Countering the Soviet Threat in the Olympic medals race: The Amateur Sports Act of 1978 and American athletics policy reform

The Olympics were a site of Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The successes of the Soviet Union eventually captured the attention of American policy-makers, who responded with the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. This article argues that the poor performance of the American team at the 1972 Olympic Games provided a ‘focusing event’ out of which the act emerged. It will further argue that the act's focus on elite athletics was a product of a perception in the late 1960s and 1970s that losses at international sport competitions detracted from American prestige abroad. The conservative political ideologies and athletic experiences of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford did much to shape the way in which the problems in American athletics were approached.     

‘Nothing but Trouble’: The Soviet Union's Push to ‘Democratise’ International Sports During the Cold War, 1959–1962

Analysing internal documents from recently accessible Soviet archives as well as International Olympic Committee (IOC) correspondence, this article explores how Soviet sports administrators sought to gain influence and authority in international sports in order to advance Soviet state goals during the Cold War. To counter the ‘reactionary’, ‘Anglo-American’ bloc they perceived in the IOC and International Federations (IFs), members of the Soviet All-Union Committee on Physical Culture and Sport sought to ‘democratise’ international sports organisations by transforming them into truly international bodies that included representatives from all regions of the world, especially those sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Because of the governing culture of the IOC and the personalities of many of its members, any stance taken on by Soviet members could not overtly challenge Olympic ideals. Couching their call to expand Olympism in the principles of international cooperation, democracy and the right for everyone to participate in sports, Soviet administrators could present themselves as dedicated promoters of sport and use their clout to further Soviet interests. Through their efforts to increase Soviet influence globally, Soviet administrators challenged the insularity of the IOC and IFs and helped to transform international sports and the Olympic Games into a truly global movement.     

Learning the American Way: Sports International and American Soft Power

Abstract

From 1962 to 1968, the United States Government along with private entities funded the training of athletes from developing nations through a non-profit organization named Sports International. Led by former Peace Corps member David Dichter, Sports International sought to enhance America’s image in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The initial aim of the programme was to train athletes to compete at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The theory behind Sports International centred on the notion that helping developing nations achieves athletic success would influence them to view the United States more favourably. The idea to form Sports International came in the midst of the Cold War as the United States and the Soviet Union battled on a multitude of fronts. This article argues that American leaders worried about the presence of the Soviet Union in developing countries and sought ways to maximize American influence in those areas. The theory of soft power, a concept most prominently explicated by American international relations theorist Joseph Nye, forms the framework for this study. By analysing Sports International through this lens, this article demonstrates several problems which might ensure should one overemphasize the effect of sport on a nation’s soft power.     

体育旅游产品的开发策略

对体育旅游产品的特征与市场机会进行分析 ,有助于旅游营销主体确立目标市场 ,筛选新产品开发策略 ,并在市场运营中开发培植新型的体育旅游产品 ,以适应现代旅游时尚要求 ,不断拓展和丰富旅游整体市场。     

竞技攀岩溯源与演变研究

竞技攀岩作为新晋奥运项目，探究其起源和演变过程可为我国竞技攀岩的发展提供借鉴、指导及理论缘由。采用文献资料研究和逻辑分析方法，探讨了竞技攀岩的概念，分析了竞技攀岩诞生的装备和技术基础、社会文化背景，以及三个发展阶段的主要特征。研究表明，竞技攀岩是攀岩运动中符合现代竞技体育特征的部分，是攀岩运动"竞技体育化"的结果；器械装备升级提供的技术基础和战后复兴的历史背景，共同促成了竞技攀岩在苏联的诞生；竞技攀岩的演变经历了苏联时期的普及化与国际化尝试、UIAA主导的竞技攀岩国际管理体系与赛事体系建设、IFSC引领的奥运发展新时期三个阶段；竞技攀岩的后奥运时代将迎来前所未有的发展契机。     

竞技攀岩溯源与演变研究

竞技攀岩作为新晋奥运项目,探究其起源和演变过程可为我国竞技攀岩的发展提供借鉴、指导及理论缘由。采用文献资料研究和逻辑分析方法,探讨了竞技攀岩的概念,分析了竞技攀岩诞生的装备和技术基础、社会文化背景,以及三个发展阶段的主要特征。研究表明,竞技攀岩是攀岩运动中符合现代竞技体育特征的部分,是攀岩运动"竞技体育化"的结果;器械装备升级提供的技术基础和战后复兴的历史背景,共同促成了竞技攀岩在苏联的诞生;竞技攀岩的演变经历了苏联时期的普及化与国际化尝试、UIAA主导的竞技攀岩国际管理体系与赛事体系建设、IFSC引领的奥运发展新时期三个阶段;竞技攀岩的后奥运时代将迎来前所未有的发展契机。     

体育美学研究述评

体育美学的研究始于20世纪下半叶。由于国情不同,世界各国在研究对象、方法和结果上都有差异,大致可分为前苏联及东欧国家、欧美等国、日本3类,代表不同的学术传统和风格。前苏联体育美学研究严格遵循马克思主义的认识论,注意力集中于竞技活动的观赏,而对身体运动的基本审美特征较为忽视,东欧各国体育美学研究与前苏联一脉相承,受其影响很深;欧美国家的体育美学研究自由而宽泛,流派众多,学说纷杂,学者们建构体育领域的美学研究,尤其在定量研究上成绩显著;日本的体育美学研究善于吸收西方先进文化,经过消化形成符合自己社会生活传统的实用特色。我国的体育美学研究虽然起步较晚,但已初步形成特色,近30年的研究,主要对研究对象和范围、自身特征、体育美及运动项目的分类、体育运动中的真善美、体育美感等的探讨,但也存在缺乏成熟的体育文化理念、研究者忽视美学原理的学习、与实际发展脱节的体育美学发展障碍。伴随中国社会的快速发展,体育运动作为促进身心健康的审美文化,正在焕发生态、绿色、人文的特性,倾诉人类与自然和谐共存的理想追求。     

Sport in the service of the state: Images of physical culture and Soviet women, 1917–1941

Using images drawn from a number of media, this article explores how and why the Soviet government encouraged women to take up sport prior to World War II. It is suggested that the regime had three goals in mind: to strengthen the military preparedness of the country, to improve the productivity of its workers, and to further the acceptance of new, more ideologically correct, forms of leisure. These goals offer a striking contrast with movements in Western Europe and North America, where women's participation in sport was heavily connected with their roles as wives and mothers.     

浅谈新中国体育娱乐因素的淡化

娱乐因素是体育的基本组成部分,但特殊的历史背景造成了新中国体育娱乐因素的淡化。本文回顾了新中国体育的发展历程,重点分析了新中国体育的前身——“赤色体育”军事化指导思想、“苏联模式”对体育的简单工具化影响、文革对体育摧残和极端异化以及竞技体育树立道德标杆的作用被片面强化等娱乐因素在新中国体育中被淡化的原因。     

对建国以来我国体育教学理论发展的初步研究

为促进我国体育教学理论形成独立的理论体系,探求我国体育教学理论自身发展的规律性,运用文献资料法、调查法、观察法和数理统计法,对建国以来我国体育教学理论发展的4个阶段进行了初步考察,归纳了各个阶段的理论特点。研究结果显示,我国体育教学理论经历了从全面引进苏联体育教学模式到向独立体系发展的过程。至今,多种教学指导思想并存,能借助多学科理论进行教学理论研究,但缺少长期、持续的整体实验研究,这是影响我国体育教学理论发展的主要因素之一。未来体育教学理论在体育教学功能开发和学生体育学习理论等诸多基础研究和比较实验研究方面取得较大进展。     

On Hidden Trails – Mountaineers and Adventurers in Communist Germany (GDR)

As mountaineering was a non-Olympic sport and of no military relevance, it did not obtain any support of the socialist state. Consequently, it was very difficult for the mountaineers to obtain visas and financial or material resources. Invitations from the Soviet Union (SU), well-paid side jobs and self-made equipment were just some of the things necessary to be able to get into the highlands. From the end of the 1970s the emerging ‘hippie-generation’ brought new life into the scene of traditional alpinists. These young people travelled into the Soviet Union with the help of a so-called ‘Transitvisum’. They stayed in the SU illegally for several weeks or even months, always being weary of the police. Not having much financial possibilities, they travelled mostly by train or by hitchhiking and thus got into close contact with the Soviet people. Due to their experiences the alpinists were able to distance themselves from the official socialist discourse in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and to realise the possibility of liberty. They can be considered as an avant-garde of the massive exoduses or escapes of thousands of GDR citizens in 1989 through one or more eastern countries which initiated the collapse of the GDR.     

Historical Dictionary of Track and Field

This article, which is based on original archival and press research, examines the origins of the Cold War from the perspective of sport in the post-war occupied zones of Germany. Both the western Allies and Soviet communist victors claimed that they wished to use sport to help establish ‘democracy’ in Germany. However, their conceptions of ‘democracy’ were diametrically opposed and each side used the sporting press to caricature and criticise the other. In the Soviet zone, sports reporting portrayed the West as elitist, professional in their ‘Taylorist’ methods and nationalist in outlook. Reversing their former hostility to the Olympic movement, the Soviet-controlled German sports press argued that only socialist sport could deliver true amateur ‘Olympic’ sport by democratising athletics for the masses. The occupying Allied powers made up of Britain, France and the United States were united in their rejection of unproven claims of Soviet superiority and denounced the ‘undemocratic’ controls imposed by the Soviets across Eastern Europe. The holding of the Olympic Games in London in the summer of 1948 as Cold War tensions increased provides a focus for these divergent views, throwing new light on the political role of the reporting of sport and of the sporting press in post-war Germany.     

A Theory of Sport and Politics

The study of international relations purports to explain how nation-states and individuals interact around the globe. Yet one major area of such interaction – international sport – remains exceedingly understudied. This in spite of the fact that countries have gone to war over sport, fought for sovereign recognition through sport, and that citizens around the world have it as a daily part of their lives. Indeed it is astounding that a phenomenon that matters so much has been so little studied by a field that purports to explain relations between states and humans around the world. These deficiencies became more apparent in 2008 when we witnessed the world's biggest country hosting the world's biggest sporting event. The Beijing Olympics, though entertaining and exciting, showed how little we have thought about the link between sport and international politics. This article introduces a framework for understanding the link between sport and politics. Its point of entry is to argue that many of the questions about how China portrayed itself during the Olympics and whether the Games marked China's rise as a responsible power cannot be answered without first understanding how sport in general is related to a country's political development, and its sense of nationhood. My arguments do not represent new breakthroughs in political science, rather I attempt merely to offer a systematic way of thinking about how sports and the Olympics matter in world politics through three inter-related causal pathways relating to a country's sense of self, its diplomacy, and its capacity for change.     

From a pub game to a sporting spectacle: the professionalisation of British Darts, 1970–1997

ABSTRACT

Various sport scholars have noted the transition of sports from amateur leisure pastimes to professionalised and globalised media sporting spectacles. Recent developments in darts offer an excellent example of these changes, yet the sport is rarely discussed in contemporary sports studies. The only sustained theoretical research on darts focuses primarily on the origins of the sport in its nostalgic form as a working-class, pub taproom pastime in England. This article critically examines the transformation of darts from a leisurely game to a professional sport between the 1970s and the 1990s. The change was enabled by the creation of the British Darts Organisation (BDO) and the introduction of television broadcasting, which together fed a continual process of professionalisation. Initially, this article discusses both the concept of professionalisation and similar developmental changes in a selection of English sports. Following this, via selected interviews, documentary analysis and archival information, the reasons behind the split in darts are explicated, shedding light on how the BDO did not successfully manage the transformation and the sport split into two governing bodies, from which the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), the sport’s most successful organisation in the present day, has emerged to dominate the world of televised darts.     

Playing left wing; from Sunday League socialism to international solidarity. A social history of the development of Republica Internationale FC

Republica Internationale FC is a socialist football club that is part of a broader international network of like-minded alternative grassroots clubs. Collectively the members play and campaign worldwide on a variety of issues in a variety of settings. This article reveals how the club has struggled to define and sustain itself more than 30 years. It explores what socialist football is, how the club was conceived and nurtured, how it is organized and how the international network was cultivated. It spans the clubs operations from the Sunday League mundane to the international spectaculars. It tracks how the club has adapted to confront many social and political challenges. It examines external and internal ideological conflict, the club's successes and setbacks, and how gender transforms the club. The article critically evaluates the club's credibility. It offers an insight into how leftist culture can flourish and be sustained in grassroots sport.     

‘Tours of Imperialism’: Cricket and Cultural Transfer in South Africa, 1880–1910

Abstract

Few can deny the significance of sport in today’s South Africa. The sporting structures upon which this is based were first introduced to the country by the British in the late nineteenth century. In line with policies of cultural imperialism, sports such as cricket were promoted at this time as part of a wider political agenda that encouraged the adoption of an ‘English’ way of life in the region. Sports tours, most notably cricket, were a fundamental part of this cultural transfer between the ‘Mother Country’ and her colonies in Southern Africa. To underpin the study of transnational linkages and transfer in African sports, this paper will offer an historical overview of how ‘British-styled’ sport arrived in South Africa and how the early cricket tours between England and South Africa were constructed to promote distinct political and cultural connections. This paper will explore the early development of cricket in South Africa and investigate its symbiotic link to British imperialism and colonialism via the first tours and sporting exchanges that took place. The origins of the game in South Africa will be examined as well as its development up to 1910 (the date of Union in South Africa) as the site of a constructed transnational 'brotherhood' between Britain and its most coveted African colonies.     

Sex Testing and the Maintenance of Western Femininity in International Sport

During the Cold War, women from Eastern Europe excelled in international sport. Rather than applauding the successes of these female athletes, many in the Cold-War-West responded with suspicion, contempt and derision. Armed with rumours and anecdotes, the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) implemented sex testing in 1966, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) followed suit two years later. Despite the introduction of a compulsory sex/gender control, many continued to lament the muscular physiques of the Cold-War-Eastern victors. The known and suspected sex test ‘failures’ from North Korea, the Philippines, Poland, the Soviet Union and Spain served to exacerbate the fears of gender fraudulence. As global dynamics shifted, however, so, too, did the anxieties in sport. When women from the People's Republic of China dominated the international sports scene in the 1990s, many in the geographic-West again doubted the authenticity of the achievements and called for a return to gender verification. A decade later, the international plights of Indian athlete Santhi Soundarajan and South African runner Caster Semenya convinced the IAAF and the IOC that such a reestablishment was necessary. Using the ‘colonial/modern gender system’ framework, this article explores the political and racialised sex/gender concerns medical professionals and sport authorities possessed, which led to the establishment, abandonment and reintroduction of sex testing/gender verification in elite sport. Through these three phases of sex testing/gender verification, the IAAF and the IOC reaffirmed a binary notion of sex and privileged white, Western gender norms.     

Introducing a Sport Experience Design (SX) framework for sport consumer behaviour research

Sport Management Review celebrates 20 years of publishing research, and this milestone provides an opportunity to reflect on sport consumer research and offer possible directions for scholarship. This article utilizes a panel of 17 academic scholars to examine sport consumer research published in SMR as an exemplar; and then, more broadly, how to enhance sport consumer research and identify future trends in the sport industry. This information, combined with an article analysis, revealed two key findings. First, the quality of scholarship was acknowledged with noted weaknesses related to improving and diversifying methodology, stronger attention to theoretical development, and relevance to industry. Second, traditional boundaries of sport consumer research will expand due to technology, a broadening sport landscape, and links to other academic disciplines. In order to account for industry trends and address noted theoretical limitations, a Sport Experience Design (SX) framework is introduced, which consists of three interrelated elements: (a) the sport context in which a sport consumer navigates through an experience and interacts with touchpoints, (b) the sport user, with mental processes, psychological needs, and personal characteristics, and (c) the sport organization, which produces the sport experience to achieve organizational goals. The framework provides a holistic consumer-centred approach that considers cognitive, organizational, and physical relevant design factors that enhance customer satisfaction and engagement by improving use and pleasure of sport experiences.     

新中国体育外交繁荣事件回顾及其发展建议

自新中国成立以来,我国在政治、经济、科教文卫体等事业上都取得了质的飞跃,体育人无论是在对内传播体育意识还是对外进行体育交流方面,都对新中国的发展做出了贡献。文章回顾了新中国成立以来,与美、苏、日、亚非拉等国家的体育交流及所取得的巨大成就,并讨论其当时影响,进而提出我国与其他国家在体育外交发展方面的两点建议,以期对我国体育外交的发展提供参考。