey made successful efforts to obtain the Winter Olympic Games of 1932 for Lake Placid, New York, he did so to make his Lake Placid Club and surrounds into America’s St. Moritz. Averell Harriman used the same formula when building America’s own St. Moritz, which he called Sun Valley, in the wilds of the cowboy town Ketchum, Idaho.
St. Moritz Athletic Clubs and Events The St. Moritz Skating Club, founded in 1880, practiced a disciplined style—as stiff, precise, and proper as the English colony itself—that became known as the English style. However, many Europeans had been much impressed by Jackson Haines, an American who toured Europe giving exciting exhibitions in which
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his arms and legs appeared to be utterly free. He settled in Vienna, and the Viennese and other Europeans emulated his style, which became known as the Continental style. As early as 1872, Viennese skaters came to St. Moritz for a contest. The two styles skated side by side on the hotel rinks in uneasy fashion until well after World War I. On the rink, too, curlers from Scotland could be found and a St. Moritz Curling Club came into being. Meanwhile, in the neighboring valley, a tobogganing club had been formed in Davos with members from many countries; the first international match took place in St. Moritz in 1883. Johannes Badrutt had laid out a toboggan run from St. Moritz to the village of Cresta, just above Celerina. The Cresta Run gave St. Moritz the first of its sporting cachets. At first, men and woman rode the Cresta on their small toboggans, then a Mr. Cornish lay on his sled, chin inches from the ice, and this Cresta style became de
The Cresta run at St. Moritz.
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rigeur. Longer and lower sleds were built to accommodate the lying position. Skiing of a rough country sort by Engadine farmers in 1860 gave way to sporting activities in the late nineteenth century. These became formalized in 1904 in the Ski Club Alpina. Generally, high society found skiing uncongenial, but little by little as the Ski Club of Great Britain and the Public Schools Alpine Sports Club organized their wealthy members into winter sporting, St. Moritz became one of the venues where even women could find pleasure and where, as the Times of London explained, “Practise can be had with a minimum of fatigue.” The Engadine’s two main ski villages were Davos, home to the first English ski club in 1903, and St. Moritz. They vied with Mürren and Montana in the Bernese Oberland.
Olympic Games in St. Moritz Until 1936, it was never certain that Winter Olympic Games would be a viable counterpart of the modern festival created by Pierre de Coubertin and first held in 1896. The Winter Games—retrospectively officially called Olympic—were held at Chamonix, France, in 1924. The Scandinavians—who felt they were supreme in Nordic sports—came only after assurances were given that the games were not called “Olympic.” Norwegians garnered half of the skating medals and all but one of those given for skiing. After such overwhelming success, there were calls in Norway to join in Winter Olympics. In the Norwegian Ski Association a vote was taken to see if a team should be sent to the 1928 Winter Olympics to be held at St. Moritz: 29 voted for, 27 against. The weather for these games was awful; one whole day’s events had to be cancelled. Still, the Norwegians won eight of twelve medals awarded for skiing and six of nine for skating. The star of the St. Moritz Olympics was the young Norwegian skater, Sonja Henie, who dazzled both the judges and crowds. Unbombed St. Moritz played host to the Winter Olympics again in 1948. Europe was still recovering
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from World War II, and the Cold War continued to make life uncertain. Germans and Japanese were banned from the games and the Russians were not present. The poor weather and outworn facilities did not give the Winter Olympic postwar era a particularly good start. Scandinavians dominated the Nordic events, and French and Swiss skiers gained medals in the Alpine skiing competitions. One American woman, Gretchen Fraser, put the Europeans on notice that the United States was an up and coming “Alpine” nation with a win in the slalom. American Dick Button revolutionized men’s skating with his acrobatic jumps, which gained him a gold medal.
Constantly Re-Inventing St. Moritz became known for its skijoring—being pulled by a horse. Its ski school started in 1929, and the following year the Kilomètre lance, from which modern speed skiing is derived, was developed. In 1969, St. Moritz hosted the now-annual Engadine marathon and in 1987 held the first Snowboard World Championship. The village—now town—has found a way to keep up culturally with modernization yet it retains its oldmoney style and remains one of the great playgrounds of the rich. E. John B. Allen
Further Reading Bushnell, A. S., Ed. (1948). Report of the United States Olympic Committee 1948 Games XIV Olympiad London, England, V Olympic Winter Games, St. Moritz. New York: United States Olympic Association. Digiacomo, M. (2000). Apparently Unharmed. Riders of the Cresta Run. London: Texera. Flower, R. (1982). The Palace. A profile of St. Moritz. London: Debrett. Phillips, E. (1996). The VII Olympiad: Paris 1924, St. Moritz 1928. Los Angeles: World Sport Research. Pottinger, G. (1972). St. Moritz: An alpine caprice. London: Jarrolds. Seth-Smith, M. (1976). The Cresta Run: A history of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club. New York: Foulsham.
Stanley Cup
T
he Stanley Cup is awarded each year to the champions of the National Hockey League (NHL) of the United States and Canada. It is the oldest trophy in professional sports in North America and is widely considered to be the most coveted prize in ice hockey. Each year NHL teams play an arduous regular season schedule to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Only sixteen of thirty teams qualify. After they make the playoffs they must win four best-of-seven series to win the Stanley Cup. The Stanley Cup is unique in that the names of each winning team and all of its members are inscribed on it. A series of bands was added to the cup to allow space for the names of new champions to be inscribed each year. Each band has the capacity for thirteen winning teams, and so every thirteen years the oldest completed band is removed, and a blank band is added. The original Stanley Cup was officially retired in 1969 and is now located in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada.
History Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley of Preston, Canada, was appointed the sixth governor general of Canada in 1888 and quickly became an avid supporter of ice hockey. Three of his sons played on the Government House Rideau Hall Rebels hockey team, and his oldest son, Arthur, is credited with organizing one of the first ice hockey associations in Canada, the Hockey Association of Ontario. Stanley recognized the need for a challenge cup that would be won and held each year by the leading hockey team in Canada. He resigned his post as governor general early because of the death of his brother and returned to England in July of 1893, but he remained an ardent supporter of ice hockey. Shortly after returning to England he sent a letter to his successor, Lord Kilcoursie, suggesting the development of a challenge cup. He wrote in this letter that “there does not appear to be an outward or visible sign of the cham-
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There is a syndrome in sports called “paralysis by analysis.” ■ ARTHUR ASHE
pionship at present. Considering the interest that hockey matches now elicit and the importance of having the games fairly played under generally recognized rules, I am willing to give a cup that shall be annually held by the winning club” (McFarlane 1978, 17–18). Lord Stanley’s offer was accepted, and the Stanley Cup was born. Stanley arranged for the purchase of a gold-lined silver cup that was worth approximately $50 and would be awarded each year to the leading hockey team in Canada. The administration and awarding of the cup would be controlled by two trustees. These trustees, P. D. Ross and John Sweetland, played a pivotal role in deciding who would compete for the Stanley Cup during the challenge era. The Stanley Cup was originally an amateur trophy, and the winner was determined through a challenge system. Any team that was willing to travel could challenge the holders of the cup. The first winner of the Stanley Cup was the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association hockey team in 1893. Between 1893 and 1910 the Stanley Cup was awarded to both amateur and professional teams, but in 1910 it became an exclusively professional trophy. An agreement that one team from the East and one team from the West would compete to determine the winner of the cup went into effect in 1915. This agreement signaled the beginning of the end of the challenge era. In the spring of 1917 the Seattle Millionaires became the first non-Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup. In 1917 the National Hockey League was formed. Between 1917 and 1926 the Stanley Cup was awarded to the winner of a playoff series between a team from the NHL and a team from the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). With the demise of the PCHA in 1926 the Stanley Cup became the sole property of the NHL. This event marked the beginning of the Stanley Cup playoffs as we know them today. Then ten teams played in the NHL, and six of them would compete in the Stanley Cup playoffs. However, the Great Depression of the 1930s eventually claimed four of these teams and left only six teams—the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Bruins, the
Detroit Red Wings, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the New York Rangers—to compete for Stanley Cup supremacy. The next major expansion of the NHL occurred in 1967 with the addition of six teams. In 1979 the NHL added four teams from the rival World Hockey Association, including the Edmonton Oilers and a player who would go on to become one of the greatest players in the history of Stanley Cup competition— Wayne Gretzky. The Montreal Canadiens won twenty-four Stanley Cup championships between 1916 and 2004.They won five straight Stanley Cups between 1956 and 1960 and six between 1965 and 1973. The Toronto Maple Leafs won five Stanley Cup championships in the 1940s and four in the 1960s. The New York Islanders became the first expansion dynasty when they won four straight Stanley Cups between 1980 and 1983. The Edmonton Oilers were the last dynasty in Stanley Cup history when they won five championships between 1984 and 1990.
Significance The Stanley Cup is one of the most enduring trophies in sports. It has been awarded every year since an influenza epidemic caused the 1919 series to be cancelled—until 2005 when the Stanley Cup was not awarded because of labor problems in the National Hockey league. The hockey players competing for the cup have become increasingly international. Players from all over the world now compete to have their names engraved on the most cherished trophy in ice hockey, the Stanley Cup. Laura Frances Chase
Further Reading Diamond, D., Duplacey, J., & Zweig, E. (2003). The ultimate prize: The Stanley Cup. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel. Falla, J., Batten, J., Hornby, L., Johnson, G., & Milton, S. (2001). Quest for the cup: A history of the Stanley Cup finals 1893–2001. Toronto, Canada: Key Porter Press. Fischler, S., & Fischler, S. (1996). Great book of hockey: More than 100 years of fire on ice. Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International. Houston, W. (1992). Pride and glory: 100 years of the Stanley Cup. Toronto, ON: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
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Nobody roots for Goliath.
Jenish, D. (1996). Stanley Cup: One hundred years of hockey at its best. Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart. McFarlane, B. (1978). Stanley Cup fever: The incredible story of the men and the team’s who have fought for hockey’s most prized trophy. Toronto, Canada: Pargurian Press. McFarlane, B. (1999). Stanley Cup fever: More than a century of hockey greatness. North York, Canada: Stoddart Publishers. McKinley, M. (2000). Putting a roof on winter. Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books. Roxborough, H. (1964). The Stanley Cup story. Toronto, Canada: Ryerson Press. Young, S. (1989). 100 years of dropping the puck. Toronto, Canada: McClelland & Stewart.
Steeplechase Racing See Horse Racing
Steroids See Performance Enhancement
Strength
S
trength is the capacity to move a load. Many sports require a high level of strength for peak performance. Strength is a function of the musculoskeletal system. The larger a muscle, the heavier the load it can move. A muscle’s size depends on the number of its fibers and their thickness. Heredity determines the number of fibers. Age, diet, and exercise determine thickness. A muscle does not directly move a load but rather moves a bone to which it attaches. Every muscle has two attachments: origin and insertion. In the parlance of physiology, the point where a muscle does not move a bone is the point of origin, and the point where a muscle does move a bone is the point of insertion. The point of insertion is the second factor, along with mus-
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cle size, that determines capacity to move a load. The biceps, for example, anchors to the scapula and insert at the radius. At one end of the radius and ulna, the two bones of the forearm, is the elbow, the joint about which they move, and at the other end is the load. The higher up the radius the biceps attaches, the greater its capacity to move a load, a fact that becomes obvious if one imagines the forearm as a lever. To take an example of a lever, one might imagine the ulna and radius as a door, the elbow the hinge and the knob the point of insertion. The door will be difficult to open with the knob at the hinge, the point of insertion on the human forearm, but easy to open with the knob at the end, its customary place on a door. A chimpanzee derives strength in part from the biceps’ comparatively high attachment on the radius. As with the number of muscle fibers, heredity determines a muscle’s point of origin and insertion. A muscle moves a load by contracting or shortening its fibers. The body does not recruit every fiber to move a light load, but only by contracting them all can it move the maximum load. During the eighteenth century the Italian physician Luigi Galvani demonstrated that electricity stimulates a muscle to contract. A nerve carries electricity in the form of ions—molecules with a chemical charge. The charge is an electrochemical signal that has a cascade, rippling down the length of a muscle fiber and causing its filaments to slide past each other as the fingers of two hands slide past each other in interlocking. This sliding of filaments bunches a fiber together and is by definition the contraction of a muscle. The Russian fitness instructor Pavel Tsatsouline describes three types of strength. Maximum strength is the capacity to move the maximum load in a single effort. An athlete who lifts the bumper of a car displays maximum strength. Explosive strength is the capacity to unleash force in a burst. A basketball player who leaps for a rebound displays this type of strength. Strength endurance is the capacity to move a load over time. A cyclist who climbs a mountain or an athlete who performs
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A woman building strength through weight training. Source: istockphoto.com/uploaded by: bankok.
one hundred push-ups displays this coupling of strength and endurance.
Differences in Strength Long before humans understood how muscles work they mythologized men of strength.Whether literary creations or historical figures Hercules and Samson rose above the common man through their strength. The ancients equated strength with virility, which itself implied virtue. Strength was thus an ethical quality as well as a physical fact. However, strength can be an ambiguous quality. The author of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes said that chance more than strength determines the outcome of events. The English writer Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster had prodigious strength but used it for evil. The same is true of the English writer Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula. The character Abraham Van Helsing estimated the count’s strength as that of twenty
men. In the end brain trumped brawn: Van Helsing’s vampire hunters killed the undead. Yet, people continue to have a quasi-Darwinian admiration of strength, a conviction that the stronger vanquish the weaker in the struggle for survival. Despite the belief that evolution has blessed humans with innumerable advantages, we cannot boast exceptional strength. A 54-kilogram chimpanzee is on average three to five times stronger than a man. An ant can drag 5,000 percent of its weight, whereas a human can drag only 60 percent of his or her weight. Even among hominids (erect bipedal primate mammals comprising recent humans and extinct ancestral and related forms) humans rate poorly. The skeletons of Homo erectus and Homo neanderthals are robust and their slots for the origin and insertion of tendons wide compared with these traits in humans. Even Cro-Magnon, the earliest anatomically modern people of Europe, were more robust than we are. In the parlance of paleoanthropology we are the gracile (slender) hominid. Simply put, we have less muscle and are surely weaker than were our closest hominid kin. Women have on average two-thirds the strength of men because they have less muscle. The disparity is greater in the upper body, where women have 40–60 percent the strength of men, and less in the lower body, where the percentage rises to 75. The notion that women are the weaker sex is a holdover from the Victorian era. Where muscle mass is equal, women are as strong as men. To put the matter another way, a muscle fiber has the same strength in women as in men. At the level of the muscle fiber the distinction between female and male vanishes.
Strength Exercises By one estimate women and men can increase strength 30–60 percent through exercise. Coaches and athletes distinguish between two types of strength exercises. Isometric exercise causes muscles to tense but not contract. An athlete who pushes against a wall performs isometric exercise because his or her muscles do not
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Strength Testing Strength in Siberia The boys know many games for testing strength. A boy lies down flat on the ground with his arms out-stretched. Three others grab him, one by each arm and one by the legs, and carry him along, and it is up to him to hold himself stiff as a rod as long as possible. Or one boy holds a wooden stick in his elbow joints while two others take hold of the ends of the stick and lift their legs from the ground. The boy then tries to carry these two a few steps ahead. Or two men sit down on the ground facing one another, legs straight and feet against feet. They both hold on to a leather strap or belt and each tries to pull the other boy over to him. Or a boy lies on the ground and another, kneeling in front of him, grabs him under the knees and tries to pull him into an upright position, or sitting down they pull each other by the middle finger. They make stilts in a jiffy from suitable trees, but they are very clumsy in using them. They also have lots of fun racing on their knees. Source: Sverdrup, H. U. (1938). With the people of the tundra (pp. 78–79). Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag.
shorten despite the greatest exertion so long as the wall holds firm. Isotonic exercise requires muscles to contract. An athlete who curls a dumbbell from waist to chin performs isotonic exercise because he or she contracts the biceps in moving a load. Weight training is a form of isotonic exercise. An athlete may use free weights: dumbbells and barbells that are not attached to a supporting structure. The absence of support requires an athlete to balance as well as lift a free weight. Alternatively an athlete may use a machine that supports weight through its range of motion, obviating the need to balance the weight while lifting it. Controversy rages over the number of repetitions of an exercise that an athlete should perform. Proponents of low-repetition exercise assert that only exertion for a single repetition pits an athlete’s strength against the maximum load. Critics counter that such exercise does
not mirror the reality of competition. A basketball player, for example, must leap for several rebounds rather than merely one during a game. Better, they assert, to build strength through multiple repetitions of an exercise. Rather than free weights or machines an athlete may use the body, as in a push-up or pull-up, as the load. An undercurrent of sexism still circulates in some circles of strength training. Women, critics contend, sacrifice femininity in attempting to build strength; if women must train, critics argue, women’s delicate physique confines them to light weights. The issue of gender and strength pivots as much on the definition of femininity as on innate ability to increase strength. Men would do well to define femininity broadly enough to acknowledge muscle mass and strength as female attributes as much as male attributes. A second type of error confuses weight lifting with strength training. Whereas many athletes lift weights to increase strength, bodybuilders lift weights solely to sculpt their physique. The prospect that a bodybuilder will grower stronger is incidental to the purpose of enlarging muscle and reducing fat to the point that he becomes “ripped,” the lexicon for extreme muscle definition. Bodybuilding underscores the fact that most athletes do not toil to increase strength as an end in itself.The discus thrower wishes to increase the length of his toss and the tennis player the speed of her serve. In short, athletes want to grow stronger in order to improve performance in a sport.
Strength Competitions A small group of sports demands strength more than other attributes.The Scottish Highland Games bill themselves as the oldest strength competition at one thousand years. The seven events include the familiar hammer throw and shot put, but others are unique. The caber throw requires participants to hoist a 68-kilogram tree trunk, balance it during an 18-meter run, and toss it for distance and accuracy: The trunk must align parallel to the participant’s line of approach for full points. The event that makes explicit the competition’s ethos (distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or
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Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. ■ MAHATMA GANDHI
guiding beliefs) is the lifting of massive stones. Participants call them the “manhood stones,” affirming the old prejudice that strength is solely a masculine attribute. The Basque people have their own stone-lifting contest in Ustaritz, France. Contestants hoist a stone around which the tribal elders once met. Basques believe that the stone lift, more than a strength contest, commemorates their Druid origins. The Basque stone is a religious symbol, and the men who hoist it demonstrate through their strength that the gods favor them. The stone lift affirms strength as a divine attribute. Since 1977 Universal Studios in the United States has hosted the World’s Strongest Man competition. It draws inspiration from the contests in Scotland and France but belongs to the machine era of Henry Ford and the Wright brothers. Stones and tree trunks give way to the Boeing 747, which contestants must pull along a runway. Another event requires contestants to lift a tire from a semitrailer. The competition pits man against machine in the tradition of John Henry. In this respect it is less a world event than a U.S. one in its ethos.
The quest for strength leads some athletes to supplement their diet with anabolic steroids, a class of chemicals that mimics the male hormone testosterone in building muscle mass and strength. One researcher estimates that 1 million athletes in the United States use steroids, generating $10 million in annual sales on the black market. Studies document that athletes on steroids may increase strength 5–10 percent in six weeks. Once off steroids, however, athletes return to their original strength within six weeks.The fact that strength gains are temporary may goad athletes to take steroids for months or even years. Long use increases the risk of liver
Diet and Drugs Weight lifters and their ilk center their diet on protein in hopes of growing strong. The body synthesizes protein into muscle. Most protein replaces muscle that the body has metabolized, although when diet and exercise are ideal a fraction may build new tissue that increases the muscle mass of an athlete. The body adds muscle by thickening muscle fibers, not by creating new fibers. The novice may believe the fallacy that if the consumption of 100 grams of protein a day will add 1 gram of muscle, then 200 grams of protein will add 2 grams. Testimonials in muscle magazines promote this fallacy in an effort to sell protein powder for mixing with milk. Some athletes consume 400 grams of protein a day, oblivious to the fact that they will excrete three-quarters of it. An athlete needs roughly 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body mass per day. A 100-kilogram athlete therefore needs not 400 grams of protein a day but rather 100 grams, the amount of protein in 481 grams of salmon or 396 grams of cheese.
This illustration from A Treatise on Gymnastic Exercises (1828) is titled “To Raise the Body by Strength of the Arms on the Horizontal Bar.”
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A young woman lifts herself completely off the ground. Source: istockphoto/hidesy.
damage, heart disease, and cancer. The U.S. football player Lyle Alzado’s admission that he used steroids throughout his career and his death from cancer at age forty-three caused a furor over the abuse of steroids. Even if athletes remain healthy they risk detection. Numerous associations, including the International Olympic Committee and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, ban the use of steroids. Public exposure of steroid use tarnishes athletes, prompting the charge that they do not play fairly. The U.S. baseball player Barry Bonds is the latest of many athletes to lose respect for having used steroids.
Toward Maximum Strength Humans cannot increase strength ad infinitum. Even now we may be near the maximum. Since 1976 the International Olympic Committee has awarded medals
for the total weight lifted in two events: the snatch and the clean and jerk. In 1976 385 kilograms, the sum of both events, won the gold medal. In 1980 the winning sum leaped to 422.5 kilograms but has since held nearly steady, registering 425 kilograms at both the 2000 and 2004 games. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the nearer athletes approach maximum strength the less decisive strength will be in separating winners from losers. Near the maximum athletes will have little room to improve and thereby distinguish themselves from rivals, who will be only infinitesimally less strong. At the maximum all elite athletes will be identical in strength, nullifying it as an advantage. To put the matter another way, when all athletes are at the maximum they will all bump up against the same strength ceiling. Near the maximum athletes may work less to build that last iota of strength and more to maintain strength throughout their career. A baseball player who can hit the ball 137 meters at age forty may extend his career and the earnings from it a decade beyond those of players whose strength deteriorates with age. Whether athletes will covet such longevity remains open to question. Multimillion-dollar contracts make athletes financially secure after only a few years, obviating the need to play longer than they desire. Yet, athletes need a long career if they are to set records and secure their place in the history of sports. If for no other reason people remember the U.S. baseball players Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken for longevity. For the same reason Italians revere cyclist Gino Bartali, who in 1948 won the Tour de France ten years after his first victory, a feat no other cyclist has matched. His success was possible only because Bartali remained strong throughout his career: He was the best mountain climber among cyclists of his generation. Others were faster on level ground, but none had his strength and the discipline to maintain it during two decades as a climber. The future may belong to athletes such as Bartali who make strength the foundation of their durability. Christopher Cumo
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Strength is the product of struggle.
Further Reading Ebben, W., & Jensen, R. (1998). Strength training for women: Debunking myths that block opportunity. Retrieved February 22, 2005, from http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/1998/05may/ ebben.htm Feinberg, B. (1993). The musculoskeletal system. Langhorne, PA: Chelsea House. Serafini, A. (1981). The muscle book. New York: Arco. Tsatsouline, P. (2003). The naked warrior. St. Paul, MN: Dragon Door Publications. Williams, M. (1989). Beyond training: How athletes enhance performance legally and illegally. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press.
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tress has been identified as a critical facet in sport, influencing individual and team performance as well as social functioning. The inability to manage stress in sport is strongly associated with increased anxiety and burnout, increased aggression and violence, decreased self-esteem and enjoyment, decreased performance expectancies, and performance difficulties. Nevertheless, one of the primary challenges in understanding and controlling stress revolves around conceptualizing it. This dilemma is revealed in the following definition of stress: 1. Generally, any force that, when applied to a system causes some significant modification of its form usually with the connotation that the modification is a deformation or a distortion. The term is used with respect to physical, psychological and social forces and pressures. Note that stress in this sense is a cause; it is the antecedent of some effect. 2. A state of psychological tension produced by the kinds of forces or pressures alluded to in 1. Note that stress in this sense is an effect; it is the result of other pressures. When meaning 2 is intended, the term stressor is typically used to refer to the causal agent.” (Reber and Reber 2001, 716)
The first part of the definition identifies stress as a stimulus. Research based on this approach emphasized how social-cultural factors (social class, age, gender,
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racism, life changes, etc.) produce stress reactions. A popular investigation of psychological stress focused on identifying common life changes or events ranging from holidays, to sexual difficulties, to death of a spouse. Sport research tended to concentrate on factors such as the pressure of important sporting events, expectations of significant others, coaching and playing demands, financial difficulties, and the like. This point of reference also leads to the use of such terms as good stress (eustress) and bad stress (distress). The second part of the definition focuses more on the stress response. This orientation emphasizes the physiological and emotional responses (such as arousal and anxiety) or the consequences of being placed in demanding sporting situations. Stress as a response was popular because scientists could study the relationship between particular biological-physiological reactions and further consequences such as illness or performance breakdowns. Physiological effects included activation of the adrenal glands, producing stress hormones (cortisol, aldosterone, and epinephrine). The stress response included increased neural excitability, cardiovascular changes, increased metabolic activity, neurological sweating, and changes in gastrointestinal functioning. Thus, a stress response to sport stressors could included increased heart rate and heart stroke volume, sweating palms (and other body parts), muscular tension or control problems, butterflies in the stomach, feelings of nausea, diarrhea, and need to urinate. Psychological responses such as emotional reactions (fear and anxiety) and changes in cognitive information processing are also important. Both the stimulus and response conceptualizations are limiting. Researchers have found large individual differences in how athletes (and nonathletes) react to the same objective stimulus. Because of these difficulties, the general consensus in the research field is that stress is best conceptualized as a process involving a dynamic interaction between the person and the environment (Lazarus 1999). This viewpoint recognizes that an athlete’s physiological, emotional, and cognitive responses to sporting stressors will be heavily determined
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by the athlete’s motives, beliefs, goals, cognitive and coping abilities, physical conditioning, and other internal factors.
The Stress Process To better understand the stress process in sport performers, it is best to identify the critical components of the process. These components are environmental demands, cognitive appraisal, physiological arousal, action tendencies or impulses, coping strategies, and emotions. A comprehensive discussion of these components and their role in the stress process is beyond the scope of this article (see, instead, Further Reading). Nevertheless, a succinct discussion will help the reader understand the role of these components in sport stress. Environmental demands create the initial stressor conditions. Common sport stressors include opponent and teammate abilities and actions, match importance, referee decisions, playing conditions, sport crowd or audience behavior, coach’s actions, equipment, financial pressures, and the support and expectations of significant others. None of these stressors, however, are sufficient in themselves to produce stress responses. Research has indicated that in the majority of cases it is how the athlete evaluates the meaning of the stressors that produces stress responses. The late Richard Lazarus suggested that psychological stress requires a judgment that the person-environment interactions involve one of the three stress relationships: harm-loss, threat, challenge. Harm-loss and threat are negative interpretations, whereas challenge involves the person perceiving possible benefits but requiring high cognitive and physical effort. The type of stress relationship is dependent on the individual’s internal characteristics, the cognitive appraisal of the environmental demands and one’s ability to manage these demands (their coping ability). There are two interrelated types of appraisal. Primary appraisal involves determining “what is at stake?” The athlete must quickly evaluate, much of which is done automatically, if the sporting situation is important to one’s goals (motivation aspect) and whether the situation threatens, harms, or benefits these goals. An
important aspect of this process is determining the potential consequences of succeeding or failing to meet the stressor demands. Secondary appraisal involves determining “what can be done.” This evaluation involves determining who is or was responsible, future expectancies, perceived control, and coping options. The appraisal of environmental demands and perceived consequences will produce discrete emotions (i.e. anxiety, anger, fear, happiness) and associated physiological states such as arousal and action impulses. For example, anxiety occurs if in the athlete’s judgment, he or she is likely to fail to achieve success in a very important event. This emotion is usually associated with high arousal and an action impulse to escape or withdraw. Coping is a critical process that can moderate this emotional experience. Sport researchers have recognized that coping strategies play an important role in the ways in which athletes of various ages manage and change stress and emotion. Coping refers to cognitive and behavioral actions used to manage the external and internal demands of a stressful situation. Most conceptual models of coping feature at least two broad coping dimensions. Problem-focused coping refers to efforts that attempt to change the situational demands. Common problem-focused strategies in sport include increasing effort, planning, and information seeking. Emotion-focused coping are efforts to manage emotions. This type of coping includes strategies like seeking emotional support, acceptance, relaxation, and positive reappraisal. Many researchers propose a third category, avoidance coping, which includes individuals’ efforts to remove themselves either physically or mentally from the stressful situation. The strategies selected by an athlete are contingent on (a) the appraisal that the strategy will help manage the situation, and (b) the confidence the athlete has in using the strategy in that situation. Coping strategies can impact the stress process both in the competition preparation stage and when the athlete actually confronts a stressor. For example, an athlete can plan a course of strategic action to neutralize an opponent’s strengths. Other preparation strategies
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might include positive imagery, suppressing competing activities (e.g., partying with friends), and fine tuning physical and technical training. Successful confrontation coping strategies might include utilizing coaching assistance and the competition plan, positive self-talk, arousal control, and increasing effort.
How Stress Impacts Performance We can understand how stress can affect sporting performance by examining how emotional experience can potentially disrupt underlying performance mechanisms. Stress can exert an influence on the physiological components of performance via an increase in arousal. Increased heart rate, sweaty hands, and mus-
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cular tension can influence fine motor control and dexterity. For example, research with elite rifle and pistol shooters show that the ability to control heart rate and muscular tension is critical for top performance. Top golf professionals have reported being unable to feel their arms and hands when faced with putts that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Stress can also influence cognitive information processing such as perception, decision making, memory, and response selection. Anxiety states can impair the ability to identify important information. The combination of anxiety and arousal can produce two performance-impairing states: (a) narrowing of attention such that critical information needed for optimal performance is missed or (b) hyperdistractibility such that the athlete is again unable to focus on the important information. Examples from sport include mistakenly passing a ball to the wrong team, forgetting part of a sequence in a play, being unable to think, and not recognizing the position of athletes in either defensive or offensive formations. Emotional control problems associated with stress can also cause problems such as violence or withdraw from the sporting situation. Action impulses associated with strong emotions such as anger may result in one athlete striking another. There have been numerous cases in the media in which athletes have loss control in highly stressful situations and have attacked other
A therapist massages the neck of a client to relieve stress. Source: istockphoto.com/
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The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. ■ VINCE LOMBARDI
athletes, coaches, referees, or spectators.These are clearly cases where athletes have lacked or chosen not to use coping strategies to manage their action impulses. Prolonged experience of stress-related anxiety and sadness may contribute to athletes withdrawing from sport, disrupting everyday social functioning, experiencing illness, and in extreme cases, committing suicide. Burnout in sport is becoming an increasing concern in organized sport at both the youth and adult level. Burnout is associated with emotional exhaustion, feelings of isolation, low motivation, negative feelings, and concentration problems. Burnout results from overtraining, combined with prolonged exposure to high pressure to perform. Some sport research indicates that athletes who have a tendency to have very high, self-imposed standards and have an inability to accept flaws or failures within themselves are at greater risk for burnout.
Managing Stress Given that sporting demands can produce undesirable consequences, it is important to identify ways to either reduce the stressor demands or help athletes manage stress more effectively. There are several key areas of stress management interventions including environmental management; the athlete’s physical, technical, and strategic preparation; and the athlete’s psychological skills and coping strategies. Since stress involves an interaction between the environment and the person, interventions should target both aspects of this relationship. Environmental management can include providing supportive coaching and parental feedback, placing athletes in training and competitive conditions that promote challenge rather than threat, developing training programs that allow for proper physical and psychological adaptation and allow sufficient rest for recovery, and modifying sporting equipment and rules to promote the development of skills, greater success, and enjoyment. Since stress occurs when athletes perceive an imbalance between situational demands and their resources, one means to reduce stress is to improve physical, technical, and tactical expertise. As athletes become stronger,
faster, more skillful, and more strategically adept, they will be better able to handle more demanding sport situations. However, increased ability often results in the athlete entering a higher level of competition with increase demands. Psychological-skills and coping-skills training can help athletes manage stress. There are a number of effective skills such as relaxation, energizing, biofeedback, goal setting, imagery, self-talk, cognitive restructuring, problem solving, time management, refocusing, and attention control that could help manage stress. Some intervention strategies may affect only one component of stress (i.e., progressive relaxation targets muscular and arousal activation), whereas other strategies may directly or indirectly affect several components (i.e., goal setting can impact the adoption of specific motivational goals and motivate changes in physical and psychological training). Sport research has found that coping-skills training can help athletes learn a number of coping skills to effectively manage stress and emotion. Stress Inoculation Training, developed by Dr. Donald Meichenbaum, is a coping-skills training intervention in which athletes learn a variety of coping responses. Athletes practice individually relevant coping skills, starting with small manageable doses of stress and progressing to more stress-inducing settings. A second program, developed by Dr. Ronald Smith, called Stress Management Training, involves having athletes develop an “integrated coping response” that enables them to better manage stressful situations. The integrated coping response combines both a breathing-relaxation component and selftalk. Athletes practice this integrated response to control high levels of arousal generated through a technique called “induced affect.” This article has emphasized that stress is a complex process that results from a dynamic transaction between the environment and the person. The sporting environment places numerous demands on the athlete, the athlete evaluates the meaning of these demands and responds, and the environment counters with new demands. It is difficult to determine what types of situations and sports are inherently more stressful than
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others since so much depends on what the athlete brings to the situation in terms of goals, motives, and physical and psychological skills. The ability to cope with the competitive pressure is critical in all levels of sport to ensure positive psychological growth. Peter R. E Crocker and Valerie Hadd
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umo wrestling is a Japanese sport in which a contestant loses if he is forced out of the ring or if any part of his body except the soles of his feet touches the ground. A sumo match usually lasts a few seconds and only in rare cases a minute or more.
See also Burnout; Psychology
History Further Reading Crocker, P. R. E., Kowalski, K. C., & Graham, T. R. (2002). Emotional control intervention for sport. In J. Silva & D. Stevens (Eds.), Psychological foundations of sport (pp. 155–176). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Crocker, P. R. E., Kowalski, K. C, Hoar, S. D., and McDonough, M. H. (2003). Emotions in sport across adulthood. In M. R. Weiss (Ed.), Developmental sport and exercise psychology: A lifespan perspective (pp. 333–356). Morgantown WV: Fitness Information Technology. Gould, D., Udry, E., Tuffey, S. & Loehr, J. (1996). Burn-out in competitive junior tennis players: I. A quantitative psychological assessment. The Sport Psychologist, 10, 322–340. Hanin, Y.L. Emotions in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Hardy, L., Jones, G., & Gould, D. (1996). Understanding psychological preparation for sport: Theory and practice of elite performers. London: John Wiley & Sons. Jones, G., & Hardy, L. (1990). Stress & performance in sport. Chichester, UK: Wiley. Lazarus, R. S. (1999). Stress and emotion: A new synthesis. New York: Springer Publishing. Meichenbaum, D. (1993). Stress inoculation training: A 20-year update. In P. M. Lehrer & R. L. Woolfolk (Eds.), Principles and practices of stress management (2nd ed.; pp. 373–406). New York: The Guildford Press. Reber, A.S. & Reber, E.S. (2001). The penguin dictionary of psychology. London, New York: Penguin Books. Smith, R. E. (1984). Theoretical and treatment approaches to anxiety reduction. In J. M. Silva & R. S. Weinberg (Eds.), Psychological foundations of sport (pp. 157–170). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Strongman Competition See Bodybuilding; Powerlifting; Weightlifting
Some historians have used archaeological evidence, such as the terra-cotta figures known as “haniwa,” to claim that sumo had prehistoric origins. Others have claimed the origins of sumo in the mythic hand-to-hand combats recorded in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) of the eighth century. However, we can reliably trace sumo no further back than 821, when sumo tournaments, along with archery and equestrian archery tournaments, were among the three great annual tournaments of the imperial court. Sumo tournaments were staged on the grounds of the imperial palace. An area behind the Shishinden (Hall for State Ceremonies) was strewn with white sand for the event. Thirty-four wrestlers, drawn from the “right” and “left” imperial bodyguards, entered a garden to the accompaniment of two drums and two gongs. After the wrestlers came musicians, dancers, and officials, then the emperor and his courtiers. Members of the “left” team wore paper hollyhocks in their hair, the “right” team wore calabash blossoms. Matches were decided when a wrestler fell or was dragged by his opponent to his team’s tent. After each match the musicians beat their drums, banged their gongs, and performed a ritual dance. These tournaments were suspended from 1120 to 1156, revived intermittently until 1185, and then discontinued. However, sumo survived in other forms— as no sumo (field wrestling) and kusa sumo (grass wrestling) or as shinji-zumo (wrestling in the service of the gods). The most famous version of the latter form was karasu-zumo (crow wrestling). It was staged at the Kamo Shrine in Kyoto, where boys who represented the
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Sumo wrestling in Tokyo, Japan. Source: istockphoto/bparren.
god Takemikazuchi wrestled boys who represented the secular world. Onna-zumo (women’s wrestling) seems to have been staged for the titillation of men. During the early eighteenth century Yoshida Oikaze and other toshiyori (elders) codified sumo wrestling and introduced some of the rituals that make sumo distinctively Japanese. Matches were staged to entertain the shoguns (military governors) who, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868, exerted greater political power than did the emperors. According to writer P. L. Cuyler (1979), “Shogunal sumo lifted the sport out of the vulgar world of entertainment and imparted to it a sense of ritual that later became its major characteristic.”
Practice Even today the administration of sumo wrestling is a complex mixture of traditional and modern elements. All sumo wrestlers are members of a heya (room), the equivalent of a stable in horse racing. The most famous of these heya were established in Edo (modern Tokyo) between 1751 and 1781. The elders who ran the heya received official recognition by the shogun in 1773 and by the emperor in 1885. At that time 105 elders existed. In 1926 the organization was restructured when heya from Tokyo joined those from Osaka to form a more nearly national organization. In 1958 this organization became the Nihon Sumo Kaikyo (Japanese Sumo Association). In 1989 forty-one heya were informally organized into five great families. The Yoshida family, which claims to have been involved with sumo wrestling since the thirteenth century, was so dominant that not until 1951, after a teenager became the official
head of the family, did the Yoshida family agree to let the sumo organization decide which wrestlers should be elevated to the top rank. The hierarchy of ranks is complicated. Beginners enter as maezumo (before sumo). They receive room, board, and a small allowance. They also receive new names, which are written in kanji (Chinese characters). By contrast, not only do Japanese baseball players keep their own names, but also, on their uniforms, these names are spelled in the Latin alphabet. If the maezumo are successful in the six annual fifteen-day tournaments, they rise to become jonokuchi, who are given individual rankings. Further successes mean promotion to the ranks of jonidan, sandamme, makushita, and juryo. Only about
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one in sixty wrestlers rises to juryo rank. If he reaches this rank, he is classified as sekitori and allowed to change from a black or dark blue loincloth to a white one and to participate in the ring-entering ceremony. Members of the juryo rank wrestle daily during tournaments, receive a salary in addition to their winnings, and have apprentice wrestlers to assist them. When they are not engaged in wrestling, they are also allowed to wear a kimono and haori (a man’s light coat). The five ranks higher than juryo—maegashira, komusubi, sekiwake, ozeki, and yokozuna—comprise the makuuchi division. Members of this division are allowed four minutes for shikiri, the crouching, stamping, and glaring that precede wrestling. Juryo are allowed only three minutes of shikiri; makushita are allowed only two. Members of the lesser ranks must enter the ring and move directly into competition. Election to the highest rank—yokozuna—is an honor that is bestowed on few wrestlers. In all other ranks a wrestler can be demoted after a number of losses. A yokozuna cannot be demoted. If his powers begin to diminish, he is expected to retire. A series of successful tournaments will elevate a wrestler to the ozeki rank, but only wrestlers whom the elders deem to have seishin (spirit) are elevated to yokozuna. Although a few foreigners have become ozeki, they rarely become yokozuna. When Hawaii-born Jesse Kuhaulua retired in 1976, the elders decreed that foreign-born wrestlers should not be allowed to achieve elder status. Westerners who watch sumo wrestling are struck not only by the size of the participants—some of whom weigh more than 182 kilograms—but also by sumo’s many rituals. Among the ritual elements is the design of the doyo (ring), which consists of a circle inscribed in a square. The doyo, which dates from the seventeenth century, is flanked by four pillars at the four corners of the rectangular “ring.” These pillars are painted blue for the god of spring, white for the god of autumn, red for the god of summer, and black for the god of winter. During the eighteenth century four elders would lean against these four pillars to assist the referee in his decisions. They were known as the “naka aratame” (mid-
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dle determiners). The circle is formed by twenty bags of rice straw stuffed with earth. The ring is about 50 centimeters high with a diameter of 4.5 meters. Before each match the doyo is purified by handfuls of salt. The shimenawa—the ropes that the yokozuna wear around their waists—represent the ropes that adorn Shinto shrines and date from the sixteenth century. Some of sumo’s traditions are ancient, but others can be traced back only to the eighteenth century. Yoshida Oikaze, for example, introduced the ringentering ceremony in 1791 when sumo was staged for the shogun Ienari, and something suitably ceremonial was called for. Today all sekitori participate in the ceremony, which includes an entrance by means of the hanamichi (path of flowers). The wrestlers circle the ring, face inward, clap their hands, raise their arms, lift their aprons slightly, and file out. The ceremony is slightly different for a yokozuna. He appears with a tsuyu harai (dew sweeper) and a tachi mochi (sword bearer). He wears a thick white rope over his apron. After his hand movements, he goes to the center of the ring, stamps his feet, lies down, rises, stamps again, and repeats his hand movements. The stamping is intended to drive away demons. The salt that the wrestlers strew upon the doyo serves the same function. The yumitorishiki (bow dance) was first performed when the shogun expressed his pleasure by handing one of the wrestlers, the great Tanikaze Kajinosuke, a bow. Tanikaze’s dance was an expression of his gratitude.
“Traditionalization” Sumo wrestling, unlike most other sports, has not undergone modernization to rid it of its religious elements. On the contrary, sumo has been characterized more by “traditionalization”—an effort to introduce religious elements into a previously secular sport and to link it more closely to the culture of medieval Japan. The hat worn by the referee, which looks like the headgear of a Shinto priest from the Heian period (794–1185), was adopted in 1909. His colorful kimono, which imitates Heian courtly attire, also dates from that nationalistic period. The roof above the doyo was originally
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shaped like the roof of a traditional Japanese farmhouse. In 1931, during another nationalistic period, the roof was redesigned to resemble the roof of the Ise Shrine, the most sacred Japanese religious site. In other words, much of the religious symbolism that an observer might assume to date to the Heian period is actually what the British historian Eric Hobsbawm has called “invented tradition.” The elders who “traditionalized” sumo were successful: Sumo is baseball’s only serious rival among spectator sports in Japan. Together the two sports symbolize Japan’s desire to be both a traditional and a modern society. Allen Guttmann
Further Reading Cuyler, P. L. (1979). Sumo: From rite to sport. New York: Weatherhill. Kuhaulua, J. (1973). Takamiyama. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Thompson, L. (1989). The modernization of sumo as a sport. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
Sumo Grand Tournament Series
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lthough sumo enthusiasts claim that their sport is thousands of years old, this uniquely Japanese form of wrestling can be reliably traced no farther back than 734 CE, when sumo matches were performed at the imperial court in Nara. When the court was moved to Heian-Kyo (modern Kyoto), at the end of the century, tournaments were held on the grounds of the imperial palace. From 837, the site was an area behind the Shishinden (“Hall for State Ceremonies”). It was strewn with white sand for the occasion. Thirty-four wrestlers, drawn from the “right” and “left” imperial bodyguards, entered to the sound of drums and gongs.They were followed by officials, musicians, and dancers, then by the emperor and his court. The teams were distinguished by decorations in their hair, paper hollyhocks for the left,
and calabash blossoms for the right. Matches were decided by falls or when a wrestler was dragged to his own team’s tent by his opponent. After each match, the musicians beat their drums, struck their gongs, and performed a ritual dance.There was no independent referee, so the emperor decided close matches. Arrows thrust into the sand recorded the results. The annual tournaments at court lasted only until 1185, but sumo survived in several other forms, the most important of which was probably shinjizumo (“wrestling in service of the gods”). A less exalted form was onnazumo (women’s wrestling). Modern sumo can be traced to the early eighteenth century, when zujizumo (street-corner sumo) entertained the urban population of Osaka, Kyoto, and Edo (modern Tokyo). Yoshida Oikaze and a number of other toshiyori (elders) codified and regulated the sport and introduced a number of distinctive rituals. Between 1751 and 1781, the elders, who gratefully received the shogun’s official recognition in 1773, gathered the wrestlers into a number of heya (“rooms”) where they lived and trained. By 1885, when the emperor gave his approval to the system, there were 105 heya, each presided over by an elder. The entire organization was restructured in 1926 when Tokyo’s heya joined those from Osaka to form a national organization. In 1958, this organization, frequently reformed and renamed, became Nihon Sumo Kaikyo (Japanese Sumo Association). In 1989, forty-one heya were informally organized into five great “families.” In 1965, the rule that prohibited matches between wrestlers of the same “family” was dropped, but matches between members of the same heya are still banned.
Complicated Rankings The wrestlers themselves are divided into an extremely complicated pyramid of ranks. Beginners enter as maezumo (“before sumo”). They receive room, board, and small allowance. They are also given new names, which are invariably written in Chinese characters. If the novices are successful in the six annual fifteen-day tournaments held in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, they
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become jonokuchi. Continued success means promotion to the jonidan, sandamme, makushita, and juryo. Only about one in sixty wrestlers rises to juryo status. If they reach this rank, they are classified as sekitori and allowed to change from black or dark blue loincloths to white ones. They wrestle daily during the tournaments, and they receive a regular salary in addition to their winnings. When they are out in public, they are allowed to wear a kimono and haori (a man’s light coat). The makuuchi division comprises the five top ranks— maegashira, komusubi, sekiwake, ozeki, and yokozuna. Among the privileges enjoyed by the makuuchi is shikiri, time set aside for crouching, stamping, and glaring. Election to the eleventh and highest rank—the yokozuna— is a great honor bestowed on very few wrestlers. The yokozuna must satisfy the elders that he has seishin (spirit), that he is an exemplary representative of the Japanese people. Once promoted, he cannot be reduced in rank. (If a yokozuna loses two or three matches in a row, he goes into retirement.) Not until 1993, after Hawaii-born Akebono had won two consecutive championships, did the Sumo Association reluctantly elevate a non-Japanese to yokozuna rank. The rules that prohibit matches between heya-mates and allow matches between wrestlers of different ranks makes the selection of a tournament champion extremely complicated. Calculations made on the basis of wins and losses must take into account that a sekiwake who unexpectedly humbles a yokozuna has achieved a spectacular upset (as if a middleweight boxer defeated the reigning heavyweight champion).
Size, Ritual, and Traditions Westerners who attend a sumo tournament are surprised by the huge size of the wrestlers, some of whom weigh 400 pounds or more, and by the many rituals that characterize the sport. The doyo (ring), which dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, is a circle inscribed in a square flanked by four pillars painted blue, red, white, and black (for the gods of spring, summer, autumn, and winter). The circle within which the
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wrestlers compete is formed by twenty bags of rice straw stuffed with earth. The doyo’s rim is approximately 20 inches high and its diameter is slightly less than 15 feet. Before each bout, the ring is purified by handfuls of salt. The shimenawa that the yokozuna wear wound about their waists represent the ropes that adorn Shinto shrines. Some of sumo’s traditions are very old, some date from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, and some are surprisingly recent. The strewing of salt dates from the end of the seventeenth century. Yoshida Zenzaemon introduced the ring-entering ceremony in 1791. Today, all sekitori participate in the ceremony, which includes an entrance down the hanamichi (path of flowers). The wrestlers circle the ring, face inward, clap their hands, raise their arms, lift their aprons slightly and file out again. The yokozuna is privileged to enter with a tsuyuharai (dew-sweeper) and a tachimochi (sword-bearer). He wears a thick white rope over his apron. After his hand movements, he goes to the center of the ring and stamps to drive away demons. The yumitorishiki (bow-dance) also dates from the eighteenth century, when the shogun expressed his appreciation by presenting a bow to the great Tanikaze Kajinosuke, who promptly danced his gratitude. Some of sumo’s most distinctive symbolism dates from the early twentieth century, when the sport underwent a period of intense “retraditionalization.” The referee’s tall black hat, which resembles the headgear of a medieval sumo priest, was adopted in 1909. His colorful kimono dates from the same period of nationalistic fervor. The roof that is suspended over the doyo, even when sumo tournaments are held indoors, was originally shaped like an ordinary Japanese farmhouse, but it was redesigned in 1931, in another highly nationalistic period, to resemble the roof of the Ise Shrine, Japan’s most sacred Shinto site. The elders who retraditionalized sumo were quite successful. In the very center of high-tech global modernity, sumo reassures the Japanese that they still have a distinctive culture. Allen Guttman
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You learn you can do your best even when its hard, even when you’re tired and maybe hurting a little bit. It feels good to show some courage. ■ JOE NAMATH
Further Reading Cuyler, P. L. (1979) Sumo: From rite to sport. New York: Weatherhill. Guttmann, A., & L. Thompson. (2001) Japanese sports: A history. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Sharnoff, L. (1993) Grand sumo. New York: Weatherhill.
Super Bowl
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he Super Bowl, the championship game of American football, is the most watched, written about, and talked about single sports event in the United States today. It has become a national ritual, and Super Bowl Sunday is akin to a national holiday—marked by gatherings of family and friends, food, drink, and betting on the outcome. The competitors are the winners of the National Football and American Football conferences of the National Football League playoffs.
An American Institution First played in 1967, the Super Bowl is traditionally staged on a Sunday evening, and is seen by more than 130 million television viewers alone in the United States. Advertisers, who paid as little as $75,000 for a thirty-second commercial for the telecast of Super Bowl I, now pay $2.5 million for the same thirty second commercial. Apple Computers introduced its first ever line of Macintosh computers with a Super Bowl television advertisement in 1984. The NFL estimates that in 2004 almost one billion people viewed part of Super Bowl XXXVIII in 229 different countries, and the game was broadcast in twentyone different languages. Some 3,000 media credentials are typically assigned for a Super Bowl, including 400 to international journalists. The game’s number is traditionally referred to in roman numerals, although that practice did not start until the fifth Super Bowl.
A Super Bowl sandwich. Source: istockphoto.com/kcline.
The game is played at a stadium site that is picked years in advance of the actual game date. No team has ever played a Super Bowl in its home stadium. Super Bowl games are usually awarded to stadiums in the southern part of the United States, to help ensure good weather since the game is played in either late January or early February, although on a few occasions the game has been played in northern locations that have a domed stadium. In all, eleven different cities in the United States have hosted a Super Bowl, with New Orleans hosting the most with nine. Cities are competitive in bidding to host the game, since the economic impact from just one Super Bowl can be as high as $250 million. The day has become so popular—more pizzas are sold on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year in the United States—that some consider it a
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When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn. ■ TOM LANDRY
de facto holiday. In 2004, more than $81 million in bets were placed on the Super Bowl in the state of Nevada, where gambling on professional sports is legal. Privately, it is estimated that several billion dollars is actually wagered on the game illegally. Part of the Super Bowl tradition is the elaborate halftime show featuring top entertainers. The 2004 show was controversial when singer Janet Jackson’s breast was bared; the 2005 show featured former Beatle Paul McCartney and was much tamer. Commercials have become an integral part of the television broadcast as well, with major corporations vying to produce the most creative, innovative, or amusing commercials— which are then widely critiqued in the media on the day after the game.
History The game was originally known as AFL-NFL World Championship Game, and came about because of competition between the two competing professional football leagues—the American Football League founded in 1960 and the National Football League founded in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association. It took the NFL name in 1922. The game didn’t actually become the “Super Bowl” until 1968, before the third championship game. Legend has it that the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, Lamar Hunt, whose team played in the first ever Super Bowl, came up with the event’s name after coming across one of his daughter’s favorite toys, a super ball. The game’s number is traditionally referred to in roman numerals, although that practice did not start until the fifth Super Bowl. The Chiefs played the Green Bay Packers, coached by Vince Lombardi (considered one of the league’s most legendary coaches), in Super Bowl I, played 15 January 1967. Today, the trophy given out to winning team is called the Vince Lombardi trophy. The Pete Rozelle Trophy—named after the man who served as league commissioner for almost thirty years and is largely credited with spurring the growth and popularity of the National Football League—is given out to the most valuable player in the Super Bowl.
Far from the popular event it is today the first Super Bowl only attracted 61,946 fans, almost 40,000 short of capacity at the Los Angeles’ Memorial Coliseum, although every game since has been a sell out. Green Bay won the first game, 35–10, led by quarterback Bart Starr and receiver Max McGee—who only saw action in the game because of an injury to starting wide receiver Boyd Dowler. For the entire season, McGee had caught only four passes for 91 yards, but in the newly created title game, he hauled in seven passes for 138 yards and two touchdowns. Each Packer received a “winner’s share”— a monetary reward for being on the victorious team—of $15,000 each, while each Chief earned $7,500. By comparison, the 2004 winning share for each member of the New England Patriots was $68,000, while the members of the losing Carolina Panthers each earned $36,500. The most inexpensive ticket to the first-ever Super Bowl was $6; the most inexpensive ticket price for the 2004 game was $350. Seventeen teams have won the Super Bowl: Dallas Cowboys San Francisco 49ers Pittsburgh Steelers Green Bay Packers New England Patriots Oakland/LA Raiders Washington Redskins Denver Broncos Miami Dolphins New York Giants Baltimore Colts Baltimore Ravens Chicago Bears Kansas City Chiefs New York Jets St. Louis/LA Rams Tampa Bay Buccaneers
5 5 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
The New England Patriots have won three of the last four Super Bowls. This is considered a near-amazing achievement given efforts by the league to develop parity among teams. The most significant Super Bowl was
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the third when the New York Jets of the AFL beat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts of the NFL by the score of 16–7. The victory had been publicly guaranteed by Jet’s quarterback Joe Namath three days before the game. The victory made the AFL the equal of the NFL, and the next year the leagues merged. Brian Ackley and David Levinson
in 1956), World Life Saving (1971), and the International Life Saving Federation (1993). To qualify as a patrolling surf lifesaver, an individual must gain the bronze medallion, which tests fitness (beach running, swimming in the surf, and resuscitation methods). Clubs conduct the test on an annual basis, but only a minority of members has current medallions.
History Further Reading Bayless, S. (1993). The boys. New York: Simon & Schuster. Green, J. (1991). Super bowl chronicles: A sportswriter reflects on the first 25 years of America’s game. Masters Press. Konner, B. (2003) The super bowl of advertising: how the commercials won the game. Bloomberg Press. Weiss, D., & C. Day (2002). The making of the super bowl: the inside story of the world’s greatest sporting event. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Surf Lifesaving
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combination of water safety educational programs and practices and ocean and beach sports, surf lifesaving first developed on Australian, New Zealand, and South African foreshores in the early twentieth century. Many of the early clubs began as affiliates of the Royal Life Saving Society (founded by William Henry in 1891), a volunteer rescue society based in England. But the dynamic ocean environment encouraged the clubs to progressively affiliate with specialist surf-based lifesaving organizations. Indeed, in 1924 the Surf Life Saving Association of Australia (SLSAA) and the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) in Australia signed an agreement that allocated responsibility for the safety of harbors, bays, and rivers to the latter. The RLSS also assumed responsibility for teaching lifesaving procedures to schoolchildren and public agencies. However, the social environment played a more decisive role than the physical environment in shaping the Australian movement that has achieved hegemony on the international stage via the International Council of Surf Life Saving (formed
Alerted by medical practitioners to the health-giving and therapeutic properties of cold-water bathing, the English middle classes adopted bathing as a pastime and sport (i.e., swimming) in the eighteenth century. But in the nineteenth century, bathers who pursued their pleasures in public faced opposition from evangelically inspired factions, who campaigned against what they deemed morally offensive and socially subversive behaviors, including exposed displays of the body. In this social climate bathing and swimming largely developed in enclosed baths (both seawater and freshwater) where moral guardians could monitor and control public displays of the human body. In the antipodes official ordinances regulated bathing in public (for example, prohibiting the activity during daylight hours), fueling conflict between moralists and those who deemed bathing in open waters a natural pleasure and of high social and economic benefit. The factions in favor of public bathing challenged repressive beach-bathing laws. In the early 1900s, devotees won the right to bathe in daylight hours, but the struggle to control the beach was far from resolved. Determined to protect “the common standards of propriety that prevail among civilized nations,” moralists directed attention to bathers’ costumes, sunbathing (which they described as a practice suitable only for dogs), and mixed bathing. Surf bathers responded by forming lifesaving patrols to demonstrate their respectable intentions, and in October 1907 a dozen clubs in Sydney united under the umbrella of the Surf Bathing Association of New South Wales (SBANSW). Its objectives were to provide better
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facilities for surf bathers, institute improved lifesaving methods and aids, and provide rules for the proper conduct of surf bathers. The class structure and aims of SBANSW quickly ensured official sanction for the activity. In 1911 John Lord, the association’s first president, chaired a fourman committee appointed by the NSW government to inquire into surf bathing. The government adopted virtually all the committee’s recommendations, including structuring volunteer lifesaving clubs around rational military organization, discipline, and drills.
Surf Life Saving Association of Australia SBANSW survived by assuming “duty-of-care” for surf bathers. The association defined itself as a humanitarian and volunteer safety service and, consistent with this image, changed its name in 1920 to the Surf Life Saving Association of Australia. The SLSAA reinforced its self-imposed responsibility by adopting the motto “Vigilance and Service” and by highlighting its annual and cumulative tallies of rescues. (The SLSAA claims that its members have performed over 484,000 rescues since 1907.) But if its assumption of “duty-ofcare” increased SLSAA’s standing in the eyes of governments and helped secure more financial assistance from local councils who understand only too well that volunteer organizations can provide highly effective cost-effective services, it also exposed the association to risks of public liability. Indeed, the expense of insuring against public liability has steadily grown to the point where it currently threatens the financial viability of many clubs. The SLSAA has also failed to reconcile the place of sport in the movement. The association nurtures the sporting image of the lifesaver that it uses to raise public monies and entice commercial sponsorship. Competition at regional, state, national, and international levels officially provides members with the means to practice and develop lifesaving skills; in reality many members and clubs regard lifesaving sport as the end rather than the means.
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“IRONMAN” The development of the Ironman Grand Prix circuit in the 1980s exacerbated the lifesaver-athlete contradiction. Introduced to Australia by touring lifeguards from the United States in 1965, corporate sponsors and the media soon recognized the economic and sporting potential for an endurance event involving lifesavers running, swimming, and paddling boards and surf skis. After outside commercial interests threatened to organize an independent event, the SLSAA introduced its own circuit in 1986. But lifesavers quickly grew dissatisfied with the management and administration of the official circuit. In 1989 a small group formed the Ironman Super Series as a “rebel” competition and secured their own sponsors. Assisted by corporate rivalry between the sponsors and those televising the two circuits, prize money for the two competitions ballooned to $1.5 million; many leading lifesavers also secured lucrative personal sponsorships. In 2001, after twelve years, breakfast food manufacturer Uncle Tobys withdrew its financial support and the “rebel” Ironman Super Series collapsed. Kellogg immediately slashed its contribution to the official circuit by more than 50 percent. Ill at ease with the hype and attention afforded to its lifesavers and seeking to balance the sporting and lifesaving aspects of the movement, the SLSAA restructured and downsized the elite ironman competition. During the course of the twentieth century, the Australian surf lifesaver became a national and international icon propelled by both lifesaving and sporting heroics on the beach. Unfortunately, successive generations of officials responsible for organizing and administering surf lifesaving have failed to reconcile the long-standing tension between the ideals and realities of what it means to be a lifesaver. Douglas Booth
Further Reading Booth, D. (2001). Australian beach cultures: The history of sun, sand and surf. London: Frank Cass. Hintz, P. (2001, November 10). Surf’s no longer up. Brisbane Courier Mail.
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Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian. ■ H. L. MENCKEN
International Lifesaving Federation. Retrieved February 2, 2005, from http://lifesaving.dsnsports.com, and http://www.slsa.asn.au/doc _ display.asp Jaggard, E. (1997). Chameleons in the surf. Journal of Australian Studies, 53, 183–191. Jaggard, E. (1999). Australian surf life-saving and the “Forgotten Members.” Australian Historical Studies, 112, 23–43. Jaggard, E. (2001). Tempering the testosterone: Masculinity, women and Australian surf lifesaving. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 18 (4), 16–36.
Surfing
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urfing is the water sport of riding waves; the ancient Hawaiians referred to surfing as He’enalu. The peoples of greater Oceania are credited with developing surfing as we know it, especially those in the islands of Hawaii where the sport became an integral part of the culture sometime around 1000 CE, centuries before Columbus sought the New World.
Origins of Surfing Although most scholars agree that the sport of surfing traces its origins more specifically to Polynesia, where and when the activity was first practiced remains a mystery. Hawaii holds a clue. History there was not preserved via the written word; rather, it was passed on from one generation to the next via stories and chants. Countless narratives, generations deep, recalled how deeply imbued surfing played into the culture. One such accounting was transcribed by A. S. Twombly in his book Kelea: The Surf-Rider, A Romance of Pagan Hawaii in the late 1800s and published in 1900. The western world first learned of surfing through the recorded observations of the Hawaiian explorer Captain James Cook and his ship’s illustrator, John Webber. Cook’s explorations more than once brought him and his crew to Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii (Hawaii was then named the Sandwich Islands), where he and the crew first witnessed men and women surfing on boards and canoes. By the 1860s, author Mark Twain penned his account of surfing while traveling on the Big Island of
Hawaii. There, he noted how the “naked natives of both sexes and all ages, were amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing.” Twain later described his first personal and futile attempts at “surf-riding” in his book Roughing It. After more than five centuries, the sport of surfing has developed and evolved into a well-established activity, although not before the decline of the Hawaiian culture, which began during the 1800s. An inevitable clash of cultures occurred when the missionaries and Europeans traveled to the islands with differing ways and customs. Surfing nearly ceased to exist by the end of the nineteenth century for many reasons, including the missionaries’ disdain for such a nonproductive activity and disease brought to Hawaii by outsiders. A mere 10 percent of the Hawaiian population is estimated to have survived between the first outside contacts with Hawaii and the end of the 1800s. The revival of surfing in Hawaii and the consequent global spread of the sport thereafter was largely because of Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, a full-blood Hawaiian who is the revered and acknowledged father of modern surfing. Kahanamoku is credited with spearheading the return of surf-riding and its mainstream acceptance in Hawaii by 1910 and, shortly thereafter, with introducing the longer ten- to eleven-foot Waikikistyle surfboard. In 1912, he went on to win gold and silver medals for swimming at the Stockholm Olympics.The same year, he introduced surfing to the U.S. East Coast, and by 1915, he brought surfing to New Zealand and Australia. During a visit to California that year, Duke advanced the sports of both surfing and swimming with displays of his water skills and because of his celebrity status. George Freeth, Hawaiian born of mixed Irish and Hawaiian ancestry, was likewise instrumental in the spread of surfing to California, far from the sport’s firmly established epicenter in Hawaii. Employed as a Los Angeles county lifeguard, Freith was often seen riding his surfboard or using the board assisting swimmers in danger during beach rescues. Alexander Hume Ford, yet another pivotal player during surfing’s revival of the early
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Surfing Surfing in Hawaii In this report by a group of missionaries in 1823, they describe surfing as practiced by indigenous Hawaiians. On these occasions they use a board, which they call papa he naru, (wave sliding-board,) generally five or six feet long, and rather more than a foot wide, sometimes flat, but more frequently slightly convex on both sides. It is usually made of the wood of the erythrina, stained quite black, and preserved with great care. After using, it is placed in the sun till perfectly dry, when it is rubbed over with cocoa-nut oil, frequently wrapped in cloth, and suspended in some part of their dwelling house.
1900s, did much to reinstate surfing in Hawaii. By 1908, Ford founded the Outrigger Canoe Club predicated upon a group of enthusiasts devoted to preserving and developing surf-riding on both surfboards and canoes.
Surfing Innovations Key surfboard designers and revolutionary design developments emerged during and after World War II, especially in the then-developing surfing mecca of Southern California. There, differing wave fields often broke close to the shoreline so rides were shorter in both distance and duration compared with those of the deep water, offshore reef venues of the islands. Until this point, the equipment used was heavy and crude by contemporary standards, with surfboards often weighing more than 100 lbs. Constructed from a variety of woods, the heavy boards precluded all but the strongest from participating in the sport. Surfboard designers in California devised lightweight surfboards that would react more spontaneously to the rider’s whims in waves, which afforded a surf-rider less time to set up for the ride. Maneuverability was the outcome, and these same surfboards soon thereafter became mainstays in Hawaiian surfing equipment. Period design and material innovators were Matt Kivlin, Joe Quigg, Bob Simmons, Dave Sweet, Dale
Sometimes they choose a place where the deep water reaches to the beach, but generally prefer a part where the rocks are ten or twenty feet under water, and extend to a distance from the shore, as the surf breaks more violently over these. When playing in these places, each individual takes his board, and, pushing it before him, swims perhaps a quarter of a mile or more out to sea. They do not attempt to go over the billows which roll towards the shore, but watch their approach, and dive under water, allowing the billow to pass over their heads. Source: Ellis, W. (1917). Narrative of a tour through Hawaii, or Owhyhee: with observations on the natural history of the Sandwich Islands, and remarks on the manners, customs, traditions, history, and language of their inhabitants (pp. 278-79). Honolulu, Hawaii: Hawaiian Gazette Co. Ltd.
Velzy, and Hobie Alter, among others. Technologies and materials developed during the war years were put to use by the private sector; chief among the materials was an assortment of plastics that revolutionized the equipment and the act of wave-riding itself. The advent of fiberglass allowed surfboard builders to seal the surfboard’s soft South American balsa wood core. The sealed lightweight balsa soon made all the heavy materials preceding its use obsolete and allowed surfing to reach more people.
Social Acceptance In a social context, the surfers of the late 1940s and 1950s were initially too few to be recognized by general society. California pioneers of the sport can recall when almost everyone who surfed the coast knew one another. By the early 1960s, further refinements in equipment delivered the sport to the mainstream status that surf riding currently holds. Today, surfers constitute a subculture whose lifestyle intrigues society at large. A multimillion-dollar fashion industry has developed around the sport that finds origins dating back to the early 1960s. Multiple media venues, including advertising, documentaries, television, print, and news, all find markets and an increasing audience share
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Surfers enjoying the big waves and offshore winds. Source: istockphoto/mattscherf.
among the public at large, not just sports fans. Surf riding clearly holds a worldwide mystique. Acclaimed Surf journalist Matt Warshaw reports an estimated 2.5 million active surfers in the United States. At last count, however, Warshaw documented less than 9,000 active competitors participating in contest circuits within the United States today. This stark accounting provides insights that the real competition in surfing is perhaps surfer vs. nature rather than surfer vs. surfer. What so many surfing participants find most alluring is the sport’s lack of basic rules, strategies, and tactics outside the formal competition venues. Conversely, formal surfing competition holds a key position in the sport and provides the pathway for professional surfing. Strong and consistent contest ratings on the pro circuit are vital elements toward endorsements and sponsorship for aspiring professionals within the peripheral billiondollar surfing industry.
Competitive Surfing Surfing competitions traces its origins back to Ancient Hawaiian folklore, the way in which the indigenous people of Hawaii preserved their history. It is said that chiefs competed against each other, often for a bounty of materials, livestock, or goods. Criteria for victory consisted of the longest ride or perhaps the first surfer to reach a designated point in the water or on the beach. A contest might very well comprise a series of rides and wins to declare a final victor. The earliest known surfboards used in the competition were the olo and kiko’o, used in the precontact days of Hawaii. The ancient boards were long and heavy
(measuring 12–16 feet [3.7–4.8 meters], some examples reportedly reached up to 18 feet [5.7 meters]) and were reserved for use exclusively by Hawaiian chiefs and royalty. The commoners used shorter alaia boards (6–10 feet or more [1.9–3.2 meters]), also referred to as omo. The longer olo boards more effectively caught the fastmoving ocean waves, aided by additional buoyancy and paddling speed afforded by length. Formal competition resumed during the sport’s revival in the 1900s. A 1918 competition held in Hawaii was among the first to judge a winning performance on style and mastery in the surf. A backlash of discontent quickly diminished any plans to continue measuring performance by what was then perceived as vague and obscure standards. For the short term thereafter, the objectives dating as far back as the Ancient Hawaiians remained the predominant measure of competitive aptitude (that is, distance covered, first to the beach or marker, and so on). In Australia, beginning in 1919, a string of surfing competitions soon came to be known as surf carnivals. The competitions became mainstream by the 1930s, often incorporating matches between lifeguards assessing
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their prowess implementing lifesaving devices that included an assortment of equipment used within coastal surf zones. In California, the Pacific Coast Surf Riding Championships began in 1928 and continued into the 1940s. Competitive surfing found genuine validity and acceptance in 1953–1954. The Makaha International Surfing Championships changed how surfers’ waveriding skills were evaluated. Although somewhat flawed in hindsight, the judging parameters set a new standard and became a blueprint from which to fabricate today’s refined appraisals. The brainchild of California transplant and former lifeguard John Lind, the contest is now acknowledged as the beginning of modern surfing competition and the prototype that fostered the sport of surfing’s passage into the competitive arena. Lind’s competitive background as a lifeguard and surfer, replete with established competition experiences and organizational skills combined the ingredients necessary to create such a forum within a near-perfect contest venue. In all but the first year of the event, the
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fabled surf break at Makaha produced dependable and quality surfing conditions. Enlisting the aid of the Waikiki Surf Club (founded by Lind) and the local Lions Club, Lind found a strong workforce of volunteers and sponsorship to help finance the event. The inaugural event in 1953 was well planned and well attended but relegated only to paddle board races. The surfing competition was cancelled that first year due to a lack of surf—the only time in the twodecade run of the event that this happened. Undeterred, Lind brought the event to fruition the following year and set the stage for the future of surfing competition. The event was open to anyone who wanted to enter, including women’s and tandem surfing divisions. The final heats of top contenders were carried annually on the ABC-TV Wide World of Sports program during the early 1960s. Disputes over royalties are said to be the only reason why the TV coverage was dropped in subsequent years. Competitive surfing gained further recognition through the United States Surfing Association (USSA), founded in California in 1961. The organization spearheaded a drive to improve the public image of surfing and surfers. Soon thereafter, the USSA became a governing faction for surfing competition. Seven districts including Hawaii, California, and the East Coast had prescribed universal rules and the requisite membership. Points could be accumulated from different contests with annual standings developed. The USSA eventually gave way to four separate zones with common interests and competition standards
A kite surfer in mid-air. Source: istockphoto/jgough.
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Surfers heading out for a wave at the Pass, Byron Bay, Australia. Source: istockphoto/davidf.
because groups in California, Hawaii, and the East and Gulf Coasts were better equipped to govern surfing in their own locales. The United States Surfing Championships (USSC) sprang from the West Coast Surfing Championships that began in 1959 in Huntington Beach, California. Contrived by the Chamber of Commerce and Huntington Beach Recreation Department, the championships continue drawing contestants from amateur circuits nationwide. In 1973, the event moved from its exclusive Huntington Beach, California, location to different venues annually throughout the country. For more than four decades, the USSC has been the springboard that allows U.S. surfers to move into the highest competitive ranks. Numerous other competitive organizations exist worldwide. Of note is the United States Surfing Federation (USSF). The union of six existing surfing organizations was founded by the late Colin Couture to establish and choose an amateur surfing team to attend the World Surfing Championships. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) acknowledged the USSF despite the sport’s continuously failed bids to gain Olympic recognition. Many believe the inability of the sport of surfing to gain Olympic status lies within the playing field. A consistent, measurable, and dependable venue is not to be afforded by the ocean. In the 1970s, Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick started the world pro surf tour. The International Professional Surfers (IPS) held professional events initially in Hawaii, South Africa, and Australia. Shortly after the tour’s inception, a women’s division was added. A modest purse was offered during the inaugural years, although the first-season winner Peter Townend nearly broke even in prize monies against his traveling expenses. Approximately five years later amidst turbulent
differences with the Australian contingent, the IPS was superseded by the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP). Founded in 1982, the organization built on what the IPS had begun, unifying isolated and discordant events into one assembly maintaining a pro circuit. By 1983, the contest circuit and attending special events offered a purse totaling just under $500,000. Prize money has grown steadily over the years but remains paltry when compared with mainstream sports such as baseball, football, basketball, and tennis. As a result, career surfers with strong competitive backgrounds often gain lucrative sponsorships and endorsements to augment their incomes, allowing a career to be had riding waves. Although competition does indeed play a pivotal role in surfing, defining the leaders, trends, and hierarchy, it is the mainstream participants that are at the core of the
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Sweden Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 2 Silver, 4 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics: 4 Gold, 1 Silver, 2 Bronze
sport. The very essence of surf riding remains as true today, as it did centuries ago: the elemental, almost primal, pleasures found within the simple yet thrilling act of successfully riding upon a wave. Mark Fragale
Further Reading Ball, J. H. (1946). California surfriders. Los Angeles: Norman B. Whale. Blake, T. (1935). Hawaiians Surfboard. Honolulu, HI: Paradise of Pacific Press. Bloomfield, J (1965). Know-how in the surf. Rutland,VT: Charles E.Tuttle. Brennan, J. (1968). Duke Kahanamoku’s world of surfing. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Cralle, T. (1991). Surfinary, a dictionary of surfing terms and surfspeak. Berkley, CA: Ten Speed Press. Dixon, P. L. (1965). The complete book of surfing. New York: Coward-McAnn. Dixon, P. L. (1966). Men and waves, a treasury of surfing. New York: Coward-McAnn. Dixon, P. L. (1968). Where the surfers are. New York: Coward-McAnn. Finney, B. R., & Houston, J. D. (1966). Surfing, the sport of Hawaiian kings. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle. Hall, S. K., with Ambrose, G. (1995). Memories of Duke. Honolulu, HI: Bell Press. Hemmings, F. (1997). The soul of surfing is Hawaiian. Honolulu, HI: Author. Kampion, D. (1997). Stoked, a history of surf culture. Los Angeles, CA: RR Donnelley & Sons Co. Kelly, J. M.,. Jr. (1965). Surf and sea. New York: A.S. Barnes and Co. Klein, A. (1965). Surfing. New York: J.B. Lippincott Co. Klein, A. (1966). Surf’s up! An anthology of surfing. New York: BobbsMerrill Co. Kuhns, G. W. (1963). On surfing. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle. Lueras, L. (1984). Surfing, the ultimate pleasure. New York: Workman. Muirhead, D. (1962). Surfing in Hawaii. Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Press. Patterson, O .B. (1960). Surf-riding, its thrills and techniques. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle. Pearson, K. (1979). Surfing subcultures of Australia and New Zealand. St Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press. Severson, J. (1964). Modern surfing around the world. New York: Doubleday. Warshaw, M. (1997). Surfriders: In search of the perfect wave. Del Mar, CA: Tehabi Books. Warshaw, M. (2003). The encyclopedia of surfing. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
Sweden
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weden covers 411,000 square kilometers in Scandinavia, a peninsula of northern Europe. The country spreads north through the Arctic Circle and south to the Baltic Sea and is bounded on the west by Norway
and on the east by the Baltic. More than 9 million people inhabit Sweden, the majority of them in the cities of the central and southern regions. Stockholm, the capital and largest city, is home to 1.2 million people. Sports have helped forge Sweden’s identity as a land of vigorous people. Cross-country skiing is the national passion, although many other sports claim the allegiance of Swedes, including football (soccer), crosscountry and road running, orienteering, cycling, ice hockey, bandy (a game similar to hockey), golf, rugby, handball, tennis, and wrestling.
History Sports in Sweden grew out of the turmoil of history. The political and economic instability of the Middle Ages persisted in Sweden into the sixteenth century, devolving into near anarchy in 1520 when Danish King Christian II ordered his army to massacre Swedish aristocrats in a bid to conquer Sweden. Nobleman Gustav Ericsson Vasa escaped the massacre in Mora, Sweden, on skis, fleeing 90 kilometers to Salen, where a band of townsmen from Dahrna, themselves on skis, overtook Vasa and pledged their loyalty to him. Their support helped make Vasa king and created cross-country skiing as Sweden’s oldest sport, although only in 1922 did King Gustav V establish the Vasaloppet, a cross-country ski race between Mora and Salen, to commemorate Vasa’s flight from Christian II’s army. By 1922 sports were prevalent in Sweden. During the 1880s Swedes had begun importing a variety of sports from other European nations. More than did U.S. sports fans, Swedish sports fans adopted a less formal attitude toward sports in which clubs of amateurs rather than government shaped the development of sports. Sweden entered the international arena in 1912, hosting the Olympic Games in Stockholm.
Participant and Spectator Sports Despite its northern latitude Sweden has a temperate climate that encourages participation in both winter and summer sports. Among winter sports cross-country skiing, ice hockey, and bandy have more than 4 million
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Sweden Key Events in Sweden Sports History 1520 Nobleman Gustav Ericsson Vasa escapes a Danish massacre on skis, becomes king and cross-country skiing becomes the national sport. 1880s Sports are imported from elsewhere in Europe. 1903 The Swedish National Sports Federation is founded. 1906 The Swedish Athletic Federation for the Deaf is founded. 1908 Sweden competes in the Olympics for the first time. 1912 The Olympics are held in Stockholm. 1922 The Vasaloppet cross-country ski race is established. 1934 Sweden competes in the soccer World Cup for the first time. 1965 The 1965 the Lidingo-loppet crosscountry running race is inaugurated. 1965 The O-Ringen orienteering event inaugurated. 1979 The Stockholm Marathon is run for the first time. 2002 Concern is raised about the used of performance-enhancing drugs.
enthusiasts, with cross-country skiers accounting for nearly half that total. The jewel of winter sports is the Vasaloppet, which the Swedish Skiing Association caps at twelve thousand entrants, turning away as many as twenty thousand applicants. Among summer sports football rivals cross-country skiing’s winter popularity, attracting more than 1 million participants. Sweden has fielded teams for the Olympic Games since 1908 and the World Cup since 1934. Matches draw as many as fifty thousand spectators. Running is likewise popular. Swedes pride themselves on competition amid the rustic splendor of nature, a sentiment that suits cross-country running. Since
1965 the Lidingo-loppet has been the preeminent competition, hosting as many as thirty thousand runners per year. Men run 30 kilometers, and women run 10 kilometers. A derivative of cross-country running is orienteering, in which more than 100,000 Swedes participate annually. The five-day O-Ringen since 1965 has been the jewel of orienteering. A third event is the Stockholm Marathon, which journalist and Hasselby Athletic Club member Anders Olsson in 1979 patterned after the New York City Marathon. In 2004 the Stockholm Marathon fielded 16,221 runners from fiftyfive countries. Swedes embrace sports as validation of their identity as hardy people. This validation encourages Swedes of all abilities and backgrounds to participate in sports, a democratic vision that diminishes the importance of elite competition.
Women and Sports Women benefit from this democratic vision, participating in the same sports that men participate in. The Swedish Football Association has thirteen hundred women’s clubs and eighty-five thousand girls under age fifteen as members. The Lidingo-loppet hosts a 10-kilometer race for women. Cross-country skiing, orienteering, ice hockey, bandy, and many other sports have women’s clubs. Every June the Swedish Cycling Federation hosts the TjejVattern, a 150-kilometer bicycle race open only to women, and one week later hosts the Vattern-Rudan, a 300-kilometer race for women and men. Both races circuit Lake Vattern, Sweden’s second-largest lake.
Youth Sports Swedish youth flock to sports. The Swedish Football Association has 250,000 members under age fifteen. The Federation Internationale de Football Association hosts the Gothia Cup, the world’s largest junior tournament. Some 600,000 boys and girls between ages twelve and seventeen from 120 countries participate. The federation recruits youth from disparate economic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds in hopes of promoting tolerance. The Gothia Cup is as much a youth peace move-
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Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull. ■ CLIVE JAMES
ment as a sports competition. The Swedish Orienteering Federation sponsors the Silva Junior Cup for boys and girls under age eighteen. The Lidingo-loppet has divisions for boys and girls ages seven to fifteen.
Organizations Sweden has sixty-five national sports organizations. Since 1903 the Swedish National Sports Federation (www.svenskdovidrott.nu/t2.asp?p=80185) has organized Swedish sports in twenty-two federations. The largest is the Swedish Football Association (www.svenskfotboll.se), with more than 1 million members and three thousand clubs. Unique among Swedish organizations is the Swedish Athletic Federation for the Deaf (www.svenskdovidrott.nu). At its inception in 1906 the federation fostered athletic competitions among the deaf, notably the International Deaf Games in Gothenburg, and has since grown to sponsor events for Swedes with disabilities of all types.
Sports in Society Sports are a progressive influence on Swedish society. They promote health and the virtues of the wellrounded athlete. Swedes encourage participation in a range of sports rather than specialization in a single sport and prize equal access to sports above elitism. Swedish competitions welcome women, men, youth, the disabled, and people of all classes, ethnicities, and religions in an effort to promote national unity rather than a win-at-all-costs mentality. Swedes do not venerate star athletes as much as U.S. popular culture does. However, in 2002 Swedish biologist Anna Kindlundh challenged this pristine image of sports, documenting the use of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs among Swedes as young as seven. Approximately 3 percent of boys and 0.5 percent of girls in the high schools of Uppsala, Sweden, had used steroids, she found, in their desire to enhance performance, increase muscle mass and tone, and improve their appearance. Fifteen percent of boys and 9 percent of girls had used some type of illicit drug to enhance performance. The pressure to succeed,
Kindlundh concluded, was undermining the purity of Swedish sports.
The Future Kindlundh’s research suggests that sports in Sweden may come to resemble sports in the United States and the former USSR in the drive to win at any price. This attitude may weaken the traditions of universal access to sports, the ordinary Swede as athlete, and the well-rounded amateur. However, counter to this attitude is the example of Dahrna’s townsmen—ordinary citizens rather than extraordinary athletes—who skied across the country to aid a future king. Christopher Cumo See also Innebandy
Further Reading Kindlundh, A. (2002). Epidemiological and neurobiological evidence for misuse of anabolic androgenic steroids. Retrieved November 5, 2004, from http://publications.uu.se/uu/fulltext/nbn _ se _ uu _ diva2567.pdf Sverigeturism, F. (2004). The Swedish information smorgasbord. Retrieved November 5, 2004, from http://www.sverigeturism.se/ smorgasbord Swedish Football Association. (n.d.). Retrieved November 5, 2004, from http://www.svenskfotboll.se Vasaloppet Week. (n.d.). Retrieved November 5, 2004, from http:// www.vasaloppet.se
Swimming
R
eferences to swimming practices have been found in hieroglyphics, drawings and paintings, legends, and books dating back to ancient times. It was not until the sixteenth century, however, that specialized books on the subject of swimming appeared—first with a book by Nicolas Wynman in 1538, and half a century later with a book by Everard Digby that described and illustrated about forty different utilitarian or recreational techniques. An athletic form of swimming appeared in England during the first third of the
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Swimming The First Test for the “Women’s Life Saving Corps,” 1920 1. Swim twenty yards, dressed in skirt, blouse and shoes which shall be fastened in the customary way.Without resting, other than floating, she must remove the skirt, blouse and shoes, and continue to swim for eighty yards before touching the shore. 2. Swim several strokes on surface; than surface dive in from six to eight feet of water, and retrieve a ten-pound object, landing same on bank.The object should be carried on the upper side of the body. 3. Carry living subject ten yards by each of the following methods: Breast stroke, cross shoulder, head carry, two-point carry.
nineteenth century, and since then, swimming has become a major international sport and one of the most widely practiced sports in the world.
History In England during the 1830s and 1840s, swimming grew away from its utilitarian origins to become a competitive practice. There were enough professional swimmers at the time to justify the creation of the National Swimming Society and a national championship in 1837. A concern for the health of society led to the building of an increasing number of indoor pools, which smoothed the way for professional competitions, popular events to which admission was charged. At about the same time, a number of public schools and universities began to encourage swimming by organizing meets between teams, whose members later started the first amateur clubs during the 1860s. In January 1869, London’s main swimming clubs united to form the Associated Metropolitan Swimming Club (AMSC), a precursor of the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA). The AMSC drafted a regulatory code for all issues relating to amateur races. In spite of the friction that existed between amateurs and professionals at the time, a definition of athletic swimming was finally established during the 1880s in the form of fifty-nine articles. These were ultimately
4. Break wrist-hold, front-strangle hold, back-strangle hold in deep water and land patient by swimming fifteen feet. 5. Float one minute in any posture and tread water thirty seconds. 6. Land a patient properly from pool, or surf or open water, as if unconscious. 7. Demonstrate the Schafer prone pressure method of resuscitation and be a subject for demonstration by another. Source: Women’s life saving corps of the American Red Cross. (1920). In The history of the water safety program of the American National Red Cross (p. 279). Washington, DC; American National Red Cross.
used as a basis for international regulations when the Fédération Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA) was created in London in 1908. In these early stages, the choice of the different events was a compromise that took into account demands emanating from clubs, trade journals, and ASA directors. The demands concerned issues such as swimmers’ rights and obligations, the powers granted to officials, the distances to be covered in events, and environmental characteristics (seas, rivers, and pools were all accepted).
FINE-TUNING A differentiation among techniques was not initially taken into consideration, but was specified in 1903 when breaststroke and backstroke championships were added to the freestyle events. The butterfly stroke officially appeared as an event in 1953, although it had already been used in 1926 by the German Erich Rademacher in a breaststroke event, and during the 1933 New York winter championships by the American Henry Meyers in the 150-yard individual medley event. For a time it even appeared as though the butterfly might supplant the breaststroke. In 1946, FINA prohibited changing techniques during any one race, and seven years later it made the distinction between breaststroke and butterfly events official. FINA continued to fine-tune the details of competitive swimming, including material
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The most extreme conditions require the most extreme response, and for some individuals, the call to that response is vitality itself. . . . The integrity and self-esteem gained from winning the battle against extremity are the richest treasures in my life. ■ DIANA NYAD
factors such as the size and height of the starting block, approved pool length, and the modesty of bathing suits; human factors, such as how to keep contestants from getting in each other’s way, the proper starter order, and the rights and powers granted to officials; and technical factors. Over time there has been a gradual shift to a much larger number of events with shorter distances. In 1949, records for distances over 200 meters disappeared from the books in the backstroke and breaststroke categories. In 1968, a 100-meter event was added for the breaststroke, which previously had been held only for 200meter distances (except for the period from 1912 to 1920, with 400 meters). Fifty-meter events were gradually added to international programs, first in freestyle during the 1980s (the 1988 Olympic Games) and then in medley events. More recently, however, sport authorities have reinstated long-distance swimming in open water to satisfy the dictates of entertainment: The 1991 World Championships included a 25-kilometer marathon river race for the first time.
THE CRAWL In freestyle events—by definition the least rule-bound— the front crawl has become established as the most efficient technique. The crawl was perfected around 1893 in Sydney by professional Australian swimmers Percy and Arthur Cavill and was exported to the rest of the world in the early twentieth century. At first their “Australian crawl,” as it was called, involved a “pedaling” of the water with bent knees, but by 1903 a straight-leg flutter kick was being initiated at the hip, and this provided more powerful propulsion. Before World War I, the stroke was optimized with a more vertical position of the body; some swimmers also sought to develop the upward kick (the Europeans and Americans around 1928) and others, the downward kick (the Japanese around 1932).
THE BREASTSTROKE AND BACKSTROKE Rooted in tradition, the breaststroke and the backstroke changed very little until the 1920s. However, after the
butterfly was separated from the breaststroke to become another style in the 1950s, the rules for the breaststroke became stricter, in particular in 1957 with the obligation to break the surface of the water with the head; this was instated to reduce the longer periods contestants managed to stay underwater by pulling their arms all the way down to their thighs and pulling their heads out of the water to breathe only on turns (the Japanese were notable for using this method). The backstroke changed considerably when the Americans introduced leg kicks before World War I; the Japanese then transformed the leg kicks in the early 1930s by eliminating the “pedaling” characteristic. American swimmer A. Kiefer introduced a straighter position of the body in the water and after 1967, East German swimmer Roland Mattes revolutionized the back crawl.
STRENGTH OR GLIDE? During the 1920s and 1930s, swimmers generally took inspiration from boats, seeking very vertical positions with the head lifted, in postures illustrated perfectly by Johnny Weissmuller. During the 1960s, the focus was more on reducing resistance to forward movement, resulting in longer periods underwater during races; during the 1970s, it was more on striking a balance between powerful movements and glide. Swim training was subjected to a lot of scientific research—for example, with famous American trainer James Counsilman— but was also negatively affected by doping practices in countries that were experimenting with techniques on a large scale, like the GDR. Since the 1980s, the search for a balance between the two principles is still manifest in the systematic use of physical work to gain power and the shaving of body hair or wearing of wetsuits to lower water resistance. In some countries, however, the emphasis is more on one (Germany for strength) or the other (China for glide). After 1950, professional swimming increased in popularity, in particular long-distance swimming. A number of international federations were created. On example is the World Professional Marathon Swimming Federation (WPMSF) in the United States. In 1963, the WPMSF set
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It only hurt once, from beginning to end. ■ JAMES COUNSILMAN
up a world championship circuit that included a number of events. The races took place all over the world in the form of marathons and raids up to 60 kilometers long on rivers and in lakes, performed in difficult temperature and water conditions. In 1991 FINA took over the initiative, organizing world open-water championships and later starting a professional circuit in 1998 as a way to compete with the International Marathon Swimming Association.
WOMEN AT THE OLYMPICS Ever since swimming in Great Britain was organized professionally, it has been open to women. By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, women had their own amateur clubs in several countries (the United States, Australia, and France, among others) where sport in general was not particularly favorable to women. This precedent opened the door to the Olympics for women: Even before they were officially admitted to the program in 1928, women were allowed to participate in the 1912 Stockholm Games (as well as the following Games) in the 100-meter freestyle and the 4 ✕ 100 relay swim events. The women’s Olympic program (as well as events giving rise to World Record claims) slowly became established alongside the men’s program. By the end of the twentieth century, it was the same as the men’s. The recreational form of swimming is present everywhere in the world, but competitive swimming has developed more in the regions where economic and sanitary conditions have been favorable to the existence of a network of swimming pools (North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia). Competitive swimming is organized in the form of championships for all age categories. In some countries, junior categories have existed since the 1920s, and for swimmers over 25, FINA’s Masters Events have provided a system of categories by a five-year age band since the 1980s.
Competitive Swimming Competitive swimming basically consists of traveling a certain distance at the water’s surface without material
aids and in a more or less stabilized environment, in accordance with specified technical conditions and in the shortest time possible. FINA further specifies that its Masters Program pursues other objectives, such as “fitness, friendship and understanding.” The principle of sprint swimming is to compare performance among swimmers in material conditions that are as neutral as possible. Some examples of such standardization are an absence of currents, a predetermined water temperature, and since 1924, delineated lanes to separate swimmers. In 1908, there were six different official swimming events; these were the 100-, 400-, and 1500-meter freestyle, the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke, and the 4 ✕ 200 freestyle relay. As of 2004, FINA now recognizes seventeen different individual events for men and as many for women (the 50-, 100-, 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyle; the 50-, 100- and 200-meter backstroke; the 50-, 100- and 200-meter breaststroke; the 50-, 100- and 200-meter butterfly; and the 200- and 400-meter medley), plus three relay events both for men and for women: the 4 ✕ 100 and 4 ✕ 200-meter freestyle, and the 4 ✕ 100 medley. Since 1969, world records are accepted only if they are achieved in approved 50-meter swimming pools; 33-meter and 25-meter pools are prohibited. Openwater events are defined as “any competition in rivers, lakes or ocean.” For these events, there are long-distance swimming races for distances under 10 kilometers and marathon swimming for distances over that. World championships and FINA competitions propose 5-, 10-, and 15-kilometer events.
CODIFYING STROKES The breaststroke is the most codified swim technique, with seven rule points (compared to five for the butterfly or the backstroke). All arm and leg movements must be done in the water simultaneously and symmetrically (that is, “without alternating movement”). The hands must be pulled down laterally with the arms extended to form a T. The feet must be brought toward the body with bent knees apart, and the movement continued by
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Swimming The Importance of Learning to Swim Robert J. H. Kiphuth, is remembered as Yale’s most successful swimming coach (from 1918 to 1959) and coach of six U.S. Olympic teams. In the extract below, Kiphuth discusses why it is important to learn how to swim. When you go to a big bathing beach on a hot summer day, or to the “old swimmin’ hole,” or to a swimming pool in a college of Y.M.C.A. gymnasium, and see the thousands of men and women, boys and girls—particularly boys— splashing and shouting and paddling and cutting through the water, you’re likely to think that just about everybody there knows how to swim. And yet there are hundreds who are frightened into shivers at the thought of plunging into a river or lake, simply because they haven’t given it the right kind of try; there are as many more who are able to paddle around and keep themselves afloat and do half a dozen strokes, after a fashion, but who will never become real swimmers because they don’t take the trouble to learn properly. All of these people are missing a lot. Swimming is a thing that everybody can do, and do right. More than that—it’s a thing that supplies an amazing lot of fun, that frequently means the difference between life and death and that is an excellent body builder. It’s for all these reasons that a number of colleges and universities have made it compulsory for a student to pass a swimming test before he can get his diploma. Source: Kiphuth, R. J. H. (1914). Are you a swimmer? In P. Withington (Ed.), The Book of Athletics (p. 405). Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
extending the legs laterally and pulling them back along an elliptical path in a frog kick. All vertical movement of the legs is prohibited, and all motion along the course is at the water’s surface. The only exceptions to the above are when executing turns and at the start, when the arms and legs can complete the strokes. It was
only in 1987 that the head was allowed to break the surface at each full arm cycle, allowing a longer period underwater as the body straightens. By 1991, given that the butterfly was a separate event from the breaststroke, it became possible in the breaststroke to bring the arms forward at the surface instead of underwater. On the backward pull, however, the hands were not allowed to extend past the hip line. The butterfly was also relatively strictly codified, the main difference with the breaststroke being that the arms were to be “brought forward together over the water.” As for the backstroke, the main rule remained keeping the body on the back throughout the swimming phases of a race. The only real change was in the turns, where the underwater course after push-off from the wall gradually became longer with the aid of “dolphin fishtail” movements (sometimes more than 35 meters), for example at the Seoul Games in 1988. FINA later limited this underwater distance to 10 meters in 1989 and then 15 meters in 1991. The “back only” principle was also modified; during turns, swimmers could touch the wall with any part of the body and were authorized to rotate onto their stomachs just before the somersault, as long as no propulsive movements of arms or legs were added.
CHAMPIONS Swimming was considered by Pierre de Coubertin as a fundamentally utilitarian sport. It is the oldest Olympic sport, appearing on the Games program without interruption since 1896. The other major swim competition is the World Championship, which has been organized every four years (in between Olympic Games) since 1978 by FINA. During the three swimming events at the first Olympic Games in 1896, which were held in Athens, there were thirteen participants in the 100-meter event, including eight Greeks, two Hungarians, one American, one Swede, and one Dane; three participants in the 500meter event (two Greeks and one Austrian); and nine in the 1200-meter event, which replaced the 1000-meter race at the last minute. The same swimmers participated
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Teaching swimming in Hungary in 1816.
in several events, of course. No special installation was built for the swimming events, which took place in the open waters of the Bay of Zea. Contestants swam approximate distances, surrounded by waves. Closed swimming pools became the norm only in 1908. When Athens hosted the Games again in 2004, 158 national delegations participated in a program of 38 different swimming events. Eight new world records, 43 continental records, and 26 Olympic records came out of these Games, evidence of how far training patterns and techniques had progressed. Many swimmers wore wetsuits, which have been authorized since 1999. Swimmer performance was registered using electronic timing devices in each lane. Each of these electronic touch pads (2.4-meters long, 90-centimeters wide, and 1-centimenter thick) is sensitive to any pressure from 1.5 to 3 kilograms exerted on it by the swimmer at the finish. The American Michael Phelps flew through these Olympic Games, winning a total of eight medals—six of them gold—to add his name to the list of great Olympic swimmers. Many of these champions are American: Charles Daniel (four gold medals in 1904, 1906, and 1908); Duke Kahanamoku (two gold medals in 1912 and 1920); Norman Ross (two gold medals in 1920); Johnny Weissmuller (three gold medals in 1924 and 1928), who is just a famous for swimming the first 100meter race in under a minute as he is for becoming Tarzan in the movies; Michael Burton (three gold medals in 1968 and 1972); Mark Spitz (seven gold medals in 1972); and Jim Montgomery (three gold medals in 1972 and 1976). The Australian Murray Rose (three gold medals in 1956 and 1960), German backstroke swimmer Roland Matthes (six gold medals from 1968 to 1975), and Russian Alexander Popov, a gold medal for the 100-meter event in 1992 and in 1996, have also earned their place in history’s Hall of Fame for great
swimmers. Other exceptional champions have followed in their footsteps—for example, the three prodigies of the 2004 Athens Games: Australian Ian Thorp, Dutchman Pieter van den Hoogenband (record holder for the 100 meter), and American Michael Phelps. In women’s swimming, much of the twentieth century was dominated by the Americans, the Germans, and the Australians, with increasing participation from the Dutch. The most famous swimmers in the early 1900s were the Australians Annette Kellerman and Fanny Durack, but the Americans made a name for themselves in the 1920s, led by Esthelda Bleibtrey, who broke record after record, and Gertrude Ederle, who successfully swam across the English Channel. Dutch sprint swimmer Willie den Ouden and the Dane Ragnhild Hveger reigned during the 1930s. Some of the swimming celebrities after World War II were Australian Dawn Fraser, who swam the 100-meter freestyle in under a minute in 1962; the American Debbie Meyer and Germans Kornelia Ender and Ulrika Richter during the 1970s; and American Janet Evans and German Kristin Otto during the 1980s. The Australian Jodie Henry holds the world’s record in the 100-meter freestyle.
Governing Body By the end of the nineteenth century, swimming was already subject to national regulations through specific or
SWIMMING, SYNCHRONIZED
multisports associations in a number of countries where it was practiced. The first really international organization dates back to 1908, when J. de Courcy-Laffan, secretary general of the organizing committee of the London Games, proposed that a set of international rules modeled on the English federations be adopted for each sport discipline. For swimming regulations, he appointed ASA President George Hearn, who worked with fellow Englishman William Henry (the founder of the Life Saving Society), German-born Olympic swimmer Max Ritter, and Swedish swimmer Hjalmar Johansson to accomplish the task. Hearn took advantage of the occasion to call delegates from ten countries to a meeting on 19 July 1908, for the purpose of founding the Fédération Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA). FINA’s objectives were to establish rules for international swimming events, keep a list of official world records, and organize swimming events at the Olympic Games. FINA, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, has been the highest authority for international swimming ever since. In 2004 it included 223 national federations, which represented 42 African, 48 American, 44 Asian, 68 European, and 21 Oceanic countries. FINA also recognizes five continental organizations. These are the Confédération Africaine de Natation Amateur, the Amateur Swimming Union of the Americas, the Asian Amateur Swimming Federation, the Oceania Swimming Association, and the Ligue Européenne de Natation (the oldest one, founded in 1926). Each continental organization coordinates its own championships. The European championships, which have been held since 1926, are the oldest. Since 1976, these have taken place each year as a function of the organization of the Summer Olympic Games. The PanAmerican Games have been taking place every four years (during the year that precedes the Olympic Games) since 1951. A Latin Cup was added in 1977, and in Europe, a European Cup has been pitting national teams against one another since 1969. Thierry Terret
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Further Readings Besford, P. (Ed.). (1971). Encyclopaedia of swimming. New York: St Martin’s Press. Breuer, H., & Naul, R. (1994). Schwimmsport und Sportgeschichte. Zwischen Politik und Wissenschaft. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. Colwin, C. (1999). Swimming dynamics.Winning techniques and strategies. Chicago: Master Press. Keil, I., & Wix, D. (1996). In the swim. The amateur swimming association from 1869 to 1994. London: Swimming Times Ltd. Oppenheim, F. (1977). Histoire de la natation mondiale. Paris: Chiron. Orme, N. (1983). Early British swimming. 55 BC–AD 1719. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter. Sinclair, A., & William, H. (1893). Swimming. London: Longmans, Green & Company. Terret, T. (1994). Naissance et diffusion de la natation sportive. Paris: L’Harmattan. Terret, T. (1995). Professional swimming in England before the rise of amateurism, 1837-1875. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 12(1). Thomas R. (1904). Swimming. London, n.p.
Swimming, Synchronized
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rom the interwar period on, the main vehicles for synchronized swimming were shows and musicals. The activity only began to acquire status as a genuine sport during the 1950s, when it was included as an official event by the Fédération Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA). It began to spread internationally during the second half of the twentieth century, finally gaining Olympic recognition in 1984, although even then it was not considered a major sport. Synchronized swimming is essentially a feminine sport, and one in which North Americans have traditionally excelled.
History Aquatic practices called “fancy swimming” or “ornamental swimming” developed in England during the mid-nineteenth century. Swimmers assumed unusual positions and performed unusual figures in the water, either during utilitarian swimming or as a feature of professional swimming exhibitions. Around the turn of the century, swimmers competed in “tricks and stunts”
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in England and Canada, and both men and women participated in displays of aquatic gymnastics in Germany, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. In 1907, Australian swimming champion Annette Kellerman (1887–1975), who was celebrated as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” took aquatic practices down an even more aesthetically pleasing and spectacular route. She went on tour after tour in Europe and North America, where her aquatic exhibitions drew in tens of thousands of spectators. Her success inspired the development of water pageants in a number of North American colleges, universities, and associations during and following World War I. University of Wisconsin student Katharine Curtis was the first to combine aquatic figures and music. Curtis created the first synchronized swimming club (the Tarpon Club) in 1923 in Chicago, where she developed what was called rhythmic swimming. This used combinations that were synchronized with the beat of the music. Her students, the “Modern Mermaids,” were invited to Chicago’s 1933–1934 Century of Progress Fair to give demonstrations. It was to describe their exhibition that the term “synchronized swimming” was first used. Katharine Curtis’ initiatives led to two different orientations.The first one showcased the spectacular aspect. In 1939, commercial performances called “aquacades” started to develop in the United States. Aquacades featured former swimming champions starring in extravagant productions; among these, Esther Williams played a considerable role in making synchronized swimming popular. She became a star in aqua movie musicals such as Bathing Beauty and Neptune’s Daughter. The second orientation developed when some of Curtis’ students decided to organize a competition between two of Chicago’s colleges.This took place on 27 May 1939; the following year, the swimming committee of the Amateur Athletic Union officially accepted the new activity. The first national championship took place in 1946, just after World War II, and Canada followed suit five years later. During the 1950s, championships included events in the
solo, duet, and team categories.These were performed in costume and to music. Thanks to the spread of competition in North America and the popularity of the musicals featuring Esther Williams, synchronized swimming began to spread to the rest of the world. It was displayed at the Helsinki Olympic Games in 1952 and recognized officially by FINA that same year. Two years later, inspired by the Canadian and American experiences, FINA codified the discipline and included it in major international competitions. Due to its hybrid entertainment-sport origins, however, the International Olympic Committee was much more reticent about admitting it into Olympic circles. The rebuff led synchronized swimming to shift during the 1970s from its choreographic and theatrical orientation to a practice that promoted a combination of endurance (long periods under water), strength (lifts), and even acrobatics, but also great virtuosity, charm, and poise. Finally recognized as a full-fledged sport, it was included in the Olympic program for the Los Angeles Games in 1984. Although it is spectacular and garners a lot of media attention, synchronized swimming has a relatively limited audience and is practiced mostly in North America, Europe, and Japan. It is open to men in the United States; however, there are no mixed teams. In spite of a few attempts in Europe during the 1990s to include men, the international FINA and IOC regulations— along with most national federations—restrict the events to women only. Champions in synchronized swimming often use their sport skills to launch a career in aquatic shows—for example, Linda Shelley (American) and Murielle Hermine (French).
Nature of Synchronized Swimming FINA regulations provide for solo, duet, team (from four to eight swimmers), and free routine combination events in synchronized swimming competitions. Each of the first three events contains figure competition, technical
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Switzerland Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 3 Gold, 2 Silver, 6 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics: 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 3 Bronze
routine, and free routine elements. In figure competition, the swimmer must perform four figures chosen from a list of required elements. The choice must be made known eighteen to forty-eight hours before the meet. For the technical routine, required elements are also chosen from a list, but may be performed to any music chosen by the swimmer. Time limits are specified for all parts of the routine, including the deck work that precedes immersion. In the free-routine event, swimmers are allowed to choose their own choreography. Five to seven judges score each performance on a scale of 0 to 10 (in tenths of a point). A routine is judged on both technical merit components (execution, synchronization, and difficulty of strokes) and artistic components (musical interpretation and manner of presentation). FINA regulations provide for senior (ages 18 and over) and junior (ages 15 to 18) categories, as well as for three different age groups (ages 12 and under, ages 13 to 15, and ages 16 to 18). In practice, elite swimmers are usually under 23, but there are master competitions for swimmers over 25.
Competition at the Top The major synchronized swimming competitions are the Olympic Games (since 1984), the World Championships (since 1973), the Goodwill Games (since 1990), and the Continental Championships. There are also a number of open international meetings with more flexible rules. These often take place at the same time as the national championships in the organizing country (for example, the Swiss Open, the Roma Sincro, and the French Open). The United States and Canada have historically been the leaders in competitive synchronized swimming. However, since the 1980s the North American dominance has been challenged by Japan, which places third in major championships on a regular basis; by Russia; and to a lesser extent, by France. The undisputed stars of Olympic synchronized swimming are the American Tracie Ruiz, with two gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, and the Russian Anna Kozlova,
with three gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona Games. The Russian swimmers were the big winners at the 2004 Athens Games. Thierry Terret
Further Readings Bean, D. (Ed.). (1963–1978). Synchro-Info. Santa Ana, CA: Dawn & Ross Bean. Bean, D. (Ed.) (1979–1992). Synchro. Santa Ana, CA: Dawn & Ross Bean. Curtis, K. (1936). Rhythmic Swimming: A source book of synchronized swimming and water pageantry. Minneapolis, MN:Burgess. Sydnor, S. (1998). A history of synchronized swimming. Journal of Sport History, 2(25), 252–267.
Switzerland
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witzerland occupies 41,290 square kilometers in central Europe; the Alps is its defining feature. Bern is the capital and Zurich is the largest city, with 971,800 of Switzerland’s 7.5 million inhabitants. Sports mirror class divisions and the tension between tradition and modernism. Football (soccer), downhill skiing, curling, gymnastics, ice hockey, cycling, schwingen (a kind of wrestling), and hornussen (a team game) remain popular even as beach volleyball attracts a new generation of Swiss athletes.
History Switzerland’s indigenous sports developed from pagan religious rituals. A seventeenth-century letter describes how peasants in Schwarzenburg would gather on Christmas night to seek justice and the favor of the gods. Rivals wrestled one another and the man who threw his opponent to the ground was considered chosen by the gods. From this event evolved schwingen, a variant of wrestling in which a match ends when a wrestler loses hold of his opponent or is pinned to the ground. Every August men and women still gather at the Swiss Alpine Herdsmen’s Festival in Interlaken to wrestle and also to see who can throw an 83-kilogram
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Switzerland Key Events in Switzerland Sports History 1840s Gymnastics are incorporated into the school curriculum. 1896 Switzerland participates in the first modern Olympics. 1911 The Tour de France adds a stage through the Swiss Alps. 1936 The Tour de Suisse cycle race is inaugurated. 1948 Hedy Schlanegger is the first Swiss woman to win an Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing. 1985 Swiss women compete in the first Schweizer Cup. 1999 Beach volleyball has become a popular sport.
granite block the farthest. According to folklore, hornussen, another indigenous sport, developed from the practice of using a long stick to rid malevolent spirits from one’s property. Hornussen pits teams of sixteen to eighteen players against one another. A member of the offense strikes a disk toward the defense with his stick. The offense scores a point when the disk soars past the defenders, whereas the defense tallies a point when a defender knocks the disk to the ground with his shield. In the 1840s Swiss teacher Adolph Spiess integrated gymnastics into the curriculum, a movement that led schools, and by extension the government, to sponsor sports. Swiss schools resemble American precollegiate schools in mandating sports as part of the curriculum and they resemble American high schools and colleges in fielding teams for competition.
Participant and Spectator Sports In 1883 German Wilhelm Paulche stoked interest in skiing by crossing the Bernese Oberland in the Swiss Alps on skis. After World War II the Swiss government and
Switzerland Alpine Mountaineering, 1541 Konrad von Gesner (1516–1565), a Swiss naturalist, wrote of the wonders of mountain climbing in the extract below, from a letter to his friend, Vogel of Glarus. I have resolved for the future, so long as God grants me life, to ascend divers mountains every year, or at least one, in the season when vegetation is at its height, partly for botanical observation, partly for the worthy exercise of the body and recreation of the mind. What must be the pleasure, think you, what the delight of a mind rightly touched, to gaze upon the huge mountain masses for one’s show, and, as it were, lift one’s head into the clouds? The soul is strangely rapt with these astonishing heights, and carried off to the contemplation of the one supreme Architect . . . . Philosophers will always feast the eyes of body and mind on the goodly things of this earthly paradise; and by no means least among these are the abruptly soaring summits, the trackless steeps, the vast slopes rising to the sky, the rugged rocks, the shady woods.
private entrepreneurs established ski resorts and training facilities to nurture enthusiasm for downhill skiing. Since 1911 the Tour de France has included the Swiss Alps among its stages, and seldom has any cyclist captured the Tour without triumphing in the Alps, making them the arbiter of victory. In 1936 the Swiss Cycling Federation modeled the Tour de Suisse after the Tour de France. The nine-stage race every June is the final European stage race before the Tour de France. Between 23 and 25 July 1999 Switzerland hosted 737 couriers from the United States and Europe in the Cycle Messenger World Championships. Since the resumption of the Olympic Games in 1896, Switzerland has won 183 medals in the Summer
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A snow covered golf course in the Swiss Alps. The sign says: “warning—golfballs” in German. Source: istockphoto/StyleP
Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy. That year the first Six Country Tournament drew women’s teams from Switzerland, Finland, Germany, France, Denmark, and the United States. Swiss women won the World Curling Championship in 1983 and since 1988 have competed in the Tour de Suisse Feminin, a fivestage race held every September, the last event of the Women’s Cycling World Cup. In 2004 Switzerland ranked seventeenth in the world in Women’s Beach Volleyball, and since 1999 the country has hosted women pairs in the Beach Volleyball World Tour.
Youth Sports
Games and 103 in the Winter Games, ranking nineteenth of 146 countries and eighth of 43, respectively.
Women and Sport Hedy Schlanegger signaled the ascent of Swiss women to elite status in 1948 when she became the first Swiss woman to win an Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing. In 1980 a school in Fribourg started the first women’s ice hockey team in Switzerland. In 1983 Swiss women trained at the first Oschner Camp, and the next year the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation admitted women. In 1985 Swiss women competed in the first Schweizer Cup, which by 1990 fielded women’s teams from
Every village in Switzerland has a football club, many with members as young as age four. Swiss schools divide boys and girls into six levels and teams practice two to five times per week. Some children play unihockey as an inexpensive alternative to ice hockey. Rather than an ice rink and skates and pads, children use the school gymnasium floor, gym shoes, and street clothes. Leysin Camp, 1.2 kilometers above Lake Geneva, is one of several retreats for foreigners and Swiss ages ten to seventeen; the camp offers two- to four-week sessions in downhill skiing, ice skating, tennis, swimming, and football.
Organizations Lausanne is home to the International Olympic Committee, the governing body of the Olympic Games, and to the Federation Internationale de Volleyball, sponsor of the Beach Volleyball World Tour. Zurich is head-
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Switzerland
The manners of mountaineers are commonly savage, but they are rather produced by their situation than derived from their ancestors. ■ SAMUEL JOHNSON
Swiss Folk Wrestling, 1611 The letter below, from a Swiss court to the government in 1611, condemns a traditional folk ritual wrestling match. We have heard that the common people (das gemeine Volk), as peasants and farm-servants, here in Schwarzenburg for a long time have been meeting on Christmas night at the place where the religious and secular justice is administered, and hold there a wrestling match (Schwinget) until midnight. They challenge and try their strength against each other, and who throws the other on the ground becomes famous hereby. They also believe that who trains that night will be vigorous and healthy the coming year. They do not only put faith into this superstition, but they also, as it has often happened, damage their limbs, shed their blood, and this leads to loud crying, cursing, swearing and other frivolous manners. Some come even from Freiburg to participate. Some have already been punished and this event has been forbidden and condemned by our decree. Schaufelberger, W. (1972). Der wetkampf in der alien eidgenossenschaft (Vol. 1, pp. 2223). Bern, Switzerland: Paul Haupt.
quarters of the Federation Internationale de Football Association, sponsor of the World Cup. The national affiliate is the Association Suisse de Football.
Sports in Society The most notable social phenomenon may be the rise of beach volleyball, a sport that combines athleticism and sex appeal with women in two-piece outfits and men in shorts, attire that reveals muscle tone and suntan. Beach volleyball advertises itself as a free-spirited alternative to traditional sports, whereas Swiss conservatives lament it as hedonistic and sensual. Sports mirror class divisions in Switzerland, with the affluent apt to participate in ice
hockey, tennis, downhill skiing, and swimming, and the less affluent in unihockey, football, and hornussen. Sports also underscore cultural attitudes, with traditionalists extolling hornussen and schwingen as symbols of national pride and modernists anticipating beach volleyball as a movement that will open Switzerland to American popular culture and fashion. Traditionalists and modernists alike suffered a setback when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the 2006 Winter Games to Turin, Italy, rather than to Sion, Switzerland. Swiss athletes and officials condemned the decision as retaliation against Swiss attorney and IOC official Marc Hedler for alleging that since 1996 countries have bought the right to host the Games.
The Future The IOC decision to award the 2006 Winter Games to Turin may exacerbate the rivalry between Switzerland and Italy. However, the future of sports in Switzerland may lie less with Europe than with the United States as American popular culture permeates Switzerland. Such a future may not imperil football and hornussen, but downhill skiing may lose ground if beach volleyball lures athletes and spectators to sun and sand. Much depends on the balance young Swiss athletes strike between tradition and modernism. Christopher Cumo See also St. Moritz
Further Reading Arnaud, P. (1994). The origins of sport in Europe. Paris: L’Harmattan Baker, W. (1988). Sports in the Western world. Champaign/Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Claeys, U. (1982). Rationalising sports policies: Sport in European society: A transnational survey into participation and motivation. Strasbourg, Germany: Committee for the Development of Sport. Hickok, B. (2004). Everything you wanted to know about sports. Retrieved November 9, 2004, from http://www.hickoksports.com Mangan, J. (Ed.). (1999). Sport in Europe: Politics, class, gender. London: Frank Cass.
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Switzerland Football Fans Tackle Heidi Once upon a time, a Swiss heroine named Heidi changed how football was broadcast by U.S. television networks. On 17 November 1968, NBC aired a matchup between the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders that football historians call the “Heidi Game.” A made-for-TV movie of the classic children’s novel Heidi was set to premiere at 7 p.m. The game had just a little more than a minute to go when the network went to a commercial and then right to the airing of Heidi. NBC lived to regret that decision because in the last minute of play, the balance shifted dramatically. The score had been 32–29, with the Jets leading. Here’s how sportswriter Phil Barber describes the scene as football fans saw their game replaced by Heidi frolicking in the Swiss Alps: What happened was a torrent of angry calls from East Coast couch potatoes, who asked, in colorful terms, why a spunky little girl had replaced their football game. They flooded the switchboard at
Manhattan’s Rockefeller Plaza and crashed the phone exchange. As it happened, they missed a fairly exciting 65 seconds. Lamonica threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to halfback Charlie Smith with 42 seconds to play, giving Oakland a 36–32 lead. The ensuing kickoff spurted free and Ridlehuber, the Raiders’ reserve fullback, picked it up and ran into the end zone. The Raiders had scored 14 points in a shorter time than it took Heidi to yodel. To make sure that there would never be another “Heidi Game,” TV networks adopted a policy of staying with a sporting event until it was over—letting the programming schedule “slide”—which is why American viewers now sometimes find themselves waiting an extra 60 minutes for 60 Minutes to begin.
Marcy Ross Source: Barber, P. (1999, November 24). No. 10: The Heidi Game. http://www.nfl.com/ news/mostmemorable10.html
Table Tennis Taekwando Tai Chi Technology
Table Tennis
Tennis Title IX Tour de France Track and Field— Jumping and Throwing Track and Field— Running and Hurdling Tug of War Turkey Turner Festivals
T
able tennis—also known by the trademark name “Ping-Pong”—began to find mass acceptance at the beginning of the twentieth century after people had looked upon it during the late nineteenth century as an extension of an entertaining board game, an after-dinner social diversion among the English upper classes. In 1926 table tennis became a competitive sport under the auspices of the newly established International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). By then the sport had spread deep into the masses, even in Asia. In the May–June 1992 issue of the United States Table Tennis Association’s publication Table Tennis Topics, Edward Bilinski wrote of his interview with a seventy-one-year-old man who won a small tournament in 1932 in Xizhou, China. The conditions had been primitive: just one table with a net but without a white center line for doubles play; a single forty-watt bulb; a poorly glued celluloid ball, wobbly because of the grit lodged in its seams; and nailed boards shaped into rackets.This account hinted that players in China might eventually take the sport seriously. However, the dominance of Japan and then China did not become manifest to the West until the 1950s, when Asian players, using the supposedly outdated penhold grip (European players used the shake-hand grip), began winning ITTF world championships. World championships began in 1926, and the ITTF, composed of associations from more than 170 countries, continues to supervise these and other world title
T events, including a biennial world veterans event (for those forty to eighty years of age). Beginning in 1988 table tennis became part of the Olympic Games. Since tournament play began, controversies have arisen, such as over the use of illegal serves (still an issue today) and over nonattacking, interminably slow play. Consequently, rules have been changed. For example, in 1936–1937 U.S. tournaments the net was lowered from 17.1 to 15.3 centimeters. However, nothing has been more controversial than the advent of rackets with sponge rubber-based surfaces during the 1950s. With these rackets the Japanese began to win world championships, and the rackets have proliferated since. Players may use various grips, but with regard to the sport’s essential characteristics of spin and speed and the athleticism that championship play requires, the technological changes in the racket surfaces during the last fifty years have brought about great changes. Indeed, one can speak of table tennis before sponge and table tennis after sponge as virtually two different games. Meanwhile, the best players—the Chinese and Swedish men and the Chinese and South Korean women— continue to excel, as do their lesser counterparts, in leagues and tournaments in East and West. The ITTF continues to serve as a miniature United Nations, and in 1991 it enabled a combined North and South Korean team to participate in the world championships. The year 2001 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the “Ping-Pong diplomacy” visit of the U.S. table tennis team to a China that would forever be changed.
Origins Table tennis is generally considered to be of English origin. People—mostly formally dressed gentlefolk— played miniature “tennis” indoors in England during the 1880s and 1890s. The table usually was set up in a dining room or parlor. Players sometimes improvised nets of woven fabric, taut towels, stringed bottles, or books. Long-handled, hollow, vellum rackets eventually were replaced by short-handled wooden rackets covered with cork, sandpaper, and, as the sport grew during the first years of the 1900s, pimpled rubber. The pips-out rubber offered better spin and control. In progressing from swatting at crude balls carved from champagne corks, players came to prefer celluloid balls.
Development By the beginning of the twentieth century table tennis had outgrown the drawing rooms of the British upper classes. People from every walk of life were playing the sport. Indeed, from 1900 to 1902 a table tennis craze swept Britain and the United States. The sport was athletic and inexpensive and provided families with wholesome entertainment. Table tennis postcards, party invitations, and even musical pieces were popular. A great demand existed for equipment, and boxed sets sold well. In England many table tennis clubs were formed, and tournaments, some offering prizes, were held. Arnold “Ping-Pong” Parker of England (no relation to Parker Brothers, the game manufacturers who in 1928 patented the trade name “Ping-Pong” in the United States) was a turn-of-the-century star player and
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authority. He devised some much needed rules, one of which championed the double-bounce serve. The double-bounce serve is now the standard, but, despite Parker’s influence, it wasn’t always so. Although table tennis was in some ways similar to lawn tennis, players realized that some modification had to be made to the single-bounce tennis serve (in which the server’s ball cannot bounce until it is on the opponent’s side). Because serving overhand would be viciously absurd, an early rule required an underhand, one-bounce serve. As the server hit the ball from behind and within the end lengths of the table, perhaps even from a line drawn behind the table, only the handle of the racket could be above the waist. Thus, by the late 1920s in the United States many players used the forehand-favoring, blade-down penholder grip instead of the doublewinged, shake-hands tennis grip. In 1922 a Cambridge University student, Ivor Montagu of England, began to codify the rules of the sport, including the retention of the double-bounce serve. In January 1926 Montagu, with representatives from Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Sweden, met in Berlin. With Dr. Georg Lehmann, president of the Deutscher Tischtennis-Bund, taking the initiative, the ITTF was organized. Montagu was its first and longest-serving president (1926–1967). The ITTF held its first world championship in 1926 in London. Lady Swaythling, Montagu’s mother, donated a trophy cup for the men’s team matches, and six European countries and India competed for it. A men’s singles (with fifty-one players) championship and a men’s doubles championship were decided. Women’s doubles were not introduced until 1928, and women’s team matches for the Marcel Corbillon Cup were not introduced until 1933 in Paris. However, in 1926 the women had their own singles championship (fourteen players) and also mixed doubles. During the early 1920s Montagu and his Cambridge friends, with the help of a leading English manufacturer, Jaques, had reestablished the English Ping-Pong Association, but when Jaques insisted that players use Jaques equipment, Montagu’s group changed its name to the
“Table Tennis Association.” A similar event occurred almost a decade later in the United States when players balked at using only Parker Brothers equipment in American Ping-Pong Association (APPA) tournaments sponsored by Parker Brothers. Although the 1930 Metro and the 193l First National APPA Championships, both held in New York City, were successful, New York area players, wanting to preserve their independence, broke away from the APPA to form the New York Table Tennis Association (NYTTA) and to hold their own national championships. By 1935 APPA players had joined, as the NYTTA players had earlier, the United States Table Tennis Association (USTTA). Upon its formation in 1933, this association (in 1993 renamed “USA Table Tennis” or “USATT” at its Colorado Springs Olympic Headquarters) affiliated with the ITTF. At the first APPA tournaments (men only; women were soon to follow), one could see that table tennis is a great social leveler and that the immigrant influx was strong. Evelyn Seeley, writing in 1930 in the New York World-Telegram, spoke of “an amazing miscellaneous group” of participants. “Bankers and brokers . . . office boys and clerks, yachtsmen and Y.M.C.A. boys.” A number of players, she said, “spoke in Continental accents.”
Hungary at the Top In the beginning Hungarian players dominated the world championships—particularly five-time world champion Maria Mednyanszky, two-time world champion Anna Sipos, and the “Three Musketeers,” Victor Barna, Miklos “Mike” Szabados, and Laszlo “Laci” Bellak. Among other European world champions before the Asian ascendancy during the 1950s were Czechoslovakia’s Bohumil Vana and Marie Kettnerova, Hungary’s Gizella “Gizi” Farkas and Ferenc Sido, Romania’s Angelica Rozeanu, and England’s Johnny Leach. The most famous person in table tennis perhaps is Victor Barna (born Berna). Known for his signature stroke, the backhand flick, he won twenty of his twentytwo world titles before he broke his playing arm in a car accident at age twenty-three. That arm was said to be insured for $10,000, but, as Barna said, “with that crash
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Chinese children learning table tennis.
went a part of my game never to return.” After his first exhibition tour of the United States in 1934–1935, Barna was the first player to warn the ITTF of the havoc that fingerspin serves could cause. As practiced by the 1930s U.S. singles and world doubles champions Sol Schiff and Jimmy McClure and to a lesser degree by Europeans, these serves eventually forced a service rule stating that the ball must initially rest on the flat open palm and be thrown up without any fingerspin. Otherwise, players frustrated their opponents in various ways: They would rub the ball against the racket and let it fly, with index and middle finger throw the ball in a wheellike motion at different positions on the racket to make it bounce crazily, shoot the ball off like a wobbly marble, snapped from a thumb, or even nick the celluloid ball with a fingernail to cause it to hop like a Mexican jumping bean. Often, if the opponent was lucky enough to return the ball, it would present a set-up, an easy point-winning follow for the server.
During the 1940s, after such U.S. stars as Lou Pagliaro, Marty Reisman, Leah Neuberger, Thelma Thall, and Dick Miles had been more or less just putting the ball into play, Asian players, about to become the world’s best, would aim to win the point as quickly as possible. Ichiro Ogimura of Japan, the 1954 and 1956 world champion, although using open-palm serves, nonetheless was able to get an immediate advantage by squatting and, with a swipe of the racket, spinning (or deceptively not spinning) the ball; he would then look to sock away the return (in what is called a “third-ball attack”) or maneuver to sock away the next return (in what is called a “fifth-ball attack”). By the mid-1970s, after three-time world champion Zhuang Zedong, his perennial runner-up Li Furong, and long-pips initiator Zhang Xielin had established the supremacy of China, other players establishing themselves after China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) showed further inventiveness: By tossing the ball up 6 meters, then pivoting into the drop, Hsu Shao-fa found new spins and new deceptions, and Huang Liang, taking advantage of technology, used still-unfamiliar long pips-out rubber to defeat opponents with unreadable spins. Into the 1980s and 1990s players and officials had to cope with behind-the-back illegal serves and players who legally “hid the ball” on service. Deception remains an integral part of table tennis. Players must learn how to “read” not only the spin on the ball but also the movements of the opponent and to anticipate how best to react to them. Another problem of the 1930s was the interminably long play that would occur when two inveterate
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One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it. ■ KNUTE ROCKNE
defenders played a match in which both simply “chiseled,” that is, pushed the ball passively back and forth, waiting for the other to miss. One point scored at the world championships in 1936 lasted more than two hours! Naturally, a rule to expedite play had to be devised, and variations were not always to a player’s liking. The U.S. team was displeased when defending world women’s singles champion Ruth Aarons was disqualified from defending her title in the 1937 final, along with her Austrian opponent Gertrude “Trude” Pritzi, for not finishing their match in the allotted time. Not long after, the four-time world champion, Richard Bergmann of England, reportedly put three alarm clocks under the playing table because a new rule mandated that if a game wasn’t finished in twenty minutes, whoever was ahead would be awarded the game. Thus, iconoclastic Bergmann set his clocks to go off at intervals to warn him of his lapsed playing time. Predictably the clocks were soon banned. Today the “expedite rule” stresses a fifteen-minute time period for any one game.Then, if the game isn’t finished, players must alternate services for the rest of the match, with the stipulation that if the server’s opponent returns a thirteenth ball he automatically wins the point.
Spin Doctors However, by the 1970s the likelihood of slow, boring play was slight with the super topspin game of the Hungarians Tibor Klampar, Istvan Jonyer, and Gabor Gergely, who, if forced to their far forehand side, could loop the ball around the table net posts with the precision of a bowler spinning strikes into a pocket.The same applies to the attack of not only the Chinese stars but also the Swedish world champions of the 1970s, led by Kjell Johansson, Hans Alser, and Stellan Bengtsson. Japanese women won six out of seven world women’s singles titles from 1956 through 1969, with two-time winner Kimiyo Matsuzaki leading the way. Japanese men were also successful after Hiroji Satoh’s world championship win in Mumbai (Bombay), India, in 1952. Since then, however, the Japanese have been un-
able to match their Chinese and Korean neighbors. In his book Songs of International Friendship, Hikosuke Tamasu, the “Butterfly” table tennis manufacturer, says that at a Japanese training camp during the 1960s players were not permitted to go to bed until they had hit one thousand forehands in a row without a miss. Thirty years later he said players lack not only what technology has made ever more indispensable—paid professional coaching—but also dedication and love of the game. After emerging from their Cultural Revolution, the Chinese coined the diplomacy slogan, “Friendship first, competition second,” and reacquainted the world, especially the so-called Third World of Asian, African, and Latin American countries, with their table tennis expertise—and their friendly propaganda. Only once during the 1970s did China have a world men’s singles champion: Hsi En-ting.The table tennis historian Zdenko Uzorinac said Hsi “tattooed” his nonplaying hand “with thoughts of great thinkers.” Hsi said, “I played with both hands, the one in which I held the racket and the other which inspired me with wise sayings that led me to victory.” China’s diplomacy went so far as to occasionally allow Chinese players to take it easy on their opponents, even, some thought, in major championships. Could this fact account for a number of European teams winning world doubles titles? Perhaps. However, given the opportunity, stars such as Russia’s Stanislav Gomozkov, Romania’s Maria Alexandru, Yugoslavia’s Dragutin Surbek, France’s Jacques Secretin, and Germany’s Jorg Rosskopf were capable of rising to the occasion. During the 1980s and early 1990s, a new wave of Swedish athletes—Jorgen Persson, Erik Lindh, Jan-Ove Waldner, Mikael Appelgren, and Peter Karlsson—won championships.These victories showed what a country— with a total population less than any one of China’s three largest cities—could do with an excellent table tennis development program, a unifying team spirit, and a will to win. However, the Chinese have come back. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, 172 athletes
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competed in table tennis. China won three gold medals, one silver, and two bronze: In men’s singles Hao Wang won silver, and Liqin Wang won bronze; in women’s singles Yining Zhang won gold; in men’s doubles Qi Chen and Lin Ma won gold; in women’s doubles Nan Wang and Yining Zhang won gold, and Yue Guo and Niu Jianfeng won bronze. China’s closest competition, South Korea, won one gold, one silver, and one bronze. In late 2004 the ITTF ranked four Chinese players among the top six players in the world: Hao Wang, Liqin Wang, Lin Ma, and Qi Chen. At the 2004 ITTF Men’s and Women’s World Cup in Xiaoshang, China, defending champion Lin Ma of China retained his title when he beat Kalinikos Kreanga of Greece in six games to win the event for the third time in his career.
The Future Perhaps their old problem faces the Chinese anew: With their strong sense of national pride, their large pool of top players and coaches, and their professional approach to table tennis, who can beat them? Are China’s table tennis players perhaps too good for the sport’s advancement? Tim Boggan
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Schaad, C. G. (1930). Ping-Pong: The game [and] its tactics and laws. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Schiff, S. (1939). Table tennis comes of age. New York: Henry Holt. Tamasu, H. (1993). Songs of international friendship. Tokyo: Kimihiko Tamasu. Uzorinac, Z. (1981). From Sarajevo to Novi Sad. Zagreb, Croatia: Graficki zavod Hrvatske.
Taekwondo aekwondo is a Korean martial art that utilizes kicks, hand strikes, and blocks for self-defense, sport, and artistic expression. Taekwondo tournaments may include competition in sparring, prearranged patterns, or “forms,” and board breaking. In English translation tae means foot, kwon means hand or fist, and do means way—the way of hand and foot. Alternative spellings for taekwondo include tae kwon do, taekwon-do, and t’aegwondo. Taekwondo was developed in Korea, but in the past few decades it has become the most widely practiced martial art in the world. The basic techniques of taekwondo have been practiced for the past two thousand years, but the sport as practiced today was developed during the 1940s.
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History Further Reading Barna, V. (1962). Table tennis today. London: Arthur Barker. Bergmann, R. (1950). Twenty-one up. London: Sporting Handbooks. Bilinski, E. (1992, May–June). When table tennis was “Ping-Pong” in China. Table Tennis Topics, 37. Boggan, T. (1976). Winning table tennis. Chicago: Henry Regnery. Clark, C. (1933). Modern Ping-Pong. New York: John Day. Craydon, R. (1995). The story of table tennis—The first 100 years. Hastings, UK: English TTA. Dunn, A. (1995, August 17). Table tennis anyone? New York Times. Gurney, G. N. (n.d.). Table tennis: The early years. St. Leonards-on-Sea, UK: International Table Tennis Federation. Miles, R. (1968). The game of table tennis. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Miles, R. (1970, July–August). Miles on Bergmann. Table Tennis Topics, 1 Montagu, I. (1936). Table tennis. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. Neale, D. (1970). Table tennis: The way to the top. London: Arthur Barker. Reid, P. (1974). Victor Barna. Lavenham, UK: Eastland. Reisman, M. (1974). The money player. New York: William Morrow.
The history of taekwondo is interwoven with martial arts that have been developing since first practiced in primitive cultures throughout the Far East. Many martial arts historians trace the origins of Eastern martial arts to India, and particularly to the Buddhist monk Bodhidarma, who taught martial arts exercises to monks in the Shaolin temple in China. From there kung fu was developed and then spread throughout China. Monks, warlords, and merchants traveling to other countries brought their martial arts practices with them and transmitted them to other cultures. Korea was an intermediary for the passage of new techniques and ideas from China to Japan and Okinawa. According to the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), the roots and development of the art lie solely within the
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Korean peninsula, and techniques were originally developed from fighting against beasts and other humans. Taekwondo was part of the physical training for young warriors dating back to the Silla Kingdom in 57 BC. Subak and taekkyon were early names for taekwondo. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, the practice of Korean martial arts was forbidden for nationalistic reasons. Taekkyon training went underground during that time, and was only practiced again openly after 1945. It was during the Japanese occupation that the father of modern taekwondo, General Hong Hi Choi, began his martial arts training. As a boy he learned taekkyon, a Korean kicking art, and in 1937 he was sent to Japan where he attained a first degree black belt in karate, an art that relies more on hand techniques. Choi was forced to enlist in the Japanese army when World War II broke out, but eventually he was implicated as a planner of the Korean Independence Movement and was imprisoned in Japan. It was during this time in prison that Choi developed modern taekwondo from his training in taekkyon and karate. Choi continued to develop taekwondo, and in 1953 he spearheaded the introduction of taekwondo training for the Korean military. During the same period other martial arts schools, or kwans, were spreading throughout Korea, many using similar techniques derived from taekkyon, karate, and other martial arts. In 1955 the kwans combined together to form one art that was recognized as a Korean martial art, and it was formally named “taekwondo.” General Choi and other taekwondo masters then began touring the world and spread the practice of taekwondo to many countries. In 1960 General Choi visited the United States and persuaded Jhoon Rhee, a karate instructor, to rename his school Taekwon-Do. Jhoon Rhee is recognized as the father of taekwondo in the United States, and he was instrumental in spreading the art throughout the country. Taekwondo was accepted into the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in 1974, and the United States Taekwondo Union (USTU) was formed. In 1966 General Choi made a goodwill visit to North Korea, which caused him to fall into disgrace with the
South Koreans. To this day General Choi is not mentioned in the history of taekwondo on the official WTF website. That year General Choi left the Korea Taekwondo Association (KTA) and created the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF), with nine charter member countries. Until his death in 2002, General Choi continued to visit other countries and work to spread taekwondo throughout the world. In 1973 the KTA became the WTF.The ITF remained under the control of General Choi, and its practitioners were thought to be more traditional. The WTF began to place more emphasis on sparring and became more sport-oriented. There have been attempts to bring the two federations together, so far without success. The political fallout from General Choi’s visit to North Korea, and his belief that taekwondo should be taught there, created a rift that has yet to be bridged. Currently the ITF style of taekwondo is thought to be more traditional than the WTF style, tournaments are not full-contact, students practice forms developed by General Choi, and the ITF style of taekwondo is still considered to be a “martial art.” The WTF created its own forms, uses fullcontact sparring, and their style of taekwondo is now considered to be more of a “martial sport.” The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recognized taekwondo as an amateur sport in 1980. Under the sparring rules for Olympic taekwondo, kicks and punches were allowed to the body, but only kicks were allowed to the head. The reason for disallowing punches to the head was that taekwondo is an art that is famous for kicking, and allowing punches to the head would lead to more of a boxing style competition. For children, however, kicks to the head were against the rules for safety reasons. Recently the United States Olympic Committee changed the rule to allow children to score points with kicks to the head, a ruling that caused controversy because of the perceived danger. The social context of taekwondo is an important part of the art and sport. For many practitioners of taekwondo, the art is a way of life. Taekwondo students learn the Five Tenets of Taekwondo, which are courtesy, integrity, self-control, perseverance, and indom-
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itable spirit. There are strict rules for etiquette, and breaching these rules may lead to expulsion from one’s school. Etiquette rules include addressing superiors properly, bowing when entering and leaving the practice hall (dojang), bowing to instructors, black belts, flags, practice partners, and, at the beginning and end of class, wearing the uniform properly, facing away from others when straightening the uniform, and other rules. In some systems there are rules of etiquette that apply to social situations, such as order of seating at the table, how to make proper introductions, and showing respect for one’s elders. Rules of etiquette also apply to tournaments, and even at the Olympic level a competitor may be penalized for showing disrespect. According to the Kukkiwon, which is the World Taekwondo Headquarters in Korea, taekwondo now has 50 million participants in 175 countries. One of the people taught by General Choi who went on to start a major taekwondo association was Haeng Ung Lee. Eternal Grandmaster Haeng Ung Lee founded the American Taekwondo Association in 1969, and there are now 300,000 members. The WTF is currently the largest taekwondo governing body in the world, followed by the ITF. A major scandal occurred in the world of taekwondo when Kim Un-yong, president of the WTF and IOC member, was arrested in 2003. He was accused of embezzling over three million dollars from the WTF, and taking bribes. Kim was a longtime member of the IOC and had run for president of the organization. His IOC membership was suspended when he was indicted on charges of embezzlement and bribery, and he stepped down from his positions as a national legislator and as president of the WTF. Kim was sentenced to jail and fined $680,000 in September 2004.
What Is Taekwondo? Currently all Olympic competitors must be black belts, but in other tournaments there are divisions for competitors based on rank. Ranking in taekwondo is indicated by belt color. Taekwondo students start at the white belt level and then progress through color belt
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levels until they reach first degree black belt. At each level students learn new forms and one-step sparring techniques, and are expected to demonstrate increasingly difficult board-breaking techniques. Testing may also include a written knowledge test of history, philosophy, and Korean terminology. It takes approximately three months to progress between ranks at the lower levels, and a longer amount of time the higher one progresses. In general it takes two to three years to progress from white belt to black belt. At the black belt level students are often expected to help teach, referee at tournaments, and take on other responsibilities. Progressing from one degree of black belt to the next can take several years. The highest rank in taekwondo is tenth degree, but generally ninth degree is the highest one may advance, and tenth degree may be granted as an honorary rank. The WTF is the ruling body for Olympic-level taekwondo, and participants must have Kukkiwon certification of dan (degree of black belt). In sparring there are eight weight divisions for men and women, ten for boys and girls 14–17 years old in the World Junior Championships, and four for men and women in the Olympics. Men fight three rounds lasting three minutes each with one minute rest between rounds, and women and juniors fight three rounds lasting two minutes each with one minute of rest between rounds. The size of the sparring ring and the placement of judges and the contestants are specified in the rules. In the early years of taekwondo tournaments there was no safety equipment, but now equipment has been developed and refined for maximum safety. All contestants must wear the WTF-approved V-neck uniform, shin and forearm guards, mouthpiece, headgear, chest protector, and men must wear a groin guard. Headgear and chest protectors with electronic devices to score points are available in some tournaments. Commands to bow, begin, stop, and end are given in the Korean language. Fist strikes and kicks are allowed to the body on the chest protector, and kicks are allowed to the face. Kicking or punching to the spine, back of the head, or below the belt are against the rules, and attacking these areas results in
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point deductions. One point is given for forceful attacks to the body, two points for attacks to the head, and one extra point if the opponent is knocked down and the referee counts. Matches are full-contact, continuous, and the winner is the contestant with the most points at the end of the three rounds. Below the Olympic level, WTF-sanctioned tournaments may also hold competition in forms. Rules for “point tournaments” vary, and are often quite different from official WTF tournaments. In a point tournament there may be fewer or no weight classes. Divisions are based on belt rank, age, and gender. Full contact may be prohibited, and in some tournaments a competitor may be disqualified for “excessive contact.” Bouts are not continuous—judges stop the action to declare points. The winner is the contestant with the most points at the end of the match, or the one who reaches the designated number of points first. Hand techniques may be allowed to the head, and varying numbers of points may be awarded for specific techniques delivered to specific areas. Rules for youth may be different from adult rules, such as requiring less contact for a point to be scored, and in some tournaments boys and girls may spar against each other. The protective equipment required varies according to individual tournament rules, and may include hand and footgear in addition to the type of equipment required by the WTF. Point tournaments also generally include competition in forms and board breaking. Forms competitors are divided into divisions based on age and rank, and they may or may not be divided by gender. The characteristics of taekwondo practitioners are varied. There are programs for children as young as three, and people are able to practice throughout their lives. Men and women, boys and girls, of all ages, throughout the world practice taekwondo. Studies concerning the personality traits of taekwondo practitioners have shown that it improves self-esteem and reduces aggression in children, and students holding higher belt ranks tend to be more demanding, enthusiastic and optimistic, self-reliant, and socially perceptive.
Competition at the Top There are numerous national, regional, and international taekwondo tournaments. The World Taekwondo League holds competitions in four regional areas: Pan America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Competitors must have Kukkiwon certification of dan, and competition rules are similar to WTF (Olympic) rules. Taekwondo competitions are also held in the Asian Games, South Pacific Games, Pan American Games, World Games, All-Africa Games, Southeast Asian Games, South American Games, Bolivarian Games, and Olympics. The history of taekwondo in the Olympics starts prior to 1980. The WTF created standardized competition rules and forms as they began to bid for recognition by the IOC as the governing body for taekwondo in the world, and they gained that recognition in 1980. In 1985 taekwondo was accepted as a demonstration sport for the 1988 Olympics. Taekwondo was a demonstration sport in the 1988, 1992, and 1996 Olympics, and was accepted as a full Olympic sport for the 2000 games in Sydney. Arlene Limas stands out as one of the major athletes in taekwondo. She competed in the Olympic games in Seoul, Korea, and was the first taekwondo athlete to ever win an Olympic gold medal. Ms. Limas retired in 2000 but has remained prominent in the Olympic movement in the United States, and she is an activist for athletes’ rights. Another athlete from the 1988 games, Jimmy Kim, was the first gold medalist in the men’s heavyweight division, and he was Blackbelt Magazine’s 1988 Male Competitor of the Year. Herb Perez was another gold medalist in the 1988 games who went on to achieve fame. He played Olympus on the television show WMAC Masters, and he has appeared in several books and videos. A more recent Olympic champion of note is American Steven Lopez, who won gold medals in both the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Ernie Reyes has not only won many taekwondo championships himself, but he set a record for training the most black-belt champions in one year with seven of his students from his West Coast team winning
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national championships. He has been inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame, has appeared on the cover of every major martial arts magazine, and in 2003 was awarded a lifetime achievement award for twenty-five years of excellence.
Governing Bodies Governing organizations include the World Taekwondo Federation (www.wtf.org/main.htm); Pan American Taekwondo Union (www.patu.org); European Taekwondo Union (www.etuTaekwondo.org); United States Taekwondo Union (www.ustu.org); American Taekwondo Association; (www.ataonline.com); International Tae Kwon Do Association (www.itatkd.com); and World Taekwondo League (www.thewtl.com). Erin Reilly
Further Reading Gwon, P. G., & Lee, M. (1984). Taegeuk: The new forms of tae kwon do. Santa Clarita, CA: Ohara. Kim, S., Chung, K. H., Lee, K. M., & Kim, S. H. (1999). Tae kwon do kyorugi: Olympic style sparring. Turtle Press. Lawler, J. (2001). Tae kwon do for women. Wish Publishing. Park,Y. H., Park,Y. H., & Gerrard, J. (1999). Tae kwon do: The ultimate reference guide to the world’s most popular martial art. Checkmark Books. Perez, H. (1998). The complete tae kwon do for kids. Los Angeles, CA Lowell House Juvenile. Rhee, J. (1971). Hwa-rang and chung-mu of kwon do hyung. Santa Clarita, CA: Ohara. Rhee, J. (1971). Tan-gun and to-san of tae kwon do hyung. Santa Clarita, CA: Ohara. Rhee, J. (1971). Won-hyo and yul-kok of tae kwon do hyung. Santa Clarita, CA: Ohara. Rhee, J. (1979). Chon-ji of tae kwon do-hyung. Santa Clarita, CA: Ohara.
Tai Chi
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ai chi is a Chinese martial art that is linked to the Daoist meditative, philosophical, and medical tradition. In China invalids and the elderly often perform the soft, slow movements of the popular Yang style of tai chi to strengthen the constitution and to promote
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longevity. Advocates say that disciplined daily practice enhances the quality and circulation of chi (vital energy) within the body, improves bodily functions, tones muscles, and engenders a relaxed mental attitude. The majority of the millions of people who practice tai chi in China and elsewhere do so for these benefits, but tai chi also is a premier martial art that can be practiced even late in life.
Origins Chinese legendary history attributes tai chi’s origin to Zhang Sanfeng, a Daoist expert who was canonized in 1459, but tai chi entered recorded history centuries later as a martial art practiced esoterically by the people of Chenjiagou in Henan Province. A form of the art was first demonstrated and taught in public in Beijing by Yang Luchan (1799–1872), who had learned it in Chenjiagou. Scholars say Yang accepted all challenges from the many Beijing martial arts masters, never to be defeated and never to seriously injure an opponent. He became known as “Yang the Invincible” and was appointed martial arts instructor to the imperial court. Yang Luchan publicly taught the slow and soft performance of a lengthy sequence of patterns, but he transmitted a much larger and more varied body of lore to his private students, a practice in keeping with martial arts tradition. Popular conceptions of tai chi as an only vaguely martial exercise, although beneficial to health and longevity, are drawn from Yang’s and his successors’ publicly taught form. This process of simplifying and softening has made tai chi accessible to many more people than would otherwise be the case. However, the more obviously martial and physically strenuous Chen style continues to be practiced, as do the derivative Sun, Wu, and Hao styles.
Practice As a martial art tai chi employs a subtlety of touch to sense an opponent’s strength in order to redirect his or her motion so that one’s defensive movement neutralizes it and becomes a counterattack as well. In describing this capacity practitioners use such phrases as “when the
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opponent is still, be still; when the opponent moves, move first,” and “use four ounces to deflect a thousand pounds.” The technique depends upon the ability to maintain gentle physical contact with the opponent without resisting, that is, to never meet force with force. The tai chi player’s counter to the aggressive move, after the instant has been seized and the movement’s force captured, can be any of several techniques. Most benignly and simply, the tai chi player can accelerate or redirect the opponent’s motion, sending him or her many feet away. Alternatively, a player can use any of several in-fighting techniques, ranging from low kicks to punches to openhand strikes and grappling techniques, singly or in combination, practically simultaneously with blending with the opponent’s force. The initial contact is said to be as soft as cotton; the counter that it becomes is said to be as springy as steel. The strength, sensitivity, skill, and mental attitude required to perform such feats spontaneously and without effort are cultivated partly by the practice of solo forms (sequences of patterns) and partly by other means. Forms vary in length and in their composition and sequence of techniques; players can practice them at different speeds with larger or smaller patterns and in higher or lower stances. In some forms the tempo is even; in others it varies. Instructors say a player should practice forms with the continuity of one “reeling silk from a cocoon.” In appearance form practice should resemble an eagle in flight; the attitude should be that of a cat when about to pounce on a mouse. Form practice is a kind of meditation in motion and requires concentration without tension. Paired practice routines, in which one works with a partner to simu-
A tai chi movement. Source: istockphoto/lovleah.
late martial encounters, have degrees of formality ranging from duo form sequences to freestyle sparring. The full range of tai chi skills includes the use of weapons as well; the sword, broadsword, staff, and spear are used. In some schools students practice auxiliary exercises to facilitate the development of the physical conditioning, skills, and mind-set appropriate to tai chi; in others schools tai chi itself is considered the only necessary exercise. In either case the expectation is that players will learn to direct and augment the flow of vital energy within the body with their mind in harmony with the breath and that bodily functions will be enhanced as the body is renewed by improved circulation of chi.Through this internal aspect of tai chi the body is expected to become supple and limber; both traits are essential to good health and to proper performance of tai chi. Tai chi’s mechanical principles involve erect stances that combine stability with nimbleness of foot. Movement begins at the dantian, an anatomical point at the body’s center of gravity just below the navel. With no tensing of muscles and with mechanical efficiency and relaxed precision, the weight is shifted and energy is transmitted via the waist to the hands. In effect the legs, spine, and arms become like five bows, resulting in
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Life is about timing.
springy whole-body strength to be applied at the optimum instant. Footwork should be like the tread of a cat. Tai chi sport competition involves solo form performance and sometimes tuishou or push-hands, a demonstration of mastery of the principles of tai chi. From a Chinese cultural perspective the psychological and medical value of the art and its martial potential are reasonable expectations. Both are in harmony with Daoist philosophical principles that are believed to be universally valid. The Daoist classics Daodejing and Yijing promulgate these principles, the interplay and balance of opposites that tai chi embodies. Thus, one can see tai chi as an art of harmonization with nature that includes the ability to harmonize with an opponent’s attack and the nurturance of chi that animates every living thing in the universe: Tai chi is considered to be a spiritual discipline as well.
The Future During China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) tai chi was under political attack in China, but the situation has changed. Tai chi has been reinstated as a national treasure and a uniquely Chinese form of art and sport. Basic tai chi is taught publicly in parks and other suitable places, as it is in other parts of the Chinese world. Advanced instruction is available, and form competitions are held. Lacking knowledge of Chinese philosophy and its implications for self-defense and medicine, Westerners have generally been drawn to flashier martial arts. However, that situation is changing, too; gradually tai chi is becoming better known in the West. It is of growing interest to the international medical research community and to martial arts scholarship, but tai chi is still best known in the West as a health and longevity exercise of particular benefit to seniors. Michael G. Davis
Further Reading Cheng, M. (1956). Tai chi chuan: A simplified method of calisthenics for health and self defence. Taipei, Nationalist Republic of China: Shih Chung Tai-chi Chuan Center.
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De Marco, M. A. (1992). The origin and evolution of taijiquan. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 1(1), 8–25. Draeger, D. F., & Smith, R. W. (1980). Comprehensive Asian martial arts. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Holcombe, C. (1993). The Daoist origins of the Chinese martial arts. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 2(1), 10–25. Jou, T. H. (1983). The tao of tai-chi chuan: Way to rejuvenation. Warwick, RI: Tai-Chi Foundation. Liang, T. T. (1977). Tai chi ch’uan for health and self defense: Philosophy and practice. New York: Vintage Books. Smith, R. W. (1995). Cheng manqing and taijiquan: A clarification of role. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 4(2), 50–65. Sutton, N. (1991). Applied tai chi chuan. London: A. & C. Black. Tek, P. L. T. (1995). Principles and practices in taijiquan. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 4(1), 65–72.
Technology
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echnology has become pervasive in society as innovations promise to make our lives better. We accept most innovations that make our lives easier as long as they are safe and efficient. Sport, however, is different. Challenge and tradition are central to the essence of sport, so technology presents a more complex dynamic in the sports arena.
New Materials, New Opportunities, and New Challenges Changes in materials and designs have provided opportunities for countless athletes to develop their athletic potential. Innovations can make sports less expensive, can provide flexibility in design so athletes can select the equipment best suited to their individual skills, and can reduce risk by making sports safer: ■
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Composite bats have allowed younger baseball players to develop their athletic skills without having to wield heavy wooden bats. In boating, composite materials have enabled kayakers to select the hull shape best suited to their individual skills. Mass manufacturing of equipment has reduced the cost of golf balls, which were once hand stuffed and sewn.
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Design, materials, and testing have produced safety pads and helmets that minimize severe injuries in many sports.
Innovation also improves performance, opportunity, and interest: ■
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The fastskin swimsuits, which ignited controversy at the 2000 Olympic games in Sydney, Australia, significantly reduce drag in the water and, thus, the swimmer’s time. Composite skis transformed skiing into a popular recreational activity and encouraged innovative designs, which led, decades later, to shape skis that allow previously intermediate skiers to quest the advanced black diamond trails. In the 1980s, after the javelin’s center of gravity was moved forward, athletes with precise technique were able to achieve victories that previously went to physically stronger athletes.
Not all technological innovations improve sport, however. Some new technologies can usurp the challenge or tradition of the sport. If a golf ball had a guidance system that guaranteed a hole-in-one every shot, it would certainly compromise the test of driving distance, accuracy, and putting precision that golf provides. These artificial challenges are the core of sports. Sport provides physical challenges that exist purely for the sake of the activity it makes possible: ■
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In track, the athletes get from the starting line to the finish line by running around the track rather than across the infield. Rowers move from the starting line to the finish line without the aid of a motor. Football players have challenges including a defensive line, to transfer the walk into the endzone into a sport. By contrast, dance, while a physical activity, is not a sport. Dance does not have artificial challenges set up purely for the sake of the activity. These physical challenges are essential to sport. Chess has challenges and artificial inefficiencies in the design of how the pieces are allowed to move but these challenges are mental and not physical, thus
chess does not meet the requirements necessary for sport. Before World War II, the available materials limited the design of sports equipment. For years, the tennis racket design remained stable. Tennis rackets with wood heads could not withstand the stringing tension necessary for a successful large-head racket. Thus, the nature of the materials provided design constraints and few innovations had a revolutionary affect on sports. Once new materials that emerged out of military research entered the industrial sphere, ingenious inventors increased flexibility to design new technologies that would revolutionize sport. Howard Head, for example, used such military materials and knowledge to design composite skis based on airplane wings. With the increased money entering the sports arena because of television fame, inventors had the incentive to be creative and develop new technology that would yield victories. Victories were profitable because of the increased revenue generated through television, and because the newly suburban families flocked to sports activities and purchased the latest equipment—equipment that enabled mass participation. New designs continued as these athletes, new to the sport, brought their own creativity into the design process unencumbered by years of sports tradition indoctrination. For example, rules governing golf balls were based on the size and weight as well as overall distance the ball could be hit. No rules governed dimple patterns until two non-golfers redesigned the dimples to reduce hooks and slices and improve the accuracy of golf ball flight. With new materials enabling creative technological design, money from television, money from the newly created recreational market, and people unencumbered by years of enculturation, the timing was right for technological innovations to revolutionize sport and to force governing bodies to address technological issues.
Controlling Innovations in Sport If innovations can increase opportunities of participation, providing athletes the chance to express their own
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Press for an old-style wooden tennis racket.
individual excellence, but can compromise the challenge or tradition of sports, how can sports organizations make comprehensive technology policy decisions? How do sports organizations determine what technologies to allow and which ones would be detrimental to the core challenge or tradition of the sport? Sports organizations have banned gels on the bottom of rowing shells that minimize drag, dimple patterns on golf balls that reduce hooks and slices, stringing systems on tennis racquets that increase topspin, recumbent bicycles, and more. These regulations protect the core challenge of the sport. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is dedicated to protecting the integrity of its games by ensuring that victories go to athletes and not engineers. The IOC allows each sport to write its own rules for technology policy but requires that innovations be available to all the athletes to make sure no one athlete has an unfair advantage. The individual sports are thus charged with determining which innovations will be permitted on the field of play during sanctioned competition. After the 1960s, the policy of ignoring technological innovation, as many organizations did (cycling and golf are notable exceptions), created crises for many sports governing bodies.
With a few exceptions, sport governing bodies that had been adept at developing playing and eligibility rules failed to address these technological revolutions until a crisis occurred. In tennis, for example, a new stringing system enabled players with an average topspin stroke to produce a shot with championship caliber spin. Balls hit effectively with this stringing system were unreturnable, so low-ranked players produced upsets throughout Europe. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) had no rule prohibiting the different stringing systems, so the new and revolutionary system was legal. In desperation, the ITF banned the new design after a number of players had already relied on the technology and the manufacturers and distributors invested in the product. The rule the ITF developed to ban the “spaghetti strung” racket focused specifically on that stringing design without providing standards to govern future technological innovations. In contrast, when the United States Golf Association (USGA) wanted to protect the sport from golf ball designs that were yielding longer drives, it developed a performance standard. No golf ball, regardless of material, manufacture, or production could fly longer than a specified distance when hit with a specified force. This performance standard proactively protected the skills the USGA defined as essential to the sport while giving manufacturers maximum flexibility in design. In addition, with this performance standard, those with a stake in golf technology knew the rules in advance.
TEAM VERSUS INDIVIDUAL SPORTS TECHNOLOGY Although coherent sport-technology policy is ideal, there are significant differences in team versus individual sports, in recreational versus elite athletes, in male versus female athletes, in adult versus youth athletes, and in on-field versus off-field sports. Technological innovations tend to have much less impact on team sports than on individual sports because the team dynamic influences results more than an individual’s technologically improved performance. In team sports, much of the technology is shared—a ball for example—and
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Technology Equipment Innovations While not always greeted with enthusiasm, change is often for the better. The following extract describes the practical innovations that have guided the evolution of baseball equipment over time. With the steady improvement in the playing of base ball we have had an improvement in the appliances of the game. It doesn’t take a very old enthusiast to remember when the catcher had no protection at all from the cannon-shot delivery of the pitcher. First came the glove for the left hand, without fingers, but slightly padded; this was first used by Douglas Allison in the old Cincinnati Reds of 1869. It came into general use slowly, many catchers disdaining to use it. The glove protection gradually found favor and improvement until now we have almost every player in the team using a glove on his non-throwing hand, and as for the catchers, they have a heavily padded mitten with a steel guard around the outer edge which effectually prevents broken and stoved up fingers, and on his throwing hand a lightly padded glove with short fingers. The first protection for the face was a large piece of rubber held in the mouth, which, if the ball hit, it bounded off and saved the
thus, the advantage of technological innovations geared for the athletes’ individual skill has no impact. With shared technology, any advantage an innovation provides is also shared. Often an innovation will dramatically affect the recreation market before the elite athlete reaps any rewards. The large-head tennis racket provides a prime example of an innovation the governing body ignored because it had no initial impact on the professional tour. This new racket dominated the tennis club scene and all weekend players wielded the new weapon, but its stringing tension was insufficient for professional athletes. Because the new technology did not dramatically affect the elite athletes, the ITF allowed the innovation, but once the large-head rackets began to affect the professional tour, its prominence made it difficult to ban.
teeth and nose; this came in vogue about 1875. In 1876 a catcher by the mane of Thayer, of Harvard College, invented the mask, which is now so universally used; the professionals didn’t take to it at all kindly at first and refused to use it. A few years ago the rubber body protector was brought into use. There has been as much improvement in baseball shoes as in any one appliance; they have now almost reached the perfection of lightness and durability and constructed with special view to the requirements’ of the player. The ball is greatly improved over those of ten or twenty years ago, in fact it seems to have reached the acme of perfection. There is apparently no hope for an improvement in the bat, except that better material is generally used now in the manufacture of first-class bats than formerly. A great deal more attention is paid to the grounds than formerly, and many of them are as nearly perfect as it is possible to make them. These items enter not a little into the almost perfect playing with which we are entertained nowadays. Source: Base ball appliances. (1890). Reach’s American Association base ball guide (pp. 35–36). Philadelphia: A.S. Reach Co.
Having different rules for different athletes creates both philosophical and practical challenges. Recreational and elite athletes have different skills and frequently use different technology. Manufacturers, however, leverage the visibility of the professionals to market their products and highlight their technologies. Recreational athletes frequently strive to emulate the professionals and purchase the “same” equipment that they witnessed leading to such success on the professional circuit. Different regulations make manufacturing and testing different technologies more complex and leave opportunities for nonapproved equipment to abound. In addition, although sport governing bodies do regulate championships, no one really regulates those weekend warriors, leaving the definition of the sport and success in the sport dubious—do victories belong to the athlete or to the engineer?
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A stop watch, a vital piece of equipment in modern sports. Source: istockphoto/crabmet.
governs the activities for the two weeks of Olympic competition but not during the years of training that lead to that competition. The ITF governs the rules on the court of play, and the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Tour governs activity on the green during their competitions. These organizations, however, have not historically had any control or authority over the training of athletes and, thus, all the technologies used to prepare an athlete for competition have remained outside the rules established by governing bodies.
CHEMICAL ENHANCEMENTS Technological innovation has also increased opportunities for female athletes to excel but has raised the question of whether rules should be identical for male and female athletes. Some vocal tennis commentators criticize composite rackets as destroying the men’s game. This same technology has enabled female tennis players, however, to thrive and produce television ratings that exceed those of their male counterparts.
OFF THE FIELD TECHNOLOGY Often the greatest impact on sport comes from those technologies used in training. Rehabilitation technology, weightlifting technology, simulation machines, high-altitude training chambers, and even performanceenhancing substances all have significantly shaped our games. These technologies are all used off the field of play and outside the view of the fans, challengers, and regulatory bodies. Governing bodies define the rules of engagement on the field of play, but they have little or no authority outside the competition arena. The IOC
One notable exception to the governing bodies writing technology rules outside the competitive arena is in the rules of performance-enhancing substances such as steroids. Governing bodies have recognized that chemical enhancements compromise the integrity of their sports and transform the challenge from one between athletes into one between pharmacologists. Governing bodies have, however, struggled to govern these new technologies for a number of reasons: 1. The governing bodies had to define specifically what was not allowed. This is not as simple as it might sound because different athletes have different levels of chemicals, and athletes take different medications for medical reasons. 2. Accurate tests need to withstand the legal scrutiny that would result from a monopoly inhibiting an athlete from earning a living. 3. Even when sports governing bodies created a list of “banned substances” and developed tests to be used on the day of competition, the regulations were vacuous because many athletes used the banned substances to train and build muscle, strength, and endurance but allowed the substances to leave their bodies in time
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Technology Waxing Poetic about Sports Equipment An excerpt from the poem “The Outfit and the Spirit” by Ray Hoffman (1923): “Phillup” Peters had a wonder bat of willow, Must have cost him eighteen bucks or so at that; But as was to be expected. “Phillup” never once connected, While Fred Ferkins knocked the homers with a slat. Did you ever know this truthful fact to fail you? It’s the gospel truth, I’ll say so, every timeGet this sentence, sport fans, hear it, ‘Taint the outfit, it’s the spirit, Thought the tools you have to use cost but a dime. Source: Hoffman, R. (1923, January).The outfit and the spirit. Sporting Life, p. 35.
for the competition and the testing. Other athletes took other substances that masked their use of the performance-enhancing substances. Thus, actually protecting the integrity of the sport means developing sport-technology policy that can be enforced off the field of play—a significant shift for sports organizations whose sovereignty has historically extended only as long as the competition.
The Future While sports organizations have focused much of their attention on athlete eligibility and game rules, technology has dramatically affected many sports. Often, the policies governing bodies write to protect their sports from new technologies are reactive ad hoc policies implemented following a crisis. With this reactive policy approach, manufacturers invest research and development dollars in creating and marketing a new technology. In some cases, this technology becomes accepted and used—as were square groove golf clubs
and the large-head tennis racket—so that governing bodies find it impossible to ban the innovation regardless of how it affects the sport. In other cases, governing bodies succeed in banning the new technology, such as the “spaghetti strung” tennis racket or the “Polara” golf ball, and the manufacture seeks to recoup the costs through legal battles that challenge the right of the governing bodies to implement these ad hoc policies Anticipating innovations is impossible, so sports governing bodies have historically waited and ruled on innovations as they arrived or created policies so vague they had no practical meaning. The debate about the fastskin swimsuit continues, for example. The suit was allowed in the 2000 Olympic games and has since appeared on swimmers at all levels. Armbands that increase buoyancy and reduce drag were banned, however. This type of ambiguity in sport technology policy could be avoided with proactive performance standards. Shifting from design standards to performance standards, such as the overall distance standard in golf, would effectively enable sports organizations to protect the core challenge of their games without having to anticipate future innovations. These proactive standards would provide foreknowledge to the manufacturers and provide protection in the legal battles that ensue from retroactively regulating technology. In addition, proactive performance standards would more effectively protect the core challenge and tradition of sport while providing manufacturers maximum flexibility to innovate. J. Nadine Gelberg See also Biotechnology
Further Reading Busch, A. (Ed), (1998). Design for sports: The cult of performance. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Eassom, M., & S. (Eds.), (2002.) Sport technology: History, philosophy, and policy. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Ltd. Morgan, W. J., & Meier, K.V. (Eds.), (1988). Philosophic inquiry in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
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Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility. ■ BILLIE JEAN KING
Television See Media-Sports Complex
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he word tennis is thought to have evolved from the Greek word phennis or the German word tanz. Others have speculated that the word evolved from the French word tenez meaning “to play.” However the name came to be, the sport has evolved from a game enjoyed only by the upper classes to one that is played and watched by people of every social strata.
History The origins of tennis are much debated. The earliest reports date back to ancient Greece. Information from the fourth century CE specifies that the Persians enjoyed a game called tchigan that was played in an enclosed space with rackets that were approximately four feet long. Despite these records of early games that were similar to tennis, most historians feel that tennis originated in thirteenth-century France. The game, known as jeu de paume (or game of the palm) evolved from handball. Balls made of cloth sewn into a hard round shape were hit with a bare hand or a hand in a glove. Nets were made of wooden obstacles or mounds of dirt, and participants volleyed against a wall or with each other. The scoring system probably originated from the Old French word une journee meaning a “sport match” or “a day.” The word love, meaning “no points,” is thought to come from the French word for egg, l’oeuf, which sounds like “love.”
Growth of the Sport Worldwide In 1873 Major Walter Clapton Wingfield, a British Army officer, in an effort to liven up a lawn party invented lawn tennis, a combination of badminton and court tennis that was played on an hourglass-shaped court. Major
Wingfield patented the game in 1874 and sold equipment for the sport. Tennis balls were made of uncovered hollow rubber, and the net was 4 feet high in the center and 5 feet at the posts. Rackets were spoon shaped with long handles. In 1877 when Wingfield’s patent ran out, the game was further modified: the hourglass shape of the court was changed to a rectangle. Most historians speculate that the game of tennis was brought to America by Mary Ewing Outerbridge of New York. Outerbridge, nicknamed the “mother of tennis,” learned the game from British officers while visiting her brother stationed at a British garrison in Bermuda. Consequently, she brought the equipment back to America. By late 1874 she had helped establish the first lawn court on American soil, in Staten Island, New York. Initially, the sport grew mostly in the eastern United States—especially at the women’s colleges in the region. The game was introduced at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1881. In 1892 Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania held the first intercollegiate tennis contest, an event that may have been the first intercollegiate contest for women in any sport. After the 1920s the game was no longer assumed to be restricted to those from the upper class. Tennis is now played among all social classes, having moved “from the classes to the masses—from an informal lawn party to a lavish spectator show” (Bartlett and Gillen 1981, 11). Much of the increased participation in tennis was due to the availability of public tennis courts.
Worldwide Participation Tennis was one of the first sports to be enjoyed by women. The leisurely and social nature of the game appealed to the “less athletically inclined” female. Despite the growth of women’s participation in tennis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, men still had more competition opportunities than women. For example, in 1884 England started the “All England Lawn Tennis Club” women’s singles championships—now known as Wimbledon—seven years after the start of the
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I can’t believe how hard Agassi hits the ball. It’s like he’s got a gun. No one hit the ball like that in my day. Ion Tiriac didn’t drive that fast. ■ ILIE NASTASE
same event for men. Perhaps more profoundly for the women, the early success of female tennis players and the growth of the sport among virtually all social classes paved the way for women to play other sports, such as basketball and field hockey. International tennis competition for men started with the Davis Cup in 1900 and for the women with the Wightman Cup in 1923 (only the United States and England participated). The Wightman Cup was discontinued near the end of the 1980s in favor of the more popular Federation Cup—initiated in 1963 as an equivalent to the men’s Davis Cup. Tennis was first added as an Olympic event in 1900. Then, in 1924 the sport was eliminated because of disputes over the distinction between amateur and professional athletes. Finally, at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, tennis returned as an Olympic sport. With the beginning of the “open era” of tennis in the late 1960s (a limited number of tournaments were opened to amateur and professional players), the Olympics became a showcase for many of the top professional players. Presently, television ratings for tennis are high, and tournament attendance records are broken regularly. Tennis is recognized as a multimillion dollar sport. This revenue has been generated from corporate support, player endorsements, and tournament proceedings. Mercedes-Benz’s current multiyear deal with the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) is worth close to $50 million. Sanex’s sponsorship, although terminated in 2002, generated over $40 million in sports revenue for the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). IBM and Rolex corporations alone have multimillion sponsorship deals with the Grand Slam tournament Wimbledon (amounting to nearly $14 million each year). With $52 million at stake at the sixty tournaments worldwide on the women’s professional circuit, it is not surprising that Venus Williams was the highest paid female athlete in 2001–2002 along with her tournament winnings, having signed $20 million in endorsement contracts with companies including Reebok and Wrigley. The popularity of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Veterans Circuit is also growing. It currently offers
186 tournaments worldwide, with players over thirty-five eligible to compete in a variety of age-category events. Tennis remains, however, the most visible sport in which men and women of different nationalities, ethnicities, and backgrounds can compete, succeed, and dominate the center stage.
Rules, Equipment, and Training: Recent Changes Since the open era of tennis began in the late 1960s, notable changes have occurred in areas such as scoring, pre- and postmatch mandatory interviews, establishment of the Code of Conduct (1975), and match protocol. The most recent additions include player hindrance guidelines, particularly regarding excessive player “grunting” during play; removal of the rest break after the first game of every set; and the use of the tiebreaker. (A full description of the current rules and regulations for professional conduct and play can be found at www. itftennis.com.) With regards to training and coaching, the most recognized professional coaching certifications are generally obtained through the national governing body for tennis in each respective country. (Many resources exist concerning tennis-related and tennisspecific training practices and programs, such as www. tennislovers.com and www.tennisone.com.) The changes in scoring and protocol concurrent with the onset of the open era of tennis have been accompanied by changes in racket technology and the quality and type of clothing (especially for females). Rackets are now made of titanium, graphite, or hypercarbon (or a combination of these materials), as opposed to wood (the predominant racket type until the 1970s) or aluminum. The price of a racket can vary significantly depending on the quality and manufacturer. Player clothing has also been transformed to provide greater comfort for the players (e.g., quicker sweating capacity, ease of movement) and provide more commercial appeal. Consequently, player clothing today consists of many bright and unconventional colors and styles. Few individuals now wear traditional “all white” outfits— except at Wimbledon where it is mandatory.
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Tennis The Tennis-Court When as the hand at Tennis plays, And Men to gaming fall; Love is the court, Hope is the house, And favour serves the Ball. This Ball itself is due desert, The Line that measure shows Is Reason, whereon judgement looks Where Players win and lose. The Tutties are deceitful shifts; The Stoppers, jealousy, Which hath, Sire Argus’ hundred eyes, Wherewith to watch and pry. The Fault, whereon fifteen is lost, Is want of Wit and Sense;
And he that brings the Racket in Is Double Dilligence. But now the Racket is Free-will, Which makes the Ball rebound; And noble beauty is the choice, And of each Game the ground. The Racket strikes the Ball away, And there is oversight; A bandy, ho! The people cry, And so the Ball takes flight. Now at the length good liking proves Content to be their gain; Thus, in the Tennis-Court, Love is A Pleasure mixed with Pain. Source: Peek, H. (Ed.). (1901). Poetry of sport (p. 317). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
Recently, there have been calls for more drastic rule changes to make the game more viewer friendly and to reduce the dominance of the serve (especially in the men’s game). Suggested changes include the “no let” rule (if the serve hits the net and falls in, it counts), no second serves, no ad-scoring, reducing the size of the service box, use of wooden rackets, and on-court coaching. These alterations have gained support from prominent individuals in the tennis world, such as John McEnroe and Stan Smith (associate director of the USTA Player Development Program, 1988–1995).
Important People The history of tennis contains many memorable personalities, notable players, and ambassadors for the sport. A brief summery of these men and women follows. The first gentlemen characters in tennis were two sets of British brothers, Ernie and William Renshaw, followed by the Doherty boys, Reggie and Laurence, who won numerous Wimbledon Singles and Doubles titles during the 1880s through the early 1900s. In 1938 American Don Budge became the first male to achieve
the “Grand Slam,” which consists of winning all four major Grand Slam events in the same calendar year. In 1962 and 1969, Australian Rod Laver became the second man to achieve this feat (twice nonetheless). In 1968 Arthur Ashe became the first African-American to play on the U.S. Davis Cup team and the first to win a major singles title, the U.S. Open, the first of his three (Australian Open, 1970; Wimbledon, 1975, being the others). In doing so he established a legacy that remains today. Swedish player Björn Borg won an unprecedented fifth consecutive Wimbledon Singles title in 1980 (he would win a total of twelve Grand Slam majors by 1981). In the 1970s and 1980s, the fiery tempers of players such as John McEnroe, Ilie Nastase, and Jimmy Connors, often directed at their opponents, umpires, and even the crowd, were more than matched by their genius as players. McEnroe won seventeen major titles (singles and doubles), and Connors, as well as winning eight major singles titles, is the only male to win the U.S. Open on three different surfaces. The playing careers of Fred Perry (Great Britain), Guillermo Vilas (Argentina), Stefan Edberg (Sweden), Boris Becker (Germany), Mats Wilander (Sweden), and Ivan Lendl
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Tennis The Spread of Tennis Our popular athletic games are not really modern, but inheritances from people and times of old. Tennis is probably the oldest of all the ballgames. Its origin is uncertain, but it first appeared in Europe during the Middle Ages. It was popular among the French nobility, who are said to have borrowed it from the Italians.The English in turn adopted it from the French. The name of the game is said to be French in origin being derived from the expression “Tenez!” which was used by early French players in serving the ball. The antiquity of the game is testified to by Horace, the Roman bard, who tells of Maecenas playing tennis while on the journey to Brundusium. Source: Badminton. (1915), p. 18.
(Czechoslovakian, American after 1992) also have honorable places in tennis history, having captured between four and eight Grand Slam titles each. Pete Sampras, an American, holds the record for men’s Grand Slam singles titles at fourteen, having been ranked number one for most of the 1990s. Today’s game is blessed with a wide variety of personalities and playing styles, from the composed persona of Roger Federer to the charismatic play and experience of Andre Agassi and the fiery passion of Lleyton Hewitt. In the 1920s, Mary Kendell Browne, an American, became one of the first female professional tennis players, along with the glamorous Frenchwomen, Suzanne Lenglen. In 1950 Althea Gibson became the first African-American woman to participate in the U.S. Championships, which she later became the first AfricanAmerican to win in 1957 (having won Wimbledon in 1956). In the 1970s Evonne Goolagong Cawley became the first and only Aborigine (Native Australian) to win a Grand Slam event (two Wimbledon titles, one French, and four Australian Open Championships). In 1953 Maureen Catherine Connolly became the first female to achieve the Grand Slam. This feat has been equaled by only two other women: Margaret Court Smith in 1970 and Steffi Graf in 1988. Graf won
twenty-two Grand Slam titles in a highly successful career that finished with a sentimental French Open Singles victory in 1998. Martina Navratilova, who won a record high of 170 singles and 129 doubles titles, recently equaled Billie Jean King’s record of twenty Wimbledon tournament wins, with a victory in the 2003 Mixed Doubles event at Wimbledon alongside partner Leander Paes. Despite retiring in 1995, Navratilova has recently been active on the tour once again at the age of forty-seven, competing in the singles and doubles events at the 2004 French Open, Wimbledon, U.S. Open, and the 2004 Olympics, but is now contemplating retirement for the second time. It is largely agreed that Helen Wills and Suzanne Lenglen were considered the greatest female players of all time for over fifty years, Pauline May Betz Addie was possibly the best post–World War II player, and Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf were possibly the greatest female players of the open era. Women’s tennis has also seen a variety of successful playing styles. Strength and power were demonstrated in the game of Alice Mable, Suzanne Lenglen, and Helen Wills in the 1920s and 1930s; Eleonara Sears and May Sutton Bundy in the early 1900s; Margaret Court Smith in the 1960s and 1970s; and Martina Navratilova from the 1970s to present. Finesse accompanied by dominating groundstroke games were demonstrated by Maureen Connolly in the 1950s and Evonne Cawley and Chris Evert in the 1970s and 1980s. Presently, a diversity of playing styles and strokes is evident in the women’s game. This has undoubtedly contributed to the immense popularity of the women’s tour.
Significant Events The emergence of open tennis, the “Battle of the Sexes,” and the development of a women’s professional league, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) are arguably the most important events in tennis history. In response to growing concern that the most popular tennis players of the era would continue to join players already turned professional (e.g., Roy Emerson, John
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A young man playing tennis. Source: istockphoto/Skashkin.
Newcombe, Cliff Drysdale, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewell), the International Tennis Federation (ITF) approved twelve tournaments (including Wimbledon) for both amateur and professional players in 1968, signaling the beginning of the open era of tennis. The women’s liberation movement and other social justice movements of the early 1970s prompted female tennis players to rectify the significant gender differences in prize money, travel allowances, and sponsorship. As a result of the 1970 Pacific Southwest Tournament organizers refusal to equalize the disparity in prize money (the men’s singles champion was set to receive $12,500 compared to the women’s champion receiving only $1,500), a women-only tournament was established in Houston, Texas. The prize money was set at $5,000, plus $2,500 in additional monies (pledged by Joe Cullman of Philip Morris tobacco) for the winner of the tournament in exchange for naming it the “Virginia Slims Tournament.” Led by tennis entrepreneur Gladys Held-
man, nine women (two Australians—Kerr Melville and Judy Dalton—and seven Americans—Peaches Bartkowicz,Val Ziegenfuss, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey, Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, and Julie Heldman) agreed to play despite threats of suspension from the USLTA. By 1971 Billie Jean King became the first female athlete to earn $100,000 in a year. Overall, the Virginia Slims tour was developed, worth $250,000, and twenty-four tournaments were planned for the near future (as opposed to only two tournaments that were guaranteed following Houston). Billie Jean King continued to act as a prominent advocate of women’s tennis and promote equality for women in sport by defeating Bobby Riggs in the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes.” The match, which was worth $100,000 (plus bonuses and endorsements) to the winner, was watched by 30,472 people in the Houston Astrodome and over 50 million on television. Billie Jean King has since occupied major roles as the first president of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and coach of the U.S. Federation Cup Team. Although immense progress has been made, inequality still exists within professional tennis. Only seventeen female players have earned more than $300,000, compared with fifty professional male players. Furthermore, only the Australian and U.S. Open tournaments (both Grand Slam competitions) award equal prize money to males and females. In 1972 the ATP, a male players’ union, was formed. The ATP has been instrumental in governing prize money, tournament conditions, conduct, and organization of tournaments (except the Grand Slams) on the men’s professional circuit (ATP Tour).The WTA is a comparable organization established in 1974 or professional female players and works in a similar manner to the ATP.
The New Millennium: Issues and Challenges The arrival of the new millennium brought both developments and opportunities to tennis. It also highlighted
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Tennis International Tennis Federation In 1911 the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) was formed. This organization integrated national tennis associations worldwide and helped bring a uniform structure to international tennis. The ILTF was officially recognized as the governing body for international tennis in 1924, and in 1977 it became the International Tennis Federation (ITF). Since the ITF was founded, it has been involved in and helped resolve disputes within the tennis arena. The ITF took over organization of the Davis Cup in 1979 and established the Women’s International Professional Tennis Council (WIPTC) in 1975 to monitor and promote women’s professional tennis worldwide. It also founded the Wheelchair Tennis Players Association (WTPA) in 1981. Overall, the ITF (www.itftennis.org) has helped secure the continued success and growth of professional tennis.
Katie Sell, Maria Newton, and Lynda Ransdell
challenges that the sport had been facing for some time. It remains difficult to “grow the game’ (as the United States Tennis Association would say) partly because sport in today’s society is driven by its entertainment value. The future of every sport is tied to its ability to secure TV time and advertising dollars. The international flavor of professional tennis tends to decrease the lure of tennis to the American consumer because the presence of an American in the final of a tournament cannot be guaranteed. For example, the 2004 U.S. Open was the first American Grand Slam event, since 1988, to lack an American male finalist. Justine HeninHardenne and fellow Belgian Kim Clijsters met in the final of the 2003 U.S. Open. They had a national TV rating of 2.5 million. That was a 52 percent drop from 2002, when Serena Williams beat older sister Venus Williams. Fewer viewers mean less exposure, revenue, and, ultimately, interest in the game.
To generate more “team” interest and promote a regional association for these teams, Billie Jean King formed World Team Tennis. Developed nearly thirty years ago, ten teams competed in 2004 season. The franchises include Delaware, Hartford, Kansas City, New York (Buzz and Sportimes), Newport Beach, Philadelphia, Sacramento, St. Louis, and Springfield. Unlike traditional tennis tournaments, coaching is allowed, music is played, and men and women compose teams. Tennis has provided an avenue for college scholarships, although opportunities to receive financial aid (i.e., scholarships) to play collegiate-level tennis are primarily restricted to American institutions. The number of NCAA Division I, II, and III female college players has increased from 6,599 in 1981–1982 to 8,420 in 2002–2003, whereas the number of male collegiate players has declined slightly from 7,340 to 7,312 during the same period. With the exception of Stan Smith (University of Southern California), Arthur Ashe (ULCA), Bob and Mike Bryan (two years at Stanford University), and Laura Granville (Stanford University), few collegiate players succeed in making the jump from college to the professional circuit. Controversy regarding the large number of foreign players recruited to play at American colleges is growing, with an estimated fortyeight out of the top one hundred females ranked by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association in 2000 hailing from countries other than the United States. The considerable success of both current and former tennis players off court symbolizes many of the changes and issues that tennis is currently facing. Players have given back to the sport by supporting charity events (notably Andre Agassi’s Charitable Foundation), coaching, commentating, and even hosting chat shows. The phenomenal off-court success of current players, such as Venus and Serena Williams, reflects the increasingly changing attitudes and interests of female players away from the courts. The manner in which they have successfully parlayed their tennis success and notoriety into other ventures (e.g., modeling, acting, and interior designing) deserves honorable mention. The continual interaction between professional sports
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The serve was invented so that the net could play. ■ BILL COSBY
and entertainment, and whether it will interfere with players “giving back to the game,” will be interesting to observe in the future. With an increase in the popularity of the sport, we have also seen an increase in injuries in the men’s and the women’s games. Undoubtedly, the pace and power of the game are contributing to the rise in injuries. Overuse injuries are also prevalent due to the early age at which players begin training and the number of hours spent doing so. Additionally, the increasing length of the season and pressure to play tournaments undeniably has an impact on injury rates. In order to preserve the players and the game, steps must be taken to prevent injuries. In the 1990s much was made of how teenagers were dominating the women’s game. In 1998 six of the top sixteen players in the world were under twenty years of age, and three of those were ranked in the top ten. In May of 2004, there were no players under twenty in the top ten and only two players under twenty in the top twenty in the world. Tennis insiders would suggest that it is no coincidence that the two teenagers (Svetlana Kuznetsova, nineteen, and Maria Sharapova, seventeen) in the top-twenty rankings are from Russia. Tennis was introduced to an entirely new generation of young girls from Russia following the unprecedented success (albeit not entirely tennis related) of Anna Kournikova. Olympic success is still also a very powerful political tool. As evidence of the success of the Russian program, seven of the top twenty females in the world (December 2004) are Russian, and the winners of the 2004 Ladies French Open, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open (Singles) were Russian (Anastasia Myskina, Maria Sharapova, and Elena Kuznetsova, respectively). Interestingly, the men’s game currently boasts players from seven different nationalities in the top ten alone. Sexual orientation remains a taboo subject in men’s and women’s professional sport, but with the growth and development of the game, tennis has come to play a powerful role.Three world-ranked players have come out as lesbians, including two former world number one players, Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. Homo-
phobia still exists in tennis and on the tour, but tennis has become the “heroine” because no other sport nor as many fans have openly embraced lesbian athletes. Drug abuse in the form of an anabolic steroid, nandrolone, has become an issue over recent years, particularly in the men’s game. In 1998 the Czechoslovakian Petr Korda tested positive for the steroid, as did seven professional players between 2002 and 2003. Interestingly, all of these players went unpunished because intentional use of the supplement could not be proven. Greg Rudeski is one of twenty-two players who have since tested positive for the steroid (and been excused) despite the ATP’s, one of the governing bodies for men’s professional tennis, instructing trainers not to distribute electrolyte tablets containing the drug. Players are tested throughout the competitive year, as well as three times out of competition (Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, and Andy Roddick were all tested at least twenty times in 2003). However, the ATP is being criticized considerably for allowing unexplainable drug use to run rife in today’s game.
PROMOTING GROWTH OF THE GAME While spectatorship is growing, both the men’s and women’s games continue to struggle to increase participation numbers. From 1988 to 1995, the number of people playing tennis dropped from 20.4 million to 17.8 million. During that same time frame, the number of women participating dropped from 9.1 million to 7.3 million. Since 1995, however, participation has started to escalate. In 2003, 24 million people played tennis in the United States. To foster growth in the game, the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA, www.usta.com), along with national governing bodies in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, have developed programs such as Tennis Welcome Centers, Growing Tennis 50/50, and the Cartoon Network Tennis Club. The USTA has made efforts to diversify participation through grassroots tennis programs that attempt to introduce the game to kids in the inner cities. Worldwide (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, United Kingdom,
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There is a syndrome in sports called “paralysis by analysis.” ■ ARTHUR ASHE
France, Spain, Czech Republic, United States, New Zealand, Columbia, China, and Japan), tennis is a popular and prominent recreational and competitive sport for both men and women and has been an integral component of physical education curricula for children and youth for many years. Events such as “Tennis for Africa Day,” hosted annually in Rome, Italy, and Dublin, Ireland, have attracted top professional players, all participating to raise money and offer assistance to less-affluent countries on the African continent. The goal of such events is to disseminate the game of tennis to all and provide opportunities for nationwide involvement, especially among young people. Katie Sell, Maria Newton, and Lynda Ransdell See also All England Tennis and Croquet Club; Davis Cup; Wimbledon
Further Reading Bartlett, M., & Gillen, B. (Eds.) (1981). The tennis book. New York: Arbor House Publishers Collins, B., & Hollander, Z. (Eds.). (1994). Bud Collins’ modern encyclopedia of tennis. Detroit, MI: Gale Research. Davenport, J. (2001). Tennis. In K. Christensen, A. Guttman, & G. Pfister (Eds.), International encyclopedia of women in sport (pp. 1168– 1173). New York: Macmillian Reference USA. De Knop, P., Engstrom, L.M., Skirstad, B., & Weiss, M. (Eds.). (1996). Worldwide trends in youth sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Gillmeister, H. (1997). Tennis: A cultural history. London: Leicester University Press. Hartman-Tews, I., & Pfister, G. (Eds.). (2003). Sport and women: Social issues in international perspective. London: Routledge. Lichtenstein, G. (1998). Tennis: Net profits. In L. Smith (Ed.), Nike is a goddess: The history of women in sports (p. 57–80). New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Renstrom, P. (1995). Elbow injuries in tennis. In T. Reily, M. Hughes, & A. Lees (Eds.), Science and racket sports (pp. 155–180). London: E & FN Spon.
Thoroughbred Racing See Horse Racing
Title IX
O
n June 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law Title IX of the Educational Amendments. Title IX states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” (20 U.S.C. § 1681(a) [2000]). On that day the landscape of college athletics was forever changed as collegiate institutions were required under federal law to provide equitable opportunities, funding, and benefits to female studentathletes.
History of Title IX Although Title IX was passed into law in 1972, the enforcement of and compliance with this legislation within college athletics has followed many paths. With passage in 1972, there was much debate as to whether Title IX applied to college athletic departments. Language within the legislation was not specific, only referring to education programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. As a result numerous athletic directors and college presidents did not feel athletics was included within the scope of Title IX. In July 1975 the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) issued Title IX regulations to clarify how Title IX should be implemented. These regulations were criticized as being too vague and not providing adequate instruction on Title IX implementation. HEW followed up with policy interpretations in December 1978, but confusion still existed as to the application of Title IX to athletics, considering that athletic language or application was not included in these policy interpretations. Finally, in December 1979 the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education, the successor to HEW charged with the administration and enforcement of Title IX, released policy interpretations that specifically included interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics.
TITLE IX
The next hurdle regarding enforcement of Title IX involved the federal financial-assistance component of the statute. The major point of contention was whether the legislation applied only to specific departments that received direct federal funding or to any department within a school or institution that received federal funding. This issue would be decided in 1984 with the Grove City College v. Bell case. Grove City College is a private college in Pennsylvania that was asked by the Department of Education in 1977 to execute an Assurance of Compliance, meaning that the school would comply with Title IX standards. The department felt that Grove City was a recipient of federal funding through the admittance of students who received Basic Educational Opportunity Grants (BEOGs). The school refused, taking the position that it was a private institution and therefore did not need to comply with the government’s request. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that only programs receiving direct federal funding needed to comply with Title IX (often referred to as a “programmatic approach”). Therefore, at Grove City College only the financial aid program needed to comply with Title IX. This ruling caused the OCR to drop numerous Title IX cases against athletic departments if it could not be established that the athletic department received direct federal funding. In 1987 the Civil Rights Restoration Act (CRRA) was proposed to restore the broad scope of coverage and to clarify the application of Title IX, as well as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Congress felt that the application of these acts had been unduly narrowed and that legislative action was required to restore the broad institution-wide application of these laws. In 1988 the Civil Rights Restoration Act was passed when Congress voted to override President Ronald Reagan’s veto. The passage of the CRRA restored the enforcement muscle of Title IX as now an “institutional approach” would be followed. This meant that if any department or program within an institution received federal funds, then all programs (including athletics) at the institution needed to comply with Title IX.
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Application and Enforcement of Title IX In 1990 the OCR published the Title IX Athletics Investigator’s Manual that sets forth the requirements and standards of Title IX for interscholastic and intercollegiate athletic departments. There are thirteen major factors, or program components, listed in the Title IX Regulation and Policy Interpretations that may be investigated by the OCR. These thirteen component areas may be grouped under three primary headings: financial assistance (athletic scholarships), accommodation of athletic interests and abilities, and benefits and opportunities. The financial assistance component investigates whether the athletic scholarships for male and female student-athletes are awarded on a substantially proportional basis. In determining compliance the OCR will look at the proportion of athletic scholarship dollars provided to male and female student-athletes and compare this with the proportion of athletes who are male and female. In July 1998 the OCR issued a policy interpretation stating this proportional analysis should be within one percentage point. In other words, if the percentage of female student-athletes within the athletic department is 45 percent, the percentage of athletic scholarship aid provided to these female student-athletes should be within 1 percent, or not less than 44 percent. A difference beyond the one-percentage-point allowable discrepancy should not automatically be viewed as a Title IX violation. Within an investigation of Title IX component areas, including financial assistance, the OCR has identified certain “nondiscriminatory factors.” These are factors that have caused the discrepancy to occur, but in themselves are not discriminatory. For example, when analyzing the financial assistance or distribution of athletic-scholarships component area, allowable nondiscriminatory factors include higher costs of tuition for students from out of state that may in some years be unevenly distributed between men’s and women’s sport programs, and a disproportional allocation of scholarship aid in a particular year due to a sport program’s development.
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Title IX Pierre de Coubertin on Female Athletes (1910) Can one permit women . . . to appear as female jockeys? Could one look calmly on from the stands while they broke their skulls? Should female teams be allowed to compete in polo and soccer matches? By no means! Respect for individual liberty requires that one should not interfere in private acts. If a woman wishes to pilot an airplane, no policeman has a right to stop her. . . . But, when it comes to public sports competitions, women’s participation should be absolutely prohibited. It is indecent that the spectators
The second primary area of Title IX compliance is the accommodation of student interests and abilities. This component area addresses the extent to which the institution has met the interests and abilities of male and female students. A three-prong test is used to determine compliance with the accommodation component area. The three-prong test involves the following: (1) whether intercollegiate participation opportunities for male and female students are provided in numbers substantially proportionate to their respective enrollment; (2) where members of one sex are underrepresented (failure to meet prong 1), whether the institution can show a history and continuing practice of program expansion that is responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex; and (3) where the members of one sex are underrepresented and the institution cannot show a continuing practice of program expansion (failure to meet prong 1 or prong 2), whether the institution can demonstrate that the interests and abilities of the members of the underrepresented sex have been fully and effective accommodated by the present program. When investigating the accommodation component area at an institution, the OCR will first compare the ratio of male and female athletes with the ratio of male and female undergraduate full-time students (prong 1). The OCR has no set statistical requirement for allowable discrepancy between these percentages, but certain courts in their decisions as well as institutions have used
should be exposed to the risk of seeing the body of a woman smashed before their eyes. Besides, no matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not formed to sustain certain shocks. Her nerves dominate her muscles, this is nature’s will. Finally, the . . . discipline that is brought to bear on male competitors in order to establish the good order and decorum of a contest is jeopardized by female participation. Source: de Coubertin, P. (1910). Chronique du mois: Défense aux femmes. Revue Olympique, 109–110.
a 5 percent benchmark. If a school fails to meet prong 1, they can still be found in compliance with the accommodation Title IX component area if they meet one of the remaining two tests. The second prong looks at the history of the athletic department. An institution must show that although their participation ratio is not substantially proportional to the student body ratio by sex as required under prong 1, the institution has made progress and shows continued progress toward compliance with steps being taken at the institution. In January 1996 the OCR provided a clarification letter that identified three factors that determine whether an institution has established a history of program expansion: (1) an institution’s record of adding intercollegiate teams or upgrading teams to intercollegiate status, (2) an institution’s record of increasing the number of participants in intercollegiate athletics who are members of the underrepresented sex, and (3) an institution’s affirmative response to requests by students or others for addition or elevation. In evaluating whether a continuing practice of program expansion is taking place, the court looks for any formal policies in place that might indicate that the institution is monitoring the pulse of the interest of its students in anticipation of expansion. Syracuse University was one of the first institutions that met Title IX compliance in the accommodation component area by satisfying prong 2 (see Boucher v. Syracuse University, 164 F.3d 113 [1999]).
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Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. ■ CHARLOTTE WHITTON
The third component area involves benefits and opportunities provided to male and female studentathletes. Within this component area is a laundry list of areas investigated by the OCR including provision of equipment and supplies; scheduling of games and practice time; travel and per diem allowances; opportunity to receive academic tutoring; opportunity to receive coaching; provision of locker room, practice, and competitive facilities; provision of medical and training facilities and services; provision of housing and dining facilities and services; publicity; provision of support services; and recruiting. The 1990 Title IX Athletics Investigator’s Manual contains instructions on each, including tables for the collection of information and for comparison purposes. Basically, it is the goal of Title IX to see that the benefits and opportunities provided to the male student-athletes are comparable with the benefits and opportunities received by the female student-athletes. Once again, nondiscriminatory factors may be involved justifying any discrepancy that may exist. For example, the equipment budget of the male student-athletes overall may be substantially more than that provided to the female student-athletes. This discrepancy is allowable if it can be attributable to certain sport programs primarily on the men’s side that require equipment that costs more or if more equipment is needed due to roster sizes. No violation of Title IX occurs as long as the male and female student-athletes receive comparable treatment.
Key Title IX Lawsuits Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, there have been numerous Title IX lawsuits involving athletic departments at the high school and college levels. Some of these lawsuits have had a major impact on the interpretation and enforcement of Title IX. For example, Grove City College v. Bell, although not involving an athletic department and sport programs specifically, diminished the enforcement application of Title IX to athletic departments due to the “programmatic” approach employed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Another such
court case of importance to Title IX is Cohen v. Brown University (101 F.3d 155 [1996]). In 1991, due to financial constraints within the athletic department, Brown University demoted the women’s gymnastics and volleyball as well as men’s water polo and golf teams from varsity to club status. Female student-athletes brought a class action lawsuit against Brown, claiming that the university discriminated against women in the operation of the athletic program. At issue was the effective accommodation of student interests and abilities component area of Title IX. In 1993–1994, the Brown University athletic department was made up of 38 percent female studentathletes, while the undergraduate enrollment at Brown was 51 percent female. Brown’s defense relied on arguments questioning the application of the “proportionality test,” comparison of the student-athlete by sex ratio to the student body by sex ratio. In 1995 the district court ruled that Brown was in violation of Title IX and ordered Brown to submit to the court within 120 days a comprehensive plan for complying with Title IX. Brown University appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The key argument in the appeals case, and one used often by opponents of Title IX, was the “relative interest” argument. Basically, this argument states that there is a difference in the level of interest in sports among the sexes in general, and, therefore, significant disparities in athletic opportunities should be allowed. In 1996 the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s decision, ruling that Brown had discriminated against female student-athletes. In the decision the First Circuit Court responded to the “relative interest” argument by stating that interest and ability rarely develop in a vacuum, but rather they evolve as a function of opportunity and experience. Women’s lower rate of participation in athletics within colleges and high schools is merely a reflection of the historical discrimination the women have been experiencing, the exact reason for which Title IX was enacted. Brown University appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear it.
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One additional Title IX case of note is Mercer v. Duke University (190 F.3d 643 [1999]). This case is noteworthy in that it involves a woman participating in a men’s contact sport, football. Title IX exempts contact sports from its protection, meaning that Title IX does not mandate equal opportunity in contact sports. Title IX defines a “contact sport” as one in which the purpose or major activity involves bodily contact, such as football, wrestling, boxing, basketball, rugby, and ice hockey. Heather Sue Mercer, an all-state kicker during high school, served as manager for the Duke football team during the 1994 season. During the spring 1995 semester, Mercer participated in conditioning drills with the team and played in an intrasquad scrimmage that April. In that game Mercer kicked the winning 28-yard field goal, with the head coach afterward telling the news media that Mercer was on the team. By the fall 1995 season, Mercer was officially listed by the university on the team roster and regularly attended practices although not playing in any games. During the spring 1996 semester, Mercer participated in conditioning drills with the team. During the 1995–1996 school year, Mercer alleges she was the subject of discriminatory treatment by the university and the football coach, with the coach informing her that she was off the team at the start of the 1996 football season. In September 1997 Mercer filed suit against Duke and the head football coach alleging sex discrimination in violation of Title IX. Duke University argued that Title IX did not apply in this case because football is a contact sport, and, therefore, they were under no obligation to allow Mercer, or any female, to be a member of the men’s football team. The district court agreed and granted Duke University’s motion to dismiss the case. Mercer appealed, with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 1999 that Mercer had stated a valid claim under Title IX regulations. By initially allowing Mercer to try out for the football team (contact sport), the university voluntarily opened the team to members of both sexes. Therefore, Title IX and its regulations regarding discrimination based on gender were applicable. Duke University was found to have violated Title IX by discriminating against
Mercer in cutting her from the football team because she was a woman.
Commission on Opportunity in Athletics Debate In June 2002, Secretary of Education Rod Paige formed the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, a federal advisory panel created to study Title IX. This commission was made up of members from Division I athletic programs, women’s groups, and former or current athletes. It was charged with studying Title IX, including the collecting information, analyzing issues, and obtaining public input, with the goal of improving the application of current federal standards for measuring equal opportunity under Title IX. Over the next eight months, the commission held six public meetings across the United States, hearing testimony and gathering information and data from various constituency groups representing a variety of viewpoints on Title IX and the enforcement standards. On February 28, 2003, the commission released its report, Open to All: Title IX at Thirty. In this report the commission developed twenty-three key recommendations, fifteen of which were approved unanimously. Overall, the commission found strong and broad support for the original intent of Title IX, while also hearing a great deal of confusion and debate over how the law should be enforced. Many of the recommendations put forth by the commission were met with opposition, with two members of the commission, Donna de Varona and Julie Foudy, submitting a minority views report. Their report summarized the concern that a majority of the recommendations put forth by the commission would weaken Title IX’s protections leading to reduced opportunities for women and girls in sport. In July 2003 the Bush Administration endorsed Title IX as is, with no significant changes made to the enforcement methods used for compliance. The political debate surrounding Title IX continues, as organizations such as the National Women’s Law Center, Women’s Sports Foundation, and National Organization for Women, among others, argue the merits of
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Title IX Key Events in the History of Title IX 1972 Title IX is signed into law. 1975 The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) issues regulations to clarify how Title IX should be implemented.
1996 In Cohen v. Brown University the First Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the district court’s decision, ruling that Brown University had discriminated against female student-athletes.
1979 The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education releases policy interpretations that specifically included interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics.
1999 In Mercer v. Duke University the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules Duke University violated Title IX by discriminating against Mercer in cutting her from the football team because she was a woman.
1984 Grove City College v. Bell the U.S. Supreme Court rules that only programs receiving direct federal funding needed to comply with Title IX.
2002 The Department of Education forms the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, a federal advisory panel created to study Title IX.
1988 The Civil Rights Restoration Act restores the enforcement muscle of Title IX, as now an “institutional approach” will be followed. 1990 The OCR publishes the Title IX Athletics Investigator’s Manual that sets forth the requirements and standards of Title IX for interscholastic and intercollegiate athletic departments.
Title IX and the appropriate enforcement methods being used. In contrast the National Wrestling Coaches Association has questioned the appropriateness of certain compliance standards, in particular the proportionality test measuring athletic participation opportunity by sex in comparison with undergraduate student body enrollment by sex. The primary concern of this association, as well as the men’s gymnastics group, is that men’s teams, and thus male opportunities to participate in sport, are being dropped as schools attempt to comply with Title IX. About 400 men’s college teams were eliminated during the 1990s, with wrestling being hit particularly hard. The National Wrestling Coaches Association filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education, arguing that the male student-athletes were being discriminated against due to the enforcement standards directly causing a reduction in men’s sports. This lawsuit was dismissed in May 2004 as an appeals court panel ruled that the parties lacked standing to file the lawsuit, which instead should be litigated against the individual colleges that eliminated men’s sports.
2003 The Commission on Opportunity in Athletics releases its report, Open to All: Title IX at Thirty. 2004 A suit by the National Wrestling Coaches Association arguing that the male studentathletes were being discriminated against due to the enforcement standards directly causing a reduction in men’s sports is dismissed.
Current Status of Title IX The formation of the secretary’s commission to study Title IX in 2003 caused athletic administrators to be attentive to these discussions, with speculation occurring as to whether the compliance standards would be altered. The Bush Administration’s endorsement of Title IX, with no changes being made to the enforcement standards used for compliance, has tempered, for the time being, this concern and debate surrounding Title IX. As federal legislation Title IX is enforced by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education. The NCAA, as governing body of collegiate athletics, has not actively involved itself with this enforcement, but instead through the Principle of Gender Equity directs their member institutions to comply with federal and state laws regarding gender equity. The federal requirements for Title IX have been endorsed recently by the president of the NCAA, Myles Brand, who, while speaking at a meeting of the National Wrestling
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As long as I breathe, I attack. ■ BERNARD HINAULT
Coaches Association in May 2004, told the group that Title IX has been used as an excuse to eliminate sport programs. Title IX should not be seen, though, as the cause. Instead, these decisions are made at the institutional level, and while the number of wrestling programs at NCAA schools over the past two decades has dropped from 363 to 222, the number of football teams has increased from 497 to 619. As part of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX was enacted to eliminate discrimination in educational programs or activities. The positive impact of this law is evident as many new doors of opportunity have been opened for women and girls in educational areas, bachelor and advanced degree programs, medical degrees, and athletics. In 1971, 294,015 girls participated in high school athletics. Today, over 2.7 million girls are participating. From 1981 to 1999, the total number of college women’s teams increased by 66 percent. Although these improvements are impressive, there is still more work to be done, as girls and women continue to experience the benefits that participation in sport can bring. Carol A. Barr See also Gender Equity; Intercollegiate Athletics
Further Reading Berry, R.C., & Wong, G.W. (1993). Law and business of the sports industries. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Bonnette, V. M., & Daniel, L. (1990). Title IX athletics investigator’s manual. Washington, DC: Office for Civil Rights, Department of Education. Symposium: Title IX at thirty. (2003). Marquette Sports Law Review, 14(1). Osborne, B. (2003). Title IX in the 21st century. Marquette Sports Law Review, 14(1), 141–162. U.S. Department of Education, Secretary’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics. (2003). Open to all: Title IX at thirty, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of Education, Secretary’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics. (2003). Minority views on the report of the commission on opportunity in athletics, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Wong, G. W. (1994). Essentials of amateur sports law (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Court Cases: Boucher v. Syracuse University, 164 F.3d 113 (1999). Grove City College v. Bell, 5 U.S. 555 (1984). Cohen v. Brown University, 101 F.3d 155 (1996). Mercer v. Duke University, 190 F.3d 643 (1999).
Tour de France
T
he Tour de France is an annual international bicycling event in which riders who represent different brands compete. It has taken place every year since 1903, except during the two world wars. The race, which is usually during July, lasts a month, and each year the circuit is different. There are twenty race stages on average, each one ranging from 50 to 350 kilometers in length, and together they constitute a more or less regular race route around the country. Since 1977, the race has traditionally finished in Paris on the Champs-Élysées. The yellow jersey designates an individual time classification, which is calculated by adding up the overall time of each individual rider for all stages. There is also a team classification, a best climber classification (polka-dot jersey), and a best sprinter classification (green jersey). The greatest champion of the twenty-first century so far is the American Lance Armstrong, who won the race six times in a row from 1999 to 2004. The Tour has a number of other legendary riders as well. The best-known are the Spaniard Miguel Indurain, the Italian Fausto Coppi, the Belgian Eddy Merckx, the American Greg Lemond, and Frenchmen Louison Bobet, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, and Raymond Poulidor.
History The Tour de France was created in 1903 by Henri Desgrange, editor of the sports newspaper L’Auto, as a way to compete with his main rival, Le Vélo editor Pierre Griffard, as working-class sports entertainment began to emerge and as bicycling became more widespread. In
TOUR DE FRANCE
Belle Epoque France, the stage race concept was immediately a success, helping L’Auto to make a name for itself as France’s leading sports newspaper. The newspaper continued to lead even after it became L’Equipe in 1945, and it still does. Desgrange remained the main organizer of the Tour through the interwar period and initiated major innovations designed to spark the interest of spectators and L’Auto readers. He set up the Tour “caravan,” a collection of team sponsors who follow the pack throughout the race and take care of coordinating each stage. In 1919 he introduced the yellow jersey (yellow for the colors of the newspaper), which was awarded to the temporary leader in the overall individual time category. He chose the mountain stages that were most likely to add zest to the journalistic accounts of sweat and tears. During the 1930s, when Europe went through a period of rising nationalism, he replaced individual riders with national teams. After World War II, the Tour no longer simply outlined the borders of France. As its audience became more international, it crossed over into Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, or Germany for certain stages. After 1948, when press coverage and radio broadcasts were joined by television, the event became even more popular. During the 1960s the Tour enjoyed one of the largest audience in the world. As it became more of a media event, the economic stakes started to rise and, as a result, national teams were replaced by brandsponsored teams. Municipalities hoping to enhance their prestige were more and more eager to host a stage start or finish. Since 2000, the Tour has become the world’s most widely followed annual sports event. Fifteen million people take to the roads in France to see the riders pass by. Each year a total of more than 2000 television programming hours are devoted to the race, reaching 2 billion people in 175 countries.
Significance At least four aspects of the Tour de France contribute to its special character and significance. These are
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identity, gender, economics, and ethics. From its very start, under the revanchist influence of the early 1900s, the race put on a show that featured the national territory and gave the working-class French the image of France they yearned for. The “Great Loop” went on to become one of the testimonials of the French collective conscience. Historian Georges Vigarello describes the symbolic power of the race as a repository of French culture. The popular success of the Tour has also been due to its ability to create a setting for, and elevate a masculine ideal that conformed to, the standards of the working and middle classes during several different periods. Both the total exclusion of women in the event (or their relegation to roles as foils) and the intense media promotion of the physical effort, technical skills, and everwidening territory make the Tour de France a model of hegemonic masculinity. The economic stakes were present from the very beginning, given that the participants were already professional riders. Since then, the stakes have continued to rise, making the Tour one of the annual sporting events that generates the most income. The press has always maintained a close relationship with the event: Only five race directors have reigned from 1903 to 1998, for example, and they have all been journalists. A hundred years after it was created, the Tour (which is under the responsibility of the Amaury Sport Organisation group) has an annual budget of 60 million euros and generates more than 15 million euros per year in profits. The ethical issues are becoming increasingly important. Since Tom Simson died in 1967 during one of the mountain stages, a cloud of suspicion has hung over the Tour. A scandal finally broke in 1998 with what was called the “Festina Affair,” where it was revealed that EPO (erytropoetin) doping was a common practice within the pack. This temporarily shook up the Tour and its image has been tarnished by cases of doping ever since. Thierry Terret
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Further Reading Dauncey, H., & Hare, G. (Eds.). (2003). The Tour de France, 1900– 2003. A century of sporting structures, meanings and values. London: Franck Cass. Duret, P., & Trabal, P. (2001). Le sport et ses affaires. Paris: Métailié. Gaboriau, P. (1995). Le Tour de France et le vélo. Histoire sociale d’une épopée contemporaine. Paris: L’Harmattan. Terret, T. (2003). Le Tour, les hommes et les femmes. Essai sur la visibilité masculine et l’invisibilité féminine. In P. Porte & D. Vila. (Eds.), Maillot jaune. Regards sur cent ans du Tour de France (211– 238). Biarritz, France: Atlantica. Vigarello, G. (1992). Le Tour de France. In P. Nora (Ed.), Les lieux de mémoire (tome III, Les France, vol. 2: Traditions, pp. 886–925). Paris: Gallimard.
and triple jump are measures of how far a competitor can jump horizontally after a running start. The high jump and pole vault test a competitor’s ability to clear a bar at various heights.
LONG JUMP
rack and field events are ancient sports. The men’s javelin, discus, and long jump date back to the first Olympics of the Greeks in 708 BCE, whereas the triple jump, pole vault, and high jump originated with the Celts. The hammer also is an ancient tradition, and the shot put dates back to the seventeenth century when the English army held cannon-ball-throwing competitions. Track and field has progressed from those humble beginnings. The first college meet occurred in 1864 between Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), the world governing body, began with only seventeen federations but today has more than two hundred. Since the revival of the Olympics in 1896 track and field remains one of the premier Olympic attractions. In the United States and Canada track and field events are the most popular high school sports, with more than 950,000 students participating each year. The achievements of track-andfield athletes have ensured that track-and-field events also remain popular internationally.
In 1922 William Dehart Hubbard and Robert Legendre introduced the hitch kick technique to the long jump. Between 1935 and 1968 the long jump world record increased a total of 8 feet, 6 inches (259 centimeters). The world record was 27 feet, 4.75 inches (8.37 meters) until one of the most amazing feats in Olympic history took place. Bob Beamon of the United States became the first person to jump more than 28 (8.5 meters) and 29 feet (8.8 meters) with a leap of 29 feet, 2.5 inches (8.90 meters) at the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City. His jump was not exceeded until Mike Powell and Carl Lewis of the United States jumped 29 feet, 3.25 inches (8.92 meters) in 1991. The long jump is one of the simplest events in track and field. An athlete sprints down a runway (coated with the same surface as the running track), jumps from a takeoff board, glides through the air, and lands in a sand pit. The takeoff board is usually 10 feet (3.05 meters) from the sand but can be closer for less experienced or younger athletes.The athlete throws both feet forward and lands feet first, pivoting the body forward.The measurement is taken from the footprints in the sand. If the athlete steps beyond the takeoff board during the run-up to the pit a foul is called, and the jump is not measured. The format of competition varies, but generally athletes are allowed three attempts to jump, and then all but eight competitors are eliminated. The eight who are not eliminated are allowed three more jumps. Only an athlete’s longest legal jump counts toward the results, and the athlete with the longest jump then wins the competition. Athletes who are successful in the long jump tend to have strong leg and abdominal muscles and superior sprinting speed.
Jumping
TRIPLE JUMP
Jumping events in track and field are the long jump, triple jump, high jump, and pole vault. The long jump
The triple jump entails sprinting down a runway and jumping to reach a maximum horizontal distance. The
Track and Field— Jumping and Throwing
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TRACK AND FIELD—JUMPING AND THROWING
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The Irish champion high jumper Kelly clearing the bar in the 1880s. Notice the difference in technique from modern high jumping.
triple jump is similar to the long jump. Often athletes use the facilities of the long jump, although the takeoff board is usually 40–45 feet (12.19–13.71 meters) for men and 32–36 feet (9.76–10.97 meters) for women. Successful long jumpers are often successful triple jumpers; however, having sprinting speed is not as important as mastering the timing and technique of the three jumps. The form of the triple jump has evolved from the form of three consecutive long jumps by the ancient Greeks to the form of hop, hop, and jump to the modern form of hop, step, and jump. Russian and Polish athletes have had the greatest influence on triple jump technique in modern times. The Polish technique emphasizes the hop phase, whereas the Russian technique emphasizes the step phase. In the hop phase the athlete sprints along a running path, then hops into the air on the takeoff foot and comes down on the opposite foot. The athlete then immediately moves into the step phase, during which the athlete springs or bounds forward and lands on the takeoff foot again.To complete the sequence the athlete goes into the jump phase, during which the athlete jumps into the air once more and lands in the sand. As with the long jump, if the athlete steps beyond the takeoff board during the run-up to the pit, a foul is called, and the jump is not marked.
HIGH JUMP In 1874 Europeans invented the Eastern cut-off technique of the high jump. The Celts then invented the scis-
sor kick in 1876. M. F. Horine of the United States developed a more efficient technique, the Western roll, during which the athlete approaches the bar on a diagonal with the inner leg being used for the takeoff and the outer leg being thrust up to lead the body sideways over the bar. Horine set the world record at 6 feet, 7 inches (2 meters) in 1912. His technique dominated through the Berlin Olympics of 1936. The Western roll led to the straddle technique, which was widely used until Dick Fosbury of the United States unveiled his new technique, the Fosbury flop, during the 1968 Olympics (he won a gold medal). The flop technique required the athlete to jump over the bar head first and land on the shoulders. This advancement in technique was made possible in part by the addition of soft landing material. The high jump differs from the other jumping events in that athletes jump vertical distances. Athletes are allowed three attempts to clear a crossbar that is set between two upright poles 13 feet (4 meters) apart. The crossbar is usually made of fiberglass, and the athlete lands on a cushioned mat called a “pit.” The cross-section of the crossbar can be round, triangular, or square, with the ends being square to rest on the uprights. Athletes run up to the crossbar and must jump off on one foot and clear the crossbar; they may touch the crossbar, but if it falls because they touched it the jump becomes a miss. Athletes can use a variety of techniques to clear the crossbar; however, the Fosbury flop is the most popular. Using this technique an athlete sprints at a perpendicular angle toward the crossbar, then curves and leaps backward over the crossbar, forming a J. The athlete pivots the head, facing upward so that the head clears the crossbar first, and then arches the back over the crossbar as the rest of the body follows, finishing with a leg extension to clear the crossbar. The athlete should land on the shoulders first. An athlete could also use the straddle or dive techniques; however, they are not as successful, and elite competitors almost always choose the Fosbury flop. Usually the crossbar is set at a low height and is raised in set increments. The increments can be anywhere the
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My thoughts before a big race are usually pretty simple. I tell myself: Get out of the blocks, run your race, stay relaxed. If you run your race, you’ll win. . . . Channel your energy. Focus. ■ CARL LEWIS
meet host wants them to be, but they are usually set at 3– 5 centimeters. Athletes choose their starting height and are allowed three attempts at each height. If they fail in all three attempts at any given height, they are out of the competition. If they clear a height, they move on to the next increment. If athletes do not want to jump at a certain height they can elect to pass that height and move on the next height.The athlete who clears the highest height with the fewest misses wins the competition. In the event of a tie a jump-off is performed between the tied athletes.
P OLE VAULT The pole vault originated in Europe, where men used the pole to jump across canals. The goal was to cover horizontal distance rather than vertical distance. The goal became covering vertical distance in Germany in 1875. In 1900 the bamboo pole and vault box were introduced. The aluminum pole was introduced in 1957, followed by the steel pole in 1960. In 1956 the fiberglass pole was invented; modern poles are made of composite materials such as carbon fiber. In the pole vault, like the high jump, the athlete attempts to clear a crossbar at varied heights, but the heights are much higher. The athlete uses a flexible pole to propel his or her body over the crossbar into the air and onto a pit. The pole is typically 12 to 16 feet long (4–5 meters). The vaulter usually grasps the pole 6 inches (15 centimeters) from the top, one hand placed with an under grip and the other hand with an over grip. The vaulter then sprints down a runway and plants the tip of the pole in the vault box. The vaulter then swings the feet upward toward the crossbar and, as the feet near the crossbar, executes a handstand on the pole, pushing the body feet first and facedown over the crossbar. The athlete pushes the pole away from the body, releases it, and drops onto the pit. Athletes are allowed three attempts at each height; if they miss all three attempts they are out of the competition. A miss is charged if the athlete displaces the crossbar or passes underneath it. The crossbar’s height is typically increased by 3–6 inches (8–15 centimeters) at a time.
During the 1990s women began competing in the pole vault, and many states added the women’s pole vault to their high school programs. The women’s pole vault became an Olympic event in the 2000 games.
Throwing Throwing events include the shot put, javelin, discus, and hammer. An athlete wins a throwing event by throwing an object the farthest. The ancient Greek poet Homer recorded one of the first instances of competitive throwing, an account of a rock-throwing competition during the siege of Troy. England’s King Henry the VIII was a noted throwing competitor, and the English army held cannon ballthrowing competitions that evolved into the shot put.
SHOT PUT The word put is derived from an old Scottish word meaning “to thrust,” and the word shot comes from the occasional substitution of a cannon ball for a stone from the Middle Ages onward. The shot put event involves an athlete propelling a heavy metal ball as far as possible. The athlete competes inside a circle. The event began in a 7foot (2.1 meters) square; in 1860 the starting point was changed to circle 7 feet (2.1 meters) in diameter. The athlete cannot leave the circle until the shot lands on the ground. If the athlete does not leave the circle from the back half a foul is called. The distance of the put is measured from the center of the circle to where the shot put landed. An athlete can use only one arm, and thus strength is essential, but an athlete also needs speed and coordination to create the momentum and maximum force during the propelling motion. In most competitions athletes are allowed three attempts, and the eight best performers are allowed three more attempts. The competitor with the farthest distance wins the competition. Athletes use two techniques to propel the shot put. In both techniques an athlete faces the back of the circle, holds the shot against the shoulder and under the chin, and launches the shot by pushing the arm forward, putting the shot, not throwing it. The first technique in-
TRACK AND FIELD—JUMPING AND THROWING
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Table 1. Men’s World Records Event
Distance
Athlete
High Jump
2.45 meters (8 feet .5 inches)
Pole Vault
6.14 meters (20 feet, 1.75 inches)
Long Jump
8.95 meters (29 feet, 4.5 inches)
Mike Powell
USA
Tokyo (JPN)
8/30/91
Triple Jump
18.29 meters (60 feet, .25 inches)
Jonathan Edwards
GBR
Gothenburg (SWE)
8/7/95
Shot Put
23.12 meters (75 feet, 10.25 inches)
Randy Barnes
USA
Westwood, CA
5/20/90
Discus Throw
74.08 meters (243 feet)
Jurgen Schult
GDR
Neubrandenburg (DEU)
6/6/86
Hammer Throw 86.74 meters (284 feet, 7 inches) Javelin Throw
98.48 meters (323 feet, 1 inch)
Nation
Location
Date
Javier Sotomayor
CUB
Salamanca (ESP)
7/27/93
Sergey Bubka
UKR
Sestriere (ITA)
7/31/94
Yuriy Syedikh
URS
Stuttgart (DEU)
8/30/86
Jan Zelezny
CZE
Jena (DEU)
5/25/96
Table 2. Women’s World Records Event
Distance
Athlete
Nation
Location
Date
High Jump
2.09 meters (6 feet, 10.25 inches)
Stefka Kostadinova
BUL
Rome (ITA)
8/30/87
Pole Vault
4.82 meters (15 feet, 9.75 inches)
Yelena Isinbayeva
RUS
Gateshead (RUS)
7/13/03
Long Jump
7.52 meters (24 feet, 8.25 inches)
Galina Chistyakova
URS
St. Petersburg (RUS)
6/11/88
Triple Jump
15.50 meters (50 feet, 10.25 inches)
Inessa Kravets
UKR
Gothenburg (SWE)
8/10/95
Shot Put
22.63 meters (74 feet, 3 inches)
Natalya Lisovskaya
URS
Moscow (RUS)
6/7/87
Discus Throw
76.80 meters (252 feet)
Gabriele Reinsch
GDR
Neubrandenburg (DEU)
7/9/88
Hammer Throw 76.07 meters (249 feet, 6 inches) Javelin Throw
71.54 meters (234 feet, 8 inches)
Mihaela Melinte
ROM
Rudingen (CHE)
8/29/99
Osleidys Menendez
CUB
Rethymnon (GRC)
7/1/01
volves sidestepping to the front of the circle and releasing the shot put; this technique is called the “glide.” The second—and newer—technique involves rotating like a discus thrower and is called the “spin.” In both techniques the key is to gain maximum forward velocity to help speed the shot on its way. Most elite shot putters use the spin technique; however, the glide is still popular, especially at the amateur level, because it is easier to master. In modern times Parry O’Brien of the United States pioneered the spin technique, and Alexander Baryshnikov of the USSR further advanced it. In 1906 16 pounds (7.26 kilograms) become the standard weight of the shot put, although the weight varies depending on the level of competition and the gender of the competitor. Men put a 16-pound (7.26-kilogram) shot for international and collegiate competition and a 12-pound (5.44-kilogram) shot for high school competition. Women’s shot puts weigh 8 pounds, 13 ounces (4 kilograms) for high school, collegiate, and international competitions.
JAVELIN The javelin is a steel-tipped metal spear that athletes throw as far as possible. A javelin measures 8 feet, 6.25 inches (2.6 meters) long and weighs 1.75 pounds (800 grams) for men and measures 7 feet, 2.5 inches (2.2 meters) long and 1.5 pounds (600 grams) for women. The rules for javelin throwing are similar to the rules for other throwing events. The athlete is allowed three attempts, and then the top eight competitors are given three more throws, with the athlete throwing the farthest winning the competition. The most noticeable difference between the javelin throw and other events is that instead of throwing from a circle, the javelin thrower throws from a run-up area that is coated with a rubberized surface. The athlete sprints down a runway toward a scratch line and near the end twists to one side and draws back the javelin; to maintain running speed while leaning back for the throw, the athlete performs a hop or a fast cross step before throwing the javelin. The throw is ruled a foul if the athlete crosses the
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scratch line, if the tip of the javelin doesn’t land first, or if the javelin lands outside of the fan-shaped in-bounds area. Javelin throwers gain considerable forward speed in the run-up to the throw, making their athleticism more similar to that of athletes in running and jumping events than that of strength throwers. Franklin Herd invented the hollow javelin, allowing a javelin to be thrown farther. Felix Erausquarin devised the rotational javelin-throwing technique in 1966 and threw the javelin more than 100 meters. The International Amateur Athletic Federation soon banned that technique, and no competitor threw farther than 100 meters again until 1984.
HAMMER The hammer used in the hammer throw is a metal ball attached to a handle. The handle is 4.3 inches (11 centimeters) wide and is attached to a wire that is attached to a metal ball called the “head.” The head measures 4.3–5.1 inches (11–13 centimeters) in diameter, and the hammer must have a total length between 4.6 and 4.7 inches (11.75 and 12 centimeters) and weigh 16 pounds (7.26 kilograms). The athlete throws the hammer with a spinning motion similar to that used to throw the discus. The athlete stands in a throwing circle, grips the handle with both hands and, while keeping the feet stationary, rotates the head of the hammer above his or her head. The hammer gains momentum as the athlete spins the body around three times and releases the hammer at the front of the circle. If the hammer lands outside the fan-shaped in-bounds area, the throw is ruled a foul. As in the other throwing events athletes are given three attempts, and then the top eight competitors are given three more attempts, and the competitor with the farthest throw A pole vaulter before poles were flexible.
wins the competition. If an athlete steps out of the circle before the hammer lands, a foul is called, and the throw is not measured. The women’s hammer throw was first included in the Olympics in 2000 in Sydney, Australia.
DISCUS The discus throw uses a steel-rimmed hardwood or metal circular platter with a diameter of 8.75 inches (22 centimeters) and a weight of 4 pounds, 6.5 ounces (2 kilograms) for men and a diameter of 7.25 inches (18 centimeters) and a weight of 2 pounds, 3.25 ounces (1 kilogram) for women. An athlete stands in a throwing circle and holds the discus in one hand, with the palm facing down and the arm outstretched. He or she then spins one and a half times toward the front of the circle and releases the discus. After the athlete enters the circle and begins a throw he or she must not touch
TRACK AND FIELD—JUMPING AND THROWING
the ground outside the circle until the discus has landed. A throw must land in the fan-shaped inbounds area, which is a 60-degree arc. The athlete is allowed three throws, and then the eight competitors with the farthest throws are allowed three more attempts. The athlete with the farthest throw wins the competition. In 1954 the concrete circle was introduced, allowing competitors to move much faster. The circle is 8 feet, 2.5 inches (2.5 meters) in diameter. The standard weight of the discus became 2 kilograms in 1907.
Amateurism and Controversy As track-and-field events have developed into modern sports, issues have arisen. One major issue was the status of amateur athletes. For many years track-and-field events were considered purely amateur sports, and athletes could not accept training money or cash prizes. If charged with professionalism, athletes could be banned from competition for life. In 1913 Jim Thorpe of the United States was stripped of his 1912 Olympic victories in the decathlon and pentathlon and banned from further completion after authorities learned he had played semiprofessional baseball. By the end of the decade track-andfield events at their highest levels had become full-fledged professional sports. During the 1980s many countries allowed athletes to receive appearance payments through trust fund accounts. Performance-enhancing drugs have long been a source of controversy in sports. Sports governing bodies as well as countries have implemented testing to control the use of such drugs. Athletes caught using such drugs are banned from competition. Repeat offenders are banned for life, whereas first offenders are often offered a lesser sentence and banned for only one to two years. They are also required to forfeit all records, prize money, and medals.
Competition at the Top Track and field has several major competitions, most notably the World Championships, the Grand Prix, the Golden League, and the Olympics. The World Champi-
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onships, the largest competition outside of the Olympics, were first held in 1983 in Helsinki, Finland. The World Championships are held every two years in varying locations across the world. In 1985 the IAAF created the Grand Prix, which was the first meet to award official prize money. In 1998 the IAAF awarded more than $2.5 million in prize money. In 1998 the IAAF created the Golden League to unify the elite individual meetings held in Europe. The Golden League is comprised of seven meetings rich in track-and-field tradition. It is held during the height of the track-and-field season, which is approximately July and August. For competing athletes the strategy is simple: Win the IAAF Golden League discipline at each Golden League meeting for a share of the Golden League jackpot of 100 kilograms of gold ingots, worth approximately $1 million. The Olympics are the last big track-and-field competition. In 1894 French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin, speaking in Paris to a gathering of international sports leaders, proposed that the ancient games be revived on an international scale. The idea was enthusiastically received, and the modern Olympics were born. The first Olympics were held two years later in Athens and are currently held every four years. All of track and field’s jumping and throwing events have been included in the modern Olympic Games since 1896, although women were not allowed to participate until 1928. In jumping and throwing women competed in only two events: high jump and the discus throw. In 1932 the javelin was added to the list of women’s events, followed by the long jump and shot put in 1948. In 1996 women were given the triple jump, and in 2000 women were given the pole vault and the hammer throw. The jumping and throwing events have had many notable athletes. In the long jump Bob Beamon was the first person to jump more than 29 feet (8.8 meters). Carl Lewis is the only person to win four Olympic gold medals in the long jump. In the triple jump Victor Sayenev won three Olympic gold medals in 1968, 1972, and 1976 and is a former world-record holder. Jonathon Edwards of Great Britain, the current worldrecord holder, was the first person to jump more than
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The more I train, the more I realize I have more speed in me. ■ LEROY BURRELL
60 feet (18.2 meters) in the triple jump. Al Oerter of the United States in the discus was the first person to win four Olympic gold medals in the same event. Sergey Bubka of Ukraine was the first person to surpass 20 feet (6 meters) in the pole vault. The International Amateur Athletic Federation must certify all world records. An athlete may set a world record at any IAAF-sanctioned meet.
Governing Bodies Overseeing organizations for track and field include Amateur Athletic Union (www.aau.com); International Amateur Athletic Federation(www.iaaf.org); International Olympic Committee (www.olympic.org); National Collegiate Athletic Association (www.ncaasports. com); U.S. Track and Field (www.usatf.com); and U.S. Olympic Committee (www.olympic-usa.org). Angela Albers and Martin Short
Further Reading Jacoby, E., & Fraley, B. (1995). The complete book of jumps. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. McNab, T. (1980). The complete book of track and field. Toronto, Canada: John Wiley and Sons. Olsen, E. (1984). On the right track: A spectators’ guide to the Olympic running events. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company. Track & Field News. (1989). Track and Field News’ little blue book. Los Altos, CA: Tafnews Press.
Track and Field— Running and Hurdling
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rack and field is not a single sport but rather a collection of sports. Track and field dates back more than four thousand years and originated through a natural course of events. People of that time did not have sports in mind when they perfected their abilities to run, jump, and throw. These are natural activities of the body and are essential to the development of muscles groups.
These activities also were imperative for survival. In prehistoric times humans had to intuitively find means to survive. Many times their only defense was to run away, jump over, and/or throw objects.These abilities were defense mechanisms as well as aids in the acquisition of food. People had to throw objects to knock fruit from trees and throw weapons to kill animals for meat. Historians argue about the beginnings of organized track and field. Recorded history shows that various civilizations competed in some aspects of track and field. The competitions of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Germanic tribes are well known; however, records show that similar events occurred in early civilizations of India, Egypt, the Americas, and Ireland. The ancient Greeks held gatherings for social amusement and in the process displayed some tests of bodily strength. The Greeks sometimes held such gatherings at funerals of distinguished men. Bodily strength was tested through wrestling or a half-mile foot race. The ancient Olympic Games of the Greeks were the start of track and field events as we know them today. The ancient Olympic Games were based with three central events: the stade, diaulos, and dolichos. The stade was a race of 192 meters, and the diaulos was an outand-back race of double that distance. In the fifteenth Olympiad the dolichos, a long-distance race of about 5,000 meters, was added. In the beginning the Olympic Games featured a limited amount of events and participants. Competition was restricted to men and boys. People began recording accounts of track and field competition during the nineteenth century. During the early 1820s men held running matches, running more than a mile on turnpike roads or race courses. People set aside open grass fields to allow athletes to practice running, jumping, and throwing. Such fields were also used for informal competitions. By the mid-nineteenth century separate athletic cultures emerged. People staged rural sports meetings, two-man races between professional athletes, open professional athletics meetings consisting entirely of running events, open athletic meetings for the middle class (excluding the working class), and intersquad competitions between universities
TRACK AND FIELD—RUNNING AND HURDLING
and public schools. In 1896 Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France revived the modern Olympics Games. The games were held in Athens, Greece, on a cramped, crumbling track of Averoff Stadium. By the twentieth century the Olympic movement was firmly established; however, many countries were not involved in track and field. In the major nations, such as the United States and Great Britain, opportunities to compete were directly related to social class. Therefore, a significant percentage of the national teams were college athletes, who tend to be middle to upper class. Today athletes hold track and field events in every country in the world. Events are easy to stage, which is a major reason for their popularity. The International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), which governs international track and field meets, has more than two hundred member nations. In the United States and Canada track and field events are the most popular sports among high school athletes. Athletes compete in track and field events throughout the year. During the winter athletes participate in indoor events. During the spring and summer they participate in outdoor events. Some outdoor events are converted to indoor events during the winter. These events are the 100 meters, which is run indoors as the 55–60 meters; the 100–110-meter high hurdles, which is run indoors as the 55–60-meter hurdles; and the 1,500 meters, which is run indoors as the 1,600 meters
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(metric mile). The summer Olympics usually follows the outdoor events program.
Women in Track and Field Although the ancient Olympic Games were limited to male participants, women took part in their own festivals in honor of Hera, the patron saint of women runners. At such festivals women competed in running. However, after the fall of the Roman Empire until the beginning of the nineteenth century women were discouraged from participating in physical activity. During the Victorian era women competed in races at fairs and festivals. The first modern meeting in which women competed was held in 1904 in Germany. Women were excluded from the modern Olympic Games because many members of the male-dominated governing bodies felt that women were at physical risk if they competed in track and field events. Baron de Coubertin felt that women had only one task in the Olympic Games: to crown the winners. However, in 1928 women were admitted to the Olympic Games at Amsterdam, Netherlands. They were allowed to compete in only five events: 100 meters, 800 meters, 4 ✕ 100-meter relay, high jump, and discus throw. At the end of the 800-meter race the women runners collapsed from exhaustion because they were relatively untrained. Their collapse reinforced antifeminist beliefs that women should not participate in competitive sports. People protested women’s participation in track and field events. However, despite protests, the hurdles and javelin events for women were added to the next Olympics. Because of the women’s collapse in 1928, not until 1960 were Olympic women athletes
Men clearing field hurdles that are much less forgiving than those used today.
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Track and Field The Running Jumps Careful attention to the proper ratio of rest to exercise was the concern of athletes in the past as it is today. This 1914 account describes the necessary method of training young men for common track and field events. For high school boys, training is a different matter than for college fellows, especially in the common lack of a really reliable coach. At this age exercise and not training is to be sought. Three days a week is the maximum limit for practice, of which only one may be used for competition of any kind. For college men, four days is the most to be desired. No broad-jumper should jump more than twice a week, although at this event as at the others there should be a liberal
allowed to compete in any distance of more than 800 meters.Women had to prove that they have strength and endurance. Many members of the male-dominated society held women to an image of gentility and helplessness and preferred not to see them engage in strenuous activity. As the times changed and women received more rights in society, their opportunities in track and field increased as well. The 1960 Olympics added the 800 meters, and the 1972 Olympics added the 1,500 meters.
Drug Use The use of performance-enhancing drugs has been an eminent problem in track and field as athletes have tried to gain an edge. The best-known drugs used to enhance performance are steroids. Steroids reduce nitrogen loss and increase protein synthesis, enlarging the muscular contracting force. Steroids give greater strength because of increased muscle bulk and improve work rate, which lead to better training. Steroids are now banned, as are certain cold medicines and the dietary supplement creatine. Recently many elite professional track and field athletes have been banned because of positive drug tests.
Sprints Sprints—short-distance races—have been a part of the competitive play of every civilization. Sprints were run
mixture of various exercise for its own sake. Sprinting, hurdling, and long jogs after practice should be a regular part of the early season work, but as the meets come along, absolutely all exercise beyond the limited practice of one’s special event should gradually be abandoned for absolute rest. Before and after a meet as well there ought to be a rest of two days at least. This is because the field events exhaust little muscular energy but a great deal of nervous force, which can be replaced and accumulated only by inaction. For the same reason strict training beyond enough sleep and decent care of the diet is inadvisable. Source: Camp, J. B. (1914). The running jumps. In P. Withington (Ed.), The Book of Athletics (pp. 228–229). Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
in the ancient Greek Olympics. However, the Greeks made no time comparisons because they had no accurate way to keep time. The prime means of comparison was the order in which the runners completed a race. In ancient times runners used starting blocks. Races were started by a herald’s call of “go” or the blare of a trumpet. If a runner started too early he was beaten to death with rods. Athletes developed sprint techniques by trial and error. Ancient sprint techniques were similar to those of modern sprinters. Images on Greek vases show sprinters running on their toes with knees lifted high, bodies erect, arms moving rapidly. When sprint races were held during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most runners were members of nobility, servants of nobility, or the representatives of nobility. In 1850 the stopwatch was invented, allowing accurate timing of sprint races. In the mid-1850s spiked running shoes were invented, giving sprinters traction on cinder tracks. The way in which races start and the techniques used at the start of races have evolved through the centuries and continue to be refined. Until the last half of the nineteenth century, many sprint competitions used “start by consent”: Runners had to agree among themselves on the fairness of the start. A problem of the start by
TRACK AND FIELD—RUNNING AND HURDLING
consent is that each runner had the right to appeal before the race, which often took a long time and caused delays in the race. To reduce this problem a clause was added to athletes’ contracts stipulating that the race would begin by “start by consent” and that if the runners could not reach an agreement in one hour the race would start by gun. Soon all races started by a gun. The dab start was one of the first start techniques that athletes used. It was used until the end of the nineteenth century. In this standing start the front foot hit the ground first. Another technique was a conventional standing start from starting holes. Toward the end of the nineteenth century Michael Murphy, a Yale University track coach, developed a crouch start from starting holes. This start technique provided the runner better stability in the “set” position and greater velocity from the gun. Through the years athletes have used many variations of this start technique. Sprint races include the 55–60 meters (indoors), 100 meters (outdoors), 200 meters (indoors and outdoors), and the 400 meters (indoors-outdoors). Two early sprint stars were Jesse Owens and Wilma Rudolph. Recent sprint stars include Carl Lewis, Florence Griffith Joyner, Michael Johnson, Gail Devers, Maurice Greene, and Marion Jones.
Hurdles Hurdles as a competitive event began during the early nineteenth century in England. The standard distance and height for hurdles were set in the beginning: The hurdle race was 110 meters with ten 3-foot, 6-inch (106 centimeters) hurdles spaced about 9 meters apart. At that time athletes hurdled over sheep hurdles that were fixed to the ground. Sometimes hurdlers had to jump over a rope or cross bar that stretched across the track. Hurdles tended to be run in public schools and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge until the end of the nineteenth century. Alvin Kraenzlein has been called the “father of modern hurdling.” Kraenzlein, a hurdler for the University of Pennsylvania, was known for his sprint action and a straight first (lead) leg over the hur-
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dle. He executed running “through” the hurdles as opposed to jumping over the hurdles and spending more time in the air. In addition to moving hurdles from grass to cinder tracks, U.S. athletes modified the structure of the hurdles. During the late 1890s U.S. athletes introduced a loose hurdle top. Soon after 1900 a hurdle in the shape of an inverted T was designed to swing down in the middle when struck by a hurdler. In 1935 Dartmouth coach Harry Hillman invented the modern weighted L-shaped hurdle because of concern that the inverted-T hurdle would rise up when knocked down and clip the hurdler. The new L shape allowed for more fluid sprinting by hurdlers. The L-shaped hurdle increased the confidence and speed of hurdlers by removing the fear instilled by the inverted-T hurdle. The L-shaped hurdle is used today in competition. Some differences exist between men’s and women’s hurdles. Men have been running 110-meter hurdles at their standard height of 3 feet, 6 inches (106 centimeters) for many years. When women became involved in hurdling they ran 80-meter hurdle races over 2-foot, 6-inch hurdles (76 centimeters) until 1969, when the hurdles were changed to 100-meter races over 2-foot, 9-inch (83 centimeters) hurdles. At the 1900 Paris Olympic Games the 400-meter hurdles were added. In this race thirteen hurdles are placed around the track in 35-meter intervals. The men’s hurdle height is set at 3 feet (1 meter). The 400-meter hurdles for women was introduced in 1974. Well-known 100-meter and 110-meter hurdlers include Roger Kingdom, Renaldo Nehemiah, Gail Devers, Allen Johnson, and Terrence Trammell. Noted 400-meter hurdlers include Edwin Moses,Tonja Buford-Bailey, Kim Batten, Felix Sanchez, Sheena Johnson, and Marie Jose-Perec.
Middle-Distance and Long-Distance Races The only long-distance race in the ancient Greek Olympics was the dolichos, which was about 5,000 meters long. Depictions of dolichos runners show low, economical action of energy, even though the athletes
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A challenge for many sprinters is developing the most efficient way to leave the starting blocks.
seemed to be more muscular than distance runners of today. After the ancient Olympics the next record of competitive distance running occurs during the eighteenth century in England. Most races at that time took place on heaths or race courses at fairs or at running competitions between villages. No standard distances existed for runners by the middle of the nineteenth century; however, the mile was as popular then as it is now. Today middledistance and long-distance running events range from 800 meters to 10,000 meters. The 800-meter race is a balance between endurance and speed. It has evolved into a sprinter race because of faster times by modern athletes. Because of the collapse of the women runners in the 800 meters at the 1928 Olympics, women were not allowed to compete in middle-distance or longdistance races. The 800 meters for women did not reappear on the Olympic program until 1964. Now women participate in all distances and have attained some outstanding performances. Well-known distance runners have included Jim Ryun and Mary Decker. More recently Maria Mutola, Suzy Favor Hamilton, Marla Runyan, and Alan Webb are known for their distance running.
Steeplechase Historians have many theories about the origins of the steeplechase race. One theory is that the steeplechase is a version of the nineteenth-century cross-country race between church steeples. Another theory is that the steeplechase was taken from the horse-racing world in Oxford, England, where people discussed a horse race over obstacles, which led to the race being run on foot. In the steeplechase race athletes jump over oversized hurdles and over water. The first 2-mile (3.21 kilometer) steeplechase race took place in 1864 in a
meet between Oxford University and Cambridge University. The 3,000-meter steeplechase became a formal part of the Olympic program in 1920. Steeplechase races of varying distances had been held at the 1900, 1904, and 1908 Olympics. When the steeplechase first appeared in the 1900 Olympics, runners had to clear stone fences, water, hurdles, and other obstacles. The steeplechase is similar to the 400-meter hurdles. The main difference is that steeplechase racers have freedom on the track and are not restricted to a single lane. Another difference is that the distances between the hurdles and the water jump are not equal. The steeplechase race is run in many meets by men but is gradually becoming popular among women. However, it is not yet an Olympic event for women runners.
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Table 1. Men’s World Records Event
Performance
100m
9.78
Tim Montgomery
USA
Paris (FRA)
9/14/02
200m
19.32
Michael Johnson
USA
Atlanta, GA
8/1/96
400m
43.18
Michael Johnson
USA
Seville (ESP)
8/26/99
110m Hurdles
12.91
Colin Jackson
GBR
Stuttgart (DEU)
8/20/93
400m Hurdles
Name
Country
Location
Date
12.91
Liu Xaing
CHN
Athens (GRC)
8/27/04
46.78
Kevin Young
USA
Barcelona (ESP)
8/6/92
Table 2. Women’s World Records Event
Performance
Name
Country
Location
Date
100m
10.49
Florence Griffith Joyner
USA
Indianapolis, IN
7/16/88
200m
21.34
Florence Griffith Joyner
USA
Seoul (KOR)
9/29/88
400m
47.60
Marita Koch
GDR
Canberra (AUS)
10/6/85
100m Hurdles
12.21
Yordanka Donkova
BUL
Stara Zagora (BGR)
8/20/88
400m Hurdles
52.34
Yuliya Pechonkina
RUS
Tula (RUS)
8/8/03
Relays The modern relays were created in 1893 by F. B. Ellis and H. L. Geyelin of the United States.The standard relays are the 4 ✕ 100 meters and the 4 ✕ 400 meters. Early relay events did not require the use of batons. Instead, the outgoing runner had to wait until he or she was touched by the incoming runner. Now all relays (except the shuttle hurdle relay) require runners to exchange a 28–30centimeter-long baton within an exchange zone. Until the Munich Olympics of 1972 the outgoing runner had to work within a 20-meter exchange zone. A 10-meter acceleration zone was added to allow the runner time to develop speed.The acceleration zone gave the runner more running space, but the exchange of the baton still had to take place in the 20-meter exchange zone.
Nature of the Sport In all track and field distance events the main objective is the same: to be the first competitor to cross the finish line. A bonus is to finish in record time, with a personal record (PR), championship record, national record, Olympic record, or world record. To officially win a competitor must follow the basic rules of track and field. Some rules apply to all events, and some rules apply to a specific event. A general rule
for all events is that all runners must start a race at the same time. A good start occurs when all runners take off after the starter fires the gun. Many runners try to anticipate the starter and get an early edge on the field. When a runners takes off before the starter fires the gun a false start is declared. Each runner is allowed two false starts. When a runner false starts twice, he or she is disqualified. In the United States this rule applies to all meets that are governed by United States Track and Field (USATF). The false-start rule in meets governed by the IAAF has changed. Now the entire field of competitors is given one opportunity to false start. If a runner false starts the entire field is charged with the false start, as if all runners had made the false start themselves. The next false start will be charged to the runner who jumped the gun, and that runner will be disqualified from the race whether or not he or she committed the first false start. The rule was changed because losing time to false starts made maintaining a meet schedule difficult. This rule encourages runners not to anticipate the starter and to wait for the gun. Other general rules involve good sportsmanship: Do not cheat (i.e., use drugs), use deceptive tactics, or inflict intentional harm. Cheating is acting outside of the rules. Using deceptive tactics—such as using illegal
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Track and Field The Art of Hurdling Now a hurdler must have a long, easy stride and plenty of snap and spring in his legs and body. Obviously he must be a good sprinter to begin with, especially to run the low obstacles. The high hurdles are placed ten yards apart and there are ten of them to be safely cleared, and there lies one of the most exciting elements in the race, for there are ten chances for a man to strike a hurdle and lose his stride or tumble, either one of which will put him hopelessly out of the race. For one’s stride is an all-important thing. It
equipment—is a form of cheating. Forms of inflicting intentional harm include pushing, tripping, or cutting off competitors. Any infraction on these rules results in disqualification. Specific running events have specific rules. In the 100 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters, 400 intermediate hurdles, 100-meter and 110-meter high hurdles, and 4 ✕ 100 meters runners must stay in their designated lane. Running out of the designated lane results in disqualification. When a runner takes three consecutive steps on the line separating the lanes, the runner is disqualified. In the 800-meter, 1,500-meter, 3,000-meter, and steeplechase events runners are allowed to break from their designated lane after a certain distance. The 4 ✕ 400-meter relay has variations to the lane rules. The 4 ✕ 400-meter relay can be run with a waterfall start, two-turn stagger, or three-turn stagger. In the waterfall start the first leg (runner) of each team starts at the starting line without a stagger (offset). When the gun is fired the runners must fight for position to get ahead of the field. This start is rarely used because the congestion causes some runners to fall or batons to be dropped. The 4 ✕ 400-meter event can also be run with a two-turn stagger in which the first leg is required to stay in lanes for two curves, and then the second leg is allowed to break as soon as runners get the baton. The most common start for the 4 ✕ 400 meters is the threeturn stagger, in which the first-leg runners are required
must be so regulated as to bring the same foot forward each time a hurdle is to be cleared, and mind you, the high hurdles are three feet, six inches high and the low just a foot shorter. In order to do this, the ten yards must be covered comfortably in three strides. In the low hurdles, which are twenty yards apart, the distance ought to be covered in seven strides. Some short-legged men use nine strides, but they are obviously at a disadvantage. Source: Jackson, A. L. (1914). The art of hurdling. In P. Withington (Ed.), The book of athletics (p. 191). Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
to stay in lanes for the entire lap. When the second-leg runners get the baton they must stay in that same lane for 100 meters or the first curve. After the first 100 meters the second-leg runners are allowed to break their lane and run on any lane on the track (although most runners select lane 1).The runners of the third and fourth legs are also allowed to run in any lane they choose. Although the objective in track and field distance events is to be the first competitor to cross the finish line, no single strategy exists for any event. Sprinters and hurdlers run their races differently than do distance runners. Each athlete adopts a strategy that works best for her or him. However, in most races athletes want to efficiently use their energy. To efficiently use their energy, most athletes rely on technique and form. Runners focus on staying relaxed, keeping their shoulders square, pumping their arms, and maintaining good knee lift. Ideally sprinters want to be explosive and to cover the track rapidly with the minimum loss of speed after peak velocity is reached. A sprint race can be divided into three stages: start, pickup, and finish. At the start, in the sprinting blocks sprinters focus on their reaction time, which is the first muscular response to the gun. After sprinters have reacted to the gun they must apply force backward against the ground. This applied force is important to velocity during acceleration. During the pickup stage acceleration is governed by the power and range of the muscles of the legs during sustained
TRACK AND FIELD—RUNNING AND HURDLING
1631
A lifetime of training for just ten seconds. ■ JESSE OWENS
ground contact. At the beginning of the pickup stage a runner’s body is low to the ground; by the end of the stage a runner’s body is erect. During the finish stage sprinters decelerate toward the tape at the finish line. At the finish line sprinters tend to lean toward the tape because the winner is determined by which torso crosses the tape first. Technique also is important in hurdles. Hurdlers should fluidly sprint over the hurdles, making only slight modifications to sprint technique in order to clear the hurdles. When approaching a hurdle, hurdlers sprint tall toward the hurdle, raise a bent lead leg to clear the hurdle, and snap the lead leg down to the ground. When they snap the lead leg down to the ground, the trail leg circles around the hurdle in a parallel manner. In the short hurdles (100–110 meters) a runner ideally takes three steps between each hurdle. In the long hurdles (400 meters), the runner, depending on stride pattern, tends to run thirteen to seventeen strides between hurdles. Men tend to take thirteen to fourteen strides per hurdle, and women tend to take fifteen to seventeen. Some 400-meter hurdlers alternate from their normal hurdle form and use their normal trail leg as their lead leg when going over a hurdle. Hurdlers tend to alternate legs when fatigue sets in. Some 400-meter hurdlers also use the alternate leg technique to remain consistent over the hurdles. Thus, instead of alternating when fatigue sets in, they train themselves to alternate legs throughout the race. A distance runner should concentrate on increasing her or his capacity to supply the muscles with oxygen. For the 800 meters runners ideally get out hard and run the first lap fast. The second lap is usually strategic, and most runners try to keep the same pace or to not break down too much from the first lap. In the final stretch runners want to come in strong. The times in the 800 meters have decreased so much that some people now look at it as a sprint. In the longer races runners try to run a consistent race pattern or pace throughout the entire race. Some even try to run each lap faster than the previous one.
Facilities and Equipment Although some track and field equipment is specific to some events, the track is used in all running events. The standard shape of the track is oval, containing two curves and two straightaways surfaced with an allweather material (i.e., a rubberized compound). All races are run counterclockwise. The lengths of the sections of a track are usually distributed evenly between the curves and the straightaways. The standard length of an indoor track is 200 meters. Undersized tracks are less than 200 meters. Some indoor tracks are more than 200 meters but less than 400 meters. Indoor tracks can be flat or banked. A banked track has sloped curves, allowing runners to reach top speed without running off the track. Indoor tracks tend to have six lanes. Most outdoor tracks have eight or nine lanes. Most outdoor track competitions are held on an Olympic standard track. The length of an Olympic standard track is 400 meters. Straightaways and curves are 100 meters long. In sprint races runners usually use starting blocks. Starting blocks are designed to give runners traction and power. At the start of a race runners crouch and place their feet on the blocks and their hands on the starting line. At the starter’s command runners come to the set position by raising their hips. When the gun fires runners drive out of the blocks by pushing against the blocks with both feet.
Competition at the Top Track and field meets are held at the league, high school, collegiate, and professional levels. At the league level youths ages five to eighteen participate in club summer track programs. Summer track meets in the United States are hosted by United States Track and Field and American Athletic Union (AAU). High school track meets usually consist of dual meets, relay meets, and open meets. At the end of each season county, district, regional, state, and national track meets are held. In track meets held at the high school level, athletes are allowed to compete against only other high school athletes. Most collegiate track and field athletes are recruited from the high school
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level. At the collegiate level runners compete in many meets. At the end of each season they compete in meets against runners from other schools in their conference. After the conference meets, athletes participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national track meet. This meet includes the best collegiate track and field athletes in the United States and lets athletes compete for a national title. Some athletes at the collegiate level are considered to have elite status and thus are able to compete with professional athletes. Many Olympic teams are comprised of college athletes. Athletes who have completed or withdrawn from their collegiate career compete at the professional level, where they receive product endorsements and monetary compensation. When professional athletes win races at certain meets they also receive prize money.
Governing Bodies Overseeing organizations for track and field include Amateur Athletic Union (www.aau.com); International Amateur Athletic Federation(www.iaaf.org); International Olympic Committee (www.olympic.org); National Collegiate Athletic Association (www.ncaasports. com); U.S. Track and Field (www.usatf.com); and U.S. Olympic Committee (www.olympic-usa.org). Amy Henry
Further Reading Doherty, J. K. (1960). Modern track and field. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. McNab, T. (1980). The complete book of track and field. Toronto, Canada: John Wiley and Sons. Olsen, E. (1984). On the right track: A spectators’ guide to the Olympic running events. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company. Quercetani, R. L. (1964). A world history of track and field athletics 1864–1964. New York: Oxford University Press. Warden, P. (1986). Sprinting and hurdling. Marlborough, UK: British Amateur Athletic Board.
Trotting See Horse Racing
Drawing of school boys in Japan playing tug of war.
Tug of War
T
ug of war is a contest of strength and skill that pits two teams against each other as they pull on opposite ends of a thick rope. Contests like tug of war were long practiced informally in the English countryside. The event is now played as an amateur sport, mainly in Europe and the United States.
History Tug of war is said to have originated in the harvestgathering of ancient China; to have been used to train slaves to haul stones up the Sphinx; or to have developed from the routines used by sailors in hoisting sails and by soldiers in hauling guns up the mountains of India’s north-west frontier. The Dictionary of British Folk-Lore (Gomme 1898) described the evolution of this ludic activity out of a basic catching- and-rhyming game. Two people stood facing one another and held their linked arms in the air. The game continued until there were two teams of linked people. The climax of the activity was a competitive tugging event, which went on until one of the teams broke down or was pulled over the halfway mark. As early as the 1840s, tug of war appeared on the programs of various Scottish Highland Games. By 1880, the Amateur Athletic Association recognized tug of war, and it became part of track and field meetings. In 1958, a Tugof-War Association was formed in Great Britain; by then, there were nearly 1,000 clubs.The sport is coeducational and draws competitors of all ages from around the world. In the United States, tug of war retains a niche in agricultural and county fairs, circuses, carnivals, cel-
TUG OF WAR
1633
Tug of War Tug of War in Korea My favorite of all the activities of this busy month (but one not done in Yean), the tug-of-war (chuldarigi), originated in China but seems to have flourished in Korea. It occurred, and in some places still occurs, on the day of the full moon. The exact procedure for this widespread activity varies. In some villages the two sides are all the adult males against all the women and children. Regardless of age, unmarried people are on the women and children’s side. The women and children are on the west (yin) side, of course, and the adult males on the east (yang). If the women and children win, there is supposed to be a good harvest. As in the ritual I observed, this is a time for recognition of the (char)um side (women, the young, low status, the west, the earth). The rope is ac-
ebrations, and picnics. It has also found a regular place in what has come to be known as corporate challenge “character building” workshops that strive to develop teamwork. Tug of war also continues to be a popular recreational pastime of fraternities and sororities on U.S. college campuses.
What Is Tug of War? Tug of war as a competitive sport is practiced by teams that are members of national tug of war associations, which are affiliated with the Tug of War International Federation. The participants, who must be amateurs, are divided by gender, age, and weight class. Competitions are either indoors or outdoors, and each venue requires specific shoes. Teams must wear normal sports clothing but may also wear protective clothing underneath. Every pulling member holds the rope with both bare hands. Each team attempts to pull the opposing team over a center line on a surface that is approximately 36 meters long. Rules designate the rope dimensions, team substitutions, pulling area, rope grip, pulling position, and position of the anchor (the person who stands at the end of a line of pullers).
tually two ropes bent double and connected by a linchpin in a way that resembles the symbol of the cosmic interplay of yin and yang. Sometimes the hamlets (often named yin and yang) or the east (yang) and the west (yin) compete with each other. In these cases the two ropes are called male and female ropes, and the two sides place themselves in east and west directions and think of themselves as male-yang and female-yin sides. In Ch(char)olla Province, Koch’ang Township, Tongbu village, “the male rope is made to go through the loop of the female rope, then a large wooden linchpin is stuck through from the male rope side.” Source: Dix, G. (1987). The New Year’s ritual and village social structure. In Kendall, L. & Dix, G., Religion and ritual in Korean society (pp. 108). Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California.
Olympic Competition From 1900 to 1920, the event was featured at the Olympics. The rules were simple, with two teams and no weight restriction. The winning team was the one to pull the opposition six feet. The time allowed was five minutes and, in the event that no winner emerged after five minutes, victory went to the team that had pulled its opponents the farthest distance. Regulations changed at each Olympics. In 1900, team size was six; in 1904, there were five to a team; and in 1908, teams comprised eight athletes. At the 1900 Paris Olympics, victory went to the Sweden-Denmark combined team. Four years later at the St. Louis Olympics, when very few Europeans had either the time or money to travel to the United States, the gold medal went to the United States. The four top-placing teams at the St. Louis Olympics were composed of members of track and field teams or gymnastic clubs. At the 1906 Athens Olympics, Germany was the champion. In 1908 at the London Olympics, there were accusations of chicanery. Although the Liverpool police (representing Great Britain) quickly yanked the Americans over the line, the cry went up that the British were cheats. The debate went back and forth. The British
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Chinese children playing tug of war.
policemen claimed that their heavy boots with steel cleats were standard everyday wear. The Americans saw it differently. They felt the Liverpool team was unfairly shod in “special illegal boots.” The Americans were unsuccessful, and British law and order prevailed with gold, silver, and bronze medals going to three teams of constabulary. At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Sweden won the gold medal, and at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, Great Britain triumphed. The record for the longest pull according to Amateur Athletic Association rules (where lying on the ground or “burying” feet are prohibited) is one of 8 minutes, 18.2 seconds, between the Royal Army Service Corps (Feltham) and the Royal Marines (Portsmouth Division) at the Royal Tournament, England, in June 1938. Since 1958, there have been national outdoor championships, and European championships were inaugurated in 1965.
Matthews, P. (Ed.). (1993). The Guinness book of records, 1994. New York: Facts on File. McWhirter, N., & McWhirter, R. (1975). Guinness book of records. London: Guinness Superlatives. Palmatier, R. A., & Ray, H. L. (1989). Sports talk: A dictionary of sports metaphors. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Wallechinsky, D. (1991). The complete book of the Olympics (3rd ed.). Boston: Little, Brown.
Turkey
Governing Body The primary governing organization os the Tug of War International Federation: (www.tugofwar-twif.org). Scott A. G. M. Crawford and Robin O’Sullivan
Further Reading Arlott, J. A. (Ed.). (1975). The Oxford companion to world sports and games. London: Oxford University Press. Gomme, G. L. (Ed.). (1898). A dictionary of British folk-lore. Part 1: Traditional games, II. London: David Nutt. Hoffman, F. W., & Bailey, W. G. (1991). Sports and recreations. New York: Harrington Park Press. John, G., & Campbell, K. (1993). Handbook of sports and recreational buildings: Outdoor sports. London: Sports Council.
T
urkey, founded in 1923, is located between southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia and has a population of 69 million people. Turkey’s history of sports and other physical activities has been influenced by culture, social structure, living environment, and time period.
History During the Early Period Throughout history, from central Asia to Europe and Africa, Turks established a number of states and encountered different cultures.Turks are descended from nomads who roamed central Asia between the Altai Mountains,
TURKEY
1635
Turkey Olympics Results 2004 Summer Olympics: 3 Gold, 3 Silver, 4 Bronze
the Eurasian steppes (vast, usually level and treeless tracts in southeastern Europe or Asia), the Yenisei River, and Lake Baikal. These nomads had a mobile civilization based on tribal organization and shamanistic beliefs that involved worship of nature. Life on the harsh steppes required people to be physically fit.The equestrian tradition was strong: Turkish tribesmen lived on horseback. Physical activities were part of everyday life and primarily were associated with survival, warfare, religious festivals, and celebrations. Turks celebrated the beginning of spring and conducted rituals to mark births, deaths, and marriages that included equestrian games, archery, wrestling, dance, and singing and hunting competitions. Women joined men in these activities. Turks began accepting Islam during the tenth century as a result of close trade relations, migration to Islamic countries, and missionary activities. Conversion brought the abandonment of shamanism and replaced the nomadic warrior life with a settled existence. In the long term Islamic and Turkish traditions dominated the new civilization that emerged in Turkish Anatolia. However, increasing religious constraints and laws restricted Turkish women from public life and consequently from sports and other physical activities. Festivals—organized under the patronage of Ottoman sultans to commemorate the circumcision of sons, births, weddings, war victories, and religion— became popular. They featured activities such as equestrian games, archery, wrestling, horse races, races, weight lifting and stone lifting, and sword competitions. Sports and other physical activities also were used in military schools to improve physical skills. Fields for sports events, training, celebrations, and ceremonies were built as early as the fourteenth century. The most famous archery field (Ok Meydan in Istanbul) had special rules, including rules for training, participation criteria, referees, awards, and behavior. Tekkes, supported by the sultans and the ruling class, were popular sports clubs, especially for Turkish wrestlers and archers. Growing religious influence and the decline of the Ottoman Empire caused traditional sports to lose their popularity and support.
Physical Education and Modern Sports During the nineteenth century reforms were initiated to modernize and Westernize the Ottoman Empire, beginning with Tanzimat (reform and reorganization). Educational reforms created secular schools. Gymnastics (later called “physical education”) courses and fencing were introduced in secular military schools in 1862 as a result of European influences. In 1868 Galatasaray High School became the first school to offer regular physical education classes, introduce modern sports, and organize sports festivals. Even though the Regulation for Public Education program, enacted in 1869, required physical education to be included in Rusdiye (adolescence) schools for boys, only a limited number of schools practiced it. Books on physical education and modern sports, influenced by Europe, were translated to use as educational tools at schools, and articles were published in newspapers and magazines. The first sports clubs were formed by foreign and non-Muslim minorities at the end of the nineteenth century.The Ottoman ruling class prohibited Turkish youngsters from forming or joining sports clubs. The first Turkish sports clubs (for football) were the Black Stockings (1899), Besiktas (1903), Galatasaray (1905), and Fenerbahce (1907). After creation of a constitutional monarchy in 1908 Turks were given more freedom and formed sports clubs and played modern sports. The Ottoman National Olympic Committee was founded in 1908 through the efforts of Selim Sırrı Tarcan, an important role model in the development of Turkish sports and physical education. The Ottoman state was represented by one gymnast at the 1908 Olympic Games in London. Despite the lack of schools, teachers, and gymnasiums, the Ministry of Education issued a physical education course curriculum for teacher-training schools for men in 1911 and for women in 1912. The first sports festival for Turkish schools was organized in 1916 through the efforts of European-educated Turkish teachers and sportsmen.
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The Turkish Sport Associations Union (Turkiye Idman Cemiyetleri Ittifakı [TICI]), considered to be the first national sports institution, was formed in 1922 to develop Turkish sports, establish national sports federations, and represent Turkey at international sports competitions. The first national sports federations of athletics, football, and wrestling were founded in 1922, followed by federations of cycling, fencing, and weight lifting in 1923 and federations of boxing, rowing, swimming, and sailing in 1924.
Development during the Turkish Republic The Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923 after the War of Independence, rose from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The Turkish Republic has undergone an intense period of secularization and modernization with a new constitution and a reform movement. Reforms have led to an increase in sports participation and an increase in the number of clubs and school sports activities. Women were given equal rights, and secular laws enhanced women’s role in society. This enhancement was reflected in sports: Turkish women began participating in modern sports such as athletics, tennis, rowing, volleyball, swimming, and equestrianism. Even though decades of war, revolution, and occupation created a disastrous economy, the government, aware of the importance of sports, provided financial assistance, and Turkey participated with forty athletes in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games in athletics, cycling, fencing, football, wrestling, and weightlifting. Under increasing pressure from the government for involvement in sports as part of a federal ideology, the TICI was abolished, and the semifederal Turkish Sport Association (Tirk Spor Kurumu [TSK]) was established in 1936 and followed by a general directorate of sports in 1938 as an umbrella organization. Not until the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, did the first Turkish women athletes—Suat Fetgeri Aseni and Halet Cambel—take part (in fencing) and
Turkey won its first Olympic medals in men’s wrestling with Yasar Erkan’s gold medal and Mersinli Ahmet’s silver medal. At later Olympic Games and world championships, Turkish wrestlers were successful, and in the 1948 London Games Turkey won twelve medals, all in wrestling. Within the Turkish school system participation in sports and other physical activities increased slowly, hampered by limited hours of physical education classes, limited content, and limited sports facilities and financing. However, during the last decade the success of Turkish national teams and individual athletes at international competitions has increased rapidly. Football continues to be the most popular sport and dominates Turkish sports life. In recent years women’s volleyball teams, men’s basketball teams, athletics teams, and weight lifting teams developed and gained popularity by winning medals at world and European championships and Olympic Games. This success has created new sports role models in Turkey. However, the growing success of Turkish sports is yet to be reflected in the number of participants in recreational and elite-level sports. Nese Gundogan
Further Reading Atıl, E. (1999). Levni and surname: The story of an eighteenth century Ottoman festival. Istanbul, Turkey: APA Tasarım Yayıncılık ve Baskı Hizmetleri. Diem, C. (1982). Asiatische Reiterspiele. Hildesheim, Germany: Olms Presse. Fisek, K. (2003). Devlet Politikası ve Toplumsal Yapıyla Iliskileri Acısından Spor Yonetimi: Dunyada ve Turkiye’de. Istanbul,Turkey: YGS Yayınları. Kahraman, A. (1995). Osmanlı Devleti’nde Spor. Ankara, Turkey: T. C. Kultur Bakanlıgı. Koryurek, C. (2003). Olimpiyadlar. Istanbul, Turkey: Istanbul Olimpiyat Oyunları Hazırlık ve Duzenleme Kurulu. Shaw, S. J. (1976). History of Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey: Vol. 1. Empire of Gazis: The rise and decline of Ottoman Empire 1280–1808. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sumer, F., Uysal, A. E., & Walker, S.W. (1972). The book of Dede Korkut. Austin: University of Texas Press. Tayga, Y. (1990). Turk Spor Tarihine Genel Bakıs. Ankara, Turkey: Genclik ve Sport Genel Mudurlugu. Yıldız, D. (2002). Caglarboyu Turklerde Spor. Istanbul, Turkey: Telebasım Yayıncılık Reklamcılık.
TURNER FESTIVALS
Turner Festivals
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urner festivals (Turnfeste) are gatherings at which turners (members of a gymnasts movement) compete in gymnastics and related sports.These festivals also have social and cultural components. Turner festivals are held in all countries where the system and culture of German turnen (gymnastics) were introduced, especially Austria, Switzerland, and eastern European nations such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Historical Overview Turner festivals of the nineteenth century helped turners unify and build identity. They contributed to the establishment of a national culture and the formation of a body-and-movement culture. They also demonstrated the manners and practices of the turner movement and the ideological, mental, and political values that turners supported. Festivals were associated with national rituals and symbols, reflected most of all in the turners’ language, songs, poetry, flags, clothing, and physical culture. Turner festivals developed out of the Turntage (Turner Days). The most important turner festival before the German Revolution of 1848–1849 took place in 1846 in Heilbronn. It stood for the prerevolutionary culture of
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turnen. There the foundation of a German turner union was supposed to be laid, but the effort failed. National turner festivals have been held since 1860 in Coburg. From 1880 on, with the exception of the period from World War I until 1933, they were held every five years. The Arbeiter-Turn-und-Sportbund (ATSB), which disassociated from the national turner festivals, organized its own national festivals in 1922 in Leipzig and in 1929 in Nuremberg. In 1948, two years before the foundation of today’s Deutsche Turner-Bund (DTB), the first West German turner festival took place in Frankfurt. In East Germany during the Cold War eight turner and sports festivals were held by the Deutsche Turn- und Sportbund (DTSB) in the former sports capital of Leipzig. Besides being athletic festivals they were misused by the totalitarian socialist government for political purposes.
U.S. Turner Festivals For turners in the United States, who founded their first societies in 1848, the festivals were of great significance from the beginning. The American Turner Union organized its first national festival in Philadelphia in 1851. The U.S. turner festivals fostered a feeling of solidarity among turners and German immigrants and provided an important element in the expansion of the ideas and culture of turnen, not only among the immigrant Germans and German-Americans of later generations, but also among U.S. residents who visited the festivals. A climax was reached at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the 1905 turner festival in Indianapolis, Indiana, attracted three thousand participants and more than ten thousand spectators. Since 1881 turner festivals (“Turnfests”) have been held every four years. The men’s competition at the National Turnerfest of the Nordamerikanische Turnerbund in 1905 in Indianapolis. Source: Kevin Grace Collection.
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Turner Festivals The 1909 Cincinnati Turnfest One of the most memorable of the American “Turnfests” occurred in June of 1909 in Cincinnati, Ohio, drawing “turners” from all over the United States. Judging by photos of the scene, it seemed as if the entire city either marched in or watched the parade in honor of the festival—especially since all the factories and stores were closed that day. A proclamation declared: “Cincinnati, famed the world over for the successes of her expositions and dramatic and musical
Women Until World War I the question of whether and how women should participate at the German turner festivals provoked fierce discussions within the movement, generated by a concern for morality and the fear of an emancipation that would destroy German family life and German peoplehood (volkstum). National turner festival officials and many women turners as well were concerned about the women’s reputation. In 1894 fifty women turners from Breslau dared to perform at the eighth German turner festival in that city. Four years later one thousand women turners from Hamburg supposedly performed improper exercises at the ninth turner festival in their home city. Before World War I nonlocal women turners were not allowed to participate at festivals. After the war, when women were able to participate in the national turner festivals, the number of women participants rose. Today about 70 percent of turner festival visitors are girls and women. In the United States women have participated in line formations or mass exercises since the 1870s. Not until 1921 were they allowed to show their skills in competitive events. In the past practical turnen with free and apparatus exercises, turner games, and competition in running, throwing, and wrestling, as well as hikes, trips, and the recitation of poetry, constituted the program of festivals. Today the program of German turner festivals is gymnastics and sports in individual, team, and combined
festivals, has had no opportunity to see so magnificent a festival as that which has been prepared under the popular title of the North American Turnfest.” Considering that 13,000 people participated in the events and another 50,000 attended, the proclamation wasn’t much of an overstatement. Source: Gut Heil!: The 1909 Cincinnati German Turnfest and Urban Sport. Retrieved May 3, 2005, from http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/archives/exhibits2/Turners/index.html
categories, as well as many gymnastic, dancing, and artistic displays.
The Future German turner festivals are held every four to five years in a different city. They still can be characterized as a festivity for the people, as can be seen by their popularity. The thirty-first German turner festival in 2002 in Leipzig was organized by the DTB, with more than 5 million members in more than twenty thousand clubs. About 100,000 people—mostly women—participated before 1 million spectators. Traditions and symbols— among them parading through the hosting city at the beginning of the festival and carrying turner flags— have survived and show a strong connection to the turners’ past. In the United States the importance of turner festivals has declined. In 2003 the number of participants at the fifty-first national festival had declined to a few hundred. These festivals no longer present German-American culture, nor do they attract the public as much. They are mainly attended by turners and their families. Annette R. Hofmann
Further Reading Hofmann, A. (2003). Der Beitrag der Turner zur amerikanischen Festtradition. [The contribution of the Turners to the American tradition of festivities]. In M. Krüger (Ed.), Erinnerungen, Geschichte(n)
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Traditionen: Rekonstruktionen der Vergangenheit zwischen Markt und Mythos [Memories, histories, traditions: The reconstruction of the past between market and mythos]. (pp. 117–130). Hamburg, Germany: Czwalina. Kruger, M. (1996). Körperkultur und Nationsbildung [Body culture and nation building]. Schorndorf, Germany: Hofmann Verlag. Neumann, H. (1987). Deutsche Turnfeste: Spiegelbild der deutschen Turnbewegung [German turner festivities. Mirror images of the German turner movement]. Wiesbaden, Germany: Limpert Verlag.
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Pfister, G. (2000). Frauen bei deutschen Turnfesten: Zum Wandel der Geschlechterordnung in der Turnbewegung [Women at the German turner festivities: The change of gender order in the turner movement]. Sportwissenschaft, 30(2), 141–155. Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig. (2002). Sport Schau: Ausstellung deutscher Turnfeste 1860–2002: Begleitbuch. Leipzig, Germany. Steins, G. (2002). Die Erfindung der Turnfeste. In Berliner [The invention of turner festivities]. Turnerbund (Ed.), Sporthistorische Blätter 11. Berlin, Germany: DruckVogt.
Ultimate Underwater Sports Unionism United Kingdom
Ultimate
U
ltimate is a fast-paced sport that combines elements of soccer, basketball, and football. Opposing teams throw a plastic disk and transition quickly from offense to defense on a large field. Players attempt to score by catching an aerial pass in the opponent’s end zone. Since its invention in 1967 Ultimate— sometimes referred to as “Ultimate Frisbee”—has been one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.
History Ultimate was invented by a group of high school students in Maplewood, New Jersey, who wanted to create a countercultural sport. The students designed what they regarded as the “ultimate sport.” The Frisbee flying disk, a product of the Wham-O Manufacturing Company, was used originally, although Ultimate now officially uses a sturdy 175-gram disk instead of a Frisbee. Ultimate spread by word of mouth and demonstration as people learned to play on college greens and city parks. Before long Ultimate was being played around the world, although it has remained at an amateur level of competition as it has moved from obscurity into the realm of popular culture. However, Ultimate players often refer to themselves as a subculture within the larger athletic world. Approximately 100,000 people in more than forty-two countries play Ultimate, and about half of those players are from the United States. Ultimate is also popular among students at universities in Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
U Ultimate purports to celebrate sportsmanship and fair play by a principle called the “spirit of the game.” Competitive play is acceptable but never at the expense of respect between players, adherence to the rules, and the basic joy of play. Through this spirit of the game, the sport teaches social values and reproaches unacceptable behavior. Ultimate players are responsible for making their own foul and line calls and must resolve any disputes that arise among themselves. Poor sportsmanship is discouraged and creates negative social repercussions. Players say that Ultimate was, from the beginning, a grassroots sport without referees or playbooks. It was created as an alternative to ultracompetitive, professionalized sports. Ultimate also was a response to the rise of violence in sports, the corrupting influence of million-dollar contracts, and the unsportsmanlike behavior of many athletes. The self-image of early Ultimate players emphasized this countercultural identity. Part of the allure for many players was the notion that they were engaging in a unique activity, a sport removed from the mainstream. Ultimate players share a sense of camaraderie that is augmented by the sport’s jargon, which sets social boundaries. People who do not play Ultimate are often confounded by the terms that players yell to one another, such as “force home,” “hammer,” and “lay out for that.” Spectators, who are usually players themselves, also heckle and encourage the teams with Ultimate jargon.To feel that they belong, newcomers must learn Ultimate jargon and culture. Informal pickup games are the most common manifestation of Ultimate. The skills, rules, and culture of the
sport are transmitted through face-to-face contact with other Ultimate players. Players insist that anyone is welcome to participate in pickup Ultimate. However, although nobody is ever turned away from a game, players who feel awkward or clumsy tend not to return after their first attempt. The Ultimate community includes players with various levels of involvement, but those who play most frequently tend to identify most strongly with the community. Games in recreational leagues are more organized than pickup games, but the leagues welcome newcomers and recruit players. Leagues have been established in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. People who want to play more strenuous Ultimate can join regional club teams, which hold tryouts. Club teams travel to tournaments and compete against other club teams in games in which the intensity level is higher than in pickup games. When taken seriously, Ultimate is a grueling sport that requires endurance, speed, and agility. The spirit of the game usually prevails on the field, but plenty of arguments develop. Still, a few players on each team often wear colorful costumes, encouraging lightheartedness in the midst of competition. When the games are over, members of opposing teams are expected to socialize with one another, sharing the esprit de corps of Ultimate. As Ultimate becomes more mainstream each year, veteran players strive to preserve the purity of the sport by highlighting the unique social benefits of Ultimate. However, a growing number of players who come from
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A young woman playing Ultimate.
traditional athletic backgrounds have brought with them the cutthroat mentality that Ultimate was meant to avoid. A boom in popularity and a spike in aggressiveness among players have increased the level of competitiveness. Some Ultimate players lament increasing disputes over calls and less evidence of the spirit of the game. High-level tournaments have begun using controversial “observers”: nonplayers who can assist in resolving player disputes. Many Ultimate purists insist that observers are antithetical to the spirit of selfgoverning cooperation that is meant to guide Ultimate.
Nature of the Sport The Ultimate Players Association (UPA), the governing body of the sport in the United States, was founded in 1979.The UPA continues to modify the rules as Ultimate has evolved, but it has essentially kept the sport intact. Teams of seven players face off on a rectangular field. A regulation field is 64 meters long and 36 meters wide, with 22-meter end zones. Ultimate is a noncontact sport that requires no special equipment aside from a disk and field. Most players wear cleats and use cones to mark the field boundaries. Players run and cut to receive a pass but must stop and pivot when holding the disk. The team who possesses the disk is on offense and scores when one of its players catches a pass in the defense’s end zone. If a pass is not completed, the defensive team takes possession of the disk and transitions into the offense.Teams may play either person-to-person or zone defense. A typical game is played to fifteen points and lasts approximately one and one-half hours. Player substitutions are allowed after a score. Players from both teams commonly exchange songs and cheers after the game and convene at a local bar or restaurant for social time. Aside from their love of the sport, many Ultimate players feel that they share values and have more in common with other Ultimate players than with nonplayers. The self-image of Ultimate players models itself on the ideal of being laidback, sociable, fun, athletic, passionate about the sport, and always ready for a party. Of course, Ultimate players are not all alike. How-
ever, Ultimate aficionados claim that the sport is open to anyone, regardless of ability, race, or class. In fact, Ultimate is primarily a sport for young, white, middleclass men and women who are both athletic and fond of socializing. According to demographic information compiled by the UPA, which has 15,600 members, the Ultimate membership base in 2004 was 65 percent male. Members tend to be young (71 percent are between the ages of nineteen and thirty-four), educated (93 percent have completed a bachelor’s degree), technologically savvy (87 percent own a computer), and middle class (54 percent report household income of more than $50,000). The UPA does not publicize racial statistics, but the sport has made few inroads among nonwhites, especially compared with other sports such as football, baseball, and basketball.
Competition at the Top Elite competition in Ultimate takes the form of local, regional, national, and international tournaments. Among men’s club teams, New York dominated men’s Ultimate during the early 1990s. Boston’s Death or Glory won numerous national and world championships during the late 1990s. In California, Santa Barbara’s Lady Condors reigned among women’s club teams during the 1980s, and Boston’s Lady Godiva captured a series of national and world titles between 1995 and 2002. Separate tournaments are held for mixed (co-ed) and master’s teams. The first World Championships for Ultimate took place in 1983 with teams from Europe and the United States. Japan joined the tournament the following year. U.S. and Canadian teams have prevailed in recent World Championships, whereas Sweden and
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A player who conjugates a verb in the first person singular cannot be part of the squad, he has to conjugate the verb in the first person plural. We. We want to conquer. We are going to conquer. Using the word I when you’re in a group makes things complicated. ■ WANDERLEY LUXEMBURGO
Finland have repeatedly won the European National Championships. Rutgers and Princeton played the first college game in 1972. College national championships have been held annually for men since 1984, and a division for women began three years later. The most successful women’s college teams have been from California, with multiple titles going to Stanford University, University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of California at San Diego. Several men’s collegiate championship teams have also hailed from Stanford and University of California at Santa Barbara. The Junior National tournament for both boys and girls has been dominated by Amherst (Massachusetts) Regional High School, and Canada won the 2002 World Junior Ultimate Championship in Latvia.
The Future Ultimate is not an Olympic sport. Given its selfofficiated nature and the relative lack of sponsorship compared to conventional sports, its potential for professionalization is limited. However, in 2001 Ultimate was included in the World Games (held in Akita, Japan) for the first time as a full medal sport.
Governing Bodies Governing bodies of Ultimate include Asociacion Mexicana de Disco Volador, Australian Flying Disc Association, Canadian Ultimate Players Association, European Flying Disc Federation, Frisbee Brasil (Federacao Paulista de Disco), Hong Kong Ultimate, Korea Ultimate, New Zealand Flying Disc Association, Singapore Ultimate, South African Flying Disc Association, UK Ultimate Association, Ultimate Players Association, and the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF). Robin O’Sullivan
Further Reading Studarus, J. (2003). Fundamentals of Ultimate. Golenta, CA: Studarus Publishing. Ultimate Handbook. (2004). Retrieved November 17, 2004, from: http://www.ultimatehandbook.com/uh/
Ultimate Players Association. (2004). Retrieved November 17, 2004, from http://www.upa.org World Flying Disc Association. (2005). Retrieved March 20, 2005, from http://www.wfdf.org
Underwater Sports
T
he wide variety of sporting or athletic activities that may be pursued underwater are always dominated by an environment that cannot sustain human life. Underwater sports therefore can be classified by the means that participants use to overcome that environmental challenge and fall into three broad categories. Snorkeling, the use of a hollow tube to breathe surface air while the face remains submerged, allows the shallowest penetration of the underwater world and is distinguished from swimming only by the use of that piece of equipment to facilitate breathing. When a swimmer or snorkeler abandons ready access to air by descending beneath the water, that person is engaged in breathhold, or free, diving. When the diver uses life-support equipment to continue breathing without direct access to surface air, he or she is participating in what is generally termed scuba diving. Numerous activities may be pursued underwater, beginning with the simple exploration of an alien environment. Such activities may be enjoyed anywhere from a backyard swimming pool to depths beyond the sun’s reach.The only constraints on sporting activities beneath the water’s surface are those imposed by the challenges of the environment, the means chosen to overcome them, and the ingenuity of participants.
Origins of Underwater Sports Although the widespread pursuit of recreational activities beneath the water’s surface is relatively new, humanity has explored and exploited the sea since the dawn of recorded history. Ancient free divers held their breath to collect foodstuffs, hunt, or obtain materials from shallow depths.The snorkel undoubtedly appeared
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soon after, with the introduction of a hollow reed or similar device that allowed the swimmer or diver to breathe with the face submerged. A person using a snorkel can remain focused on the underwater world indefinitely, but the mechanical effort required to breathe air through a tube while submerged restricts snorkeling depths to only a few centimeters. Unaided free divers can reach significant depths, but they can do so for only short periods. Expanding the limits of depth and time required more sophisticated technology. The Greek philosopher Aristotle reported the use of a diving bell in the fourth century BCE, and Leonardo da Vinci envisioned a submersible life-support system in the sixteenth century. But truly effective systems for preserving human life underwater for extended periods were not developed until the nineteenth century. Even then, the cost, discomfort, and cumbersome nature of the required equipment restricted it to commercial and military applications. Underwater sports did not begin to emerge until the middle of the twentieth century, when the technology required to expand the human reach underwater became widely available. In the 1869 novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, French science fiction author Jules Verne hypothesized that a recently introduced French commercial diving system that pumped air from the surface into a tank carried by a diver and then used a demand valve to supply the diver from the tank could be further modified. By eliminating the first link to the surface and personally carrying all of the required air in a self-contained system, a diver could freely interact with the marine environment. A series of experiments over the ensuing decades produced successful rebreathers, devices that filtered carbon dioxide from a diver’s exhalations and replenished their oxygen levels in a continuous breathing loop. Although useful in military and commercial applications, this technology remained too complex and hazardous for recreational use. Two French inventors, engineer Emile Gagnan and free diver Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997), resolved that difficulty in 1943 with a mechanism similar to the one described by Jules Verne. A demand valve at-
tached to a tank of compressed air provided the diver with a breath of air at the same pressure as the surrounding water. In combination with the snorkel and the recent development of fins worn on the feet to aid propulsion and goggles to allow the eye to focus underwater, would-be adventurers now had access to simple technologies that made submerged recreational pursuits possible.
Dangers Underwater The dangers involved in underwater activities had already been identified when Cousteau and Gagnan began to develop their apparatus. While the risks represented by sea creatures themselves are often ridiculously exaggerated, the laws of physics and human physiology represent significant barriers to underwater sports of all types. The most obvious of those barriers is the simple fact that humans require oxygen to stay alive. Snorkelers have found a solution to that problem, but it presents more substantial difficulties for free divers. At sea level, water pressure increases by one atmosphere for every 10 meters (33 feet) of descent; that is, a person 10 meters below the surface of the ocean is exposed to the normal pressure of the surface atmosphere and an additional atmosphere of pressure from the surrounding water. Descending to 20 meters subjects the diver to three atmospheres of total pressure. Being subject to such pressure has several immediate results. Anyone who has attempted to free dive in even a shallow pool will be aware that the air spaces within the human ear must be equalized with the surrounding water pressure to avoid pain or injury. If the diver is wearing goggles, which provide an air space to allow the eyes to focus underwater, the air within them must also be equalized. Most divers wear masks that enclose the nose as well as the eyes rather than simple goggles so that a gentle exhalation can increase the pressure in the mask to match external pressure and so avoid painful injury. But another consequence of increasing pressure on descent is less obvious. All air spaces in the human body are subjected to changes in external pressure, including the lungs.
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You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That’s the mark of a true professional. ■ JOE PATERNO
Increasing the pressure of the air within the lungs also increases the pressure exerted by the oxygen contained within that air, the oxygen partial pressure. As a result of that increased partial pressure, a submerged free diver may unknowingly metabolize a higher percentage of the total oxygen available in his or her lungs than would be possible at the surface. When the diver ascends, the decreasing external pressure may reduce the remaining partial pressure of oxygen below the level required to sustain consciousness. The resulting phenomena is called shallow-water blackout, and it can prove fatal. Because of this potential, free divers are well advised to pursue the sport in pairs and exercise caution in increasing both the depth and duration of their dives. Perhaps the greatest danger of shallow-water blackout is its counterintuitive nature. Like most dangers in underwater sports, it is associated with shallow water rather than great depth. A moment’s consideration will reveal the cause: If the pressure on a diver goes from 1 atmosphere at the surface to 2 atmospheres at 10 meters, then to 3 atmospheres at 20 meters and so on, it follows that the increase in pressure is 100 percent in the first 10 meters of descent, 50 percent in the second 10 meters, and continues to decrease as the total depth increases. Pressure changes most rapidly near the water’s surface, and it is that rapid pressure change that subjects the human body to the greatest physiological hazards in underwater sports. Breathing compressed gasses underwater further complicates those hazards. The breathing apparatus that Cousteau and Gagnan developed, the Aqua-Lung, provides the diver with air at the pressure of the surrounding water. While the air in a free diver’s lungs is similarly pressurized, it achieves that pressure through physical compression and a reduction in total lung volume. The lungs and the air within them return to surface pressure and capacity as the diver ascends, and the ratio between the amount of air the lungs can hold and the amount that they actually do hold remains relatively constant throughout. A diver on compressed air fills the lungs to their normal surface volume regardless
of depth. Thus ascending without exhaling would force the lungs to expand beyond their normal volume as the depressurizing air expands, leading to rupture of the lungs and a condition known as arterial gas embolism. The mantra of divers using such equipment therefore became “never hold your breath,” marking a complete break with the habit of free diving. Other complications delve even deeper into physics and physiology. Air is composed of approximately 21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen, plus various trace gasses. That is, at the surface humans breathe oxygen at a partial pressure of .21 atmospheres and nitrogen at .79 atmospheres. As those pressures increase with depth, the increasing partial pressure of nitrogen soon begins to exert a narcotic effect. This nitrogen narcosis, or rapture of the deep, impairs higher brain functions and may produce a sense of well-being that increases to euphoria or a sense of unease that increases to terror. As with alcohol and other intoxicants, individual susceptibility varies on a daily basis, but all divers are affected. Memory and reasoning power are often affected first and without the diver’s awareness. This condition may lead the diver to forget that he or she ever experienced any impairment and is often revealed in vague memories of a dive immediately after its completion. The gradual erosion of reasoning power is a more serious danger, for the diver may unknowingly become unable to analyze and respond to an unexpected event. In addition to its narcotic effect, nitrogen is an inert gas that the body does not metabolize. Increasing partial pressures force nitrogen from the lungs into the bloodstream and tissues, where it accumulates. The problem this produces is still referred to as “the bends” because a rapid return to normal atmospheric pressure allows the stored nitrogen to form bubbles that tend to accumulate in joints and the central nervous system.Victims may contort their bodies to relieve joint pain and can experience permanent nerve damage, paralysis, or death. This malady first struck men working in pressurized caissons during bridge construction and was therefore properly known as caisson disease. In 1880 French physiologist Paul Bert suggested that the disease,
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also a problem for commercial divers, was associated with exposure to pressurized nitrogen. In 1910 British physiologist John Haldane confirmed this suspicion and generated a set of tables for staged decompression, gradual ascent from beneath the water or any other pressurized environment, to allow for the release of accumulated nitrogen. The use of such tables allows divers to significantly reduce the incidence of decompression sickness, as caisson disease is now more widely known.
Scuba The fundamental dangers of using an Aqua-Lung could therefore be addressed by the knowledge of physics and physiology available to Cousteau, Gagnan, and their contemporaries. In the wake of World War II, diving with the Aqua-Lung and free diving both became increasingly popular. Continued use of the brand name AquaLung, under which Cousteau and Gagnan first marketed their device, to designate all such devices posed obvious difficulties, and the generic designation of self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, or simply “scuba,” began to emerge as the sport developed in the 1950s. Underwater sports enthusiasts around the world banded together in a steadily growing number of clubs during that decade, aided by a number of best-selling books, popular motion pictures, and television shows that popularized diving. Manuals and standards began to emerge as the number of equipment manufacturers and retail shops increased, but training for scuba diving still reflected its origins in military and commercial instruction. The heavy emphasis on physical fitness, emergency techniques, and performance under stress in an adversarial environment that characterized most training programs limited participation in scuba diving, particularly among women. Resorts dedicated to scuba diving and other underwater activities began to appear in the late 1950s and 1960s as participation increased. Divers benefited from the increased thermal insulation provided by the appearance of commercially available wet suits and the introduction of the buoyancy compensator, a device that allows the scuba diver to float on the surface and adjust
buoyancy throughout the dive. Such equipment was normally designed for male anatomy, making it illsuited or uncomfortable for female divers. Steady growth in tropical tourism and cruise ship vacations in the 1970s introduced thousands of people to snorkeling, free diving, and scuba as the popularity of all three modes of underwater exploration continued to increase. But female participation in underwater sports, particularly in scuba diving, remained relatively limited through the mid-1980s. The steady increase in the number of female divers since that time can be attributed to a number of social and economic factors: the development of less adversarial and physically demanding training standards, the appearance of equipment designed for female use, and wider acceptance of underwater sports as safe activities.
Underwater Activities A number of recreational activities are commonly pursued beneath the water’s surface.Vacationers may be introduced to underwater sports, snorkeling, or free diving to explore the beauty of tropical reefs, but that level of participation is just the beginning of the informal possibilities and the activities formally organized under the Confédération Mondial des Activités Subaquatiques (CMAS), the international organization that governs training and competition in underwater sports. At the informal level, snorkeling and free diving allow the participant to reach beyond exploration into activities such as photography and videography, hunting, and improvised games. CMAS takes the possibilities a little further. Under the auspices of CMAS, free divers can participate in Apnea, competitive breath-hold diving, in a number of categories. The goal of such competitions is to attain the maximum possible depth and safely return to the surface. But that is only one of the internationally organized competitive events CMAS offers. Octopush, an underwater variant of hockey, remains little known despite steady growth since the late 1990s. The sport features biannual world championships and national, regional, and local competitions. In those competitions single- or mixedgender teams of ten contend to move a small metal disk
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across the bottom of a 2-meter- (6-feet-) deep swimming pool and into a goal, using 30-centimenter (12-inch) bats resembling small hockey sticks. Team members employ snorkeling equipment and free dive to the pool bottom to advance the disk or defend their goal. CMAS also establishes international standards for scuba instruction. As in snorkeling or free diving, simply enjoying the underwater environment is only the first level of participation in scuba diving. But competitions in the actual use of scuba equipment are rare and are actively discouraged by much of the international diving community due to safety concerns. Scuba diving is not a competitive sport. Instead, scuba divers participate in a wide range of specialized activities. Underwater hunting and artifact collecting enjoyed widespread popularity as the sport of scuba diving matured, but growing environmental concerns have placed a number of restrictions on those activities. Scuba divers were among the pioneers of the global environmental movement, and the diving community has proven very effective in establishing legal protections and enforcing self-imposed restrictions. As a result of the efforts of divers, in conjunction with other interested parties, underwater parks and marine sanctuaries began to appear in the 1960s and continue to proliferate. Many scuba divers enjoy underwater photography and videography. Some indulge in exploration of underwater shipwrecks and caves, activities that carry added risk and require very specialized training and equipment. With proper gear, scuba divers can pursue such activities from tropical seas to mountain lakes, and even in winter or beneath arctic ice. In one variant of scuba, divers breath air supplied through a hose from a compressor on the surface rather than a true selfcontained system. Often marketed as little more than a powered snorkel, this form of diving subjects participants to many of the hazards found in scuba and should be approached with proper caution.
Technical Diving A number of innovations in scuba equipment and techniques began to emerge in the 1990s, at the same time
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that the growing popularity and safety record of scuba began driving some divers to extend the range of the sport. Many were content to seek new locations, fueling the expansion of diving resorts and underwater sports in some of the world’s most remote aquatic locations. Others sought to expand diving’s horizons by going deeper and further than was previously possible. The later group are identified as technical divers, because their activities depend on an expanded array of equipment, specialized techniques, and complete technical mastery of both for safety as they surpass the excepted limits of recreational scuba diving. One of the defining elements of technical diving is abandoning the use of simple compressed air in favor of more exotic gas mixtures. Expert alteration of the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen or addition of inert gases such as helium into the breathing mix and the use of multiple optimized breathing mixes on a single dive can allow a diver to go deeper and stay longer than is advisable when using normal air. Safely using the full range of such mixtures remains too complicated for the average recreational diver, but during the 1990s oxygen-enriched air, or nitrox, gained wide acceptance in the general diving community, and additional breathing gasses and advanced techniques have continued to migrate from the technical diving community into more general use since that time.
The Future Underwater sports remain in their infancy despite their ancient origins. The recreational use of life-support equipment to explore and enjoy the underwater world —scuba diving—is less than a century old. The technologies involved continue to change rapidly, including the widespread adoption of computers to manage the complexities of dive tables, the growing use of breathing mixtures other than air, and even the introduction of rebreather technologies long restricted to military and commercial applications. Such technologies and advances in understanding of the physics and physiological impact of diving continue to make diving safer and more accessible as they expand the possibilities for human recreation in the underwater world.
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I’m rich. What am I supposed to do, hide it? ■ LOU WHITAKER
Demographics indicate that female participation in most aspects of the sport is growing toward parity, and training agencies are developing standards and protocols to introduce scuba to preteens. The medical aspects of diving are complex, but specialized training and equipment allows many physically challenged individuals to participate in underwater sports, and some studies suggest that such participation may have therapeutic value. Participation in underwater sports is likely to become more widespread and diversified as the sports continue to mature. Jeffery A. Charlston
Further Reading Bookspan, J. (1995). Diving physiology in plain English. Kensington, MD: Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Association. Joiner, J. T. (Ed.). (2001). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration diving manual (4th ed.). Flagstaff, AZ: Best Publishing. McMurray, K. F. (2001). Deep descent: Adventure and death diving the Andrea Doria. New York: Pocket Books.
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ot surprisingly, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) is often referred to as the most successful and most powerful union in the United States. This is the union that brought unrestricted free agency into the world of team sports, and in 2003 the average major league player earned $2.4 million in salary. Yet if we judge by average salary, then the basketball players union (the NBPA) would win the prize: The average player salary in 2003–2004 was $4.4 million. Team sports unions are like no others. First, there is the obvious difference that the membership would hardly qualify as proletarian. Rather, virtually all members reside in the top 1 percent of income earners in the country. Second, unlike traditional unions, team sports unions do not bargain over specific wages; instead, they bargain over the framework within which wages are determined. Sports collective bargaining agreements (CBAs)
also stipulate minimum salaries, benefits, and grievance procedures as well as other general employment provisions. Once the framework is set, individual players and their agents bargain with their teams for salaries above the minimum and other benefits through the addition of special covenants to the uniform players contract. Third, sports unions bargain within a multiemployer bargaining unit. That is, each of the four major team sports leagues, Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL), has thirty or more teams, each of which is separately owned. There is also a wide disparity in revenue across the teams in any given league. The widest disparities are in baseball, where the top team earns over $300 million in revenue and the bottom team earns around $40 million (before revenue sharing). The smallest disparities are in football, a league within which over 70 percent of the revenues are equally shared, where the top team earns approximately $240 million and the bottom team around $140 million. These disparities are important for a variety of reasons. For collective bargaining purposes their largest significance is that team owners have very different economic experiences from each other. These differences, in turn, lead to rather distinct views about what the collective bargaining agreement should accomplish.
MLBPA and Collective Bargaining As the earlier revenue figures suggest, the disagreements among owners tend to be sharpest in baseball, where the problems that ensue from this disunity are at least threefold. First, the owners cannot agree on a common vision for the game, let alone a cohesive plan for its future. Their inability to agree on basic demands inevitably leads to long delays before collective bargaining is initiated. For instance, shortly after the baseball owners reopened the 1990 collective bargaining agreement in December 1992, the owners’ chief negotiator Richard Ravitch told Don Fehr, who represents the players union, that he wanted to start negotiating right away.
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Actual bargaining did not begin until March 1994, sixteen months later. Well in advance of the 2002 CBA, Commissioner Bud Selig formed a unilateral Blue Ribbon Panel in 1998 to study the economics of baseball and make recommendations for reform.The panel produced its report in July 2000. Then, nearly a year passed before Selig authorized Paul Beeston, then MLB’s chief operating officer, to commence discussions with the MLBPA. According to Steve Fehr, a union negotiator, the two sides had twenty-three meetings between 28 February 2001 and 20 June 2001. When the June 20 meeting adjourned, the MLBPA thought they had an agreement. Beeston had responded favorably to the players’ last proposal and said he would get back to them in short order. But the players never heard back. Selig had abruptly terminated the discussions without explanation. The owners did not put their substantive demands on the bargaining table until December 2001—a month after the expiration of the old agreement and eighteen months after the Blue Ribbon Panel’s report was issued. A likely explanation for these delays is the disunity among owners. Since they cannot agree what demands to put on the table, bargaining is pushed back. Then, when they start preliminary bargaining, a previously dormant ownership clique gets wind of the talks, objects, and the talks are terminated. The end result is that bargaining goes down to the wire and either does not get resolved in time (as in 1994) or is resolved in haste (as in 2002) with a flawed structure resting on compromise. Second, when the owners finally are ready to come to the bargaining table, it is usually based on the lowest common denominator among them—they would like salaries to be lower. Accordingly, rather than producing a coherent, balanced plan for the game’s future, the tendency of the owners has been to come to the bargaining table with a demand for unilateral sacrifice by the players that restricts free agency rights in one way or another. This sets an adversarial tone to the bargaining process and reinforces the deep-seated distrust that the players have felt toward the owners.
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Third, the MLBPA confronts formal ownership demands, but in practice it is bargaining with different groups of owners that must be reconciled. It is put in the strange position of triangulating an agreement. This too is conducive to inefficient outcomes. For instance, a few owners may find themselves aligning more closely with the players on the issues of revenue sharing and luxury taxes. We know this to be the case at least with the New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. This phenomenon leads the majority of owners to seek to penalize the owners who break ranks, even if it means deviating from a rational design of its collective bargaining institutions. Similar, though generally less acute, dynamics are at play in the NHL, NBA, and NFL. Strong leadership from the commissioner’s office can help to alleviate some of the centrifugal forces.
Defining Labor Issues While the foregoing may help to explain the difficulty in reaching a collective bargaining agreement, most sports fans cannot understand or accept the inability of millionaire (or billionaire) owners and millionaire players to find common ground. If the issue is cast as a greedy $10 million player who wants to earn $10.5 million, then there is little question that the players do not merit a great deal of sympathy from the fans. Players associations, however, do not see their struggles in those terms. Rather, they want to be sure that the players are getting their fair share of the billions of dollars of revenue generated by the monopoly sports leagues. Owners repeatedly claim to be losing money, yet the value of their franchises keeps rising, and owners have been found to hide revenue from each other as well as from the players associations. Players, thus, tend to resist compensation systems that place restrictions on a free market determination of their value. The players’ struggle for free markets originated in their battle against the reserve clause that prevailed in all the team sports prior to the 1970s. The reserve clause basically allowed teams to retain their players as long as they wanted. Reserved players could
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receive no competitive bids for their services from other teams and, hence, they received artificially depressed salaries.
Free Agency Between 1964 and 1970, the players in each of the four major team sports formed collective bargaining units. Unrestricted free agency, however, was not gained until 1976, when the MLBPA won the Messersmith-McNally arbitration case. Thereafter, players with six years of major league experience (whose existing contracts had expired) qualified to enter the open market and receive competitive bids from other teams. Unrestricted free agency followed begrudgingly in other sports. In the NBA a settlement was reached in 1976 allowing the ABA (American Basketball Association) and NBA to merge, but also creating a form of restricted free agency. The restriction was that a team losing a free agent would be compensated significantly by the team signing the player. This restriction first was replaced by a clause giving each team the right of first refusal before a new team signed one of its players and then, in 1984–1985, by unrestricted free agency along with a salary cap. The cap at the time was set at 53 percent of “defined gross revenues” or DGR. The NBA cap was introduced with one very significant loophole, known as the “Larry Bird Exception.” A team could re-sign one of its own players and pay him as much as they wanted (without regard to the cap). This exception reduced player mobility and made it more likely that a small market team could retain its best players, rather than seeing them flee to a large market club as is the pattern in baseball and hockey. The Bird Exception is still in place. Another interesting development in the NBA points at one of the difficulties of a salary cap system.The amount a team can pay its players (payroll) is set as a percent of some definition of league revenues. But league revenues are based on team revenues, and teams have various ways to legally underreport their revenues. This opens the door for disputes between the league and the union
and this is precisely what happened in 1991. The players brought a proceeding that charged the owners with hiding revenues. In July 1992 a settlement was signed that awarded $62 million to the players. With the 1999 collective bargaining agreement, the NBA introduced an escrow system along with a very stiff luxury tax (over 100 percent) for payrolls that rose above 61 percent of defined revenue. NBA player payrolls have stabilized around 60 percent of defined league-wide revenues. The NFL took a more tortuous route to free agency. The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) became the collective bargaining unit for the players in 1970. The owners refused to yield on any of the players’ key demands, which included unrestricted free agency and impartial arbitration of all disputes. In 1974 the players brought suit against the NFL, and in 1976 the courts declared the NFL in violation of the nation’s antitrust laws. Fewer than half the players, however, were paying dues to the union, leaving the union in a weak bargaining position. In this context the union and the NFL reached agreement on a new CBA in March 1977. Player benefits were increased significantly and impartial arbitration was introduced for most issues, but the new free agency system was still highly restrictive. It stipulated that a team losing a player would have a right of first refusal and then be compensated for the lost player with a first-round draft pick. Moreover, with the NFL’s extensive revenue sharing, owners had little financial incentive to invest in free agents. The result was that very few “free agents” moved to new teams. Ironically, in retrospect, in 1982 the players asked for a salary cap, set at 55 percent of league-wide revenues. When the owners refused, the players began a two-month strike. The strike was settled when the owners agreed to a considerably larger benefit-compensation package, but the issue of free agency remained unresolved. When negotiations for the next CBA opened in 1987, the owners were feeling their oats because their would-be competitive league, the United States Football
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Unionism Resistance to a Baseball Union in the 1920s The ball players seem determined to have another union. As in the case of the old Players’ Fraternity, which collapsed soon after America’s entry into the World War, the present union is being organized from the outside. The strike of the Detroit players in 1911 in protest against Cobb’s indefinite suspension for punching an abusive fan in New York gave Dave Fultz, a retired ball player, the idea for a union of ball players. Unquestionably Ray Cannon, a young Milwaukee attorney, got considerable encouragement when he broached the subject of a union to prominent ball players. It seems largely up to organizer Cannon whether his union shall make itself a nuisance or an organization for the good of the game. Fultz’s Fraternity accomplished some needed reforms, but Fultz then began looking for trouble. In the winter of 1916– 1917, with the war right around the corner, Fultz called upon all fraternity members, major and minor, to sign pledges not to enter into contracts with their clubs until certain grievances of minor league players were met. Knowing as he did the slender thread which bound the majors and minors together, it was a suicidal policy to try to keep players like Speaker, Sisler
League (USFL), had gone out of business the year before. The players had less leverage, but the union was no less determined to gain true free agency. The intransigence on each side led to a three-week strike, which ended when the ranks of the players became divided, and the union leader decided that the players had a better chance with an antitrust action than a job action. After an initial victory, the union was told that it would have to decertify itself as a collective bargaining unit to proceed with its antitrust claims. The union did this and in 1990 filed its McNeil v. NFL case against the league. The jury found in favor of the union, and the owners were forced to negotiate a more open system.
and Johnson from signing big league contracts until Kalamazoo paid $50 back pay to pitcher Schmeltz and Muskogee reinstated catcher Schmitz. The new Players’ Union should profit by the mistakes of its predecessor. No one has any objection to the players forming an organization, especially one which gives some thought to the old down-and-out player. If instead of searching for grievance with a microscope, the new union seeks to do all it can to help the game, it can make of itself a praiseworthy institution. The new union may act as a clearing house for rumors of the diamond in the event that any set of players again attempt to undermine the game. Honest players, with the welfare of the game at heart, have made the mistake in the past of being too clannish. They saw things that they knew did not look right; especially was this true of the honest Chicago American League players in 1919 and 1920, but they whispered it among themselves and never went to the constituted baseball authorities with their suspicions. As far as we recall, Les Mann, who took Phil Douglas’ incriminating letter to Branch Rickey, is the only player who has lent much of a hand in cleaning up the game in recent years. Source: Lieb, F. G. (1923). The new ball players’ union. Sporting Life, 70(24), 24.
In January 1993 the two sides reached agreement. Owners agreed to free agency, but only if there was a salary cap. Players agreed to the cap, but only if player costs first exceeded 67 percent of league defined revenues. Even then, the cap would have to be relatively high—63 percent of defined revenues—and the clubs would have to guarantee that at least 58 percent of defined revenues would be spent on players. Further, the agreement permits teams to exceed the cap by counting only a portion of up-front signing bonuses. (Historically, until then, the players’ share of revenues had averaged less than 50 percent.) Importantly, the owners agreed that there would be no cap in the last year of the deal—1999. Finally, $195 million in damages would
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have to be paid to the players in settlement of various court actions. This same cap system, with small modifications, has been extended four times and has been the basis for uninterrupted labor peace in the NFL since 1993. Labor relations in hockey were at a crossroads in 2004. Although the league did not adopt unrestricted free agency until the mid-1990s, and even then allowed it to only apply to players with at least ten years in the league or thirty-one years of age, the player payroll share in revenue was considerably higher in the NHL (at around 70 percent) than in the other team sports. In part this is because of hockey’s system of salary arbitration, and in part this is because of unrestrained signing bonuses offered to first-year players. The 1995 CBA expired after the 2004 season (as did the league’s television contract with ABC/ESPN). In October 2004 the owners locked out the players. The owners maintained that they would not sign a new CBA unless it included “cost certainty.” The union interpreted this to mean a salary cap and has maintained that a cap is unacceptable. Many observers predicted a long work stoppage and a further weakening of the league’s fan base.
Perspectives Whatever the outcome of the NHL’s labor negotiations, the 2004 dispute once again raises the issue of why labor markets in sports should be different from elsewhere in the economy. Sports unions (the NFLPA excepted) have argued that the free market is the fairest way to value player talent. Don Fehr at the MLBPA and Bob Goodenow at the NHLPA (National Hockey League Players Association) have maintained it would be unconscionable for their unions to accept a set of rules that would prevent team owners from paying players as much as they wanted to pay them. The owners, in contrast, have said that sports are different from other industries because of their popularity. Owners, they argue, come under enormous public pressure to build winning teams, and responding to this pressure leads to intense competition and excessive compensation.
One of the interesting features of the sports industry is precisely its degree of public exposure. Team owners benefit from this because it makes them prominent in the community. This prominence, in turn, yields new contacts and influence in business and political circles. Thus, owning a sports team usually helps to promote an owner’s other businesses. Some owners own one or more businesses significantly related to the sports team (such as a local sports channel or radio station, the arena or stadium, a concessions company, surrounding real estate, etc.). The more important these related businesses, generally, the more valuable a player is to the owner. The player contributes to the value of the team, but also to the other businesses. This effect can produce very large disparities in team payrolls, but it can also create payrolls that are disproportionate to the revenues generated in the sport. Hence, there appears to be a reasonable argument for sports labor markets to be restrained. The MLBPA has accepted implicitly this argument by agreeing to a luxury tax and revenue sharing system. The NHLPA has also stated that it is willing to accept tax-related restraints on payrolls.The question remains whether hard salary caps or incentive systems are the best and fairest way to modify free labor markets in the team sports industry. As long as this issue remains unresolved, collective bargaining in sports promises to continue to be both contentious and interesting. Andrew Zimbalist See also Collective Bargaining
Further Reading Dowbiggin, B. (2003). Money players. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. Leeds, M., & von Allmen, P. (2004). The economics of sport. Boston: Addision-Wesley. Miller, M. (1991). A whole different ballgame. New York: Carol Publishing Group. Staudohar, P. (1996). Playing for dollars: Labor relations and the sports business. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. Szymanski, S., & Zimbalist, A. (2005). National pastime. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Zimbalist, A. (2004). May the best team win: Baseball economics and public policy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
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United Kingdom Olympics Results 2002 Winter Olympics: 1 Gold, 1 Bronze 2004 Summer Olympics: 9 Gold, 9 Silver, 12 Bronze
United Kingdom
T
he United Kingdom was the birthplace of modern sport. From the drawing up of rules to the development of sporting philosophies, Britons have played a major role in shaping sport as the world knows it today. This role meant that British sport was overly insular and confident in its early days, while its post-1945 history was marked by doubts and crises as the nation realized that the rest of the world had moved on, a situation that mirrored the U.K.’s wider crisis of confidence in a postimperial world.
Preindustrial Sports Preindustrial sport in Britain resembled sport in much of Europe. It was not a clearly demarcated activity but rather part of a communal festive culture that saw people congregate to celebrate high days and eat, drink, gamble, and play. The sports of the people reflected their lives: They were rough, proud, and highly localized. Rules were unwritten and based on customs and informal agreements that varied from place to place according to local oral traditions. “Folk” football was one of the most common and popular sports. It had existed in different forms across England and Wales since at least medieval times, but it resembled a melee more than it resembled its modern descendant. Traditional boundaries within rural society were celebrated in such games, with contests between parishes, young and old, and married and unmarried. Other sports played at communal festivals included running races and traditional feats of strength such as lifting or throwing rocks. The physicality of pre- and early-industrial Britain was also reflected and celebrated in bare-knuckle prizefighting, although this widespread sport could not always be clearly distinguished from public drunken brawls. The brutality of life was further evident in the popularity of animal sports. Bear or bull baiting and cockfighting were among the most popular, but such recreations increasingly came under attack in the middle of the nineteenth century from middle-class moral-
ists. The foxhunting of the upper class was not attacked, suggesting that the crusades owed something to concerns about the turbulent behavior of the workers and not only to the suffering of animals. The attacks on animal sports were part of a wider process of modernization that saw Britain transformed into the industrial workshop of the world. Urbanization, railways, factories, mills, and mines saw Britain transformed, economically, environmentally, and psychologically. Modern sport was forged within this heady mix of breakneck change; new ways of working and living brought new ways of playing. Along with the assaults on animal sports, folk football was attacked in towns because it disrupted trade and the general orderliness of the increasingly regimented world that industry was creating. Bare-knuckle fighting, too, was attacked as a threatening symbol of a violent working class that unsettled an establishment already worried by the rise of political demands from the workers. There was, of course, much continuity between preindustrial sport and the commercialized and codified games that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century. Cockfighting and prizefighting, for example, survived the attempts to outlaw them, but they left the centers of towns for quiet rural spots or pubs and back streets that were away from the surveillance of middleclass authorities. Folk football too lived on, although apparently on a smaller scale that was less oriented around traditional holidays and community celebrations. Its survival in this form surely underpinned the speed with which the codified form that emerged from the public schools was taken up by the masses across Britain.
Emergence of Modern Sport While forms of football were on the decline in midnineteenth-century Britain, they were actually being adopted by the country’s public schools as a means of controlling the boys and building their character, both as individual leaders and as socially useful team players. Underpinning the values that football was thought to cultivate were ideas of masculinity and religious conviction. Muscular Christianity deemed that men should
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First time past the stands in the Gold Cup in 1825. Notice the upright riding position.
be chivalrous and champions of the weak but also physically strong and robust. The belief that such qualities would create the right sort of men to lead the British Empire meant that a cult of athleticism, whose importance ran far deeper than mere play, developed within the English public schools.
CODIFICATION Such traditions found a natural extension in the universities. It was here, particularly at Cambridge, that much of the impetus for common sets of rules developed in order to allow boys from different public schools to play together. It was from such beginnings that the moves toward the codification of rules and the establishment of governing bodies mostly sprang. Most famously, representatives of leading London football clubs, including former public schoolboys, met in London in 1863 to establish a common code of rules for football and form the Football Association to govern the game. With rules and a governing body behind them, former public schoolboys went out into the world, taking their games with them. Not only did this encourage the diffusion of sport outside British shores but it also led to modern sport being taken to the masses by a paternal elite who sought to better the health and morals of the masses, not least because of fears of national decline. Games like soccer and rugby were well suited to urban, industrial communities, requiring only limited time and space, and they very quickly developed in popularity among the working classes across Britain during the late nineteenth century. Such developments created an apparent homogenization of sport culture across Britain, but there were distinct local variations.
Knurr-and-spell and hurling, for example, enjoyed some popularity in the north of England and the Scottish highlands, respectively. Such traditional games furthered the continuity between preindustrial and industrial sport, but to survive, even they had to develop modern organizations and sets of rules. Modern British sport was not entirely rooted in the public schools and their spheres of influence. In Sheffield, for example, there were independent attempts to draw up sets of rules for football. Even among the southern middle classes, there developed popular sports, such as tennis, whose origins lay elsewhere. Golf could trace its written rules back into eighteenth-century Scotland, but it was not until the wider sporting revolution and mania of the late nineteenth century that the sport’s popularity exploded among the British middle classes. Cricket was another sport whose written rules were drawn up in the eighteenth century and thus predate the public-school cult of athleticism.
AMATEURISM Professionalism in cricket also dated back to the eighteenth century, but as the phenomena developed in other sports in the late nineteenth century, cricket too developed an obsession with amateurism that was closely allied to the public-school ethos of fair play and playing for the sake of the game. Above all, amateurism was about projecting social position in a period of social change and mobility. To be an amateur in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain was to not need to be paid to play. Thus in cricket, where amateurs and professionals often played on the same team, social distinctions were preserved through the use of different changing rooms, different ways of writing names, and
UNITED KINGDOM
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
initially requiring professionals to labor with bowling and even menial tasks such as cleaning the kit. Yet, despite the snobbery that underpinned amateurism, there was a general reluctance in most sports to impose explicit class-based restrictions on participation, though the Amateur Rowing Association was a notable exception. Furthermore, the reality of amateurism did not always match the rhetoric. Nowhere was this clearer than in the case of cricketer W. G. Grace (1848– 1915). Undoubtedly the most famous sportsman of the Victorian era, Grace was a doctor and a gentleman but he was also supremely competitive and certainly not above gamesmanship and demanding excessively generous expenses.
RUGBY AND SOCCER It was in rugby and soccer that the issue of professionalism became most controversial. The growth of socially mixed northern teams led to broken-time payments, where working men were compensated for missing work in order to play. Such payments, however, not only offended the amateur principles of some of the elite, but they also threatened to take power away from the middle classes, both on and off the playing field. In soccer, professionalism was sanctioned in 1885 in order to ensure that the middle-class Football Association retained control of the game, but it was soon tempered with severe controls on players’ freedom to move clubs and be paid what a free market might allow. Such tensions, fueled by north-south rivalries, led rugby to split into two codes (which became known as league and union) in 1895. Rugby league became a sport whose whole existence and identity was closely interwoven with ideas of working-class identity in northern England.
Watching and Playing Clubs could afford to pay players because soccer and rugby had become something that people watched as well as played. This owed much to the establishment of cup competitions, which, fed by civic and regional rivalries, gave some purpose and excitement to matches. In the industrial north of England, the growing crowds
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began to be charged for the privilege of watching and were hosted in purpose-built grounds. Such crowds worried the class prejudices of social onlookers, who complained about the drinking, gambling, and partisanship of supporters, as well as about the impact on the nation’s health of a population that spent its free time watching rather than playing. When soccer continued to be played after the outbreak of war in 1914, the reputation of professional sport plummeted among the middle classes. Nonetheless, sport was to play an important role in maintaining troop morale at the front, and in the aftermath of the Great War, spectator sport reached new heights of popularity. The largest league games in soccer could attract as many as sixty thousand spectators, yet beyond drinking and gambling disorder was rare. This led the sport to be celebrated as a symbol of the general orderliness and good nature of the British working class at a time of political and social unrest at home and abroad.
MASCULINE ENCLAVES For spectators, professional sport offered an exciting communal experience, where the spheres of home and work could be forgotten in the company of one’s peers. As such, crowds at professional soccer and rugby league games became overwhelmingly masculine enclaves that fed a shared sense of community, and perhaps even class identities. Sport’s ability to promote civic identity was underpinned not by the players, who being professional were transient, but by the supporters and the club sharing the name of their town or city. Yet these crowds were not actually representative of such civic communities. Professional sport was mostly watched by skilled male workers, with only a sprinkling of women and the middle classes. Unemployed and unskilled workers were, by and large, excluded by their own poverty and the relative expense of entry prices. Consequently, as unemployment rocketed in parts of Britain during the interwar depression, professional sport suffered. Some clubs in the hardest-hit industrial regions actually went bankrupt. Working-class women were excluded from professional sport by the
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A wrestling match at a fair during the Elizabethan era.
constraints of both time and money. Even the skilled workers did not show an uncritical loyalty to their local teams. Professional sport was ultimately entertainment, and people exercised judgment over what was worth spending their limited wages on. Men played as well as watched, and the towns of Britain boasted a plethora of different sports, from water polo in the public baths to pigeon races from allotments and quoits in fields behind pubs. Darts, dominoes, and billiards flourished inside pubs and clubs. Space was, of course, a key requirement of sport but it was at a premium and the land that was available was heavily used. For all the excitement that sport enabled men and women to add to their lives, they were still constrained by the wider structures of economic power. Working-class sport could not be divorced from the character of working-class culture. Local sport was thus intensely competitive and often very physical. In both football codes, bodies and fists were hurled through the mud, cinders, and sawdust of the rough pitches that were built on parks, farmland, and even mountainsides. But, win or lose, for many men and boys, playing sport was a source of considerable physical and emotional rewards. For many youths, giving and taking such knocks was part of a wider process of socialization: Playing sport was an experience that helped teach them what it meant to be a man. Similarly, working-class sporting heroes reflected the values and interests of the audience; they were tough, skilled, and attached to their workingclass roots.
CRICKET Cricket was the national sport of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England, in that its following was not limited to one class or region. Matches in urban working-class districts may have lacked the pressed white flannels and neat green wickets of a test match at Lord’s, but they shared the same intricacy and subtlety of play. The contest between the skill and speed of the bowler and the technique and bravery of the batsmen was familiar to both working-class boys and upper-class gentlemen. Cricket’s popularity also owed something to the
rural image of England that it encapsulated. Cricket on the village green was an evocative and emotive image, employed even by a prime minister at the end of the twentieth century. Yet, from the English elite cricket spread not only to the masses of the cities but also to the four corners of the vast British Empire, where it enabled the colonies both to celebrate imperial links and to take considerable pride in putting the English in their place.
HORSE RACING Like cricket, horse racing had been organized since the eighteenth century and was followed by all classes, from lords to commoners. Gambling was at the core of its attraction, and a flutter on the horses was extremely popular, despite its illegality (until 1963) when the bet was placed in cash and outside the race course. As with soccer, the sporting press offered form guides and was studied closely, and elaborate schemes were developed to predict a winner. The race course itself was often rather disreputable, with the sporting entertainment on offer to its large crowds supplemented by beer, sideshows, and in the nineteenth century, prostitutes. It provided the middle classes with an opportunity to (mis)behave in a manner that would be impossible in the wider respectable society.
THE MIDDLE CLASS Respectability did matter on the golf course and in the clubhouse. Although it had a limited working-class following, especially in Scotland, golf was a sport of the middle class and its clubs were important social and business networks that conferred privilege and status within the local community upon their mostly male membership. Tennis too had both a middle-class profile
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United Kingdom Sports during the Boer War in South Africa On Christmas Day, a year ago, General Buller’s army was encamped at Chriveley Hill; and because it was an army of Britishers, the day was given chiefly to sports. Only ten days before this the broken regiments had come crawling back to the camp from the disaster of that mad attack on the Boer position at Colenso. Even now the tents of the foremost brigade were almost within range of the enemy’s big guns. It was a time of strange uncertainty–a time of many rumors. [...] Of course, both the variety of the sports and the extent to which they could be carried out depended upon the material for such to be found with an army in the field. The men of the naval brigade, as always, were most ingenious. They decided to have what they called “a bit of fun” at the beginning of the festivities. Their officers gave permission. They borrowed a gun carriage from a neighboring field battery and arranged long ropes to drag it by. Then they dressed one of their number as Oom Paul Kruger and an-
and a social importance that often marginalized actually playing the game. Like archery and croquet before it, for the urban middle class of the early twentieth century, the tennis club was an opportunity to meet and flirt with members of the opposite sex of the “right sort.” In such ways, sport became an important part of the lives of a middle class that was increasingly socially isolated in the new suburbs.
INTERWAR AND P OST-WAR SPORT Like the rest of Europe, the shadow of war was hanging over the suburbs by the 1930s. In such an atmosphere, sport itself became increasingly political. The England soccer team were even told by the appeasing Foreign Office to give the Nazi salute when playing an international game in Berlin in 1938. The threat from Germany also led to renewed investment in playing fields, as concerns resurfaced about the fitness of a nation on the brink of war. Unlike in World War I, sport was fully pro-
other as John Bull, placed them on the seats, and started to drag the carriage through the camps. [...] In the afternoon all the kinds of sports which were possible under the circumstances were held in the open space about the camp. To the different arms of the service different sports were naturally allotted. The infantry had running races, potato races and the like; the cavalry men engaged each other in wrestling bouts on horseback and tent-pegging competitions; the Royal Army Medical Corps organized a race of ambulance wagons–and these same ambulances which now went tearing wildly over the rough ground of the veldt in order to be first across the finish line, to-morrow or the next day would crawl out cautiously behind the advancing battle front to bring back the wounded from the field; but the most important of all were the horse-races of the mounted infantry brigade. Source: Scull, G. H. (1899, December). Vacant hours in war: the sporting instinct of the Britisher. Outing, 3, 333–334.
moted during the 1939–1945 conflict, as an improver of spirits and bodies for civilians and troops alike. Britain finished World War II victorious but physically and economically exhausted. In the austerity that marked the late 1940s, sport was one readily obtainable relief and, encouraged by growing radio coverage, soccer, rugby, cricket, and boxing enjoyed huge crowds. There were also large crowds at the 1948 Olympics, which London hosted in the hope that the games would rejuvenate tourism and help put some color into the postwar austerity. The games were an organizational success and even made a profit—the last Olympics to do so until 1984. After leaning toward isolationism in both politics and sport during the interwar years, the postwar period saw a new awareness in Britain of its relationship with the rest of the world. With the Empire being dissolved, international competitions like the Olympics began to matter more as indicators of national vitality. The conquest of Everest in 1953 offered
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United Kingdom Sports, Teamwork and Colonialism The following analysis of British colonial rule in the Sudan indicates that involvement in sports made for more efficient administration. The fact that most members played games and participated in sports gave them a similarity of outlook which was clearly reflected in their handling of administrative matters. The esprit de corps which bolstered the provincial polo team was equally applicable in organizing a road gang or supervising the construction of a bridge. Source: Collins, R. O. (1972). The Sudan political service: A portrait of imperialists. African Affairs, 71(1172), 297.
some optimism and confidence for the future, but soccer, Britain and the world’s most popular game, was not reassuring for its inventors. England’s first forays into the World Cup were far from successful and indicated that the country’s loss of global power was not confined to the political sphere.
The Television Era As economic prosperity returned in the 1950s, spectator sport suffered a downturn in popularity because it now had to compete against the lure of shopping, cars, and increased domestic comforts, of which television was one of the most alluring. Such alternatives were particularly appealing to older men, and thus the 1960s seemed to witness crowds, in soccer at least, become younger. One consequence was the rise of a youthful football-fan culture that utilized humorous but obscene and aggressive chants and promoted fighting between rival supporters. The media spotlight, increasingly looking for sensational stories from across sport, amplified the hooligan problem, but from the late 1960s to the 1980s football fans created a genuine and widespread subculture that drew more upon the thrill of limited violence than upon any sense of a disempowered youth rebelling against the world.
Initially, there was only limited sport shown on television, and many sporting authorities, not least soccer authorities, feared that coverage would kill live audiences. Yet others, like golf and horse racing authorities, saw television as an opportunity to develop their popularity and thus they courted its coverage. The growth of televised sport was therefore sporadic; in the 1950s and 1960s it was often limited to edited highlights or live coverage of only the biggest events on the sporting calendar. Yet televised sport was to become hugely popular and influential. In the 1960s, coverage of the Olympics and the 1966 World Cup won mass audiences and turned the events into shared celebrations of a global sporting culture. Wimbledon became, for most people, a television event rather than a live tennis championship, while rugby league became inextricably linked to the northern tones of commentator Eddie Waring. By the 1970s, television coverage had also helped turn rugby union’s Five Nations Championship into a very popular competition that transcended the sport’s middle-class English foundations.
COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES Television also opened up opportunities to utilize sport commercially, not least through sponsorship. Athletics was one sport where television and sponsorship increased its profile and popularity, but this also created tensions between the amateur traditions of the administrators and the commercial demands of the stars. Other sports suffered similar tensions and responded by either slowly becoming explicitly commercial, as in the case of professional golf, or turning a blind eye to transgressions of amateur code, as in parts of rugby union. Yet ultimately money talked and amateurism gave way to commercial pressures across senior sport. The changes television was bringing about could be radical. Cricket proved surprisingly willing to embrace change and even introduced a one-day Sunday League as early as 1967, as it searched for a more accessible and exciting one-day format to supplement the waning fourday county game. After the invention of color television,
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snooker was televised from the late 1960s, and the sport was transformed from the realm of smoky pubs to something resembling a national craze.The relatively static nature of the game meant that it was cheap to broadcast and conducive to dramatic close-ups. Snooker also had the characters and personalities that the media was increasingly seeking in its coverage of sport.
SATELLITE TV The real commercial boost from television came in the 1990s with the development of satellite television. Soccer was seen as the key to securing an audience for the new medium. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Global Network spent enormous sums on securing and then keeping the rights to televise the game’s senior division. After the 1980s—when hooliganism and the fatal horrors of disasters at Bradford, Heysel, and Hillsborough had seen English football sink to its lowest ebb of popularity and standing—Sky’s millions enabled the game’s upper echelon to reinvent itself in the 1990s. New all-seater stadiums (enforced by the government to avoid a repeat
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of the ninety-six deaths at Hillsborough in 1989) made watching soccer both safer and more sanitized, and an influx of talented foreign players raised standards of play, while a more cynical and overtly commercial edge developed among the game’s owners and administrators. Players were the main beneficiaries as their profile, wages, and sponsorship opportunities rapidly escalated in the now hugely fashionable and celebrity-conscious game. David Beckham epitomized this transition, with his pop-star wife, countless sponsorship deals, and media-frenzied private life. Fans meanwhile could watch more soccer than ever on television but actually attending matches had become extortionately expensive. Other sports were keen to follow soccer’s example. Rugby league became Super League, its teams gained American-style epithets, and the sport moved from winter to the less-crowded television schedules of summer. Rugby union, fearing being left behind, suddenly abandoned its amateur heritage and turned professional in 1995, a move that was to bring it as many financial headaches as rewards.
Identities and Inequalities In the second half of the twentieth century, spectator sport and television may have become interwoven in a relationship built on money, but participatory sport did not die out. However, it too became part of a leisure industry that sold everything from training shoes to personal gyms, and
A traditional British stile on a footpath, used to prevent livestock from leaving the pasture.
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. ■ WINSTON CHURCHILL
participation remained skewed by class. The wealthier appeared not only more able to afford to play sport but also more interested in doing so. The foundations and boundaries of the British class system were becoming increasingly blurred, and the diminishing class associations of the most popular sports reflected that. Yet historical legacies and financial requirements meant that equestrian sport still remained beyond the reach and often the tastes of the masses, while activities such as boxing and darts remained closely allied to workingclass culture. Success at such sports could take performers out of their working-class origins, but this did not end the cultural resonances that had been built up over a century. Nor were the gender biases of sport ended by the equal opportunity ethos of the late twentieth century. Playing and watching sport remained far more popular among men, despite the significant advances made in female participation rates and the profile of some leading sportswomen. Olympic athletes like Denise Lewis and Kelly Holmes may have ventured into the celebrity world of sports stardom, but at the start of the twentyfirst century, women are still on the margins of sport in terms of numbers, profile, and culture. Athletes from Britain’s ethnic minorities have, however, broken through into the mainstream of nearly all the country’s most popular sports. In the early twentieth century, there had been occasional black athletes, in boxing and soccer in particular, but it was the 1970s, when the sons of the first generation of largescale immigration reached adulthood, that saw British sport become genuinely ethnically mixed. By the twenty-first century, England’s national teams had even had black and Asian captains in soccer and cricket, respectively. Such achievements were not simply symbolic but also encouraged a degree of wider racial integration in national culture. Yet sport has also been, and continues to be, the site of explicit racism (notably in the form of soccer chants) and more subtle prejudices about the playing abilities of different ethnic groups. Such prejudices must surely explain why a pro-
fessional soccer player of note has yet to emerge from the U.K.’s large Asian population. While little sustained media attention was ever devoted to sporting inequalities based on class, gender, or ethnicity, nationhood was a topic of widespread popular interest. When in 1999 the Chelsea Football Club fielded a team that did not include a single British player, there were debates about globalization’s potential impact on the future success of British international sides. Sport had always played an important role in shaping national identity within the United Kingdom. For the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish, it had had an important symbolic role in affirming their nationhood and equality with England. While the Scots and Welsh enjoyed cutting the English down to size at football and rugby, the Irish increasingly rejected these sports in favor of their own indigenous games, such as Gaelic football and hurling, which could be used to symbolize a separate, and non-British, cultural heritage. Martin Johnes See also All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club; Ascot; Boat Race (Cambridge vs. Oxford); British Open; Commonwealth Games; Henley Regatta; Lord’s Cricket Ground; St. Andrews; Wembley Stadium; Wimbledon
Further Reading Cox, R., Jarvie, G., & Vamplew, W. (Eds.). (2000). Encyclopedia of British sport. Oxford, UK: ABC Clio. Cronin, M. (1999). Sport and nationalism in Ireland: Gaelic games, soccer and Irish identity since 1884. Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press. Hill, J. (2002). Sport, leisure and culture in twentieth-century Britain. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan. Holt, R. (1989). Sport and the British: A modern history. Oxford, UK: Clarendon/Oxford University Press. Holt, R., & Mason, T. (2000). Sport in Britain, 1945–2000. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Jarvie, G., & Burnett, J. (Eds.). (2000). Sport, Scotland and the Scots. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell. Johnes, M. (2005). Sport in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Polley, M. (1998). Moving the goalposts: A history of sport and society since 1945. London: Routledge. Tranter, N. (1998). Sport, economy and society in Britain, 1750–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Values and Ethics Venice Beach Violence Volleyball
Values and Ethics
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thics generally refers to the question of what is right or correct from a moral standpoint. The study of ethics necessitates the critical examination of beliefs. This process involves clarifying the principles that undergird beliefs and subjecting them to rigorous interrogation (Simon 2004).The conundrum for sport scholars is to understand the field of sport as one in which competing and sometimes contradictory values and ethics are debated and idealized (Eitzen 1999). Understanding this complex situation requires defining an approach to the subject, rather than providing clear-cut answers. Ethical inquiry into sport forms a broad field, often with very different areas of investigation and conclusions. A variety of theories and models have been employed and can be applied to the example of sports. Simon (2004) argues that what these models and theories share is an approach that combines three common features: (1) impartial moral reasoning: one must consider multiple perspectives and points of view, giving no special consideration to his/her position or group; (2) systematic consistency: regardless of characteristics, people should receive comparable responses to similar actions; and (3) reflective judgments: one must consider actual and hypothetical examples from a critical perspective. By approaching ethical dilemmas from a perspective that employs these three features, a reasoned consideration may be made. Sport mirrors the human experience and society in ways that make inquiry illuminating (Eitzen 1999).
V Debates over Ethics and Values Since the inception of modern sport with the advent of industrialization, a host of issues have been debated. Many debates perceived as current also plagued early modern sport and often ancient sport as well. Such debates focus on questions of inclusion/exclusion, the nature of competition, acceptable methods by which to pursue excellence, sportsmanship, and responsibilities toward bodies at risk.
THE NATURE OF COMPETITION Since the inception of modern sport with the rise of industrialization in the nineteenth century, the nature and value of competition has been considered from an ethical standpoint. Is “winning the only thing,” or is it immaterial compared to “how one plays the game”? In the first case, competition itself must be critically considered. Some scholars contend that competition may be inherently immoral or may reinforce undesirable social values. Others note that competition promotes many positive traits such as loyalty, character, and perseverance (Simon 2004). While some argue that participation in sport builds character, teamwork, and a host of other positive virtues, Shulman and Bowen (2001) report that these traits are already present in athletes. In other words, perhaps those who already possess the traits thought to be taught by sport self-select into them. Further, many question the benefit of some of the values imparted in competitive sport. Feezell (1987) argues that victory at all costs is by necessity ethically problematic, while others contend that being able to eschew
victory reflects a privileged position that not all athletes (whether recreational or professional) occupy. The enormous amount of debate over this subject reflects a wide range of cultural beliefs and differing social experiences.
WHAT IS A GOOD COMPETITOR? How one evaluates what a good competitor is depends on one’s views of competition. Is the best competitor the one who plays with honor and dignity or the one who may use anything to win, including intimidation and psychological warfare? Additionally, who one is affects how the larger culture has viewed competition. Early women’s sport had to contend with the idea that competition would make women “manly,” and therefore, competition was considered inappropriate for women. This view carried the weight of institutional verification as medical professionals counseled that the exertion and excitement of competition endangered the reproductive viability and even life of women (Cahn 1994). While many female educators decried the negative consequences of competition, others lauded the positive virtues and saw it as a vehicle to achieve equal rights. Such beliefs still surface in charges that women aren’t interested in competition or that women’s sports are secondary to men’s because they represent a less competitive version of games.
APPROACHES TO COMPETITION Simon (2004) notes there are several different philosophical approaches to competition in sports. In the first case, one could adopt a utilitarian perspective and focus on competition in terms of the consequences. If
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Values and Ethics Animal Baiting Criticized Animal baiting, whether involving dogs, bulls, badgers, or bears, has always been controversial. This extract published in The New York Spectator on 7 September 1827 takes the critical view. Bull Baiting.—The following is the note of “Humanitas,” to which we referred yesterday. The author is a gentleman of respectability, and we therefore call upon the police to interpose and prevent the barbarous spectacle proposed by Mr. Armstrong on Thursday next. One of our friends, in passing Harlem, at the time, accidentally saw the cruel scene. Mr. Editor—As a friend of “humanity and correct morals,” will you give a hint to the guardians of our city, of a most bloody and cruel Bull Bait, which took place at Armstrong’s tavern, at Harlem yesterday afternoon—and also, that notice was given that another “Piece of Sport” of the same kind, would take place next Thursday, at the same place. These exhibitions are scandalous, and with all the vices attending in their train, tend much to paralyze every effort that can be made for the increase of morality, and virtue among us. Source: Menna, L. K. (Vol. Ed.). (1995). Sports in North America—A documentary history: Vol. 2 The origins of modern sports, 1820–1840 (pp. 78–79). Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
so, one must determine how consequences will be evaluated. In the second case, one could evaluate competition in terms of its operating as a “mutual quest for excellence.” In this view the ways in which competition may or may not impede this quest are considered. While some contend that competition has simply been redefined as a quest for excellence, others point to how competitive spirits may elevate the play of all involved. For example, being in a competitive situation may lead to an athlete’s setting a new record. Third, competition as competition with the self must be considered. Does competing with one’s earlier performances serve as a positive motivating force? Certainly, many athletes
strive to improve in ways that seem to be beneficial and positive. Fourth, is winning central to competition? While some argue that winning is at the heart of competition, others contend improvement, the elevation of the game, and how one plays the game are central. What becomes clear is that there is no simple answer to these questions. If one considers that each athlete may take away different lessons from the same sporting situation, the picture becomes even more complicated. What follows from debates surrounding the nature of competition is the behavior of those competing. Sportsmanship and cheating require closer investigation.
Sportsmanship and Cheating The code of “sportsmanship” is often cited as an example of ethical beliefs, but a great deal of confusion exists as to what the term explicitly means. The slogan adopted by the Sportsmanship Brotherhood in 1926, “not that you won or lost but how you played the game” seems to embody popular sentiment on sportsmanship (Keating 1964). Keating also suggests that what makes sportsmanship so hard to define is that individuals engage in sport at a wide range of levels and with very different goals. He notes that for the recreational setting sportsmanship is an injunction that one should conduct oneself in a manner such that the pleasure found in the activity is not detracted from for oneself or one’s fellow participants. The difficulty in this, as Keating points out, is that it asks those engaged in emotionally charged and sometimes high-stakes competition to act as if they were merely engaged in a diversion. Keating suggests a concept of fair play, in which opponents mutually demonstrate similar expectations to define competitive sportsmanship, while Feezell (1987) suggests that an even more fluid definition that takes specific situations into account be employed to address each situation uniquely.
CHEATING Cheating seems a clear-cut issue, but what exactly constitutes “cheating”? The controversial ending to the 1999 Women’s World Cup, in which the American
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One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it. ■ KNUTE ROCKNE
team beat the Chinese team in overtime penalty kicks provides an often cited example. Following the match, American goalkeeper Briana Scurry admitted that she had consciously violated the rules. She took two steps toward shooter Liu Ying and successfully blocked the shot. But is this cheating? Or is it a calculated risk, for which she was willing to incur possible penalty? Is a strategic decision to violate the rules and run the risk of “getting caught” cheating? While some argue that attempting to gain an unfair advantage by breaking a rule deliberately exemplifies poor sportsmanship and qualifies as cheating (Feezell 1987), others contend that it is the responsibility of officials to prevent such infractions (Simon 2004). Pearson (1973) argues that there are two types of deception possible in sport—strategic and definitional deception. Strategic deception involves an athlete’s tricking an opponent within the rules of the game. Definitional deception involves an athlete’s deliberately breaking the rules of the game. In this view, while strategic deception is acceptable, definitional deception, as committed by Scurry, is not. Debates over the intentional foul in basketball reveal the complexity of the situation. While some argue the intentional foul is unsportsmanlike, others argue that the very fact players are given a limited number of fouls to “use” implies that they may be strategically deployed. Still others note that it’s not a foul unless the referee calls it. Therefore, nothing the player does is relevant; rather, it’s how the referee interprets actions.
Role of Performance-Enhancing Drugs The question of cheating becomes more involved when one considers the role of performance-enhancing drugs in sports.The Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) scandal that broke in 2003 (in which four men employed by BALCO were charged with distributing steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing substances to top athletes) demonstrated that the use of such illegal drugs is endemic in amateur and professional sports. Part of the problem involves what defines a performance-enhancing substance. Certainly, legal painkillers, caffeine, and other
commonly used products enhance performance. But at what point does a substance become illegal? One would think this is an easy definition; but not all leagues have banned some substances.While some argue that athletes have a legitimate right to use performance-enhancing substances, others maintain the risk to athletes outweighs the benefits to performance. Still others contend that the use of performance-enhancing drugs detracts from the sanctity of the game. Some note the coercive pressure to use such drugs is problematic and that athletes may feel they must consume potentially harmful substances to remain competitive.
Sport and Socialization Similar to arguments centering around competition, the role of sport in socialization generates a great deal of ethical debate. Mirroring traditional divides between functionalist and conflict theorists, debates focus on the integrative function of sport. Some note that sport socializes children by extolling positive virtues like loyalty, courage, and perseverance. Further, participation in sport teaches teamwork, the value of hard work, and responsibility. While many presume these to be positive values, other scholars note that some of what is taught is problematic. While Marxist scholars are critical of the ways in which sport mirrors the logic of capitalist production, inculcating athletes with specific traits that prepare them to be compliant workers (Rigauer 1981), post-structuralists expand on these ideas to note the disciplinary aspects of sport participation. Moreover, sport, in its role of defining masculinity, has long been seen by some as socializing men into a form of masculinity that is violent and misogynist.
Inclusion/Exclusion When considering ethical issues in sport, one must consider debates over access and control. Who can play in which venues? For whom is sport appropriate? What type of sport? There has long been a schism between idealized, legitimated venues and popular amusements. Modern sport has featured a number of venerated forums—for example, college sports and the
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Values and Ethics The Higher Purpose of Kendo The credo below, enacted by the All Japan Kendo Federation in 1975, makes clear that the practice of Kendo has the highest of goals: The concept of Kendo is to discipline the human character through the application of the principles of the Katana. The purpose of practicing Kendo is: To mold the mind and body, To cultivate a vigorous spirit,
Olympics—that have been viewed as displaying the “best” features and traits held by the Western world and specifically the male world. Hardworking, persevering, loyal, and successful, the idealized athlete embodied hegemonic (the most powerful form of) masculinity (Connel 1987, 1995). Because these positive virtues were linked exclusively to privileged bodies, subordinated men and women were excluded from the venerated venues of early modern sports. For example, the first modern Olympic Games held in Athens, Greece, in 1896 excluded women and those who worked for a living. Though women were admitted to the second games in 1900, it was in a limited capacity, and even today fewer events are offered to women than men. The exclusion of women, people of color, and the working class from legitimated sporting venues was the subject of great debate and to some degree continues to plague the world of sport. While marginalized men and women did participate in local games and events, serious concern was expressed regarding the exploitation of athletes, alcohol use, gambling, and other social ills, despite the prevalence of these problems in legitimate venues. In this way, ethical debate actually emerged as a means for disciplining and controlling “other bodies, while privileged bodies were presumed to be above needing such controls. Current debates consider limiting participation in risk sports or sports known to have a high risk
And through correct and rigid training, To strive for improvement in the art of Kendo; To hold in esteem human courtesy and honor, To associate with others with sincerity, And to forever pursue the cultivation of oneself. Thus will one be able To love his country and society, To contribute to the development of culture, And to promote peace and prosperity among all peoples.
of injury. While some focus on the possibilities of exploitation, particularly of the economically disadvantaged, others see attempts to limit participation as paternalism (Simon 2004).
Sport and Corruption The problem of corruption at all levels continues to plague the world of sport. Many believe that the unresolved issues surrounding the concepts of amateurism versus professionalism contribute to rampant corruption. These issues center around who can be paid to participate, the implications of payment, legal age restrictions, and the rights of players. College sports provide an example. Accounts of college sports in the 1800s reveal the existence of “ringers” who spent far more time on athletics than academics. Some traveled from region to region, playing at different colleges and being paid by alumni and local gambling interests. Today, the question of what to do about amateurism remains problematic. While some advocate eliminating the requirements of amateurism from highlevel college sports and certain other venues, others contend that this would hardly solve the problem. Investigation into an academic-fraud accusation at the University of Minnesota in 1999 revealed that with the coaches’ knowledge, an academic counselor had written hundreds of papers for players. In addition, the case uncovered improper payments, sexual impropriety, and a host of recruiting violations. Wetzel and Yaeger
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In the field of sports you are more or less accepted for what you do rather than what you are. ■ ALTHEA GIBSON
(2000), in their exploration of youth basketball leagues, found that corruption and unethical practices are endemic even to youth sports. The continued exploitation of young athletes by their legal custodians, coaches, leagues, and multinational corporations is a key problem facing the world of sports today.
Bodies at Risk Concerns of exploitation must include the issue of bodies at risk—athletes in many sports subject their bodies to the possibility of injury. The question of who has the right to control this risk (the athlete, the coach, the team owner?) must be balanced against considerations of what risks are worth accepting. Scholars are critical of the ways in which the type of masculinity venerated in sports encourages athletes to ignore pain and injury. Such practices risk further injury, shorten careers, and can lead to long-term physical disability (Messner 1992). Moreover, social stratification means that the riskiest sports are largely practiced by those with few other viable options for economic stability and success. As Messner argues, men with options are often able to disengage from sport voluntarily to pursue more stable and less risky careers, while their working-class counterparts more often have fewer options when no longer able to compete. What obligation do sporting bodies have to reduce risk, and what levels of risk are acceptable? For example, despite incontrovertible medical evidence that links blows to the head with the risk of death or long-term debilitation due to head injuries, head gear for boxers is not imposed at the professional level (Jackson 1999). Further, the risk of performanceenhancing drugs cannot be underestimated.
while minimizing risk. The public and mass media have largely come to support the rights of HIV-positive athletes to participate; however, the public and legislative bodies remain undecided on rules of disclosure. Rather than adopting a single universal principle, Jackson (1999) suggests that any ethical inquiry into HIV/AIDS and sport should adhere to four rules: (1) specific details of any recommendations made must be given; (2) the goals of the recommendation must be stated clearly and honestly; (3) ethical and factual justification for the recommendation must be given; and (4) possible objections to the recommendation must be given.
Imagery Finally, how should the imagery promoted in sport venues be considered with regard to values and ethics? The team-mascot debate provides an excellent example. Eitzen and Baca Zinn (2001) discuss what they call “the dark side of sports symbols.” Many contend that the use of Native American mascots and symbols is offensive. While some fans assert that these images are not taken seriously or are meant to honor, not offend, many Native American groups have expressed serious objections to mascots such as Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians or gestures such as the tomahawk chop of the Atlanta Braves. Some Native groups have supported specific schools—usually local schools with names that represent the specific nation—in their use of the name, citing few other public forums in which the name of their group is cheered. However, there seems little support or excuse for teams whose mascot, team name, or chant is essentially an ethnic slur.
The Future HIV/AIDS AND THE RISK OF INFECTION In recent years, concerns centering around the transmission of HIV/AIDS and the rights of infected and uninfected athletes have risen to the forefront. Debates over athletes’ rights to privacy, risk of transmission, and the role of athletes as public figures remain unresolved. However, most leagues have adopted universal precautions, protecting the rights of athletes to participate,
The arena of sports remains a site of ethical contention. While sports is an arena in which positive values can be exhibited and taught, it is also an arena in which negative values may be imparted as well. Indeed, debates over the meaning and efficacy of competition reflect disparities in the wider culture as to what values and ethics should be promoted. While barriers to access for women and people of color have been significantly
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A real champion is a champion in life, not just in sport. ■ UNKNOWN
reduced, the exploitation of athletes, acceptable means to ends practices (performance enhancing substances, deliberate rules violations, and so forth), and the role of business remain areas of considerable debate. Faye Wachs See also Sportsmanship
Further Reading Cahn, S. (1994) . Coming on strong: Gender and sexuality in twentieth century women’s sport. New York: Free Press. Connell, R.W. (1987). Gender and power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Connell, R.W. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Eitzen, S. D. (1999). Fair and foul: Beyond the myths and paradoxes of sport. New York: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers Inc. Eitzen, S. D., & Baca Zinn, M. (2001, January). The dark side of sports symbols. USA Today, 129, 48. Feezell, R. (1987). Sportsmanship. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, XIII, 1–13. Jackson, R. (1999). HIV and sport: Constructing a framework for ethical deliberation. In G. Sankaran, K. A. E. Volkwein, & D. R. Bonsall (Eds.), HIV/AIDS in sport: Impact, issues and challenges. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Press. Keating, J. W. (1964). Sportsmanship as a moral category. Ethics. LXXV, 25–35. Messner, M. (1992). Power at play: Sports and the problem of masculinity. Boston: Beacon Press. Pearson, K. (1973). Deception, sportsmanship and ethics. Quest, XIX, 115–118. Rigauer, B. (1981). Sport and work. New York: Columbia University Press. Shulman, J. L., &. Bowen, W. C. (2001). The game of life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Simon, R. L. (2004). Fair play: The ethics of sport. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Wetzel, D., & Yaeger., D. (2000). Sole influence: Basketball, corporate greed, and the corruption of America’s youth. New York: Warner Books.
Venice Beach
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“
enice Beach” is an expression used to describe the physical culture phenomenon that emerged in the Santa Monica Bay region of southern California during the 1930s. Centered in the seaside communities of Santa
Monica and Venice, the phenomenon helped shape the image of southern California as a land of sun, fun, health, and fitness and as a mecca for bodybuilders.
Early History Because of its congenial climate and abundant natural resources, California attracted many enterprising free spirits from the eastern United States during the late nineteenth century. New York businessman and visionary Abbott Kinney founded Venice in 1900 as an upper-middle-brow Italianate resort, replete with a 25-kilometer network of canals, gondoliers, and a twenty-five-hundred-seat auditorium for lectures, recitals, opera, and plays. When Los Angeles citizens did not respond to such haute (fashionable) culture, Kinney turned his creation into a Coney Island of the Pacific where the masses could enjoy a Ferris wheel, shoot-the-chutes ride, skating rink, dance pavilion, bowling alley, shooting gallery, aquacade, and other amusements. This paradise by the sea declined into speakeasies and gambling halls during the 1920s, but Venice was destined to remain a center for leisure, recreation, and sport—a precursor of Disneyland.
Original Muscle Beach During the 1930s attention shifted to Santa Monica, where, beside a pier with a roller coaster and merry-goround, fitness enthusiasts gathered on the beach to engage in volleyball, acrobatics, and gymnastics and to enjoy the sun and fresh air. Known as the “Santa Monica Beach Playground,” it also attracted weightlifters and bodybuilders who found the milieu conducive to training, getting tanned, showing their bodies, and possibly even landing a movie role in nearby Hollywood.The city government encouraged these activities by improving the facilities for acrobats and installing a weight pit for the musclemen. Even before World War II this physical culture hotbed attracted thousands of spectators and participants, especially on weekends and holidays. During the postwar years the playground entered its golden age and became nationally renowned as “Muscle Beach.” It featured such notables as Abbye (Pudgy) Stockton, the first woman bodybuilder, who with her
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Sports do not build character. They reveal it. ■ HEYWOOD BROUN
husband, Les, operated a gym on Sunset Boulevard. Jack LaLanne brought physical fitness (and the California beach culture) to a new level through his television show that aired from 1951 to 1984 on approximately two hundred stations to millions of viewers. Harold Zinkin, an acrobat and bodybuilder, helped devise the Universal Gym in 1957. Screen star Mae West recruited her celebrated troupe of musclemen from Muscle Beach for nightclub appearances in major cities during the 1950s. Muscle Beach was also a magnet for prominent weightlifters, including Olympic champions John Davis, Paul Anderson, and Isaac Berger, and such bodybuilding greats as John Grimek, George Eiferman, and Dick Dubois. However, the most famous Muscle Beach trainee was the 1947 Mr. America, Steve Reeves, who starred in various sword-and-sandal epics, including Hercules, the highest grossing film of 1959. Closely associated with the beach culture was Vic Tanny’s Gym, opened in the late 1930s in a loft above an auto repair shop on Second Street in Santa Monica. Assisted by his brother Armand, a physique star and Muscle Beach regular, Tanny expanded his operation into the first major chain, eventually resulting in eightyfour gyms nationwide, grossing $15 million a year by the 1960s. Annual Mr. and Miss Muscle Beach contests, combining brawn and beauty, added luster to Santa Monica’s image and contributed to the popularity of the growing sport of bodybuilding. However, the intrusion of unsavory elements and some unfortunate incidents prompted city leaders to close Muscle Beach in 1958.
Muscle Beach Moves to Venice The weightlifters and bodybuilders retreated temporarily to the “Dungeon,” a workout facility operated by Vic Tanny in the basement of a nearby commercial building. Then they convinced the city of Venice to set up a weight pen on the beach, about two miles south of the old location. This new Muscle Beach soon attracted a regular clientele and spectators, but without the acrobatic-gymnastics component. It was complemented in 1965 when Joe Gold opened his first gym on Pacific
Avenue. His gym eventually spread to more than five hundred locations in twenty-six countries and became the most famous fitness franchise in the world. These neighboring outdoor-indoor facilities created the arresting image and expression of “Venice Beach” during the 1970s. When leading fitness promoter Joe Weider moved his operations from New Jersey to Los Angeles in 1972, the reputation of this new Muscle Beach was enhanced by photographs in his magazine of such physique stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, and Lou Ferrigno training there. The most notable icon, however, was Dave Draper, the “Blond Bomber,” who co-starred (with Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale, and Sharon Tate) in the 1967 film Don’t Make Waves, based on Ira Wallach’s novel Muscle Beach. Muscle magazine photos of Draper and others frolicking in the sun, sand, and surf and surrounded by bevies of beautiful women inspired a generation of bodybuilders, many of whom moved to Venice to take part in the California dream.
Bodybuilding’s Mecca This phenomenon had a direct impact on the fitness boom that swept the United States during the late 1970s. Despite the growth of many other bodybuilding centers during the next two decades, attention remained focused on Venice. After selling his original franchise, Joe Gold established his first World Gym International in 1987 on Main Street between Santa Monica and Venice. It eventually blossomed into 280 gyms worldwide with headquarters in the adjacent community of Marina del Rey. The most important center for bodybuilders, however, remains at the Gold’s Gym located at Hampton and Sunset in Venice, where the champions train and pose for photographers. Venice Beach also remains a sentimental source of inspiration. True to its origins, a carnival-like atmosphere prevails on the mile-long Ocean Front Walk where cyclists, joggers, and in-line skaters mingle with jugglers, acrobats, tarot card readers, musicians, bikini-clad women, and gawking tourists—a kaleidoscope of humanity that one would expect to find in southern California. The
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When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. ■ GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
weight pen, too, is still there, reconstructed in 1986 with a stage to conduct bodybuilding and powerlifting competitions. At the same time, in recognition of a tradition stretching back a half-century, the city formally designated the venue “Muscle Beach Venice.” John Douglas Fair
Further Reading Alexander, C. (1999). Images of America: Venice, California. Charleston, SC: Arcadia. Basten, F. (1997). Paradise by the sea, Santa Monica Bay: A pictorial history of Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga, & Malibu. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group. Draper, D. (2001). Brother Iron, Sister Steel: A bodybuilder’s book. Santa Cruz, CA: On Target Publications. Rose, M. (2001). Muscle Beach. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Starr, K. (1985). Inventing the dream: California through the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University Press. Webster, D. (1979). Barbells + beefcake. Irvine, UK: Coasbyprint. Zinkin, H. (1999). Remembering Muscle Beach. Santa Monica, CA: Angel City Press.
Violence
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iolence in sport is not a new area of study. What is new is the systemization of the research being conducted on violence, both on and off the field of play. Sport used to be about games; not any more. These days no sport is immune from the effects of violent behavior, even those we refer to as “country-club” sports (e.g., tennis, golf, and figure skating). Violence now extends beyond the playing field or the court into real life. Baylor men’s basketball player Carlton Dotson has been accused of killing Patrick Dennehy, his teammate and roommate. And NHL hockey player Mike Danton was involved in a failed murder-for-hire plot. These scenarios are real, and they and many other events have begun to impact the institution of sport in ways that no athlete, professional or amateur, who played in the 1940s, 1950s, or even as late as the 1970s could have imagined.
Violence, Sport, and a Critical Understanding The list of athletes involved in some form of violence or another is long and growing longer. Nor is violence in sport limited to current and former professional athletes; in fact, violence perpetrated by athletes begins early on, often in high school. Coaches and fans, as well, have been a factor in recent years, so that violence is certainly not limited to the court or playing field.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ATHLETES TO SOCIETY No one could deny that many athletes do good works. In college, some volunteer at local human-resource agencies or work with troubled kids, and as professionals, many donate food to homeless shelters or money to charities. Some speak out on the travails of smoking, drinking, and drug use as an underage problem in America. A few athletes are also socially conscious and will address issues of poverty and inadequate healthcare for the elderly. Jeanette Lee, a professional pool player, more commonly known as the “Black Widow,” is currently the national spokeswoman for the Scoliosis Association. In addition, the Jeanette Lee Foundation raises money to help create more public awareness about this disease and the need for more physical therapy programs and scoliosis research. Emmitt Smith, a professional athlete well known for his football achievements, is becoming equally recognized for his contributions to community services. To date Smith has raised over $350,000 for charity by auctioning game-worn items and artifacts from his football career. He put it thus: “Football has given me an extraordinary opportunity. This is just one way that I can continue to give back. I have always believed that I have a responsibility to make an impact beyond the football field.” Troy Aikman, former Dallas Cowboys football star, started the Starbright Foundation, which establishes Troy Aikman End Zone playrooms in children’s hospitals around the country. These accomplishments are admirable and should always be recognized as athletes giving back to their re-
VIOLENCE
spective communities. However, increasingly, some athletes are bringing violence into the very communities they inhabit and sometimes into the communities they visit in sport competitions.
Violence in High School Sport When most adults today were growing up, violence associated with high school sport involved fistfights between local rivals after a football game or the occasional scuffle between players.
GLEN RIDGE RAPE Today, however, violence in high school sport involves assault and even rape. Incidents can take place both on and off the field and can sometimes affect nonathletes as well. One incident that received national and international media attention took place in the middle-class suburb of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. In 1989 three high school athletes, all white males, gang raped a mentally retarded seventeen-year-old white female in front of a group of their friends, using a baseball bat and a broom handle. Much of the media attention at the time focused on the culture in the school’s athletic program, one which was said not to have valued or required decent character and behavior on the part of its male athletes. This incident is one of many that detail how young males sometimes assault and commit sexual violence against females (Hattery 2001) with few consequences. The Glen Ridge perpetrators, when convicted, appealed and were out on bail for four years until they were finally sent to prison in 1997. Another aspect of this horrific crime that is in some ways even more disturbing is that there were some ten others who witnessed the crime and did nothing to stop it. The high school athletes in Glen Ridge that day were participating in what is for some young men a sort of ritual, a twisted rite of passage into what they see as adulthood. The culture of their high school athletic program gave the impression that such behaviors as talking about and carrying out sexually violent acts against women, if not acceptable, were at the very least looked
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upon as something that carried no responsibility and had no consequences.
SPUR P OSSE Another incident similar to the Glen Ridge case took place in 1993 in Lakewood, California, a town where the Youth Sports Hall of Fame is not at the high school, not at City Hall, but in the local McDonald’s. In the Lakewood case, teenage male athletes from a street sex gang that went by the name of “Spur Posse” made use of their athletic popularity in high school to seduce female classmates. When done, they passed these girls around for sex and then publicly bragged about their conquests. The news of their exploits sent shock waves across the community and the nation. In a misguided show of support, family members, mothers, girlfriends, and supporters from the community came forth to defend these young males. Dottie Belman, mother of Kristopher Belman, a member of the Spur Posse, together with her husband Donald, served the Lakewood community as coaches of Little League and Pop Warner football, and Dottie herself was a “team mother.” She says: They would make a home run or a touchdown and I held my head high. We were reliving our past. We’d walk into Little League and we were hot stuff. I’d go to Von’s and people would come up to me and say, “Your kids are great.” I was so proud. Now I go to Von’s at 5 a.m. in disguise. I’ve been Mother of the Year. I’ve sacrificed everything for my kids. Now I feel like I have to defend my honor (Didion 1993, 55).
Dottie and Donald Belman and a host of other Lakewood parents and residents blamed the girls who were involved for the boys’ troubles. It was argued that the girls were “loose”—as Donald Belman said on national television, they had to be, for these girls even had various body parts tattooed. And it was even suggested that perhaps the girls tricked the boys into the sexually aggressive behavior that had transpired.Accepted behavior? Socially approved behavior? The message is yes. The fact that much of the outcry in Lakewood was
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Archers played a role in the Battle of Tewksbury in 1471, a decisive battle in the War of the Roses in England.
against the girls who stepped forward to complain about this behavior speaks volumes about how Americans still view male/female relationships and roles in this country. The messages sent to young males are quite clear: predatory sexual behavior carries with it no responsibility and no consequences. Sometimes it can even bestow bragging rights. The escalation in irrational violent behavior among young males is a symptom of the growing tendency in sport programs to condone violence, or at least to “look the other way.”
Violence in Intercollegiate Sport When the essence of life is to “keep up with the Joneses,” social problems inevitably arise as a result of this chase. Repercussions of this uniquely American rat race are manifest from the available data on individuals and families living beyond their means to the numbers on home foreclosures and bankruptcy. With the need to win becoming the driving force in athletics, we are seeing the recruitment of student athletes from places as diverse as Riker’s Island (the world’s most populous penal colony) and so-called prep schools that have no academic standing whatsoever.
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA INCIDENT In a college version of the Glen Ridge and Lakewood crimes, a 14-year-old female child prodigy who was attending the University of Alabama, Birmingham, was kidnapped and held as the sex slave of the basketball and football teams for close to a full semester. This was a crime involving 25 student athletes. Not only was the young girl used as a sex slave while living in the college dormitory, but she was turned into a drug addict as well.
BAYLOR MURDER One case that stands out as a prime example of college athletic programs out of control—crossing the line into lawbreaking behavior—is the 2003 murder of Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy, the arrest of his former roommate and teammate, and the allegation that head basketball coach Dave Bliss told his players to lie to the FBI agents investigating the homicide.
SPORT –SELF -PROMOTIONAL SHOWMANSHIP SYNDROME One factor in the emergence of lawbreaking behavior in athletes is the system of privilege that the institutions, the student athletes, and the coaches have created that takes them away from the concept of “team” and moves them deeper into what the French sociologist Emile Durkheim describes in his research as “individualism.” Individualism can be defined as the Sport–Self-Promotional Showmanship Syndrome (S–SPSS). S–SPSS also applies to the institutions that allow academic fraud and those that let faculty salaries lag and building maintenance deteriorate to the lowest levels, then use the funds to enter into the Division 1A athletic category. In other words, these institutions self-promote athletics above and beyond academics. S–SPSS applies to coaches in the greed attached to their endorsement contracts, the television and radio shows, the automobiles for private use, game and even airline tickets for family and friends, and the use of institutional facilities for private gain (for example, summer camps).
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Violence William Hazlitt’s “The Fight” (1822) The extract below from this famous essay by English writer William Hazlitt graphically depicts the violence of a boxing match. To see two men smashed to the ground, smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their bodies; and then, before you recover from the shock, to see them rise up with new strength and courage, stand ready to inflict or receive mortal offense, and rush upon each other “like two clouds over the Caspian”:—this is the high and heroic state of man! About the twelfth round it seemed as if it must have been over. Neate just then made a tremendous lunge, and hit Hickman full in the face. He hung suspended for a second or two, and then fell back, throwing his hands in the air, and with his face lifted up to the sky. All traces of life, of natural expression, were gone from him. His face was like a human skull, a death’s head, spouting blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose streamed with blood. the mouth gaped blood. He was like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or like one of the figures in Dante’s Inferno.
For the student athlete, it’s about trying to get as much playing time as possible, hogging the ball in games, victory celebrations that come with every score, the end-zone dances, and drawing attention to oneself. Even the venerable Florida Seminoles coach Bobby Bowden feels that because, “We give them this, we give them that,” it is no wonder they focus on themselves. This system of privilege for some athletes over others often leads to jealousies on teams and in the end can result in a loss of focus on the overall success of the team. Because this syndrome involves giving one athlete something that another doesn’t have, all for the purpose of winning games, sometimes it’s hard for student athletes and their coaches to discern right from wrong.
Violence in Professional Sport In recent years, violence has been on the rise in professional sport; athletes engage in violence both on and off the field of competition.
Yet he fought on after this for several rounds, still striking the first desperate blow, and Neate standing on the defensive, and using the same cautious guard to the last, as if he had still all his work to do; and it was not until the Gas-man was so stunned in the seventeenth or eighteenth round that his sense forsook him and he could not come to time, that the battle was declared over. When the Gas-man came to himself the first words he uttered were, “Where am I? What is the matter?” “Nothing is the matter, Tom,— you have lost the battle, but you are the bravest man alive.” Neate instantly went up and shook him cordially by the hand, and seeing some old acquaintance, began to flourish with his fists, “Ah, you always said I couldn’t fight—What do you think now?” But all in good humor, and without any appearance of arrogance; only it was evident that Bill Neate was pleased that he had won the fight. The carrier-pigeons now mounted into the air, and one of them flew with the news of her husband’s victory to the bosom of Mrs. Neate. Alas for Mrs. Hickman!
KERMIT WASHINGTON On the evening of Friday, 9 December 1977, the Los Angeles Lakers played the Houston Rockets in Houston. Few remember who even won the game, but the events that occurred in the third quarter are forever etched in professional basketball history (Goldpaper 1977). Laker forward Kermit Washington was struggling for a loose ball while running up court when Houston player Kevin Kunnert got into a shoving match with Washington. Washington (six foot eight and 230 pounds), seeing from the corner of his eye a Houston Rockets player heading in his direction, turned and landed a right cross to the jaw of Houston player Rudy Tomjanovich. The rest is history. NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien suspended Washington for 60 days (at a cost of $50,000) and fined him an unprecedented amount of money for the time, $10,000. Tomjanovich, a forward for the Rockets, was sent to the hospital for 15 days with a broken jaw, fractured skull,
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Is it normal to wake up in the morning in a sweat because you can’t wait to beat another human’s guts out? ■ JOE KAPP
broken nose, cracked eye socket, and a ruined career. Lisa Olson, writing for the New York Daily News says: Tomjanovich was felled in one punch, his skull and cheekbone fractured, his jaw and nose sinking back into his head like bloody pulps. Abdul-Jabbar said it sounded like a watermelon being dropped on cement.
According to sport writer John Feinstein (2002), the punch thrown by Washington changed the way the National Basketball Association handled on-court violence. Fights did break out prior to the TomjanovichWashington fight. Because Washington’s punch to the face of Tomjanovich was so violent, the NBA took much more severe measures in punishing out-of-control players. Washington’s fine and suspension, for example, was unheard of prior to the fight.
sioner David Stern originally suspended Sprewell for a year from the NBA. But on 3 March, 1998, Sprewell was reinstated to the Warriors after lodging a grievance against the team and the league that was favorably heard by arbitrator John Feerick, dean of the Fordham University Law School.
MIKE T YSON On Saturday, 28 June 1997, in a much-anticipated and -touted World Boxing Association heavyweight title fight, “Iron” Mike Tyson twice bit the ear of his opponent, the then heavyweight champion, Evander Holleyfield. This behavior was an all-time low even for professional boxing, inflicted before an international audience on pay-per-view television.
VIOLENCE OUTSIDE THE PLAYING FIELD L ATRELL SPREWELL The job of a coach is to make sure that the athletes on his team train hard and win games. Unfortunately, the stresses of such an environment combined with personality clashes or harassing behavior can lead to violence. Professional basketball player Latrell Sprewell (of the Golden State Warriors) crossed the line and is now paying the price. In a fit of anger because his coach, P. J. Carlesimo, was “in his face,” Sprewell choked Carlesimo in front of other players during a practice session on 1 December 1997. Phil Taylor of Sports Illustrated put it thus: When he assaulted and threatened to kill his coach, P. J. Carlesimo, . . . he committed one of the most outrageous acts on the court or field of play that American professional sports in the modern era has known, and that act will surely follow him for the rest of his life.
Almost anywhere except in the NBA, says New York Times columnist Ira Berkow, such an act would have meant immediate dismissal. Soon after the incident Sprewell was stripped of his four-year $32 million contract (and a loss of all endorsement revenues estimated at $500,000 with Converse). Furthermore, Commis-
Uncivil and violent behavior is not confined to the playing field or court, of course. The behavior of athletes and fans can be just as brutal outside the arena as it is inside. On 30 April 1993, Monica Seles, one of the world’s top female tennis players, was stabbed while playing in a tournament in Hamburg, Germany. Gunther Parche, the assailant, was apparently a fanatic fan of Stephanie Graf and wanted Seles out of the competition. For his crime, Parche was given a two-year suspended sentence. At the 1994 winter Olympic trials, Nancy Kerrigan, the top contender on the U.S. team, was attacked, clubbed in the leg just weeks before the Olympics. Tonya Harding, who was the closest contender to Kerrigan, was later convicted of hiring her ex-boyfriend to club Kerrigan at the trials, allegedly to eliminate her from the competition and ensure Harding’s win. Kerrigan was able to recover in time for the Olympics and took a silver medal. Harding finished in eighth place and eventually served time in jail for her involvement in the crime.
TRADITION OF CIVILITY BEING REPLACED There has always existed a tradition of civility in sport: it manifests itself in the form of fair play—by strict
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Violence Mud Battles among the Blackfoot of Canada The most primitive sport was a mud battle fought by young tribesmen. Sides were picked, and the two bands of Indian boys would repair to a large flat under their respective leaders, each boy armed with a long pliable switch about six feet long and a big ball of mud weighing about 20 pounds. Here the opposing leaders would take up their positions, a distance of about 75 yards separating them. Each fighter would then take a small piece of mud weighing about four ounces and press it hard on the tip of his switch. The flexibility of a switch would send these mud pellets flying with terrific force and they would burn and leave bruises on the body of anyone unfortunate enough to be struck by them. A battle of this kind would rage sometimes for hours, mud whistling through the air accompanied by loud yells from those in the casualty list. After the cessation of hostilities everyone was happy, despite the sore spots and numerous bruises discernable on the bodies of the combatants. Source: Mountain Horse, M. (1979). My people, the Bloods (p. 13). Calgary, Canada: Glenbow-Alberta Institute; Blood Tribal Council.
definition, conformity to established rules. But fair play also involves such ideals as treating others with respect and courtesy, being a good loser, accepting responsibility for one’s own mistakes in a mature way. There is another tradition establishing itself in the arena of modern sport—openly avowed, assiduously cultivated, and zealously carried out—that was succinctly defined in the statement of Coach Woody Hayes that, “I’d rather die a winner than a loser,” and was nicely demonstrated in the testimony of ex-professional lineman Alex Karras that, “I hated everyone on the football field, and my personality would change drastically when I got out there . . . I had a license to kill for sixty minutes a week. My opponents were all fair game, and when I got off the field I had no regrets. It was like going totally insane.”
What happened to the tradition of civility and fair play, on the field and off? Latrell Sprewell in a fit of anger placed his hands around the neck of his coach and choked him. What does an act like this symbolize, even if the coach went beyond the normal boundaries in imposing stricter practice requirements? In many office environments, employers overload workers all the time. Yet most employees know that an action such as strangling their supervisors would result in at the very least termination, if not criminal prosecution. Should we assume that courtesy among fans, getting an autograph from a professional athlete without having to pay for it, or attending a game without having beer dumped down your shirt only remain as figments of the sport sociological imagination? In answering this question we ultimately bump up against the larger one of what we stand for as a society and as athletes entering the twenty-first century. Francis Fukuyama in his immensely important book Trust (1995) demonstrates that when the community ethos dissolves and folkways disappear, citizens are no longer trustful of each other. As this is happening in American society, says Fukuyama, we begin to see the rise of violent crime and civil litigation; the breakdown of family structure; the decline of a wide range of intermediate social structures such as neighborhoods, churches, unions, clubs, and charities; and the general sense among Americans of a lack of shared values and community with those around them.
ROLE OF MALE D OMINANCE In her book The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football, Mariah Burton Nelson explores the connection between the growing power and strength of women and male resistance to participation by women in athletics. The furor over Title IX is a case in point. As Burton demonstrates, male resistance to female athletic participation can be empirically validated simply looking at the slow pace of compliance with Title IX. This resistance can sometimes take the form of violence.
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Outlook The violent, hyperaggressive, uncivil behavior we see in sport today is an issue that involves society at large. What we tolerate in the sports arena reflects what we as a society find acceptable. And because of the high status and prestige placed upon athletes at all levels but especially in professional sport, we can expect that the huge sums of money that go to the owners of franchises, to the equipment outfitters, to the moguls who own and control the media, to the concessionaires, to the elected officials who run cities where teams play, and to the players themselves will drive individualism and greed to the extreme, and violence will continue. The media have come to play an enormously important role in sports. By bringing evidence of the growing lack of civility in sport and the attendant rise in violence into our living rooms and by seeming to glorify such behavior, the media not only report the stories, they are a contributing factor in the perpetuation of violence. Only when we—the athletes, the fans, the media, the coaches, everyone involved in sport—decide that the escalating violence must come to an end will civility again return to sport. Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith See also Masculinity
Further Reading Didion, J. (1993). Trouble in Lakewood. The New Yorker, 26 July, 46-65. Feinstein, J. (2002, October). The punch. Sports Illustrated, 68–77. Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity. New York: Free Press. Goldpaper, S. (1977, December 14). Lakers Kermit Washington Fined $10,000. New York Times. Hattery, A. (2001). Women, work, and family: Balancing and weaving. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Karras, A. (1979). Alex Karras: My life in football, television, and movies. New York: Doubleday. Olsen, L. (1997, December 21). Shattered in time. New York Daily News. Smith, E. (2004). Race, sport and the American dream. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Smith, M. (1979). Hockey violence: A test of the violent subculture hypothesis. Social Problems, 27, 235–247.
Volleyball
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olleyball is a close cousin of basketball: Both sports were created in Massachusetts, and both were created by men who worked for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Although at the recreational level volleyball maintains a universal appeal and an intuitive structure of play, at its most competitive level it has increasingly emphasized ball handling and specialization of players. The sport was introduced into the Pan American Games in 1955 at Mexico City and into the Olympic Games in 1964 at Tokyo.
Origins William G. Morgan invented volleyball in 1895. He was physical education director of the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and a former student of James Naismith of Springfield, Massachusetts, who invented basketball. Basketball and volleyball were, in fact, invented to be simple, diverting indoor winter sports that could augment the austere regimen of gymnastic exercises that made up the greater part of physical education in the United States during the late nineteenth century. Neither man anticipated the popularity and competitiveness of his creation. Morgan invented volleyball for his clients at the YMCA: businessmen who were, for the most part, middle-aged, unathletic, and not up to the challenges of basketball. The original version of volleyball was played by two teams who pushed a slow, oversized ball back and forth over a net that was only a few inches higher than some of the players. Because Morgan had originally used a badminton (or lawn tennis) net for his new sport, he at first called it mintonette, but its rules were derived mainly from handball and baseball. The influence of the latter is seen in early volleyball rules, which stipulated that the sport be played in nine “innings,” with “three outs” allowed before a team lost the serve. In 1896, while watching a demonstration of the sport, Dr. Alfred Halstead of
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An indoor volleyball match at the Pan American Games.
Springfield College—a YMCA colleague of Morgan— suggested that the word volleyball better suits the sport’s nature of pushing the ball back and forth over the net. The new word was quickly accepted.
Development Volleyball, like basketball, spread quickly and for similar reasons: Both sports were simple in design and featured clear and intuitively appealing goals. Moreover, the YMCA and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), both of which had chapters throughout the world, promoted both sports. Thus, volleyball, like basketball, initially moved across the globe in aid of a pragmatic and “muscular” Christianity. The first national championship in the United States was played in 1922 in New York City. Twenty-three teams—most from no farther west than Chicago— competed at the Brooklyn Central YMCA gymnasium. The Pittsburgh team won. The Volleyball Rules Committee of the YMCA officiated this championship and subsequent championships until 1928, when the United States Volleyball Association (USVBA) was formed.
F. H. Brown, yet another YMCA organizer, introduced volleyball in Japan in 1913. Volleyball quickly became popular, and in 1921 the Japanese Imperial Volleyball Association was formed. The YMCA was active in other areas of Asia as well, notably India and China.Volleyball also became popular in the Philippines for a while, and it was played in Manila at the Far Eastern Games organized by the international YMCA in 1913. During and after World War I many U.S. soldiers played volleyball in Europe, partly because many YMCA instructors had been inducted into the Army as physical education instructors. Many YMCA and YWCA organizers stayed on in Europe after the war, and volleyball grew in popularity through the 1920s, particularly in France, where many volleyball clubs were formed. The Soviets, too, became interested in volleyball, and the Soviets and their client states were to become, with Japan, major competitive players. In 1931 the first international volleyball tournament in Europe was held in Paris. The Soviets won first placed against their most serious opponents, the Estonian team, whose country at that time had only nine years of independence left before it was annexed by the Soviet Union. Volleyball had become popular by 1920 in Central and South America, particularly in Peru and Brazil. Both countries would become top volleyball competitors. Although the French had attempted to establish an international volleyball organization in 1936, only in 1946 was the International Volleyball Federation formed. The federation’s most active original members were France on the one hand and the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia—all Communist nations—on the other. The United States showed no interest in elite volleyball, and the predominance of Communist nations in elite play ensured that the sport would be played in a highly politicized atmosphere during the next two decades. For example, during the 1949 world championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, eleven countries competed, and the Soviets won both men’s and women’s titles. The United States did not bother to
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Nigerian women playing volleyball.
send a team. Yugoslavia did not send a team, either, although this fact had nothing to do with athletic ability or interest. Indeed, the Yugoslavians had developed considerable volleyball talent, but the Soviets wanted to send the Yugoslavians a political message via the Soviets’ Czechoslovakian clients. In the end the “renegade” Yugoslavians— whose maverick leader Marshal Tito had offended socialist orthodoxy—were denied visas to travel to the championships. Sending another such message in 1963, the Soviet bloc boycotted an international volleyball event in Albania—another “unorthodox” state. At the Albanian event the only teams were from Albania, China, North Korea, and Romania —all socialist countries that had either broken with the Soviets ideologically or were considering doing so. During this period the only international volleyball played by the United States was a “match” in 1955 between the staffs of the U.S. and Soviet embassies in the Hague in the Netherlands. According to the New York Times, the Soviets—who had proposed the match— “beat the United States on the volleyball court this afternoon in a setting redolent of the spirit of coexistence, cooperation and goodwill.” Perhaps one can explain the U.S. loss by the fact that volleyball had been intended as a recreation and not as a seriously competitive sport. In 1961 the International Olympic Committee voted volleyball into the Olympic Games. The Soviets and their clients and the Japanese supported this vote, and, at the 1964 games in Tokyo the Japanese, Soviet, Polish, and Czech teams were the main players. The Soviets edged out the Czechs for the gold medal in the men’s competition; the Czech men won silver, and the Japanese men won bronze. However, the Japanese
women’s team played the most exciting volleyball. In fact, one can fairly argue that the Japanese women’s team revolutionized volleyball. As one observer wrote, the Japanese women played “with a ferocity and precision that have made almost a new game of a familiar playground pastime.” They were never in any danger, losing only one set (to the Polish team), and losing that only because the coach, Daimatsu Hirofumi, had taken some of his better players out of the game when he felt that the Soviet team was learning too much about his team’s tactics. The Japanese women’s team was formed in 1953 and sponsored by the Nichibo Spinning Mills near Osaka. Hirofumi, who was the mills’ manager in charge of office supplies procurement, drove his team hard: The team practiced six hours a day seven days a week all year. He had a hot temper, and insults and occasional kicks were part of his training. Although some people criticized such training, Hirofumi’s 1964 team performed splendidly. One headline captures the surprise that attended the Japanese victory, at least in the United States, as well as a lingering Cold War atmosphere: “Celebrated Team of Office Girls Subdues Russians.” Of special interest to other teams was the Japanese version of the rolling retrieve, which required a player to fall with gymnastic precision and power to save an
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The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours. ■ PEGGY FLEMING
incoming ball that could be up to 3 meters away. The player then recovered with grace and speed to rejoin the ongoing play. Since the 1964 Tokyo games, volleyball has been a hard-driving “power” sport in the international arena. At the first Olympic Games to feature volleyball, the United States finished ninth. At the 1968 Olympic Games at Mexico City, neither the men’s team nor the women’s team of the United States made a very good showing—the Soviets, Japanese, Poles, and Czechs dominated—and U.S. teams did not even qualify for the Olympics again until 1984. The first U.S. national training center for volleyball, near Houston, Texas, was dedicated to women’s volleyball—a rare case of a sport being led, in development and elite participation, by women. However, the U.S. men’s team won the gold medal at the 1984 Olympics; the women’s team won the silver; and the United States has since been a world power. However, at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, Brazil and China tied for first place. Brazil won gold in men’s, China won gold in women’s. Russia, Italy, and Cuba finished in third place through fifth place, respectively.
Practice Originally teams played volleyball over a net that was just 2 meters high, but that height has been raised several times. Now the height is 2.43 meters for men and 2.25 meters for women. The net is 1 meter deep and is stretched across the center of a court that measures 9.14 meters by 18.29 meters. The minimum ceiling height is 7 meters. The ball—first manufactured by Spaulding, the company that originally manufactured basketballs—weighs 250 to 280 grams and measures 38 to 69 centimeters in circumference. Standard teams have six players (Morgan’s original rules allowed nine players). Each team is arrayed in two rows of three players: left, center, and right forwards and left, center, and right backs. Play begins after first serve is determined by the toss of a coin, and the right
back of one team serves the ball. The serve may be overhanded or underhanded; the player must serve within five seconds of assuming the serving stance, and the served ball must not touch the net. The goal of the receiving team is to return the ball to the opposite side of the net. Team members may handle the ball three times before the ball is returned, and, indeed, game strategy depends on such ball handling. In the basic volleying process players must master a number of skills.The front line handles blocking. Players in the front line move to the place where they think the ball will be coming into their court and jump with hands outspread and arms overhead to block the ball.Timing is crucial, and often a beginner is coming back down to the ground just as the opponent’s ball flies over the net. Players must avoid body contact with the net, adding another level of challenge to mastering the block. Should the block fail, receiving players, generally in the back court, use an underhanded stroke played close to the ground. This stroke is designed to “dig” the ball up and into play. The stroke may be two-handed or, if quick lateral movement toward the ball is required, onehanded. The goal is to save the ball and to put it into play for another team member, who may choose to “set” (pass) the ball toward a third team member. The third team member then attempts to “spike” the ball into the opposing team’s court. The set can be toward the forward ranks or toward the back, or even lateral. Much of the skill in setting consists of holding a posture that conceals the direction of the intended pass until the last possible moment. The spike—one of the more dramatic offensive maneuvers—can be sent into the opposing court at speeds of more than 100 kilometers per hour, leaving opponents with little reaction time. The spike involves a jumping attack and an overhead smash down toward the opposite court. Quick reaction time is essential to execute a good spike: Should a player aim the spike down into the opponent’s front court area, thus risking a successful block, or spike it toward the back to defeat the “diggers”?
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The team who is serving wins a point if the other team is unable to return the ball; if the serving team loses, a “side-out” occurs, and the other team takes the serve. The players on the team that scores a side-out rotate clockwise so that each player begins the new set playing from a new position. Players must be in their positions when the ball is served. However, after the serve they may move to any position on the court, introducing the possibility of specialization into a sport that was designed to be universal in terms of the skills required. Of course, the postserve movement of players is also a key factor in overall strategy. The first team to score fifteen points wins, as long as the other team trails by at least two points. If the trailing team is within one point, the game continues until the two-point spread is reached. A match consists of five games and is won with three games; three-game matches are sometimes played. Teams change sides after each game. Beach volleyball—although played by many people purely as a form of recreation and by elite volleyball players as a form of training—has developed its own rules, teams, and a professional tour with corporate sponsorship. Teams may be of two or four players, male or female. The cushioning effect of beach sand encourages players to attempt saving dives that would be impossible on a hard gymnasium floor, and jumping for blocks and spiking are more difficult than in standard volleyball. Alan Trevithick
Further Reading Baker, W. J. (1982). Sports in the Western world. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Beal, D. (1985). Spike! The story of the victorious U.S. volleyball team. San Diego, CA: Avant Publishers. Krout, J. A. (1929). The pageant of America: Vol. 15. Annals of American sport. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. MacGregor, B. (1977). Volleyball. Brighton, UK: EP Publishing. Peck, W. H. (1970). Volleyball. London: Collier Books. Stokes, R., & Haley, M. (1984). Volleyball everyone. Winston-Salem, NC: Hunter Textbooks. Turnbull, R. (1964, October 24). Celebrated team of office girls subdues Russians. New York Times, p. 7. Waggoner, W. H. (1955, August 3). Soviet downs U.S. in volleyball match between embassy teams in the Hague. New York Times, p. 5.
Volleyball, Beach
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each volleyball is similar to indoor volleyball in its structure and rules of play. However, unlike indoor volleyball, beach volleyball has no coaches to facilitate play, and a player has only one teammate to rely on. Beach volleyball began during the 1920s on the beaches of southern California and Europe. By the 1950s and 1960s tournaments were held in the United States, Brazil, Canada, and France, and in other parts of Europe. During the 1960s President John F. Kennedy attended the first official beach volleyball event at Sorrento Beach in Los Angeles. During the 1990s the Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), with 214 national federations, began to govern international beach volleyball and volleyball. The FIVB World Tour, formerly known as the “World Championship Series,” is the official international tour. The World Tour grew quickly since it began in 1992, and the groundwork for this growth was laid in the sands of sunny southern California.
Rules and Play A distinct feature of beach volleyball is the formation of teams. Unlike other sports teams, beach volleyball teams are not contracted for a specified length of time. Players can switch teams as often as they like. Many times these switches are because of injuries, other times because of differences between teammates. Players can compete with one teammate one week and another teammate the next. Playing on any team of only two people is challenging, and beach volleyball is no exception. Maintaining partnerships is not easy. The relationship between the two players can become complicated and can interfere with the ability of the players to communicate and work together.This arrangement makes beach volleyball an interesting combination of a team sport and an individual sport. Beach volleyball is played on a court of the same size and net height of an indoor volleyball court. However, beach volleyball is played in sand that is 35–40 centi-
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Men playing beach volleyball. Source: istockphoto.com/barsik.
meters deep, and it is played with a slightly larger ball. The full playing court measures 18 by 9 meters and is divided by the net into two halves of equal size. The top of the net is 2.24 meters (2.43 for men) from the ground. The area around the playing court is called the “free zone” and is usually 3–5 meters wide. A line 5–8 centimeters wide marks the perimeter of the playing court. This line is part of the court, and if the ball lands on the line the ball is considered to be in bounds. As in indoor volleyball, the boundary of the court extends up along the net. Two antennas are placed on the net where the sideline crosses under it. The antennas mark where the court boundary is located on the net. If the ball touches an antenna the ball is considered to be out of bounds. The ball is designed for outdoor use and is slightly larger and slightly softer than the indoor ball. Play is between two teams of two players. A rally is initiated by a serve from anywhere in the area bounded by the 9-meter end of a team’s playing court (the team’s baseline) and the extensions of the two 18-meter sidelines of the court. Each player gets only one attempt to serve the ball, and a “net” serve is a fault. Common types of serves are spike serves, overhand float serves, underhand sky serves, and standing topspin serves. The server continues to serve until the opponent wins the rally. If the serving team wins the rally, that team is
awarded a point; if the receiving team wins the rally, a “side-out” is called, and the receiving team wins the right to serve. When a team “regains” service, the serve alternates between players from that team. Players are allowed to move freely within their court area; no distinction is made between the front court and back court. Because no center line exists under the net, players can go under the net as long as they do not interfere with their opponents. Players do not “rotate” from one position to the other as in indoor volleyball. During a rally the ball can be contacted by any part of the body. Three is the maximum number of contacts allowed on each side. A block counts as a contact. The usual sequence of contacts is pass (forearm pass or dig), set (volley or overhand pass), and attack (hit or spike) over the net. The attack cannot be completed with the use of an open-handed tip. If the ball is set, or volleyed over the net to the opponents, it must be set perpendicular to the shoulders of the player setting the ball. No substitution of players is allowed. During each match each team is allowed two timeouts of thirty seconds. Teams also switch sides every multiple of five points (4–1, 6–4, etc.) with a thirtysecond rest between side changes. A variety of scoring systems is used. The standard scoring system on the FIVB World Tour is a one-set match played to fifteen points, with at least a two-point lead required for victory, to a maximum of seventeen points (victory by one point is possible at 17–16). Teams can score points only when they are serving.
Net Gains for Women Women first appeared at beach volleyball competitions as “beauty contestants,” not as competitors. However, by the 1970s women’s beach volleyball competitions
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began to become popular. By the 1980s the United States and Australia began holding national tournaments for women; after beach volleyball became an Olympic sport in 1996, many countries provided competitive opportunities for women. Women had played organized beach volleyball in southern California since the 1950s. In fact, the United States was one of the first countries to develop a women’s professional tour and a women’s players association—the Women’s Professional Volleyball Association (WPVA). In 1987 the WPVA tour began with ten events and $48,900 in total prize money; the top player earned more than eight thousand dollars. Because of such minimal earning potential, many athletes maintained a regular job while participating in weekend tournaments. By 1996 the WPVA tour had grown to fifteen events with more than $900,000 in prize money; the top player earned more than $88,000. However, in 1998 the WPVA and its tour began to struggle, and for the first time in more than ten years no tour was sanctioned by the WPVA. The WPVA was dissolved in 1998. The formation of the WPVA and its tour and the popularity of the sport in the United States played a major role in the development of beach volleyball worldwide. Organizers in the United States also developed a national tour devoted to four-player team volleyball. Four-versus-four events were nationally televised and were sponsored by large corporations, helping to increase the exposure of beach volleyball. Because of the increased media exposure, some athletes who competed on this tour grew in popularity and began to promote beach volleyball outside of competitions. For example, Gabrielle Reese not only began writing magazine articles, but also hosted television shows for the MTV (Music Television) cable channel. The WPVA competitions in the United States drew many international players who came to develop their skills. For example, Jackie Silva, an Olympic gold medalist in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996, played on the WPVA tour from 1987 to 1991. In 1992 the FIVB realized that providing opportunities for women as well as men was essential for global devel-
opment of beach volleyball and its acceptance by the Olympic community.Thus, 1992–1993 was the inaugural season for international women’s beach volleyball. The World Tour had two stops, a purse of $100,000, and more than thirty athletes representing eight countries. By 1998 the World Tour had nine stops, more than $1.4 million in prize money—with women and men receiving equal prize money in each event, and more than three hundred athletes representing more than thirty countries. Beach volleyball players, like so many other athletes, were now earning money from advertising. Players could advertise their own sponsors on their competition suits, hats or visors, and washable tattoos. Players could make a career out of playing beach volleyball. In 2002 Karch Kiraly of the United States became the first beach volleyball player to earn $3 million in prize money. In 2002 he also became the oldest player to win a professional domestic beach volleyball tournament at the age of forty-one. Considering the importance of the WPVA World Tour in the development of women’s beach volleyball, one should not be surprised that U.S. women set the standards during the early years of the FIVB World Tour. The first beach volleyball event for women sanctioned by the FIVB was played in 1992 at the Olympic Year Tournament in Almeira, Spain. The winners were Karolyn Kirby and Nancy Reno of the United States. This team went on to win the second FIVB women’s event held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1993, and each player has won numerous events since then. Since the beginning of the FIVB World Tour, Brazilian women have competed almost as well as U.S. women. From the first event in 1992 to the end of the 1998 season the FIVB had sanctioned fifty World Tour events. The United States won fifteen of the first twentyfive events (1992–1996), and Brazil won ten. Australia was the first country to consistently join Brazil and United States at the top of the sport. Other nations began to challenge Brazil and the United States by breaking into the top four places at an FIVB World Tour event during the 1994–1995 season. The Japanese team of Sachiko Fujita and Yukiko Taka-
VOLLEYBALL, BEACH
hashi finished fourth at Osaka, Japan. Takahashi has finished in the top four places at an FIVB World Tour event three times, including one silver medal. Beate Buhler and Danja Musch of Germany won the bronze medal at the Brisbane, Australia, event in 1995. Thereafter, Musch finished in the top four at an FIVB World Tour event seven times, with three silver medals and one bronze. Beach volleyball made its first appearance in multisport international games at the 1994 Goodwill Games in St. Petersburg, Russia. Karolyn Kirby and Liz Masakayan of the United States won the gold medal by defeating Monica Rodrigues and Adriana Samuel of Brazil. At the first Olympic beach volleyball match at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, Brigette Lesage and Anabelle Prawerman of France played Mayra Huerta Hernandez and Velia Eguiluz Soto of Mexico before more than nine thousand spectators. In July, Jackie Silva and Sandra Pires of Brazil made history by winning the first-ever Olympic gold medal in beach volleyball, defeating fellow Brazilians Monica Rodrigues and Adriana Samuel. The gold medal won by Silva and Pires was also Brazil’s first Olympic gold medal in a women’s sport. Natalie Cook and Kerri-Ann Pottharst of Australia won the bronze medal by defeating Linda Hanley and Barbra Fontana from the United States.
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At the 2001 Goodwill Games in Brisbane, Australia, featuring the world’s sixteen best men’s and women’s teams, the men’s medalists were Jose Loiola and Ricardo Santos (Brazil), gold; Martin Conde and Eduardo Martinez (Argentina), silver; and Stein Metzger and Kevin Wong (United States), bronze. The women’s medalists were Sandra Pires and Tatiana Minello (Brazil), gold; Adriana Behar and Shelda Bede (Brazil), silver; and Pauline Manser and Kerri-Ann Pottharst (Australia) and Elaine Youngs and Barbra Fontana (United States), bronze. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, the Ricardo-Emanuel team of Brazil won a gold medal for men’s beach volleyball; the Walsh-May team of the United States won a gold medal for women’s beach volleyball. Kristine Drakich
Further Reading Beach volleyball. (1993). VolleyWorld, 5, 2–7. Beach volleyball women. (1996). VolleyWorld, 4, 38–48. Beach volleyball world tour, an unforgettable year. (1997). VolleyWorld, 5, 24–29. Federation Internationale de Volleyball. (2003). Beach volleyball handbook. Retrieved December 15, 2004, from http://www.fivb.org/ EN/BeachVolleyball/Handbook/2003/index2003.asp Great excitement for the world tour. (1998). VolleyWorld, 1, 4–11. Kiraly, K. (1999). Beach volleyball. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Rizzo, P. (1996). 100 years of global link: Volleyball centennial 1895– 1995. Lausanne, Switzerland: FIVB.
Wakeboarding Weightlifting Wembley Stadium Wimbledon
Wakeboarding
Windsurfing Women’s Sports, Media Coverage of Women’s World Cup Worker Sports World Cup World Series World University Games Wrestling Wrigley Field Wushu
W
akeboarding—a sport that combines surfing, water skiing, skateboarding, and snowboarding— began in 1985 when California surfer Tony Finn created a board called a “Skurfer” by combining a water ski and a short surfboard. Finn’s creation allowed a wakeboarder—or “rider”— to “freeboard” or “skurf,” performing surfing-like moves on the board while being towed in the wave—or wake— behind a boat. Two of Finn’s friends suggested that he add foot straps to the board to allow riders more freedom of movement. Water ski company owner Herb O’Brien eventually joined with surfboard shapers to create a wakeboard that was more like a surfboard. The “modern” wakeboard has a symmetrical front-toback shape and a “twin tail” design—one each in the front and back underneath the board—to allow a more balanced position whether the wakeboarder is riding forward or backward.
Rules and Play Wakeboarders can perform a variety of flips, turns, and spins called “tricks,” with some riders going as high as 7 meters into the air. Wakeboarding competitions began to develop in 1990 when Jimmy Redmon founded the World Wakeboard Association (WWA), the sport’s world governing body. World Sports & Marketing, a sports promotion and event organizer company, began to sponsor professional wakeboarding events in 1992. Professional wakeboarders can compete in numerous
W events today, including the World Wakeboard Championships, the Pro Wakeboard Series, and the X Games (which consist of various so-called extreme sports). Amateur riders can participate in pro-am and other local events at which clinics are sometimes offered in conjunction with competitions.
Women and Wakeboarding Although men and women compete in the same competitions, they are scored and ranked separately. The professional women’s wakeboarding field includes competitors ranging from teenagers to riders in their midtwenties. Tara Hamilton, a Florida high school student, competed in gymnastics for eight years before she took up wakeboarding. Training with male wakeboarder
Darin Shapiro, Hamilton was ranked among the top women wakeboarders in the world just a few months after she began the sport. During the 1998 X Games in San Diego, California, silver medalist and first-time participant Dana Preble performed the first Air Raley by a woman. The Air Raley is a trick that consists of a rider hitting the wake, swinging the wakeboard and body head over heels to cross the wake in the air, and landing on the opposite side of the wake.
Competition at the Top The World Wakeboard Association in 2004 ranked Andrew Adkison of the United States first in the world among men, Dallas Friday of the United States first in the world among women. C. J. Lockman Hall
Further Reading Association. Wakeboard World (2004). Retrieved January 10, 2005, from http://www.thewwa.com
A wakeboarder in action. Source: istockphoto/Ju-Lee.
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Weightlifting
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eightlifting is a sport in which heavy objects, usually barbells, are lifted in competition. It is also an exercise format designed to promote health, fitness, and proficiency in other sports. Since the late nineteenth century, weightlifting has achieved worldwide participation.
Early History Competitive weightlifting can be traced to prehistoric times when ancient tribes used lifting heavy stones as a test of manhood, and stone-lifting is still done in strongman and strongwoman contests in Europe and America. Sustained interest in weightlifting activities dates from the Greeks, who not only hoisted stones and tossed the discus but also employed iron objects called halteres that resembled modern dumbbells in their games and training. By far the most famous Greek athlete was Milo of Crotona, a weightlifter and wrestler. Milo, a six-time Olympic champion, originated the idea of progressive resistance training by carrying a calf daily until it became a bull, thereby steadily increasing his strength. Little weightlifting activity transpired during the Middle Ages, and not until the eighteenth century do records show iron weights (dumbbells) being used for light exercise. George Barker Windship, a Harvardtrained physician living in Boston in the 1850s, introduced heavy lifting.Windship incorporated various lifting devices to develop the lower torso and promote his philosophy, “Strength is Health.” By the end of the century, strongmen such as Eugen Sandow (England and America), Arthur Saxon (Germany), George Hackenschmidt (Russia), Louis Uni (France), and Louis Cyr (Canada), were performing competitive feats of strength.
Weightlifting Becomes a Sport The first official international weightlifting competition was held in London in 1891. Inspired by the Greek tradition, Pierre de Coubertin included weightlifting events in his 1896 revival of the Olympic games. The first
champions were Launceston Elliot (Great Britain) who did a one-hand jerk with 156 pounds (70.74 kg) and Viggo Jensen (Denmark) who did a two-hand jerk with 245 pounds (111.16 kg). Weightlifting was also included in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis and in the 1906 intercalary games in Athens. Although world championships, largely made up of Europeans, occurred from 1903 to 1913, the sport was pursued in a haphazard manner, with relatively few competitions and no firm set of international rules and records. The outbreak of World War I stifled any further progress. Then in 1920, Jules Rosset, president of the French federation, instigated the International Weightlifting Federation (Federation Haltérophile International) to regulate and administer international competitions. This also was the occasion for weightlifting’s return to the Olympics, which were staged in Antwerp. During the 1920s, the French, led by light-heavyweights Ernest Cadine and Charles Rigoulot, set the pace in international competition. The 1924 Paris Olympics marked the last time globe barbells were used. Plateloading barbells then became standard, soon followed by bars with revolving (ball-bearing) sleeves to minimize friction as the athlete turned the bar while hoisting it. In 1928, the Germans returned to Olympic competition for the first time since the war, and the international federation adopted the press, snatch, and clean and jerk for use in all sanctioned competitions. These two-hand lifts (the Olympic lifts) remained the standard for the next forty-four years and essentially defined the sport. The 1932 Los Angeles Olympics attracted relatively few weightlifting competitors, but it brought the first appearance by the United States in Olympic or world championships since 1904. Because of America’s lackluster (third place) performance, Bob Hoffman of York, Pennsylvania, started recruiting and training young weightlifters and published Strength & Health magazine to promote Olympic lifting. Hoffman’s lifters steadily improved during the 1930s with one of them, Tony Terlazzo, winning America’s first gold medal at the 1936 (Berlin) Olympics. But the Germans, led by
WEIGHTLIFTING
Josef Manger and Rudolf Ismayr, and the Egyptians, under the great Khadar el Sayed Touni, dominated the decade. By the outbreak of World War II, weightlifting was recognized widely as a sport on the international, national, regional, and local levels, but it received far less acceptance as a means for developing health and fitness.
American Golden Age Given the widespread devastation of European countries from the war, the United States emerged as the dominant weightlifting power, scoring a decisive victory over the Soviet Union at the 1946 world championships in Paris. Led by Hoffman and such great champions as John Davis, Tommy Kono, Pete George, and Norbert Schemansky, American lifters mounted a successful Cold War challenge to the Soviets and brought about a “golden age” of American weightlifting that lasted into the early 1960s. A climax occurred at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne where Georgia heavyweight Paul Anderson again led the American team to victory over the Russians. So prodigious were Anderson’s feats of strength that he set a new standard for big men (being the first weightlifter to press 400 pounds (181.44 kg). By universal consensus, the greatest weightlifter of all time was Kono, who won eleven national titles, six world championships, and one silver and two Olympic gold medals and set thirty-seven American, eight Pan American, seven Olympic, and twenty-six world records in three weight classes during his seventeen-year career (1948–1965). Eventually, however, the Soviets, led by such standouts as Arcady Vorobiev, Yuri Vlasov, Leonid Zhabotinsky, and David Rigert, were beating Hoffman’s men with regularity, and such countries as Poland, Hungary, Japan, Cuba, and Bulgaria were coming to the fore. Most of the countries became competitive on the international level because of the introduction of vigorous (state-funded) nationalization programs. The greatest Asian lifter during the 1960s was Miyake Yoshinobu of Japan, who won three Olympic medals and six world titles and set twenty-five world records.
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Agents of Change By the 1960s, the sport was being affected by several ancillary developments. Because of the persistence of Hoffman and other promoters such as Peary Rader and Joe and Ben Weider, weightlifting was gaining a wider acceptance and was increasingly being employed to improve proficiency in other sports, particularly football, basketball, and baseball, but eventually even swimming, golf, tennis, and distance running, where flexibility and endurance were critical to success. On the other hand, the increased popularity of bodybuilding (physique) and powerlifting competitions during the 1960s seriously detracted from participation in Olympic weightlifting meets on all levels. Another important change during this era was the internalization of the sport from simply training with barbells to the use of dietary supplements. Developed in the early 1950s by Irvin Johnson, a Chicago dietician and bodybuilding enthusiast, these products, often with a soy base, were designed to make more protein available for muscle growth and improve the weightlifter’s health and functioning of internal organs. Strength athletes started getting bigger and lifting more weight. Even more critical to performance was the introduction of anabolic steroids. First isolated in 1935 by Charles Kochakian, a University of Rochester graduate student, this drug was used on a limited basis in the 1940s to help wounded soldiers recuperate and in the 1950s by Russian weightlifters to fuel their victories in international competition. In the early 1960s, John Ziegler, an Olney, Maryland, physician, introduced steroids to American (York, Pennsylvania) lifters. During the next decade, their use spread to virtually all sports, and in all countries weightlifting totals and records soared. At the 1970 world championships in Columbus, Ohio, Russian superheavyweight Vasily Alexeev became the first man in history to clean and jerk more than 500 pounds (226.8 kg). From 1970 to 1977, the Russian giant broke eighty world records and eventually moved the clean and jerk mark up to 563 pounds (255.38 kg). Controversies surrounding steroids eventually led to their ban and the institution of drug testing by the International Olympic
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The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at. ■ JESSE OWENS
Committee (IOC) at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Weightlifters were stigmatized for steroid use in ensuing decades, but ergogenic drug abuse (from lack of testing) was far more prevalent in the sister sports of powerlifting and bodybuilding. What contributed most to the relative decline of Olympic weightlifting, however, was a controversy over the execution of the overhead press, once the most popular of lifts and a legitimate test of upper body strength. Quite contrary to the rules, lifters were increasingly allowed to employ the legs and hips and an exaggerated backbend. Officiating became heavily mired in international politics, and the whole movement became a farce. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) made the momentous decision to eliminate the press as a competitive lift. Almost immediately Olympic weightlifting, despite its status as an Olympic sport and the growing public acceptance of weight training, began to decline in popularity, especially in the United States and Western Europe.
East European Dominance In Eastern Europe and Cuba, however, the weightlifting tradition remained strong, and Bulgaria, a country of only about nine million people, began to replace Russia as the world’s greatest lifting power. In the 1970s, Russia won 255 Olympic and world championship medals to Bulgaria’s 150, but in the 1980s these totals were just 226 to 210 respectively. By 1989, Bulgaria held 14 of the world records to just 11 for Russia, and with the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Bulgaria became the dominant weightlifting power. Bulgaria’s greatest weightlifter was Naim Suleimanov (“Pocket Hercules”) who set his first world record at age fifteen but was prevented from entering the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics by Bulgaria’s boycott. After defecting to Turkey at the 1986 World Cup Tournament in Australia, he became Naim Suleymanoglu and went on to win Olympic gold medals at Seoul, Barcelona, and Atlanta, the first weightlifter to win three in a row. During this time, despite a windfall of $656,000, surplus from the 1984 Olympics, and the establish-
ment of a first-rate national training facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, American weightlifting continued its relative decline. At the 1995 world championships in Ghangzhou, China, for instance, the American team placed thirty-first, behind even Nauru, a Pacific island of only 10,000 people. So proficient did Bulgaria become at producing top-flight weightlifters that some of them were hired to become naturalized citizens and compete for other nations, such as Australia and Qatar, in international competition. The continued popularity of powerlifting and bodybuilding, lack of grassroots coaching and training facilities, and meager opportunities for commercial gain relative to other sports contributed to weightlifting’s declining status in North America.
Reconstructing an International Order That Olympic weightlifting retained a high degree of recognition elsewhere may be attributed partly to the stalwart leadership of Gottfried Schodl (Austria) and Tamás Aján (Hungary) in positions of IWF president and general secretary since the 1970s. Among their achievements was a substantial increase in the number of countries and athletes participating on all levels. The 1996 centennial Olympics in Atlanta attracted 100,000 spectators, the largest number in the history of the sport, each paying $34. In 2003, 1,269 male weightlifters from 127 countries participated in IWF calendar events. Women’s competitions, conducted on a regular basis since the late 1970s, also gained international status in 1987 with the first women’s world championships in Daytona Beach, Florida. When women’s weightlifting became an Olympic event for the first time at Sydney in 2000, Tara Nott, in the 48 kg class, became the first American to win an Olympic gold medal in weightlifting since bantamweight Chuck Vinci’s victory at Rome in 1960. In 2003, a record 721 women from 95 countries participated in sanctioned international competitions. Another leadership initiative has been an increased standardization of rules, officiating practices, and equipment. In 1993, the IWF implemented a more
WEIGHTLIFTING
rigorous drug-testing program that was complemented by a restructuring of weight classes and an abolition of all previous (presumably drug-induced) records. Not surprisingly, contest totals and world records dropped dramatically. In 2003, the IWF conducted 1,351 tests, with only 28 (2 percent) being positive for drugs. Especially with the inclusion of national spot-testing in some countries, weightlifting has become cleaner than its sister sports of powerlifting and bodybuilding.
Entering the Twenty-first Century With the onset of the twenty-first century, Bulgaria remained a leading lifting power, but other countries including Turkey, China, Russia, Greece, Iran, Poland,
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Rumania, and Qatar were producing world-class weightlifters in the men’s ranks. In a poll conducted on the IWF Internet site, Hossein Reza Zadeh (105+ class) from Iran and Halil Mutlu (56 kg class) from Turkey received the most votes for world’s best lifter in 2003. As of March 2004, Reza Zadeh held all the records in his class. Still his 578-pound (262.15 kg) world-record clean and jerk was only 15 pounds (6.8 kg) higher than Alexeev’s 563 (255.42 kg) in 1977, a likely testimony to the effectiveness of drug testing. In the women’s ranks, China has utterly dominated competition, holding eighteen of the twenty-one senior world records and thirteen of the junior records in March 2004. By far the best female lifter, and recipient of the most Internet votes, was Liu Chunhong of China. Though still only a junior level lifter (at age 19), her 270 kg total in 2003 in the 69 kg class was 7.5 kg higher than the 262.5 kg total registered by Nahla Ramadan of Egypt in the 75 kg class. For men and women, especially in capitalist societies, the greatest challenge remains the relative lack of remuneration in Olympic weightlifting.
Weightlifting Basics The objective of Olympic weightlifting is to register the highest two-lift total in the snatch and the clean and jerk. Each lifter gets three attempts in each lift, with the highest weights in each category being added to his or her total. If a lifter misses all three attempts in either lift, he or she is eliminated from the competition. In the event of a tie, the lighter lifter receives the higher placement. The lifter has two minutes from the time his or her name is called to start the lift. A head referee and two side judges officiate. At least two of three white lights are required for a passing lift. Strategy in weightlifting normally comes into play toward the end of the competition where each athlete will choose a final clean and jerk that will yield a total that other lifters will not be able to surpass.
Weightlifting equipment. Source: istockphoto/mevans.
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In the first competitive lift, the snatch, the bar is pulled from the floor to an overhead position at arms length in one continuous movement. The lifter is allowed to move his feet into either a squatting or splitting position, essentially dipping under the bar while it is momentarily suspended in mid-air. In the recovery portion of the lift, the athlete raises his or her body to an erect position. The clean and jerk is a twopart lift. The athlete first, in the clean, lifts the barbell from the floor to the shoulders, again (as in the snatch) squatting or splitting under the suspended bar. The lifter then recovers into a standing position with the weight resting on the shoulders. After lowering the weight with the knees, the lifter then thrusts it overhead with his or her legs and again dips under the suspended bar by assuming either a split or squat position. In the recovery portion, the athlete again raises his or her body erect. From 1928 to 1972, the press was also contested. As in the clean and jerk, the barbell was first brought to the lifter’s shoulders, using the same foot motion options. The athlete would then stand erect until the head referee signaled the execution of the lift, which was done by pressing the barbell overhead with the arms and shoulders and with no assistance from the legs or lower torso. In each lift, the athlete must finish with feet in line, body erect, arms and legs fully extended, and the barbell under control overhead. The lifter must hold the weight overhead until receiving the head referee’s signal to replace it to the floor.
WEIGHT CLASSES AND EQUIPMENT Men’s competitions consist of eight bodyweight classifications, the upper limits being: 56 kg (123 pounds), 62 kg (137 pounds), 69 kg (152 pounds), 77 kg (170 pounds), 85 kg (187 pounds), 94 kg (207 pounds), 105 kg (231 pounds), and more than 105 kg. For women, there are seven weight classes: 48 kg (106 pounds), 53 kg (117 pounds), 58 kg (128 pounds), 63 kg (139 pounds), 69 kg (152 pounds), 75 kg (165 pounds), and more than 75 kg.
The equipment employed in competitive weightlifting consists of the barbell, a steel bar or rod to which castiron or steel disk weights (encased in hard rubber) are attached at each end on a revolving sleeve. The men’s competition bar weighs 20 kg (44 pounds). For women, the bar weighs 15 kg (33 pounds). The range of weights added is 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, 2.5, and 1.25 kg (55, 44, 33, 22, 11, 5.5, and 2.75 pounds). All lifts are performed on a square platform that measures four meters on each side.
GOVERNANCE Five organizations administer the sport of weightlifting, consisting of (in descending order of influence) the International Weightlifting Federation, National Weightlifting Federations, the International Olympic Committee, Olympic committees for individual nations, and the organizing committees for specific competitions. Olympic weightlifting in the United States is governed by USA Weightlifting in Colorado Springs.
Final Reflections Weightlifting has always been a highly individual sporting endeavor. Although it is possible to compete on a team basis, particularly on the national and international levels, many weightlifters prefer no affiliation. Unlike many sports, there is no possibility for direct interaction with opponents or even members of one’s own team. This lack of physical contact and team strategy encourages individuality, yet a strong spirit of camaraderie has always existed among participants. Historically, weightlifting has attracted ethnic and racial minorities, those seeking greater self-esteem, or individuals not able to participate in team sports. Contrary to popular belief, the best weightlifters (pound-forpound) are found in the lighter classes, often among individuals who appear quite normal and do not fit the stereotype (bulky, oversized). Speed (from fast-twitch muscles) and flexibility are as important as strength to an Olympic weightlifter’s success. Exercise scientists, in fact, have identified the snatch, where great explosive
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It’s scary to read things like that, you know, being the best player in England, but it gives me confidence. I’m not going to go around shouting about things that people say about me, but it’s nice that they say it. ■ DAVID BECKHAM
power and quickness are required, as the fastest movement in all of sport. Through its association as a training aid for other sports during the past half century, weightlifting has gained increased respect for its health and athletic qualities. John D. Fair See also Powerlifting; Venice Beach
Further Reading Drechsler, A. (1998). The weightlifting encyclopedia, a guide to world class performance. Whitestone, NY: A Is A Communications. Fair, J. (1988). Olympic weightlifting and the introduction of steroids: A statistical analysis of world championship results, 1948–1972. International Journal on the History of Sport, 5, 96-114. Fair, J. (1993). George Jowett, Ottley Coulter, David Willoughby and the Organization of American Weightlifting,1911–1924. Iron Game History, 2I, 3-15. Fair, J. (1993). Isometrics or steroids? Exploring new frontiers in strength in the early 1960s. Journal of Sport History, 20, 1-24. Fair, J. (1998). The iron game and capitalist culture: A century of American weightlifting in the Olympics,1896–1996. International Journal on the History of Sport, 15, 18-35. Fair, J. (1999). Muscletown USA, Bob Hoffman and the manly culture of York Barbell. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Fair, J. (2001). The tragic history of the “military press” in Olympic and world championship competition,1928–1972. Journal of Sport History, 28, 345-374. Ivanov, D. (1979). The strongest man in the world, Vasili Alexeyev. New York: Sphinx Press. Gaudreau, L. (1975). Anvils, horseshoes and cannons: The history of strongmen. East Kingston, NH. Kirkley, G. (1957). Modern weightlifting. London: Faber Popular Books. Mihajlovic, V. (1977). 80 years of the weightlifting in the world,1896– 1976. Beograd, Serbia: International Weightlifting Federation. Mihajlovic, V. (1982). Weightlifting results, Part II, Budapest, Hungary: International Weightlifting Federation. Radley, A. The illustrated history of physical culture. Preston, UK. T. Snape. Saxon, A. (1992). Textbook of weight-lifting. Farmington: Modern Reprint Edition. Schodl, G. (1992). The lost past, a story of the International Weightlifting Federation. Budapest, Hungary: International Weightlifting Federation. Searle, C., & Vaile, B. (Eds.). (1996) The IOC Official Olympic companion 1996. London: Brassey’s Sports. Strossen, R. (1999). Paul Anderson, the mightiest minister. Nevada City, CA: Ironmind Enterprises. Webster, D. (1976). The iron game, an illustrated history of weightlifting. Irvine, Scotland: John Geddes. Weightlifting USA. Colorado Springs, CO: Weightlifting USA. Widlund, T. (1989). Weightlifting at the Olympic Games,1896–1988. Budapest, Hungary: International Weightlifting Federation. World Weightlifting. Budapest, Hungary: International Weightlifting Federation.
Wembley Stadium
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embley Stadium is a sports stadium in Wembley, London, England. At the time of this writing, the original Wembley Stadium had been torn down and a new one, scheduled to open in 2006, is being built on the site. Wembley stadium was and is expected to continue to be Britian’s leading soccer stadium and also a major venue for world soccer competitions. In the late 1800s the ground that later became the stadium was Wembley Park Leisure Grounds and had facilities for soccer and cricket, gardens, and fountains. After a failed attempt to build a huge tower as a tourist attraction it became a golf course. In the 1920s the government developed the park into a venue for a British Empire Exhibition, with the new stadium, then called Empire Stadium, as the centerpiece. The new stadium was marked by its distinctive twin towers and by its royal box, thirty-nine steps above the field. The first event was the “White Horse Cup Final,” the Football Association (FA) final between the Bolton Wanderers and West Ham. It is believed that some 200,000 people attended with a seating capacity of only 100,000. The game got under way only when Police Constable George Scorey rode up and down the sidelines on his white horse, Billie, pushing the crowds back off the field. Hence, the names, “White Horse Cup Final.” The FA Cup was contested at Wembley every year (except when suspended due to war) until 2000, when the stadium was closed for rebuilding. It is also the home of the National Team and hosted the final game of the 1966 World Cup. It has also hosted five European Cup championships and numerous lower-level British championships. Brazilian soccer immortal Pele noted that “Wembley is the church of football. It is the capital of football and it is the heart of football.” In addition to soccer, Wembley hosted the track and field events at the 1948 Olympics, Rugby League and Rugby Union matches, motorcycle racing, and several preseason National Football League games. In 1972 it
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Wembley Stadium before being replaced in 2004.
began hosting concerts. Notable ones have been those by Bruce Springsteen, Queen, the Spice Girls, and the Live Aid concert in 1985. In 2000 the stadium was closed, and events shifted elsewhere until it was rebuilt. The rebuilding initiative was controversial and faced numerous financial and political hurdles including concerns about the overall cost, the source of funds, the effect on the surrounding community, and transportation issues. One major controversy has been over the plan to set aside 18,800 seats (of 90,000) for corporations that will pay between 30,000 and 50,000 British pounds to use the seats for a wide range of events for ten years. These subscriptions will provide 70 percent of the stadium’s revenues. Some sports fans are concerned that the corporate presence will damage the sports experience for other fans. Manchester United’s captain Roy Keane has referred to them as the “prawn sandwich brigade.” Supporters of the plan argue that it will help keep the cost down for other fans. The final plans were not agreed upon until 2002.The 90,000 seats in the new stadium will all have unobstructed views of the field.There will be a retractable roof that will close in inclement weather but remain open at other times to allow the sun to reach the grass field. The most visible feature will be an arch 315 meters long and 133 meters high above the north end. It supports the north stands and part of the south stands as well and replaces internal pillars. The royal box will be in its usual position in the middle of the north stand. The project is budgeted at 757 million pounds. Despite the series of false starts, Wembley Stadium seems on schedule for completion in 2006 and for the FA Cup in May. David Levinson
Further Reading Blukeman, M. (1998). Wembley, the first time. Yore Publications. Chaudhary,V. (2002). Bulldozers roll as Wembley stadium gets go-ahead. The Guardian, Sept. 27, 2002.
Inglis, S. (1983). The football grounds of England and Wales. Willow Books. Nederlands Architectuurinstitut et al. (2000). The stadium: Architecture of mass sport. NAI Publishers.
Wimbledon
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he All England Lawn Tennis Championships, known as “Wimbledon” (after the locale where they are played), is the most prestigious professional tennis tournament in the world. The championships are staged at the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), a private club founded in 1868. Attended by more than 500,000 people each year, Wimbledon has grown tremendously from the gathering of two hundred spectators who attended the first championships in 1877. Only the men’s singles event, won by Spencer Gore, was played originally. The women’s singles event was not introduced until 1884 (the same year the men’s doubles event was introduced). From an entry pool of thirteen women, Maud Watson became the first women’s champion.The trophies presented to the initial winners are still presented today: a silver gilt cup (inscribed with “The All England Lawn Tennis Club Single Handed Champion of the World”) for men and a silver salver named the “Rosewater Dish” for women. The number of players included in the main draw of the singles events has increased (to 128), as has the prize money. In 1968 the women’s and men’s singles champions received $1,313 and $3,500, respectively, which increased to $980,875 and $1,054,375, respectively, by
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Tennis is a young man’s game. Until you’re 25, you can play singles. From 25 to 35, you should play doubles. I won’t tell you exactly how old I am, but when I played, there were 28 men on the court—just on my side of the net. ■ GEORGE BURNS
2004. Permanent stands replaced temporary bleachers by the mid-1880s, and by 1922 a fourteen-thousandseat stadium was built, one of the most prominent additions to date. Presently the Wimbledon championships utilize all nineteen grass courts of the AELTC, including the center court (originally the court around which all others were arranged) with a capacity of 13,810 and the number one court with a capacity of 11,429.
Players In the beginning the championships were dominated by British players. Ernest and William Renshaw won thirteen singles and doubles championships from 1881 to 1889, followed by Reggie and Laurence Doherty, who won the doubles title eight times from 1896 to 1906. Since 1907 only two Britons, Arthur Gore (in 1901, 1908, and 1909) and Fred Perry (in 1934, 1935, and 1936) have won the men’s singles title, and after 1922 only five British women have become singles champions (Kitty McKane Godfree in 1926, Dorothy Round in 1934 and 1937, Angela Mortimer in 1961, Ann Jones in 1969, and Virginia Wade in 1977).
Regardless of the nationality of its players, Wimbledon has become a showcase for the greatest players on the professional women’s tour. The participation of overseas players at Wimbledon was initiated by May Sutton in 1905 and by Norman Brookes of Australia in 1907. During the early 1920s Suzanne Lenglen of France dominated Wimbledon by winning six titles before turning professional. Her countrymen, Jean Borota, Jacques Brugnon, Rene Lacoste, and Henri Cochet (the “Four Musketeers”), continued to dominate during the late 1920s. U.S. men (e.g., Jack Kramer and Anthony Talbert) dominated the championships during the late 1940s and early 1950s before handing the mantle to the Australians (e.g., Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, and John Newcombe) until the 1970s. In 1956 Althea Gibson became the first African-American woman to win a title at Wimbledon before Margaret Court Smith captured the singles title three times (1963, 1965, and 1970). Wimbledon joined the “open era” by allowing both amateur and professional players in 1968, the year when Billy Jean King and Rod Laver became the women’s and men’s champions, respectively. In 1971 Evonne Fay Goolagong became the first Aborigine (native Australian) to win Wimbledon. In 1980 the Swede Bjorn Borg become the first player to win five consecutive men’s singles titles. Boris Becker became the youngest player (at seventeen), the first German, and the first unseeded player to win the same event in 1985. In 1987 the U.S. player Martina Navratilova became the first woman to win six women’s singles championships in succession (nine in total by 1990). However, during the late 1980s and 1990s Steffi Graf (Germany) dominated Wimbledon, winning the title seven times. On the men’s side the U.S. player Pete Sampras had also recorded seven men’s singles wins by 2000.
Traditional Wimbledon The plethora of Wimbledon traditions has helped maintain the unique character of the championships.
Hardware used to secure the tennis net.
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I’ll let the racket do the talking.
■
JOHN MCENROE
Wimbledon Bill Tilden at Wimbledon In 1920 Bill Tilden became the first American to win at Wimbledon. The extract below captures his thoughts as he came to Centre Court at Wimbledon. Here am I, America’s representative, given the opportunity, the fates being kind, to do what no other American has yet done. Under my feet is the turf which the giants of all lawn tennis time have trod. Looking on are the shades of the Renshaws, the Baddelys, the Dohertys, and scores of others almost equally great, watching my strokes, noting my strategy and tactics, nodding, approvingly or the reverse, as they envision my bearing and take cognizance of my every action. Around me, filling every available bit of space, are the men and women who compose the most distinguished and critical gallery in all the lawn tennis world; even royalty has come to view the scene and add luster and éclat to it. ’Twould ill become me to do aught but acquit myself well, to justify my selection as one of the representatives of my country. I must act worthily, as beseems the game and its followers. And may the best man win.
With increases in the popularity of professional tennis and player involvement in the fashion industry, the variety in tennis clothing will continue to flourish as it has done in recent years.
The Future Wimbledon has changed through the years to accommodate the growth in popularity of tennis and the need for improved facilities. During the past twenty-five years the members enclosure was introduced, the center court roof was raised for more seating, and Aorangi Park (a large grassed area that allows televised coverage) was added. Currently the major project is the construction of a retractable roof for center court that will allow play to continue during rain. The projected completion date is 2009. Since 2003 drug-testing policies at Wimbledon have also been increased in accordance with the Tennis AntiDoping Program operated by the International Tennis Federation, the Association of Tennis Professionals, and the Women’s Tennis Association. Katie Sell
Tilden II, W. T., & Merrihew, S. W. (1925). Match play and the spin of the ball. New York: American Lawn Tennis.
These traditions include the serving of strawberries and cream, champagne, and Pimms (an alcoholic cocktail supplemented with fruit), along with the presentation of trophies by members of the royal family (e.g., Queen Elizabeth II in 1977, Prince Philip in 2004) and, of course, the ivy-covered walls and timepieces throughout the grounds. Wimbledon mandates completely white tennis attire for both men and women. Initially white clothing was popular because it masks perspiration. Clothing fashions, the prerogative of women players, have always been a major focus at Wimbledon, from the headband and silk chiffon that Lenglen added to her already delicate calf-length dress in 1919 to the form-fitting all-inone white body stocking worn by Anne White in 1986.
Further Reading Bartlett, M., & Gillen, B. (Eds.) (1981). The tennis book. New York: Arbor House Publishers. Wimbledon Championships. (2004). Retrieved November 24, 2004, from http://championships.wimbledon.org/
Windsurfing
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indsurfing (also called “sailboarding”) combines surfing and sailing on what is basically a large surfboard with a sail operated by one person.
History Windsurfing originated during the late 1960s and, like surfing, developed a distinct culture. The windsurf board was based on designs and technologies adapted from boat sailing and surfing. By the mid-1970s
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A windsurfer in training. Source: istockphoto/lisegagne.
residents) often constitute the majority of participants.
Culture
companies were producing windsurf boards around the developed world, particularly in Australia, Europe, Canada, and Japan. Windsurfing expanded rapidly during the 1980s as more than a half-million boards were sold worldwide. This expansion was largely because of advances in technology, particularly the development of materials with higher strength-to-weight ratios, which allowed lighter, more efficient, and more durable boards and rigs (the mast, sail, and boom) that were easier to use. The so-called fun board, which is shorter and lighter, contributed to the popularity during the mid1980s, a period when windsurfing was the fastest growing sport in Europe. Windsurfing had matured somewhat by the early 1990s; equipment sales in Europe—home of the sport’s largest consumer base and biggest producers—peaked during the late 1980s. However, windsurfing has progressed from being a fad and has established itself as a genuine sport that encompasses several forms, ranging from long-board racing and speed sailing to freestyle and wave sailing.Venues range from inland waters, such as lakes and reservoirs, to the open sea. People in many developing nations, including in Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific islands, also windsurf. However, because the equipment is expensive and often unavailable in some of these areas, tourists (rather than
Windsurfing, along with other new sports such as snowboarding, surfing, and skateboarding (also called “lifestyle sports” or “whiz sports”), developed along with counterculture social movements in North America. These activities evolved in opposition to mainstream sports and in opposition to the institutionalization of sports in recent years. A culture has developed around these new sports. The philosophy of windsurfing promotes fun, selfactualization, individualism, and other internal rewards. Windsurfing is less institutionalized than more traditional modern sports, has fewer rules, fewer formal restrictions and exclusion policies, and promotes the idea that anyone can participate. Only a few windsurfers belong to sports organizations. Windsurfing’s “grass roots” are casual weekend sailors.
Competition at the Top In 1984 the Olympic Games accepted windsurfing as a class in the yachting events. Initially women and men competed together, but by 1994 separate women’s and men’s classes were established. Nevertheless, windsurfing competition takes many forms, and for many people the pinnacle is the professional funboard racing circuit, which operates under the auspices of the Professional Windsurfers Association (PWA). Recreational windsurfers tend not to engage in formal competitions. For many windsurfers organized competition is contrary to the freedom of the windsurfing lifestyle. In late 2004 the Professional Windsurfers Association ranked these athletes first: Scott McKercher of Australia, men’s wave; Daida Ruano Moreno of Spain, women’s
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wave; Antoine Albeau of France, men’s racing; Allison Shreeve of Australia, women’s racing; Ricardo Campello of Brazil, men’s freestyle; Daida Ruano Moreno, women’s freestyle; and Matt Pritchard of the United States, Super X.
Culture and Gender Women windsurf, but their numbers are disproportionately low, and the sport and its culture remain dominated by men. Research in Germany and Australia suggests that women constitute between 25 and 33 percent of windsurfers, although 40 percent of the windsurfers classified as beginners are women. Demographic data from the United Kingdom also suggest class differences. This data showed that British women who windsurf regularly tend to be able-bodied, white, and middle class. Windsurfing is an expensive sport, although less expensive than other water sports such as sailing. Data showed that women participants in particular have disposable incomes that enable them to purchase the windsurfing board and sail. If participants lack the money to buy the equipment, they will have only a limited interest in participating. Windsurfing is a time-consuming sport; often several hours (at least) are needed to reach the location (often inaccessible by public transport), assemble the equipment, and then spend time out on the water. Women windsurfers interviewed in the United Kingdom suggested that, even for professional women whose income did not limit their ability to participate, finding time to windsurf was difficult; this was especially problematic for women who lived a considerable distance from the water and for women who had family commitments. As a woman instructor explained, “Windsurfing takes up half a day, or a day. Aerobics you can go down to the gym—fit it in—hubby or partner will baby-sit, so windsurfing is a problem. . . . I mean they haven’t got time to fit it in, it’s not a sport that is accessible to them.” Although improvements in both teaching equipment and methods have made windsurfing more accessible to women, the perception remains that windsurfing is dif-
ficult to learn and requires considerable power and strength. The media (especially videos and magazines) perpetuate this perception by focusing on advanced windsurfing action, with men dominating both photographs and text. Thus, windsurfing is represented as a male domain, with women often the ornamental observers. This emphasis on the hard-core element of the culture excludes outsiders, especially women. As Jessica Crisp, an elite Australian windsurfer, said, “I taught a girl the other day who felt she couldn’t even paddle a surfboard because she had no muscles. But right away she was beach-starting, uphauling the sail and sailing around. . . . There is some myth that you have to be huge and strong, but just look at us—we aren’t exactly giants. The equipment is so light and easy to learn on now. It’s a technique thing in the end” (Crisp 1996, 14–20). However, as more women participate, elite women are pushing the limits. Women windsurfers of all levels have described the confidence and independence they experience while windsurfing. Although the sport itself is individual, women have gained a sense of community from it. Belinda Wheaton
Further Reading British Market Research Bureau. (1995). TGI index. London: Author. Crisp, J. (1996). The winds of Maui. Wahine, 2, 14–20. Gosselin, L. (1994, July–August).Throwing caution to the wind. Women’s Sport and Fitness, 56–61. Turner, S. (1983). Development and organisation of windsurfing. Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management, 1, 13–15. Wheaton, B., & Tomlinson, A. (1998, August 22). The changing gender order in sport? The case of windsurfing. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 252–274.
Women See Baseball Wives; Body Image; Coeducational Sport; Disordered Eating; Feminist Perspective; Gender Equity; Gender Verification; Injury Risk in Women’s Sport; Lesbianism; Psychology of Sex Differences; Sexual
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Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks. ■ JOE PATERNO
Harassment; Sexuality; Title IX; Women’s Sports, Media Coverage of; Women’s World Cup
Women’s Sports, Media Coverage of
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he feminist critique of sport that has existed for over three decades concludes that the marginalization and trivialization of female athletes only serves to reproduce the domination of men over women.Writers tend to agree that the media play a central ideological role not only in “reflecting” but also in reinforcing existing ideas about gender—there is a large body of work focused around the study of the media coverage of women’s sports and female athletes.These studies tend to follow two main issues: the amount of coverage and the portrayal of women’s sports and female athletes by the media. Many of these studies conclude that despite all the changes that have taken place over the last decades, women’s sport is still underrepresented in the media, and when female athletes are covered, it is still in ways that are different from coverage given their male counterparts.
Women and Sport The notion that in sports physical and biological differences interface with social and cultural interpretations of gender role expectations has been central to much of what has been published in the sociology of sport. Indeed, studies published during the 1970s and 1980s explored remarkable gender differences in patterns of athletic socialization and examined whether sport as an institution neutralizes men’s power and privilege over women. They concluded that the marginalization and trivialization of female athletes only serves to reproduce the domination of men over women. In the decades that followed, some scholars continued to claim that sport, perhaps more than any other institution, perpetuates the myth of man’s superiority and woman’s inferiority, ap-
parently based on masculine biological and physiological supremacy. It is however clear that over the years, and particularly during the 1990s, women have made many advances in organized, competitive, high-performance spectator sports. Overall, figures do suggest a rise in women’s participation in sports, particularly in Western societies and most clearly in the United States (following Title IX—an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guaranteeing equal funding for girls and boys sports that became law in 1972).
Women, Media, and Sport Why should the media be discussed in relation to women and sport? The main reason is that the mass media—which are an essential feature of modern social life—preserve, transmit, and create important cultural information. Indeed, one central assumption within media studies is that how members of society see themselves, how they are viewed and even treated by others is determined to a great extent by their media representation. It can be argued that when it comes to sport the mass media assume an even greater importance since the overwhelming majority of spectators experience sporting events in their mediated version. To date a substantial body of work examining the role of the media in relation to women and sport does exist and, very broadly speaking, it tends to focus on two main issues: the amount of coverage and the portrayal of women’s sports and female athletes by the media.
AMOUNT OF COVERAGE Studies published throughout the 1980s, most of the 1990s, and onward have continued to reveal that the lion’s share of sports coverage by the media is still dedicated to men’s activity. Indeed, a consistent finding is the underreporting of female athletes and their sporting events throughout all mass media; for example, in 1994 men were found to receive 93.8 percent of coverage on U.S. television (Duncan and Messner 1998). Since the media is seen as reflecting what is important and has prestige, this severe underrepresentation is thought to
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create the impression that women athletes are nonexistent in the sporting world or of little value when they do exist. Moreover, this “creates a false impression of women’s athleticism by denying the reality of the modern female athlete” (Kane and Greendorfer 1994, 35). This underrepresentation, in turn, is also viewed as creating a vicious circle since the growth of women’s sport is hindered by the lack of funds that nowadays come primarily from sponsorship. Sponsors are interested in investing in sports and teams that are featured regularly on television, and since women’s sports do not qualify as such, they do not get the big cash injections associated with sponsorship. It is important to point out that the most substantial body of work in this field originates primarily from the United States; however, according to studies from other (Western) countries, the coverage of women’s sport routinely occupies no more than 5 percent of total sport airtime in nations like Italy (Capranica and Aversa 2002), the Netherlands (Knoppers and Elling 2001), Sweden (Koivula 1999), and Britain (Harris 1999). Studies also consistently show that along with significantly less coverage, there are fewer representations of those team or individual women’s sports generally conceived of as “masculine.” And yet, some changes in the amount of coverage of women’s sport have been traced in major sporting events, like the extensive and successful coverage of the 1999 Women’s World Cup—in ratings terms— especially in the United States, the nation that hosted the games and eventually won the event. This case in fact showed television organizations that there is profit to be made in women’s sport. The 2001 UEFA European Women’s Championship also attracted a high level of sponsorship, live TV screening of the semifinals in all four countries concerned, and ratings that revealed that every fourth television set in Germany was tuned into the opening game (Germany versus Sweden). These could seem like major shifts, and yet, the examples mentioned are of major international sporting events in which it is safe to assume any successful athlete would get extensive media attention in his or her
home country regardless of the athlete’s gender. The Olympic Games are another revealing example in this context; studies by Eastman and Billings (1999) and Tuggle and Owen (1999), analyzing coverage of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics by the American network NBC found an almost equal coverage of men’s and women’s events as determined by parameters like proportions of clock time and numbers of covered medal events. Still, in these studies many reservations emerge in regard to the focusing of women’s sport coverage on those that are considered to be “feminine sports” (for a study of the Sydney Games, see Higgs, Weiller, and Scott 2003). To date, women’s tennis may be the only clear example of a sport to which the media routinely dedicate much airtime. Thus, for example, in 1999 the American cable channel HBO devoted an unprecedented 70 percent of its tennis coverage to women (Mackay 1999). The intensive coverage of women’s tennis is even more extensive during major events like the Wimbledon tournament. This may be, however, not only because women’s tennis appears to elicit interest in sporting terms but also, as many have noticed, due to the physical appearance of some of the young female players— an argument that links into the qualitative aspect of the research of women, media, and sport.
MEDIA P ORTRAYAL OF FEMALE ATHLETES Beyond the quantitative questions of media coverage, studies also deal with differences in the type of coverage women’s and men’s sports get. Over the years various studies have focused on different practices by which the media construct female athleticism not only as “other than” but also as “lesser than” that of the male. Don Sabo and Curry Jansen (1992), for instance, argue that the skills and strengths of women athletes are often devalued since the dominant standards of excellence are masculine, emphasizing cultural equivalents of hegemonic masculinity: power, self-control, success, agency, and aggression. Furthermore, whereas male athletes are valorized, lionized, and put on cultural pedestals, female athletes are infantilized by sports commentators
WOMEN’S SPORTS, MEDIA COVERAGE OF
who refer to them as “girls” or “young ladies.” Messner, Duncan, and Jensen (1990) found that while male athletes tended to be described in terms of strength and success, the physical strength of female athletes tended to be neutralized by ambivalent language. Another— much referred to in the literature—practice used by the media is the use of names in commentary. Indeed, Messner, Duncan, and Jensen (1990) found that commentators referred to female tennis players by their first names 52.7 percent of the time and to men only 7.8 percent of the time. Pfister’s (1989) study of the coverage of the Olympics by German newspapers also showed that while men were often addressed by their surnames, women were introduced by their first name, a nickname, or a fantasy name. According to her findings, these diminutive, especially intimate, or overly polite forms of address were among the strategies that were almost exclusively applied to women. This phenomenon is perceived by the various writers as displaying a hierarchy of naming, that is, a linguistic practice that reinforces the existing gender-based status differences. Moreover, while the male performance is often linked to power metaphors (like war), the coverage of female athletes is often framed within stereotypes that emphasize their aesthetic appeal rather than athletic skill. However, in this respect too some changes have been taking place in recent years; thus, for example, in their aforementioned study of the 1996 Olympic Games, Eastman and Billings (1999) found that although the presence of gender stereotyping was not as overwhelming as had been expected, nonetheless “as traditional gender stereotyping suggests, the descriptors applied to women athletes contained more commentary about physical appearance than the descriptors applied to men athletes” (Eastman and Billings 1999, 163). Moreover, the scholars claim that one could also find— mainly in preproduced profile reports—what can be only labeled as “unfortunate stereotyping” (1999, 165). Eastman and Billings note, however, that NBC’s host and on-site reporters were careful to attribute women’s success and failure to the same characteristics as men’s
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success and failure. Jones, Murrel, and Jackson (1999) in their study of the 1996 Olympics also found that for female athletes playing “female appropriate” sports, there was a trend toward print media accounts, which focused more on describing their performance than personality or appearance. Other findings by these scholars, however, indicate that the “beauty” and “grace” of the female gymnasts were still the main points of emphasis, despite their having taken U.S. gold in the event. Thus, it can be argued that the “buts” in this case outweigh the positive findings by far. Indeed, in her study Koivula (1999) found, for example, that infantilism (“girl,” “young lady/woman”) was still very much part of the language used by commentators for referring to women athletes, while the language used to describe men (“man” and even “old fellow/man”) linguistically acknowledged their status as adults—this although the athletes were generally of similar age. Moreover, in his study of the representation of woman in football-related stories in the British popular press during the course of the 1996 European Championship, Harris (1999) argues that the message still being portrayed is that sport is an essentially male activity in which women are afforded only subordinate and/or highly sexualized roles.
Appearance and Attractiveness In fact, among various other findings, researchers analyzing the portrayal of female athletes from different perspectives found the coverage to be often framed within stereotypes that emphasize appearance and attractiveness rather than athletic skill. According to this argument, the sexualization of female athletes trivializes them and robs female athletes of athletic legitimacy, thus preserving hegemonic masculinity.
THE ANNA KOURNIKOVA PHENOMENON The media coverage of women’s tennis over recent years is highly representative in this context, the most prominent example being Anna Kournikova. Although Kournikova, prior to her early retirement, was for several years one of the top players in the world—in the season of 2000, for instance, she was ranked eighth in the
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Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there. ■ BO JACKSON
world—the amount and type of coverage she gained (and still does) did not correlate with her tennis ranking. To illustrate, during Wimbledon 2000 for every picture of the single’s finalist Lindsay Davenport there were twenty of Kournikova in the British newspapers (Mackay 1999). The extensive media attention to the blonde, model-looking Kournikova—also dubbed “tennis’s pinup girl”—clearly shows the importance certain branches of the media ascribe to looks and image over tennis skills. Indeed, as one Web-based writer put it, “the Anna Kournikova phenomenon proves you don’t need to win tournaments to get your name—and photo—in the media” (Thomas 2001). Some believe that there is an up side to this phenomena—Chris Evert, three-time Wimbledon champion and later a commentator for NBC, said in an interview: “Girls now want to grow up and be athletes [ . . . ] there are attractive, appealing girls out there and now they realize that’s it is okay to run around and sweat and be tough. Twenty years ago it was frowned upon and wasn’t feminine” (Mackay 1999). Furthermore, according to the Sports Sponsorship Advisory Service, women should “play the sex appeal card to attract more media coverage and therefore more sponsorship” (Gillan 1999). This suggestion infuriated Yvonne Barker, director of Women in Sport, who said: “We believe that women’s sport should be sponsored for exactly the same reason as men—because they appeal to their audience for their achievement and intrinsic value. We certainly don’t feel that they should be sponsored for sex and sex appeal” (Gillan 1999). Generally speaking, a certain ambivalence emerges every time a female athlete is framed as a sexual being or is covered by the media not for her sport performance but because she is attractive and conveys sex appeal. Kournikova is but one example: During the 2003 Wimbledon tournament, Maria Sharapova—who one year later would go on to win the Wimbledon crown—drew much of the media’s attention for her physical appearance. The dramatic decline in Anna Kournikova’s tennis performance (she failed even to qualify) resulted in the media’s “eagerness” to crown an appropriate substitute.
Sharapova was one option; Yelena Dukic was another, which was illustrated by the British newspaper headline prior to the match between the two being described as “Battle of the Babes” (Daily Mirror, June 28, 2003). However, it is important to emphasize that the current discussion of women’s image is more complex than this. In addition to the wide variety of female images currently being presented by the media, tennis (and other sports) also offers an image of powerful sportswomen, manifested by stars like Venus and Serena Williams.
The Future Over recent years women have certainly advanced in organized competitive sport, and women’s sport has also gained considerable ground as far as media visibility is concerned, particularly in major sporting events. A certain shift also occurred in the type of coverage of women’s sports and female athletes, and yet recent research findings show that practices used to undermine women’s sporting achievements—and identified in the past—are still very much in evidence. All of which continues to send a message that sport is in essence a male activity, in which women play only a subordinate and/ or sexualized role. Although it can be argued that the media cannot change the world, it can certainly help— alongside other societal forces—change attitudes about women in sports, but for now—with all the improvements that have been made—one can only hope they will do so more in the future. Alina Bernstein
Further Reading Bernstein, A. (2002). Is it time for a victory lap?—Changes in the media coverage of women in sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(3–4), 415–428. Billings, A. C., & Eastman, S. T. (2002). Selective representation of gender, ethnicity, and nationality in American television coverage of the 2000 Summer Olympics. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(4), 351–370. Capranica, L., & Aversa, F. (2002). Italian television sport coverage during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games: A gender perspective. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(4), 337–349. Creedon, P. J. (Ed.). (1994). Women, media and sport—Challenging gender values. Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage.
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Duncan, M. C., & Messner, M. A. (1998). The media image of sport and gender. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), MediaSport (pp. 170–185). London: Routledge. Dyer, R. (1993). The matter of images—Essays on representations. London: Routledge. Eastman, S. T., & Billings, A. C. (1999). Gender parity in the Olympics —Hyping women athletes, favoring men athletes. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 23(2), 140–170. Gillan, A. (1999, August 26). Sex appeal ‘pays in sport. The Guardian. Retrieved April 26, 2004, from www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/ Archive/Article/0,4273,3895751,00.html. Harris, J. (1999). Lie back and think of England: The women of Euro 96. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 23(1), 96–110. Harris, J., & Clayton, B. (2002). Femininity, masculinity, physicality and the English tabloid press: The case of Anna Kournikova. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(4), 397–413. Higgs, C. T., Weiller, K. H., & Scott, M. B. (2003). Gender bias in the 1996 Olympic Games: A comparative analysis. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 27(1), 52–64. Jones, R., Murrel, A. J., & Jackson, J. (1999). Pretty versus powerful in the sports pages. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 23(2), 183–192. Kane, M. J., & Greendorfer, S. L. (1994). The media’s role in accommodating and resisting stereotyped images of women in sport. In P. J. Creedon (Ed.), Women, media and sport—Challenging gender values (pp. 28–44). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Knoppers, A., & Elling, A. (2001). Sport and the media: Race and gender in the representation of athletes and events. In J. Steenbergen, P. De Knop, & A. Elling (Eds.), Values and norms in sport—Critical reflections on the position and meaning of sport in society (pp. 281– 300). UK: Meyer and Meyer Sports Books. Koivula, N. (1999). Gender stereotyping in televised media sport coverage. Sex Roles, 41(7–8), 589–603. Lapchick, R. E. (Ed.). (1996). Sport in society—Equal opportunity or business as usual? London: Sage. Mackay, D. ( 1999, July 4). One for the ladies. The Observer. Retrieved April 26, 2004, from www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/ Article/0,4273,3880373,00.html. Messner, M. A., Duncan, M. C., & Jensen, K. (1990). Separating the men from the girls: The gendering of televised sports. Paper presented at the meeting of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Denver, CO. Pedersen, P. M. (2002). Examining equity in newspaper photographs: A content analysis of the print media photographic coverage of interscholastic athletics. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(4), 303–318. Pfister, G. (1989). Women in the Olympics (1952–1980): An analysis of German newspapers (Beauty Awarded vs. Gold Medals). The Olympic Movement and the Mass Media (pp. 11–27, 11–33). Canada: Enterprises Ltd. Sabo, D., & Curry Jansen, S. (1992). Images of men in sport media— The social reproduction of gender order. In S. Craig (Ed.), Men, masculinity, and the media (pp. 169-184). London: Sage. Scraton, S., & Flintoff, A. (Eds.). (2002). Gender and sport: A reader. UK: Routledge Shifflett, B., & Revelle, R. (1996). Gender equity in sports media coverage—A review of the NCAA news. In R. E. Lapchick (Ed.), Sport in society—Equal opportunity or business as usual? (pp. 237–243). London: Sage.
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Thomas, J. ( 2001, July 11). Youth is served. Retrieved April 26, 2004, from http://slate.msn.com/tagteam/entries/01-07-11 _ 111826.asp. Tuggle, C. A., & Owen, A. (1999). A descriptive analysis of NBC’s coverage of the centennial Olympics—The “games of the women”? Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 23(2), 171–182.
Women’s World Cup
B
egun in 1991, the Women’s World Cup, the premier women’s international soccer competition, is held every four years and involves female athletes from around the world. Sponsored by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), this event involves a series of elimination games that begin with twelve to sixteen teams and culminate in a championship game between the top two teams. The Women’s World Cup, which has received a great deal of media coverage, has brought issues concerning gender roles in international sports to the forefront in both academic and popular writings.
History The People’s Republic of China hosted twelve teams during the inaugural year, and the United States national team defeated Norway 2–1 for the championship in front of a crowd of sixty-five thousand in Guangzhou’s Tianhe Stadium. Chinese media dubbed the front line of the American team—made up of Michelle Akers, Carin Jennings, and April Heinrichs, who combined to score twenty of the twenty-five total goals for the United States —the “Triple-Edged Sword.” The referee for the thirdplace match, Claudia de Vasconcelos of Brazil, became the first woman to officiate at this level for FIFA. According to a note made in June 1995 on the FIFA website, “If China in 1991 was the innovation, Sweden in 1995 was the consecration of women’s football at the highest level.” In the second Women’s World Cup, Sweden hosted twelve teams and held the matches in medium-sized venues that held fewer than twenty thousand fans at a time. While the U.S. team was favored, Norway defeated the American team 2–0 in the semi-
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finals and went on to victory in the finals against Germany. Sweden’s Ingrid Jonsson became the first woman to referee a FIFA final. In 1999, the number of participating teams rose from twelve to sixteen. The United States hosted the World Cup and defeated China 5–4 in penalty kicks at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. This championship game had over ninety thousand fans in attendance—the largest audience at a female sporting event to date. Almost as many fans attended this final match as had attended the entire series of matches in the 1995 Women’s World Cup in Sweden. It was at this event that American Brandi Chastain removed her shirt to reveal a sports
bra underneath after the winning kick—an image that remains one of the most famous of all sports images. In 2003, the Women’s World Cup was scheduled to take place in China, but due to the SARS outbreak, the venue was switched to the United States. This World Cup took place in six cities in the United States. Numerous North American journalists dubbed the event “World Cup Lite,” because it was put together quickly and was held in venues that hosted crowds of twenty or thirty thousand, rather than eighty or ninety thousand, as was the case in 1999. Taking place in Portland, Oregon, the final match of 2003 was between Germany and Sweden, with Germany winning 2–1 in overtime. In 2007, China will host the event as compensation for the changed venue in 2003 due to the SARS outbreak.
Significance
Two American girls of Chinese and Irish ancestry hold a sign saying “Victory to Chinese Women’s Soccer Team” during the 1999 Women’s World Cup.
Women’s sports changed dramatically in the last century. With the creation of Title IX in the United States, for example, young girls have more athletic opportunities at the high school and collegiate level than ever before, even if the opportunity for professional play is limited. Nonetheless, the highly publicized photo of U.S. national team player Brandi Chastain in her sports bra after the 1999 win against China in overtime suggests that even if women’s sports were increasing in popularity, they were still qualitatively different from men’s sports. Female athletes still face challenges with regard to being seen as serious and strong athletes in a world dominated by men’s sports. Internationally, women have increased their participation in sports such as soccer even in countries where women’s roles are more traditional than in the United States. During each World Cup, journalists frequently comment on the status of women in the participating countries, noting that in countries such as Brazil and Mexico, where men’s soccer is dominant, it is more difficult for female players to feel accepted than it is in the United States and some European nations. However, since the inception of the Women’s World Cup, women’s participation and status in international sporting events has increased, both as participants and as spectators.
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Women’s World Cup Key Facts of the Women’s World Cup Year
Host
1991 China
Winner/Runner-up
Score
USA/Norway
2–1 (1–1)
1995 Sweden Norway/Germany
2–0 (2–0)
1999 USA
USA/China
0–0 a.e.t. (0–0) 5–4 p.**
2003 USA
Germany /Sweden
2–1 a.e.t. (1–1, 0–1) *
* After extra-time play ** After extra-time play then decided by penalty kicks
Although the number of teams, players, and fans remains far below the equivalent in men’s events, after several more Women’s World Cup championships, this gap may narrow. As journalists and academics reflect on the status of women’s sports, the Women’s World Cup can be seen as either a watershed in the fight for women’s equality in international sports or as a blip in the slow but relatively stagnant growth of women’s participation in professional sports. Undoubtedly the 1999 championship game was unique in its popularity, and it created a buzz about women’s professional soccer leagues and prompted girls and boys to look up to increasing numbers of female athletes such as Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy as sports idols. However, with the folding of the American professional soccer league for women—the Women’s United Soccer Association (FIFA)—just five days before the start of the 2003 Women’s World Cup, it is difficult to argue that that buzz has remained as strong as it was in 1999. Either way, the Women’s World Cup remains the most visible venue in which professional female athletes from around the world compete for the most coveted championship in soccer. And the event itself signifies a milestone for women’s sports that did not exist before 1991. Michelle Janning
Further Reading Christopherson, N., Janning, M., & McConnell, E. D. (2002). Two kicks forward, one kick back: A content analysis of media discourses
on the 1999 Women’s World Cup soccer championship. Sociology of Sport Journal, 19, 170–188. Longman, J. (2000). Girls of summer: The U.S. women’s soccer team and how they changed the world. London: HarperCollins. Markovits, A. S., & Hellerman, S. L. (2001). Off-Side: Soccer and American exceptionalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Messner, M.. (2002). Taking the field: Women, men, and sports. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stewart, B., Stoumbos, H., Whitesell, J. B., Whitesell, P., & Hooper, C. (2003). Women’s soccer: The passionate game. Berkeley, CA: Greystone Books. Trecker, J., Miers, C., Whitesell, B., the United States Soccer Federation, & Federation Internationale De Football Association. (2000). Women’s soccer: The game and the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup. New York: Universe Publishing.
Worker Sport
I
n 1925, a year after the Paris Olympic Games, as many as 150,000 workers attended the first Worker Olympics at Frankfurt am Main, Germany. In 1931, one year before the Los Angeles “official” Olympic Games at which 1,408 athletes competed, over 100,000 workers from twenty-six countries took part in the second Worker Olympics in Vienna, Austria. More than a quarter of a million spectators attended the Vienna Games. Five years later, in opposition to the 1936 “Nazi Olympics” in Berlin, Germany, an even grander Worker Olympics was planned for Barcelona, Spain. However, it never took place, since the Spanish Civil War erupted on the day scheduled for the opening ceremony (and its organizers were later shot by Franco’s fascists). The Worker Olympics easily surpassed their rival, the “bourgeois” Olympic Games, in number of competitors and spectators, and in pageant, culture, and even sporting records. Yet today, it is only the official Olympic Games that are commemorated in books, television, and films. The Worker Olympics and the worker sport movement are all but forgotten. However, for millions of workers between World War I and World War II, sport was an integral part of the labor movement, and worker sport clubs or associations existed in almost every country of Europe, in the United States and Canada, and in South America and Asia (e.g., Japan
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and India). By 1930 worker sport united well over 4 million people, making it by far the largest workingclass cultural movement. At the zenith of its existence, worker “oppositional” sport combined sporting activities with socialist fellowship, solidarity, and workingclass culture.
Aims of Worker Sport The aims of the worker sport movement differed from country to country. All countries agreed, however, that worker sport should give working people the chance to take part in healthy recreation and to do so in a socialist atmosphere. Worker sport differed from bourgeois sport in that the former was open to all workers, women as well as men, and black as well as white (this at a time when many workers, women, and blacks were excluded from bourgeois clubs). It provided a socialist alternative to bourgeois competitive sport, to commercialism, chauvinism, and the obsession with stars and records. It replaced capitalist with socialist values and set the foundation for true working-class culture. Worker sport, therefore, initially emphasized less competitive physical activities, such as gymnastics, acrobatics, tumbling, pyramid forming, mass artistic displays, hiking, cycling, and swimming. The founders of the worker sport movement believed that sport could be revolutionary, that the movement was no less significant to workers than their political, trade union, and cooperative movements. Sport played a paramount role in the struggle against capitalist nationalism and militarism that pervaded the so-called politically neutral bourgeois sport organizations and, through them, corrupted young working people. The formation of separate worker sport organizations shielded youths from bourgeois values. While capitalism fostered mistrust among workers of different nations, the worker sport organizations banded together internationally to create peace and international solidarity. They turned physical culture into a new international language capable of breaking down all barriers. In Germany, for example, a worker sport organization, the Worker Gymnastics Association (WGA),
emerged in the 1890s in conscious opposition to the nationalistic German Gymnastics Society (Turnen) that was to spread its considerable influence to North America with the migration of entire German communities. The WGA was followed by the Solidarity Worker Cycling Club and the Friends of Nature Rambling Association in 1895, the Worker Swimming Association in 1897, the Free Sailing Association in 1901, the Worker Athletics Association in 1906, the Worker Chess Association in 1912, and the Free Shooting Association in 1926. With over 350,000 worker-athletes in various clubs even before World War I, Germany became the hub of the worker sport movement.
Olympic Games While the worker sport movement did not take issue with much of the Baron de Coubertin idealism concerning the modern Olympic Games, it did oppose the games themselves and counterposed them with its own Olympiads, on the following grounds: ■
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The bourgeois Olympics encouraged competition along national lines, whereas the Worker Olympics stressed internationalism, worker solidarity, and peace. While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) barred German and Austrian athletes from the 1920 Games, and German athletes from the 1924 Games, the 1925 Worker Olympics were held in Germany under the slogan “No More War.” While the IOC Games restricted entry on the grounds of sporting ability, the worker games invited all athletes, stressing mass participation as well as expanding events to include poetry and song, plays, artistic displays, political lectures, and pageantry. The IOC Games were criticized for being confined chiefly to the sons of the rich and privileged because of their “amateur” rules and aristocratic, bourgeoisdominated Olympic committees. Coubertin himself always opposed women’s participation and readily accepted the cultural superiority of whites over blacks; the longest serving IOC presidents, BailletLatour and Avery Brundage, both collaborated with
WORKER SPORT
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Hitler’s Nazi regime and were unabashedly antiSemitic. By contrast, the Worker Olympics were explicitly against all chauvinism, racism, sexism, and social exclusivity. They were truly amateur, organized for the edification and enjoyment of workingwomen and workingmen, and they illustrated the fundamental unity of all working people irrespective of color, creed, sex, or national origin. The labor movement did not believe that the Olympic spirit of true amateurism and international understanding could be attained in a movement dominated by an aristocratic, bourgeois leadership. It was, therefore, determined that the labor movement should retain its cultural and political integrity within the workers’ Olympic movement.
Problems of Worker Sport Bourgeois society excluded workers from public life as well as from amateur sports clubs and competitions. Consequently, if workers were to compete locally, nationally, or internationally, they had to establish their own sports associations and contests. Such organizations were part of a far-reaching political, trade union, and cultural movement; they formed a network of worker-based organizations that could represent workers throughout their lives. The bourgeois state did all it could to obstruct this movement by introducing new laws, constantly moving the bureaucratic and administrative “goalposts,” and at times resorting to brute force. The state, however, could not destroy the rapidly growing worker movement until Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922 and Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany after 1933. Worker sport did not take place in a vacuum. The problems that other branches of the labor movement faced (especially the party struggle—social democratic versus communist—struggle for influence) also affected worker sport. And like these other branches of the labor movement—including trade unions, socialist or labor parties, the cooperative movement, and youth organizations like the Woodcraft Folk, Young Pioneers, and Young Communist League—worker sport rose and fell
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everywhere almost simultaneously, reaching a peak in the 1920s and a trough in the late 1930s, and nearly fading away after World War II. National peculiarities invariably added brakes and accelerators, as the German and Austrian tragedies under Hitler; the peaceful demise of worker sport in the United Kingdom, North America, and Scandinavia; and the persistence of worker sport in Israel and Finland all illustrate.
Worker Sport after World War II World War II weakened, but did not defeat, the worker sport movement. It continues today, although the radically changed circumstances of the postwar world inevitably transformed the movement. In contrast with its prewar development, the movement’s new role called upon its member organizations to cooperate selectively with national sports federations and clubs. A number of factors caused this new situation. First, the Soviet Union had broken its isolation. It emerged from the war a victor, and the Soviet Union’s military and political power penetrated into Central and Eastern Europe. With the resulting international friction—Cold War—in which two rival blocs confronted one another in a divided Europe, sport became an obvious arena for international (peaceful) competition. In the Soviet Union, domestic sport was now thought potent enough to take on the world, and victories over bourgeois states, especially the United States, would evidently demonstrate the Soviet system’s vitality (apart from space pioneering, sport was the only area in which the USSR could demonstrate superiority). Second, worker sport encouraged both the Olympic movement and bourgeois sport in general to democratize their memberships. Fewer sports and clubs were confined to middle-class white males, and the belief grew that international sport, particularly the Olympic Games, could be used for peace, democracy, and the isolation of racist regimes, such as South Africa and Rhodesia. Third, worker sport switched its emphasis to campaigning within bourgeois organizations against commercialism and chauvinism to sport for all—funds,
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Chinese workers playing basketball before a large crowd.
playgrounds, open spaces, and facilities; for working people; for promoting a sport that was profoundly humanistic and free; and for women’s sport. As the development of worker sport in France showed, the new goal was no longer to replace bourgeois sport but, instead, to take part in building a national sports system founded on the needs of all. A separate worker sport movement, however, managed to survive. In 1946, immediately after the war, the Socialist Worker sport association in Western Europe set up the International worker sport Committee (IWSC) in London. Despite a peak of 2.2 million members in fourteen countries, the IWSC never attained the importance of its prewar counterpart—the committee of the same name— because, with the exception of Finland, France, Austria, and Israel, individual member associations were weak. For example, the Finnish Gymnastics and Sports Federation (TUL), while cooperating with the national sports association (SVUL), retained its own identity; it had a membership of 450,000 (one-half the SVUL membership) in 1990; and it promoted mass gymnastics and artistic displays, family exercise programs, cultural events, and, particularly, women’s sporting activities. Its worker sport festivals held in Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium attracted as many as 50,000 spectators. The French Worker Sport and Gymnastics Federation (FSGT) had over 100,000 members at the end of the 1990s, coordinated the activities of worker sport clubs throughout the country, organized conferences, and sponsored worker sport events, such as the annual cross-country and cycling contests associated with the Communist newspaper L’Humanite, as well as the annual Fete de l’Humanite in which 6,000 people par-
ticipated in the 1980s. The Austrian worker sport Association (ASKO) similarly retained its identity and played an important part in Austrian sport. In Israel, Hapoel (“The Worker”) is still Israel’s largest and strongest sports organization. It is one of the few exceptions where a worker sport organization controls its country’s sport.
Reasons for Today’s Weakness There are several reasons why the worker sport movement is relatively weak today (or has faded away completely) and why it never captured the majority of the working class within its membership. Worker sport almost always duplicated bourgeois sports, clubs, federations, and Olympics. This was not significant as long as the older organizations remained socially exclusive preserves of the bourgeoisie. But once the workers succeeded in democratizing sport and once industrial firms, the church, and governments came to realize the potential of sport for social control, the duplication became problematic. Worker sport societies rarely had the prestige, facilities, or funds to compete with bourgeois teams, and they were often denied access to public funds and amenities. Similarly, media coverage of worker sport was
WORKER SPORT
usually confined to the socialist-communist press and was ignored by the bourgeois media. Insofar as only a minority of workers read the socialist-communist party press, it is not surprising that only a minority of workers joined the worker sport movement or were prepared to turn their backs on the glamorous bourgeois clubs for the low-status worker sport organizations. It was common for bourgeois clubs to recruit the best worker athletes—just as they recruited the best athletes from Africa, Asia, and Latin America—by offering athletes attractive financial inducements. A number of problems hampered efforts to enhance the attractiveness of worker sport. These problems included the explicitly political nature of worker sport, the uncertain—and at times insensitive—attitudes of labor leaders toward organized sport and competition, and the tactical differences over the role of sport in society—not to mention the socialist versus communist wrangling. Apparently, many worker sport leaders failed to understand that a sports organization might be more politically effective by being less explicitly political. The theoretical argument over the role of sport in society presented an obstacle to the development of worker sport. At one extreme were the proletarian culture advocates (and their supporters in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and parts of Scandinavia) who saw bourgeois sport as a reflection of a degenerate bourgeois culture that had to be thrown out because it was permeated by chauvinism, exploitation, and militarism. What was needed, they asserted, was a new proletarian system of physical culture based on personal fulfillment, mutual respect, and solidarity. At the other extreme were those, like many North American and British socialists, who regarded sport as one’s personal affair, on the periphery of superstructural phenomena and therefore relatively apolitical—not something on which the labor movement should waste its scarce resources. Typically, both extremes resulted in the feeblest of all the worker sport movements in the industrial world. Where the worker sport movement did flourish, it often suffered from internal problems. In the early years, it emphasized noncompetitive participation, but as the
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1920s and 1930s wore on, the bourgeois obsession with records, spectators, and victory infiltrated worker sport and caused the activities to adopt the elements of more organized competitions. It was not uncommon for socialist and communist newspapers, for example, to devote the bulk of their sports coverage to horse racing and winning forecasts.
What Did Worker Sport Accomplish? Developments in the latter part of the twentieth century opened up a number of possibilities for certain sports. There were far more opportunities for organized sports participation than before the Second World War; the best athletes were more highly skilled and had a better chance to nurture their talent to the fullest for the benefit of the individual and the community. Gifted working-class, nonwhite, and women athletes could, with dedication, reach the top of their sport. There were now sporting spectacles of unprecedented scale, grandeur, and public exposure from which working people could gain considerable enjoyment—even if they were subjected to society’s dominant sports values and presented a sport that workers themselves could not control. The worker sport movement needed to expand if it was to fulfill its cultural and political mission, but this growth presented complex problems. Organized sport, like the working class itself, is a product of modern industrial society, and in a bourgeois world, a large proportion of workingmen and workingwomen are steeped in society’s dominant values. Nonetheless, the worker sport movement did try to provide an alternative experience based on workers’ own culture, and it did inspire visions of a new socialist culture. To this end, it organized the best sporting programs it could for all athletes, whether a Sunday bike ride or a Worker Olympic festival founded on genuinely socialist values. Its story is as much a part of the history of sport and the labor movement as Coubertin’s Olympics or trade unionism. James Riordan
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Further Reading Arnaud, P. (Ed.). (1994). Les origines du sport ourvrier en Europe. Paris: l’Harmatan. Jones, S. (1982). The British Workers’ Sports Federation: 1923–1935. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Kruger, A., & Riordan, J. (Eds.). (1996). The story of worker sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Riordan, J. (1977). Sport in Soviet society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ueberhorst, H., Frisch, Frei, Stark, and Treu. (1973). Die Arbeitersportbewegung in Deustschland, 1893–1933. Dusseldorf, FRG: Droste.
World Cup
B
y far the most popular single sporting event of the modern world is the World Cup, officially known as the FIFA World Cup, which is the quadrennial international championship for association football (soccer). Established by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) in 1928, the first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930. Since then, the world has celebrated the event seventeen times; it was cancelled because of World War II in 1942 and 1946. The FIFA Women’s World Cup was launched in China in 1991. Although still in its infancy, the event has enjoyed significant growth and success in its first decade.
Humble Beginning FIFA was founded in Paris, France, in May 1904, to represent seven European nations: Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. FIFA became truly international a decade later with membership including Argentina, Chile, the United States, and South Africa. For nearly a quarter century, the Olympic Games soccer tournaments were regarded as the world’s championship games. Countries tried to use the Olympics to establish their own football supremacy in the world, but the strict amateur code of the Games banned “paid” athletes, often the best, from Olympic competition. Consequently, FIFA established its own international championship and awarded the honor of hosting the first World Cup to Uruguay, a small South
American country that had captured both the 1924 and 1928 Olympic titles. To ensure success of the championship, Uruguay built a brand new 100,000-seat stadium in the capital, Montevideo, and promised compensation for traveling and accommodation expenses for all participating teams. The host’s effort, however, was not enough to entice most European teams to make the weeks-long ocean voyage to South America. Only thirteen teams, instead of the anticipated sixteen, competed for championship and its gold trophy (named the Jules Rimet Cup in 1950 for the Frenchman who conceived the World Cup event). Uruguay defeated Argentina in the final and became the first World Cup champion. The 1934 World Cup in Italy was essentially a European affair with all eight quarter-finalists coming from the continent. ■
■
■
Uruguay declined to defend its title in retaliation for the widespread European absenteeism in Montevideo. Argentina deliberately sent a weakened team to Rome as revenge for losing its best players to Italy after the 1930 World Cup. The British teams from England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland remained outside the event since their withdrawal from FIFA in 1928.
In the final, host Italy defeated Czechoslovakia 2–1 in extra-time play. Italy also captured its second World Cup four years later with a more convincing 4–2 victory over Hungary in Paris, France.
Postwar Era The first postwar World Cup was held in Brazil in 1950. By then, the British football associations had rejoined FIFA. Fourteen teams competed in the threeweek long finals. The United States, against all odds, defeated England 1–0 and virtually sent the “masters” of soccer packing. In the championship match, Uruguay defeated host Brazil in front of nearly 200,000 spectators in the brand-new Maracana Stadium, the largest crowd in soccer history. The 1954 World Cup in Switzerland included the superb performance of a Hungarian team that demol-
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World Cup Keys Facts of the World Cup Year
Host
Winner/Runner-up
Score
1930
Uruguay
Uruguay/Argentina
4–2 (1–2)
1934
Italy
Italy/Czechoslovakia
2–1 a.e.t. (1–1, 0–0)*
1938
France
Italy/Hungary
4–2 (3–1)
1942
cancelled
1946
cancelled
1950
Brazil
Uruguay/Brazil
2–1 (0–0)
1954
Switzerland
West Germany/Hungary
3–2 (2–2)
1958
Sweden
Brazil/Sweden
5–2 (2–1)
1962
Chile
Brazil/Czechoslovakia
3–1 (1–1)
1966
England
England/West Germany
4–2 a.e.t. (2–2,1–1)*
1970
Mexico
Brazil/Italy
4–1 (1–1)
1974
West Germany
West Germany/Netherlands
2–1 (2–1)
1978
Argentina
Argentina/Netherlands
3–1 a.e.t. (1–1, 1–0)*
1982
Spain
Italy/West Germany
3–1 (0–0)
1986
Mexico
Argentina/West Germany
3–2 (1–0)
1990
Italy
West Germany/Argentina
1–0 (0–0)
its own soil, defeated West Germany 4–2 in the final, and won the 1966 World Cup. Yet, the 1966 championship was not spectacular football— physical and defense-oriented play overshadowed the artistry and spontaneity of individual talents. That defensive style of football, however, was shortlived. The era belonged to Pelé and his brilliant Brazilian squad. Their magnificent offense-oriented attacking football mesmerized millions of spectators as well as many of their opponents. By the time Brazil captured its third World Cup —after defeating Italy 4–1 in front of 100,000 fans in Mexico City’s Aztec Stadium in 1970—soccer, with its incomparable popularity, had established itself as the king of sports.
1994
USA
Brazil/Italy
0–0 a.e.t. (0–0) 3–2 p.**
Total Football
1998
France
France/Brazil
3–0 (2–0)
2002
Korea/Japan
Brazil/Germany
2–0 (0–0)
* After extra-time play **Ater extra-time play then decided by penalty kicks
ished its opponents with a total score of 25–7, including a 8–3 thumping of West Germany in the first round. The Germans, however, got their revenge in the final with a 3–2 victory over Hungary, becoming only the third country to capture a World Cup.
Pelé and Brazilian Dominance A record fifty-five countries participated in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. For the first time, the event received international television coverage, so much of the world witnessed the Brazilian dominance and the rise of Pelé (b. 1940), the king of soccer. Between 1958 and 1970, Brazil won three of four World Cups, losing only the one held in England.The English team, energized by an enthusiastic home crowd, took every advantage on
Pelé retired from the World Cup after 1970, as did the Jules Rimet trophy, retained by Brazil after winning it three times. But the impact of Brazilian football was profound. The last quarter of the twentieth century saw the rise and dominance of “total football,” in which the traditional distinction between offense and defense blurred and players became more versatile and involved in the total operation of the team. The Dutch team at the 1974 World Cup epitomized the quality of total football. Although the Dutch lost to West Germany in the final, the team’s dazzling performance with superstar Johan Cruyff (b. 1947) won millions of fans around the world. By the 1982 World Cup in Spain, FIFA had increased the number of qualifiers from sixteen to twenty-four. In 1986, Mexico became the first country to host two World Cups. Argentina, led by the masterful and unstoppable Diego Maradona (b. 1960), defeated West Germany 3–2 in the final and captured its second World Cup in eight years.The French team, with its near flawless
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Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half if physical ■ YOGI BERRA
midfield trio of Michel Platini, Alain Giresse, and Jean Tigana, fascinated the world with its artistry. Soccer’s popularity surged in the 1990s: ■
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A record 147 countries competed for the twenty-four final seats in the 1994 World Cup held in the United States. By the 1998 World Cup in France, FIFA had increased the number of qualifiers to thirty-two to accommodate a more diverse representation of nonEuropean countries.
In 1998, the French team defeated the 1994-champion Brazilians in the final to finally win the event that was conceived on French soil seven decades earlier.
The Future The first World Cup in the twenty-first century was cohosted by Korea and Japan in 2002. When the monthlong event concluded, it became clear that a new era of soccer had arrived. Teams from Asia, Africa, and North America had successfully challenged the traditional powers from Europe and South America. Korea and Turkey fought all the way into the semi-finals, only to lose to Brazil and Germany, two teams with combined wins of eight World Cups. Nevertheless, as the game’s popularity continues to grow and the structure of the World Cup becomes more diverse, soccer’s traditional dominance by Europe and South America will soon become the past. Ying Wushanley
Further Reading Dauncey, H., & Hare, G., (Eds.). (1999). France and the 1998 World Cup: The national impact of a world sporting event. London: Frank Cass. FIFA.com History. The official website of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, retrieved November 10, 2004, from http:// www.fifa.com/en/history/history/0,1283,5,00.html Glanville, B. (1993). The story of the World Cup. London: Faber and Faber. Horne, J., & Manzenreiter, W. (2002). Japan, Korea, and the 2002 World Cup. New York: Routledge. Lewis, M. (1994). World Cup soccer. Wakefield, RI: Moyer Bell. Lewis, M. (2002). World Cup soccer: Korea/Japan, 2002. Wakefield, RI: Moyer Bell.
Micallef, P. (1994). The World Cup story: An Australian view. Caringban, Australia: Philip Micallef Publishing. Murray, W. J. (1996). The world’s game: A history of soccer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rollin, J. (1990). The World Cup, 1930–1990: Sixty glorious years of soccer’s premier event. New York: Facts on File. Robinson, J. (1990). Soccer: The World Cup, 1930–1990. Cleethorpes, UK: Soccer Book Publishing.
World Series
E
ach October, American attention focuses on the championship of Major League Baseball, the World Series. The phrase itself conjures images: Babe Ruth “calling his shot” in 1932; Willie Mays in 1954, racing to the outfield wall and making a breathtaking over-theshoulder catch, then hurling the ball back toward the infield, his hat flying off in the effort; Carlton Fisk in 1975, skipping toward first base, willing the ball out of Fenway Park to force game seven against Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine”; a hobbled Dodger, Kirk Gibson, bravely circling the bases after his game-winning home run against Oakland in 1988. It causes fans, both young and old, to remember the Sultan of Swat, Mr. October, and even poor Billy Buckner, who booted an easy ground ball and cost the Boston Red Sox a Series victory, forcing a Game 7, which the Red Sox lost, in 1986. For the baseball historian, it brings to mind Tinker to Evers to Chance, the Black Sox, or “Wait ‘til next year!” Such moments and heroes are a part of the shared culture of the United States, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond.
The Early Years The Fall Classic began when the National League champion, the Pittsburgh Pirates, challenged the American Association champion Boston Pilgrims to a best-of-nine series to determine baseball’s world champion in 1903. The series was due in part to a new “National Agreement” that settled the dispute between the established National League and the upstart American Association, ending cutthroat competition for players and fans at the turn of the century. The Pilgrim’s victory five games to
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Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game. ■ JACQUES BARZUN
World Series Winners of the World Series Team
New York Yankees
# of Series Won
26
St. Louis Cardinals
9
Boston Red Sox
5
Cincinnati Reds
5
Los Angeles Dodgers
5
New York Giants
5
Philadelphia Athletics
5
Pittsburgh Pirates
5
Detroit Tigers
4
Oakland Athletics
4
Baltimore Orioles
3
Chicago White Sox
2
Chicago Cubs
2
Cleveland Indians
2
Florida Marlins
2
Minnesota Twins
2
New York Mets
2
Toronto Blue Jays
2
Anaheim Angels
1
Arizona Diamondbacks
1
Atlanta Braves
1
Boston Americas
1
Boston Braves
1
Brooklyn Dodgers
1
Kansas City Royals
1
Milwaukee Braves
1
Philadelphia Phillies
1
Washington Senators
1
three, with one tie, generated terrific popular support, and legitimized the American Association’s claim as a coequal league. Since the 1880s, there had been other so-called world championship series played as exhibitions, but when the New York Giants, the NL champions, refused to play the series against the Pilgrims in 1904, the public outcry forced the National Commission to regularize the series, with a best-of-seven format. From 1905, when the World Series resumed, to 2004 when the
Boston Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals four games to none, only one other series has been called off, that being in 1994 when the Major League Baseball Players Association strike against the owners canceled the autumnal rite.
War, Scandal, and Natural Disaster During World War I, Major League Baseball shortened the regular season, played the World Series in September, and entertained the thought of canceling the 1919 season altogether. During the war service teams held their own service World Series, with teams gleaned from drafted professionals. The scandal that erupted after the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the first postwar series in 1919 also threatened its continuation, but firm action by newly installed commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis saved the day. In the midst of the Great Depression, popular heroes such as Ruth, DiMaggio, and St. Louis’s Gas House Gang provided some comfort in the midst of economic chaos. During World War II, the championship continued, minus most of the able-bodied players, as an important factor in boosting morale on the home front. In 1989, just before players from San Francisco and Oakland were to be introduced, an earthquake shook San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. The disaster killed sixtyseven people in the Bay Area and forced postponement of Game 3. Some called for the cancellation of the series, but the games went on, providing normalcy and offering Bay Area residents a chance to heal. The 2001 Series, between the Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks, was played while rubble was being removed from the site where the World Trade Center once stood, for the same reasons.
Technology and the World Series Over the course of the century of World Series history, technology transformed it from an event that relatively few fans witnessed to a worldwide spectacle beamed globally via television. In the early decades, urban fans
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World Series Sandy Koufax and Yom Kippur Sandy Koufax’s decision not to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series had a strong impact on Jews in the United States. In the extract below, Rabbi Lee Bycel recalls that memorable day. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was Oct. 6—the opening day of the 1965 World Series. The Dodgers, behind the great pitching of Sandy Koufax, had won the National League pennant and advanced to the Series. But Koufax, who was slated to start the first game, was not on the mound. He was not even in the stadium. He was not there because it was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year. [...] As a Jewish boy and an ardent baseball fan, I had a great need for Jewish heroes — especially on the
congregated around telegraph offices to follow the game, and when radio became widespread, businesses used displays, some featuring model fields and movable players, to attract trade. Graham McNamee became a household name when he became the first play-by-play announcer to describe the action of a baseball game live during the 1923 World Series between the Yankees and New York Giants. In modern times the Series reaches a worldwide audience boosted by the increasing presence of international players.
New York Domination In 1992 the World Series became a “world” series in more than name only when the Toronto Blue Jays won the first of two consecutive championships, and in 1997, the Florida Marlins became the first “Wild Card” (nondivision champion) team to win it all. Despite new faces in the nineties, New York teams have dominated the World Series. The Yankees have won twenty-six; the Giants, before moving to San Francisco in 1958, won five; and “next year” finally came for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955, when they defeated the Yankees for their only championship in Brooklyn. The Mets finished
playing field. Koufax’s refusal to play on Yom Kippur filled me with pride. I realized that day that no one should ever be embarrassed when practicing one’s religion or identifying with one’s ancestral culture. Ethnic and religious identity should engender fulfillment and hope. It was a courageous act for Koufax to abstain from playing in an era that preferred to sanitize difference. His decision not to pitch that Yom Kippur served as an important reminder that America shelters many different faiths and religious practices. Koufax taught me that I could hope to take an active part in American life without compromising my religious convictions. This lesson has remained, and has solidified my commitment to make it accessible to all people. Source: Bycel, L. (1996, September 20). Sandy Koufax taught pride to generation of young Jews. Jewish News Weekly of Northern California.
their miracle season with a championship in 1969, and they won again in 1986. In total New York teams have won thirty-three of ninety-eight World Series. New York teams have appeared in 66 percent of the series played, and there have been fourteen “subway series” between New York teams, the last in 2000, between the Yankees and Mets.
Series Mythology The World Series has such importance in American culture that a mythology has formed around it. According to legend, both the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs suffer from curses that doom them to postseason futility. The Sox were cursed when the team sold Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919, but finally disposed of the “Curse of the Bambino” in 2004, beating the St. Louis Cardinals handily. In 1945 Sam “Billy Goat” Sianis, a local tavern owner, and his pet goat were denied entrance into Wrigley Field for Game 4 of the Series against the Detroit Tigers, causing him to curse the Cubs, and his “curse” has kept the team out of the series ever since. (The Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908!)
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Fans outside Fenway Park in September 2004, the year the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.
Although some will argue that baseball is no longer the most popular sport in the United States, each October the World Series occupies a significant place in the American psyche and continues to provide cherished moments and heroes for a worldwide audience. Russ Crawford
Further Reading Morgan, J. (2000). Baseball for dummies. New York: IDG Books Worldwide. Rader, B. (1983). American sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rader, B. (1984). In its own image: How television has transformed sports. New York: The Free Press. Rader, B. (1994). Baseball: A history of America’s game. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Reichler, J. L. (Ed.). (1978). The World Series: A 75th anniversary. New York: Simon & Schuster. Tygiel, J. (2000). Past time: Baseball as history. Oxford, UK, New York: Oxford University Press. Will, G. (1998). Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and other reflections on baseball. New York: Scribner.
World University Games
T
he history of university sport can be visualized as three consecutive waves. The first wave originated with universities in the thirteenth century; the second wave coincided with the rise of the games ethic in pub-
lic schools in Great Britain in the nineteenth century and spread to the universities. This was the heyday of elite athleticism and amateurism, which inspired Pierre de Coubertin to found the modern Olympic games. The third wave started after World War I and led university sports into the turmoil of international sport contests and international politics. The University Games of 1959 in Turin, Italy, marked the beginning of yet another wave. From then on there has been a gradual evolution of “amateur” student sportsmen and women competing with “professional” athletes in games with sometimes dubious university affiliations.
Founding Fathers of the Games The first person to think of organizing international student sports was the English peace activist Hodgson Pratt (1824–1907), who founded the International Arbitration and Peace Association (IAPA) and chaired the Universal Peace Congress of 1890 in London. When Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937) organized the 1894 congress in Paris that led to the founding of the International Olympic Committee, he invited Pratt to attend as an honorary member. Unable to be there, Pratt wrote to Coubertin and reminded him that he had proposed the idea of international student festivals, combining both sport and arts, at the Rome Peace Congress in 1891. The minutes of this congress describe Pratt’s proposal in this way: “That an annual conference and university fete of international fraternity be held successively at the seats of the great universities, including an international contest via gymnastics and similar exercises, and in contests of merit in poetry and prose on subjects relating to international concord and cooperation” (Anthony 1998). In his educational zeal, Pierre de Coubertin tried to convince the leading circles of the European universities
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It’s never too late to become what you might have been. ■ GEORGE ELLIOT
to promote sport and physical education among their students as American universities were doing. During the IOC international congress on Sport and Physical Education in 1905 in Brussels, the following was proposed as recommendation 14: “The university should urge the students to join physical education societies and encourage such associations” (Comité International Olympique 1905, 187). However, a completely diluted version of the original recommendation was finally adopted: “The University should not ignore the physical activity of its students; but on the other hand it should not make it obligatory for them to frequent the gymnasium or the playing field” (Comite 1905, 233). This weak statement might have been thought up by the university rectors of Brussels, Ghent, Liège, and Louvain, members of the honorary committee of the congress who probably did not want to be forced to change by congress recommendations. Before World War I, the majority of Louvain students preferred the playful atmosphere of traditional folk games such as popinjay shooting, curl bowls, jay bowls, or nine pins to more athletic efforts. “Then came Jean Petitjean” is the opening line of Claude-Louis Gallien’s 1999 biographical contribution to the history of university sport, and Jean Petitjean (1889–1969), a French chemist, is generally considered the father of the world university sports movement. At the first Student Congress of the postwar period, in 1921 in Strasbourg, he proposed the creation of a General Committee for Sports within the National Union of General Students Associations of France. It was under the aegis of this National Union that he organized the first International University Games in Paris in 1923. (See table 1 for a list of Summer and Winter World University Games from 1923 to 2005.) Petitjean wanted to call the first games “University Olympic Games,” but Coubertin convinced him to change the name in order to reserve the term “olympic” for “his” Olympic Games. Ten countries participated in the competitions, which included only track and field events, and Petitjean also invited “the world’s fastest human,” the American star
athlete Charlie Paddock. During these 1923 Games, an International Congress of University Sports was organized, which recommended the creation of an International University Sports Federation. The next year, the International Students Confederation (CIE) backed this idea and several important sport meets were organized between 1924 and 1939. After the competition in Paris in 1923, International University Games were staged in Warsaw in 1924, in Rome in 1927, in Paris in 1928, in Darmstadt in 1930, in Turin in 1933, in Budapest in 1935, in Paris in 1937, and in Monaco in 1939. The first University Winter Games were organized in 1928 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. The three sports on the program were speed skating, figure skating, and cross country skiing. The 8th International University Games of 1939 in Monaco were interrupted by the start of the World War II. The participating students headed back home, where many of them became involved in the cruel war game.
The Cold War Split 1945–1959 One year after the end of the war, the International Union of Students (IUS) was founded in Prague to restore the tradition of the former International Students Confederation (CIE). Although during its very first meeting in 1946, some fundamental differences of opinion appeared among student leaders, particularly between the Marxist and the free unionist factions, the Physical Education and Sports Department of the IUS managed to organize the 9th World University Games in 1947 in Paris. Jean Petitjean was one of the initiators of these “reconciliation games,” which were attended by about eight hundred students from seventeen countries. However, in January of the same year, during the 7th University Winter Games in Davos, political incidents between students from both sides of the Iron Curtain disturbed the festive atmosphere. The increasingly overt leftist orientation of the IUS eventually evoked a reaction from the West and a dissident preparatory committee was created in Zurich. In December of 1948 in Luxemburg, seven Western countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxemburg, Monaco, The Netherlands, and
WORLD UNIVERSITY GAMES
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Switzerland) decided that they would create an indeaged to bring both sides back together. Except for the pendent Fédération Internationale du Sport Universivirulent Asiatic flu epidemic, which scourged the Cité taire (FISU) if IUS would not change its Marxist course. Universitiare, Petitjean’s reconciliation campaign was a The situation worsened, and only one Western block success and the foundations were laid for the reunificountry, France, participated in the 1949 Winter Games cation of student sport in Splinderuv Mlyn, Czechoslovakia. And when the 10th World University Games were held in Budapest in The Universiades and connection with the Youth Congress for Peace of the Primo Nebiolo, 1959–1999 communist World Federation of Democratic Youth, only “And then came Primo Nebiolo” could be the opening Belgium and France attended. However, because the words of this section. During the first Universiade of the IUS did not react to the 1948 Luxemburg motion, FISU reunited FISU, Primo Nebiolo (1923–1999) from Turin considered itself legitimately established and organized had already revealed himself as the dynamic thriving rival Games in 1949 in Merano, Italy, the “International force behind the local organizing committee. A few University Sports Week.” months before the Turin UniverAfter this, the split between siade, the former member counEast and West was considered a tries of the IUS joined the FISU fact and FISU and the Physical after several secret meetings, Education and Sports Departwhich had been planned by ment of IUS organized their Jacques Flouret of France and Summer and Winter University Georges Oosterlynck of BelGames and Sport Weeks sepagium. It was the first time that the term Universiade was used, rately. Yugoslavia was expelled from the Kominform in 1948, that the “starred U” flag was inand the IUS did the same with troduced, and that national anthems were replaced by the the Yugoslavian students in medieval student song Gaudea1949. FISU was of course more than ready to offer the Yugoslamus igitur during award vian sporting students a warm ceremonies. welcome: In the middle of the Although the new FISU was Cold War, FISU organized its characterized by the peaceful co1955 Winter Sport Week in Jaexistence of the former rival horina, Yugoslavia, while the blocks, new difficulties loomed Summer Sport Week took place at the horizon. There were the in San Sebastian, Spain. “nostalgics,” who wanted to keep At last, in 1957, on the 50th university sport small and cozy anniversary of the “neutral” and far from the Olympic circuit Poster of the 8th International French University Students Fedand its ever-increasing profesUniversity Games of Monaco in eration (UNEF), both FISU and sionalism. Flouret, for instance, 1939. The events were interorganized the 1960 Winter IUS were invited to participate rupted by the beginning of Universiade in Chamonix at the in the World University Games World War I and the participants very same time as the Winter in Paris. Jean Petitjean was the had to return home. Olympics were being held in travelling diplomat who manSource: FISU magazine, June 1999.
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Table 1. Summer and Winter World University Games from 1923 to 2005 Summer University Games
Winter University Games
1923
Paris, France
1924
Warsaw, Poland
1927
Rome, Italy
1928
Paris, France
1930
Darmstadt, Germany
1933
Turin, Italy
1935
Budapest, Hungary
1937
Paris, France
1939
Monte Carlo, Monaco
1947
Paris, France
1953
Dortmund, West Germany
1957
Paris, France
1959
Turin, Italy
1961
Sofia, Bulgaria
1960
Chamonix, France
1963
Porto Allegre, Brazil
1962
Villars, Switzerland
1965
Budapest, Hungary
1964
Spindleruv Mlyn, Czechoslovakia
1967
Tokyo, Japan
1966
Sestriere, Italy
1970
Turin, Italy
1968
Innsbruck, Austria
1973
Moscow, Russia
1970
Rovanieme, Finland
1975
Rome, Italy
1972
Lake Placid, USA
1977
Sofia, Bulgary
1975
Livigno, Italy
1979
Mexico City, Mexico
1978
Spindleruv Mlyn, Czechoslovakia
1981
Bucharest, Romania
1981
Jaca, Spain
1983
Edmonton, Canada
1983
Sofia, Bulgaria
1985
Kobe, Japan
1985
Belluno, Italy
1987
Zagreb, Yugoslavia
1987
Strbske Plesso, Czechoslovakia
1989
Duisburg, Germany
1989
Sofia, Bulgaria
1991
Sheffield, England
1991
Sapporo, Japan
1993
Buffalo, USA
1993
Zakopane, Poland
1995
Fukuoka, Japan
1995
Jaca, Spain
1997
Sicily, Italy
1997
Chonju Moju, S. Korea
1999
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
1999
Poprad, Slovakia
2001
Beijing, China
2001
Zakopane, Poland
2003
Daegu, S. Korea
2003
Tarvisio, Italy
2005
Izmir, Turkey
2005
Innsbruck, Austria
Squaw Valley, California. Other leaders wanted the Universiades to become as grandiose and philistine as the Olympic Games. During the Universiade in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1961, FISU’s founding president Paul Schleimer was replaced by the flamboyant and autocratic Primo Nebiolo. A comparative analysis of the Universiades and the Olympic Games between 1959
(Universiade of Turin) and 1996 (Atlanta Olympics) shows that the Universiades have gradually become “interolympics” in which top athletes meet and test each other in student camouflage. This analysis matched the names of the student athletes who were among the five best in their discipline at the Universiades against the names of the three medal winners in consecutive
WORLD UNIVERSITY GAMES
Olympics. For instance, when the 1959 Turin Universiade was compared with the 1960 Olympic Games for track and field events, eight names reappeared: three men and five women. From 1959 to 1996, Eastern block countries outdid Western block countries with a success rate of, respectively, 241 versus 172 two-timewinners. The Eastern block countries dominated in track and field, gymnastics, fencing, and wrestling, whereas the Western countries were more successful in fancy diving, judo, and swimming. When the number of two-time-winners was weighed in relation to the number of participants in the Universiades, the success rate varied between 0.65 (Sheffield 1991–Barcelona 1992) and 3.20 (Tokyo 1967–Mexico 1968). After Kobe 1985–Seoul 1988, the relative success rate of Universiade athletes in the Olympics dropped, probably due to the overt acceptance of professional athletes after the 1988 Olympics.
George E. Killian and International University Sports 1999–2005 When Primo Nebiolo died in 1999, he was succeeded by George E. Killian, an Amercian who had served as president of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) from 1990 to 1998 and who had been FISU First Vice President since 1995 and Vice President since 1987. Some old-timers thought that under the new leadership university sport would opt for less grandiosity and switch back to its origins in which there were real university games for real students. However, the new scenario turned out to be one of further differentiation, magnification, and professionalization. Apart from the biannual Winter and Summer Universiades, more and more emphasis was now laid on the so-called World University Championships (WUCs). Student athletes met for the first time in a single World University Championship in 1962, and since then there have been 173 WUCs.These events are organized to ensure “continuity in our competition programme, since the Universiades take place in odd years” (New Identity 2004, 6). In 2002 eighty-three countries sent delegations and 4,228 students participated in 24 different WUC
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IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch with FISU and IAAF President Primo Nebiolo attending the official inauguration of the General Secretariat of FISU in Brussels, 1992. Source: FISU magazine, June 1999.
competitions. The following new sports were introduced: shooting, floorball, matchracing (sailing), beach volleyball, and bridge. For the Summer Universiade in Daegu, South Korea, in 2003, it was decided to include judo, archery, and taekwondo, three disciplines that were already regularly organized as WUCs. In 2004 twenty-seven World University Championships were scheduled in all parts of the world.The program now also included woodball (a kind of pall-mall), softball, rugby sevens, and water skiing. At the 22nd Winter Universiade in Innsbruck/Seefeld, Austria, in 2005, medals were for the first time awarded in ski cross. The Summer Universiade of 2005 in Izmir, Turkey, is proposing sailing, wrestling, taekwondo, and archery as optional sports. In 2007, the 23rd Winter Universiade will be hosted by Torino, Italy, and the 24th Summer Universiade by Bangkok, Thailand. During a press conference in Zakopane at the 20th Winter Universiade in 2001, FISU President Killian said, “We can’t try to copy the Olympic Games programmes.
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Wrestling is ballet with violence.
The most important factor for us is if students really practise a particular sport. Because Universiades are for students-sportsmen, not for professionals” (FISU 2001). This sounds anachronistic, since today most top athletes at the Universiades or World University Championships are professional athletes who happen to study or who are registered as students, and not university students who happen to practise a sport. At the 2003 Tarvisio Winter Universiade, a female Russian cross-country skier was disqualified because she had a positive drug test for norandrosterone. In imitation of the IOC, FISU President Killian now also speaks of the FISU “family,” whereas the term “enterprise” might be more accurate. All in all, because of the democratization of higher education on the one hand and the increasing professionalization and internationalization (globalization) of sport on the other hand, more and more Universiade athletes and their coaches have not the slightest idea what the Latin medieval song Gaudeamus igitur, which replaces the national anthems at the Universiades, might mean. Roland Renson
Further Reading Anthony, D. (1998). Hodgson Pratt: Nineteenth century leader for international understanding through sports. Journal of Olympic History, 6(3), 44. Campana, R. (1994). World university sport: From the beginning to contemporary times, F.I.S.U. Forum ’94, Catania, 25–28. Comité International Olympique. (1905). Congrès international de sport et d’éducation physique. Auxerre, France: Albert Lamier. FISU. (1993, 1923–1993). The world university games celebrate their 70th anniversary. FISU magazine (25): 17–21. FISU. (2001). FISU President George E. Killian says: This Universiade already is a huge success! In Winter Universiade Zakopane 2001. Retrieved from http://www.universiade2001.Zakopane. Gallien, C.-L. (1999). Jean Petitjean et les premiers Jeux Mondiaux Universitaires de Paris. In The conference on the study of university sport, Palma de Mallorca, 7–19. Killian, G. E. (2004). The President’s message. University Sports Magazine (59), 4. New Identity. (2004). New Identity: World University Championships. University Sports Magazine (59) April: 6–21. Oosterlynck, G. (1960). Geschiedenis van de internationale universitaire sport van 1945 tot 1960. Sport, 3(10), 27–32. Ostyn, M. (1980). ‘Politiek versus sport’ in de geschiedenis van de internationale universitaire sport: deel I. Hermes (Leuven) 14: 115– 125; 337–350.
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Renson, R. (1999). Anticipating the fourth wave: History and future of university sport. In The conference on the study of university sport (pp. 41–49). Palma de Mallorca: Universiada Palma. Renson, R., & Vanleeuwe, T. (1983). Sport and the Flemish movement at Louvain University between 1835 and 1914. In S. Kereliuk (Ed.), The university’s role in the development of modern sport: past, present and future. Proceedings of the FISU conference—Universiade ’83 in association with the 10th HISPA congress, Edmonton, Canada, 90–101. Renson, R., & Verbeke, L. (1998). Universiades 1959–1996: University Games or Interolympics? In J. Tolleneer & R. Renson (Eds.), Old borders, new borders, no borders. 11th conference International Society for Comparative Physical Education and Sport, 22–232.
Wrestling
W
restling is a contact sport in which the objective of participants is to take down their opponent by using holds that involve placing both of the opponent’s shoulders in contact with the mat (called a “pin” or “fall”). Although the objective may seem simple, accomplishing it requires effort and skill.
Origins Wrestling is one of the world’s oldest sports. Its history extends back thousands of years to the development of the first great empires around the Mediterranean Sea, in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates Rivers, and in India and China. Scholars believe paintings from Egypt from about 3000 BCE to be the oldest evidence of the sport. Stories and legends handed down by the early poets and storytellers tell of wrestling in ancient Greece. In the Odyssey the ancient Greek poet Homer gives accounts of wrestling matches back to the eighth century BCE, including a story of a wrestling combat between Odysseus and Ajax with Achilles as referee. From the Roman empire the oldest evidence of wrestling is found in wall paintings that date from the fifth century BCE.
Rules and Play Wrestlers are divided into classes based on gender, age, and weight. Wrestlers weigh in the day before a competition. Three referees are needed, each having their
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Wrestling “Wrestling Holds” By Grantland Rice The Headlock is no way I’d choose To try to chase away the blues; If I was quite depressed and flat I hardly think I’d seek a mat And hire some human bracing-bit To squeeze my skull until it split. The Toehold, with its warping trend, Is not the way I’d pick to spend A happy, cheerful afternoon In January or in June. While twisted toes may cop the pelf, I’d rather wiggle mine myself. The Scissors may be worth a run, But I can think of better fun Than letting Stecher play the snake Unto my abdomenic ache, The while he wraps his legs around My cracking ribs on mat or ground. Though here and there I strike a scale, I do not get the wrestler’s kale; But I had rather keep instead My uncracked toes and ribs and head; For when through working I prefer To have my bones just where they were. Source: Rice, G. (1924). Wresting holds. Badminton, p. 130–131.
own tasks. According to the standardized value system, wrestlers are rewarded for the holds they use to take down their opponent. The holds are rated as more or less difficult and also are rewarded differently. Points are awarded for each rewarded hold. A match is terminated when one wrestler is ten points ahead or when time runs out. The wrestler with the most points wins and must have at least three points to win a match. The International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA, www.fila-wrestling.com), the governing body, continually revises the rules. A wrestler needs minimal equipment: light, soft-soled boots and a wrestling costume, generally a singlet.
Some wrestlers also use a mouth guard, knee pads, or headgear. About two hundred forms of wrestling exist. The freestyle and Greco-Roman forms have been dominant in Europe, and freestyle is the most common in the United States. Greco-Roman and freestyle dominate amateur competition.
Freestyle In freestyle wrestling competitors use a wide variety of holds on the upper body and legs; competitors cannot grasp the opponent’s clothing to secure a hold. The modern sport, which is practiced in the Olympic Games, the World Games, and competitions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), represents a tradition thousands of years old and manifested worldwide. The tactics, heroes, and lore of freestyle wrestling have had considerable impact on literature, art, and history. Some types of freestyle wrestling practiced today appear to be descendants of ancient forms. The Nuba of the lower Sudan have held wrestling festivals for centuries, if not for millennia, and continuity seems to exist between the costumes of the Nubian wrestlers seen in Egyptian sculpture and the gourd-strung skirts that Nuba wrestlers still wear. A popular folk wrestling of India performed on a mud surface also continues an ancient tradition. Freestyle wrestling has been popular in Great Britain for centuries, and the Lancashire style in particular has had a great influence on modern wrestling. In this style, often called “catch as catch can,” contestants begin standing and continue the bout on the ground if neither contestant scores a fall from standing. In the United States after the Civil War freestyle wrestling spread quickly, and by the 1880s its tournaments drew hundreds of contestants. Urbanization, industrialization, and the closing of the Western frontier formed the context in which this combat sport—along with boxing—became popular. A professional circuit, not corrupted by the theatrics of later years, emerged during this era, as did amateur organizations: About the time of the first New York Athletic Club wrestling
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A wrestling match at the Pan American Games.
tournament in 1878, professional championship bouts offered purses of up to $1,000. From the earliest years FILA and intercollegiate rules stressed the safety of competitors.Tactics and holds that jeopardize life or limb or that punish the opponent, rather than gain leverage, have been consistently illegal. These tactics and holds include strangleholds, the full nelson, twisting hammerlocks, the flying mare with the opponent’s arm locked, and slamming the opponent to the mat. Modern rules have gone further in banning virtually any hold that pressures a joint in a direction contrary to its natural movement.
Greco-Roman Greco-Roman wrestling is governed by all the rules and procedures of freestyle wrestling, but contestants may not take holds below the waist or even use their legs actively in holds; thus, the leg takedowns and trips fundamental to freestyle wrestling are prohibited. The arm drags, bear hugs, and headlocks of freestyle wrestling, on the other hand, are a central part of Greco-Roman wrestling. Far from creating a dull contest, the restriction of holds to the upper body has encouraged the use of a spectacular series of throws called “souples,” in which the offensive wrestler lifts the opponent in a high arch while falling backward to a bridge on his or her own neck and bringing the opponent’s shoulders into contact with the mat. Even in wrestling on the mat (par terre), the GrecoRoman wrestler must seek body-lock and gut-wrench holds to turn the opponent for a fall. The ability to arch backward from a standing position onto one’s own neck confidently and safely while lifting and turning the opponent to the mat is crucial. Rules prohibit stalling, and after fifteen seconds of inconclusive action, a bout must resume with both wrestlers standing in a neutral position and working toward a throw. Despite its name, Greco-Roman is not an ancient form of wrestling but rather is mainly a development of
nineteenth-century Europe, where it achieved popularity as an amateur and professional sport and appeared in the first modern Olympics in 1896 in Athens, Greece. It maintains its popularity today, especially among wrestlers in Europe and the Far East. The formalization of the elements of Greco-Roman wrestling into today’s sport is a recent phenomenon. Sixteenth-century drawings of wrestling ascribed to Albrecht Durer and Fabian von Auerswald’s Wrestler’s Art depict leg holds inadmissible in GrecoRoman wrestling today, suggesting that freestyle, rather than Greco-Roman, was the main form of wrestling of that era. Despite the similarities of Greco-Roman to several British forms of wrestling and its promotion by William Muldoon in the United States after the Civil War, the sport never achieved lasting popularity in the Englishspeaking world, yielding to the more unstructured freestyle form. Greco-Roman wrestling appeared at the first modern Olympics, where three contestants competed in the heavyweight class, with Karl Schuhman of Germany winning first place over Georgios Tsitas of Greece. Freestyle wrestling, by comparison, did not appear in the Olympics until the 1904 games in St. Louis, Missouri.
Women on the Mat Wrestling traditionally has been a male domain from which women largely have been excluded. Only
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Wrestling Wrestling in an Asian Indian Folktale In an ancient village by the Simsang River Chela Asanpa came across a very strong man who was sitting in an open courtyard of his house making bamboo-threads out of big wahnok bamboos by splitting open the thick stiff nodes with his mere hands. The strong man welcomed Chela Asanpa cordially, killed a fatling bull for him and entertained him with food and drink. After he had dined Chela Asanpa said to his host: I have heard much about you and so have come to wrestle with you. If you defeat me in a wrestling bout, you will have to come over to my village with your milam and spi for a duel. First, I shall entertain you with a grand feast in my house. Then we shall go to the village proper where we shall fight our duel with our milams and spis. If you are defeated you must leave your head with me. If I lose, you shall have my head to bring home here as a trophy. However, if you are defeated in our wrestling bout tomorrow, I shall leave you in peace as a man of no account to me. Do you agree? The strong burly man of the ancient village readily agreed. The next day the two contestants cleared a site on the plain, loamy soil near the bank of the Simsang River. They together bathed and ate their meal. Then they began their wrestling contest in the clearing which they had earlier prepared. It was a titanic struggle, each holding the other in deadly grips, and trying his utmost to hurl the other down. What a spectacle they presented, these two enormously strong men clenched in each other’s ironlike arms, straining their immense muscles, bending their huge bodies in an effort to fling and floor each other! At times they appeared like lifeless statues on pedestal,
recently have women been welcomed by the international wrestling community and by the sport in general but still not on equal terms with men. That competitions are being organized for women and men together is a sign of progress in women’s wrestling.
so immovable they stood, though at such moments they were utilizing their full physical capacity to cause each other to give way. They sank deep into the loamy soil in the midst of their tremendous struggle. All about the ground was drenched with their perspiration. Hour followed hour. The sun stood on the western horizon, and the two mighty giants wrestled on continously without one being able to floor the other. Both were by now almost utterly exhausted. Finally, exerting all his strength Chela Asanpa made one last vigorously desperate attempt to hurl his opponent down on the ground and succeeded. The colossal contest was over. The victor and the vanquished praised each other’s performance. Hand in hand they went down to the river to bathe. After that the strong man of the ancient village killed a seven-year old castrated pig for Chela Asanpa, procured a good deal of rice-beer, and dined with his conqueror until late at night. In the morning the host killed thirty-two cocks and twelve hens in the name of Chela Asanpa for the purpose of divining the future of his guest. After examining the entrails of the cocks and hens he said to Chela Asanpa: My divination indicates that you will go on vanquishing all whom you encounter and that you will never allow your head to fall into the hands of an enemy. However, you will die a natural death at a ripe age, full of honour and fame. Your name and fame will remain in the mouths of our descendants for generations to come. Now, friend, take your full share of our customary Achik hospitality. Source: Rongmuthu, D. W. (Comp.). (1960). The folk-tales of the Garos (p. 20–22). Gauhati, India. University of Gauhati.
The history of women’s wrestling in ancient times is largely unrecorded, but some documentation exists. This documentation suggests that wrestling between virgins of noble heritage was related to religious ceremonies. From Greek myths the legend of Atalanta is the best known through a vase painting from the
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Wrestling Wrestling in Hawaii Wrestling was also practised by the more athletic youth, as a preparation to the single combats usual in almost every battle. Sometimes they had sham fights, when large numbers engaged, and each party advanced and retreated, attacked and defended, and exercised all the maneuvres employed in actual engagement. Admirably constituted by nature with fine-formed bodies, supple joints, strong and active limbs, accustomed also to a light and cumberless dress, they took great delight in these gymnastic and warlike exercises, and in the practice of them spent no inconsiderable portion of their time. Source: Ellis, W. (1917). Narrative of a tour through Hawaii, or Owhyhee: with observations on the natural history of the Sandwich Islands, and remarks on the manners, customs, traditions, history, and language of their inhabitants (pp. 278). Honolulu: Hawaiian Gazette Co. Ltd.
develop on other continents. FILA established the first commission for women’s wrestling in 1983.
Effects Advocates of wrestling emphasize that it offers wholesome physical and mental exercise and is one of the best sports for developing physical fitness: It improves balance, builds muscle tone, and develops agility, quickness, flexibility, and power. It also may develop positive personality characteristics such as determination, courage, self-confidence, and self-reliance. Injuries are common, but they are seldom serious. Use of protective equipment can reduce some injuries; for example, head gear protects against cauliflower ear, which is an ear that, after many falls, becomes deformed by fluid accumulation under the skin that has calcified.
Competition at the Top fifth or sixth century BCE, illustrating her grappling with Peleus. As wrestling developed during the twentieth century, contests were organized professionally and held in circuses or in traveling booths, both in the United States and Europe. Most participants were men, but women were also allowed to perform. Between World War I and World War II women wrestlers became popular in several countries, but most women wrestlers were aware that the crowds came for the novelty: to see women wrestle. The matches. including mud wrestling, were mostly gimmicks. Although participation by women has increased, women’s wrestling remains controversial. The sport’s physical requirements and great degree of body contact link it with masculinity; thus, many people still consider wrestling to be inappropriate for women. Therefore, as women’s wrestling developed during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the athletes experienced barriers both in the sport and in daily life. During the 1970s women’s wrestling was largely practiced in European countries such as Belgium, France, and Norway. However, during the 1980s the sport began to
In the 2004 Olympics at Athens, women gold medal winners were: freestyle, 48 kilograms, Irini Merleni, Ukraine; 55 kilograms, Saori Yoshida, Japan; 63 kilograms, Kaori Icho, Japan; and 72 kilograms, Xu Wang, China. Men gold medal winners were: men’s freestyle, 55 kilograms, Mavlet Batirov, Russia; 60 kilograms, Yandro Miguel Quintana, Cuba; 66 kilograms, Elbrus Tedeyev, Ukraine; 74 kilograms, Buvaysa Saytiev, Russia; 84 kilograms, Cael Sanderson, United States; 96 kilograms, Khadjimourat Gatsalov, Russia; 120 kilograms, Artur Taymazov, Uzbekistan; men’s Greco-Roman, 55 kilograms, Istvan Majoros, Hungary; 60 kilograms, Ji Hyun Jung, South Korea; 66 kilograms, Farid Mansurov, Azerbaijan; 74 kilograms, Alexandr Dokturishivili, Uzbekistan; 84 kilograms, Alexei Michine, Russia; 96 kilograms, Karam Ibrahim, Egypt; and 120 kilograms, Khasan Baroev, Russia. Mari-Kristin Sisjord and Michael B. Poliakoff See also Arm Wrestling; Sumo
Further Reading Alter, J. S. (1992). The wrestler’s body. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
WRIGLEY FIELD
Armstrong, W. (1893). Wrestling. London: Longmans, Green. Camaione, D. N., & Tillman, K. G. (1980). Teaching and coaching wrestling: A scientific approach. New York: John Wiley. Caroll, S. T. (1988). Wrestling in ancient Nubia. The Journal of Sport History, 15(2), 121–137. Hackenschmidt, G. (1909). The complete science of wrestling. London: Athletic Publications. Keen, C., Speidel, C., & Swartz, R. (1964). Championship wrestling (4th ed.). New York: Arco Publishing. Kent, G. (1968). A pictorial history of wrestling. London: Spring Books. Martell, W. A. (1973). Greco-Roman wrestling. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Morton, G. W. (1985). Wrestling to rasslin: Ancient sport to American spectacle. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press. Niebel, B. W., & Niebel, D. A. (1982). Modern wrestling: A primer for wrestlers, parents, and fans. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Petrov, R. (1986). Freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling. Lausanne, Switzerland: Federation Internationale des Luttes Amateurs. Poliakoff, M. B. (1987). Combat sports in the ancient world: Competition, violence, and culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wilson, C. M. (1959). The magnificent scufflers: Revealing the great days when America wrestled the world. Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Greene Press.
Wrigley Field
W
rigley Field is the home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team and is the second-oldest ballpark in the majors. Only Boston’s Fenway Park, opened in 1912, is older. It was built as the home of the Chicago Federals, later Whales, of the just-established Federal League by team owner Charlie Weeghman, at the cost of an estimated $250,000. It opened on April 23, 1914, as Weeghman Park and was also known as the North Side Ball Park, as the first ball bark built on Chicago’s North Side. When the Federal League folded two years later, Weeghman and his ten partners bought the Chicago Cubs of the National League and moved them to Weeghman Park. One of Weeghman’s partners was the chewing gum king, William Wrigley Jr., and by 1919 Wrigley had bought out the other partners, including Weeghman. In 1920 the field was renamed Cubs Park and then in 1926 renamed Wrigley Field in honor of the owner. In 1914 the park had a capacity of 14,000 that was expanded over the years to its current
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capacity of 38,902 in 1998, small by current stadium standards. The field is also relatively small and play is affected by onshore or offshore Lake Michigan winds, favoring either the hitter or pitcher, respectively. In 1937 outfield bleachers were added as was the scoreboard, which continues to be manually operated and has yet to be hit by batted ball. Both were added by baseball executive and innovator Bill Veeck. He also had Japanese and Boston ivy planted along the centerfield wall.The ivy thrived, giving the wall a unique appearance among major league stadiums. Among other Wrigley Field firsts were the first permanent concession in a baseball stadium (1914), allowing fans to keep foul balls, and throwing opposing team home run balls back on to the field. At the end of each game, a flag signifying a win or lose is flown from a center field flag pole—either a white flag with a blue W or a blue flag with a white L. Another feature is the custom of fans watching the game from the rooftops of houses on Waveland and Sheffield avenues.
Let There Be Lights Until August 8 1988, Wrigley Field did not have lights and 5,687 consecutive day games had been played there. Wrigley had planned to install lights for the 1941 season but instead donated them to the government for use during World War II. Lights were finally installed over the objection of some residents in the Wrigleyville neighborhood under pressure from Major League Baseball and the Cubs management, who threatened to leave the stadium. The Cubs have played in six World Series at the field, but lost all six. The most famous event associated with Wrigley Field is Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home run off of Charlie Root in the 1932 World Series. Ruth did make a hand gesture to the outfield before hitting Root’s pitch into the bleachers, although it is not clear what he meant by the gesture. Among the great players who performed at Wrigley Field are Cubs shortstop Ernie Banks, third baseman Ron Santo, and outfielder Billy Williams. All three are honored by flags that hang from the foul poles displaying their uniform numbers, 14, 10, and 26. Wrigley is also associated with a unique cast of off-the field characters, including a group of regulars in the
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Panoramic view of the stands at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Source: istockphoto.com/fig.
bleachers about whose antics the play Bleacher Bums was written; William “Billy Goat” Sianis, a Chicago restaurant owner who put a “curse” on the Cubs when he and his goat were asked to leave a 1945 World Series game; and popular play-by-play announcer Harry Carey.
Further Reading Jacob, M., Green, S., & Banks, E. (2003). Wrigley Field: A celebration of the friendly confines. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Pahigan, J., & O’Connell, K. (2004). The ultimate baseball road trip: A fan’s guide to major league stadiums. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press. Sandalow, M., & Sutton, J. (2004). Ballparks: A panoramic history. Edison, NJ: Chartwell.
The Future Like the other old ballpark, Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field retains its appeal as a stadium that reflects an earlier era of baseball that has resisted destruction and desertion. Cubs fans are hopeful that the Red Sox’ winning the World Series in 2004 is a sign that their long World Series drought—dating back to 1908— will end soon as well. David Levinson
Wushu
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ushu is the Chinese martial arts, ranging from their origins in early Stone Age cultures to the martially inspired arts practiced today. The word wushu is composed of two characters: Wu is associated with
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military and warfare; shu with the skill or methods of performing an activity. The word gongfu, or kung-fu, often used in the West to refer to Chinese martial arts, is actually composed of two Chinese characters that refer to the time and effort required to accomplish any human activity.
Development Chinese martial traditions evolved with social and technological changes during China’s history. Martial arts required a variety of defensive and offensive specializations, from basic hand-to-hand combat to complex techniques of large-scale warfare. Although composed primarily of martial arts, wushu has long been associated with meditative exercise, physical conditioning, dance, drama, and competitive exhibition. Wushu developed as an important element of China’s culture and influenced the martial traditions of neighboring countries and eventually the rest of the world. The Chinese martial arts grew out of people’s need for protection against other people and dangerous animals. As Chinese society became more complex, so did its martial systems. The first martial systems used the body parts most appropriate for the task: feet, hands, knees, elbows, and head. Rudimentary skills were supplemented by the use of farming and hunting tools made of wood and stone, including the spear, club, and knife. As people developed the basic technology and began to use metals, a range of weaponry became available. Chinese society came to place more emphasis on warfare, and the martial arts became a specialized profession for many people. However, with the advent of modern firearms in China, people began to practice traditional martial arts more as forms of sport and exercise. Today such martial arts enjoy a growing popularity throughout the world. Although people practice them in all cultures, martial arts of Asian origin are the better known because of their sophisticated repertoire of techniques coupled with philosophies of self-cultivation. The histories of the most popular Asian martial arts in-
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dicate a strong Chinese influence. For example, Okinawan karate developed from China’s Fujian Province, and the founder of Korean taekwondo studied wushu while serving in the military in Manchuria. The martial arts in Japan, Korea, and Indonesia were influenced by encounters with Chinese people during trade, immigration, and war. Knowledge of Asian martial arts likewise spread to the rest of the world, the movie industry being the most significant popularizer. Basic forms of Chinese martial arts developed during early Neolithic (relating to the latest period of the Stone Age characterized by polished stone implements) times as products of a survival instinct. They also provided entertainment, as in games of “head butting” in which contestants wore animal horns. By the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BCE), wushu had reached an advanced level. Excavations of the period have uncovered arms and armor, including halberds, spears, chariots, bows, arrows, swords, helmets, and knives. Other artifacts indicate not only sophisticated military organization, but also a culture in which martial arts were valued for their role in securing or maintaining political stability. The crossbow and iron weapons came into use during the fifth century BCE, ushering in new forms of martial arts. Military treatises, such as Sun Tsu’s The Art of War, detailed military tactics and maneuvers that people still study today. During later centuries China remained the apex of refined culture, and surrounding countries looked to it for inspiration and knowledge. However, with China’s cultural advances came threats of invasion by people seeking its riches. Likewise, internal conflicts erupted because of inevitable social inequities that developed among economic groups. China’s history flows through dynastic cycles during which imperial armies fought invading barbarians and/or native rebels. Such turmoil taught the Chinese to rely on martial arts as a security measure. Those people who possessed the most advanced systems felt that they had an advantage in protecting their empire, clan, or family. Therefore, martial arts systems were highly secretive and taught only to selected people.
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Winners never quit and quitters never win. ■ UNKNOWN
Effective Systems The martial arts systems reflected the social positions and concerns of their creators. For instance, the imperial army developed martial arts for large-scale military engagements. Such arts often focused on long-range weapons, such as the crossbow. Their maneuvers usually required a fast cavalry to execute their objectives. However, sometimes the imperial politicalmilitary structure collapsed, leaving the commoners to fend for themselves. Other groups developed their own martial arts systems, often organizing themselves around a common bond, be it social, linguistic, or philosophical. Because talented people were credited with creating specific martial arts systems, their families often retained control of such knowledge by passing it down from generation to generation. Their concerns were primarily for the security of family and clan. Their limited resources kept their focus on developing skills that a fighter could use, including in the use of weapons such as spear, sword, and knife. They often fought against individuals or small groups, so open-hand boxing skills were also important. Martial arts styles were usually named for the people, places, or philosophical ideas associated with them. A few hundred Chinese styles exist, but many more styles and substyles have yet to be categorized. For the sake of simplicity, experts sometimes place martial arts styles into general categories, such as northern-southern, internal-external, or Taoist-Buddhist, and sometimes according to their place of origin. The association of some Chinese martial arts with temples is of special importance. During times of turmoil, people often used temples as places of refuge. Such temples attracted people from all segments of Chinese society, including martial arts experts who came to live together, often comparing their knowledge. Some temples, such as Shaolin, became “universities” where experts contributed to the evolution and preservation of martial arts. The rise of modern weaponry has led to the extinction of some martial arts traditions. Nonetheless, many
martial arts remain popular in China because, in part, of their pervasive presence in Chinese culture. Their historical importance has been the subject of many literary endeavors, including a martial arts genre. As moving art forms, the martial arts are living expressions of their developers’ creativity. People also value martial arts forms for their therapeutic benefits. In China the majority of people who practice martial arts do so primarily for such benefits. However, people also practice martial arts in theatrical productions, self-defense classes, entertainment industries, meditative practices, military training programs, and sporting events. In China today modern forms of entertainment are relatively limited. Computers, televisions, and electronic games, for instance, are luxuries that relatively few people can afford. Modern health care is also limited because of high costs. Wushu, as a form of sport and exercise, is an attractive alternative. Martial arts exhibitions have a long tradition in China. Competitions are featured at the national level. International teams also have been formed. Routines standardized by government regulations are taught in martial arts schools and in colleges that have wushu departments. Competitive martial arts exhibitions have transformed traditional solo routines by incorporating gymnastic elements to achieve greater visual effects. Matches between individuals, usually judged on a point system, limit the type of techniques used. Overall, martial arts sports have adapted elements from traditional systems, thus presenting only one aspect of what martial arts entail. Financial and political concerns increasingly play a role in martial arts as world participation in Asian martial arts increases.
The Future Today people practice wushu for a variety of reasons in all parts of the world. Some people see wushu as a violent activity and thus are either attracted to it or seek to suppress it. Martial arts sports are popular with people who enjoy competition. Such competition ranges from full-contact bouts with no rules to no-contact tournaments with rules to prevent injures and ensure fair-
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ness in judging. However, problems continue to plague martial arts sports because no one internationally recognized system for teaching, ranking, or judging exists. Still other people desire to learn martial arts for the physical and psychological benefits. More than ever people are attracted to wushu not simply as a physical activity but as a way of self-discovery. Therefore, despite its organizational disarray as a sport, wushu will increase in popularity. Michael A. DeMarco See also Mixed Martial Arts
Further Reading Boudreau, F., Folman, R., & Konzak, B. (1995). Psychological and physical changes in school-age karate participants: Parental observations. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 4(4), 50–69.
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Dreager, D., & Smith, R. (1969). Comprehensive Asian martial arts. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Donohue, J. (1991). The forge of the spirit: Structure, motion, and meaning in the Japanese martial tradition. New York: Garland Publishing. Donohue, J. (1992). Dancing in the danger zone: The martial arts in America. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 1(1), 86–99. Donohue, J. (1994). Warrior dreams: The martial arts and the American imagination. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Haines, B. (1995). Karate’s history and traditions (Rev. ed.). Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle. Holcombe, C. (1992). Theater of combat: A critical look at the Chinese martial arts. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 1(4), 64–79. Kauz, H. (1992). A path to liberation: A spiritual and philosophical approach to the martial arts. New York: Overlook Press. Pieter, W. (1994). Research in martial sports: A review. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 3(2), 10–47. Reid, H., & Croucher, M. (1983). The way of the warrior: The paradox of the martial arts. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. Rosenberg, D. (1995). Paradox and dilemma: The martial arts and American violence. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 4(2), 10–33. Sutton, N. (1993). Gongfu, guoshu and wushu: State appropriation of the martial arts in modern China. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 2(3), 102–114.
X Games
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he concept of competition, whether athletic or otherwise, is universal; it crosses all language and cultural boundaries and can serve to unite an entire country, as it often does with the Olympic games. There exists, however, an even greater desire to test the human spirit, to push farther and expand the boundaries of athletics. Conventional sports are giving way to a new breed where adrenaline runs freely and the more extreme athlete goes home with the gold medal. The venue for this risk-taking, thrill-seeking, extreme athlete is the X Games.
History of the X Games In 1993, Entertainment Sports Network Programming Director Ron Semiao envisioned a competition for extreme-sports athletes. Prior to this, organized athletic events were limited to traditional sports. With the growth of extreme sports in the last two decades of the twentieth century, the opportunity existed to create an outlet for the extreme and alternative athlete. After two years of preparation, ESPN successfully staged the first Extreme Games in Newport, Providence, and Middletown, Rhode Island, and in Mount Snow, Vermont, from 24 June through 1 July of 1995; 198,000 spectators attended. Nine sport categories were included, with such events as BMX/stunt bike, barefoot water-ski jumping, bungee jumping, in-line skating, kite skiing, mountain biking, skateboarding, sky surfing, sport climbing, street luge, windsurfing, and X Venture Race.
X The success of the first Extreme Games and an enthusiastic response by the athletes, sponsors, and spectators encouraged ESPN to organize a second Extreme Games in 1996. In January of 1996, the name Extreme Games was officially changed to X Games. Altering the name gave ESPN the ability to more easily market the games to international viewers and allowed for better branding opportunities. In April of 1996, the first X Games Road Show traveled throughout the United States, bringing a two-day interactive expo to twelve cities, including Boston, San Francisco, and Miami. In June of the same year, beneath the shadows of ancient temples, the first international exhibit took place in Shanghai. Spectators were treated to demonstrations of bicycle stunts, in-line skating and skateboarding. These demonstrations shadowed X Games II, held in late June before 200,000 spectators.
Winter X Games The growing popularity of the X Games encouraged ESPN to organize the first Winter X Games. From 30 January through 2 February 1997, at the Snow Summit Mountain Resort in Big Bear Lake, California, spectators had the opportunity to watch extreme athletes compete in ice climbing, shovel racing, snowboarding, snow mountain bike racing, and a multisport crossover event.
Growing Popularity Since the inception of the X Games in 1995, both men and women have had the opportunity to compete, and
1996 saw the beginning of international exposure and eventual participation in the X Games themselves. In 1997 the annual tradition of both winter and summer X Games began. In April of 1998, the first international X Games, the Asian X Games, were held in Phuket, Thailand, and featured two hundred athletes competing for spots in X Games IV in San Diego. X Games IV attracted 233,000 spectators, and there were nearly 275,000 spectators at X Games V. The popularity of the games continued to increase, both within the United States and across the globe. In November of 1999, the first Junior X Games were held in Phuket, Thailand, attracting action-sports athletes between the ages of eight and fourteen. Within four years, the Asian X Games led to the development of the Junior X Games and, in March of 2002, the beginning of the Latin X Games. In July of 2002, the European X Games were held. The global expansion of the X Games continued in May of 2002 with a new event, the X Games Global Championship. The premise of the Global Championship is that six world teams will compete against each other in a four-day competition, with both winter and summer X Games events. The events included are skateboard, bicycle stunt, Moto X, aggressive in-line skate, snowboard, and ski. Team USA edged out Team Europe to win the inaugural X Games Global Championship. Since 2002, the X Games have continued to grow in popularity. These extreme sports, once on the fringe, are finding their way into mainstream sport entertainment and international competition.
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X Games X Games Journalism Just like the Games themselves, X Games journalism is breathless, exciting, and over the top. The extract below is part of an EXPN.com recap of the top ten moments of the 10th X Games, held in Los Angeles from 5–8 August 2004. The first stop on the X Games X recap tour is the mammoth, monster, mother-of-all, behemoth dropin, take your pick, shoot the gap, then trick-it-up-onthe-pipe mega ramp. The X gods pulled out all the stops for the 10th-anniversary edition and constructed the ultimate playground for six skateboard crazies.
Significance of the X Games Extreme sports were neither developed for the purpose of entertainment nor for competition. The athletes that chose to participate in extreme sports did so for their own pleasure. Competition was not a prime motivator. Individual style was encouraged. Setting personal records was desired. These athletes were thrill seekers looking to push the limits of their own bodies and the boundaries of their sports. The athletes who pursue extreme sports are men and women, adults and youth, who live in different countries throughout the world. The adrenaline rush and high risk of their event is what brings these athletes together. The development of the X Games gives these athletes a stage and a greater chance to improve themselves and push these extreme sports further than ever imagined. The X Games are the showcase for broken records and sometimes broken bones but also for never-
The big lady featured a choose-your-own-adventure: a 50- or 70-foot roll-in that launched you over either a 50-foot gap or a 70-foot gap for he with stones. If you landed it, you were launched NOTever-so-gently into the 27-foot quarterpipe. This is NOT for the faint of heart. Although the master of this monster—Mr. Danny Way—has a serious heart condition . . . an abnormal excess of heart. The 30-year-old vet from Encinitas, CA, was the only guy who dared drop in from the tipity top and he landed it Christ-air style. Source: Burkheit, M. (2004, August 10). Top 10 of X Games X. Retrieved April 12, 2005, from http://expn.go.com/expn/summerx/2004/story?pageName=040809_bestof_XGX2
before-seen tricks such as Tony Hawk’s “900 degree turn” in skateboarding or for the “Body Varial” in Moto X. The X Games encourage the development of and increased participation in extreme sports. In August of 2001, ESPN helped to create skate parks designed to give an authentic X Games experience to anyone using it. Designed by the industry’s top course designers, these public facilities offer skateboarding, bike stunt riding (BMX), and in-line skating ramps and props. These parks are currently located in five major metropolitan markets: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Philadelphia, and St. Louis.
The Future Since the X Games were first introduced in 1995, the growth of extreme sports has been incredible. Athletes across the United States, Asia, South America, and beyond have taken sports originally considered to be too
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dangerous and helped them to become a source of entertainment and an important part of the sport culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With the help of its athletes and its fans, the X Games will continue to grow and expand as the sports become more extreme and as its athletes remain determined to push their limits. Annette C. Nack
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Further Reading Asian X Games. (2005). Retrieved February 16, 2005, from http:// www.asianxgames.com EXPN. (2005). Retrieved February 16, 2005, from http://www.expn.com Kay, J. (2000). Extreme sports. In K. Christensen, A. Guttmann, & G. Pfister (Eds.), International encyclopedia of women and sports (pp. 377–381). New York: Macmillan. McMillen, R. (1998). Xtreme sports. Houston, TX: Gulf. Tomlinson, J. (1996). Extreme sports, The illustrated guide to maximum adrenaline thrills. New York: Carlton Books Unlimited. Youngblut, S. (1998). Way inside ESPN’s X Games. New York: ESPN Hyperion.
Yankee Stadium Yoga Youth Culture and Sport Youth Sports
Yankee Stadium
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ome ballpark!” That was George Herman (Babe) Ruth’s verdict on 18 April 1923, when he and his baseball team, the New York Yankees, moved into their new home in the Bronx borough of New York City. Since then, Yankee Stadium, also known as “the house that Ruth built,” has witnessed many landmark moments in the sporting and cultural history of the United States, becoming one of the most recognizable sport venues in the world.
Construction The Yankees required a new home after the New York Giants baseball team (now the San Francisco Giants) informed co-owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston that they must vacate the Polo Grounds, which the two teams shared, as soon as possible. The eviction notice arrived in 1921, shortly after the Yankees, capitalizing on Ruth’s immense popularity, outdrew the Giants by more than 100,000 fans. Construction began on the new structure on 5 May 1922, on land purchased from the heirs of William Waldorf Astor. White Construction Company completed construction of the design by Osborn Engineering 284 days later, in time for Opening Day 1923, at a cost of $2.5 million dollars. The structure, which included three tiers of seating, and a distinctive fifteen-foot deep copper façade that covered much of the stadium’s upper deck, originally seated 70,000 fans. After the opening ceremonies, which included John Phillip Sousa leading the U.S.
Y Army’s Seventh Regiment band, 74,200 fans watched Ruth hit a three-run homer to defeat his old team, the Boston Red Sox, 4–1.
Innovation and Renovation Many innovations baseball fans take for granted originated at Yankee Stadium: ■
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Yankee business manager Edward Barrow marked the distances from home plate on the outfield walls, which under the original design measured 281 feet in left, 295 feet in right, and 487 feet in center field. In 1946, Yankees president Larry McPhail installed lights so the Yankees began playing night baseball. The first electronic message board was installed in 1959. In 1976, after a complete renovation, the scoreboard featured baseball’s first telescreen, which displayed slow-motion replays.
The renovation carried out by new owner New York City during the 1974 and 1975 seasons totally remodeled the aging structure. The new stadium had a capacity of 57,145 fans, fewer than the original design, but eliminated seats with obstructed views from the old stadium. The new dimensions included 318 feet to left, 314 to right, and 408 to the center field wall. Estimated at $24 million, the actual cost to the city was nearly $100 million during a time when the city defaulted on loans and faced bankruptcy. Despite the city’s financial difficulties, its purchase of the stadium saved the Yankees for New York after the two parties signed a thirty-year lease in 1972.
Sports Milestones and Other Events No other venue has been the scene for as many World Series (thirty-nine) as Yankee Stadium, which has been the site of many other memorable moments in baseball history: ■
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Babe Ruth hit his sixtieth homerun during the 1927 season, the Major League Baseball record until Roger Maris broke it there with his sixty-first homer in 1961. The Yankee’s dominance of professional baseball that began with Ruth’s acquisition included a World Series victory in their first season in their new home, a feat repeated twenty-five times since. Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history there in 1956. Yankee Reggie Jackson added to the lore that joins Yankee Stadium and the World Series by hitting three consecutive pitches for homeruns in 1977.
Yankee Stadium has also served as the venue for numerous other sporting spectacles, including some legendary contests in American sports history: ■
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Thirty championship-boxing matches took place there, including the 1936 and 1938 fights between the German Max Schmeling and American Joe Lewis. Lewis gained revenge and salvaged American pride in the rematch when he knocked out the German in the first round. “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, defeated Ken Norton in 1976 in a championship boxing match. On 12 November 1928, one of the most storied college football games of all time took place in Yankee
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Stadium when the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame faced the Golden Knights of Army. At halftime of a scoreless tie, Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne made his legendary plea to “win one for the Gipper,” and Notre Dame responded by winning 12–6. On 28 December 1958, the National Football League’s New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts played to a 17–17 tie at the end of regulation in the NFL Championship Game, and in the first “sudden death” overtime game, Alan Ameche scored the winning touchdown, giving Baltimore the win. The game, still considered one of the greatest in NFL history, helped cement professional football’s popularity with the American public.
Yankee Stadium has also been the site for historic non-sporting events, with the largest crowd of 123,707 gathering for a Jehovah’s Witnesses convention. On 4 October 1965, in the first visit of a pontiff to North America, Pope Paul VI celebrated mass before 80,000 fans, and Pope John Paul II did the same in 1979. In commemoration, plaques of the two popes were added to the monuments that adorn the area behind the centerfield wall, joining such Yankee legends as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle. The area, which includes a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is open to fans before and after games.
Further Reading: Bale, J., & Moen, O. (Eds.). (1995). The stadium and the city. Staffordshire, UK: Keele University Press. Rader, B. (1983). American sports: From the age of folk games to the age of televised sports. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Rader, B. (1994). Baseball: A history of America’s game. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Robinson, R., & Jennison, C. (1998). Yankee Stadium: 75 years of drama, glamour, and glory. New York: Penguin Books. Sullivan, N. J. (2001). The diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the politics of New York. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Will, George. (1998). Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and other reflections on baseball. New York: Scribner. Yankee History. Retrieved August 9, 2004, from http://newyork. yankees.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/nyy/history/index.jsp Yankee Stadium. Retrieved August 9, 2004, from http://www.ballparks. com/baseball/american/yankee.htm Yankee Stadium Photo Tour. Retrieved August 9, 2004, from http:// www.nyctourist.com/yankees.htm
Yoga
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oga is an ancient Indian spiritual philosophy that focuses on achieving deeper awareness of the body and mind through disciplined, dedicated practice.Yogic practice usually involves asanas, which are postures or sequences of postures; pranayama, or breathing modification and exercises; and meditation and sometimes chanting. Yoga is not a religion. To practice it, one need not sacrifice one’s own faith or beliefs.
The Future
Types of Yoga
One of the most recognizable landmarks in professional sports, and the first structure to be titled “stadium,” Yankee Stadium joins Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park as the oldest and most venerated baseball stadiums; collectively, they served as models for retro-style baseball stadiums constructed in the 1990s.The future remains uncertain for the only stadium used as a regular backdrop for an American television situation comedy (Seinfeld), and the scene for so many memorable moments, but tentative plans call for a new Yankee Stadium to be constructed across the street from the old site.
Yoga is divided into six main types or branches:
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Raja yoga follows the strict form outlined by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, with emphasis on meditation, and is the preferred type of yoga for monastic practitioners, although monastic life is not required to practice it. Karma yoga, an ancient Vedic type of yoga, applies to a more spiritual practice of yoga and is focused on the yogic principle of ahimsa, that is, the avoidance of accumulating karma. Bhakti yoga is a devotional type of yoga. Within the Mahabharata, which is one of the most important
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Indian religious epics, is the critical text, the Bhagavad Gita, which contains the seed teachings of the Mahabharata, particularly the devotional bhakti yoga. Bhakti yoga was first presented in the Bhagavad Gita through a conversation between the epic’s hero Arjuna and the deity Krishna, who describes bhakti as full devotion of the practitioner to the deity. Thus, this type of yoga is more emotionally centered than are the older types of Vedic yogas. Jnana yoga, an older, more scholarly type of yoga than bhakti yoga, focuses on the yogic texts and scriptures, following a more direct path to realization. Realization, in this sense, is an extension of a person’s consciousness that remains constant in all life activities—a state akin to the deep, peaceful awareness achieved through meditation. Tantra yoga, perhaps the most misunderstood form of yoga, and the most esoteric, is associated with finding the sacred in the mundane, and is closely linked with rituals. Interestingly, most Tantra yogis are celibate, contrary to popular Western ideas about Tantric sexual rituals. A yogi is an advanced practitioner of yoga. Often such a practitioner is able to use yoga to achieve a deep meditative state and perform
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the more advanced postures easily, and may serve as a teacher of yoga. Hatha yoga, which first appeared in the ninth or tenth century CE, uses asanas, postures, or sequences of postures to purify the body and eventually the mind. Hatha yoga’s focus, therefore, is more on the physical body than are some of the more cerebral yogas.
STYLES OF HATHA YOGA Hatha is the most widely practiced form of yoga in the West. Within hatha yoga, several styles exist that include, but are not limited to, ashtanga, iyengar, bikram, kundalini, Kripalu, and Tibetan. These styles represent different schools of thought, or emphasize the ideas of specific masters, and are likely to be present in either full form or in varying degrees or combinations in a yoga class, as decided by the individual instructor. ■
Ashtanga yoga was popularized by K. Pattabhi Jois, from Mysore, India, and is based on six series of asanas that increase in difficulty as the yoga student acquires more skill. During a yoga session, each set of asanas flows into the next. Ashtanga yoga allows students to use the asanas best suited to their own ■ abilities and encourages students to increase difficulty only when they feel ready to do so. ■ Iyengar yoga, which was founded by B. K. S. Iyengar in Pune, India, focuses on proper muscular and skeletal alignment, and the asanas are held much longer than in other styles. ■ Bikram yoga, founded by Bikram Choudhury in the latter part of the twentieth century, is practiced in a very hot room, often exceeding 100° F (38° C). Bikram yoga is a Yoga teacher Mark Gerow demonstrates the bound triangle posture.
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If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it. ■ RONNIE LOTT
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favorite style of Hollywood stars because it induces a high degree of perspiration, promoting both physical fitness and cleansing the body of toxins. Kundalini yoga, founded by Yogi Bhajan in the late 1960s, focuses on a Tantric path, using the kundalini energy that is centered at the base of the spine. Kripalu yoga was developed in the 1970s by Amrit Desai, who founded the Kripalu Center in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Kripalu yoga uses three major stages: willful practice, willful surrender, and meditation in motion. Practice of the Kripalu style leads to a personal sense of harmony and trust in the body’s own wisdom. Tibetan yoga, practiced in Tibet but virtually unknown outside Tibet until the twentieth century, combines asanas, Tantric meditation, and pranayama. Five continuous asanas are repeated and increased until practitioners can perform the twenty-one repetitions of the full practice.
Ancient Practices Continue The history of yoga begins in the Vedic period, approximately 3,500 years ago. The origins of yogic practice were brought to India with invading Aryans’ Brahmanism. The Aryans, from west of India, had a sacred language called Sanskrit, from which the term “yoga” originates. Yoga means “to yoke.” As oxen are yoked to haul a heavy load, a yogi is yoked to self-discipline.Yoga was mentioned in the Vedas, which were memorized during the Vedic period because the Aryans did not yet have a written language. A good deal of evidence suggests that yoga was already present in the Vedic practice of the Aryans, so yoga may be 5,000 years old. During the Preclassical period at the end of the Brahmanical era or Vedic period, texts called the Upanishads became prevalent. Although the Upanishads do not specifically target yogic asana practice, they stress the importance of a sincere commitment to the practice of yoga and meditation. Patanjali composed the 195 Yoga Sutras during the Classical period, which began about 1800 years ago. The Yoga Sutras and the eight-limbed path they delineate are important because these are the
first texts to systematically present yogic practice. Differing styles, including Hatha, developed during the subsequent Postclassical period, which began about 1600 years ago and continues. The Yoga Upanishads, written during this time by the unknown authors, provide clear instruction in pranayama, chanting, and the use of inner sound. Around 1785, fifty years before yoga was introduced in the United States, English scholars began to study a variety of yogic texts. They, and later American scholars such as Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), drew from these texts to produce philosophical writings. Yoga was not publicly discussed or practiced until Swami Vivekananda (1863– 1902) arrived in the United States in 1893. In 1899, Vivekananda established the New York Vedanta Society, the first yoga school in the United States, which still exists. The Vedanta Society remains focused on four of the yoga branches: raja, karma, jnana, and bhakti. Thereafter, many yogis traveled to the United States until the 1920s, when the United States government placed a quota on Indian immigration. This led many people, such as Paul Brunton (1898–1991), to travel to India in search of yogic instruction. Later Brunton established a yoga center in the United States, which is named for him. In 1934, Brunton authored A Search in Secret India after meeting Ramana Maharishi (1879– 1950), one of yoga’s greatest teachers. Brunton’s foundation remains devoted to transmitting ideas between Eastern and Western philosophies. Richard Hittleman (1927–1991), another spiritual disciple of Maharishi, began teaching only the physical benefits of yoga to his students in New York City, later had a television program with the same approach, and founded the Yoga Universal Foundation, which educates its students on yogic philosophy.
Western Yoga in the Twenty-first Century Presently, yoga is experiencing a revival in the United States; it seems to be everywhere. From pop music “gurus” to classes offered at corporately owned health
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The forward bend is a classic yoga asana, practiced here by a class at the Berkshire Mountain Yoga studio.
HOLISTIC YOGIC HEALTH
clubs, public exposure and access to yoga has never been so prevalent. For most people interested in learning the basics of yoga, three approaches are available: ■
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From books or videotapes. Although books and videos are excellent teaching aids, they can hardly substitute for the benefit of having the experience and guidance of a trained yoga teacher. In a basic class at a fitness center. Although beginners will have the benefit of a yoga teacher, a growing trend among gyms is to hire yoga teachers who have undergone rapid training that does not allow them time to become familiar with the deep history and Sanskrit origin of yoga, nor with the deepened awareness of meditation. This rapid process does little to honor the rich tradition of yoga, and problems may arise if the teacher lacks enough experience to handle more nuanced aspects of yoga practice, such as a person’s emotional response to an asana. From a teacher trained in one of the formal traditions of yoga. Trying a couple of classes in different styles to find one that feels right is a good idea.The benefit of taking a class in a yoga center is twofold: having the dedicated but gentle guidance of the instructor and having a caring, supportive class environment.Yoga students should feel safe to share the experiences they have during a session with one another. This is especially important for beginners, who may experience emotional or physical discomfort and find it helpful to speak with others who may be experiencing similar feelings.
Yogis believe health is a balanced state of the anatomical and physiological bodily functioning united with mental and emotional stability. Yoga emphasizes mind-body unity, focusing on a person as a whole being. In yoga, asana practice includes both physical and psychological processes. Asanas lengthen and strengthen the muscles and joints, improve balance, and affect mental states. Another aspect of yoga that has impressive effects on health is pranayama, the art of breath control. Essentially, yogis believe that the body itself is a powerful remedy for health problems.
WESTERN HEALTH AND YOGA Medical research suggests that conditions such as asthma, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, cardiovascular diseases, epileptic seizure, obsessive compulsive disorder, and depression can be alleviated with a doctorsupervised regimen of yoga. For example, Journal of Asthma has reported that 74 percent of 255 asthma patients who participated in a 1986 medical study sustained significant improvement. The New England Journal of Medicine has further discussed the effects of yoga on carpal tunnel syndrome indicating that an eleven-asana-series that focuses on a full range of motion for most joints in the upper body is more effective than conventional treatments, including drugs and surgery, for sufferers of carpal tunnel. Dr. Dean Ornish is a well-known medical doctor who has incorporated yoga in his therapy to reverse various heart diseases. Regular asana practice and meditation improve circulation of the blood to the heart and increases oxygen levels, so Dr. Ornish uses yoga to help his patients reduce low-density lipoprotein levels (LDL cholesterol) and blood pressure. The pranayama exercises calm the central nervous system, which frequently becomes overtaxed in “Type A” individuals prone to cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Ornish’s
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therapy is widely commended and used by doctors around the world.
Yoga and Sport Yoga is now becoming a more important component of training for athletes. One pioneer, Kareem AbdulJabbar, began to practice yoga early in his basketball career, in high school. The aspects of limberness, concentration, and breath control drew him to yoga. By 1984, Abdul-Jabbar was studying with Bikram Choudhury. Abdul-Jabbar believes that yoga was instrumental to the longevity of his career, which spanned more than two decades. He avoided injuries that his fellow players endured and feels that he gained a deeper understanding of his body that allowed him to remain strong and healthy. Phil Jackson, a leading basketball coach formerly with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, has routinely employed contemplative practices and meditation to help his players succeed on the court. Jackson advocates that his players create a calm, serene place within themselves, even amidst the chaos of the game and the fans, to facilitate deeper concentration. He also feels that this contemplation helps him to feel more balanced, regardless of the outcome of the game. Many other professional athletes use yoga to help them train. They come from the full spectrum of sports, including Evander Holyfield, Pete Sampras, Venus and Serena Williams, and Dan Marino. Judging by the success of these athletes, yoga has a potential to tap into the hidden body resources and enhance athletic performance.
The Future of Yoga in the West Yoga has potential to aid healing in a variety of health conditions. As with any form of physical activity, however, practitioners should consult a physician before beginning a yoga regimen, particularly if they suffer from health problems. Western doctors who want to employ yoga already have a model for the fusion of yoga with Western medicine. In India, during the past forty years, yoga has been increasingly included in Western medi-
cine with great success, specifically for preventing illness. Illness prevention, which is more cost effective, has been important to achieving the health standards of the World Heath Organization. This is especially true for impoverished areas, where physicians often combine preventative medicine with the limited Western medicine available. Although preventative medicine has not been as widely accepted in the United States as it has even in Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia, various academic disciplines have held discourses about the efficacy of preventative medicine. Yoga, with asanas that stimulate immune and healthy organ function, is particularly well suited for such a practice and is becoming employed in Western nations outside the United States for preventing disease. U.S. doctors are now beginning to look at the numerous studies from these countries for ways to incorporate yoga into Western medical treatments. Despite yoga’s great antiquity, it is proving to be beneficial for diverse populations. Its holistic, harmonizing approach to whole body health and vitality often succeeds where other methods fail. Yoga’s versatility, wide scope, and focus on healthy living ensure its vitality and continued practice in the West. Yoga just may be one of the East’s greatest contributions to the West. Sarah E. Page and Tatiana V. Ryba
Further Reading Brunton, P. (1990). A search in secret India. Boston: Weiser Books. Desikachar, T. K. V. (1995). The heart of Yoga: Developing a personal practice. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International. Donato, M. (Ed.). Phil Jackson on meditation. Conscious Choice. Retrieved July 2, 2004, from http://www.consciouschoice.com/issues/ cc1704/ch _ philjackson1704.html Embree, A. T., Hay, S., Hay, S. N., & De Bary, W. T. (1988). Sources of Indian tradition (2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. Mehta, S., Mehta, M., & Mehta, S. (2003). Yoga the Iyengar way. New York: Knopf. Muskin, P. (Ed.). (2000). Complementary and alternative medicine and psychiatry. Review of Psychiatry Series. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Press. Satchidananda, Swami Sri. (1990). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Buckingham, VA: Integral Yoga Publications.
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It’s really impossible for athletes to grow up. On the one hand, you’re a child, still playing a game. But on the other hand, you’re a superhuman hero that everyone dreams of being. No wonder we have such a hard time understanding who we are. ■ BILLIE JEAN KING Trivieri, L. (2001). The American Holistic Medical Association guide to holistic health: Healing therapies for optimal wellness. New York: Wiley. van Buitenen, J. A. B. (Ed.). (1981). The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Yee, R., & Zolotow, N. (2002). Yoga: the poetry of the body. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.
Youth Culture and Sport
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he term youth has historically been used to identify people in the transitional period between early childhood and adulthood, including puberty and adolescence. The role of sport in the values, beliefs, and ways of life of young people has long been researched and publicly debated. Indeed, few issues provoke sharper disagreements than whether sports provide constructive experiences and contribute positively to young people’s development. Complicating these discussions is the changing nature of sport itself. Sport is now experienced by many youth within a web of both live and virtual media experiences, including television and computer games, rather than simply as participating in actual organized programs. For some youth, sports options have expanded to include alternative as well as traditional sports. Traditional youth sport involves adult leadership, structured competition, and sponsorship by public or nonprofit agencies. Alternative sports more resemble informal play and feature less adult involvement, less structure, deemphasized competition, and privatization. Organized youth sports programs developed in Europe and North America in the late 1800s attempted to prepare children, mostly boys, for industrialization and an increasingly competitive society. Boys were targeted to counteract what were seen as “feminizing” forces in their social environments. The few programs developed for girls were much less vigorous and competitive because of beliefs that girls were frail and needed to prepare for child rearing and domestic lives. Sports sponsored by
schools, clubs, private organizations, and governmental agencies grew rapidly during the twentieth century to the point where, in some societies, participation is now an assumed rite of childhood. Around the world, organized sports continue to be used to target social problems of youth, including crime, violence, drug use, racial and ethnic tension, the loss of cultural heritage, child labor, and AIDS awareness. Many youth sports programs around the world are also linked to, if not integral parts of, elite sport systems and the production of professional athletes.
Growing Popularity of Sports The tremendous variety of sports among cultures around the world, in addition to varying ways of collecting information about them, make comparisons of various countries difficult. Unfortunately, little systematic information exists about sport for youth in developing countries; most research focuses on Europe, North America, and Oceana. In these regions of the world, sports participation and interest among youth increased substantially through the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the United States, the overwhelming majority of American youth, both boys and girls, now spend time with sports via television, movies, video games, magazines, books, newspapers, the Internet, and radio. U.S. boys and girls differ significantly, however, in the sports they follow most closely, with boys preferring, in order, National Football League (NFL) football, National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball, and the Olympics and baseball (tied for third). Among girls, most popular are the Olympics, gymnastics, and figure skating, followed by NBA basketball. Boys are also twice as likely as girls to watch extreme sports, motor sports, National Hockey League (NHL) hockey, and boxing. Nearly equal percentages of girls and boys watch the most popular sports among boys, but boys are half as likely to watch the most popular sports among girls. This reflects a pattern in which women’s sports receive a small fraction of the media coverage of men’s sports. Figures for actual sports participation around the world suggest strongly that sports participation is the
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most popular leisure time activity of youth. In the United States, 74 percent of youth ages six to seventeen, or about 26 million youth, participate in one of eighteen sports offered by clubs, leagues, or schools. Of these, 11 million are girls and 15 million are boys. The team sports with the overall highest rate of participation for both boys and girls in the United States are basketball, followed closely by soccer. From there, participation figures among U.S youth show boys preferring, in order, baseball and tackle football, and girls choosing softball, volleyball, and cheerleading. On a worldwide basis, soccer is the number one participation sport among boys, and among both boys and girls in Canada. Among all team sports in the United States, soccer has grown the fastest in recent years and is the only sport where numbers of girls and boys participating is nearly equal.
Outcomes of Participation There is plenty of debate about the relative merits of organized youth sports programs, but little evidence supports the many platitudes about them. Adult-led, community-sponsored sports may create occasions for youth and families to join forces; establish achievement arenas for children; provide early experiences of leadership, discipline, and competition; and enhance health and fitness. Those same programs can also create tensions, conflict, and hostility among adults; create worklike pressures on youth to please their parents and coaches; foster inappropriate expectations about their performances; and actually do more harm than good to their health and well-being. Under the right conditions, youth who participate in school-sponsored sports may have higher academic performance, educational aspirations, and enhanced career options than do those who do not, but ample evidence indicates that sports programs may subvert the educational mission of their sponsoring schools, sidetrack students into focusing exclusively on sports, and bestow disproportionate and inappropriate privileges to young, usually male, athletes. In general, organized youth sports are successful and constructive to the degree that they place the in-
terests of youth above those of the adults who lead them and the organizations that sponsor them. They also benefit from adults who are educated about the developmental characteristics of youth, effective at instruction in the skills of their sports, and genuinely concerned about the welfare of their athletes.
Current Issues The composition, incomes, and other circumstances of the households and larger societies in which youth live are changing rapidly, and the role of sports in their lives is changing accordingly: 1. Among the most important demographic changes of the last twenty years have been the increase of single parent households, the need for both parents to work outside the home, and the “aging” of populations, particularly in North America and Europe. Youth now compose smaller percentages of their societies than in past years, and the cultures in which they live are increasingly focused on accommodating the needs and interests of adults. 2. Migration patterns from lesser- to more-developed countries have changed the composition and economic circumstances of youth, exacerbating differences between the rich and poor. 3. The expansion of global media, as parts of larger globalization patterns, has significantly influenced how youth spend their time and how they include sports in their lives. 4. There is an increasing shift in sponsorship and provision of youth sports away from the public and nonprofit sectors to the private and corporate sectors. These four factors working together, in addition to the sex-segregated history of youth sport, are essential in understanding the role of sport in contemporary youth culture.
GLOBAL BUT NOT UNIVERSAL Although we know that youth sports are a growing world phenomenon, a number of youth in the world have little or no access to them. Organized sports in-
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Youth Culture and Sport Youth Sports in Korea The smallest schoolboys began the wrestling—little fellows of six and seven stepping forth into the arena and wrestling away until one of them threw the other amid universal applause. Older boys then had their turn and when one or other of them distinguished himself by defeating several competitors in succession the applause became wild and he had to go up and receive a prize, which consisted generally of a leadpencil, a block of writing-paper, a couple of spools of cotton or some other useful object. Then came wrestlers of still larger size and finally fully grown men. Now the contests became more exciting than ever, the spectators shouting and yelling for all they were worth. After the wrestling came the swinging. A big swing had been erected. Whoever swung highest won the prize. The heights attained were marked by a string which had to be touched. Swinging would seem to be the favourite exercise for girls in Korea. I have seen very large swings of this kind in many Korean villages and they are used by girls only. All the girls on this
volvement for children requires time, resources, facilities, and at least some adult and social support. Accordingly, youth living in conditions where any of these things are lacking may have diminished chances of accessing the array of well-organized and high-quality sports programs available to more fortunate children. Research in Canada strongly suggests that household income levels have a dramatic impact on youth involvement in sports. Three-quarters of children from households earning $80,000 (Canadian) per year are active in sports, but less than 50 percent of children whose parents earn less than $40,000 were active in sports. Data on changes to families and levels of poverty in the United States show that minority children are more likely to live in these diminished conditions. Before they reach age six, more than a quarter of U.S. children will already have lived with only one parent, including two-thirds of AfricanAmerican children. More than 12 million children
occasion wore handsome national costumes. The women spectators secured places for themselves quite near the swings at the start of the competition but all drew close while it was in progress. The competition seemed to be restricted to girls of marriageable age. I expected that they would sit on the seat but they all stood on it. The first competitor was a really handsome girl and in due course we were to see what Engan could show in the matter of female charms. Some of the competitors swung up to an astonishing height, winning loud applause as well as the allotted prizes. To prevent their skirts from flying up into their faces they all made a kind of jerk with their knees at the right moment. A great number of the women looking on carried babies on their backs and these babies were duly fed in the course of the festival. Many of the intending competitors were still a-waiting their turn when the rain began to pelt down on us once more, dispersing the whole joyous crowd in their brightly-coloured clothes. Source: Bergman, S. (1938). In Korean wilds and villages (p. 60–62). London: John Gifford.
in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2002, with the number of African-American children living in extreme poverty increasing by 1 million in 2003. Seventy-five percent of the children of migrant farm workers in the United States live below the national poverty line. About 5 million children in the United States spend time outside of school with no adult supervision.
SEDENTARY LIVES AND OBESITY A study of youth sports across twenty different countries in the mid-1990s revealed a worldwide trend toward the formation of two groups of youth: one intensely involved in organized sports, the other quite inactive. In the United States, 20 percent of children ages eight to sixteen engage in two or fewer stints of activity per week, and 25 percent watch four or more hours of television per day. Evidence also suggests that school-based
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Youth with a skateboard depicted in an urban grunge area. Source: istockphoto/lovleah.
physical education programs are not providing an adequate amount of time for children to be active. One study found third-grade children were involved an average of twenty-five minutes per week in moderate to vigorous activity, despite recommendations that children participate in thirty to sixty minutes per day. Not surprisingly, inactivity is related to the increasing numbers of youth who are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists obesity as among the ten most significant health problems in the world, although obesity is a problem characteristic of a few wealthy countries. Indeed, the WHO lists the number one health problem in the world as child and maternal underweight. On the other hand, young teens in the United States are heavier than those of fourteen other industrialized countries. For African-American and Latino children, particularly girls, these figures are higher, including
27 percent of African American teen girls. These figures represent a fourfold increase since the early 1970s. The involvement of parents has been shown to be a key factor in their children’s activities. A Canadian study found that interest and participation among youth increases if their parents are physically active and if they volunteer to be part of their children’s programs. However, two-thirds of U.S. parents surveyed about the problem of inactivity among their children state that, although they realize participation in activity with their children is important, they have little time to do so. Forty percent of these surveyed parents also said they have little or no access to community playgrounds, parks, or other facilities in which to play with their children, with this barrier being more difficult for AfricanAmericans and Latinos. Illustrative of the worldwide pattern, however, evidence shows that parents of children with the time and wherewithal have increasingly chosen structured, rather than “free time,” activities for their children. In general, when left on their own, youth appear to be increasingly more interested in sedentary pursuits than active ones.
GENDER , RACE, AND CLASS CONTINUE TO DIVIDE The high participation rate for boys in sports reflects a worldwide pattern in which boys remain more active in sports than girls. In the United States, even though participation numbers for youth reflect considerable increases among girls during the past thirty years, some studies show that boys spend twice as much time involved in sports as girls do. The increasing numbers of girls participating also needs to be qualified by race and class differences. Nearly 90 percent of U.S. girl participants are those who live in suburban areas, compared with only 15 percent of urban girls. AfricanAmerican girls have one-third as many participation opportunities as their white counterparts do. The differences between boys and girls reflect the sex-segregated and mostly unequal sports programs of the past. Girls also continue to receive mixed messages from the culture at large about their places in the sport
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Youths playing a variety of games and sports.
world. Although they are often encouraged and welcomed into sports at early ages, girls continue to see an overwhelming emphasis on male sports in the media and learn that participation in traditionally masculine sports may entail risks to their gender and sexual identities. Predictably, even though both boys and girls have historically shown decreases in participation in sports during early adolescence, these figures are consistently higher for girls than for boys. In general, the most popular sports in the world have been built on male values and interests, and girls have simply been asked to fit into those programs.
An Alternative Future? Traditional team sports participation appears to be on the decline in the United States, with just over half of all youth participating in these activities. On the other hand, the popularity of extreme or alternative sports has increased dramatically. Indeed, the fastest growing sport in the United States is in-line skating, with 29 million participants, nearly double the number of soccer participants. Other alternative sports, including skateboarding, mountain biking, snowboarding, bungee
jumping, rock or artificial wall climbing, paintball, and whitewater kayaking or canoeing, have all increased in popularity. The implications of these changes are noteworthy: 1. Far fewer alternative sports are sponsored by public institutions, such as schools, recreation departments, and nonprofit leagues; instead, alternative sports tend to be offered by commercial, for-profit firms or corporations. Consequently, participation in alternative sports depends more heavily than traditional sports on the resources of youth and their families. As with traditional sports, such costs present considerable obstacles for youth from poor families, given the often expensive and specialized equipment, facilities, and instruction some alternative sports require. 2. The commercial status of providers of these activities means that, as youth participate, they are now also cultivated as potential consumers of products, both related and unrelated to participation in sports. 3. Although there are competitions in alternative sports such as skateboarding, bicycle motocross (BMX), and
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mountain biking, unlike traditional sports, most participants focus on their own enjoyment rather than on a team or school’s tradition or won/lost record. 4. Although specialized training may be involved in learning the skills of these sports, the traditional roles of adult figures, including coaches and parents, is significantly altered or absent altogether in alternative sports. The diminished adult involvement may foster creativity and increased enjoyment, but it may also mean activities that are less safe and mostly guided by values fostered in media. 5. To the degree that alternative sports are built on the values and interests of males, and male participants in them are the primary focus of alternative sport media coverage, they will attract more boys than girls. Stephan Walk
Further Reading Coakley, J. J. (2004). Sports in society: Issues and controversies (8th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. DeKnop, P. B., Engstrom, L.-M., Skirstad, L., & Weiss, M. R. (Eds.). (1996). Worldwide trends in youth sports. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Henkel, J. (2002, May–June). Finding activities for kids after school. FDA Consumer, 36(3), 33. Hofferth, S. L., & Sandberg. J. F. (2001). Changes in American children’s use of time, 1981–1997. In T. Owens and S. Hofferth (Eds.), Children at the millennium: Where have we come from, where are we going? Advances in Life Course Research Series (pp. 193–229). New York: Elsevier Science. Lissau, I., Overpeck, M. D., Ruan, J. W., Due, P., Holstein, B. E., & Hediger, M. L. (2004). Body mass index and overweight in adolescents in 13 European countries, Israel, and the United States. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 158(1):27–33. National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2000). 1999–2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Platt, T. (2003). The state of welfare: United States 2003. Monthly Review, 55(5),13–27. Proctor, B. D., & Dalaker, J. (2003). U.S. Census Bureau, Current population reports, P60-P222, Poverty in the United States 2002. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Romanowski, M.H. (2003). Meeting the unique needs of the children of migrant farm workers. Clearing House, 77(1),27–33. Ruggles, S., & Brower, S. (2000). Measurement of household and family composition in the United States, 1850–2000. Population and Development Review, 29(1),73–101. Schmidt, C.W. (2003). Environews: Focus: Obesity: A weighty issue for children. Environmental Health Perspectives, 111(13), A700–A707.
Statistics Canada, Health Statistics Division. (2003). Health reports, Special Issue, Supplement to Volume 14, 2003. Statistics Canada, Health Statistics Division. Taylor Research and Consulting Group. (2001). Generation next is generation now: Kids, sports, media & technology. Taylor Research and Consulting Group. Wilson, W. (Ed.) (1999). The children and sports media study. Los Angeles, CA: Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. World Health Organization. (2002). The World Health Report 2002. Reducing risks, promoting healthy life. World Health Organization.
Youth Sports
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hildren around the world play a wide range of physical activities and informal games native to their cultures. Youth sports, or formally organized games and physical challenges designed for children and adolescents, are relatively new activities in human history, because they depend on human and material resources and the existence of particular ideas about childhood and adolescence. Youth sports require resources in the form of adults who have the time, money, and skills needed to organize and manage programs. They also require a critical mass of children with discretionary time and access to facilities and spaces designed for their organized games or physical challenges. In nations and regions where family income is very low, there are few, if any, youth sports. Adults in these settings lack resources to initiate and manage formally organized games and challenges, children lack free time to play in scheduled activities, and there are no playing fields and facilities to accommodate youth sports. In a material sense, youth sports are a luxury that many people in the world cannot afford. Youth sports also require particular cultural ideas. People organize youth sports when they define childhood and adolescence as identifiable periods of the life course during which social, psychological, and cognitive development occurs in connection with personal experiences. This definition provides an incentive for organizing games and challenges designed specifically for children. Family and community resources are dedicated
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French girls in a playground race in 1913.
to youth sports only when there are widespread beliefs that childhood and adolescence are times during which fun and developmental experiences are important.
The Emergence of Youth Sports Playing youth sports is a taken-for-granted experience among many young people in wealthy, postindustrial societies. This is especially true when families have enough money to pay for equipment, program fees, and transportation to practices, games, and events. However, youth sports are a creation of the twentieth century, and they have become widely popular only since the 1950s. It was not until the early 1900s that many people in England and North America began to realize that the behavior and character of children were strongly influenced by their social environment and everyday experiences. This belief that the environment influenced a person’s overall development was encouraging to people interested in progress and reform. It caused them to think about how they might control the experiences of children so that they would grow up to be responsible and productive adults in societies where citizenship and work were highly valued. They knew that democracy depended on responsibility, and a growing capitalist economy depended on productivity. Progressive reformers in the United States during the early twentieth century were influenced by educators in England who saw sports as ideal activities for molding the characters of young boys. In fact the very first youth sports were developed in exclusive private schools in
England. Playing sports, thought the headmasters at these schools, would help the sons of wealthy and powerful people in British society become future leaders in business, government, and the military. Reform-oriented adults in the United States took the notion that sports built character and used it as a basis for organizing youth sports, especially team sports for boys, in schools, on playgrounds, and in church groups. The hope was that team sports would teach boys from working-class and immigrant families values about work, cooperation, productivity, and obedience to authority in the pursuit of competitive success. It was also hoped that sports would help boys from middle- and upper-class families become strong, assertive, competitive men who would eventually become the captains of industry, government, and the military. Teaching privileged boys to be tough, competitive men was important to many reformers because they worried that these boys were learning too many feminine values because they were raised exclusively by their mothers. Fathers worked long hours and were seldom at home, so there was a fear that boys had few chances to learn about manhood. Sports were seen as activities that would turn boys into men. At the same time that youth sports were organized for boys, other activities were organized to help girls learn about motherhood and homemaking. Most people during the early twentieth century, even progressive reformers, believed that it was more important for girls to learn domestic skills than sport skills. School curriculum and playground activities were organized to
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In the late twentieth century basketball became one of the most popular sports around the world. Here, young men in Shanghai, China, in 2003 play in a basketball tournament.
reflect this belief. According to ideas held by most people through the 1950s, girls were naturally suited to be wives and mothers, not athletes or leaders in society. Many physicians promoted the idea that playing vigorous physical activities were dangerous to the overall health and wellbeing of girls and women. Therefore, girls only needed to know about sports so they could raise their sons properly. Until the 1970s there were few youth sports for girls apart from those that occurred in connection with the lifestyles of relatively wealthy families. When girls did participate, their sports were designed to enhance physical poise, coordination, and general health. Gendermixed participation in youth sports was rare; if girls played sports and games with boys, it was done informally by girls who were identified as “tomboys.” Although there were exceptions to these patterns, organized youth sports through most of the twentieth century were developed around prevailing cultural ideas about how boys and girls should grow up and what they were supposed to learn in the process of becoming productive adults.
Organized Youth Sports Since the 1950s As the first wave of the Baby Boom generation (that is, children born between 1946 and 1964) moved through childhood during the 1950s and 1960s, youth sports became increasingly popular in Europe and North American. Growth was especially dramatic in the United States, where youth sports were funded by a combination of
public, private, and commercial sponsors. Local park and recreation departments sponsored programs.The YMCA, YWCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, and many religious organizations and churches added programs of their own. Entrepreneurs developed commercial clubs for children whose parents could afford to pay for private lessons and exclusive sport participation opportunities. Parents also entered the scene as active promoters of youth sports. They were eager to have the characters of their sons built through organized, competitive sports. Fathers became coaches, managers, and league administrators. Mothers did laundry and became chauffeurs and short-order cooks so their sons were always ready and properly suited up for practices and games. Most organized youth sports through the mid-1970s were for boys eight to fourteen years old. The programs usually emphasized a combination of fun and competition as preparation for future occupational success. Girls’ interests in sports were largely ignored, and few girls had opportunities to play on organized youth teams or varsity sports in schools. It was not until the mid-1970s that the women’s movement, the health and fitness movement, and government legislation (Title IX in the United States) prohibiting sex discrimination in public school programs all came together to stimulate the development of sport
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Youth Sports Ritual Fighting among Dogon Boys in West Africa During the four months following the harvests, the boys of the two Ogols [villages] meet on prepared ground, as soon as the night falls and when the moon lights the countryside sufficiently. They place themselves in a circle unu gonawe; literally children in a circle; those of Ogolda occupy the half circle on the side of their village; those of Ogoldognou face them. A boy steps out from one of the sides, places himself in the middle of the circle and makes a defiant gesture towards the adversary side: he raises to his side his bent right leg, extends his right arm while holding his forearm vertically. A boy of the other side comes and places himself before him and the two seize each other by the waist, passing their right arm under the left arm of the other. The hands are crossed behind the back, without gripping each other. They try to unbalance each other by side to side twisting of the trunk, or by taking hold of the adversary’s thigh. Each one tries equally to turn the other upside down while pressing the upper part of their body against the chest of the adversary and by seizing him by the loins. In order to avoid being taken by these different methods, the two fighters, at the beginning, stoop toward one another, with their feet very far apart. He who falls under the other is beaten and hooted at by the opposing side. The vanquished is seized by one of his comrades and carried to the place where he was before the challenge took place. Two other boys take their turn in the contest.
programs for girls. These programs grew rapidly during the 1970s and early 1980s, and now most girls in North America have opportunities to participate in youth sports. However, participation rates among girls remain lower than rates among boys because playing sports continues to be connected more strongly with masculinity than femininity. Furthermore, some girls continue to be discouraged by beliefs that “girls are not
When a child refuses to come and prepare the space on which one fights, his comrades insult him and forbid him to enter the circle on the first day of the competitions, but on that day only: u y minne buburu üw bunno beg wr ngalu. One said to you yesterday: “come and beat the earth into dust!” You responded: “I will not come.” When a boy refuses to take part in the fights, he is mocked and accused of cowardice or weakness: u y a[caron jjori üw amuga omuode wrngalu.
One said to you yesterday: “Come to the fight.” You, weak child, you have answered: “I am not coming!” One can, without ridicule, refuse to fight with a comrade wearing a bracelet of iron señe. In effect, while holding upon the loins with the iron, one causes such a pain to the adversary that he immediately falls on his back. These fights are organized generally between quarters or between villages. For the region of Sanga, Ogolda fights against Ogoldognou, Sangui against Enguel, Bongo against Gogoli: the two Diaméni like the Dini, both fight against Tabda; Doziou and Tabda unite against Guinna, etc. If a quarter finds itself alone, it divides into two sides. Formerly, before the arrival of the French, all of the boys of the region of Upper Sanga would gather together in order to witness the fights between the two Ogols. Nowadays the nocturnal games are forbidden on the grounds that they are too noisy. Source: Griaule, M. (1938). Dogon games (p. 119–121). Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie.
as good as boys” in sports and that being successful as an athlete in certain sports will cause others to question their femininity. Even though traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity still influence participation in youth sports, playing sports is now an accepted part of the process of growing up in most postindustrial nations. Parents encourage sons and daughters to play youth sports. Some
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For truly it is to be noted, that children’s plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions. ■ MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE
parents wonder if their children should play in programs where winning is emphasized more than overall child development, but many parents seek out the win-oriented programs, hoping their children will become the winners.
Current Trends in Youth Sports In addition to increased popularity, recent trends in youth sports include the following: 1. Youth sports have become increasingly privatized in that they are more often sponsored by private and commercial organizations and less often sponsored by public, tax-supported organizations. 2. Youth sports increasingly emphasize a “performance ethic” in that participants, even in recreational programs, are encouraged to evaluate their experiences in terms of developing technical skills and progressing to higher levels of achievement. 3. There is an increase in elite sport training facilities dedicated to producing highly skilled, specialized athletes who progress through increasingly difficult levels of competition. 4. Parents have become more involved in and concerned about the participation and success of their children in youth sports because they see sports as socially and developmentally important activities for young people. 5. Participation in alternative or “action” sports has increased because some young people prefer unstructured, participant-controlled physical challenges such as those encountered in BMX biking, skateboarding, in-line skating, and snowboarding, among others. These five trends have an impact on who participates in organized youth sports, the conditions of their participation, the types of experiences they have, and the meanings that they give to those experiences.
The Effects of Participation in Youth Sport Youth sports provide a dynamic context in which young people can experience many positive outcomes. These outcomes include becoming more physically fit, learn-
ing about one’s body, and developing physical competence, self-esteem, social skills, and the ability to make moral decisions (Ewing et al. 2002). However, studies of the effects of participating in youth sports have produced mixed findings because the experiences of young people vary across programs, teams, and situations. Furthermore, the meanings given to sport experiences and the ways that they are integrated into the lives of young people vary from one participant to the next. A review of the research indicates that positive developmental outcomes are most likely when youth sports provide young people with opportunities to expand their identities, experiences, and relationships under the guidance of adults concerned with and knowledgeable about developmental issues. Negative outcomes are most likely when participation constrains identity development, limits the diversity of a young person’s experiences and relationships, and occurs under the guidance of adults who focus on competitive success without explicit strategies for fostering general development (Coakley 2004). Research also indicates that young people are most likely to have fun in youth sports when programs are organized to maximize action, personal involvement in the action, and the formation and reaffirmation of friendships among participants (Coakley 2004). However, definitions of fun change as children develop, as their goals related to sports change, and as they see their connections with the rest of the world in new ways. Although most young people define fun in terms of opportunities to develop and display physical competence across a range of activities and challenges, competitive success becomes a requirement for fun among many young people who participate in programs that have a strong emphasis on winning and moving up to higher levels of competition. A sense of fun is generally related to perceived competence, but ideas about competence vary with young people’s ideas about what is important in their lives. When success in a single sport becomes a primary focus, satisfaction and self-esteem among young people are likely to swing back and forth from one extreme to another depending on recent and anticipated competitive outcomes.
YOUTH SPORTS
Problems in Youth Sports Youth sports are not without problems. Some programs have become so costly that many young people are excluded. At the same time, many communities have cut publicly funded programs due to budget crises. Instead of sponsoring programs as they have done in the past, many publicly funded park and recreation programs now issue permits to club-based youth sport organizations that use fields and facilities.The cost of club-based programs often discourages participation by children from low-income families, which intensifies existing forms of socioeconomic segregation in many communities. Furthermore, the widespread notion that sports exemplify ideals of bodily perfection has limited the provision of youth sports for young people with disabilities. Some youth sports programs are now organized so that young people are expected or required to participate year-round. In the case of children younger than fourteen years old, this specialization often restricts overall physical and social development, undermines motivation, and creates burnout. Burnout occurs primarily during early adolescence when young people feel that they have lost personal control over the conditions of their sport participation. This causes stress, and when stress becomes excessive, burnout becomes common. The seriousness and demands of youth sports have also created problems for parents and problem parents. Many parents today feel it is their moral obligation to find the best programs for their children and ensure that their children experience success in those programs. These parents often believe that if they do things correctly their children will reap rewards such as college scholarships and even professional contracts and prize money in their sports. Under these conditions their children’s accomplishments become evidence for their own moral worth as parents. These expectations put significant pressure on children to perform well and to continue playing a sport even when they would like to expand their interests and participate in other activities. It also creates pressure for coaches who may not always do what parents expect of them or think is appropriate.
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As the stakes associated with youth sports have increased, so have the numbers of problem parents. At the same time, media accounts have publicized the actions of obnoxious and sometimes violent parents to the point that such characters have become the stuff of urban legends. Problem parents not only create challenges for coaches and program administrators, they also create challenges for young athletes who seek control of their sport experiences. These and other problems have created challenges related to youth sports. Although the goal of many people is to ensure that all children have opportunities to play sports and develop and display physical skills in contexts that are safe and fun, there are others who have a goal of producing elite sport performers. Achieving both of these goals simultaneously is difficult when resources are limited. In the meantime increasing rates of childhood obesity in many postindustrial societies have raised questions about how to organize youth sports in ways that maximize health through the life course. Jay Coakley
Further Reading Coakley, J. (2004). Sports in society: Issues and controversies. New York: McGraw-Hill. De Knop, P., et al. (Eds.). (1994). Youth-friendly sport clubs: Developing an effective youth sport policy. Brussels, Belgium: VUB Press. De Knop, P., et al. (Eds.). (1996). Worldwide trends in youth sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.. Ewing, M., et al. (2002).The role of sports in youth development. In Gatz, M., Messner, M. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (Eds.), Paradoxes of youth and sport (pp. 31–48). Albany: State University of New York Press,. Kremer, J., Trew, K., & Ogle, S. (Eds.). (1997). Young people’s involvement in sport. London and New York: Routledge.
Index Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
A AAASP (Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology), 3:999, 3:1225 Aaron, Hank, 1:149 Aarons, Ruth, 4:1590 AAU. See Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) ABA (American Basketball Association), 3:1245, 4:1650 ABC. See Walt Disney/ABC/Capital Cities Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 1:173, 1:175, 3:1255, 4:1738 Abera, Gezsaahegne, 3:967 Aboriginal Sport Circle, 3:1063–1064 Abraham, Fritz, 3:944–945 Abramovich, Roman, 3:1134 Abstracts, periodical, 3:952 Academic sport and physical education periodicals, 3:949–951, 3:959, 3:1175–1176, 3:1223 Academies and camps, sport, 1:3–4, 1:306, 1:308, 2:817–820. See also Youth sports Acordeon, Mestre, 1:44 Acro skiing, 4:1410 Actualization. See Self-determination, athlete’s Adapted physical education, 1:5–9. See also Disability sport Addie, Pauline May Betz, 4:1606 Adidas, 3:974, 3:975, 4:1491 Adkison, Andrew, 4:1685 Adler, Friedrich, 3:1104
Adolescents. See Youth sports ADR (Alternative dispute resolution), 3:919 “Adrenalin sports,” 2:539 Adu, Freddie, 2:510 Adults, older. See Senior sport Adventure education, 1:9–11 Adventure racing, 2:541 Advertising. See Marketing Aeneid, 3:935 Aerial skiing, 4:1410 Aerobics, 1:12–15, 2:607–608, 4:1511. See also Endurance; Fitness Aesthetics, 1:15–20. See also Art; Beauty Affective aspects, spectator sports consumptions, 4:1471–1473 African Games, 1:20–25, 3:1337 African-American scholar-athletes, 2:812, 3:1323–1328 Agents, 1:25–29, 3:922. See also Free agency Aggassi, Andre, 4:1606, 4:1608, 4:1609 Agostini, Giacomo, 2:854 Ahlqvist, Carl, 2:609 AIDS and HIV, 1:30–35, 4:1667. See also Homophobia Aikido, 1:35–38 Aikman, Troy, 4:1670 Ailey, Alvin, 1:440 Aján, Tamán, 4:1688 AJS motorcycles, 3:1021 Alaska, 2:788, 2:790 Alaska International Senior Games, 3:1342 Albertville Olympics (1992), 3:1122, 3:1349
1751
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INDEX
Albright, Frankee, 2:598 Alcindor, Lew. See Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem Alcott, Louisa May, 4:1489 Alexander, Grover Cleveland, 1:149 Alexander, Pete, 1:149 Alexeev, Vasily, 4:1687, 4:1689 Algeria, 3:1237, 4:1446–1447 Ali, Muhammad, 1:243, 3:1236, 3:1255 in art, 1:96 as athlete celebrity, 1:109 health issues, 1:246 Norton match, 4:1733 title loss, 1:247 All Blacks, 3:1072–1073, 3:1077, 3:1270, 4:1487, 4:1491 All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, 1:38–40. See also Wimbledon All Indian Rodeo Cowboys Association, 3:1062 All Whites, 3:1077 Allen, Marcus, 3:1192 Allen, Mark, 1:192 Allen, Mel, 3:1245 Allin, Ching, 3:1198 Allison, Jim, 2:793 Allison, Stacy, 3:1030 Alpine Club, 3:1040, 3:1046 Alpine skiing. See Skiing, Alpine Alpine style mountaineering, 3:1045–1046 Alps, 3:1039–1041, 4:1582 Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), 3:919, 3:923 Alternative sports, 1:40–44, 4:1739, 4:1743– 1744, 4:1748. See also specific sports Alvarez, Lili, 4:1465 Alzado, Lyle, 4:1552 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Boston Marathon, 3:968 Mr. America contest, 3:1211 powerlifting supported by, 3:1211–1212 taekwando accepted into, 4:1592 track and field, 2:873–874, 4:1624, 4:1630, 4:1632 women’s basketball championship, first, 1:174 wrestling, 4:1719 Amateur Rowing Association, 4:1655 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Amateur Softball Association (ASA), 4:1449–1451, 4:1454 Amateur sport clubs, 1:315–318 Amateur vs. professional debate, 1:44–49, 3:1218–1221 college athletics, 1:45–49, 1:339, 1:348, 2:477– 479 Olympics, 3:1107, 3:1113, 3:1120, 3:1219– 1221, 4:1604, 4:1705 tennis, 4:1604, 4:1606–1607, 4:1693 track and field, 4:1623 United Kingdom, amateurism in, 3:1220, 4:1654– 1655, 4:1658 Ameche, Alan, 4:1734 Amenorrhea, 1:33, 1:197 American Alpine Club, 3:1046 American Basketball Association (ABA), 3:1245, 4:1650 American Football League (AFL), 3:921 American League (AL), 1:145, 1:150 American Power Boat Association (APBA), 3:1018, 3:1019 American sports exceptionalism, 1:49–52 American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO), 1:52–53 Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), 1:7, 1:34, 2:465 America’s Cup, 1:54–56, 3:1077, 3:1315, 3:1321 Amherst College, 3:1324 Amish, inline skates used by, 4:1392 Ammann, Simon, 3:1123 Amphetamines, 3:1165, 4:1531 Amundsen, Roald, 4:1415 Anabolic steroids. See Steroids Anaheim Mighty Ducks, 3:995, 3:1134 Anders, Beth, 2:738 Anderson, Benedict, 4:1446 Anderson, Paul, 3:1211, 4:1687 Ando, Miki, 4:1387 Andretti, Mario, 2:795 Andretti, Michael, 2:795 Androstenedione, 3:1166 Anemia, 1:57–59 Angel, Jose, 2:544 Angelopoulos-Daskalki, Gianna, 3:1108 Angerer, Willy, 2:500 Angling. See Fishing Anheuser Busch (company), 2:523
INDEX
Animal rights, 1:60–68. See also Bullfighting; Foxhunting; Horse racing feminism and, 1:64–65 historical aspects, 1:62 movement, 1:63–67 origins, 1:60–61 philosophies, 1:61, 1:63 rodeo, 3:1277 Anorexia nervosa, 2:458. See also Disordered eating Anson, Adrian “Cap,” 1:147, 1:148 Antarctic exploration, 4:1415 Anthropology Days, 1:68–70, 1:81 Anti-competition movement, 1:377–378 Anti-jock movement, 1:70–72 Antwerp Olympics (1920), 1:187, 1:189, 3:1118 Anxiety, role in sports performance of, 3:1001–1002 Any Given Sunday, 3:1050 AOL Time-Warner, 3:992, 3:994 Apartheid. See South Africa APBA (American Power Boat Association), 3:1018– 1019 Apnea free diving, 4:1646 Apparatus, gymnastics. See Gymnastics, apparatus Apparel. See Athletic equipment and apparel; Sporting goods industry Applebee, Constance M. K., 2:735, 3:914–915 Aqua-Lung, 4:1645, 4:1646 Aquatic exercise, 2:602 Arab Games, 1:72–74 Arad, Yael, 2:847, 2:849 Arai, Junko, 2:889–890 Arcari, Bruno, 2:854 Archery, 1:74–84, 3:935. See also Kyudo in art, 1:77, 1:93–1:95 China, 1:309 English longbow and, 1:77–78 in Europe, 1:78–79 forms of, 1:82–83 historical aspects, 1:74–76 international aspects, 1:76–77 Toxophilites and, 1:79–80 Argentina, 1:84–89, 3:1143, 3:1146, 4:1429, 4:1709 Arizona Diamondbacks, 4:1711 Arizona State University scholar-athlete case study, 3:1326–1327 Arlberg-Kandahar ski race, 4:1400
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Arledge, Roone, 2:629, 3:1191 Arlin, Harold, 3:1243 Arlington, Lizzie, 1:153 Arm wrestling, 1:90–92 Armstrong, Debbie, 4:1403 Armstrong, Lance, 1:426, 2:603, 4:1616 as athlete hero, 1:115 endorsements and, 1:354, 2:507, 2:508 Arousal, role in sports performance of, 3:1001–1002 Arrayoz, Bautista de, 3:1157 “Arrows.” See Darts Art, 1:92–97. See also Beauty abstract, 1:95–96 aesthetics and, 1:15–20 ancient sports images, 1:92–93 human body and, 1:96 mechanized motion and, 1:96–97 modern sports images, 1:93–95 realism, 1:95–96 As You Like It, 3:936 ASA (Amateur Softball Association), 4:1449–1452, 4:1454 Ascot, 1:97–99 Ashe, Arthur, 1:31, 1:32, 4:1605, 4:1608 Ashe, Thomas, 1:278 Ashes, the, 1:99–101 Ashford, Evelyn, 3:1144 Ashtanga yoga, 4:1735 Asian Conference on Women and Sports, 2:867 Asian Games, 1:101–106, 4:1376. See also South East Asian Games China, 1:104–105, 1:312 future aspects, 1:106 history, 1:101–102, 3:1299, 3:1303–1304 India, 1:102, 1:104 Indonesia, 1:102–103 Iran, 1:103–104 Japan, 1:102, 1:105 locations, 1:104 Philippines, 1:102 sepak takraw, 3:1347 South Korea, 1:104, 1:106 Thailand, 1:103–106 Asian South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology (ASPASP), 3:1225 Askin, Bob, 3:1274 ASPASP (Asian South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology), 3:1225
A
1754
B
INDEX
Association football. See Soccer Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology (AAASP), 3:999, 3:1225 Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), 4:1604, 4:1606, 4:1607 Asthma, 2:536 Astrodome, 1:106–108 Astroturf, 2:520 Atarashii Naginata, 2:869, 2:871–872, 3:1054– 1056 Athens Olympics 1896 (See Olympics, Summer) 2004 (See Olympics, 2004) Athlete rights, 3:920 Athletes as celebrities, 1:108–113, 1:371, 2:506– 511 Athletes as heroes, 1:114–116 Athletic equipment and apparel, 3:955. See also Sponsorship; Sporting goods industry billiards, 1:193–194 biomechanics and, 1:199 fashion and, 2:568–572, 4:1567 mountain bikes, 3:1031–1032 powerlifting equipment, 3:1211, 3:1213, 3:1214 running, 3:970 surfboards, 4:1567 table tennis equipment, 4:1588 tennis, 4:1598–1601, 4:1604 wakeboard, 4:1684 Athletic talent migration, 1:116–120, 4:1491. See also Globalization Athletic training, 1:120–123. See also Fitness; Strength training biotechnology and, 1:201–202 burnout and, 1:268–270 Atienza, Maribel, 1:266 Atlanta Braves, 3:995, 4:1474, 4:1667 Atlanta Hawks, 3:995 Atlanta Olympics (1996), 4:1532–1533 Atlanta Thrashers, 3:995 Atlas, Charles, 1:220, 2:606, 3:988 ATP. See Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, 3:1154 AT&T radio stations, 3:1244 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
ATV racing, 2:541 Auction houses, memorabilia sold by, 3:997 Auerbach, Red, 1:173 Auffermann, Uli, 2:501 Augusta National Golf Club, 3:988–990 Austin, Tex, 3:1274, 3:1277 Australia, 1:123–128, 1:231, 1:357, 4:1446. See also Commonwealth Games beach volleyball, 4:1683 Bondi Beach, 1:228–231 lifeguarding, 3:934, 4:1564–1565 newspaper sports pages, 3:1079, 3:1080 parachuting in, 3:1150 radio broadcasts, 3:1189–1190, 3:1192 rodeos, 3:1273, 3:1278 rugby, 1:125, 3:1299–1301 surfing, 4:1568–1569 Sydney and Melbourne Olympics, 1:125, 3:1115, 4:1483, 4:1501 televised sports in, 3:993, 3:995 tennis, 4:1693 Australian Open Tennis Championship, 4:1605– 1607 Australian Rugby League (ARL), 3:995 Australian rules football, 1:128–130, 1:317 Austria, 1:131–133, 3:1120–1121, 4:1706 Auto racing, 1:133–137, 3:1338. See also Indianapolis 500; Karting broadcasting of, 3:1191 Le Mans, 1:133, 3:924–925 New Zealand, 3:1073–1074 Nextel (Winston Cup), 1:136, 3:1083–1085 sponsorship of, 3:978 Autry, Gene, 3:1275 Avellán, Isabel, 1:88 AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization), 1:52–53 Aztecs, 3:1003–1005
B Backstroke, swimming, 4:1575 Bad News Bears, The, 3:1049 Baden-Powell, Worrington, 1:289 Badminton, 1:138–142, 2:863, 4:1376 Bahktin, Mikhail, 3:1056 Baillet-Latour, Henri de, 1:187–189, 3:1117, 4:1704–1705 Bait fishing, 2:595
INDEX
Baker, Cindy, 1:91 Baker, Josephine, 1:439 Baker, Moe, 1:90 Bakoyannis, Dora, 3:1108 Balance beam, 2:717 Balas, Iolanda, 3:1279 Balck, Victor, 3:1117 BALCO (Bay Area Laboratories Co-operative), 3:1167, 4:1665 Baldini, Stefano, 3:1110 Baldwin, Tom, 3:1148 Baliko, Chris, 1:91 Ballesteros, Seve, 1:258, 3:989 Ballet, 1:436–438 Ballooning, 1:142–144 Ballparks. See Baseball stadium life; Stadiums Ballroom dancing, 2:443 Balmat, Jacques, 3:1040 Baltimore Colts, 4:1479, 4:1564, 4:1734 Baltimore Orioles, 3:1168 Bankier, William “Apollo,” 2:880, 2:884 Barbells, 3:1210, 3:1211, 3:1213, 4:1686, 4:1690 Barcelona Olympics (1992), 3:1115 Barclay, Robert, 3:1232–1234 Barna, Victor, 4:1588–1589 Barrilleaux, Doris, 1:222 Barrow, Edward, 4:1733 Barry, Brent, 3:1237 Bartali, Gino, 1:426, 2:853, 4:1552 Bartholomew, Joseph M., 2:694 Baryshnikov, Alexander, 4:1621 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 1:440 Basden, George, 3:1086 BASE jumping, 2:541 Baseball, 1:144–157, 3:936, 3:938, 3:1188. See also Baseball stadium life; Fenway Park; Major League Baseball (MLB); World Series; Wrigley Field in art, 1:95 Astrodome, 1:106–108 athletic talent migration in, 1:117–118 Canada, 1:283 in Central America, 1:155 church leagues, 3:1254 competition at the top, 1:155–156 development of, 1:147–151 equipment, 1:153
1755
facilities, 1:153 franchise relocation, 2:649–653 global aspects, 1:154–155 governing body, 1:156 history, 1:144–147 Japan, 1:154, 1:156, 2:860–861, 2:867 leagues, 1:145–146, 1:150 memorabilia, 3:997 Mexico, 3:1006, 3:1009 movies, 3:1047–1051 nature of the sport, 1:151–153 organization of, 1:145–146 periodicals, 3:952–953 racial issues, 1:115, 1:146–147, 1:153 scandals in, 1:150–151 technology, equipment changes due to, 4:1597, 4:1600 women and, 1:153–154 Yankee Stadium, 1:159, 4:1732–1734 Baseball Index, 3:952 Baseball nicknames, 1:157–158 Baseball stadium life, 1:159–165 ballpark spectators, 1:159–160 ballparks, 1:153, 1:159 field, 1:160–161 front office, 1:164–165 pressbox, 1:163–164 stands, 1:161–163 Baseball wives, 1:165–168 Basedow, Johann, 3:1178 Basketball, 1:168–176, 3:938 athletic talent migration in, 1:119 competition at the top, 1:174–175 current game, 1:173–174 governing bodies, 1:176 history, 1:168–170, 1:172, 3:1254 Japan, 2:863 leagues, professional, 1:170–171 memorabilia, 3:997 movies, 3:1047, 3:1050 nature of the sport, 1:174–175 in Olympics, 1:175–176, 3:1109, 3:1113 professional, 3:923 racial issues, 1:171–172 rules, new, 1:172–173 social class and, 4:1438 television and, 1:174–175, 3:992, 4:1500 women in, 1:174, 2:812, 4:1358
B
1756
B
INDEX
Basques pelota played by, 3:1155–1157 strength competitions, 4:1551 Bates, Robert H., 3:1045–1046 Baton twirling, 1:176–179 Baudrillard, Jean, 3:1208–1209 Bay Area Laboratories Co-operative (BALCO), 3:1167, 4:1665 Baylor University, 4:1672 Beamon, Bob, 4:1618, 4:1623 Beauclerk, Frederick, 3:940 Beauty, 1:15–20, 1:179–184, 4:1360–1361. See also Art Bechler, Steve, 3:1168 Becker, Boris, 1:39, 4:1605, 4:1693 Beckham, David, 4:1501 as athlete celebrity, 1:110, 1:112–113, 1:184, 4:1659 brand management and, 1:250 endorsements and, 2:507, 4:1659 Bee, Clair, 1:175 Beers, William George, 3:913–914 Beeston, Paul, 4:1649 Behavioral intention, athlete’s, 3:1012–1013 Belbin, Tracey, 2:736 Belgium, 1:184–189, 3:1118, 3:1271, 4:1516 Bell, James “Cool Papa,” 1:147 Bell, Judy, 2:695 Bellutti, Antonella, 2:854 Belman, Dottie and Donald, 4:1671 Belmondo, Stefania, 2:854 Bench, Johnny, 1:150 Bends, the, 4:1645–1646 Benjedid, Chadli, 3:1237 Bennett, James Gordon, 3:1197 Bennett, James Gordon, Jr., 4:1535–1536 Benvenuti, Nino, 2:854 Beracasa, José, 3:1143 Berenson, Senda, 3:908, 4:1358 Berezhnaya, Elena, 3:1123, 4:1385 Bergmann, Juliette, 1:225 Bergmann, Richard, 4:1590 Bergman-Österberg, Martina, 3:1178 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Berlin Olympic Stadium, 3:1105–1107 Berlin Olympics (1936), 1:109, 2:678, 2:821, 2:823, 2:852–853, 3:991, 3:1105–1107, 3:1116, 4:1504, 4:1703 Berman, Chris, 2:525 Berry, Joyce Cran, 3:914–915 Bert, Paul, 4:1645–1646 Berterelli, Ernesto, 1:54 Bertrand, John, 1:54 Berwanger, Jay, 2:626 Betjeman, John, 3:939 Beyer, Henry, 3:1180 Beyond the Boundaries, 3:1235 Beyus, Bob, 2:522 Bezdek, Hugo, 2:626 Bhakti yoga, 4:1734 Biathlon and triathlon, 1:189–193, 2:480, 3:1120, 3:1123, 3:1159, 4:1405 Bibbia, Nino, 4:1418 Bicarbonate, 3:1093–1094 Bicycle polo, 3:1198–1199 Bicycling. See Cycling; Mountain biking Bier, August, 3:1181 Bierhoff, Oliver, 2:529 Bierma, Nathan, 3:1206 Big-game fishing, 2:597 Bikila, Abebe, 1:234, 3:967 Bikram yoga, 4:1735 Billiards, 1:193–195, 4:1656 Bilson, Frank L., 1:82 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, 3:1154 Binging behavior. See Disordered eating Biomechanics, 1:195–199, 2:900–902. See also Physical education; Sport science Biotechnology, 1:199–204, 4:1601–1602. See also Technology Bird, Larry as athlete celebrity, 1:111 as college athlete, 2:810 ranking, 1:50, 1:173, 1:175 salary issue, 2:493, 3:1322, 4:1650 Birkenhead Bowls Club, 1:318 Bisexuality, defined, 2:753 Bislett Stadium, 1:204–205 Bjoerndalen, Ole Einar, 3:1123 Björkstén, Elli, 2:588 Blackman, Marty, 1:26 Blackmur, R. P., 3:1056–1057
INDEX
Blair, Bonnie, 3:1123, 4:1390 Blake, Sir Peter, 1:54 Blanchard, J. P., 3:1148 Blanchard’s balloons, 1:143 Blanco, Ramon, 3:1030 Blankers-Koen, Francina “Fanny,” 1:17, 2:730 Blatter, Silvio, 3:938 Bleibtrey, Esthelda, 4:1578 Blériot, Louis, 2:611 Blind athletes. See Disability sport Bliss, Dave, 4:1672 Blood doping. See Performance enhancement Blue Chips, 3:1050 Boas, Franz, 3:1179 Boat race (Cambridge vs. Oxford), 1:206–208, 2:727 Boating, ice, 1:208–210, 3:1311–1314 Bobsledding, 1:210–214, 2:856, 3:941, 3:1050, 3:1118 Bocce and petanque, 1:235–237 Body image, 1:16–17, 1:214–218, 2:457. See also Feminist perspective Body mass index (BMI), 2:458 Bodybuilding, 1:218–228. See also Venice Beach fitness and, 2:601–602, 2:605–607 history, 1:218–222 men’s, 1:219–220 muscularity/femininity debate, 1:223–225 organizations, 1:222–223 powerlifting and, 3:1211 rules and play, 1:226–227 women’s, 1:220–225 Boer War, sport during, 4:1657 Bogner, Willy, 4:1409 Boklov, Jan, 4:1397 Bolivarian Games, 3:1145 Bondi Beach, 1:228–231 Bonds, Barry, 2:828, 3:1167, 4:1552 Book of Kings, 3:935 Boomerang throwing, 1:231–233 Boosting, 2:464–465 Borelli, Lou, 2:890–891 Borg, Björn, 1:39, 4:1605, 4:1693 Borota, Jean, 1:39 Borra, Luigi, 2:852 Boshen, W.C., 2:597 Bosman, Jean-Marc, 2:493 Bossi, Carmelo, 2:854
1757
Boston Celtics, 1:173, 3:1322 Boston Marathon, 1:7, 1:233–235, 3:967, 3:970, 3:1075 Kenyan participation, 2:899 women, 1:234, 3:968 Boston Red Sox, 1:249, 2:584, 4:1710–4:1712 Botha, Frans, 1:247 Boucher v. Syracuse University, 4:1612 Boule, 1:235, 1:236 Boulmerka, Hassiba, 1:23, 3:1237 Bourdillon, Tom, 3:1029 Bouton, Bobbie, 1:168 Bowden, Bobby, 4:1673 Bowerman, Bill, 1:402, 3:970 Bowls and bowling, 1:235–241, 3:1342 bocce and petanque, 1:235–237 future aspects, 1:241 history, 1:235–236, 3:1252 indoor variants, 1:238 international play, 1:238–239 in North America, 1:239–241 participation in, 1:237–238 rules and play, 1:236–237 Boxer Rebellion, 2:880, 2:884 “Boxercise” classes, 1:245 Boxing, 1:241–247, 2:701, 3:1081 amateur, 1:243–244 in art, 1:96 corruption in, 1:246–247 history, 1:242–243 Kenya, 2:899 in literature, 3:936–938 at Madison Square Garden, 3:947–948 Mexico, 3:1006 mixed martial arts, 3:1010–1012 movies, 3:1050 New Zealand, 3:1072 Olympics, ancient, 3:1102 Olympics, modern, 1:243, 1:244 physical dangers of, 1:245–246 popular culture and, 1:247 professional, 1:243 racism in, 1:247, 3:987, 3:1236, 3:1337 radio broadcasts, 3:990, 3:1189, 3:1190, 3:1243 Senegal, 3:1337, 3:1338 social issues, 1:245–247 television broadcasts, 3:993
B
1758
B
INDEX
Boxing (continued) violence in, 1:241, 4:1673, 4:1674 women’s, 1:244–245 Boyd, Jean, 3:1326 Brabham, Jack, 2:794 Brack, Kenny, 2:794 Bradman, Donald, 1:101, 1:115, 1:127 Braid, James, 1:257 Brand, Myles, 3:1326, 4:1615–1616 Brand management, 1:248–252, 2:649–653. See also Sponsorship Brandsten, Ernst, 2:475 Brandsten, Greta Johanson, 2:475 Brazil, 1:252–256. See also Capoeira beach volleyball, 4:1683 Maracana Stadium, 3:964–965 masculine nature of soccer in, 3:986 mixed martial arts, 3:1011 São Paulo Pan American Games (1963), 3:1143– 1144 soccer, 1:254–55, 3:986, 4:1430, 4:1433, 4:1491, 4:1709 Breal, Michel, 3:966 Breast-feeding and exercise, 3:1261 Breastroke, swimming, 4:1575 Breeze, Joe, 3:1031 Breitenbach, Jake, 3:1029 Brezek, John, 1:90 Brisbane Broncos, 3:995 Britain. See United Kingdom British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 3:991, 3:993, 3:994 British Empire Games, 1:355 British Open, 1:256–258, 3:1073, 4:1543 Britten, John, 3:1074 Britton, Helene, 3:1135 Broadwick, Charles, 3:1148 Broekhoff, Jan, 3:908 Broekhuysen, Nico, 3:907–908 Brooklyn Dodgers, 3:1244, 4:1712 Brooks, Cleanth, 3:1056–1057 Brooks, Herb, 3:918 Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players, 3:1131, 3:1132 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Broun, Heywood, 4:1537 Broun, Heywood Hale, 4:1537 Brown, Bruce, 2:543 Brown, Elwood S., 2:808, 2:809 Brown, Franklin H., 2:863 Brown, Mordecai “Three Finger,” 1:149 Brown, Walter, 1:171 Brown University, 4:1613 Browne, Mary Kendell, 4:1606 Brugnon, Jacques, 1:39 Brundage, Avery, 3:1117, 3:1120, 3:1143, 3:1219, 4:1504, 4:1704–1705 Brunei, 4:1463 Brunet, Pierre, 4:1385 Bryan, Bob and Mike, 4:1608 Bryant, Kobe, 1:354, 2:510 Bryant, Paul “Bear,” 1:350, 2:810 Bryn Mawr College, 4:1603 BSA motorcycles, 3:1021, 3:1022 Bubka, Sergey, 4:1624 Buchman, Sydney, 3:1048 Buckner, Bill, 4:1710 Budd, Zola, 4:1460 Budge, Don, 4:1605 Budo. See Japanese martial arts, traditional Buehning, Dr. Peter, 2:721 Bulgaria, 1:258–261, 3:999, 4:1688, 4:1689 Bulimia, 2:458. See also Disordered eating Bull Durham, 3:1050 Bulletins, 3:949 Bullfighting, 1:261–268, 3:937–938 animal rights and, 1:66 matadors, selection process, 1:264–265 matadors, women as, 1:265–266 Mexico, 3:1006 origins, 1:262 practice of, 1:262–264, 1:266–268 Bulpetts, W. H., 4:1416 Bunche, Ralph, 3:1324 Bundy, May Sutton, 4:1606 Bungee jumping, 2:541 Burk, Martha, 3:989 Burke, Glenn, 1:31, 1:32 Burnout, 1:268–270, 4:1749. See also Psychology Burton, Michael, 4:1578 Burton Nelson, Mariah, 4:1675 Burton snowboards, 4:1419 Burtuzzi, Todd, 4:1502
INDEX
Busch family, 3:1134 Bush, George W., administration of, 4:1614–1615 Bushido, 2:865, 2:880 Button, Richard “Dick,” 3:1120, 4:1384, 4:1546 Buttrick, Barbara, 1:245 Buzkashi, 1:270–273 Byers, Chester, 3:1274 Byers, Walter, 1:46
C Cadine, Ernest, 4:1686 Caffeine, 3:1093 Calgary Olympics (1988), 3:1121–1122 Call of the Wild, The, 4:1416 Calorie, defined, 2:458–459 Calvert, Allen, 2:606 Calvin, John, 3:1252 Camarillo, Leo, 3:1276 Cambodia, 4:1461–1462 Cameroon, 1:274–277 Camogie, 1:277–280, 2:839, 2:841 Campanella, Roy, 1:147 Campbell, Jeannette, 1:87, 1:88 Campbell, Veronica, 2:858–859 Camps. See Academies and camps, sport Canada, 1:281–287. See also Commonwealth Games; Montreal Olympics (1976); Native American games and sports; Stanley Cup baseball, 1:283 Calgary Olympics (1988), 3:1121–1122 Commonwealth Games and, 1:357–358 curling and, 1:417–418 football, 1:283, 2:630–632 future aspects, 1:285–286 history, 1:281–282 hockey, 1:282–283, 4:1545–1546 Hockey Night in Canada, 3:962–963, 3:990, 3:1192 lacrosse, 1:283, 3:913–915, 3:1062 lifeguarding, 3:933–934 Maple Leaf Gardens, 3:962–964 mountaineering in, 3:1044–3:1046 newspaper sports pages, 3:991, 3:1079 organizations, 1:285 racism, 1:281, 4:1491 Ringette, 3:1265 rodeos, 3:1272, 3:1274, 3:1278 snowshoeing, 4:1421, 4:1422
1759
sports and national identity, 4:1491 televised sports in, 1:285–286, 3:963, 3:991 Winnipeg Pan American Games, 3:1144, 3:1146 winter Olympic history, 3:1118, 3:1119, 3:1123 women and sport, 1:283–284 youth and sport, 1:284–285 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1:285, 3:991 “Canadian canoeing,” 1:287 Canadian Colleges Athletic Association (CCAA), 1:284 Canadian Football League (CFL), 1:283 Canary, Martha “Calamity Jane,” 2:785 Cancer, 2:533, 2:536 Canoeing and kayaking, 1:287–293 canoe polo, 1:291 canoe sailing, 1:291 competition, 1:291–292 dragon boat racing, 1:291 flatwater, 1:290 future aspects, 1:292–293 governing body, 1:292 history, 1:287–288 marathon, 1:290–291 popularity of, 1:288 recreational racing, 1:288–289 slalom, 1:290 variations, 1:290–291 wildwater, 1:290 Canopying, 2:541 Canutt, Enos Edward “Yakima,” 3:1274 Canyoning, 2:541 Capital Cities. See Walt Disney/ABC/Capital Cities Capoeira, 1:43–44, 1:293–295, 2:617 Capriati, Jennifer, 1:308 Car racing. See Auto racing Carbohydrates, 3:1091–1092, 3:1094, 3:1162 Carbohydrates, healthy eating and, 2:456–457 Cardiovascular diseases, 1:12, 2:533, 2:534–535, 4:1526, 4:1528, 4:1737 Cardiovascular endurance, 2:511–512, 2:534–535, 2:599, 4:1509, 4:1511–1512 Carew, Rod, 1:150 Caribbean Games. See Central American and Caribbean Games Carlesimo, P. J., 4:1674 Carlisle Indian School, 3:1062 Carlos, John, 1:17, 4:1506 Carmichael, Chris, 2:603
C
1760
C
INDEX
Carnegie Report, 1:45–46, 1:295–297, 2:815 Carnera, Primo, 2:853 Carolina Panthers, 4:1563 Carom billiards, 1:193, 1:194 Carpenter Burton, Jake, 4:1419 Carpentier, Georges, 1:242, 3:1189, 3:1243, 3:1337 Carrel, Jean, 3:1041 Carriage driving, 1:297–299 Carter, H. Adams, 3:1045 Carter, Hamish, 3:1074 Cartwright, Alexander, Jr., 1:145 Cashel Byron’s Profession, 3:936 Cassina, Igor, 2:718 Cassioli, Giuseppe, 3:1114 Casting, defined, 2:595 Catholic Youth Organization, 3:1254 Catlin, George, 1:77, 1:93 Caulkins, Tracy, 3:1144 Cave diving, 2:541 Cawley, Evonne. See Goolagong, Evonne Fay Cayley, George, 4:1423 Cazaly, Roy, 1:130 CBS, 1:354, 3:992, 3:1192, 3:1245, 4:1485 Centazz, Guilherme, 3:1204 Central America, Mesoamerican ball court games in, 3:1003–1005 Central American and Caribbean Games, 1:299– 301, 3:1145 Cuba and, 1:404–406 Honduras and, 2:756–757 Jamaican participation, 2:857 Mexican participation in, 3:1006–1007 Central American and Carribean University Games, 3:1145 Cha cha cha, 2:443, 2:444 Chadwick, Henry, 1:147, 1:148 Chamberlain, Wilt “the Stilt,” 1:172, 1:173, 4:1360 Chambers, John Graham, 1:242 Chamonix Olympics (1924), 3:1118, 4:1545 Champions League, soccer, 4:1433–1434 Chand, Dhyan, 2:738 Chandler, Richard, 3:1103 Changing Room, The, 3:939 Chanute, Octave, 4:1423 Chapey, Paul, 2:745 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Chariot races, 3:1282, 3:1283 Chariots of Fire, 3:1335 Charles, Bob, 3:1073 Charles, J.A.C., 1:142 Charleston, Oscar, 1:147 Charlesworth, Ric, 2:738 Charlotte Bobcats, 3:1134 Charreada, 3:1273, 3:1278 Chase, Hal, 1:150 Chastain, Brandi, 1:183, 4:1702 Chausson, Anne-Caroline, 3:1036 Cheating, 4:1530, 4:1664–1665 Cheerleading, 1:301–306 Chelsea Football Club, 3:1134 Chenal-Minuzzo, 3:1120 Chess, 3:1050, 4:1598 Chesser, Todd, 2:543 Chicago Black Sox, 1:150–151, 3:1073, 3:1136, 4:1711 Chicago Bulls, 1:173, 3:1245 Chicago Cubs, 3:1163, 3:1245, 4:1474, 4:1476, 4:1479. See also Sosa, Sammy; Wrigley Field Chicago White Sox, 1:150–151, 3:1133, 3:1136, 4:1711 Chichén Itzá, 3:1003, 3:1005 Child sport stars, 1:306–309. See also Academies and camps, sport; Elite sports parents; Youth sports Chile, 3:1278 China, 1:309–315, 4:1505, 4:1701–1702. See also Wushu (kung fu) ancient, sports in, 1:309–310, 3:1160–1161 Asian Games and, 1:101, 1:102, 1:104 badminton in, 1:141 modern sport and physical education, 1:310–315, 3:1179 sepak takraw, history of, 3:1345 soccer, 4:1701–1702 table tennis, 4:1586–1587, 4:1589–1591 taekwando, history of, 4:1591 tai chi, history of, 4:1595, 4:1597 weightlifting, 4:1689 Chizevsky, Kim, 1:223, 1:225 Choi, Hong Hi, 4:1592, 4:1593 Chouniard, Yvon, 3:1043 Christianity, sport and, 3:1250–1256, 4:1357–1358 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 2:536 Chukchee of Siberia, sports ritual of, 3:1251
INDEX
Chunhong, Liu, 4:1689 Cierpinski, Waldemar, 3:967 Cincinnati Reds, 3:1134, 4:1475, 4:1710 Cinema. See Movies Cintron, Conchita, 1:266 Circuit training, 2:515–516 Citizenship Through Sports Alliance (CTSA), 4:1533 Clark, E. B., 2:863 Clark, Jim, 1:133, 2:794 Clark Flores, José de Jesús, 3:1009, 3:1143 Clarke, William, 1:388 Clemens, Mrs. Roger, 1:167 Clement, Amanda, 1:154 Clemente, Roberto, 1:150 Cleveland Browns, 2:489 Cleveland Indians, 3:983, 4:1667 Clifton, Nathaniel “Sweetwater,” 1:172 Clijsters, Kim, 1:189, 4:1608 Clouds from Both Sides, 3:1000 Clout shooting, 1:83 Clubsport systems, 1:315–320 Coaching, 1:320–328 attitudes, essential, 1:321 characteristics, essential, 1:321–322 coach and athlete, sexual relations between (See Sexual harassment) ethical issues, 1:322–323 gender equity in, 2:669 history, 1:324–325 organizations, 1:326–327 salaries and perks, 1:349 school sports, participation in, 3:1331 social issues, 1:325–326 stress and, 1:323–324 training, 1:326 Coakley, Jay, 3:1186–1187, 3:1192 Coan, Ed, 3:1213 Coase theorem, 2:655–656 Cobb, Ty, 1:149, 1:155 Coca Cola (company), 1:111, 2:509–510, 4:1482 Cocaine, 3:1166 Cochet, Henri, 1:39 Cody, Buffalo Bill, 2:782, 3:1273, 3:1277 Coeducational sport, 1:328–333 Cognitive aspects, spectator sports consumption, 4:1470–1471 Cognitive information processing personality theory, 3:1174–1175 Cohen v. Brown University, 4:1613
1761
Cohn, Linda, 2:525 Cold War, 4:1506–1507 Olympics and, 3:1119–1122, 4:1478, 4:1506– 1507 World University Games, 4:1714–1715 Coliseum (Rome), 1:334–335 Collective bargaining, 1:335–338, 3:923, 4:1648–1652. See also Unionism baseball and, 1:150, 1:336–338, 2:651 free agency and, 1:337, 2:655–656 College athletes, 1:340–347. See also Amateur vs. professional debate; Intercollegiate athletics; World University Games academic standards, 1:343 African-American students, 2:812, 3:1323–1328 controversies, 1:346 corporations and, 1:341–343 Drake Group, 1:48, 2:477–479 football, 1:340–341, 2:811 history, 1:340 locker rooms for, 1:348–349 perks, 1:349–350 professional sports, move to, 1:348 recruiting practices, 1:350–351 reform, early, 1:341 Sanity Code, 1:341 women’s sports, 1:343–344, 1:346, 2:812–813 College Sport Network, 4:1483 Collings, Gertrude, 2:597 Collins, Eddie, 1:149 Collins, John, 2:843, 2:844 Collins, Wilkie, 3:936 Colonialism, 3:1235 Colorado Avalanche, 4:1502 Columbia University, 2:811, 4:1500 Comaneci, Nadia, 1:16, 1:115, 1:308, 2:715, 3:1279 Comiskey, Charles, 1:148, 3:1133 Commercialization of college sports, 1:250, 1:347–351. See also Amateur vs. professional debate; Carnegie Report Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, 4:1614– 1615 Commodification and commercialization, 1:351–354, 4:1503–1504. See also Commercialization of college sports; Marketing; Ownership; Spectator consumption behavior; Sponsorship brand management, 1:248–252, 2:649–653 global symbolism of sport, 3:1270
C
1762
C
INDEX
Commodification and commercialization (continued) jogging/running, 2:873 Olympics, 1:352–354, 3:1115–1116 professionalism and, 3:1220 United Kingdom, 4:1658–1659 Wembley Stadium, 4:1692 Commonwealth Games, 1:125, 1:354–359 Commotio cordis, defined, 2:796 Community, 1:359–365, 4:1496. See also Fan loyalty; Social identity; Sport and national identity Compagnoni, Deborah, 2:854 Competition, 1:365–372 anti-competition movement, 1:377–378 approaches to, 4:1663–1664 cooperation, 1:376–379 corporations and, 1:370–371 critical perspectives on, 1:369–370 cultural variances, 1:368–369 as defining feature of sport, 1:367–368 good competitor, evaluation of, 4:1663 historical perspective, 1:366–367 implications, 1:371 media and, 1:370–371 nature of, 4:1663 relationships of, 1:366 Competitive balance, 1:372–376 Conant, James, 2:901 Conative aspects, spectator sports consumption, 4:1473 Concentration, role in sports performance of, 1:1015–106, 3:1002 Confidence, role in sports performance of, 3:1002 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A, 3:936 Connell, Frank, 2:597 Conner, Dennis, 1:54, 1:55 Connolly, Cyril, 4:1359 Connolly, Mary Catherine, 4:1606 Connors, Jimmy, 4:1605 Consett Rugby Club, 1:317 Constitutional overstrain, theory of, 2:573 Consumer services, 3:955 Conte, Victor, Jr., 3:1167 “Continental handball,” 2:720 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Contract law, 3:919 Converse (company), 2:506 Conway, Martin, 3:1025 Conzelman, Jimmy, 2:626 Cook, James, 4:1566 Cooney, Gerry, 1:247 Cooper, Chuck, 1:172 Cooper, Kenneth, 1:12, 2:511, 2:607, 2:608, 2:873 Cooperation, 1:376–379 Cooperstown (NY), 1:145, 1:155 Coors Brewing Company, 2:481, 3:978 Coppi, Fausto, 1:426, 2:853 Corbett, James J., 3:1072 Cordero, Angel, 2:763 Coronary artery disease (CAD). See Cardiovascular diseases Corruption, in sports, 4:1666–1667. See also Sportsmanship; Values and ethics baseball, 1:150–151 (See also Chicago Black Sox) boxing, 1:246–247 bullfighting, 1:266–267 cricket, 1:390 cycling, 1:422–423 horse racing, 2:763, 2:765 internet and, 2:826–827 Cortes, Hernan, 3:1038 Corti, Claudio, 2:501 Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics (1956), 2:854, 3:1120 Cortopassi, Greg, 2:619 Cosell, Howard, 3:1191 Costa Rica, 3:1146 Costas, Bob, 3:1245–1246 Costeau, Jacques-Yves, 4:1644–1646 Cotton Bowl (Dallas), 2:628 Coubertin, Pierre de, 2:817 modern Olympics founded by, 2:580, 2:644, 2:821, 3:1104, 3:1107, 3:1111–1113 muliculturism, support for, 3:1052 Olympic, use of term, 2:809 Olympic ideal promoted by, 3:1179, 3:1219, 4:1622 pentathlon introduced by, 3:1158, 3:1159 as president of International Olympic Committee, 3:1117 on swimming, 4:1577 women athletes, opinion on, 2:573, 3:967, 4:1612, 4:1625, 4:1704 World University Games and, 4:1713–1714 Coulthard, David, 1:184
INDEX
Country club, 1:379–386 activities, 1:380–381 development of, 1:381–382 gender, issues of, 1:384 golf, impact on, 1:382–383 history, 1:379–380, 1:384–386 Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS), 3:919, 3:920 Couthard, David, 3:1191 Coutts, Russell, 1:54 Cowboys Turtle Association (CTA), 3:1274–1275 Cowles, Betsy, 3:1028 Cown, Tommay, 3:1243 Cranston, Toller, 4:1384–1385 Cranz, Christl, 4:1402 Crawford, Sam, 1:155 Crawford, Shawn, 3:1109 Crawl stroke, swimming, 4:1575 Creatine, 3:1093, 3:1166 Cresta Run, skeleton, 4:1417–1418 Crick, Francis, 1:199 Cricket, 1:386–391, 3:936, 3:1235, 4:1656 amateurs and professionals in, 4:1654–1655 in art, 1:94 Ashes, the, 1:99–101 Australia, 1:124–125, 3:1189–1190, 3:1192 clubs, 1:319 colonialism and, 4:1446 Jamaica, 2:859 Lord’s Cricket Ground, 3:939–941 memorabilia, 3:997 New Zealand, 3:1072, 3:1074, 3:1075 South Africa, 4:1455–1456, 4:1458 television and, 1:389, 3:995, 4:1477, 4:1658– 1659 women in, 2:859 Cricket World Cup, 1:392–394 Crimes, sports. See Corruption, in sports; Gambling; Violence Crist, Bob, 3:1212 Cronkite, Walter, 3:1245 Croquet, 1:95, 1:394–398, 4:1489 Crosby, Bob, 3:1274 Crosby, Cornelia T., 2:597 Crossbow shooting, 1:83 Cross-country running, 1:398–404 Cross-country skiing. See Skiing, cross-country Croz, Michel, 3:1040–1041 Crum, Ben, 3:909 Crump, Diane, 2:763
1763
Cruz, Juanita, 1:265–266 CTA (Cowboys Turtle Association), 3:1274–1275 CTSA (Citizenship Through Sports Alliance), 4:1533 Cuba, 1:155–156, 1:404–409, 3:1144–1146, 4:1505, 4:1688. See also Central American and Caribbean Games Cuban, Mark, 2:489 Cuervo, Jorge, 3:1144 Cultural studies theory, 1:409–414 Cunningham, Merce, 1:439, 1:440 Curavoo, Karen Brisson, 1:91 Curi-Pressig, Anne, 2:483 Curling, 1:414–420, 3:1122 Curry, John, 4:1384–1385 Curry, Jon, 1:31 Curtis, Katharine, 4:1580 Curtis, Mike, 4:1479 Curtius, Ernst, 3:1104 Cusack, Michael, 2:635 Cycling, 1:420–427, 3:937, 3:938. See also Biathlon and triathlon; Mountain biking; Tour de France Belgium, 1:186, 1:188 bicycling polo, 3:1198–1199 competition in, 1:426–427 duathlon, 2:480–483 history, 1:420–423 nature of, 1:423–426 New Zealand, 3:1075 Portugal, 3:1203 women in, 1:427 Cypress Gardens, 4:1412, 4:1414 Cyr, Louis, 3:1210, 4:1686 Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia), 1:428–431, 3:999, 4:1677–1678
D Da Vinci, Leonardo, 3:1148, 4:1423 Daehlie, Bjorn, 3:1123 Daimler, Gottlieb, 3:1017, 3:1021 Dalai Lama, 3:1025 Dallas Cowboys, 3:1170 Dally, Eugène, 3:1179 Dance, 1:432–442. See also Capoeira aerobic, 1:12 in Asia, 1:433 athletics of, 1:440–441 ballet, 1:436–438 exercise, 1:12
D
1764
D
INDEX
Dance (continued) future aspects, 1:441 global forms of, 1:433–434 Highland Games and, 2:733 historical aspects, 1:432–433 human movement studies and, 2:772–773 Native American, 3:1061 origins of Western, 1:434–435 in physical education, 3:1182 Renaissance court, 1:435–436 revolutions in, 1:438–440 training, 1:440 “Dance fight,” 1:293 DanceSport, 2:443–445 Daniel, Charles, 4:1578 Darbellay, Michel, 2:501 Darbepoetin, 3:1168 Darts, 2:445–447, 4:1656 Database marketing, 3:976–977 Davenport, Lindsay, 4:1700 Davin, Pat, 2:635 Davis, Al, 2:491 Davis, Dwight Filley, 2:447–448 Davis, Jeanette, 1:91 Davis, Malachi, 1:119 Davis Cup, 2:447–449, 3:1073, 3:1279, 4:1603– 1605, 4:1608 Davos, Switzerland, 3:941, 3:942, 4:1416, 4:1543, 4:1714 Dawson, Zack, 2:890 De Dion, Baron, 3:1021 De Oliveira, Joao Carlos, 3:1144 De Varona, Donna, 4:1614 Deaf World Games. See Deaflympics Deaflympics, 2:449–452, 2:461, 2:463 Dean, Cleve, 1:90 Dean, Dizzy, 1:149 Decker, Mary. See Slaney, Mary Decker Deconstructionism, 3:1058–1059 Dedyulya, Svetlana, 3:1213 Deferr, Gervasio, 2:718 Definitional deception, 4:1665 Dehydration, 2:459–460 DeJesus, Esteban, 1:31 Delauney, Henry, 2:526, 2:528 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Delgado, Carlos, 2:654 DeLillo, Don, 3:938 DeLorme, Thomas, 4:1508, 4:1511 DeMar, Clarence H., 1:234 Dempsey, Jack, 1:109, 1:243, 3:1006 broadcasts of matches, 3:990, 3:1189, 3:1190, 3:1243 Carpentier match, 1:242, 3:1189 Denali, 3:1044 Dene Games, 3:1060, 3:1065 Denmark, 2:452–456 Dennehy, Patrick, 4:1672 DePalma, Ralph, 2:794 Der wesse Rausch, 4:1409 Derrida, Jacques, 3:1058–1059 Desai, Amrit, 4:1736 DeSaussure, H. B., 3:1040 Desbonnet, Edmond, 2:880, 2:884 Desessartz, Jean Charles, 3:1177 Desgrange, Henri, 4:1616–1617 Designated hitter rule, 1:150 Desjardins, Peter, 2:474 Destivelle, Catherine, 2:499, 2:501 Devers, Gail, 4:1627 Devoy, Susan, 3:1075 Di Centa, Manuela, 2:854 Diabetes mellitus, 2:533, 2:535–536 Diack, Lamine, 3:1337 Diaghilev, Sergei, 1:438 Dialogics, narrative theory, 3:1056 Dianabol, 3:1165, 3:1212 Dibiasi, Klaus, 2:475–2:477 Didrikson, Babe. See Zaharias, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Diem, Carl, 3:1104, 3:1114 Diet and weight loss, 2:456–460, 3:1127–1129, 3:1332, 4:1551–1552. See also Exercise and health; Nutrition Dietary supplements, 3:1092–1094, 4:1687 Dill, David Bruce, 4:1508 Dillard, Terry, 3:1212 Dilutional pseudoanemia, 1:57 DiMaggio, Joe, 1:112, 1:149, 1:157, 4:1734 Diouf, Assani, 3:1337 Disability sport, 2:460–466. See also Deaflympics; Paralympics; Special Olympics adapted physical education, 1:5–9 defined, 2:461
INDEX
exercise, health and, 2:537 goalball, 2:686–688 historical aspects, 2:461–462 international competitions, 2:462–463 issues/controversies, 2:463–465 Pan American Games for the Blind, 3:1147 Pan American Wheelchair Games, 3:1147 for senior athletes, 3:1344 tennis, 4:1608 trends, 2:465–466 Discus throwing, 2:700–701, 4:1622–1624 Disordered eating, 2:466–473, 3:1332. See also Diet and weight loss; Exercise and health; Nutrition dancers and, 1:440 diagnosis, 2:467 gymnasts and, 2:716 health consequences of, 2:467–2:469 helping athletes with, 2:470–471 overview, 2:466–467, 2:471–472 prevalence, 2:467, 2:468 prevention, 2:468, 2:470 risk factors, 1:33, 1:217, 2:468 sexuality of ideal body, 4:1360–1361 signs/symptoms, 2:469 treatment, 2:471, 2:472 youth sports and, 2:796 Dispositional personality theory, 3:1172–1174 Distance running. See Marathon and distance running Diving, 2:473–477. See also Underwater sports DNA testing, 1:199, 2:673–674 Doby, Larry, 1:147 Docherty, Bevan, 3:1074 Dog sled racing, 4:1415–1417. See also Iditarod Dogon people, racing ritual of, 4:1497 Doherty, Matt, 1:349 Doherty, Reggie and Laurence, 4:1605, 4:1693 Domed stadiums, 1:106–108, 1:159, 2:520 Donaldson, Gillian Sheen, 2:582 Donnelly, Ben “Sport,” 2:625 Donor services, 3:957 Don’t Make Waves, 4:1670 Doping, blood. See Performance enhancement Doreen, Wilber, 1:82 Doubleday, Abner, 1:144–145 Douglas, Archibald Lucius, 2:862 Douglas, Francis, 3:1041 Downing, Liz, 2:483
1765
Doyle, Mamie, 3:1319 Drag racing, 1:133, 1:134 Dragon boat racing, 1:289, 1:291 Drake Group, 1:48, 2:477–479 Draper, Dave, 1:219, 4:1670 Draves, Victoria Manalo, 2:475, 2:476 Dream Team, 1:175, 3:1113, 3:1220–1221 Dressage, 1:298, 2:766–767 Dresse, Antoine, 2:449–450 Dreyfus, Barney, 2:625 Drive, He Said, 3:938 Drugs. See Performance enhancement Dry-fly fishing, 2:595 Duathlon, 2:480–483 Dudley, Jimmy, 3:1240 Duke University, 4:1613–1614 Dukic, Yelena, 4:1700 Dunaway, Deborah, 2:598 Duncan, George, 3:1307 Duncan, Isadora, 1:439 Dundee, Johnny, 3:1243 Dunlap, Alison, 3:1036 DuPont, Richard, 4:1423 Durack, Fanny, 4:1578 Durkheim, Emile, 3:1206, 3:1266–1267, 4:1492, 4:1495, 4:1672 D’Usseaux, Eugnio Brunetta, 3:1117 Duval, Helen, 3:1342 Duvall, David, 2:509 Dyhrenfurth, Norman, 3:1029 Dyson, Betty, 1:245
E Eagan, Ed, 2:522 Eagan, Edward, 3:1118 Eakins, Thomas, 3:1295 Earnhart, Dale, 1:133 East Germany, 2:484–488, 3:999, 3:1119, 3:1165–1166 East Timor, 4:1463 Easy Rider, 3:1022 Eating disorders. See Disordered eating Eco-Challenge, 2:541 Economics and public policy, 2:488–496, 3:958– 959, 4:1519–1520. See also Ownership; Revenue sharing; Social class and sport; Spectator consumption behavior; Sporting goods industry; Unionism beach volleyball, prize money in, 4:1682
E
1766
E
INDEX
Economics and public policy (continued) cooperation and, 2:490–492 crisis in, 2:495–496 franchise relocation, 2:649–653 (See also Fan loyalty) golf, 4:1438–1439 labor market and, 2:492–493 memorabilia, 3:996–998 NASCAR, 3:1085 Olympics, cost of, 3:1111, 3:1120 overview, 2:488–489 periodicals, 3:951 professional sports and, 2:489–490, 2:493–495, 3:992 rodeo, prizes in, 3:1272–1273, 3:1275–1276 rowing, costs of, 3:1289 salaries, professional athletes, 2:493–494, 2:654– 655, 4:1439–1430, 4:1648 size of sports industry, 3:958–959, 3:975 ski professionals, 4:1403 soccer, 4:1430 sponsorship, spending on, 3:978, 4:1482–1486 subsidization, professional teams, 2:494–495 Super Bowl, economic value of, 4:1562–1563 tennis, 4:1604, 4:1607, 4:1692 Tour de France, 4:1617 Edberg, Stefan, 4:1605 Ederle, Gertrude, 4:1578 Edschmid, Kasimir, 3:937 Edstrom, Sigfrid, 3:1117 Edwards, Jonathon, 4:1623–1624 Edwards, Michael, 3:1122 Egan, Pierce, 4:1534–1535 Egorova, Ljubov, 3:1122 Egypt, 2:496–498, 3:1160 Eiger North Face, 2:498–502 Eiselen, Ernst, 3:1283 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 4:1508 Eisenhower Trophy, 3:1073 El Guerrou, Hicham, 3:1109 Elder, Lee, 3:989 Elderly. See Senior sport Elek, Ilona, 2:582 Elfstedentocht, 2:502–503 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Elite sports parents, 1:3–4, 2:503–506, 2:557– 562. See also Youth sports Elliot, Launceston, 4:1686 Ellis, F. B., 4:1629 Ellison, Tom, 3:1072 Els, Ernie, 2:508 Elssler, Fanny, 1:437 Elway, John, 2:507 Emerson, Roy, 1:39 End Zone, 3:938 Ender, Kornelia, 4:1578 Endorsements, 2:506–511. See also Athletes as celebrities; Sponsorship Endurance, 2:511–517 aerobic, 2:512–514, 2:599, 2:604 cardiovascular, 2:511–512, 2:599, 2:604 circuit training, 2:515–516 cross-training, 2:516 fitness and, 2:511–512 medical clearance, 2:516 muscular, 2:514–2:516, 2:599, 2:604 overload and progression, 2:515 relative perceived exertion (RPE) scale, 2:514 target heart rate zone, 2:513–514 Enebuske, Claes, 3:1178 England. See United Kingdom English billiards, 1:195 Enjoyment by athlete, 3:1015 Enquist, Per Olov, 3:938 Entertainment and Sports Network (ESPN). See ESPN Environment, 2:517–522, 2:782, 4:1526 Environmental physiology, 4:1509–1510 Ephedrine, 3:1168 Epstein, Theodore, Jr., 3:1342 Equipment. See Athletic equipment and apparel Erasmus, Desiderius, 3:1252 Ergometers, 3:1294 Erickson, Marian, 2:888 Ericson, Jon, 2:477 Eriksen, Stein, 4:1403 Erratchun, Jean, 3:1157 Erving, Julius “Dr. J,” 1:172–173 Erythropoietin (EPO), 3:1168, 4:1526, 4:1617 ESPN, 1:354, 2:490, 2:522–525, 3:994, 4:1652 broadcast rights, table of, 3:992 extreme sports and, 4:1380, 4:1728 radio network, 3:1246 sports news on, 4:1476–1477
INDEX
Estadio Mario Filho, 3:964–965 Ethics. See Sportsmanship; Values and ethics Ethiopia gugs horse sport, 4:1502 Olympic marathon victories, 3:967 Ethnicity and racism, 3:1236–1238 Etienne, Joseph and Jacques, 1:142 Eurhythmics, 1:438 Euro 2000, 4:1502, 4:1531 Euro 2004, 2:526–527 European Federation of Sport Psychology (FEPSAC), 3:1225 European Football Championship, 2:528–530, 4:1433–1434 “European handball,” 2:720 Eurosport, 2:530–532 Evans, Charles, 3:1029 Evans, Janet, 4:1578 Everest, George, 3:1025 Everest, Mount. See Mount Everest Everson, Cory, 1:224 Evert, Chris, 4:1606, 4:1700 Evetts, Phyllis, 2:888 Evey, Stuart, 2:523 Evinrude, Ole, 3:1017 Ewald, Manfred, 3:1165–1166 Exclusion, ethical issure of, 4:1665–1666 Exercise and health, 2:532–539. See also Diet and weight loss; Endurance; Fitness; Nutrition; Osteoporosis; Performance; Reproduction (reproductive health); Sport science; Yoga adolescents and, 2:537–538 adverse effects, 2:536–537 cancer and, 2:536 cardiovascular disease and, 2:533–535 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and, 2:536 defined, 2:532–533 diabetes and, 2:535–536 disabled people and, 2:537 health, overall, 2:533–534 hyperlipidemia and, 2:535 hypertension and, 2:535 mental health and, 2:536 obesity and, 2:534 for older adults (See Senior sport) peripheral vascular disease and, 2:535 special populations and, 2:537–538 stroke and, 2:535
1767
young adults and, 2:537–538 youth sports and (See Youth sports) Exercise machines, 2:607 Exercise-induced hemolysis, 1:57, 1:58 Experience marketing, 3:979 Extreme sports, 2:539–543. See also X Games Extreme surfing, 2:543–545
F FA (Football Association). See Football Association (FA) Faber, Red, 1:149 Facility management, 2:546–551 Facility naming rights, 2:551–553. See also Sponsorship Fair Play for Children (FPC), 4:1533 Fairbairn, Steve, 3:1292 Fairchild, Julia, 2:597 Falconry, 2:553–557 Faldo, Nick, 1:258, 3:989 False anemia, 1:57 Family involvement, 2:557–562. See also Elite sports parents Fan clubs, 3:976 Fan loyalty, 2:562–565, 2:649, 4:1495, 4:1496. See also Social identity Fanck, Arnold, 4:1400, 4:1409 Fangio, Juan Manuel, 1:85 Fantasy camps. See Academies and camps, sport Fantasy sports, 2:566–568 Fanzines, 3:949 Faroux, Charles, 3:924 Farr, Bruce, 1:54 Fashion, 2:568–572, 4:1567. See also Athletic equipment and apparel; Beauty Fast pitch softball, 4:1452 Fat City, 3:938 Fats, healthy eating and, 2:457 Faulkner, Max, 1:258 Fay, Sir Michael, 1:54 Federation Cup, 4:1604, 4:1607 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), 2:862, 3:964, 4:1431, 4:1434, 4:1522, 4:1533. See also Women’s World Cup; World Cup Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) Alpine skiing, 4:1403 cross-country skiing, 4:1404, 4:1406, 4:1408
F
1768
F
INDEX
Federation Internationale de Ski (continued) free-style skiing, 4:1408, 4:1410 snowboarding, 4:1420 Federer, Roger, 4:1606, 4:1609 Feerick, John, 4:1674 Fehr, Donald, 1:25, 4:1648, 4:1652 Felicien, Perdita, 3:1109 Feller, Bob, 1:149, 1:336 Fells Method, biological maturation and, 2:710 Female triad, 1:33, 1:217, 2:468, 2:470 Feminist perspective, 2:572–579, 4:1442, 4:1443. See also Gender equity; Lesbianism animal rights and, 1:64–65 culture, difference and, 2:576–578 muscularity, bodybuilding and, 1:223–225 sport apparel, fashion and, 2:568–572 sport as sexist spectacle, 4:1502–1503 Fencing, 2:579–584. See also Iaido; Kendo; Kyudo competitions, 2:580–582 naginata (naginatado), 2:867–872, 3:1054–1056 rules and play, 2:582–584 Fenley, Molissa, 1:440 Fenway Park, 2:584–586 brand management and, 1:249 design, 1:163 facility management, 2:549 history, 1:159, 4:1734 FEPSAC (European Federation of Sport Psychology), 3:1225 Ferguson, Tom, 3:1276 Fernandez, Lisa, 4:1454 Ferrigno, Lou, 4:1670 Festivals. See Folk sports Field hockey, 2:734–739 Field of Dreams, 3:1050, 3:1051 Field shooting, 1:82–83 FIFA. See Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Figure skating. See Skating, ice figure Finch, Jennie, 4:1451 Fingleton, Jack, 3:941 Finland, 2:586–590 at Olympics, 2:587–589, 3:1118 Ringette, 3:1265 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
ski jumping, 4:1396–1397 worker sport in, 4:1706 Finn, Tony, 4:1684 Firdawsi, Hakim Abu ol-Qasem Mansur, 3:935 Fire and Ice, 4:1409 Firpo, Luis Angel, 1:85 Fischart, Johann, 3:935 Fischer, Leo, 4:1449–1450 Fischer, Scott, 3:1030 Fisher, Carl, 2:793 Fisher, Carsten, 2:738 Fisher, Gary, 3:1031 Fisher, Hugh, 1:281 Fisher, Sarah, 1:134, 2:795 Fishing, 2:590–598, 3:937. See also Hunting big-game, 2:597 competitions, 2:593–595 economic impact, 2:591 facts about, finding, 2:598 freshwater, 2:596–597 ice, 1:361 methods/equipment, early, 2:591–593 record catches, 2:597–598 saltwater, 2:597 types, 2:595–597 Fisk, Carlton, 4:1710 Fitch, Bill, 1:173 Fitness, 2:598–604, 3:956, 4:1528. See also Athletic training; Diet and weight loss; Endurance; Nutrition; Performance; Physical education; Senior sport; Sport science components of, 2:599–600, 2:604–605 cultural aspects, 2:600–601 future aspects, 2:603–604 growth, development and, 2:704–705, 2:712 popularity of, 2:601–602 pregnancy, exercise during, 3:1257–1262 sexuality of ideal body, 4:1360–1361 trends, current/emerging, 2:602–603 U. S. government, promotion by, 4:1508–1509 youth sports and, 4:1741–1742, 4:1746– 1748 Fitness industry, 2:604–609 Fittapaldi, Emerson, 1:133 Fitz, George, 3:1181, 4:1508 Fitzsimmons, Bob “Ruby Robert,” 3:1072 Fixx, Jim, 2:873, 3:970
INDEX
Flag football, 2:632–635 Flatwater freestyle racing, 1:289 Flatwater kayaking, 1:290 Fleming, Peggy, 3:1120 Flessel, Laura, 2:582 Flexibility, fitness and, 2:599, 2:604 Flight shooting, 1:83 Flood, Curt, 1:337, 2:654 Floor exercise, 2:716–717 “Floor hockey,” 2:806 Floorball, 2:609–610 Florida Marlins, 4:1479, 4:1712 Flouret, Jacques, 4:1715 Flowers, Vonetta, 3:1236 Fly casting, 2:595 Fly-fishing, 2:595 Flying, 2:610–612 Folk sports, 2:612–619 Afghanistan, 1:270 Belgium, 1:185 Cameroon, 1:275–276 defined, 2:612–618 fundamentals of, 2:614–616 modern, 2:616–618 nature of, 2:618–619 premodern, 2:613–614 Follis, Charles, 2:628 Fonda, Jane, 1:12, 2:602, 2:608 Fonst, Ramon, 2:580 Fontaine, Steve, 4:1414 Foo, Mark, 2:543 Foot races, ancient olympics, 2:700 Foot strike hemolysis, 1:58 Footbag, 2:619–621 Football, 2:622–630, 3:938. See also National Football League (NFL); Super Bowl amateur vs. professional debate, 1:47 anti-jock movement and, 1:70 in art, 1:95 athletic talent migration in, 1:118–119 college, 1:340–341, 2:625–628, 2:811, 3:1243–1245 development, 2:623–624 ESPN and, 2:523–524 memorabilia, 3:997 movies, 3:1047–1050 origins, 2:622–623
1769
as religion, 4:1493, 4:1496–1497 television and, 1:353–354, 2:628–629, 3:992– 3:993, 3:1191–1192, 4:1476, 4:1479, 4:1501, 4:1562 Football, Canadian, 2:630–632 Football, flag, 2:632–635 Football, Gaelic, 2:635–638 Football Association (FA), 4:1427–1429, 4:1654, 4:1655, 4:1691 For Love of the Game, 3:1050 Ford, Alexander Hume, 4:1566–1567 Foreman, George, 1:243, 2:507 Formula 1 racing, 1:133, 1:135 Foro Italico, 2:638–640 Fosbury, Dick (Fosbury Flop), 4:1619 Foster, Andrew “Rube,” 1:147 Foucault, Michel, 3:1058, 3:1207–1208 Foudy, Julie, 4:1614, 4:1703 Four-in-hand driving, 1:298 Fowler, John “Bud,” 1:146 Fowler, William Herbert, 3:1154 Fox, James, 3:1159 Fox, Terry, 1:115 Fox Sports Radio, 3:1246 Fox Television, 1:354, 3:992, 3:994, 4:1485 Foxhunting, 1:65–66, 2:640–644 Foxtrot, 2:443, 2:444 Foyt, A.J., 2:795 FPC (Fair Play for Children), 4:1533 France, 2:644–649. See also Jousting; Tour de France Albertville Olympics (1992), 3:1122, 3:1349 Chamonix Olympics (1924), 3:1118, 4:1545 Grenoble Olympics (1968), 3:1120 Le Mans, 1:133, 3:924–925 Olympic marathon victories, 3:967 parachuting in, 3:1148 rugby in, 3:1299 soccer, 2:645, 3:1135, 3:1236, 4:1429, 4:1446–1447, 4:1709–1710 volleyball, 4:1677 weightlifting, 4:1686 worker sport in, 4:1706 France, Bill, Sr., 3:1083 Franchise relocation, 2:490, 2:649–653. See also Fan loyalty Francioni, Warren, 1:41 Francis, Bev, 1:224
F
1770
G
INDEX
Franco, Francisco, 4:1464, 4:1465 Frank, Gerry, 3:1213 Franko, Jure, 3:1121 Franz, Ernie, 3:1212–1213 Fraser, Dawn, 4:1578 Fraser, Gretchen, 3:1119, 4:1546 Fraser, Ken, 2:597 Fraser, Neale, 1:39 Frazier, Joe, 1:243, 1:247 Fredericks, Frankie, 1:23 Free agency, 1:150, 1:337, 2:653–657, 4:1648– 1652. See also Collective bargaining; Unionism Free calisthenics, 2:716–717 Free climbing, 2:541 Free diving, 4:1646 Freeman, Cathy, 1:126, 4:1501 Freestyle skiing, 4:1408–1410 Freestyle wrestling, 4:1719–1720 Freeth, George, 4:1566 French Open Tennis Championship, 3:1279, 4:1606, 4:1609 Freshwater fishing, 2:596–597 Friday, Dallas, 4:1685 Friedman, Gal, 2:847, 3:1110 Friesinger, Anni, 1:183 Frigerio, Ugo, 3:1234 Frisbie, 1:41–42, 4:1640–1643 Froebel, Friedrich, 3:1181 Frontiere, Georgia, 3:1134 Frye, Jack, 1:146 Fu Mingxia, 2:476 Fudge, Gloria Miller, 1:224 Fujiyama, Mount, 3:1039 Fukayama, Francis, 4:1675 Funakoshi, Gichen, 2:887 Furst, Silvia, 3:1035 Furtado, Juli, 3:1035
G Gabler, Dr. George, 1:169 Gaelic football, 2:635–638 Gaelic Games, 3:1271 Gagnan, Emile, 4:1644–1646 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Gait, Paul and Gary, 3:917 Galenic theory, 4:1523–1524 Gallico, Paul, 4:1537–1538 Gambling, 3:922, 3:1220. See also Chicago Black Sox; Corruption; Horse racing Internet, 2:830–831 Native American games of chance, 3:1061, 3:1063 New Zealand, 3:1072 Singapore, 4:1376 Super Bowl, 4:1563 Games, folk. See Folk sports Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO), 2:658–661 Gaming. See Gambling GANEFO (Games of the New Emerging Forces), 2:658–661 Gant, Lamar, 3:1213 Garcia, Sergio, 2:508 Gardner, Leonard, 3:938 Gargantua, 3:936 Garlits, Don, 1:133 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympics (1936), 3:1119 Garnerin, Andre Jacques, 3:1148 Garnett, Kevin, 3:1322 Gate control theory, pain, 3:1139–1140 Gate-revenue sharing, 3:1263 Gatlin, Justin, 3:1109 Gatting, Mike, 4:1458 Gay Games, 2:661–665 Gebreselassie, Haile, 1:23 Geesink, Anton, 2:882 Gehrig, Lou, 1:149, 1:157, 4:1734 Geijessen, Carolina, 4:1390 Gender equity, 2:665–671, 4:1443–1444. See also Body image; Disordered eating; Feminist perspective; Injury risk in women’s sport; Lesbianism; Psychology of gender differences; Sexual harassment; Sexuality coeducational sport, 1:328–333 in foxhunting, 2:641, 2:642–643 International Olympic Academy and, 2:818–819 masculinity and, 3:985–988 women’s sports, coverage of, 4:1697–1701 in youth sports, 4:1742–1743, 4:1746–1748 Gender verification, 2:671–675, 3:1279, 4:1525 General Electric (company), 4:1485. See also NBC General Mills, 3:1244 Genlis, Comtesse de, 3:1177
INDEX
Gerevich, Aladar, 2:581 Germany, 2:675–681. See also Berlin Olympics (1936); East Germany; Turner festivals (turners) Eiger North Face, 2:498–502 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympics (1936), 3:1119 glider development, history of, 4:1423 lifeguarding, 3:932–933 motorcycle racing, 3:1021–1023 Munich Olympics (1972), 3:1116, 4:1506 physical education in, 3:1178, 3:1180–1181, 3:1283–1284 soccer, 4:1429–1430, 4:1446, 4:1531 sports medicine in, 4:1525 women’s sports, coverage of, 4:1698, 4:1699 worker sport in, 4:1703–1705 Gesner, Conrad, 3:1039 Gestring, Marjorie, 2:477 Getty Oil (company), 2:523, 2:524 Gevaert, Kim, 1:188 Geyelin, H. L., 4:1629 Gibb, Roberta “Bobbi,” 1:234 Gibson, Althea, 2:694–695, 3:1143, 4:1436, 4:1606, 4:1693 Gibson, Bob, 1:149–150 Gibson, Hoot, 3:1274 Gibson, Josh, 1:147 Gibson, Kirk, 4:1710 Gibson, Thomas R., 2:837 Gigghia, Alcides, 3:964 Gilera motorcycles, 3:1021, 3:1022 Gilkey, Art, 3:1045–1046 Gillette (company), 2:506 Gills, Jim, 2:843 Ginobilli, Emanuel “Manu,” 1:85, 1:119 Giove, Missy, 3:1036 Gipp, George, 3:1255 Giresse, Alain, 4:1710 Gladden, Washington, 3:1254 Gladiatorial combat, 3:1282–1283, 4:1357, 4:1475 Glazer, Malcolm, 3:1132 Glen Ridge, New Jersey, rape case, 4:1671 Gliding hang, 2:722–724 soaring, 4:1423–1427 Globalization, 2:681–686. See also Internet; Sport and national identity; Sport tourism commercialized sport and, 1:352–353
1771
internet and, 2:827–828 national identity and, 4:1490–1491 sport politics, 4:1504–1508 Glycogen, 3:1092, 3:1094–1095 Goalball, 2:686–688 Goalie’s Fear during the Penalty Kick, The, 3:939 Goal-setting for sports performance, 3:1001, 3:1015 Goat dragging (buzkashi), 1:270–273 Goerner, Hermann, 3:1210 Gogarty, Deidre, 1:244 Goggins, Steve, 3:1213 Go-karting, 2:890–891 Gold, Joseph (Gold’s Gym), 1:220, 2:601, 2:602, 4:1670 Golden State Warriors, 4:1674 Goldsworthy, Bill, 1:31 Golf, 2:688–696, 3:1073, 4:1656. See also British Open; St. Andrews amateur, 2:692–693 in art, 1:95 country clubs and, 1:382–383 courses, pollution and, 2:521 derivation of word, 3:1071 endorsements and, 2:506 equipment, 2:690–692 history, 2:688–689 Masters Tournament, 3:988–990 memorabilia, 3:997 Mexico, 3:1006 minorities in, 2:693–695 movies, 3:1050 New Zealand, 3:1073 at Olympics, 3:1113 Pebble Beach, 3:1153–1155 professional, 2:690–692 rules development, 2:689–690 Ryder Cup, 3:1307–1309 social class and, 4:1438–1439 technology, equipment changes due to, 4:1597– 1599, 4:1601 women in, 2:693–695, 3:1113 Golubnichiy,Vladimir, 3:1234 Goncharov, Valeri, 2:718 Goodenow, Bob, 4:1652 Goodyear, Scott, 2:794 Goolagong, Evonne Fay, 3:1236, 4:1606, 4:1693 Gordon, Robby, 2:794 Gore, Arthur, 4:1693
G
1772
H
INDEX
Gore, Spencer, 4:1692 Governance sport clubs, 1:316, 1:319 Grace, W. G., 1:388, 3:940–941, 4:1655 Gracie, Carlos, Helio, and Rorion, 3:1011 Graf, Stephanie “Steffi,” 1:133, 4:1606, 4:1674, 4:1693 Grafström, Gillis, 3:1118, 4:1384 Graham, Billy, 3:1255 Graham, Leslie, 3:1024 Graham, Martha, 1:439, 1:440 Graham, Trevor, 3:1167 Grand, George, 2:523 Grand Prix, 1:135 Grand Slam, tennis, 4:1605–1606 Grand Tetons, 3:1044 Grange, Harold “Red,” 2:626 Grant, Douglas, 3:1154 Grant, Frank, 1:146 Grant, George F., 2:694 Grantham, William W., 3:1287–1288 Granville, Laura, 4:1608 Great Britain. See United Kingdom Greco-Roman wrestling, 4:1720 Greece, 2:696–698 Athens Olympics (1896) (See Olympics, Summer) Athens Olympics (2004) (See Olympics, 2004) Greece, ancient, 2:698–702, 4:1357. See also Homer; Olympia performance, 3:1161 performance enhancement, 3:1164 religion and sport, 3:1247–1250, 3:1267 wrestling, origins of, 4:1718 Green Bay Packers, 3:1134, 4:1563 Greenberg, Hank, 3:1255 Grenoble Olympics (1968), 3:1120 Gretzky, Wayne, 1:115, 2:744 Greulich-Pyle (GP) Method, biological maturation and, 2:709 Grey, Zane, 2:597 “Gridiron football,” 2:632 Griffith, Coleman, 3:998, 3:1163, 3:1170, 3:1172 Grimek, John, 1:220 Gros, Piero, 2:854 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Grove, Lefty, 1:149 Grove City College v. Bell, 3:921, 4:1610–1611. 4:1613 Growth and development, 2:702–713. See also Exercise and health; Nutrition; Youth sports biological maturation and, 2:708–711 normal, standards of, 2:706–708 physical fitness and, 2:704–705, 2:712 sexual maturation, ages and, 2:710–711 studies over time, 2:703–704 Gruber, Stein, 3:1122–1123 Grudzielanek, Mark, 1:157 Grut, Willie, 3:1158 Guerin, Robert, 2:821 Guerrero, Wilton, 4:1530 Guettich, Bruce, 2:619 Guevara, Ana, 3:1009 Gulick, Luther Halsey, 1:168, 3:1179, 3:1181–1182, 4:1495 Guthrie, Janet, 1:134, 2:795 GutsMuths, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 2:675–676, 2:714, 3:1178, 3:1283 Guttmann, Allen, 1:51, 1:76 Guttmann, Ludwig, 3:1150–1152 Gymkhana, 2:769 Gymnastics, apparatus, 2:713–718 Belgium, 1:185–186 Bulgaria, 1:260 human movement studies and, 2:772 Japan, 2:861 at Olympics, 2:714–718, 3:1140 Poland, 3:1194 Romania, 3:1279 Gymnastics, rhythmic, 2:718–719
H Habeler, Peter, 3:1029, 3:1030 Hackenschmidt, George, 4:1686 Hackl, Georg, 3:942 Hacky Sack®, 2:619 Hadlee, Richard, 3:1074 Hadow, Douglas, 3:1041 Hageborge, Otto, 2:474 Hagen, Walter, 2:692, 3:1307 Hahn, Kurt, 1:9 Haibin Teng, 2:718 Haines, Dan, 4:1411 Haines, Jackson, 4:1382
INDEX
Hainz, Christoph, 2:501 Hakanson, Walter, 4:1450 Halas, George, 2:625 Halazy, Oliver, 1:7 Haldane, John, 4:1645–1646 Hale, Edward Everett, 3:1253 Hall, Bob, 1:234 Hall, G. Stanley, 3:1181 Hall, Lars, 3:1158–1159 Hall, Rob, 3:1030 Haller, Gordon, 2:843 Halprin, Anna, 1:442 Halstead, Alfred, 4:1676–1677 Hamilton, Bethany, 2:543 Hamilton, Laird, 2:543 Hamilton, Tara, 4:1685 Hamm, Mia, 1:183, 1:250, 1:354, 2:810 Hamm, Paul, 2:718 Hammer, 4:1622, 4:1623 Hancock, George, 4:1449 Handball, team, 2:720–722, 3:1281 Handicapped sports. See Disability sport Handke, Peter, 3:939 Hang gliding, 2:722–724 Hanlon, Ned, 2:491 Hannibal, 3:1039 Hansson, O. B., 3:1124 Hardekopf, Cristina, 1:88 Harding, Tonya, 4:1387, 4:1674 Hargrove, Mike, 1:157, 1:167 Hargrove, Sharon, 1:167 Harlem Globetrotters, 1:171, 1:172 Harley Davidson, 3:1021, 3:1022 Harlin, John, 2:501 Harmsworth Trophy, 3:1018 Harness racing, 2:761–762 Harrer, Heinrich, 2:501 Harrington, Joey, 1:349 Harris, David, 1:196 Harris, William T., 3:1179 Harrison, C. Keith, 3:1326 Harroun, Ray, 2:794 Hartwell, Edward M., 3:1178 Harvard University, 2:811, 3:1324, 4:1449, 4:1508, 4:1509 Harvey, William, 4:1524 Hasiltudes, 2:874, 2:876–878 Hatcher, Billy, 4:1530
1773
Hatha yoga, 4:1735 Hautamaeki, Matti, 4:1397 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, 1:191 Hawk, Tony, 1:40, 2:507, 2:508, 4:1379, 4:1380, 4:1731 “Hawking,” 2:553 Hayashizake Jinsuke Shigenobu, 2:869 Hayes, Woody, 4:1675 Hazing, 2:724–727 Hazlitt, William, 4:1673 HBO, 4:1698 H’Doubler, Margaret, 3:1182 Head, Howard, 4:1598 Health and fitness. See Fitness Hearn, George, 4:1579 Heart disease. See Cardiovascular diseases Heath, Lady, 3:1115 Heckmair, Andreas, 2:500, 2:501 Heffelfinger, Walter “Pudge,” 2:625 Heiden, Eric, 3:1121 Heiden, Max, 2:720 Helley, W. S., 3:1198 Helmsley, Lord Francis, 1:211 Helton, Mike, 4:1530 Hemenway, Robert, 3:1327 Hemingway, Ernest, 3:937–938 Hemmings, Deon, 2:858–859 Hemmings, Fred, 4:1570 Henderson, George, 3:970 Hendricks, Agnes E. M. B. “Aggi,” 1:134 Henie, Sonja, 3:1118, 3:1119, 4:1383–1384 Henin, Justine, 1:189 Henin-Hardenne, Justine, 4:1608 Henley Regatta, 2:727–729 Henman, Tim, 4:1485 Henry, Franklin, 2:901 Henry, Jodie, 4:1578 Henry V, 3:936 Heptathlon, 2:729–731 Herbert, Charles, 3:1113 Herd, Franklin, 4:1622 Herkimer, Larry, 1:301 Hernandaz, Angela, 1:266 Hernández, Tirso, 3:1008 Herodotus, 3:966 Herr, Andy, 4:1529 Heterosexuality, defined, 2:753 Hetherington, Clark, 3:1182
H
1774
H
INDEX
Hewitt, Foster, 3:962–963 Hewitt, Lleyton, 1:126, 4:1606 HGH (human growth hormone), 3:1168 Hicks, Helen, 2:692 Hicks, Thomas, 3:1165 Hideo, Nomo, 1:117 Higgins, Bob, 1:146 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 3:1253 High bar, 2:716 High jump, 4:1619–1620, 4:1623 High-impact aerobics, 1:13 Highland Games, 2:731–734, 3:1333–1335, 4:1550–1551, 4:1632 Hill, Grant, 2:810 Hill, Lynn, 3:1044 Hill climbing auto racing, 1:133 Hillary, Edmund, 1:115, 3:1026–1030, 3:1044, 3:1076 Himalayas, 3:1044–1045. See also K2; Mount Everest Hingis, Martina, 1:308 Hinterstoisser, Andreas, 2:500 Hiraoka, Hiroshi, 2:860–861 Hirofumi, Daimatsu, 4:1678 Hise, Joseph Curtis, 3:1210 Hitchcock, Edward, 3:1178 Hitler, Adolf, 3:1105, 3:1106, 4:1504 Hitomi, Kinue, 2:867 HIV. See AIDS and HIV Hoad, Lew, 1:39 Hockey, field, 2:734–739 Hockey, ice, 2:739–745, 3:1118–1123. See also Lake Placid; National Hockey League (NHL) anti-jock movement and, 1:70 Canada, 1:282–283, 4:1545–1546 crimes related to, 3:922, 4:1478, 4:1502 Hockey Night in Canada, 3:962–963, 3:990, 3:1192 Maple Leaf Gardens, 3:962–964 memorabilia, 3:997 movies, 3:1049 prayer for, 4:1498 professional, 3:923 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Stanley Cup, 2:739, 4:1546–1548 women, 3:1123 Hockey, indoor, 2:738 Hockey, in-line, 2:745–747, 4:1394–1395 Hockey, underwater, 4:1646–1647 Hoeppner, Manfred, 3:1165–1166 Hoffman, Bob, 1:220, 1:221, 2:606, 3:1211–1212, 4:1510, 4:1686–1687 Hogan, Ben, 1:258, 3:989 Hogan, Michael, 2:636 Holder, C.F., 2:597 Holland, Jerome “Brud,” 2:812 Hollins, Marion, 2:693 Holmenkollen Ski Jump, 2:747–748, 4:1395 Holmenkollen Sunday, 2:748–750 Holmes, Alfred (Tup), 2:694 Holt, Lawrence, 1:9 Holyfield, Evander, 4:1738 Home field advantage, 2:750–752. See also Fan loyalty Homer, 3:935, 3:1247, 4:1718 Homophobia, 2:752–756, 3:987, 3:988, 4:1609. See also AIDS and HIV; Lesbianism feminist perspective, 2:576 Gay Games and, 2:661 sexuality in sports and, 4:1359 Honda motorcycles, 3:1022 Honduras, 2:756–758 Hoogenband, Pieter van den, 3:1109, 4:1578 Hoosiers, 3:1050 Hopman, Harry, 2:448 Horine, M. F., 4:1619 Horizontal bar, 2:716 Hornbein, Tom, 3:1029 Hornsby, Rogers, 1:149 Hornussen, 4:1581 Horse racing, 2:758–766, 3:937 animal rights and, 1:65 Argentina, 1:84 in art, 1:94 Ascot, 1:97–99 Australia, 3:1189–1190 Belgium, 1:186 Brazil, 1:252–253 carriage driving, 1:297–299 controversies, 2:763, 2:765 harness, 2:761–762 history, 2:758–759, 3:1282, 3:1283
INDEX
movies, 3:1050 New Zealand, 3:1072 performance enhancement, 2:763, 2:765, 3:1166 radio broadcast of, 3:1244, 3:1245 social aspects, 2:762–763 South Africa, 4:1455–1456 steeplechase, 2:762 thoroughbred, 2:759–761 United Kingdom, 4:1656 Horseback riding, 2:766–771 New Zealand, 3:1074 Portugal, 3:1202 Spain, 4:1463–1464 Horween, Arnold, 2:626 Hosoi, Christian, 4:1379 Hot dogging, 4:1408, 4:1409 Houston, Charles, 3:1028, 3:1030, 3:1045–1046 Houston, Oscar, 3:1028 Houston Astros, 4:1530 Houston Rockets, 4:1673–1674 Howard, Dwight, 1:348 Hoy, William “Dummy,” 1:148 Hoyt, Dick and Rick, 1:192 Hsi En-ting, 4:1590 Hsu Shao-Fa, 4:1589 Huang Liang, 4:1589 Hubbard, William Dehart, 4:1618 Hudson, Robert A., 3:1308 Hughes, Sarah, 1:308 Hughes, Thomas, 3:1176, 3:1177, 3:1253, 4:1427 Hulman, Tony, 2:794 Human Genome Project, 4:1513 Human growth hormone (HGH), 3:1168 Human movement studies, 2:771–776. See also Physical education Human services, 3:955 Humphrey, Doris, 1:439 Hungary, 2:776–779, 3:1200, 3:1201, 4:1588– 1590 Hunt, H. C. John, 3:1028–1029 Hunt, Lamar, 2:629, 4:1563 Hunter, C. J., 3:1168 Hunter seat horseback riding, 2:769 Hunting, 2:779–785, 3:937. See also Fishing animal rights and, 1:65, 1:66–67 clubs, 2:784 falconry, 2:553–557 foxhunting, 1:65–66, 2:640–644
1775
historical aspects, 2:779–780 methods, 2:780–781 Portugal, 3:1202 regulation of, 2:782–783 safety, 2:780–781 underwater, 4:1647 unrestricted, dangers of, 2:782 weapons, 2:781–782 women in, 2:785 Huntsman World Senior Games, 3:1342 Hurdles, 4:1627, 4:1630, 4:1631 Hurling, 1:277, 1:278, 2:786–787 Husing, Ted, 3:1245 Hussein, Ibrahim, 1:234 Huston, Tillinghast, 4:1732 Hutchinson, Jock, 1:258 Hveger, Ragnhild, 4:1578 Hyatt, John Wesley, 1:194 Hyde, Lloyd, 2:725 Hyperlipidemia, 2:535 Hyperreality, 3:1208–1209 Hypertension, 2:535
I IAAF. See International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) Iaido, 2:869–872, 2:896, 2:897 Iba, Hank, 1:175 IBM, 4:1482, 4:1604 Ibos, 3:1086 Ice boating, 1:208–210, 3:1311–1314 Ice hockey. See Hockey, ice Ice skating. See Skating, ice figure; Skating, ice speed Iceberg profile, 3:1173 Iditarod, 2:788–790, 4:1416, 4:1422 Iliad, 3:935, 3:1247 Imagery sports performance, role in, 3:1001 sports venues, promoted in, 4:1667 Imagined communities, sports teams as, 4:1445– 1447, 4:1470–1471 Inclusion, ethical issue of, 4:1665–1666 Indart, Jose Ramon, 3:1157 Indexing services, periodical, 3:952 India, 1:102, 1:104, 2:790–793, 4:1522 Indian motorcycles, 3:1021 Indian wrestling, 1:90
I
1776
I
INDEX
Indianapolis 500, 1:133, 1:135, 2:793–795, 3:1244 Indianapolis Pan American Games (1987), 3:1145– 1146 Individualism in sport, issues of, 4:1672–1673 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1997), 1:5, 1:6 Indonesia, 1:102–103, 4:1372–1376, 4:1462 Indoor hockey, 2:738 Indoor sport facilities. See Stadiums Ingels, Art, 2:890–891 Ingwerson, Bert, 2:626 Injuries, youth, 1:307–308, 2:795–797, 4:1527– 1528 Injury, 2:797–801, 3:987, 4:1525–1528, 4:1667. See also Athletic training; Sports medicine athletic training and, 1:122 in boxing, 1:245–246 exercise, adverse effects of, 2:536–537 knees and, 1:198–199 overuse, 1:197, 1:269, 4:1512 pain, 3:1138–1142 prevention, 1:200–201, 2:599–600, 2:780–781 professionalism, increased injuries and, 3:1220– 1221 Injury risk in women’s sport, 1:197, 1:198, 2:801–806, 3:1257–1262, 4:1527–1528 In-line hockey. See Hockey, in-line In-line skating. See Skating, in-line Innebandy, 2:609, 2:806–807 Innsbruck, Austria luge, origins of, 3:941 Olympics, 3:1120–1121 Intellectual property, 3:923 Interallied Games, 2:807–809 Intercollegiate athletics, 2:809–817, 3:1177. See also Amateur vs. professional debate; College athletes; World University Games commercialization of, 1:347–351 controversies, 2:813–816, 4:1531–1532 divisions, 2:809–810 Drake Group, 1:48, 2:477–479 football, 1:340–341, 2:811 future aspects, 2:816–817 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
governing bodies, 2:811–812 historical aspects, 2:810–811 radio broadcasts, 3:1243–1245 social mobility and, 4:1440 speedball, 4:1480–1482 television and, 1:174–175, 1:350, 2:628, 3:991– 992, 4:1476, 4:1483, 4:1500 tennis, 4:1608 track and field, 4:1631–1632 trends in, 2:813–816 Ultimate, 4:1643 violence and, 4:1672–1673 women in, 1:343–344, 1:346, 2:812–813 youth leagues and, 3:1187 International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), 4:1531, 4:1618, 4:1622, 4:1625, 4:1632 false start rule, 4:1629 Golden League, 4:1622 race walking events, 3:1233 Senegal, center in, 3:1337 women’s running events, 3:968 world records certified by, 4:1624 International Olympic Academy, 2:817–820 International Olympic Committee (IOC), 1:325, 3:1107, 3:1116–1117, 4:1505. See also Olympics; Olympics, Summer; Olympics, Winter amateurs, issue of (See Amateur vs. professional debate) codified rules and policies, 3:919–920 ethics and, 4:1531–1533 Paralympics and, 3:1152 pentathlon and, 3:1158, 3:1159 South Africa, policy toward, 4:1458, 4:1460 Special Olympics authorized by, 4:1467 sports medicine, role in, 4:1525 substance abuse policies, 3:919, 3:1167, 3:1168 technology, controlling innovations due to, 4:1599, 4:1601 trademark protection by, 3:923 International Paralympic Committee (IPC), 2:462 International politics, 2:820–825, 4:1506–1508. See also Sport and national identity International Silent Games. See Deaflympics International Skating Union (ISU), 4:1383, 4:1386– 1387, 4:1389 International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP), 3:1224–1225
INDEX
International Tennis Federation (ITF) amateur/professional tournaments, 4:1606–1607 Veterans Circuit, 4:1604 Internet, 2:825–832 fans, athletes and, 2:828–829 fantasy sports and, 2:566 gambling and, 2:830–831 globalization, 2:827–828 information and dialogue, 2:826–827 International Olympic Academy and, 2:819 Major League Baseball (MLB), used by, 4:1499 overview, 2:825–826 periodicals, online access to, 3:952–953 ticket sales, 3:979 video games, 2:829–830 Interorganizational networks, 3:958 Interpretive sociology, 2:832–836 Inzer Designs, 3:1213 IOC. See International Olympic Committee (IOC) IPC (International Paralympic Committee), 2:462 Iran, 1:103–104, 2:836–839, 2:844–847 Ireland, 2:635–638, 2:839–842, 3:1271, 3:1298. See also Camogie; Hurling Iron deficiency anemia, 1:57, 1:58 Ironman Triathlon, 2:842–844, 3:1342, 4:1565 Irvine, Andrew, 3:1027–1028 Irvine, Marion, 3:1342 Iselin, Hope Goddard, 3:1321 Islam, sport and, 2:497–498, 3:1250, 3:1255, 3:1256 Iran, 2:838–839 silat, 4:1373, 4:1374 Islamic Countries’ Women’s Sports Solidarity Games, 2:844–847 Israel, 2:847–850, 3:945, 3:1110, 3:1116 ISSP (International Society of Sport Psychology), 3:1224–1225 Italy, 2:850–855. See also Rome, ancient Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics (1956), 3:1120 motorcycle racing, 3:1021 soccer, 3:1264, 4:1429 women and sports, 2:854, 4:1698 ITF (International Tennis Federation) amateur/professional tournaments, 4:1606– 1607 Veterans Circuit, 4:1604 Itosu, Anko, 2:887 Iyengar yoga, 4:1735
1777
J Jackie Robinson Story, The, 3:1047–1048 Jacklin, Tony, 3:1308 Jacks, Sam, 3:1265 Jackson, Andy, 1:146 Jackson, Phil, 1:173, 1:249, 4:1738 Jackson, Reggie, 1:150, 4:1733 Jackson, “Shoeless Joe,” 1:149 Jaffee, Irving, 3:1118 Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig, 2:714, 3:1178, 3:1283 Jai alai, 3:1009, 3:1156 Jamaica, 2:856–859. See also Commonwealth Games James, C. L. R., 3:1235 James, Charmayne, 3:1276 James, LeBron, 1:111, 2:508, 2:510 Jameson, Frederic, 3:1058 Jansen, Dan, 3:1123 Jansma, Paul, 1:5 Japan, 2:859–867. See also Baseball; Japanese martial arts, traditional; Sumo archery, 1:76 Asian Games and, 1:101, 1:102, 1:105 beach volleyball, 4:1683 football, 1:118–119 future, 2:867 martial arts, 1:35 modernized martial arts, 2:864 motorcycle racing, 3:1022 Nagano Olympics (1998), 2:860, 3:1123 physical education in, 3:1179 Sapporo Olympics (1972), 2:860, 3:1119, 3:1120 sepak takraw, history of, 3:1345 table tennis, 4:1586, 4:1589–1590 traditional sports, 2:864–867 volleyball, 4:1678–1679 weightlifting, 4:1687 westernized sports, history of, 2:860–863 women and sport, 2:866–867, 2:869, 3:1055– 1056 Japanese martial arts, traditional, 2:864, 2:867, 2:868–872, 3:939. See also Judo; Jujutsu; Karate; Kendo aikido, 1:35–38 naginata (naginatado), 2:867–872, 3:1054–1056 for women, 2:867, 2:869, 2:888–890, 2:896 Jardine, Douglas, 1:100 Jaripeo, 3:1005–1006
J
1778
K
INDEX
Javelin, 2:701, 4:1621–1623 Jazz dance, 1:434 Jazzercise, 1:12, 2:608 J’drzejczak, Otylia, 3:1195 Jeffries, Jim, 3:987 Jenkins, Dan, 4:1539 Jennings, Lynn, 1:401, 1:402 Jensen, Viggo, 4:1686 Jihong Zhou, 2:477 Jnana yoga, 4:1735 Jogging, 2:872–874, 3:968–970 Johansson, Hjalmar, 2:474, 2:475 Johnson, Ben, 4:1531 Johnson, Bill, 3:1121, 4:1403 Johnson, Byron Bancroft, 1:145 Johnson, Earvin “Magic” as athlete celebrity, 1:111 as college athlete, 2:810 health issues, 1:30–1:33 ranking, 1:50, 1:173 Johnson, Irvin, 4:1687 Johnson, Jack, 1:242, 3:987, 3:1006 Johnson, Junior, 3:1083 Johnson, Richard, 1:146 Johnson, Robert L., 3:1134 Johnson, W. T., 3:1274–1275 Johnson, Wait C., 2:808 Johnson, Walter, 1:149 Joly, Andrée, 4:1385 Jones, Bill T., 1:442 Jones, Dot, 1:90, 1:91 Jones, Marion, 3:1167, 3:1168, 4:1627 Jones, Parnelli, 2:794 Jones, Rammel, 2:862 Jones, Robert, 4:1382 Jones, Robert Tyre (Bobby), 1:258, 2:693, 3:988, 4:1543 Jordan, Michael, 1:339, 3:1081, 4:1444 as athlete celebrity, 1:110–112, 2:828 as athlete hero, 1:115 brand management, 1:251 as college athlete, 2:810 endorsements and, 1:354, 2:506, 2:508, 2:510 ranking, 1:50, 1:173 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Jousting, 2:874–879, 3:935, 3:1161, 4:1357– 1358, 4:1475 development, 2:877–878 origins, 2:876–877 practice, 2:878–879 Joyner-Kersee, Jackie, 2:731, 3:1146 Jubinville, Karyn, 1:91 Judaism, sport and, 3:1255, 3:1256 Judo, 1:37, 2:879–883 Athens Olympics, 2004, controversy at, 3:1109 Japan, 2:864, 2:867 Jujutsu, 1:36, 2:879, 2:881, 2:884–885, 3:1010, 3:1011 Julin, Magda, 3:1118 Jumping. See Track and field—jumping and throwing
K K2, 3:1000, 3:1030, 3:1045 Kahanamoku, Duke Paoa, 4:1566, 4:1578 Kailus, Mount, 3:1038–1039 Kajinosuke, Tanikaze, 4:1561 Kalganov, Michael, 2:847 Kallio, Elin, 2:588 Kanazawa, Hirokazu, 2:888 Kanjuro, Shibata, XXI, 2:872 Kano, Jigoro, 1:36, 2:879–881, 2:884 Kansas City Chiefs, 4:1563 Karate, 2:886–890, 3:1010 Karma yoga, 4:1734 Karolyi, Bela, 1:308, 2:716 Karppinnen, Pertti, 3:1295 Karras, Alex, 4:1675 Karsavina, Tamara, 1:438 Karting, 1:133, 1:137, 2:890–891 Kasparek, Fritz, 2:501 Kawasaki motorcycles, 3:1022 Kayaking. See Canoeing and kayaking Kazmaier, Bill, 3:1213 Kee Chung Sohn, 3:905 Keeler, “Wee” Willie, 1:148 Kehoe, George, 4:1449 Keino, Kipchoge, 2:898, 2:900 Kellerman, Annette, 2:475, 4:1578, 4:1580 Kelley, Charlie, 3:1031 Kelley, Essie, 3:1144 Kelly, Jack, 2:728, 3:1295 Kelly, John, 3:1295
INDEX
Kelly, Michael “King,” 1:148 Kelty, Agnes, 2:849 Kemari, 2:865–866 Kemp, Dixon, 3:1315 Kendo, 2:864, 2:867, 2:892–898, 4:1666. See also Iaido Dai Nihon Butokukai, 2:895 equipment, 2:893 future of, 2:897 history and development, 2:892–893 international spread of, 2:897 Meiji period kenjutsu, 2:893–894 post-war democratization, 2:896 pre-war militarism, 2:895–896 rei, 2:895 schools, kenjutsu in, 2:894–895 tradition vs. sport, 2:897 training methodology, 2:893 Kenkichi, Sakakibara, 2:894 Kennedy, John F., 2:902 Kenteris, Costas, 3:1109, 3:1110 Kentucky Derby, 3:1244, 3:1245 Kenya, 2:898–900 Kenyatta, Jomo, 2:899 Kerrigan, Nancy, 4:1387, 4:1674 Kickboxing. See Taekwando Kidder, Kieran, 3:1213 Killander, Ernst, 3:1124 Killanin, Lord, 3:1117, 4:1462 Killlian, George E., 4:1717–1718 Killy, Jean-Claude, 3:1120, 4:1402, 4:1403 Kim, Jimmy, 4:1594 Kim Un-yong, 4:1593 Kindlundh, Anna, 4:1573 Kiner, Ralph, 1:336 Kinesiology, 1:196–199, 2:900–902. See also Physical education; Sport science King, Billie Jean, 1:39, 2:602, 3:931, 4:1606–1609, 4:1693 Kingsley, Charles, 3:1253 Kinney, Abbott, 4:1668 Kiptanui, Moses, 1:23 Kiraly, Karch, 4:1682 Kirby, Karolyn, 4:1682, 4:1683 Kirk, William, 3:1188 Kirkland, Gelsey, 1:440 Kite, Tom, 3:1155 Kite sports, 1:42, 2:542, 3:903–904, 3:906
1779
Kjellstrom, Bjorn, 3:1124, 3:1125 Klemperer, Wolfgang, 4:1423 Klobukowska, Eva, 2:674 Knees, injury and, 1:198–199 Knight, Bob, 1:175, 4:1530 Knight, Phil, 1:111, 1:402 Knight Commission, 1:342–343 Knox, Alexander, 3:1048 Knudsen, Dane Fredrik, 1:421, 2:721 Knute Rockne, All American, 3:1047–1048 Koch, Bill, 1:54, 1:56, 4:1405 Koch, Konrad, 2:720 Kochakian, Charles, 4:1687 Koetter, Dirk, 3:1326 Kolbe, Peter-Michael, 3:1295 Kolesar, Judy, 2:888 Koll, Edward R., 2:725 Konishi, Yasuhiro, 2:887 Kono, Tommy, 4:1687 Konopacka, Halina, 3:1194–1195 Korbut, Olga, 1:308, 2:715, 2:804 Korda, Petr, 4:1609 Koreas, 3:905–907, 4:1587, 4:1591–1593 Korfball, 3:907–911, 3:1069 Korzeniowski, Robert, 3:1195, 3:1234 Koss, Johann Olav, 3:1123 Kostélic, Janica, 3:1123 Koufax, Sandy, 1:149, 3:1255, 4:1712 Kournikova, Anna, 1:183, 2:510, 4:1502, 4:1609, 4:1699–1700 Kozlova, Anna, 4:1581 Kraenzlein, Alvin, 4:1627 Kramer, Ingrid, 2:475 Krankl, Hans, 1:133 Kreuter, Chad, 4:1531 Krieger, Heidi, 3:1166 Kripalu yoga, 4:1736 Krone, Julie, 2:763 Kronfeld, Robert, 4:1423 Krzyzewski, Mike, 2:810 Kuerten, Gustavo, 2:509 Kundalini yoga, 4:1736 Kung fu. See Wushu (kung fu) Kunisato,Naganuma Shirozaemon, 2:893 Kuparento, Jodaki, 3:1148 Kurz, Toni, 2:500 Kusanku, 2:887 Kusner, Kathy, 2:763
K
1780
INDEX
Kusocinski, Janusz, 3:1195 Kuznetsova, Elena, 4:1609 Kuznetsova, Svetlana, 4:1609 Kwan, Michelle, 1:308 Kyudo, 2:864, 2:867, 2:868, 2:870–872
L
L
Labor issues, professional sports, 3:923. See also Sexual harassment; Unionism injuries to athletes, 3:1220 rodeo cowboys, strike by, 3:1274–1275 salary caps, 3:1322–1323 soccer, 4:1430–1431 tennis, 4:1606–1607 Lacoste, Rene, 1:39 Lacrosse, 3:911–918, 3:1061, 3:1062 Canada, 1:283 future, 3:917 governing bodies, 3:915–917 history, 3:911–913 modern, growth of, 3:913–916 professional, 3:917 rules and play, 3:916–917 for women, 3:914–917 Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), 1:385, 3:930 LaDue, Florence, 3:1274 Laguerre, Andre, 4:1539 Laird, Dr. Bob, 2:843, 2:844 Laird, Ron, 3:1234 Lajoie, Nap, 1:149 Lajunen, Sampan, 3:1123 Lake Placid, 3:918, 3:1118–1119, 3:1121 Lakewood, California, Spur Posse case, 4:1671–1672 LaLanne, Jack, 1:220, 2:601, 2:606–607, 4:1669 Lambeau, Curly, 2:625 Lambert, Michael, 3:1213 Lambert, Raymond, 3:1028 Lampell, Millard, 3:1048 Landis, Kennesaw Mountain, 4:1711 Landry, Tom, 4:1497 Lang, Otto, 4:1400 Langer, Gustave Harold, 3:1342 Laos, 4:1461–1462 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Lardner, Ring, 4:1537 Larner, Jeremy, 3:938 Larsen, Don, 4:1733 Larwood, Harold, 1:101 Laser, Christine, 2:731 Lasutina, Larissa, 3:1123 Latfod, Bob, 3:1084 Lauda, Nikki, 1:133 Laver, Rod, 1:39, 4:1605, 4:1693 Law, 3:918–924. See also Collective bargaining; Economics and public policy; Free agency; Sexual harassment; Title IX; Unionism athlete rights, 3:920 contract law, 3:919 Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS), 3:919, 3:920 crimes, 3:922 future, 3:923 history, 3:919 intellectual property, 3:923 labor issues (See Labor issues, professional sports) NCAA, 3:920–921 Olympic movement, 3:919–920 periodicals, 3:951 prayer by athletes, constitutional issues of, 3:1215– 1217 sports agents, 3:922 torts, 3:922 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 3:923 Lawn tennis, 1:38–40, 2:447 Le Mans, 1:133, 3:924–925 League of Their Own, A, 3:1050 League-revenue sharing. See Revenue sharing Leaves of Grass, 3:936 Lee, Haeng Ung, 4:1593 Lee, Jeanette, 4:1670 Lee, Sammy, 2:475, 2:476 Lee v. Weisman, 3:1216 Legaignoux, Bruno and Dominique, 3:903 Legrange, Louis, 4:1393 Leisure sports, participation in, 3:958 Leland, George Adams, 2:861, 3:1179 Lemaire, Lyn, 2:843 Lemon, Meadowlark, 1:172 Lendl, Ivan, 4:1605 Lengendre, Robert, 4:1618 Lenglen, Suzanne, 1:39, 4:1606, 4:1693 Lenin, Vladimir, 3:998
INDEX
Lenoir, Jean, 3:1017 Leonard, Benny, 1:243 Leonard, Lee, 2:523 Leonard, Ray, 3:1144 Lepennec, Emilie, 2:718 Lepper, Merry, 3:968 Lerner, Helen, 2:597 Lesbianism, 2:576, 3:926–931, 4:1609. See also Homophobia competitiveness in sport and, 3:928–929 future, 3:931–932 historical foundations, 3:926–927 homonegative attitudes, 3:926, 3:929–931 recognition of lesbians in sport, 3:930–931 sexuality and sport, 3:927–928 success of women athletes and, 3:928 vocabulary, 3:926 Lesgaft, Pyotr, 3:1179 Leslie, Lisa, 1:174, 2:510 Lever, Sir Ashton, 1:79 Levin, Jenifer, 3:938 Lewis, Carl, 1:115, 3:1146, 4:1618, 4:1623, 4:1627 Lewis, Dio, 2:861 Lewis, Duffy, 2:585 Lewis, Joe, 4:1733 Lewis, Jonas Norman, 1:336 Lewis, William Henry, 2:812, 3:1324 Lexan, Ben, 1:54 Li Bong-ju, 1:234 Liboton, Roland, 1:188 Liddell, Eric, 3:1335 Lieb, Fred, 4:1537 Liebling, A. J., 4:1539–1540 Lifeguarding, 3:932–934, 4:1564–1566 Lilienthal, Otto, 4:1423 Lillard, Joe, 2:628 Lillehammer Olympics (1994), 3:1122–1123 Lima, Vanderlei, 3:1110 Limas, Arlene, 4:1594 Lin Ma, 4:1591 Lincoln, Abraham, 3:1233 Lincoln, D. F., 3:1179 Lind, John, 4:1569 Ling, Per Henrik, 3:1178, 4:1524 Ling Association, 3:1066–1068, 3:1179 Linton, Arthur, 3:1165 Lipa, Elisabeta, 3:1295
1781
Lipinski, Tara, 1:308, 3:1229 Liston, Sonny, 1:243 Literature, 3:934–939. See also Magazines; Sportswriting and reporting epic poems and feats, 3:935–936 modern sports literature, 3:936–939 narrative theory, 3:1056–1058 physical education supported by, 3:1176–1178 Little Women, 4:1489 Livy, 3:1039 Lloyd, Earl, 1:172 Loader, Danyon, 3:1074 Lobo, Rebecca, 1:174, 2:810 Local-revenue sharing, 3:1263 Locke, John, 3:1177 Lockouts, collective bargaining and, 1:338, 2:657 Loie, Fuller, 1:439 London, Jack, 4:1415–1416 London Marathon, 2:874, 3:967, 3:970 London Olympics (1908), 3:1118 London Olympics (1948), 4:1657, 4:1691 Londoner Norton, 3:1021 Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, 3:938 Long horse (vault), 2:717 Long jump, 4:1618, 4:1623 Longboat, Thomas, 1:281, 3:1064 Longbow, English, 1:77–78 Longest Yard, The, 3:1049 Longfellow, Wilbert, 3:932, 3:933 Longhi, Stefano, 2:501 Lonormand, Sebastian, 3:1148 Lopes, Carlos, 3:1204 Lopez, Steven, 4:1594 Lord, Thomas, 3:940 Lord’s Cricket Ground, 1:99, 3:939–941 Los Angeles Dodgers, 3:995, 3:1009, 4:1530, 4:1710 Los Angeles Lakers, 4:1673–1674 Los Angeles Olympics (1984), 3:906, 3:1115, 3:1116, 4:1483–1485, 4:1506–1507 Louganis, Greg, 1:31–1:33, 2:476, 2:477 Louis, Joe, 1:243, 1:246, 3:1081, 3:1236 Louys, Spiridon, 3:967 Love III, Davis, 2:509 Love Me Tender, 3:938 Lovelock, John Edward, 3:1073 Lovin, Fita, 1:401 Low-impact aerobics, 1:13
L
1782
INDEX
Lowry, Philip, 1:159 Lowry, Sunny, 4:1358 LPGA. See Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Lucas, Jerry, 1:175 Lucas, Tad, 3:1274, 3:1276 Luce, Henry, 4:1539 Lucian, 3:966 Ludodiversity, folk games and, 1:185 Luge, 2:542, 3:941–943 Lunn, Arnold, 4:1398–1400 Luque, Adolfo, 1:155 Lusko, Cammie, 1:224 Luther, Martin, 3:1252 Luyendyk, Arie, 2:794 Lydiard, Arthur, 3:968–970 Lynn, Fred, 2:586 Lynn, Peter, 3:903
M
M
Mable, Alice, 4:1606 Maccabiah Games, 3:944–947 MacFadden, Bernarr, 1:219–1:221, 2:606 MacGregor, John, 1:288, 1:289 Mackenzie, Alister, 3:988 MacLean, John, 2:843 Maclennan, Hugh Dan, 4:1362, 4:1363 Macredy, R. J., 3:1198 Madison Square Garden, 3:947–948, 3:1274, 3:1275 boxing and, 1:243, 1:247 statuary, 1:94 Maehata, Hideko, 2:867 Magazines, 3:948–954, 4:1475. See also Literature; Sportswriting and reporting abstract and indexing services, 3:951–952 academic sport and physical education periodicals, 3:949–951, 3:959, 3:1175–1176, 3:1223 full-text and online access, 3:952–953 future, 3:953 general sport, 3:948, 4:1538–1539 memorabilia, information on, 3:997 newsletters and bulletins, 3:949 sport-specific, 3:948–949, 3:970, 3:1046, 3:1211, 3:1213, 4:1510, 4:1686 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Mahoney, Mary, 1:245 Maier, Hermann, 3:1123 Major Indoor Lacrosse League (MILL), 3:917 Major League, 3:1050 Major League Baseball (MLB), 3:923, 4:1522. See also Free agency; Unionism; World Series; Wrigley Field; specific teams economics, public policy and, 2:489 endorsements and, 2:509 fan behavior, 4:1479 franchise relocation and, 2:651 Internet and, 4:1499 radio broadcasts, 3:1240, 3:1241, 3:1244–1246, 4:1712 religion and, 3:1255 revenue sharing, 3:1263–1264 salary caps, 3:1323 sponsorship and, 4:1483–1485 sports psychology, use of, 3:1170 substance abuse issues, 3:1166–1167 team ownership, 3:1131, 3:1133–1136 television broadcasts, 1:163–164, 3:992, 4:1485 ticket sales, 4:1474–1475 Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA). See Unionism Malaysia, 1:358, 3:1345–1348, 4:1372–1376, 4:1461–1463 Male hormones, synthetic, 3:1116 Mallory, George Leigh, 3:1026–1028, 3:1038 Malone, Karl, 1:32, 1:173 Malone, Moses, 1:173 Malya, netball in, 3:1067 Man and Wife, 3:936 Management, 3:954–962. See also Economics and public policy; Marketing; Ownership academic study of, 3:959 allied industries, 3:959–961 as coordination, 3:957–958 defining the field, 3:954–956 economic impact of sports industry, 3:958–959 facility management, 2:546–551 future, 3:961 periodicals, 3:951 services, classifying, 3:956–957 Manchester City, 3:995 Manchester United, 1:248, 1:249, 3:995–996, 3:1132 Mandela, Nelson, 3:1236, 4:1458 Mangiarotti, Edoardo, 2:581 Manning, Peyton, 2:810
INDEX
Mantegazza, Paolo, 2:852 Mantle, Mickey, 1:149, 4:1734 Maori rugby players, 3:1072, 3:1076–1077 Maple Leaf Gardens, 3:962–964 Maracana Stadium, 3:964–965 Maradona, Diego, 4:1709 Marathon and distance running, 3:965–971, 4:1627–1628, 4:1630, 4:1631. See also Boston Marathon Athens Olympics (2004), 3:1109, 3:1110 jogging inspired by, 2:873–874, 3:968–970 Kenyan participation, 2:899–900 Native American running, 3:969 New Zealand, 3:1075 Olympics, 3:966–967, 3:1204 Portugal, 3:1204 women, 3:967–968 Marathon canoeing, 1:290–291 Marbury, Stephon, 1:348 “March Madness,” 1:175 Marciano, Rocky, 1:243 Marey, Etienne-Jules, 3:1179 Mariani, Carolina, 1:88 Marino, Dan, 4:1738 Maris, Roger, 1:149, 3:1166, 4:1733 Marketing, 3:971–980. See also Commodification and commercialization; Media-sports complex; Ownership; Spectator consumption behavior; Sponsorship; Sport tourism; Sporting goods industry basics, 3:971 current practices, 3:975–978 facility naming rights, 2:551–553 future, 3:978–979 mascots and, 3:982 memorabilia, 3:996–998 newspaper sports pages, 3:1079 of Olympics (See Olympics) overview, 3:971–973 periodicals, 3:951 process, 3:973–975 of tennis, 4:1604, 4:1608–1610 United Kingdom, 4:1658–1659 Marshall, Mike, 2:619 Marshall, Nancy, 1:168 Martial arts, 3:939. See also Japanese martial arts, traditional; Judo; Jujutsu; Kendo; Silat; Taekwando; Wushu China, 1:310
1783
mental conditioning, used for, 3:1000 mixed, 3:1010–1012 silat, 4:1372–1376 tai chi, 4:1595–1597 Martin, Casey, 1:7 Martin, Christy, 1:244 Marx, Karl, 3:1206, 4:1505–1506 Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), 1:319, 1:387, 3:939–940 Mascots, 1:162, 3:980–985 controversies, 3:982–984, 4:1667 current, 3:981–982 perspectives, 3:984–985 Masculinity, 3:985–988, 4:1360, 4:1675 Mason, James, 3:954 Masotta, Katrina, 2:738 Massey, Christopher Michael, 4:1412 Masters games, 3:1342–1344 Masters Tournament, 3:988–990 Matete, Samual, 1:23 Mathewson, Christy, 1:149, 2:625 Mathias, Christian, 1:210 Matsui, Hideki, 1:154, 2:861 Matterhorn, 3:1040 Mattes, Roland, 4:1575, 4:1578 Matthes, Ruthie, 3:1035 Maturation, defined, 2:703 Mauermayer, Gisela, 2:730 Mauritzi, C.F., 2:474 Mayans, 3:1003–1005 Mayer, Helene, 2:582 Mayer, Hermann, 1:133 Mays, Willie, 1:149, 1:157, 4:1710 Ma’ysz, Adam, 3:1195 Mazzinghi, Sandro, 2:854 MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club). See Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) McCarthy, E. Jerome, 3:973 McCartney, Kathleen, 2:843 McCloy, Charles, 3:1179 McCormack, Mark, 1:26 McCormick, Kelly, 2:476 McCormick, Pat, 2:476 McCoy, Georgia, 2:598 McDaniel, Stephen, 2:826 McDonald, Les, 1:192 McDonald’s (company), 1:111 McEnroe, John, 1:39, 4:1605 McFadden, Bernarr, 2:880, 2:884
M
1784
M
INDEX
McGee, Maz, 4:1563 McGraw, John, 1:148 McGwire, Mark, 1:160, 3:1166 McHale, Kevin, 1:173 McKenley, Herb, 2:857, 2:858 McKinley, Mount, 3:1044 McLane, David, 2:745 McLaren, Bruce, 3:1073–1074 McLish, Rachel, 1:224 McManus, Sean, 3:1192 McNally, Dave, 1:150, 1:337, 2:654 McNamee, Graham, 3:1190, 3:1245, 4:1476, 4:1712 McNeil v. NFL, 4:1651 McPhail, Larry, 4:1733 Mears, Rick, 2:795 Media-sports complex, 3:961, 3:990–996, 4:1476–1478. See also ESPN; Magazines; Movies; Play-by-play announcing; Radio; Sportswriting and reporting; X games debates, 3:993–994 deregulation, new technology, and globalization, 3:994–995 Eurosport, 2:530–532 future, 3:996, 3:1082 government intervention in sports broadcasting, 3:993 history, 3:990–991 mountain biking, coverage of, 3:1032 national identity, representing, 3:1082 newspapers, 3:990–991, 3:1078–1083 Robinson, Jackie, story of, 3:1047–1048 sports-television relationship/transformation, 3:991–993 (See also Television) superleagues and media control, 3:995 symbiosis and vertical integration, 3:995–996, 3:1134 synthetic images (hyperreality), 3:1208–1209 women’s sports, coverage of, 4:1697–1700 Medicine, sports. See Sports medicine Medline/PubMed, 3:952 Melbourne Olympics (1956), 1:125 Melges, Buddy, 1:54 Melzack, Ronald, 3:1139 Memorabilia industry, 3:996–998 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Mendez, Jose, 1:155 Mendoza, Daniel, 1:242 Mendy, Jean Baptiste, 3:1338 Mental conditioning, 3:998–1003, 3:1012–1016. See also Coaching; Psychology Mental health, 2:536 Mercedes-Benz, 4:1604 Mercer v. Duke University, 4:1613–1614 Merckx, Eddy, 1:188 Merivale, Charles, 1:206 Merlin, Joseph, 4:1391 Merrill, Janice, 3:1144 Mesoamerican ball court games, 3:1003–1006 Messersmith, Andy, 1:150, 1:337, 2:654 Messner, Reinhold, 3:1029, 3:1030 Metamorphoses, 3:935 Mexico, 3:1005–1010 Central American and Caribbean Games, 3:1006– 1007 future, 3:1009–1010 history, 3:1005–1006 Mesoamerican ball court games, 3:1003–1006 mountain climbing, 3:1038 Olympic Games, 3:1008–1009 organizations, 3:1009 Pan American Games, 3:1007–1008, 3:1143, 3:1144 participant and spectator sports, 3:1006 professional sports, 3:1009 rodeos, 3:1273, 3:1278 women and sport, 3:1009 Mexico City Olympics (1968), 1:17, 3:1008–1009, 4:1506, 4:1526 Meyer, Debbie, 4:1578 Meyer, Starke, 1:209 Miami Dolphins, 4:1479 Michigan State University, 1:350 Micronutrients, 3:1092–1094 Middle Ages, sports in, 3:1161–1162 Middle Tennessee State University, 3:984 Middle-distance races, 4:1627–1628, 4:1630, 4:1631 Mikami, Takayuki, 2:888 MILL (Major Indoor Lacrosse League), 3:917 Miller, Charles, 1:254 Miller, Gin, 1:13 Miller, Johnny, 1:258 Miller, Marvin, 1:337 Miller, Warren, 4:1409 Milliat, Alice, 2:574
INDEX
Milo of Crotona, 3:1210, 4:1686 Milovich, Dimitrije, 4:1419 Minerals, healthy eating and, 2:457 Minnesota Vikings, 3:1168 Minor leagues, 1:146 Miracle on Ice, 3:918, 3:1121, 4:1487 Miresmaili, Arash, 3:1109 Miske, Billy, 3:1243 Missett, Judy Sheppard, 1:12, 2:608 Mitchell, Abe, 3:1307 Mitchell, Billy, 3:1148 Mitchell, E. D., 4:1480 Mitchell, Jackie, 1:153 Mitchell, Maxine, 2:582 Mitford, Mary Russel, 3:936 Mittermaier, Rosi, 4:1402 Mixed martial arts, 3:1010–1012 MLB. See Major League Baseball (MLB) Moceanu, Dominique, 1:308 Modern dance, 1:434, 1:438, 2:772–773 Modernism, 3:1205–1207 Mogul skiing, 4:1408, 4:1409 Molino, Cosimo, 2:852 Monday Night Football, 3:1191–1192, 4:1479 Mont Blanc, 3:1040 Montagu, Ivor, 4:1588 Montana, Joe, 2:810 Montgolfier brothers, 1:142, 3:1148 Montgomery, Jim, 4:1578 Montgomery, John, 4:1423 Montgomery, Tim, 3:1167 Montherlant, Henry de, 3:937 Montreal Canadiens, 4:1547 Montreal Olympics (1976), 3:971, 3:1115, 3:1116, 4:1482, 4:1506 Moolenijzer, Nicolaas, 3:908 Moore, Steve, 4:1502 Moos, Bill, 1:349 Morceli, Noureddine, 1:23 Morgan, Joe, 1:150 Morgan, John N., 3:1342 Morgan, William G., 4:1676–1677 Moriarty, Jay, 2:543, 2:544 Morris, Alwyn, 1:281 Morris, Mark, 1:440 Morris, “Old” Tom, 1:256 Morrison, Cynthia, 2:732 Morrison, Fred, 1:41 Morrison, Tommy, 1:31, 1:33
1785
Morriss, Violette, 3:1024 Morse, Samuel F. B., 3:1153–1154 Moscow Olympics (1980), 3:999, 3:1116, 3:1305, 4:1506–1507 Moser-Pröll, Annemarie, 1:133 Moss, Julie, 2:843 Mosso, Angelo, 2:852 Mota, Rosa, 1:234, 3:1204 Motivation, 3:998–1003, 3:1012–1016, 3:1174. See also Coaching; Psychology spectator consumption behavior and, 4:1470– 1471 television, fans motivated by, 4:1477–1478 Motley, Marion, 2:628 Moto Guzzi, 3:1021, 3:1022 Motorboat racing, 3:1017–1019 Motorcycle racing, 3:1020–1024 Mount Everest, 3:1024–1031, 4:1657–1658 early interest in climbing, 3:1025–1027 first expeditions, 3:1027–1028 later expeditions, 3:1029–1031, 3:1045 U. S.-British team, 1952, 3:1027–1028 Mountain biking, 3:1031–1037 bicycle technology, 3:1032 biking events, 2:542, 3:1032–1034 future, 3:1037 governing bodies, 3:1034–1035 media coverage, 3:1032 problems, 3:1036–1037 women bikers, 3:1035–1036 Mountain boarding, 2:542 Mountaineering, 1:42–43, 3:939, 3:1037–1047. See also Mount Everest Alpine style, 3:1045–1046 basic climbing procedures, 3:1041–1043 clubs, 3:1046 difficulty of climb, 3:1040 early history, 3:1038–1039 Eiger North Face, 2:498–502 mental conditioning for, 3:1000 rules, 3:1043 short climbs and expeditions, 3:1044 siege techniques for big mountains, 3:1044–1045 sports climbing, 3:1046–1047 technical climbing, 3:1039–1041 tools, new, 3:1043–1045 women, 3:1028, 3:1030, 3:1041, 3:1044 Movement, human, 2:771–776. See also Physical education
M
1786
N
INDEX
Movement education, 3:1182 Movies, 1:16, 1:18, 3:1047–1051 arm wrestling, 1:90 Australian rules football, 1:130 boxing, 1:247 figure skating, 4:1384 motorcycle racing, 3:1022 running, 3:1335 skiing, 4:1400, 4:1408–1409 synchronized swimming, 4:1580 Venice Beach, 4:1669 Mr. America contest, 3:1211, 4:1670 Mueller-Preiss, Ellen, 2:582 Muldoon, William, 4:1720 Muldowney, Shirley, 1:134 Mulford, Ralph, 2:794 Mulhall, Lucille, 3:1274 Multiculturalism, 3:1051–1053. See also Anthropology Days; Native American games and sports; Racism Mummery, Albert F., 3:1030, 3:1041 Munich Olympics (1972), 3:1116, 4:1506 Murdoch, John, 3:1335 Murdoch, Rupert, 1:111, 1:112, 3:994, 3:995, 3:1270, 4:1659 Murphy, Dennis, 2:745 Murphy Cup, 2:745 Murray, Jim, 4:1539–1540 Murray, Lenda, 1:224, 1:225 Murray, Ty, 3:1276 Muscle Beach, 4:1670 Muscle Beach (CA). See Venice Beach Musial, Stan, 1:149 Muster, Thomas, 1:133 Mutlu, Halil, 4:1689 Myskina, Anastasia, 4:1609
N Naegele, Bob, Jr., 2:745 Nagano Olympics (1998), 2:860, 3:1123, 4:1385 Nagashima, Shigeo, 2:861 Naginata (naginatado), 2:867–872, 3:1054–1056 NAIG. See North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Naish, Robby, 3:903 Naismith, James, 1:168–169, 1:343, 3:1066, 3:1254 Naismith Memorial Hall, 1:176 Nam Sun Uong, 3:905 Namath, Joe, 2:507, 2:629, 4:1564 Namba, Yasuko, 3:1030 Names facility naming rights, 2:551–553 (See also Sponsorship) nicknames, 1:157–158, 2:525 Nandrolone, 4:1526, 4:1609 Nanga Parbat, 3:1045 Nansen, Fridtjof, 4:1398, 4:1404 Narrative theory, 3:1056–1060 NASCAR. See National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) NASPE. See North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM) NASSM (North American Society for Sport Management), 3:954–955, 3:959 Nastase, Ilie, 2:507, 3:1279, 4:1605 National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), 1:134, 1:136, 3:978, 4:1530 Nextel (Winston Cup), 3:1083–1085 radio broadcasts, 3:1246 sponsorship and, 4:1484 television contracts, 3:992, 3:1085 National Baseball Hall of Fame (Cooperstown, NY), 1:155 National Basketball Association (NBA), 3:947 See also specific teams agents and, 1:29 brand management and, 1:249 collective bargaining and, 1:337 economics, public policy and, 2:489 endorsements and, 2:509 foreign interest in, 3:1069 franchise relocation and, 2:651–652 free agency and, 2:654, 2:657 history, 1:170–172 Olympics, players at, 1:175, 3:1109, 3:1113, 3:1220–1221 players’ union (See Unionism) racism and, 3:1237 radio broadcasts, 3:1245 revenue sharing, 3:1263–1264 salary cap, 3:1322 sponsorship and, 4:1484
INDEX
team ownership, 3:1134 television contracts, 3:992, 4:1500 violence in, 4:1673–1674 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 3:920–921, 3:958. See also College athletes; Intercollegiate athletics Academic Reform Movement (ARM), 3:1324, 3:1326–1327 agents and, 1:28 amateur vs. professional debate, 1:45–49, 1:339 Carnegie Report and, 1:296 ethics and, 4:1531–1532 guidelines, 1:35, 2:809 history, 1:341 lacrosse, 3:916, 3:917 spending on sports by schools in, 3:958–959 sponsorships, 4:1483 substance abuse, 3:1168 television and, 1:174–175, 1:350, 2:628, 3:991– 992, 4:1476, 4:1483 tennis, 4:1608 Title IX and, 4:1615–1616 track and field events, 4:1624, 4:1631–1632 wrestling, 4:1719 National Football League (NFL), 2:625–628, 3:921, 3:923, 3:961. See also Super Bowl; specific teams agents and, 1:29 American Football League-NFC lawsuit and merger, 3:921, 4:1563–1564 collective bargaining and, 1:337 economics, public policy and, 2:489 endorsements and, 2:509 fan behavior, 4:1479 foreign interest in, 3:1069 franchise relocation and, 2:650–651 free agency and, 2:654, 2:657 globalization and, 1:353 players, contributions to community by, 4:1670 players’ union (See Unionism) racism and, 3:1237 radio broadcasts, 3:1245, 3:1246 religion and, 3:1255 revenue sharing, 2:490, 3:1263–1264 salary cap, 3:1322–1323 sponsorship and, 4:1484 sports psychology, use of, 3:1170 substance abuse, 3:1167–1168
1787
team ownership, 3:1134 television and, 1:353–354, 2:628–629, 3:992– 993, 3:1191–1192, 4:1476, 4:1479, 4:1501, 4:1562 National Hockey League (NHL), 3:947. See also specific teams agents and, 1:28, 1:29 Canada, 1:282–283 collective bargaining and, 1:337 economics, public policy and, 2:489 franchise relocation and, 2:652 free agency and, 2:654, 2:657 history, 2:740 players’ union (See Unionism) radio broadcasts, 3:962–963, 3:990 revenue sharing, 3:1263–1264 salary caps, 3:1323 sponsorship and, 4:1484–1485 Stanley Cup, 2:739, 4:1546–1548 team ownership, 3:1134 television and, 3:991, 3:992, 4:1500 National identity, sport and. See Sport and national identity National Indian Athletic Association, 3:1060, 3:1063 National Indian Finals Rodeo, 3:1060, 3:1063 National Lacrosse League (NLL), 3:917 National League (NL), 1:145, 1:150 National Library of Medicine, 3:952 National Off-Road Bicycling Association (NORBA) events, 3:1032–1035 National Senior Games and Senior Olympics, 3:1340–1342 National Veterans Golden Age Games (NVGAG), 3:1344 National Wrestling Coaches Association, 4:1614– 1616 Native American games and sports, 3:1060– 1066. See also Lacrosse all-Native sporting competitions, 3:1051, 3:1060, 3:1062–1064 Anthropology Days and, 1:68 archery, 1:77, 1:93 dance and, 1:432–1:434 Euro-American impact, 3:1061–1062 history, 3:1060–1061, 3:1247 hunting and, 2:782 mascot controversies, 3:983–984, 4:1667 Mesoamerican ball court games, 3:1003–1006
N
1788
N
INDEX
Native American games and sports (continued) mountain climbing for religious reasons, 3:1038 racism and, 3:1237, 3:1276 religion and, 3:1247 rodeos, 3:1060, 3:1062, 3:1063, 3:1273, 3:1276 running, 3:969, 3:1063 significance, 3:1065–1066 traditional sports and games competitions, 3:1064–1065 Natural, The, 3:1049–1051 Navratilova, Martina, 1:39, 2:576, 3:931, 4:1606, 4:1609, 4:1693 Nazis, 2:677–678, 4:1657. See also Berlin Olympics (1936) motorcycle racing supported by, 3:1023 in Romania, 3:1279 worker sport and, 4:1703–1705 NBA. See National Basketball Association (NBA) NBC, 1:353, 1:354, 3:992, 3:1244, 3:1246, 4:1485, 4:1585,4:1698, 4:1699 NCAA. See National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Ndereba, Catherine, 1:234, 2:899 Nebiolo, Primo, 4:1715–1717 Necessary Roughness, 3:1050 Negotiations, labor. See Collective bargaining Negro National League, 1:147 Neiminen, Toni, 3:1122 Neligan, Gwen, 2:582 Nelson, Byron, 2:692, 3:989 Nelson, Don, 1:173 Nelson, Lindsey, 3:1245 Nelson, Maud, 1:154 Nepal, 3:1025–1030 Netball, 3:1066–1068, 3:1072, 3:1074–1075 Netherlands, 2:747, 3:1069–1071 Elfstedentocht, 2:502–503 korfball, 3:907–911, 3:1069 lifeguarding, 3:932, 3:933 sailing, history of, 3:1315 skating, history of, 4:1381, 4:1388, 4:1390 soccer, 3:1070, 4:1709 women’s sports, coverage of, 4:1698 Netsch, Adolf, 3:1284 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Neubert, Ramona, 2:731 Neville, Jack, 3:1154 New criticism, narrative theory, 3:1056–1057 New England Patriots, 4:1563 New Jersey Nets, 3:977 New York Cosmos, 4:1431 New York Giants (baseball team), 3:1243–3:1245, 4:1712 New York Giants (football team), 4:1734 New York Jets, 4:1564 New York Knicks, 3:947, 3:948, 3:995 New York Liberty, 3:947 New York Marathon, 3:970, 3:1075 New York Mets, 4:1712 New York Rangers, 3:947, 3:948, 3:995 New York Yacht Club, 1:55, 1:316 New York Yankees, 1:248, 3:1243–1245, 3:1264, 4:1649, 4:1711–1712, 4:1732 New Zealand, 1:357, 3:1071–1078. See also Commonwealth Games future, 3:1077 history, 3:1072 netball, 3:1068, 3:1072, 3:1074–1075 organizations, 3:1076 participant and spectator sports, 3:1072–1074 rodeos, 3:1273, 3:1278 rugby in, 3:1075–1077, 3:1116, 3:1299–1301, 4:1458 (See also All Blacks) sport in society, 3:1076–1077 televised sports in, 3:993–3:995 women and sport, 3:1074–1075, 3:1077 youth sports, 3:1075 Newby, Arthur, 2:793 Newby-Fraser, Paula, 2:843 Newcombe, John, 1:39 News Corporation (Fox), 1:354, 3:994, 3:995, 3:1246, 4:1485 Newsletters, 3:949 Newspapers, 3:990–991, 3:1078–1083, 4:1616– 1617. See also Media-sports complex; Sportswriting and reporting Nextel (Winston) Cup, 1:136, 3:1083–1085 NFL. See National Football League (NFL) Ngugi, John, 1:402 NHL. See National Hockey League (NHL) Nibelungenlied, 3:935 Nichibo Spinning Mills, 4:1678 Nichols, Billy, 4:1414
INDEX
Nickalls, Vivian and Guy, 2:728 Nicklaus, Jack, 1:258, 2:507, 3:989, 3:1154–1155, 3:1308, 4:1543 Nicknames baseball, 1:157–158 ESPN and, 2:525 Nigeria, 1:438, 3:1085–1088 Nike (company), 3:959, 3:974–976, 4:1489, 4:1520–1522 Freddie Adu and, 2:510 LeBron James and, 2:508 Michael Jordan and, 1:111–112, 1:251, 2:506 Steve Prefontaine and, 2:608 Tiger Woods and, 2:507 Nixon, Richard M, 4:1507, 4:1610 Noel, J. B., 3:1026 Noguchi, Mizuki, 3:1109 Noll, Greg, 2:544 Nomo, Hideo, 1:154, 2:861 NORBA (National Off-Road Bicycling Association) events, 3:1032–1035 Nordau, Max, 3:944 Nordquest, Joe, 3:1211 Norgay, Tenzing, 1:115, 3:1026–1030, 3:1044 Norman, Greg, 1:258 Norman, Peter, 1:17 North American Indigenous Games (NAIG), 3:1051, 3:1060, 3:1064 North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), 3:954–955, 3:959, 3:960 North Dallas Forty, 3:1049 North Korea, 3:905–907, 4:1587, 4:1592 Northern Games, 3:1060, 3:1065 Norton, Edward, 3:1027 Norton, Ken, 4:1733 Norway, 1:204, 2:748, 3:1088–1090, 3:1118, 4:1545 Bislett Stadium, 1:204–205 Holmenkollen Ski Jump, 2:747–750, 4:1395 Lillehammer Olympics (1994), 3:1122–1123 Oslo Olympics (1952), 3:1119–1120 ski jumping, 4:1395–1396 skiing, 4:1400, 4:1403, 4:1404 Notre Dame University, 3:1254, 4:1476. See also Rockne, Knute Nott, Tara, 4:1688 Nowitzki, Dirk, 1:119 Nurmi, Paavo, 1:115, 2:589
1789
Nutrition, 3:1090–1095, 3:1162. See also Diet and weight loss for competition, 3:1094–1095 healthy eating, 2:456–457 micronutrients and dietary supplements, 3:1092– 1094, 4:1687 osteoporosis and, 3:1127–1129 for training, 3:1090–1092 Nuvolari, Tazio, 2:853, 3:1022 NVGAG (National Veterans Golden Age Games), 3:1344 Nykänen, Matti, 3:1122, 4:1396
O Oakland Athletics, 3:1170, 4:1710, 4:1711 Oakland Raiders, 3:1167 Oakley, Annie, 2:785 Obesity. See also Diet and weight loss exercise, health and, 2:533, 2:534, 4:1508 youth sports and, 4:1510, 4:1741–1742 O’Brien, Herb, 4:1684 O’Brien, Larry, 4:1673 O’Brien, Parry, 4:1621 Ocean (offshore) sailboat racing, 3:1319 Ochoa, Francisco Fernandez, 3:1120 Octopush, 4:1646–1647 Odell, Noel, 3:1027, 3:1045 Odyssey, 3:935, 4:1718 Oerter, Al, 4:1624 Officiating, 3:1096–1102 changing rules over time, 3:1101 components of official’s job, 3:1096–1098 errors by officials, 3:1100–1101 figure skating, 4:1386–1387 selecting and evaluating officials, 3:1099–1100 sport and competition level, effect of, 3:1098– 1099 violence toward officials, 3:1099 Women’s World Cup, 4:1701–1702 Off-road auto racing, 1:133 Ogilvie, Bruce, 3:1170 Ogimura, Ichiro, 4:1589 Oh, Sadharu, 2:861 Oikaze, Yoshida, 4:1559, 4:1560 Okafor, Emeka, 1:348 Okayama, Yasutaka, 1:119 Okinawa, 2:886–887 Okrent, Daniel, 2:566
O
1790
O
INDEX
Olberman, Keith, 2:525 Older adults. See Senior sport OLN (Outdoor Life Network), 3:1032 Olson, Scott, 2:745, 4:1391 Olympia, 2:700–702, 3:1102–1104, 3:1161, 3:1248–1250, 4:1475, 4:1499, 4:1624 Olympic Charter, 3:1112, 3:1220 Olympic flag, 3:1113–1114 “Olympic handball,” 2:720 Olympic hymn, 3:1114 Olympic motto, 3:1116 Olympic Stadium (Berlin), 1936, 3:1105–1107 Olympics. See also International Olympic Committee (IOC); Special Olympics; United States Olympic Committee (USOC) amateurs vs. professionals in (See Amateur vs. professional debate) ancient games (See Olympia) Anthropology Days and, 1:68–70 boycotts, 3:919, 3:1116, 3:1120, 3:1305, 4:1506, 4:1688 Cold War, 3:1119–1122, 4:1478, 4:1506–1507 facility management and, 2:546–547 fitness and, 2:601 gender verification in, 2:672–673 International Olympic Academy, 2:817–820 law and, 3:919–920 marketing of, 1:352–354, 2:509, 3:971, 3:978, 3:1115–1116, 4:1482–1483, 4:1485 multiculturalism in, 3:1051–1052 racism and, 4:1458, 4:1460, 4:1704–1705 ritual and, 3:1268 as spectacle, 4:1500, 4:1501 substance abuse (See Performance enhancement) technology, controlling innovations due to, 4:1599, 4:1601, 4:1602 television broadcasts, 1:353–354, 3:991, 4:1501 trademark protection, 3:923 women in, 2:573–574, 2:667–668 Worker Olympics and, 3:1304, 4:1703–1705 Olympics, 2004, 2:681, 2:719, 3:1107–1111 drug use in, 1:18–19 swimming at, 4:1578 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Olympics, Summer Antwerp (1920), 1:187, 1:189, 3:1118 archery, 1:80–82 Argentinian participation, 1:87 Athens (1896), 3:966, 3:967, 3:986, 3:1107, 3:1113, 3:1114, 3:1116 Athens (2004) (See Olympics, 2004) Atlanta (1996), 4:1532–1533 badminton, 1:139, 1:141 Barcelona (1992), 3:1115 baseball, 1:156 basketball, 1:175–176, 3:1109, 3:1113 Beijing (2008), 2:686 Berlin (1936) (See Berlin Olympics (1936)) British participation, 4:1657, 4:1658 Chinese participation, 1:314–315 commercialism, 3:1115–1116 Cuban participation, 1:407–408 dance, 2:444 Dutch participation in, 3:1070 fencing, 2:580–582 Honduran participation, 2:757 Hungarian participation, 2:778–779 in-line skates, 4:1392 Italian participation, 2:854 Jamaican participation, 2:858–860 Japanese participation, 2:860, 2:867 judo, 2:882, 2:883 Kenyan participation, 2:898–899 Korean participation, 3:905 lacrosse, 3:914, 3:915, 3:917 London (1908), 3:1118 London (1948), 4:1657, 4:1691 Los Angeles (1984) (See Los Angeles Olympics (1984)) marathons, 3:966–967 Melbourne (1956), 1:125 Mexican participation in, 3:1008–1009 Mexico City (1968) (See Mexico City Olympics (1968)) Montreal (1976) (See Montreal Olympics (1976)) Moscow (1980) (See Moscow Olympics (1980)) Munich (1972), 3:1116, 4:1506 New Zealand participation, 3:1073–3:1075 Nigerian participation, 3:1085 Norwegian participation, 3:1088 pelota, 3:1157 pentathlon, 3:1157–1159 Polish participation, 3:1194–1195
INDEX
political tensions, 3:1116 Portuguese participation, 3:1204, 3:1205 race walking in, 3:1233–1235 revival, 3:1112–1114 roller hockey, 4:1395 Romanian participation, 1:1279–1281 Rome (1960), 2:639–640, 2:854, 4:1485 rowing, 3:1295 sailing, 3:1314 Senegalese participation, 3:1337–1338 Seoul (1988), 3:906, 3:907 soccer, 4:1433 softball, 4:1451 Soviet participation, 3:1159, 3:1305 Stockholm (1912), 3:1117 swimming, 3:1113, 4:1575–1579 swimming, synchronized, 4:1580–1581 Swiss participation, 4:1582–1583 Sydney (2000) (See Sydney Olympics (2000)) table tennis at, 4:1590–1591 taekwando, 4:1592, 4:1594 tennis, 4:1604, 4:1609 torch relay, 3:1114–1115 track and field, 3:968, 4:1618, 4:1622–1625 treatment of, 4:1632 tug-of-war, 4:1633–1634 Turkish participation, 4:1635, 4:1636 volleyball, 4:1678–1679 volleyball, beach, 4:1683 water polo, 3:1201 weightlifting, 3:1211, 4:1686–1688 windsurfing, 4:1695 winter games at, 3:1117–1118 women in, 3:986, 4:1503, 4:1576, 4:1622, 4:1623, 4:1625–1626, 4:1628, 4:1666, 4:1698, 4:1699, 4:1704 wrestling, 4:1719, 4:1720, 4:1722 Olympics, Winter, 3:1117–1123, 3:1236. See also Lake Placid; St. Moritz Albertville (1992), 3:1122, 3:1349 biathlon (See Biathlon and triathlon) bobsledding, 1:211–212 Calgary (1988), 3:1121–1122 Chamonix (1924), 3:1118, 4:1545 Cold War games, 3:1119–1122 Cortina d’Ampezzo (1956), 2:854, 3:1120 curling, 1:419 early games, 3:1118–1119
figure skating, 4:1383–1386 Garmisch-Partenkirchen (1936), 3:1119 Grenoble (1968), 3:1120 Innsbruck (1964), 3:1120 Innsbruck (1976), 3:1120–1121 Italian participation, 2:854 Jamaican bobsled team, 2:856 Korean participation, 3:907 Lillehammer (1994), 3:1122–1123 luge, 3:942 Miracle on Ice (See Miracle on Ice) Nagano (1998), 2:860, 3:1123, 4:1385 Norwegian participation, 3:1088 Oslo (1952), 3:1119–1120 pentathlon, 3:1159 post-Cold War, 3:1122–1123 Salt Lake City (2002) (See Salt Lake City Olympics (2002)) Sapporo (1972), 2:860, 3:1119, 3:1120 Sarajevo (1984), 3:1121 skeleton sledding, 4:1418 ski jumping, 4:1396–1397 skiing, Alpine, 4:1401–1403 skiing, cross-country, 4:1405–1406 skiing, freestyle, 4:1408, 4:1410 snowboarding, 4:1420 Soviet participation, 3:1120–1122, 3:1305 speed skating, 4:1388–1390 Squaw Valley (1960), 3:1120, 4:1485 Switzerland in, 4:1583 torch relay, 3:1119 Vancouver (2010), 1:286 women in, 4:1388, 4:1402, 4:1503 World War II, 3:1119 Olympique de Marseilles, 3:1135 Olympiques, Les, 3:937 Olympus, Mount, 3:1039 O’Malley, Walter, 3:954 Omori, Hyozo, 2:863 One in a Million, 4:1384 One on One, 3:1049, 3:1050 O’Neal, Shaquille, 3:1322 O’Neil, John “Buck,” 1:147 Onischenko, Boris, 3:1159 Oosterlynck, Georges, 4:1715 Open to All: Title IX at Thirty, 4:1614 Orange Bowl (Miami), 2:628 Orienteering, 3:1124–1126
1791
O
1792
INDEX
Ornish, Dr. Dean, 4:1737 Oropeza, Vincente, 3:1276 Ortega, Domingo, 1:265 Orvis-Marbury, Mary, 2:597 Osage nation, 3:969 Osiier, Ellen, 2:581 Oslo Olympics (1952), 3:1119 Osteoporosis, 1:217, 2:471, 2:536, 3:1126–1131, 3:1340, 4:1511 Ottey, Merlene, 2:858–859 Otto, Kristen, 4:1578 Otto, Nikolaus August, 3:1021 Ouden, Willie den, 4:1578 Our Village, 3:936 Outcome expectations, athlete’s, 3:1013–1014 Outdoor Life Network (OLN), 3:1032 Outerbridge, Mary Ewing, 4:1603 Outward Bound, 1:9, 1:11 Overload, 4:1511–1513 Overuse injuries. See Injury Ovid, 3:935 Owens, Jesse, 1:109, 1:115, 2:812, 3:1236, 4:1626 Ownership, 3:1131–1137 future, 3:1136 models of, 3:996, 3:1133–1136 organizational background, 3:1131–1133
P
P Paccard, Michel, 3:1040 Pacifico, Larry, 3:1212 Packer, Kerry, 1:389, 1:390, 3:995 Paddock, Charles, 2:809, 4:1714 Padilha, Sylvio de Magalhaes, 3:1143 Paes, Leander, 4:1606 Page, Dorothy G., 2:789 Paglinawan, Ruby, 2:888 Paige, Leroy “Satchel,” 1:147 Paige, Rod, 4:1614 Pain, 3:1138–1142. See also Injury Palamas, Kostis, 3:1114 Palm, Kerstin, 2:582 Palmer, Arnold, 1:258, 2:507, 3:989 Pamplona (Spain), 1:261 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Pan American Games, 3:1142–1147. See also Central American and Caribbean Games Argentina and, 1:86–87 Cuba and, 1:406–407 history, 3:1142–1143 Honduras and, 2:757 Jamaica and, 2:857–858 karate at, 2:889–890 Mexico and, 3:1007–1008, 3:1143 race walking in, 3:1234 significance of, 3:1147 softball, 4:1451, 4:1453 swimming, 4:1579 winter, 3:1146 Pan American Games for the Blind, 3:1147 Pan American Wheelchair Games, 3:1147 Pancratium, defined, 2:701 Pankration, 3:1010–1011 Pantagruel, 3:936 Par golf, 2:690 Parachuting, 3:1147–1150 Paragliding, 2:542 Parallel bars, 2:717 Paralympics, 2:461, 2:462–463, 2:687, 3:1150– 1153 Athens, 2004, 3:1110 summer games, list of, 3:1151 Winter, 3:1123, 3:1151 Parawing sailing, 3:1311, 3:1312, 3:1314 Parcells, Bill, 1:249 Parche, Gunther, 4:1674 Parents, role of, 1:3–4, 2:503–506, 2:557–562. See also Youth sports Park, Willie, 1:256 Parker, Arnold, 4:1587–1588 Parker, Tony, 1:119 Parkour, 2:542 Parnell, Mel, 2:585 Parrington, Frank, 2:473 Parrish, Robert, 1:173 Participant services, 3:955–956 Paterno, Joe, 2:810 Patrick, Dan, 2:525 Patten, David, 1:90 Patterson, Carly, 2:718 Patton, George S., 3:1159 Paulche, Wilhelm, 4:1582 Pauley, Michael J., 4:1449–1450
INDEX
Paulhan, Louis, 2:611 Pavlova, Anna, 1:438 Pebble Beach, 3:1153–1155 Peck, Annie, 3:1041 Pedestrianism. See Race walking Pedroso, Eustaquio, 1:155 Pelé, 1:115, 2:507, 3:1236, 4:1431, 4:1434, 4:1709 Pellaton, Scott M., 4:1414 Pelletier, David, 3:1123, 4:1385 Pelota, 3:1155–1157 Frontenis (pelota vasca), Mexico, 3:1006 Mesoamerican pelota maya/pelota mixteca, 3:1003–1005 Pentathlon, ancient, 3:1102 Pentathlon, modern, 3:1157–1159, 3:1342 Pentathlon, 2:730 Pentland Group, 4:1521 Pep, Willie, 1:243 Peppe, Mike, 2:475 Pérez Dueñas, Pedro, 3:1144 Performance, 3:1160–1164. See also Performance enhancement Performance enhancement, 3:923, 3:987, 3:1164–1171, 4:1526–1527. See also Nutrition; Psychology; Steroids; Technology; World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ancient times, 3:1164–1165 BALCO case, 3:1167, 4:1665 biotechnology and, 1:202–203, 4:1601–1602 blood doping, 2:590, 3:1168, 4:1526, 4:1575 bodybuilding, 1:223, 1:225 dietary supplements, 3:1093–1094 disability sport, 2:464–465 early professional sports, 3:1165 ephedrine, 3:1168 future, 3:1170–1171 horse racing, 2:763, 2:765, 3:1166 human growth hormone, 3:1168 NCAA policies, 3:920 Olympics, 1:18–19, 3:919, 3:1109, 3:1110, 3:1123 Pan American Games, 3:1144–1145, 3:1147 powerlifting/weightlifting, 3:1165, 3:1212–1213, 4:1687 recent professional sports, 3:1166 school sports, 3:1332 sports authorities, actions by, 3:1167, 3:1168 sports psychology as alternative to, 3:1169–1170
1793
sportsmanship and, 4:1530–1531, 4:1665 strength and, 4:1551–1552 teens, by, 3:1169 tennis, 4:1609 Tlingits, drugs used by, 3:1169 Tour de France, 3:1168, 4:1531, 4:1617 track and field, 4:1625 Periodicals. See Magazines Periodization, 4:1512–1513 Peripheral vascular disease (PVD), 2:535 Perkain, 3:1157 Permission marketing, 3:976 Perry, Fred, 4:1605, 4:1693 Pershing, General “Black Jack,” 2:808 Personality, 3:1171–1175, 3:1227–1228. See also Motivation; Psychology; Psychology of gender differences Pesky, Johnny, 2:585 Pétain, Marshall Philippe, 2:808 Petanque, bocce and, 1:235–237 Peters, Mary, 2:731 Petitjean, Jean, 4:1714 Petrarch, 3:1039 Petty, Richard, 1:133 Pezzo, Paola, 2:854, 3:1035–1036 PGA. See Professional Golf Association (PGA) Phar Lap (race horse), 1:127 Pheidippides, 3:966 Phelan, Jacquie, 3:1035 Phelps, Michael, 3:1109, 4:1578 Phenomological personality theory, 3:1174–1175 Philadelphia Phillies, 3:1243 Physical education, 3:1175–1184. See also Fitness; Sport science; Turner festivals (turners) adapted physical education, 1:5–9 China, 1:309–312 coeducational sport, 1:328–333 conceptual and curricular changes, 3:1181–1182 connections to other fields and organizatons, 3:1179–1181 early research efforts, 3:1182–1183 eighteenth-century antecedents, 3:1177–1178, 4:1524 health reform and public health, links to, 3:1178– 1179 human movement studies, 2:771–776 kinesiology, 2:900–902
P
1794
P
INDEX
Physical education (continued) as multidisciplinary field, 3:1181 nineteenth-century developments, 3:1178, 4:1524, 4:1582 outlook, 3:1183 periodicals, 3:949–951 Portugal, 3:1203–1204 rope jumping, 3:1283–1285 Soviet Union, 3:1179, 3:1304 Turkey, 4:1635–1636 Pickett, Bill, 3:1273, 3:1274, 3:1276 Piercy, Violet, 3:968 Pilates, 1:441, 2:603, 3:1184–1186 Pilcher, Percy, 4:1423 Pillay, Dhanaraj, 2:736 Pilots, 2:612 Ping-pong. See Table tennis Piping, as Highland Games event, 2:733 Pippig, Uta, 1:234 Pires, Sandra, 4:1683 Pittsburgh Pirates, 3:1243 Pius XII, Pope, 4:1359 “Plasticbandy,” 2:609 Platform diving, 2:474 Platini, 4:1710 Plato, 3:1176–1177 Platz, Tom, 1:222 Play vs. organized sport, 3:1186–1188 Play-by-play announcing, 3:1188–1193 beginnings of, 3:1189–1190 broadcast team, 3:1189 early resistance by sports organizations, 3:1190 entertaining style, 3:1190–1191 by former athletes and coaches, 3:1192 future, 3:1193 Monday Night Football, 3:1191–1192 viewers influenced by, 3:1192 women announcers, 3:1192 Player, Gary, 1:258, 3:989 Playing surfaces, 2:518, 2:520 Plimpton, James, 4:1393 Pocket billiards, 1:193, 1:195 Pocock, George, 3:903 Podoloff, Maurice, 1:171–172 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Poland, 3:1193–1196 Pole vault, 4:1620, 4:1623–1624 Poll, Sylvia, 3:1146 Pollack, Burglinde, 2:731 Pollard, Fritz, 2:625, 2:628, 2:812 Pollution, sports and, 2:520–521 Polo, 1:1966–1198, 3:935–936 Argentina, 1:85 in art, 1:94 China, 1:309 Iran, 2:836 Polo, bicycle, 3:1198–1199 Polo, canoe, 1:291 Polo, water, 3:1199–1202, 4:1656 Pommel horse, 2:714, 2:717 Ponor, Catalina, 2:718 Pool, Robert, 3:915 Pool ( billiards), 1:193–195, 4:1656 Pope, Dick, 4:1412 Popinjay shooting, 1:79–1:81, 1:83 Popocatepetl, 3:1038 Popov, Alexander, 4:1578 Porter, Pat, 1:402 Portland Trailblazers, 3:1170 Portugal, 3:1202–1205 Posse, Nils, 3:1178 Postmodernism, 3:1205–1210 Poststructuralism, 3:1058–1059, 3:1207 Pound, Dick, 3:1110 Powell, Foster, 3:1232 Powell, Mike, 4:1618 Powell, Rene, 2:695 Power kiting, 1:42 Powerlifting, 3:1165, 3:1210–1215. See also Weightlifting Pow-wows, 3:1064–1065 Pratt, Hodgson, 4:1713 Prayer, 3:1215–1218. See also Religion; Sport as religion PRCA. See Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) Preble, Dana, 4:1685 Prefontaine, Steve, 1:402, 2:608 Pregnancy. See Reproduction (reproductive health) Price, Nick, 1:258 Princeton University, 2:811, 2:812, 3:1244, 4:1500, 4:1643 Pritzi, Gertrude, 4:1590
INDEX
Pro-am sport clubs, 1:315, 1:316 Prochazka, Heinz, 2:450 Profanity, 4:1530 Professional Golf Association (PGA), 1:7, 1:385, 3:989 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), 3:1272–1273, 3:1275–1278 Professional services, 3:955 Professional sport clubs, 1:315, 1:316 Professionalism, 3:1218–1221 brand management and, 1:249–250 free agency and, 2:654 salaries and, 2:493–494 Profit, Christophe, 2:501 Program, The, 3:1050 Prohaska, Herbert, 1:133 Protein intake, 3:1091 Proteins, healthy eating and, 2:457 Protest, sport as vehicle for, 3:1235–1236 Protopopov, Ludmila and Oleg, 4:1385 Proust, Marcel, 3:937 Psychodynamic theory, 3:1171–1172 Psychology, 3:1163, 3:1221–1226. See also Social identity extreme sports and, 2:539, 2:541 fan loyalty, 2:562–565, 2:649 future, 3:1225–1226 home field advantage, 2:750–752 mental conditioning, 3:998–1003 motivation, 3:1012–1016 performance enhancing drugs, alternative to, 3:1169–1170 periodicals, 3:951 personality and sports, 3:1171–1175 research, teaching, and consultation, 3:1223–1224 scope, 3:1222–1223 sport psychology societies, 3:1224–1225 Psychology of gender differences, 3:1226–1231. See also Gender equity applied sport psychology, 3:1230–1231 future, 3:1231 personality and gender-role orientation, 3:1227– 1228 sex differences, 3:1227 social processes and gender, 3:1228–1230 women’s sports, gender in, 3:1226–1227 Public policy. See Economics and public policy Puica, Maricica, 1:401
1795
Pulaski, Maximillian, 4:1411 Purging behavior. See Disordered eating Puritanism, sport and, 3:1252–1253 Pyle, C.C., 1:26
Q Quarrie, Donald, 2:857, 2:858, 3:1144 Queensberry Rules, 1:242–243 Quickstep, 2:443, 2:444 Quiriot, Fidelia, 3:1146
R R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, 3:1083 Rabelais, François, 3:936 Race walking, 3:967, 3:1195, 3:1232–1235 Racism, 2:577, 3:927, 3:1235–1239, 4:1444, 4:1502–1504 baseball, 1:115, 1:146–147, 1:153 basketball, 1:171–172 boxing, 1:244, 1:247, 3:987, 3:1236, 3:1337 Canadian sports, 1:281, 4:1491 in coaching, 1:325 colonialism and, 4:1446–1447 football, 2:628 golf, 2:694–695 intercollegiate athletics, 2:812 multiculturalism and, 3:1051–1053 against Native Americans, 3:1062, 3:1276 New Zealand rugby, issue in, 3:1076–1077 newspaper sports pages, racial stereotypes in, 3:1080–1082 Olympics and, 4:1704–1705 professional golf, issue in, 3:989 rodeos, 3:1276 scholar-ballers and, 3:1324 South Africa, apartheid in (See South Africa) youth sports, 4:1742–1743 Racquetball, 3:1240–1242 Radcliffe, Paula, 3:1109 Rader, Peary, 3:1210, 3:1211, 4:1687 Radigonda, Ron, 4:1450 Radio, 3:990–991, 3:1242–1247, 4:1476. See also Play-by-play announcing Hockey Night in Canada, 3:962–963, 3:1192 Tour de France, coverage of, 4:1617 Rafter, Pat, 1:126 Rainer, Edi, 2:500 Rainsford, William S., 3:1254
Q R
1796
R
INDEX
Raja yoga, 4:1734 Ramadan, Nahla, 4:1689 Ramirez, Manny, 2:654 Ranier, Mount, 3:1044 Rarick, Randy, 4:1570 Raschker, Eileen-Philippa Kersten, 3:1343 Rasmussen, Bill, 2:522, 2:523 Rasmussen, Scott, 2:522, 2:523 Ratjen, Dora, 2:674 Raue, Bill, 2:745 Ravitch, Richard, 4:1648 Rawlings Sporting Goods Co., 4:1522 Ray, Johnny, 3:1243 Ray, Ted, 3:1307 Reader-response theory, 3:1058 Reagan, Ronald, 3:1083, 3:1245, 4:1476 Red Grange Rule, 2:626 Redgrave, Steven, 3:1295 Redington, Joe, Sr., 2:789 Redmon, Jimmy, 4:1684 Reebok (company), 4:1522, 4:1604 Mark Walker and, 2:510 Venus Williams and, 2:508, 2:509 Reed, Rick, 1:158 Rees, Dai, 3:1308 Reeves, Steve, 4:1670 Reggae Boyz soccer team, 2:856 Rehabilitation Act (1973), 1:34 Reichardt, Lou, 3:1029 Reinhoudt, Cindy, 3:1212 Relationship marketing, 3:976–977 Relative perceived exertion (RPE) scale, 2:514 Relaxation skills, 3:1001–1002 Religion, 3:1247–1256, 4:1712. See also Rituals; Sport as religion ancient gods and games, 3:1247–1250 medieval and renaissance Christianity, 3:1250– 1252, 4:1357–1358 nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 3:1253–1255, 4:1358–1359 prayer, 3:1215–1218 Puritanism, effect of, 3:1252–1253 women in sport, 3:1255–1256 Renfro, William, 1:146 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Renshaw, Ernie and William, 4:1605, 4:1693 Renson, Roland, 3:907–909 Replacements, The, 3:1050 Reproduction (reproductive health), 1:198, 2:538, 3:1257–1262 Reserve system, free agency and, 2:654 Resistance training, 4:1510, 4:1511 Retton, Mary Lou, 2:716 Revenue sharing, 2:490–491, 3:923, 3:1262– 1264, 4:1648 Revithi, Stamata, 3:967 Reyes, Ernie, 4:1594–1595 Reynolds, Allie, 1:336 Reynolds, John Hamilton, 3:936 Rhee, Jhoon, 4:1592 Rhoda, Franklin, 3:1038 Riach, Nancy, 3:1335 Ribbs, Willy T., 2:795 Rice, Bobby, 2:795 Rice, Grantland, 2:563, 3:1243, 4:1536–1538 Richards, Tap, 3:1027 Richardson, Dot, 4:1454 Richardson, Mildred and T. D., 4:1385 Richardson, Nolan, 2:810 Richmond, Tim, 1:31 Richter, Ulrika, 4:1578 Rickard, George L. “Tex,” 1:243 Rickenbacker, Eddie, 2:794 Riddles, Libby, 4:1416 Riding. See Horseback riding Riefenstahl, Leni, 1:19, 4:1409 Riggin, Aileen, 2:476 Riggs, Bobby, 2:602, 4:1607 Rigoulot, Charles, 4:1686 Riley, Dawn, 1:56 Riley, Pat, 1:173 Rimet, Jules, 2:821 Rinehart, Tina, 3:1213 Ringette, 3:1264–1266 Rings, 2:716 Rio de Janeiro, Maracana Stadium, 3:964–965 Ritchey, Tom, 3:1031 Rituals, 3:3 See also Mascots; Religion; Sport as religion behavior and social construct, 3:1267–1268 Chukchee of Siberia, sports ritual of, 3:1251 future, 3:1270–1271 global entertainment, 3:1270
INDEX
modern sports as rituals, 3:1270–1271 prayer, 3:1215–1218 pregame rituals, 3:1270 symbols and symbolism, 3:1268–1270 Road Runners Club of America, 2:874 Roba, Fatuma, 1:234, 3:967 Rober, Lewis, 4:1449 Roberson, Gene, 3:1211 Robert, Charles and Ainé, 1:142 Roberts, Cheryl, 4:1461 Roberts, Clifford, 3:988 Roberts, Eugene, 1:234 Roberts, Katie (Vulcana), 1:221 Roberts, Robin, 2:525 Robertson, Oscar, 1:175, 3:1143 Robeson, Paul, 2:625, 2:628, 2:812, 3:1324 Robinson, Eddie, 2:810 Robinson, Frank, 1:150 Robinson, (Jackie) John Roosevelt, 1:147, 3:1047–1048 as athlete hero, 1:115 as college athlete, 2:812 racial issue and, 2:628 Robinson, Sugar Ray, 1:243, 1:246 Roby, Douglas, 3:1143 Roche, Bertrand, 3:1030 Rockne, Knute, 1:326 as football coach, 2:626, 3:1163, 3:1255, 4:1734 as football player, 2:625 movie, 3:1047–1048 Rocky Mountains, 3:1038, 3:1044 Roddick, Andy, 4:1609 Rodeo, 3:1272–1279 animal rights and, 3:1277 current, 3:1278 development, 3:1274–1276 events, 3:1277 international, 3:1277–1278 Native Americans and, 3:1060, 3:1062, 3:1063, 3:1273, 3:1276 organizations, 3:1276–1277 origins, 3:1273 Rodgers, Bill, 2:873 Rodriguez, Alex, 2:654 Rodríguez, Jorge, 3:1144 Rodriquez, Jim, 3:1276 Roe, Allison, 3:1075
1797
Roesler, Corey and Bill, 3:903 Rogan, “Bullet” Joe, 1:147 Rogers, Bill, 1:234 Rogers, Will, 3:1274 Rogge, Jacques, 1:189, 3:1109, 3:1117, 3:1123 Rolex, 4:1604 Roller skating. See Skating, roller Roman, Charles P., 2:606 Romania, 3:1279–1281 Romanowski, Bill, 3:1167 Romary, Janice York, 2:582 Rome, ancient, 3:1281–1283, 4:1357, 4:1475, 4:1499 performance, 3:1161 performance enhancement, 3:1164–1165 religion and sport, 3:1250 wrestling, origins of, 4:1718 Rome Olympics (1960), 2:639–640, 2:854, 4:1485 Romero, Curro, 1:267 Roosevelt, Theodore, 2:811 Rope jumping, 3:1283–1285 Rope skipping, 3:1284–1285 Roper, Sylvester, 3:1021 Rose, Murray, 4:1578 Rose, Pete, 1:150, 1:151 Rose Bowl (Pasadena), 2:628 Roseano, Angelica, 2:849 Rosendahl, Heide, 2:731 Ross, Norman, 2:809, 4:1578 Rosset, Jules, 4:1686 Rossi, Valentino, 2:854 Rosu, Monica, 2:718 “Rotisserie,” 2:566 Rounders and stoolball, 3:1285–1288 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 3:1283 Rowe, David, 2:826 Rowing, 3:1288–1296 amateurism in, 4:1655 in art, 1:95 Belgium, 1:186 boat race (Cambridge vs. Oxford), 1:206–208, 2:727 Brazil, 1:253 competition, top, 3:1294–1295 equipment, 3:1289–1290, 4:1599 governing body, 3:1295 Henley Regatta, 2:727–729 history, 3:1288–1289
R
1798
S
INDEX
Rowing (continued) Japan, 2:862 Mexico, 3:1006 nature of sport, 3:1291–1292 New Zealand, 3:1073, 3:1075 racing, 3:1292–1294 social context, 3:1289 social rowing, 3:1294 team and individual success, 3:1295 Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. See St. Andrews Rozeanu, Virgilia, 3:1279 Rozelle, Pete, 2:523, 2:629 “Rozier” balloons, 1:143 RPE (relative perceived exertion) scale, 2:514 Rubens Alcais, Eugene, 2:449–450 Rubin, Barbara Jo, 2:763 Rudeski, Greg, 4:1609 Rudolph, Wilma, 3:1143, 4:1627 Rugby, 3:939, 3:1296–1302 amateur vs. professionals, 3:1220, 4:1658 Australia, 1:125, 3:1299–1301 European Superleague, 3:1270, 4:1659 future, 3:1301 historical development, 3:1296–1297 injuries in, 3:1220 international spread, 3:1299–1301 Japan, 2:863 memorabilia, 3:997 New Zealand (See New Zealand) power struggles, 3:1297 Romania, 3:1279 Rugby Union/Rugby League differentiated, 3:1296 televised competitions, 3:992, 3:995, 3:1296, 4:1659 transition and structural uncertainty, 3:1297–1299 United Kingdom (See United Kingdom) at Wembley Stadium, 4:1691 women’s, 3:1075, 3:1077 Ruiz, Tracie, 4:1581 Rumba, 2:443, 2:444 Runner’s World, 2:872–874, 3:970 Running, 2:872–874, 3:936–938, 3:968–970. See also Marathon and distance running; Track and field—running and hurdling Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Native Americans, 3:969, 3:1063 runner’s “high,” 3:1141 Running clubs, 2:874 Running with bulls, 1:261, 2:542 Runyon, Damon, 4:1537–1538 Rupp, Adolph, 1:175 Rupp, Edward, 4:1498 Ruppert, Jacob, 4:1732 Russia and USSR, 3:1302–1397, 4:1505. See also Moscow Olympics (1980) Chukchee of Siberia, sports ritual of, 3:1251 forced industrialization and sport, 3:1304 Maccabiah Games and, 3:945–946 mental conditioning of athletes, use of, 3:998– 999, 3:1163 Olympic participation, 3:1120–1122, 3:1159, 3:1305 physical education in, 3:1179, 3:1304 post-Communist developments, 3:1305–1307 postwar sports competition, 3:1304–1305 rowing, 3:1295 Russian Revolution, sport in, 3:1302–1304 substance abuse by athletes, 3:1165 Tatarstan, folk sport and self-determination in, 3:1306 tennis, 4:1609 volleyball, 4:1677–1678 weightlifting, 4:1687–4:1689 worker sport in, 3:1304, 4:1705, 4:1707 Russian formalists, narrative theory, 3:1056 Russo-Japanese War, 2:880, 2:884 Rutgers University, 3:1324, 4:1643 Ruth, “Babe” George Herman, 3:997, 4:1712 as athlete celebrity, 1:109 nickname, 1:157 ranking, 1:149, 1:159 at Yankee Stadium, 4:1732–4:1734 Ruud, Birger, 4:1396–1397, 4:1402 Ryan, Nolan, 1:150, 2:654 Rychlak, Gene, 3:1213 Ryder, Samuel, 3:1307 Ryder Cup, 3:1307–1309
S Sabatini, Gabriela, 1:85, 1:88 Saddle seat horseback riding, 2:769 Safety, in sports, 1:229–230. See also Injury Sail sports, 1:291, 3:1310–1314. See also Kite sports; Windsurfing
INDEX
Sailboarding, 3:1311–1313 Sailer, Toni, 3:1120, 4:1402, 4:1403 Sailing, 3:1314–1321, 4:1376. See also America’s Cup boats, 3:1315–1317 categories, 3:1317–1320 New Zealand, 3:1073, 3:1077 origins, 3:1315 outlook, 3:1321 racing, 3:1319–1321 women in, 3:1321 Salary caps, 3:1322–1323. See also Collective bargaining; Economics and public policy; Revenue sharing; Unionism Salavato, Joan, 2:597 Salazar, Alberto, 2:873 Salchow, Ulrich, 3:1118, 4:1383 Salé, Jamie, 3:1123, 4:1385 “Salibandy,” 2:609, 2:806 Salinas, Juan, 3:1276 Salt Lake City Olympics (2002), 3:1123, 3:1168, 4:1385, 4:1533 Saltwater fishing, 2:593, 2:594, 2:597 Samaranch, Juan Antonio, 1:24, 3:1117 Samaras, Spyros, 3:1114 Samba, 2:443, 2:444 Samba, Cire, 3:1337 Sampras, Pete, 1:39, 4:1606, 4:1693, 4:1738 Sampson, Charles, 3:1276 Sampson, Millie, 3:968 Samuelson, Joan Benoit, 1:234, 3:967 Samuelson, Ralph, 4:1411 San Francisco 49ers, 3:1134, 3:1170 San Francisco Giants, 3:979, 3:1167, 4:1711 Sanchez, Cristina, 1:266 Sanchez, Felix, 3:1146 Sanderson, Derek, 1:27 Sandhu, Emanuel, 4:1385 Sandow, Eugen (Eugene), 1:219, 1:220, 2:606, 3:1210, 4:1686 Sandwina (bodybuilder), 1:221 Sandyachting, 3:1310–1314 Sanex, 4:1604 Sanity Code, NCAA and, 1:341, 2:815 Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe, et al., 3:1216 Santa Monica, California, 4:1669–1670 Saperstein, Abe, 1:171, 1:172 Sapp, Patrick, 2:828
1799
Sapporo Olympics (1972), 2:860, 3:1119, 3:1120 Sarajevo Olympics (1984), 3:1121 Sarazen, Gene, 2:692, 3:989 Sargent, Dudley, 3:927, 3:1179 Sarnoff, David, 3:1244 Sasaki, Kazuhiro, 1:154, 2:861 Satellite radio, 3:1246 Saturday’s Hero, 3:1048 Saunders, Steve, 3:978 Savage Mountain, The, 3:1046 Saxon, Arthur, 4:1686 Sayenev, Victor, 4:1623 Scaino da Salo, Antonio, 3:1252 Scandals. See Corruption, in sports Schäfer (Schaefer), Karl, 3:1118–1119 Schelenz, Karl, 2:720 Schembechler, Bo, 2:810 Scherens, Jef “Poeske,” 1:188 Scheuchzer, Johann, 3:1039 Schick, Marcus, 3:1213 Schilling, Shonda (Mrs. Curt), 1:167 Schlager, Werner, 1:133 Schlanegger, Hedy, 4:1583 Schleimer, Paul, 4:1716 Schmeling, Max, 3:1236, 4:1733 Schneider, Hannes, 4:1400, 4:1403, 4:1409 Schneider, Vrenie, 3:1123 Schodl, Gottfried, 4:1688 Schoening, Pete, 3:1046 Scholar-baller, 2:812, 3:1323–1328 Scholarships, sports, 1:46–47, 2:478–479, 2:812, 3:1323–1328 School performance, 3:1328–1333 Schott, Marge, 3:1133 Schottenheimer, Marty, 4:1531 Schranz, Karl, 3:1120 Schuba, Beatrix, 4:1387 Schuhmann, Karl, 4:1720 Schumacher, Michael, 1:250, 2:507, 2:508 Schuyler, George L., 1:54 Schwartz, Eric, 2:483 Schwartz, Karen and Howard, 1:14 Schwartz, Lou, 3:1245, 3:1246 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 1:225, 2:602, 4:1670 Scotland, 3:1333–1336, 4:1656. See also Commonwealth Games; Curling; Highland Games; St. Andrews golf in, 2:688–689 rounders, history of, 3:1287
S
1800
S
INDEX
Scotland (continued) rugby in, 3:1298 shinty, 4:1361–1363 skating, history of, 4:1381, 4:1388–1389 soccer, 4:1429, 4:1446 sport apparel in, 2:570 tug-of-war, 4:1632 Scott, Jack, 1:376 Scott, Robert Falcon, 4:1415 Scott, Stuart, 2:525 Scratch golfers, 2:690 Scuba, 4:1643, 4:1646–1647 Scumacher, Michael, 1:134 Scurry, Briana, 4:1665 Se Ri Pak, 2:508, 3:907 Sears, Eleonara, 4:1606 Seaver, Tom, 1:150 Seavey, Mitch, 4:1416 Second, The, 3:938 Security, sports facilities and, 2:549–551 Segura, Bernardo, 3:1234 Sehorn, Jason, 3:1237 Seles, Monica, 2:550, 4:1674 Self-determination, athlete’s, 3:1014, 3:1174 Self-efficacy beliefs, athlete’s, 3:1013 Selig, Bud, 4:1649 Senegal, 3:1337–1338 Senior sport, 3:1338–1345 aging and exercise, 2:537–538, 3:1338–1340, 4:1511 Alaska International Senior Games, 3:1342 benefit of exercise on aging, 3:1340 fitness and, 2:602–603 Huntsman World Senior Games, 3:1342 masters and veterans games, 3:1342–1344 National Senior Games and Senior Olympics, 3:1340–1342 National Veterans Golden Age Games (NVGAG), 3:1344 sports medicine, 4:1527–1528 World Master Games (WMG), 3:1344 Sepak takraw, 3:1345–1348, 4:1376 Seppala, Leonard, 4:1416 Service of Ladies, 3:935 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Sex, defined, 2:671 Sex and performance, 3:1348–1350. See also Gender verification; Lesbianism Sex chromatin testing, 2:673, 2:674 Sexual abuse. See Sexual harassment Sexual discrimination, defined, 2:753 Sexual harassment, 3:1350–1357. See also Feminist perspective; Gender equity; Sexuality abusers, identification of, 3:1353 definitions, 3:1350–1351 exploitation continuum, 3:1351 intimacy of coach/athlete relationship, 3:1353– 1354 myths and taboos, 3:1351–1352 personal experiences of athletes and coaches, 3:1354–1355 persons at risk, 3:1353 prevention, 3:1355–1356 previous research, 3:1352–1353 sports organizations, response of, 3:1352 triggers of, 3:1353 Sexual orientation, defined, 2:671–672, 2:753 Sexuality, 4:1357–1361. See also Feminist perspective; Homophobia beauty and, 1:179–184, 4:1360–1361 sport as sexist spectacle, 4:1502–1503 Seyé, Abdouleye, 3:1337 Shahamorov, Esther Roth, 2:849 Shakespeare, William, 3:936 Shandler, Ron, 2:566 Sharapova, Maria, 4:1609, 4:1700 Shaw, George Bernard, 3:936 Shawn, Ted, 1:440 Shea, Jack, 3:1118 Sheehan, George, 2:873 Sheil, Bernard J., 3:1254 Sherpas, 3:1026–1030, 3:1044–1045 Sherrod, Blackie, 4:1539 Shevchenko, Irina, 3:1109 Shewfelt, Kyle, 2:718 Shin Geum Dan, 3:905 Shinty, 4:1361–1363 Shippen, John M., 2:694 Shipton, Eric, 3:1045 Shooting, 4:1363–1372. See also Biathlon and triathlon; Hunting competition, top, 4:1369–1370
INDEX
governing bodies, 4:1370–1372 history, 4:1363–1366 rifle and pistol shooting, 4:1366–1367 shotgunning, 4:1367–1369 Shorter, Frank, 1:234, 1:402, 2:873, 3:1144 Shot put, 4:1620–1621, 4:1623 Shouaa, Ghada, 2:731 Shoulders, Jim, 3:1276 Show jumping, 2:766 Shrake, Bud, 4:1539 Shriver, Eunice Kennedy, 4:1466, 4:1468 Shriver, Pam, 3:1146 Shriver, Sargent, 4:1467 Shriver, Timothy, 4:1466, 4:1468 Shults, Kenny, 2:620 Shultz, John, 2:789 Shuttlecocks, 1:138, 1:140 Sianis, Sam, 4:1712 Siciliano, Angelo. See Atlas, Charles Sick, Max, 2:606 Sidat-Singh, Wilmeth, 2:628 Side horse, 2:717 Sidesaddle horseback riding, 2:768–769 Siegl, Siegrun, 2:731 Sierra Blanca, 3:1038 Siitonen, Pauli, 4:1406 Sikharulidze, Anton, 3:1123, 4:1385 Siki, Battling, 3:1337 Silat, 3:1010, 4:1372–1376 Silk, Valerie, 2:843, 2:844 Sillitoe, Alan, 3:938 Silva, Jackie, 4:1682, 4:1683 Simmons, Chester, 2:523 Simmons, Louie, 3:1214 Simmons, Richard, 1:12, 2:602, 2:608 Simonson, Eric, 3:1027 Simpson, Tommy, 4:1531, 4:1617 Sims, Tom, 4:1419 Sinclair, Rosabelle, 3:914–915 Singapore, 4:1376–1378, 4:1462 Singh, Balbir, 2:738 Singh, Vijay, 2:508 Sirius radio, 3:1246 Sisley, Alfred, 3:1295 Skadarasy, Ernst, 4:1400 Skate sailing, 3:1311–1313 Skateboarding, 1:40–41, 4:1378–1379 Skater hockey, 2:745
1801
Skating, ice figure, 3:1229, 3:1231, 4:1380–1388, 4:1502 competing styles, 4:1382 early history, 4:1381–1382 future, 4:1387–1388 ice dancing, 4:1385–1386 institutionalization of sport, 4:1382–1385 judging, 4:1386–1387 at Olympics, 3:1118–1123 pairs, 4:1385 recent developments, 4:1387 violence in, 4:1387, 4:1674 Skating, ice speed, 4:1382–1383, 4:1388–1391 Elfstedentocht, 2:502–503 Norway, 1:204, 1:205 at Olympics, 3:1118, 3:1120, 3:1121, 3:1123 Skating, in-line, 2:541–542, 4:1391–1395. See also Hockey, in-line Skating, roller, 3:1312, 3:1313, 4:1393–1395. See also Skating, in-line Skeletal age, determining, 2:710 Skeleton. See Sledding—skeleton Ski ballet, 4:1410 Ski jumping, 4:1395–1397, 4:1405 Holmenkollen Ski Jump, 2:747–750, 4:1395 at Olympics, 3:1119, 3:1122 Poland, 3:1195 Ski sailing, 3:1312, 3:1313 Skidriving, 2:542 Skiing, Alpine, 4:1397–1404, 4:1582. See also St. Moritz competition, top, 4:1402–1403 early races, 4:1399–1400 environmental issues, 2:521 extreme, 2:541 governing body, 4:1403 history, 4:1398–1399 Japan, 2:861 kite skiing, 1:42, 3:904 nature of sport, 4:1401–1402 Norwegians spread sport, 4:1400–1401 at Olympics, 3:1118–3:1120, 3:1123, 4:1583 snowboarding and, 4:1401 technology, equipment changes due to, 4:1598 tourism and, 4:1515 Skiing, cross-country, 2:861, 3:1123, 4:1404– 1408. See also Biathlon and triathlon Skiing, freestyle, 4:1408–1410
S
1802
S
INDEX
Skiing, water, 4:1410–1414 Skijoring, 2:542, 4:1546 Skurfer, 4:1684 Sky Global Network, 3:994, 4:1659 Sky surfing, 2:542 Skydiving, 3:1147–1150 SkyDome, 2:520 Slalom kayaking, 1:290 Slaney, Mary Decker, 2:804, 3:1144, 4:1628 Slap Shot, 3:1049 Slater, Duke, 2:628 Sled dog racing, 4:1415–1417. See also Iditarod Sledding bobsledding (See Bobsledding) luge, 2:542, 3:941–943 Sledding—skeleton, 3:941, 3:1119, 3:1123, 4:1417–1418 Sloane, William Milligan, 3:1113, 3:1117 Slow pitch softball, 4:1452 Smetania, Raisa, 3:1122 Smith, Albert, 3:1040 Smith, Bill, 2:598 Smith, “Bonefish Bonnie,” 2:598 Smith, Dean, 1:175, 2:810 Smith, Emmitt, 4:1670 Smith, Horton, 3:989 Smith, Jerry, 1:31 Smith, Kathy, 2:608 Smith, Margaret Court, 4:1606, 4:1693 Smith, Michele, 4:1454 Smith, Red, 4:1538 Smith, Stan, 4:1605, 4:1608 Smith, Tommie, 1:17, 4:1506 Smith, Wilson, 1:210 Smith College, 4:1603 Smythe, Conn, 3:962–963 Snead, Sam, 3:989 Snell, Peter, 3:1073 Snooker billiards, 1:194 Snorkeling, 4:1646 Snouffer, Chet, 1:233 Snowball fights, 3:1121 Snowboarding, 3:904, 4:1401, 4:1418–1420, 4:1546 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Snowshoe racing, 4:1421–1422 Snowsnake, 3:1065 Snurfer, 4:1419 Soaring, 2:722–724, 4:1423–1427 Sobek, Joe, 3:1240 Soccer, 3:938–939, 4:1427–1434. See also Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA); Manchester United; Women’s World Cup; World Cup American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO), 1:52–53 Argentina, 4:1429, 4:1709 Athens Olympics (2004), 3:1110 athletic talent migration in, 1:117 Brazil (See Brazil) China, 4:1701–1702 competition, top, 4:1433–1434 early forms of, 3:1250–1252 economics of, 2:489, 2:490 Euro 2000, 4:1502, 4:1531 Euro 2004, 2:526–527 European Football Championship, 2:528–530, 4:1433–1434 expansion beyond Britain, 4:1429–1430 France (See France) Germany, 4:1429–1430, 4:1446, 4:1531 governing body, 4:1434 hooliganism, 4:1430, 4:1431, 4:1502, 4:1658, 4:1659 Italy, 3:1264, 4:1429 Jamaica, 2:856 Japan, 2:862–863, 2:867 Kenya, 2:899 Korea, 3:905–907 Maracana Stadium, 3:964–965 memorabilia, 3:997 Mexico, 3:1006, 3:1009 movies, 3:1047, 3:1050 nature of sport, 4:1432–1433 Netherlands, 3:1070, 4:1709 New Zealand, 3:1077 Nigeria, 3:1086 in North American market, 4:1431–1432, 4:1484–1485 Norway, 3:1089–1090 origins, 4:1427–1429 para-soccer, 3:1086 Poland, 3:1195
INDEX
Portugal, 3:1203 racism and, 3:1239, 4:1502 revenue sharing, professional leagues, 3:1263– 1264 Romania, 3:1279 Singapore, 4:1376 social identities of teams, 4:1446 Spain, 3:1264, 4:1446 team ownership, 3:1132, 3:1134, 3:1136 televised broadcasts, 3:993, 3:995–996, 4:1430– 1432, 4:1477, 4:1485, 4:1658, 4:1659 United Kingdom (See United Kingdom) Uruguay, 4:1430 at Wembley Stadium, 4:1691 women’s, 4:1431–1432 young people, programs for, 1:52–53 Social class and sport, 4:1434–1441 basketball, 4:1438 economics, 4:1435–1437 education, 4:1440 future, 4:1440–1441 golf, 4:1438–1439 professional sports, 4:1439–1440 social capital, 4:1437–1438 social mobility, 4:1439 sports participation, 4:1435 Social constructivism, 4:1441–1444 Social ideas, 3:957 Social identity, 4:1445–1449, 4:1470–1471. See also Athletes as celebrities; Sport and national identity athletes as heroes, 1:114–116 masculinity and, 3:985–987 school sports, effect of participation in, 3:1330– 1331 Social-cognitive personality theories, 3:1175 Socialization, sport and, 4:1665 Sociological narrative studies, 3:1058–1059 Sociology interpretive, 2:832–836 postmodernism and, 3:1206–1207 Sodium bicarbonate, 3:1093–1094 Soft tennis, 2:861 Softball, 4:1449–1455 Amateur Softball Association (ASA), 4:1449–1452 competition, top, 4:1453–1454 description of game, 4:1452 future, 4:1454
1803
governing bodies, 4:1454 Mexico, 3:1006 New Zealand men’s team, 3:1073 organizations, 4:1452–1453 professional, 4:1454 “Softbandy,” 2:609 Sokol clubs, 3:1194 Solomon, Donnie, 2:543 Sombart, Werner, 1:49–50 Songe, Le, 3:937 Sorensen, Jackie, 1:12, 2:608 Sorenstam, Annika, 1:354, 2:508, 2:510 Sorrese, Dan, 1:91 Sosa, Sammy, 1:160, 3:1166, 4:1530 SOSUPE (South American Society of Sport Psychology), 3:1225 Sotomayor, Javier, 3:1146 Soule, Aileen Riggen, 3:1342 South Africa, 4:1455–1461 ball games, tribal, 4:1459 competition, top, 4:1460–1461 exclusion from Olympics, 1:20, 1:21–22 future, 4:1461 Olympics participation, 4:1458, 4:1460 rugby, 3:1299–1300 sports after apartheid, 3:1236, 4:1458–1460 sports before apartheid, 4:1455–1457 sports during apartheid, 3:1235, 4:1457–1458, 4:1506 World Cup in, 4:1433 South American Games, 1:85–86, 3:1145 South American Society of Sport Psychology (SOSUPE), 3:1225 South East Asian Games, 3:1347, 4:1376, 4:1461–1463 South Korea, 3:905–907, 4:1592 Asian Games and, 1:104, 1:106 table tennis, 4:1587 Souza, Kenny, 2:483 Soviet Union. See Russia and USSR Spahn, Warren, 1:149 Spain, 4:1463–1465. See also Bullfighting Barcelona Olympics (1992), 3:1115 at Olympics, 3:1120 soccer, 3:1264, 4:1446 Worker Olympics and, 4:1703 Spalding, Albert G., 1:145, 1:148, 3:1131, 3:1134 Spalding Baseball Guides, 3:952–953
S
1804
S
INDEX
Speaker, Tris, 1:149 Spear fishing, 2:591 Special Olympics, 1:7, 2:461, 2:463, 4:1465– 1469 Spectator consumption behavior, 4:1469–1475. See also Marketing; Sporting goods industry demographic aspects, 4:1469–1470 environmental aspects, 4:1473–1474 past behavior as predictor, 4:1473 psychographic aspects, 4:1470–1473 Spectators, 3:956, 4:1475–1480. See also Fan loyalty; Mascots; Sport as spectacle; Violence ancient fans, 4:1475 baseball, 1:159–160 comfort, environment and, 2:518–519 fan behavior, 4:1478–1479, 4:1502, 4:1531 franchise relocation, 2:649–653 future, 4:1479 international consequences, 4:1478 radio, role of, 4:1476 stadiums, 4:1475–1476 television, role of, 4:1476–1478, 4:1500–1501 Speed biking, 2:542. See also Mountain biking Speed skating. See Skating, ice speed Speedball, 4:1480–1482 Speigler, Gustav, 3:945 Spiess, Adolph, 3:1178, 4:1582 Spiller, Ben, 2:694 Spin casting, 2:595 Spirit of St. Louis basketball teams, 3:1245 Spitz, Mark, 2:507, 4:1578 Spitzack, Carol, 1:216 Spock, Benjamin, 3:1295 Spoelstra, Jon, 3:977 SPOLIT, 3:952 SPONET, 3:952 Sponsorship, 3:956–957, 3:977–979, 4:1482– 1486, 4:1501. See also Athletes as celebrities; Marketing America’s Cup race, 1:56 baseball radio broadcasts, 3:1244 facility naming rights, 2:551–553 Japanese volleyball, 4:1678 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
motorcycle races, 3:1022 national teams, corporate sponsorship of, 4:1491 Nigerian youth sports, 3:1087 Olympics, 3:978, 3:1115, 4:1482–1483, 4:1485 race walking, 3:1233 sailboat racing, offshore, 3:1319 tennis, 4:1483, 4:1604, 4:1607 United Kingdom, 4:1658 wakeboarding, 4:1684 Wembley Stadium, 4:1692 worldwide spending on, 3:957 Sport academies. See Academies and camps, sport Sport and Gagaly, 3:937 Sport and national identity, 4:1486–1491 globalization and, 4:1490–1491 media, role of, 3:1082 national identity defined, 4:1487–1488 popular culture, sport in, 4:1491 single national identity, 4:1488–1490 study of, 4:1488 Sport as religion, 4:1492–1498. See also Religion; Rituals as alternative to civil religion, 4:1493–1494 future, 4:1496–1498 meaning of, 4:1496–1498 reflection of society, religion and sport as, 4:1494–1496 Sport as spectacle, 4:1499–1504. See also Racism; Spectators; Violence commercially exploitive spectacle, sport as, 4:1503–1504 early spectator entertainment, 4:1499 Olympics, 4:1500, 4:1501 (See also Olympics, Summer; Olympics, Winter) technology, impact on spectator sport of, 4:1499–1501 violent, sexist spectacle, sport as, 4:1501–1503 Sport history periodicals, 3:951 Sport philosophy peridocials, 3:951 Sport politics, 4:1504–1508 Sport science, 4:1508–1514. See also Fitness; Physical education biomechanics, 1:195–199, 2:900–902 careers, 4:1514 classical issues in, 4:1508 environmental physiology, 4:1509–1510 exercise prescription, 4:1511–1513
INDEX
future athletes and weekend warriors, 4:1511 golden years, 4:1511 heart-healthy lifestyle, 4:1509 human movement studies, 2:771–776 periodicals, 3:949–951 periodization, 4:1511–1513 physical fitness assessment, 4:1508–1509 principles of, 4:1511–1512 resistance training, 4:1510, 4:1511 strength training (See Strength training) Sport tourism, 3:959–961, 4:1514–1517 SPORTDiscus, 3:952 Sporting goods industry, 3:958–961, 3:974–977, 4:1517–1522. See also Athletic equipment and apparel; Spectator consumption behavior; Technology contemporary economic signficance of, 4:1519– 1520 corporate and social responsibility, 4:1521–1522 emergence of, 4:1518–1519 global market, 4:1517–1518 goods, circulation of, 4:1518 issues and controversy, 4:1520–1521 mascots and, 3:982 memorabilia, 3:996–998 organizations and associations, 4:1518 team ownership by, 3:1131 Sporting News Radio, 3:1246 Sports bars, rise of, 2:524–525 Sports camps. See Academies and camps, sport Sports Collector’s Digest, 3:997 Sports Illustrated, 4:1538–1539 Sports management. See Management Sports medicine, 3:1180, 3:1203, 4:1523–1528. See also Diet and weight loss; Disordered eating; Exercise and health; Injuries, youth; Injury; Injury risk in women’s sport; Nutrition; Osteoporosis; Sport science anemia, 1:57–59 contemporary issues, 4:1525–1527 fitness and, 4:1528 history, 4:1523–1525 injured female athletes, 2:804–805 women, children, and older adults, 4:1527–1528 Sports products. See Athletic equipment and apparel; Sporting goods industry Sport-Self-Promotional Showmanship Syndrome (S-SPSS), 4:1672–1673
1805
Sportsmanship, 4:1528–1534. See also Corruption, in sports; Performance enhancement; Violence cheating, 4:1530, 4:1664–1665 ethical character, development of, 4:1529–1530 future of fair play, 4:1533–1534 organizational level, ethics at, 4:1531–1533 profanity, 4:1530 return to ethical behavior, 4:1533 Sportswriting and reporting, 4:1534–1540. See also Literature; Magazines; Newspapers American pioneers of, 4:1535 Bennett, James Gordon, Jr., 4:1535–1536 birth of daily sports page, 4:1536 cultural values and, 1:15–16, 1:18 Egan, Pierce, 4:1534–1535 Liebling, A. J., 4:1539–1540 Murray, Jim, 4:1539–1540 other luminaries, 4:1537–1538 Rice, Grantland, 3:1243, 4:1536–1537 Smith, Red, 4:1538 Sports Illustrated, 4:1538–1539 Texas sportswriters, 4:1539 women, 4:1539 Sprewell, Latrell, 4:1674 Springboard diving, 2:474, 2:475 Springboks, 3:1077 Springfield (MA), 1:168, 1:176 Sprints, 4:1625–1626, 4:1630–1631 Spur Posse case, 4:1671–1672 Spurrier, Steve, 1:349 Squash, 3:1075, 4:1540–1542 Squaw Valley Olympics (1960), 3:1120, 4:1485 Ssirum Korean wrestling, 3:905 S-SPSS (Sport-Self-Promotional Showmanship Syndrome), 4:1672–1673 St. Andrews, 1:319, 2:688, 2:689, 4:1542–1544 St. Goddard, Emile, 4:1416 St. James, Lynn, 1:134 St. Louis Cardinals, 3:1133, 3:1134, 3:1136, 3:1166, 4:1711, 4:1712 St. Louis Rams, 3:1134 St. Moritz, 4:1544–1546 athletic clubs and events, 4:1544–1545 bobsledding, 1:211, 1:212, 3:941 luge, 3:941 Olympics, 3:1118–1119, 3:1159, 4:1416–1417, 4:1545–1546
S
1806
S
INDEX
Stadiums. See also Baseball stadium life; Domed stadiums; Fenway Park Bislett Stadium, 1:204–205 college, 1:348–349 environmental issues, 2:521 franchise relocation and, 2:652–653 indoor, 2:520 Maracana Stadium, 3:964–965 spectator sports and, 4:1475–1476, 4:1500– 1501 Yankee Stadium, 1:159, 4:1732–1734 Stagg, Amos Alonzo, 1:296 Stalberger, John, 2:619 Staley, Dawn, 2:810 Standpoint theory, 4:1442–1443 Stanford University, 2:812, 3:1244, 4:1479, 4:1643 Stanley, Frederick Ashley, 4:1546–1547 Stanley Cup, 2:739, 4:1546–1548 Stearns, Cheryl, 3:1150 Steeplechase (horse race), 2:762 Steeplechase (track and field), 4:1628, 4:1630 Steinborn, Henry, 3:1210 Steinbrenner, George, 4:1127, 4:1649 Stenberg, Sigge, 3:1124 Stenmark, Ingemar, 3:1121, 4:1403 Step aerobics, 1:13 Stephen, Leslie, 3:1030 Stephens, Rebecca, 3:1030 Stern, David, 1:111, 1:249, 1:348, 4:1674 Steroids, 3:1094, 3:1165–1167, 4:1601 bodybuilding and, 1:223, 1:225, 4:1551–1552 at Olympics, 3:1116 in powerlifting, 3:1212 sportsmanship and, 4:1531 Sweden, use in, 4:1573 in tennis, 4:1609 in track and field, 4:1625 in weightlifting, 4:1687 by women, 2:804 Stevens, A. Leo, 3:1148 Still rings, 2:716 Stilt racing, 2:613 Stock car racing, 1:133, 1:135–136 Stock seat horseback riding, 2:769 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Stockholm Olympics (1912), 3:1117 Stockhorn, 3:1039 Stockton, Abbye “Pudgy” Eville, 1:221, 2:601, 2:602, 4:1668–1669 Stockton, Les, 1:220, 2:601 Stojko, Elvis, 3:1229 Stoke Mandeville Games, 1:7, 1:82, 3:1150–1152 Stone, Donna, 2:582 Stoolball, 3:1285–1288 Storey, David, 3:939 Stovey, George, 1:146, 1:147 Strange, Frederick William, 2:861–862 Strange, Mike, 2:544 Strategic deception, 4:1665 Strawberry, Darryl, 1:347 Streb, Elizabeth, 1:440 Streb, Marla, 3:1036 Street hockey, 2:745 Street luge, 2:542 Strength, 4:1510, 4:1548–1553 competitions, 4:1550–1551 diet and drugs, 4:1551–1552 differences in, 4:1549 exercises, 4:1549–1550 maximum, 4:1552 Strength training, 3:1162–1163, 3:1340, 4:1510, 4:1511, 4:1549–1550 Stress, 4:1553–1557. See also Burnout; Psychology athletic injury model, 3:1140–1141 burnout and, 1:268–269, 4:1749 coaching and, 1:323–324 Strikes, collective bargaining and, 1:150, 1:160, 1:337–338, 2:657 Stringer, Korey, 3:1168 Stroke, 2:535 Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football, The, 4:1675 Strongman competitions, 3:1213. See also Bodybuilding; Powerlifting; Weightlifting Stroud, Cleveland, 4:1529 Stroud, Leonard, 3:1274 Strug, Kerri, 2:716, 3:1140 Student-athletes, 2:478, 2:813–815 Su Il Nam, 3:905 Suárez, Paola, 1:85, 1:88 Substance abuse. See Performance enhancement Sudan, 1:19, 4:1719
INDEX
Sudirman Cup, 1:141 Sugar Bowl (New Orleans), 2:628 Sukarno, Ahmed, 2:658–660 Suleimanov (Suleymanoglu), Naim, 4:1688 Sullivan, Christopher, 2:826 Sullivan, John, 1:243 Sullivan, Kathy, 2:888 Sumer, sports in, 3:1160 Summitt, Pat, 1:324, 1:345, 2:810 Sumner, Cheryl, 1:221 Sumo, 2:864, 2:867, 4:1557–1560 Sumo Grand Tournament Series, 4:1560–1562 Sun Also Rises, The, 3:937–938 Super Bowl, 2:550–551, 2:629, 4:1485, 4:1501, 4:1562–1564 Supermoto (Supermotard), 2:542 Surf lifesaving, 4:1564–1566 Surface, playing. See Playing surfaces Surfing, 4:1566–1571 competitive surfing, 4:1568–1571 extreme surfing, 2:543–545 innovations, 4:1567 kite surfing, 3:903–904 origins of, 4:1566–1577 social acceptance, 4:1567–1568 Sutherland, Jock, 2:626 Suzuki, Ichiro, 1:154, 2:828, 2:861 Suzuki motorcycles, 3:1022 Swain, Beryl, 3:1024 Swanson, Becca, 3:1213 Sweden, 2:806, 3:1158–1159, 4:1571–1573 physical education in, 3:1178 Stockholm Olympics (1912), 3:1117 table tennis, 4:1587, 4:1590 Swift, Grace Ann, 1:91 Swimming, 3:938, 4:1376, 4:1573–1579. See also Biathlon and triathlon Athens Olympics (2004), 3:1109 competitive, 4:1576–1578 governing body, 4:1579 history, 4:1574–1576 Olympics, 3:1113, 4:1575–1579 Poland, 3:1195 senior athletes, 3:1342 strokes, 4:1575–1576 technology, equipment changes due to, 4:1598, 4:1602 television, effect on rules of, 3:993
1807
water polo, 3:1199–1202 women, 3:1113 Swimming, synchronized, 4:1579–1581 Swing, 2:443 Switzer, Kathrine, 1:234, 1:400, 3:968 Switzerland, 4:1581–1585. See also Davos, Switzerland; St. Moritz Swoopes, Sheryl, 1:174 Swordsmanship. See Fencing Sydney Olympics (2000), 1:125, 3:1115, 4:1483, 4:1501, 4:1515, 4:1532–1533 Sydor, Alison, 3:1036 Syers, Madge, 4:1383 Synchronized driving, 2:474 Syracuse University, 4:1612 Szewinska, Irena, 3:1195
T Tabei, Junko, 3:1030 Table tennis, 3:1279, 4:1376, 4:1507, 4:1586– 1591 competition, 4:1586–1591 development, 4:1587–1588 origins, 4:1587 Taekwando, 1:37, 3:905, 4:1591–1595 Taerea, Briece, 2:544 Taglioni, Marie, 1:437 Tai chi, 4:1595–1597 Taiaroa, Jack, 3:1072 Takahashi, Yukiko, 4:1683 Takeko, Mitamura, 2:872 Takeshi, Mitsuzuka, 2:872 Talk test, exercise and, 2:514 Tamini, Noel, 3:970 Tampakos, Dimosthenis, 2:718 Tan Liangde, 2:475–476 Tanaka, Ginnosuke, 2:863 Tango, 2:443, 2:444 Tanner-Whitehouse (TW) Method, biological maturation and, 2:709–710 Tanny, Victor “Vic,” 2:601, 4:1670 Tantra yoga, 4:1735 Tap dance, 1:434 Tapje, Bernard, 3:1136 Target heart rate zone, 2:513–514 Target shooting. See Shooting Taylor, Chuck, 2:506 Taylor, George, 4:1524
T
1808
T
INDEX
Taylor, J. H., 1:257 Taylor, Marshall “Major” Walter, 1:426 Taylor, Paul, 1:440 TBS, 3:992 Technology, 4:1508, 4:1597–1602. See also Athletic equipment and apparel biotechnology, 1:199–204, 4:1601–1602 controlling innovations in sport, 4:1598–1602, 4:1622 future, 4:1602 new materials, opportunities provided by, 4:1597–1598 spectator sport, impact on, 4:1499–1501 team vs. individual, 4:1599–1601 Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, 3:920 Telemark skiing, 4:1405 Television, 1:353–354, 3:991–993, 4:1476–1478, 4:1500–1501, 4:1585. See also ESPN; Playby-play announcing; Wimbledon athlete celebrities and, 1:109–110, 1:112–113 Australia, 3:993, 3:995 baseball and, 1:163–164, 3:992, 4:1485 basketball and, 1:174–175, 3:992, 4:1500 Canada, 1:285–286, 3:963, 3:991 corporate sponsorship and, 4:1483, 4:1485 cricket and (See Cricket) curling and, 1:419 endorsements and, 2:506 Eurosport, 2:530–532 football and (See Football) hockey, 3:991, 3:992, 4:1500 intercollegiate athletics and (See Intercollegiate athletics) mixed martial arts competitions, 3:1011 mountain biking and, 3:1032 NASCAR and, 3:992, 3:1085 New Zealand, 3:993–3:995 newspapers and, 3:1078 Olympics (See Olympics) Pan American Games, 3:1146 revenue sharing and, 4901264 rugby and (See Rugby) soccer and (See Soccer) Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
synthetic images (hyperreality), 3:1208–1209 tennis and (See Tennis) Tour de France, 4:1617 track and field and, 3:993, 4:1629 United Kingdom, 3:991–995, 4:1658–1659 women’s sports, coverage of, 4:1697–1698 X Games on, 4:1380 Telfair, Sebastian, 1:348 Tennis, 3:937–938, 4:1436, 4:1603–1610. See also Davis Cup; Wimbledon amateur vs. professional (See Amateur vs. professional debate) in art, 1:95 current issues and challenges, 4:1607–1610 endorsements and, 2:506 history, 3:1252, 4:1603, 4:1606, 4:1608 Japan, 2:861 lawn, 1:38–40, 2:447 Mexico, 3:1006 New Zealand, 3:1073 notable players, 3:1279, 4:1605–1606 at Olympics, 3:1113 rules, equipment, and training, changes in, 4:1604–1605 senior athletes, 3:1342 significant events, 4:1606–1607 soft tennis, 2:861 sponsorship of, 4:1483, 4:1604, 4:1607 technology, equipment changes due to, 4:1598– 4:1601, 4:1604 television broadcasts, 1:354, 3:991, 3:1073, 4:1485, 4:1608, 4:1658, 4:1698–1700 United Kingdom, 4:1656–1657 violence and, 4:1674 women, 3:1113, 4:1502, 4:1698–1700 worldwide growth and participation, 4:1603– 1604 Terrell, Roy, 4:1539 Tertullian, 3:1250 Testoni, Claudia, 2:853 Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), 3:1167, 4:1527 Thailand, 4:1461–1463 Asian Games and, 1:103–106 sepak takraw, 3:1346–3:1348 Thanou, Katrina, 3:1109 Tharp, Twyla, 1:440 Theodorakis, Mikis, 3:1110 THG (tetrahydrogestrinone), 3:1167, 4:1527
INDEX
This Sporting Life, 3:939 Thomas, Jim, 3:1150 Thomas Cup, 1:141 Thompson, Edith, 2:735 Thompson, Hunter S., 1:349 Thompson, John, 2:810 Thompson, William and Maurice, 1:80, 1:81 Thöni, Gustav, 2:854 Thornton, Colonel Thomas, 2:554 Thoroughbred horse racing, 2:759–761 Thorp, Ian, 4:1578 Thorpe, Jim, 2:625, 3:1113, 4:1623 Throwing. See Track and field—jumping and throwing Tibet, 3:1025–1028, 3:1038–1039 Tibetan yoga, 4:1736 Ticket sales, 3:977, 3:979 revenue sharing and, 3:1263 soccer, 4:1431 spectator consumption behavior and, 4:1474– 1475 Super Bowl, 4:1563 Ticketmaster, 3:977 Tigana, Jean, 4:1710 Tilden, Bill, 2:448, 4:1694 Tilghman, Billy, 2:782 Tillander, Gunnar, 3:1125 Tilman, H. L., 3:1028 Tilman, H. W., 3:1045 Tishman, Maria Cerra, 2:582 Tissié, Philippe, 3:1179 Title IX, 3:921–922, 3:1229, 4:1610–1616, 4:1675, 4:1697. See also Gender equity; Intercollegiate athletics application and enforcement of, 4:1611–1613 athletic training and, 1:122 baton twirling and, 1:178 cheerleading and, 1:303 coaching and, 1:325 college athletics and, 1:344, 1:346 Commission on Opportunity in Athletics debate, 4:1614–1615 cross-country running and, 1:403 current status, 4:1615 field hockey and, 2:737 fitness boom and, 2:602 gymnastics and, 2:715 history, 4:1610–1611
1809
ice hockey and, 2:743–744 intercollegiate athletics and, 2:813 key lawsuits, 4:1613–1614 korfball and, 3:908 lesbianism and, 3:930–931 Women’s World Cup and, 4:1702 youth sports and, 4:1746 TNT (Turner Network Television), 3:992, 3:1146 Tobin, Michael, 2:483 Toboganning, 3:941 Todd, Jan, 1:221, 3:1212 Todd, Mark, 3:1074 Todd, Terry, 3:1211 Tohei, Koichi, 1:36 Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 3:1176, 3:1177, 4:1427, 4:1475–1476 Tomba, Alberto, 3:1122, 4:1403 Tomjanovich, Rudy, 4:1673–1674 Topolski, Dan, 1:207 Toronto Blue Jays, 4:1712 Toronto Maple Leafs, 3:962–964, 4:1547 Torts, sports-related, 3:922 Tough Man Competitions, 2:542 Touny, Ahmed, 1:72 Tour de France, 4:1552, 4:1582, 4:1616–1618 competitiveness of, 1:423, 1:426 drug use in, 1:18–19 substance abuse, 3:1168, 4:1531, 4:1617 tourism and, 4:1515 yellow jersey, 3:990, 4:1616 Tourist Trophy motorcycle race, 3:1022–1024 Tournaments, medieval. See Jousting Tow-in surfing, 2:544 Townsend, Peter, 4:1570 Toxophilites and archery, 1:79–80 Track and field—jumping and throwing, 4:1618–1624 amateurism and controversy, 4:1623 competition, top, 4:1623–1624 governing bodies, 4:1624 (See also International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF)) jumping, 4:1618 at Olympics, 2:700, 3:1102, 3:1109, 3:1113 technology, equipment changes due to, 4:1598, 4:1622 throwing, 4:1620–1623 women, 3:1113 world records, tables of, 4:1621
T
1810
U
INDEX
Track and field—running and hurdling, 4:1624– 1632. See also Biathlon and triathlon competition, top, 4:1631–1632 cross-country running, 1:398–404 drug use, 4:1626 duathlon, 2:480–483 facilities and equipment, 4:1631 governing bodies, 4:1631–1632 (See also International Amateur Athletics Federation [IAAF]) history, 4:1624–1625 hurdles, 4:1627, 4:1630, 4:1631 literature, 3:938 middle-distance and long-distance races, 4:1627– 1628, 4:1630, 4:1631 movies, 3:1050 nature of, 4:1629–11631 at Olympics, 3:1102, 3:1109–1110, 3:1113 relays, 4:1629, 4:1630 senior athletes, 3:1342, 3:1343 sprints, 4:1626–1627, 4:1630–1631 steeplechase, 4:1628, 4:1630 television, effect on rules of, 3:993, 4:1629 women in, 3:968, 3:1113, 4:1625–1626 world records, tables of, 4:1629 Tracks on Ice, 4:1382 Training and trainers. See Athletic training; Strength training Trek (company), 2:507 Tremblay, Kari, 1:91 Trevino, Lee, 1:258 Trezeguet, David, 2:529 Trias, Robert, 2:888 Triathlon. See Biathlon and triathlon Trillini, Giovanna, 2:854 Triple jump, 4:1618–1619, 4:1623 Triplett, Norman, 3:998, 3:1163, 3:1169–1170 “Trotting,” 2:761 Truck racing, 1:136 Trujillo, James Charles, 3:1276 Trust, 4:1675 Tsitas, Georgios, 4:1720 Tsuboi, Gendo, 2:861 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Tsugutake, Nakanishi Chuzo, 2:893 Tug of war, 4:1632–1634 Tullis, Julie, 3:1000 Tumbling, 1:303 Tunney, Gene, 1:109, 3:1190 Turati, Augusto, 2:853 Turkey, 4:1634–1636 Turkoglu, Hidayet, 3:1237 Turner, Ted, 1:111 Turner festivals (turners), 2:676, 3:1178, 3:1283, 4:1358–1359, 4:1636–1639 Turner Network Television (TNT), 3:992, 3:1146 Twain, Mark, 3:936, 4:1566 Twentieth century, sports performance in, 3:1162–1163 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 4:1644 Twirling, baton, 1:176–179 Twombly, A. S., 4:1566 Tyson, Mike, 1:243, 2:510, 3:1255, 4:1360, 4:1674
U Uber Cup, 1:141 UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale), 3:1034 Uecker, Bob, 3:1240 UEFA. See Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Ueshiba, Kisshomaru, 1:36 Ueshiba, Morihei, 1:36 UIM (Union Of International Motor Boating), 3:1018, 3:1019 Ulmer, Sarah, 3:1075 Ultimate Fighting Championship, 3:1011–1012 Ultimate (Ultimate Frisbee), 1:41–42, 4:1640– 1643 Umbro (company), 4:1522 Underwater sports, 4:1643–1648 dangers of, 4:1644–1646 free diving, 4:1646 future, 4:1647–1648 origins of, 4:1643–1644 recreational activities, 4:1646–1647 scuba, 4:1643, 4:1646–1647 technical diving, 4:1647 Uneven parallel bars, 2:717 Uni, Louis, 4:1686 “Unihockey/unihok,” 2:609, 2:806 Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), 3:1034
INDEX
Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), 3:958 European Football Championship, 2:528–530, 4:1433–1434 stadium safety requirements, 3:964 Women’s Championship, television coverage of, 4:1698 Union Of International Motor Boating (UIM), 3:1018, 3:1019 Unionism, 3:923, 4:1648–1652. See also Collective bargaining; Free agency defining labor issues, 4:1649–1650 Major League Baseball (MLB), 1:25, 1:336–337, 3:923, 3:1131–1132, 4:1648–1649, 4:1651– 1652 National Basketball Association (NBA), 3:923, 4:1648–1650 National Football League (NFL), 3:923, 4:1648– 1652 National Hockey League (NHL), 2:652, 3:923, 4:1648, 4:1649 United Kingdom, 4:1653–1661. See also Cricket; Scotland; St. Andrews; Wimbledon amateurism in, 4:1654–1655, 4:1658 archery in, 1:77–78 Ascot, 1:97–99 British Open, 1:256–258, 3:1073 Cambridge vs. Oxford boat race, 1:206–208, 2:727 Commonwealth countries, sports exported to, 3:1072, 3:1235, 3:1299, 4:1446, 4:1455– 1456 Commonwealth Games, 1:125, 1:354–359 cultural studies theory and, 1:410 emergence of modern sport, 4:1653–1655 figure skating, 4:1382 Henley Regatta, 2:727–729 identities and inequalities, 4:1659–1660 influence on European sports, 3:1069, 4:1429– 1430 jousting, 2:876–879 lifeguarding, 3:932 London Olympics, 3:1118, 4:1657, 4:1691 memorabilia industry, 3:997 motorcycle racing, 3:1021–1024 mountaineering in, 3:1040–1041, 3:1046 netball, 3:1066–1068
1811
participant and spectator sports, 4:1655–1658 polo, 3:1197 preindustrial sports, 4:1653 public schools, athletics at, 3:1176, 3:1177 rounders, history of, 3:1287 rowing, 3:1289, 3:1295 rugby, 3:1296–1301, 4:1654, 4:1655, 4:1658, 4:1659 in Ryder Cup, 3:1307–1308 sailing, history of, 3:1315 skating, history of, 4:1382–1383, 4:1388 skiing, 4:1398–1399 soccer, 3:1239, 3:1263–1264, 3:1336, 4:1428– 1430, 4:1446, 4:1502, 4:1531, 4:1654–1655, 4:1658–1659, 4:1691 sponsorship, spending on, 3:978 sporting goods industry, 4:1519–1521 sports and national identity, 4:1491 sports tourism in, 4:1515–1516 table tennis, 4:1587–1588 team ownership, 3:1132, 3:1134 televised sports in, 3:991–995, 4:1658–1659 tug-of-war, 4:1632 water polo, 3:1199–1201 Wembley Stadium, 4:1691–1692 women’s sports, coverage of, 4:1698 United Parcel Service (UPS), 3:978 United States. See America’s Cup; Astrodome; Baseball; Boston Marathon; Carnegie Report; College athletes; Davis Cup; Drake Group; Economics and public policy; ESPN; Fenway Park; Football; Indianapolis 500; Intercollegiate athletics; Masters; Native American games and sports; Pebble Beach; Ryder Cup; Title IX; Venice Beach; Wrigley Field; Yankee Stadium U. S. Amateur Championship (golf), 3:1154 U. S. Anti-Doping Agency, 3:1167 U. S. Open Golf Championship, 3:1154–1155 U. S. Open Tennis Championship, 3:1279, 4:1605, 4:1607–4:1609 United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, 3:1018 United States Football League (USFL), 4:1650–1651 United States Olympic Committee (USOC), 3:920 marketing by, 3:977 mental conditioning of athletes, use of, 3:999, 3:1002, 3:1163, 3:1170
U
1812
INDEX
United States Power Boat Squadron, 3:1018 Universiades. See World University Games University of Alabama, 3:1244, 4:1672 University of California, 2:812, 3:1324, 4:1479, 4:1643 University of Chicago, 3:1244 University of Colorado, 1:349 University of Illinois, 1:349–350, 3:983 University of Iowa, 3:1245 University of Michigan, 2:811, 3:1245, 4:1480 University of Missouri, 1:349, 3:1245 University of Nebraska, 3:1244, 4:1476 University of Oregon, 1:348–349 University of Pennsylvania, 3:1244 University of Pittsburgh, 3:1243 University of Southern California, 3:1244 University of Wisconsin, 1:350 Unser, Al, Jr., 2:794 Unser, Al, Sr., 2:795 Unser, Bobby, 2:795 Unsoeld, Willi, 3:1029 UPS (United Parcel Service), 3:978 USA Track & Field, 2:874 USFL (United States Football League), 4:1650–1651 USSR. See Russia and USSR
V
V
Valenzuela, Fernando, 3:1009 Values and ethics, 1:285, 4:1662–1668. See also Corruption, in sports; Sportsmanship biotechnology and sports, 1:202–203 debates over, 4:1663–1664 disability sport and, 2:464–465 foxhunting and, 2:641 future, 4:1667–1668 HIV/AIDS, 4:1667 imagery of sport, promotion of, 4:1667 inclusion/exclusion, 4:1665–1666 injury, risk of, 4:1667 intercollegiate athletics and, 2:815–816 school values, commitment to, 3:1330–1331 socialization and sport, 4:1665 Van Aaken, Ernst, 3:968, 3:970 Van Dorn, Marieke, 2:738 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Van Innis, Hubert, 1:80 Van Lierde, Luc, 2:843 Van Looy, Rik, 1:188 Van Steenbergen, Rik, 1:188 Vance, Dazzy, 1:149 Vancouver Canucks, 4:1502 Vander Merwe, Marina, 2:738 Vardon, Harry, 1:257 Vare, Glenna Collett, 2:693 Vault (long horse), 2:714, 2:717 Vázquez Raña, Mario, 3:1009 Vázquez Raña, Olegario, 3:1009 Vega, Nora Alicia, 1:88 Venables, Stephen, 3:1029 Venice Beach, 1:220, 2:602, 4:1668–1670 Ventouz, Mount, 3:1039 Veranzio, Fausto, 3:1148 Verne, Jules, 4:1644 Vezina, Steve, 2:746 Vezzali, Valentina, 2:854 Viacom. See CBS Vic Tanny’s Gym, 4:1670 “Victorian rules football,” 1:128 Video games, 2:829–830 Video replay, 3:992 Vietnam, 4:1461–1463 Vigoro, 1:127 Vikelas, Dimitrios, 3:1117 Vilas, Guillermo, 1:85, 4:1605 Vince, Marion Lloyd, 2:582 Vintage auto racing, 1:133, 1:136–137 Violence, 4:1501–1502, 4:1531–1532, 4:1670– 1676 boxing, 1:241, 4:1673, 4:1674 contributions by athletes to society, 4:1670–1671 facility management and, 2:549–550 in high school sports, 4:1671–1672 in intercollegiate sports, 4:1672–1673 Kerrigan-Harding incident, 4:1387, 4:1674 masculinity and, 3:987 outlook, 4:1676 in professional sport, 4:1673–1675 soccer hooliganism, 4:1430, 4:1431, 4:1478, 4:1502, 4:1658, 4:1659 by spectators, 4:1478–1480, 4:1502, 4:1531 Virgil, 3:935 Virginia Slims tournament, 4:1483 Visa, 3:978, 4:1482
INDEX
Visually impaired athletes. See Disability sport Vitamins, healthy eating and, 2:457 Volleyball, 4:1676–1680 Volleyball, beach, 4:1680–1683 Volvo Ocean Race, 3:1319 Von Gesner, Konrad, 4:1582 Von Laban, Rudolph, 1:438 Von Lerch, Thodor, 2:861 Von Liechtenstein, Ulrich von, 3:935 Voog, Daisy, 2:501 Vôrg, Ludwig, 2:500, 2:501
W Waddell, Dr. Tom, 1:31, 2:661 Waddell, George “Rube,” 1:149 Wagner, Honus, 1:149, 1:157 Wahlsten, Juhani, 3:1265 Waitz, Grete, 1:401 Wakeboarding, 2:542–543, 4:1684–1685 Wales, 1:356 Walker, Hershel, 2:810 Walker, John, 3:1074 Walker, Mark, 2:510 Walker, Moses Fleetwood “Fleet,” 1:146 Walker, Murray, 3:1191 Walker, Welday, 1:146 Wall, Patrick, 3:1139 Wall of Ice, 3:939 Wallach, Ira, 4:1670 Walt Disney/ABC/Capital Cities, 1:354, 2:524, 3:992, 3:994, 3:1146, 4:1485, 4:1500. See also ESPN Anaheim Mighty Ducks, 3:995, 3:1134 hockey, televising of, 4:1652 Monday Night Football, 3:1191–1192, 4:1479 Wide World of Sports, 4:1476, 4:1569 Walton, Bill, 1:175 Waltz, 2:444 Wangali, Robert, 2:899 Wanshu, 2:887 Warbrick, Joe, 3:1072 Waring, Thomas, 1:79 Warshaw, Mark, 4:1568 Washburn, Brad, 3:1045 Washington, Kenny, 2:628 Washington, Kermit, 4:1673–1674 Washington Redskins, 3:983 Water Dancer, 3:938
1813
Water polo, 3:1199–1202 Water skiing, 4:1410–1414 Watson, Andrew, 3:1236 Watson, Greg, 2:483 Watson, James, 1:199 Watson, Maud, 4:1692 Watson, Tom, 1:258, 3:989, 3:1154–1155 Watterson, Garrett, 2:726 Waugh, Andrew, 3:1025 Way, Danny, 1:40 Webber, Chris, 3:1237 Weber, Max, 3:1206 Weble, Ursula, 4:1416 Weider, Ben, 1:220, 3:1211, 4:1687 Weider, Joseph, 1:220, 2:601, 3:1211, 4:1510, 4:1669, 4:1687 Weight loss. See Diet and weight loss Weightlifting, 4:1376, 4:1510, 4:1670, 4:1686– 1691. See also Bodybuilding agents of change in, 4:1687–1688 American golden age of, 4:1687 basics of, 4:1689–1690 current status, 4:1689 early history, 4:1686 East European dominance, 4:1688 governance, 4:1690 international order, reconstruction of, 4:1688– 1689 powerlifting, 3:1210–1215 3:1165 as sport, 4:1686 steroid use, 3:1165 Weiss, Alta, 1:154 Weiss, Michael, 4:1385 Weissflog, Jens, 4:1397 Weissmuller, Johnny, 4:1578 Weld, Theresa, 3:1118 Welsh, Lillian, 3:1178 Wembley Stadium, 4:1691–1692 Wenzel, Hanni, 3:1121 Wepner, Chuck, 1:246, 1:247 West, Mae, 4:1669 West Virginia University, 3:1243 Western horseback riding, 2:769 Westinghouse Radio, 3:1243 Weston, Edward Payson, 3:1233 Westside Barbell Club, 3:1214 Wet-fly fishing, 2:595 Wethered, Joyce, 2:693
W
1814
W
INDEX
WFAN-AM radio, 3:1246 Wham-O Manufacturing Company, 4:1640 Wheaties (company), 2:506 Wheelchair athletes/athletics basketball, 2:461, 2:462 Boston Marathon and, 1:7–8, 1:234 ethical concerns, 2:465 Wheeler, Frank, 2:793 Wheeler, Rashidi, 3:1168 Wheel-rolling game, 1:69 Whillans, Don, 1:43 Whitbread Round the World Race, 3:1319 White, Albert, 2:476 White, Andrew, 3:1245 White, Byron “Whizzer,” 2:626 White, Cheryl, 2:763 White, Sol, 1:146 White, Stanford, 3:947 White Fang, 4:1416 White Frenzy, The, 4:1409 Whitehead, Cindy, 3:1035 Whitewater freestyle racing, 1:289 Whitfield, Fred, 3:1276 Whitman, Walt, 3:936 Whitmore, Walter James, 1:395 Whymper, Edward, 3:1040–1041 Wide World of Sports, 4:1476, 4:1569 Wiggins, Alan, 1:31 Wightman Cup, 4:1604 Wigman, Mary, 1:438, 3:1182 Wilander, Mars, 4:1605 Wilbye, Harald, 3:1124–1125 Wilcox, Howdy, 2:794 Wild One, The, 3:1022 Wild West shows, 3:1273–1274, 3:1277–1278 Wilding, Anthony, 3:1073 Wildwater canoeing and kayaking, 1:290 Wilhelm, Bruce, 3:1213 Wilkins, Lenny, 1:173 Williams, Esther, 4:1580 Williams, Jason, 3:1238 Williams, John, 1:82 Williams, Lucinda, 3:1143 Williams, Mitch, 1:157 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Williams, Serena, 4:1608 endorsements and, 1:250, 1:354, 2:510 as yoga practitioner, 4:1738 Williams, “Smokey” Joe, 1:147 Williams, Ted, 1:149, 1:157, 2:585 Williams, Venus, 4:1604, 4:1608 endorsements and, 1:250, 2:508–2:510 as yoga practitioner, 4:1738 Williams, Willie, 1:350 Willis, Helen, 1:39 Willis, Michael, 2:544 Wills, Helen, 3:928, 4:1606 Wills, Maury, 1:149 Wilmarth, Dick, 2:789 Wilson, Horace, 2:860–861 Wilson, Maurice, 3:1028 Wilson, William, 3:1200 Wimbledon, 1:38, 3:993, 4:1603, 4:1692–1694 players, 4:1605–1607, 4:1609, 4:1693 prize money, 4:1692 sponsorship of, 4:1604 television broadcasts, 1:354, 3:991, 3:1073, 4:1485, 4:1658 traditions, 4:1693–1694 Wind, Herbert Warren, 3:989 Windship, George Barker, 3:1210, 4:1686 Windsurfing, 3:903–904, 3:1314, 4:1694–1696 Winfrey, Oprah, 2:874 Wingfield, Walter Clapton, 1:38, 4:1603 Winnick, Joseph, 1:7 Winston (Nextel) Cup, 1:136, 3:1083–1085 Wint, Arthur, 2:857, 2:858 Winter, Liane, 3:968 Winter Olympics. See Olympics, Winter Wipicat, 3:903 WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), 3:923 Wise, John, 3:1148 Witt, Katarina, 3:1121, 3:1122 WMG (World Master Games), 3:1344 WNBA. See Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Wolde, Mamo, 3:967 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 3:1177 Wolsey, Thomas, 3:1252 Women. See Baseball wives; Body image; Coeducational sport; Disordered eating; Feminist perspective; Gender equity;
INDEX
Gender verification; Injury risk in women’s sport; Lesbianism; Psychology of gender differences; Sexual harassment; Sexuality; Title IX; Women’s sports, media coverage of; Women’s World Cup Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), 1:174, 3:947, 4:1484 Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA), 3:1275, 3:1276–1278 Women’s sports, media coverage of, 4:1697– 1701 Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), 4:1483, 4:1604, 4:1606–1607 Women’s World Cup, 4:1431, 4:1432, 4:1664– 1665, 4:1698, 4:1701–1703 Wood, “Smokey” Joe, 1:149 Wood, Thomas Denison, 3:1182 Wooden, John, 1:175 Woods, Tiger, 3:989, 3:1155, 4:1543 as athlete celebrity, 1:111 as athlete hero, 1:115 brand management and, 1:250 endorsements and, 1:354, 2:507–2:509 father’s comments on, 2:504 Woolf, Bob, 1:26, 1:27 Wordsworth, Charles, 1:206 Worker sports, 2:587–588, 2:676, 3:1304, 4:1703–1708 Workman, Fanny, 3:1041 World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), 1:202–203, 1:285, 3:920, 3:1093, 3:1110, 3:1116, 4:1513, 4:1526 World Cup, 4:1431, 4:1433, 4:1448, 4:1708–1710 Brazilian dominance, 4:1709 commodification of sport, example of, 1:353 Korean participation, 3:905–906 at Maracana Stadium, 3:964 origins, 4:1708 postwar era, 4:1708–1709 racism, 3:1236 Romanian participation, 3:1279 sponsorship, spending on, 3:978 television broadcasts, 4:1430, 4:1431, 4:1433, 4:1477, 4:1485, 4:1658 total football, dominance of, 4:1709–1710 violence and, 4:1478 World Games for the Deaf. See Deaflympics
1815
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 3:923 World Master Games (WMG), 3:1344 World Series, 4:1710–1713 cancellation (1994), 1:150, 1:160, 1:338 radio broadcast, 3:990, 3:1241, 3:1244, 3:1245 television broadcasts, 4:1485 World Series cricket, 3:995 World Team Tennis, 4:1608 World University Games, 4:1713–1718 Cold War split, 1945-1959, 4:1714–1715 founders, 4:1713–1714 International University Sports and George E. Killian (1999-2005), 4:1717–1718 Universiades and Primo Nebiolo, 1959-1999, 4:1715–1717 World War I glider development, 4:1423 rounders, history of, 3:1287 skiing, 4:1405 soccer, 4:1429 World Series during, 4:1711 World War II. See also Nazis glider development, 4:1423 Japanese martial arts, effect on, 2:895–896 United Kingdom, sports promoted by, 4:1657 World Series during, 4:1711 World’s Strongest Man competition, 4:1551 Worthy, James, 1:173 WPRA (Women’s Professional Rodeo Association), 3:1275, 3:1276–1278 Wrestling, 4:1718–1723 arm wrestling, 1:90–92 in art, 1:96 China, 1:309 freestyle, 4:1719–1720 Greco-Roman, 4:1720 Iran, 2:836 movies, 3:1050 in Olympics, 2:701 origins, 3:1102, 3:1103, 4:1718 rules and play, 4:1718–1719 as spectacle, 4:1503 ssirum Korean wrestling, 3:905 Sudan, 1:19 Swiss folk wrestling, 4:1584 Title IX and, 4:1614–1616 women, 4:1720–1722
W
1816
INDEX
Wright, Mickey, 2:692 Wright, Orville and Wilbur, 2:611, 2:723, 4:1423, 4:1425 Wrigley, Philip, 1:153 Wrigley, William, Jr., 4:1723 Wrigley Field, 1:159, 1:249, 2:625, 4:1479, 4:1712, 4:1723–1724, 4:1734 Wrist wrestling, 1:90 Writing, sports. See Sportswriting and reporting WTA. See Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Wulff, Lee, 2:597 Wushu (kung fu), 1:310, 3:1010, 4:1724–1727 Wyatt, Jonathan, 3:1074
X X Games, 2:509, 2:524, 2:539, 4:1380, 4:1728– 1731 Xiong Ni, 2:476, 2:477 XM radio, 3:1246
Y
X Y Z
Yachting. See Sail sports Yale University, 2:811, 3:981, 4:1449 Yamaha motorcycles, 3:1022 Yang Luchan, 4:1595 Yankee Stadium, 1:159, 4:1732–1734 Yao Ming, 2:509, 2:828 Yastrzemski, Carl, 1:150 Yasushi, Inoue, 3:939 Yawkey, Tom, 2:585 YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), 3:957, 3:1179, 3:1254, 3:1255, 4:1359, 4:1495 gymnastics promoted by, 2:714 Japan, 2:863 Mexico, 3:1006 volleyball, invention of, 4:1676–1677 Yoga, 2:603, 4:1734–1739 York, Denise DeBartolo, 3:1134 Yosemite Valley, 3:1044 Yoshinobu, Miyake, 4:1687 Yost, Paul Edward, 1:143 Young, Buddy, 2:628 Young, Denton True “Cy,” 1:148 Young, Geoffrey Winthrop, 3:1043 Notes: 1) Bold entries and page numbers denote encyclopedia entries; 2) The bold numbers preceeding the page numbers denote the volumes (1–4) where the page numbers can be found.
Young, Larry, 3:1234 Young, Nat, 2:544 Young Men’s Christian Association. See YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), 3:1256 Younghusband, Francis, 3:1025, 3:1026 Youth culture and sport, 4:1739–1744 Youth sports, 4:1511, 4:1744–1749. See also Parents, role of academies and camps, 1:3–4, 2:817–820 exercise and health, 2:537–538, 4:1509–1511, 4:1741–1742, 4:1748–1749 Fair Play for Children (FPC), 4:1533 family involvement, 2:557–562 (See also Elite sports parents) female superstars, 1:308 growth, development and, 2:712 injuries and, 2:795–797 play v. organized sport, 3:1186–1188 track and field, 4:1618 violence and, 4:1671–1672 Yuko, Mashima, 3:939 YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association), 3:1256
Z Zadeh, Reza, 4:1689 Zafarana, Giacomo, 2:852 Zagunis, Mariel, 2:582 Zaharias, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson, 1:115, 1:153, 2:692, 3:928, 3:930 Zane, Frank, 2:602 Zarella, Joe, 3:1212 Zatopek, Emile, 3:967 Zeevi, Arik, 2:847 Zenzaemon, Yoshida, 4:1561 Zhang Sanfeng, 4:1595 Zidan, Zinedine, 3:1236 Ziegler, John B., 3:1165, 4:1687 Zinkin, Harold, 4:1669 Zionism, 3:944–946 Zurner, Albert, 2:476 Zwaanswijk, Adri, 3:908