The 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm – The First Meeting of the Highly Trusted Men and What Happened to Them Since

At the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912, Johannes Sigfrid Edström, Avery Brundage, Carl Diem and Karl Ritter von Halt met each other for the first time and started to cooperate afterwards. From the 1930s they all played a very important role in IOC and in the Olympic System (I prefer system instead of movement). The article examines the role of the network in the international discussion about the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, the networks perceptions of the Jews and their cooperation with the Nazis, the networks importance for the denazification of Karl Ritter von Halt after the Second World War and the influence in IOC to West Germany and East Germany during the Cold War until the 1972 Olympics when East Germany participated for the first time as a sovereign state and Avery Brundage resigned as president of the IOC.     

John ‘Army’ Howard,Canada’s First Black Olympian: A Nation-Building Paradox

Abstract

The early 1910s marked a turning point in Canadian immigration policy history. With the introduction of the Immigration Act of 1911, the Canadian state effectively declared black people, Asians, and most other people of colour to be unfit and unsuitable immigrants. Nation-building efforts encouraged a white Canada; as such, the Canadian Amateur Athletic administration approached the 1912 Games as an opportunity to attract ‘suitable’ white European immigrants. Amidst sustained anti-black immigrant discourse in policies and the press, Canada’s 1912 Olympic team included, for the first time, a black athlete: John Armstrong ‘Army’ Howard, an emerging sprinting talent from Winnipeg (Manitoba) who had done well in national meets. Howard’s racial identity was not only the antithesis of a white Canada, he was also a recent American immigrant. Yet, his potential made him one of most prominent medal hopefuls for a nation looking to secure its position on the world stage. In this way, Howard’s tenure on the national team underscores the fragile and conditional space which ideas of race and nation have largely occupied in Canada, and the role of sport and the Olympics in shaping them.     

Manufactured Dope: How the 1984 US Olympic Cycling Team Rewrote the Rules on Drugs in Sports

At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, the US cycling team not only won its first Olympic cycling medal since 1912 but also added eight more, marking a triumph for the team and its Polish-born coach, Eddie Borysewicz. Soon, however, news leaked that the seven members of the US cycling team, four of whom won medals, had employed controversial blood transfusions. Though not prohibited by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the news caused a firestorm within the press and led to a significant revision of the IOC Medical Commission's anti-doping rules. Previous historical scholarship has ignored this event, focusing instead on early doping scandals such as Knud Jensen or more recent controversies such as Ben Johnson and Lance Armstrong. However, this event caused a significant shift within the IOC Medical Commission's attitude towards doping. Prior to 1984, the IOC Medical Commission had hesitated to prohibit any substance, including anabolic steroids, if it could not detect the substance through testing. The willingness of the US team to experiment with new medical procedures to improve performance galvanised the Medical Commission and set in motion new anti-doping policies that remain in place today.     

论孙子“将备五德”与排球教练员的素质

《孙子兵法》是我国古代军事名著,其战略、战术思想已经运用到现代体育竞赛、企业经营管理等众多领域。《计篇》中提出了将者,智,信,仁,勇,严也。,对将帅的作用和素质作了重要论述。教练员在运动队中也扮演着将帅的角色。文章运用文献资料研究方法、逻辑分析法等研究方法,借鉴将备五德对将帅的要求,通过实例对排球教练员的基本素质进行阐述,以期为各级排球教练员提高自身素质提供一定的参考。     

The ‘White Man’s Game’? West Indian Cricket Tours of the 1900s

The 1900s saw two tours of the United Kingdom (UK) by a mixed race cricket team representing the West Indies. This paper argues that the tours were part of a concerted cultural campaign largely organized by the West India Committee to raise the profile of the British West Indian colonies in the Mother Country in the light of competition for favour among the settler colonies. It analyzes the selection of the team and its reception in the UK to argue that the existing literature has been mistaken in portraying the team to have been subject to consistent hostility due to the inclusion of black players in the touring party. Rather it is argued that the team of 1900 was largely welcomed as a truly representative West Indian team but that by 1906 a tightening of the definition of who could represent the empire on the sports field, influenced by the settlement of the South Africa War, meant that mixed race cricket would be rejected and the West Indians unjustly excluded from the Imperial Cricket Conference, which became an all whites club.     

Gender,photography and women’s football in England: the Portsmouth Ladies FC, 1916–1918

ABSTRACT

Founded in 1916, the Portsmouth Ladies FC were one of many women’s football teams active during the First World War. Building upon the work of Jean Williams, Patrick Brennan and Ian Nannestad, this article seeks to broaden our knowledge of the development of women’s wartime football. Its principal sources are images held by National Football Museum, the Pompey History Society, along with newly digitised newspapers. This article explores two aspects of the club’s history. Firstly, it presents an overview detailing the team’s origins, playing record, the types of games they played, including games against male teams, and the role of Councillor Tom Langdon in organising and promoting their activities. Secondly, it will explore the significant photographic coverage afforded to the team, in particular by the Portsmouth Evening News photographer Joseph Stephen Cribb. It will be argued that the club’s history helps develop the chronological development of women’s football in World War On. It will also be argued that visual depictions of the team show both an increasing interest in the women’s game, and also the limits and gendered nature of that interest.     

‘They are able to play football in South Africa’: Austria’s ‘little Wunderteam’ on tour in 1936

From the end of the nineteenth century South Africa had become a popular touring destination for British and colonial sports teams. Tours in the popular sport of cricket, football and rugby were very popular. These tours tested local opposition against foreign competition, brought in revenue to local and national sports associations and contributed to the development of a white South African identity. Austrian football teams were extensive travellers and popular attractions around the world. Prior to the Second World War Austrian football was highly regarded and was able to compete and hold its own against English and Scottish clubs and representative teams. This article considers an unusual tour by a combined Viennese football team to South Africa in 1936. We consider the preparations for the tour, the different playing styles and the way in which the visitors were received around the country. At the broader political level, the tour was important as leading South African politicians and Austrian diplomats attended matches and functions while on tour. This can be understood in the context of both countries attempting to flex their political identity and muscle in light of more dominant neighbours and colonial masters.     

The Heroine of Free China: A New Image of Diplomatic Envoys and the Female Body of the Liangyou Women’s National Basketball Team in the 1950s

The Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and Communist Party that ended in 1949 caused a confrontation between the ‘Free China’ in Taiwan claimed by the Republic of China, the KMT that retreated to Taiwan, and the ‘New China’ established by the People’s Republic of China. The sport policies of the ‘Two Chinas’ were based on the respective political positions, which were affected greatly by the Cold War. Taiwan, ruled by the KMT affiliating with the camp of the capitalists led by the USA, was the revival base to connect with Chinese in several East and Southeast Asian countries and to connect with other Asian anti-Communist countries. Political and military policies contributed to Taiwan women’s basketball development during the Cold War in East Asia and the first national team named Liangyou thus emerged. The Liangyou’s life symbolized the beginning and the phased ending of women’s basketball development in Taiwan, and skilful players of noble character practised loyal diplomatic missions and publicized the strong body-mind heroine image of Free China. Their healthy and cheerful character along with a passion for basketball provided new ideas of women’s roles in post-war Taiwan. Trips for overseas competitions let players experience the outside world.     

Cultural Evolution and Ideology in Korean Soccer: Sport and Nationalism

Modern Korean sports have been adopted mostly from the West, but now Korea has emerged as a sporting power demanding global attention. The influence of historical and political ideology has been in the cultural background of Korean sports development, and the process of cultural evolution in soccer may be explained in the similar context. What helped the Korean soccer team qualify for the World Cup eight consecutive times – only the sixth country in the world to do so – thus making it the most powerful soccer team in Asia? Soccer initially appeared in Korea during the threat of Japanese invasion, and this backdrop provided the opportunity for soccer to be combined with nationalism and transformed into a cultural product that confronted Japanese imperialism. Since the Korean War, South Korean soccer has become a vehicle for ideological confrontation with North Korea amid the atmosphere of the Cold War, and it thus gave rise to sports nationalism by revealing an ideological superiority and nationalistic disposition. Soccer, which arrived in Korea on a British ship, has become a representative Korean sport and continuously challenges the global stage ahead of Asia's leading economic power. It was against the background of such rapid development that nationalism formed.     

Modern pentathlon and the First World War: when athletes and soldiers met to practise martial manliness

In the nationalistic atmosphere of the early twentieth century, a nurturing medium for sports practising martial manliness abounded throughout Europe. This framework supported the invention of a new multi-disciplinary sport, aided by Baron Pierre de Coubertin himself: modern pentathlon. Though the idea of a new form of pentathlon was already born in 1894, it took 30 years, until Paris 1924, to establish modern pentathlon within the Olympic Games. This study is concerned with the reasons for that delay. It will be assessed whether the active military preparations around the First World War and the contemporary image of masculinity had a decisive influence on the early history of modern pentathlon. By including historical documents from the IOC archives in Lausanne, Switzerland, the research office for military history in Potsdam, Germany, and the LA84 Foundation in Los Angeles, USA, as well as literature on gender, military sport and Olympic history, this study offers an entirely new view on the early history of a sport that was born in an atmosphere of glorifying manliness and apparent militarism. The history of modern pentathlon thereby provides a particularly appropriate area for the analysis of connections between sport, militarism and masculinity. It was not by chance that the implementation of a combined sport, which included besides swimming and running the three military disciplines of shooting, fencing and horse riding, arose in a pre-war context. Though in 1912 the Great War had not yet begun, the awareness of an upcoming battle was rising and led to a higher attention to Coubertin's almost forgotten assumption of a new sport. In 1924 the advantages were finally admitted on two sides: the army recruited modern pentathletes as future military officers; the sports community appointed skilled officers as successful competitors. Thus the lobby for an Olympic recognition of modern pentathlon was found.     

Stockholm Olympics at the Movies

This article is a contribution to the special issue on the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912 commissioned by Christian Widholm. The text discusses the 1912 Olympics as a major media event with a special focus on the production, distribution and reception of moving pictures     

The Perils of Blowing the Whistle: Match-Fixing in Scotland and Australia, 1920s to 2015

Abstract

Two family stories shed some light on changes in the character and causes of corruption in football in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My grandfather was a central figure in an alleged match-fixing episode in Association football in Scotland in the third decade of the twentieth century, while I was a peripheral figure in one in Australia in the last. I came across another one while researching the story of the Croatian soccer clubs in Victoria in the post-Second World War years. I also observed very closely an attempt to fix a series of matches by introducing a number of players into a team on behalf of overseas betting interests in the twenty-first century. Reflecting on these cases is a way of trying to understand how the forms and the drivers of match-fixing have changed in the twenty-first century. The three earlier episodes seem very old fashioned in the context of globalization, the commodification of sport, international gambling syndicates, and systematic corruption at the heart of the world game.     

The Aesthetics of The Olympic Art Competitions

In the Olympic Art Competitions (1912–1948) Pierre de Coubertin expresses his conception of both sport and art as instruments of moral renewal. In this paper, this conception is criticised for failing to appreciate art and sport as necessary manifestations of modernism. The Art Competitions were informed by a traditionalist aesthetic, and thus played a highly conservative role within Olympism. A modernist art about sport, in contrast, would have been a source of critical reflection, potentially protecting the Olympic movement from corrupting exploitation by commercial and nationalistic interests. The conclusion defends the need for Cultural Olympiads, as a source of such critical reflection, that are at once modernist in conception and yet, unlike their current expression, are centrally about sport.     

Reactive and eccentric strength contribute to stiffness regulation during maximum velocity sprinting in team sport athletes and highly trained sprinters

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the role of reactive and eccentric strength in stiffness regulation during maximum velocity sprinting (Vmax) in team sport athletes compared with highly trained sprinters. Thirteen team sport athletes and eleven highly trained sprinters were recruited. Vmax was measured using radar, and stiffness regulation was inferred from modelled vertical and leg spring stiffness. Reactive strength (RSI) was determined from a 0.50 m drop jump, and an eccentric back squat was used to assess maximum isoinertial eccentric force. Trained sprinters attained a higher Vmax than team sport athletes, partly due to a briefer contact time and higher vertical stiffness. Trained sprinters exhibited a moderately higher RSI via the attainment of a briefer and more forceful ground contact phase, while RSI also demonstrated large to very large associations with vertical stiffness and Vmax, respectively. Isoinertial eccentric force was largely correlated with Vmax, but only moderately correlated with vertical stiffness. Reactive and eccentric strength contribute to the ability to regulate leg spring stiffness at Vmax, and subsequently, the attainment of faster sprinting speeds in highly trained sprinters versus team sport athletes. However, stiffness regulation appears to be a task-specific neuromuscular skill, reinforcing the importance of specificity in the development of sprint performance.     

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.     

Lifting ‘Round the World': The Goodwill Weightlifting Tours of 1955

Abstract

In the first visit by American athletes to the Soviet Union since World War II, the U.S. weightlifting team included 340-pound Paul Anderson who startled the sports world in June of 1955 by pressing a world record 402 pounds, exceeding that of his Soviet adversary by 77 pounds. The admiration evoked by his colossal size and strength encouraged the State Department to send Anderson and other weightlifters on goodwill tours to counter Soviet expansionism in the Middle East and South Asia. The first tour evoked praise from President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon, but the second tour proved disappointing when Anderson was unable to perform as expected and Coach Bob Hoffman made disparaging remarks about local customs, thus inadvertently planting seeds of ill-will. The 1955 weightlifting tours illustrated the likelihood of unanticipated consequences and limitations of using athletics as a Cold War strategy to counter Soviet influence in non-aligned countries. Previous accounts have provided chiefly macroscopic views with only a vague notion of what transpired on the ground during goodwill tours. This study provides a closer view of how they were conducted, examples of interaction between visitors and locals, and their failure to fulfil the strategic aims of the Eisenhower Administration.     

‘Your Shire,Your Sharks’: The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and Delocalization v. Glocalization in Australian Rugby League

Delocalization has become an enduring theme in sports historiography. In Australian rugby league much of the work on this theme has been associated with the so-called ‘Super League War’ and the disconnection of sporting teams from place and local identity. Not all clubs, however, suffered such a fate. The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are one such team that endured the travails of the 1990s and maintained a strong connection with their geographical community. Problematizing delocalization in this context, the study explores the Sharks' Super League experience and finds strong evidence to support the contention that the Sharks provide a local sporting example of ‘glocalization’.     

教练效能对运动员自我效能和比赛成绩的影响

本研究的主要目的在于探讨篮球教练效能、运动员自我效能和球队比赛成绩的关系。参加2009年全国少年篮球比赛的134名男运动员和128名女运动员及23个球队的主教练接受了运动员自我效能问卷和教练员效能感问卷的测试。比赛成绩采用全国青少年篮球教学训练大纲中的方法评分,即队数减名次乘以3．5。回归分析结果表明,教练员效能可以显著预测运动员自我效能和球队比赛成绩,其中动机激励效能是最佳预测指标。     

Effects of emphasising opposition and cooperation on collective movement behaviour during football small-sided games

ABSTRACT

Optimizing collective behaviour helps to increase performance in mutual tasks. In team sports settings, the small-sided games (SSG) have been used as key context tools to stress out the players’ awareness about their in-game required behaviours. Research has mostly described these behaviours when confronting teams have the same number of players, disregarding the frequent situations of low and high inequality. This study compared the players’ positioning dynamics when manipulating the number of opponents and teammates during professional and amateur football SSG. The participants played 4v3, 4v5 and 4v7 games, where one team was confronted with low-superiority, low- and high-inferiority situations, and their opponents with low-, medium- and high-cooperation situations. Positional data were used to calculate effective playing space and distances from each player to team centroid, opponent team centroid and nearest opponent. Outcomes suggested that increasing the number of opponents in professional teams resulted in moderate/large decrease in approximate entropy (ApEn) values to both distance to team and opponent team centroid (i.e., the variables present higher regularity/predictability pattern). In low-cooperation game scenarios, the ApEn in amateurs’ tactical variables presented a moderate/large increase. The professional teams presented an increase in the distance to nearest opponent with the increase of the cooperation level. Increasing the number of opponents was effective to overemphasise the need to use local information in the positioning decision-making process from professionals. Conversely, amateur still rely on external informational feedback. Increasing the cooperation promoted more regularity in spatial organisation in amateurs and emphasise their players’ local perceptions.     

新课程与高校体育教师队伍建设的研究

新《指导纲要》对高校体育课程提出了新的发展思路和要求,而新课程能否得到顺利实施关键要靠一支现代化的体育教师队伍。然而,目前高校体育教师队伍中存在着教育理念不清、职称学历结构不合理、理论水平和科研能力较低等不良现象。以新课程为出发点,采用调查法、访谈法,对高校体育教师队伍现状进行了研究,为建设一支高质量的体育教师队伍提供参考依据。