Modern Pentathlon at the London 2012 Olympics: Between Traditional Heritage and Modern Changes for Survival

In London, in 2012, the modern pentathlon (fencing, swimming, horse riding, shooting and running) celebrated its centenary. In its 100 years of Olympic history several rule changes have taken place. Directly after its Olympic debut in Stockholm in 1912, the International Olympic Committee headed by Pierre de Coubertin evaluated the event and criticised the shortcomings between the supposed idea behind the sport and its implementation. After Coubertin's death, the sport continued to develop; recently running and shooting have been joined in a so called combined event. In all cases, the presidents of the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) argued the associated rule changes by referring to the original idea of the modern pentathlon. The sport's insecure future after the Games in Rio in 2016 provides sufficient reason to investigate the discrepancy between the marketing strategy of the UIPM and the ideological origins of the modern pentathlon. It finally allows an analysis of select historical rule changes that fitted the original idea behind the events and those that served purely modern strategies of survival. Thus, the topic also stands as an example of the policies of a contemporary international sports federation that uses (select parts of its) history and (invented) traditions as strong and successful marketing tools.     

试论程登科“民族体育”思想及意义

程登科,中国近代著名体育思想家与活动家。他的＂民族体育＂思想,其核心是＂全民体育化＂和＂体育军事化＂。这一体育观,在中国处于抗日战争前后时期,产生了很大影响,成为抗战时期＂战时体育＂的理论基础。他对抗日战争时期制定＂体育军事化＂和＂军事体育化＂政策,在中国近代史上,为推广和发展军事体育方面做出了积极的贡献。他的民族体育思想是与时俱进的产物,对当今竞技体育和大众体育有着积极的指导意义。     

William Penny Brookes – the Founding Father of the Modern Pentathlon?

For a long time William Penny Brookes' influence on the re-establishment of the Olympic Games has been neglected thanks to a focus on Pierre de Coubertin's creative force. Meanwhile Brookes' general work for the Olympic movement has been officially acknowledged by the IOC. However, the British origins have not been proved yet for the modern pentathlon, which is – just like the Olympics – widely presented to be Coubertin's child. The two sport officials had been in touch since the 1890s and while the Olympic Games did not include the modern pentathlon before 1912, a pentathlon was organised as early as 1868 on the occasion of the Wenlock Games. This combined event did not have the same shape as the later modern pentathlon, but the ideological similarities are as obvious as Brookes' general impact on Coubertin. By analysing historical documents located in the IOC Archives in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Archives of the Wenlock Olympian Society in Much Wenlock, UK, and the National Archives of Sweden in Stockholm, this study aims to trace to what extent Brookes and the Much Wenlock Games impacted upon the birth of the modern pentathlon. Thus, the study reinterprets the genesis of a 100-year-old Olympic sport that has, until today, been exclusively dedicated to Coubertin.     

American Sammys and French Poilus in the Great War: sport, masculinities and vulnerability

The violence and duration of fighting throughout the Great War created an intense feeling of vulnerability among the men engaged in battle, which challenged their perception of manliness. When the Americans joined the war in 1917, the balance between the two opposing armies was modified and the psychological crises of French soldiers brought to an end. The confidence shown by the American soldiers and their first successes on the battlefield changed the way the French Poilus perceived their new allies. From scepticism to admiration, Frenchmen's feelings extended beyond the fighting. Indeed, by living with American soldiers in the trenches and camps behind the front, French soldiers discovered a new culture where games and sport played a major role and contributed to building manliness. The Foyers Franco-Americains du Soldat (Franco-American hostels for soldiers) provided an ideal place for the cultural transfer of a model of masculinity from Sammys to Poilus. The foyers were managed by the American YMCA and eventually reached the number of 1,500 in France during the war. These hostels afforded soldiers numerous opportunities to develop cultural and sports practices, by bringing together Americans and Frenchmen. Mainly based on the archives of the American Expeditionary Forces, the YMCA and the French Army, the paper argues that the Foyers du Soldat brought to light a new model of masculinity based on sport, which challenged the Frenchmen's vision. It aims to show the rapid transformation of masculine identity within a context of extreme vulnerability and confirms the changes in representations of men in French society at this time.     

Wartime rugby and football: sports elites, French military teams and international meets during the First World War

The First World War is traditionally considered in history as a temporary halt for cultural and sporting activities. If the Olympic Games and the Tour de France were actually cancelled, football and rugby were in fact stimulated by the circumstances of war. Indeed, the gathering of allied nations behind the Western Front emerged as the main factor in the development of these two sports. Reading the sporting press and military archives shows that international sporting exchanges were stimulated during the Great War. To be specific, France benefited from the golden opportunity provided by the presence of the masters of the game to strengthen its practices and affirm its status as a sporting nation. Inter-allied sporting exchanges were primarily characterised by informal encounters between military selections. Then, following the recognition of these sports by the military authorities, the number of exchanges increased. At the end of 1917, the official status acquired by sport within the military forces created the conditions for the structuring of the French sporting elite. From that point, we can witness the birth of the first French military rugby and football teams, as they demonstrate, through their good performances during the demobilisation period, the progressive build-up of the international dimension of French sport during the war years.     

Equestrian Sport at the Olympic Games from 1900 to 1948

Olympic equestrian sport has to date evolved through three distinct phases of development. The genesis of equestrian sport in the modern Olympics began in 1900 and was predominantly shaped by military influences until 1948. Pre-1900 equestrian sport existed in various forms around the world primarily to develop and practice skills of hunting and warfare. At this time, equestrian sport lacked governance and internationally standardized rules. This paper’s aim is to explore the influence of the military on the first phase of equestrian sport development in the Olympic Games between 1900 and 1948 with regards to their format and rules. Through thematic analysis of the narratives evident in the literature, we highlight influential military developments/changes that occurred outside the confines of sport, and place the sociocultural development of equestrianism within this framework. This reconstructive approach has enabled us to highlight the relevance of the military influence on the development of equestrian sport. Through the identification and analysis of perceptions of Olympic equestrianism, which are centred upon the Eurocentric, military-influenced development of the sport, the paper also discusses implicit and explicit references to, and the relevance of, masculinity elitism and social class, along with issues of amateurism and professionalism.     

对中国近代“尚武思潮”的历史学考察

19世纪40-60年代,体育作为新生事物从西方传入,为中国社会注入了＂新鲜血液＂,并影响到人们的社会心理,那就是＂尚武＂。＂尚武＂思潮的兴起,动摇了传统的＂重文轻武＂文化观,并日益发展,形成为一种爱国主义的思潮。在民族危机严重时,＂尚武＂起到了警醒国民、聚合民力、振奋民族精神的巨大作用。新时期,更成为我国奥运体育精神之源,民族精神的组成部分。     

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.     

Degenerate days: colonial sports tours and British manliness 1900–1910

The 1900s saw a crisis in English manliness that played out in the commentary on sport in the national press. At a time when the theory of social Darwinism was becoming more influential among intellectuals and politicians, the British Army put in a catastrophic performance against the Boers in the South African War. In the aftermath of the war some of the blame for the bad performance of the Army had been placed upon the poor physical and mental quality of recruits to the armed forces. This articles argues that the success of colonial teams caused a crisis of middle-class British masculinity that was played out in the national press as progressives and conservatives debated the future direction of cricket and rugby. A debate, it is argued, that was won by those who wished to demarcate their games from the masses, and who rejected class and ethnic inclusivity as a threat to their future leadership of the nation's sports.     

Coercion for Asian conquest: Japanese militarism and Korean sport, 1938–45

In the third phase of Japanese colonialism in Korea, from 1937 to 1945, after the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Japan became a militaristic state. It expanded onto the Asian mainland. Korea was an important military base in this military expansion. The colonial policy shifted from cultural amalgamation to military oppression. This period was the darkest and the most oppressive colonial period. In the line with the new colonial policy, the government closely watched nationalist suspects. It introduced the Regulation for the Observation of Korean Ideologists in 1936 and the Regulation for Detention in Custody in 1941 whilst it also carried out the “Cultural Erasure Policy”. Korean sport was seen as a part of this new colonial policy. Japan used sport to advance its militarism. Thus gymnastics for the Imperial Subject was introduced across society. Furthermore, military drill was performed in schools along with Japanese traditional martial arts.     

"A man's game": cricket, war and masculinity, South Africa, 1899-1902

As practitioners of the imperial sport of the Victorian age, cricketers rallied whenever war descended upon England and its colonies. The South African War of 1899-1902 was no different. Adding to existing work on cricket's imperial development within South Africa, this study marks a significant contribution to research on the link between masculinity, war and sport during the Victorian era. A concept emerging from the English public schools of the mid- to late nineteenth century, the masculine ethos of sport and military honour had reached colonial South Africa by the outbreak of war in 1899. In its analysis of cricket and masculinity, this essay examines the events surrounding the war in South Africa and provides an example of the distinct relationship that existed between the military and the masculinity of sport and its organisation during this era.     

《孙子兵法》势篇在足球进攻与防守训练理念中的应用研究

《孙子兵法》是我国一部军事著作,文中的军事思想论断对当前我国竞技运动技战术具有很强指导能力,《孙子兵法》在足球运动技战术层面有着很强的实用性,近几年来,中国足球的发展停歇不前,本文采用文献资料法、录像观察法、数理统计法将《孙子兵法》融入足球的进攻战术训练,并试图找出一条符合中国国情的足球发展道路,以史为鉴,有利于我国足球技战术和足球运动的发展。     

Black Males in the Stadium: All ‘Bad Niggers’? French Literature,Sport and Masculinity from the 1920s to the 1950s

In the first part of the twentieth century, ‘sports literature’ presented a new form of heroism departing from the traditional models of masculinity. The novels examined the stadiums, the boxing rings or the velodromes and noticed the existence of coloured sportsmen. Black boxers and athletes were considered as original models of manliness competing with the hegemonic masculinity, hitherto written in ‘white’. This essay intends to explore the French ‘sports novels’ published in the first part of the twentieth century. Relying on the history of masculinities and of gender, and on the methodological reflection of ‘race studies’, it examines the meeting between Black identity and athletic masculinity in literature. Thus this articles aims at showing how, through a series of stylistic, narrative and semiotic processes, the fiction essentialized the difference. Both fascinated and scared, the novels stigmatized Black sportsmen and endeavoured to analyse the alterity.     

The revoking and returning of Jim Thorpe’s Olympics awards: 70 years of Native-American sports protest?

Abstract

James Francis Thorpe became the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States… and the first person in history to be disqualified for professionalism. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon. He lost his Olympic titles after an investigation by the Amateur Athletic Union showed that he had played semiprofessional baseball in 1909 and 1910, before competing in the Olympics. In 1983, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals. The seven decades that it took for the restoration of Thorpe’s medals were marked by a protean form of protest, drawing on the image of Thorpe as victor, victim, stereotype and symbol. Despite the rehabilitation of Thorpe, he remains in the eyes of Native Americans a powerful symbol of the humiliation of Native American peoples.     

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。     

体育文化对构建上海城市文明体系的干预

上海市政府于2016年决定在2025年前将本市建设成世界知名体育城的决议具有超体育的解读空间,它在多维度上触及上海市民的奥林匹克想象。上海是西方体育在中国的觉醒地,上海市民原本就具有浓郁的体育情结。上海的体育文化源于早年西侨的俱乐部活动。20世纪20年代是上海华人体育取得初步发展的时间节点。体育在上海出现的初期就伴随着上海的时尚的生活,成为上海摩登化生活的一部分。上海早已是一座体育名城,其对体育名城的追求理应在更高端的理念上实现。现代上海体育应当结合竞技性和生活性两者之长,再铸上海新的体育发展模式。2025年后的上海体育无法完全脱离奥运元素,而基于奥运理念之上的城市美学、设计理念、本土创造力、国际法系传统的价值要远远大于其赛事价值。     

现代舞龙运动无形资产的开发与利用

舞龙是有着几千年悠久历史的中华民族优秀的传统体育活动,舞龙运动作为中华民族传统体育进入现代社会,必然会融入现代体育文化的氛围,使这项传统的民族文体活动,不仅有现代竞技体育与健身的内涵,而且也具有特殊的体育无形资产价值。本研究力图通过对现代舞龙运动发展特性的研究,对其无形资产的开发与利用提出合理的建议与对策。     

奥林匹克运动在中国的发展(二)

以体育为载体的国际社会文化活动——奥林匹克运动,在19世纪末期诞生不久,即随着西方近代体育文化的传入被介绍到了中华大地,为奥林匹克运动在近代中国的发展和普及起到了推动作用。新中国的成立,为奥林匹克运动在中国的进一步发展提供了前所未有的机遇,奥林匹克运动与中国文化背景逐渐交流、融合,并在中华大地得到了空前的发展,形成了当代中国体育的主流。进入20世纪80年代后,中国民众对以奥运会为代表的奥林匹克的关注程度,甚至高于对其他许多社会问题的关心。现代体育意识和奥运意识以潜移默化的方式,逐渐深入人心,成为当代中国发展奥林匹克运动的一大特色。     

温阳激活颗粒和滋阴修养胶囊对军事五项运动员睡眠和血清睾酮及抗氧化能力影响的实验研究

在提高专项能力为主的大负荷训练阶段,主要以实验的方法,应用运动补剂温阳激活颗粒和滋阴修养胶囊和C口服液对军事五项队30名运动员进行了身体机能的应用效果筛选研究。结果表明:运动补剂温阳激活颗粒与滋阴修养胶囊能显著改善大负荷训练期运动员的睡眠质量和效果,而且能显著提高运动员血清睾酮水平和机体的抗脂质过氧化能力。