An Athletics Compendium

The Uteratureof Athletics In the final halfof the century,other professionalathletessuch asW. G. George and AlfShrubb alsoproduced technicalbooks thinlylacedwith autobiography.The first halfof the twentieth centurysawlittlein the wayof biographiesof amateurs.A similar work, Cinder-Path Tales (1900)by a sprinter, WilliamM. Lindsey, providesuswith our only snapshot of American professionalathletics. Biography is the most prolific, but probably the weakest, area of athletics literature. Mostbiographiesare of athletesand usuallyconsist of littlemore than a list of events and performances,interwovenwith innocuousanecdotes. Whereadministrators such as AveryBrundage and Juan AntonioSamaranchare the subjects,there is often a steep descent into hagiography. Here, David Miller's Olympic Revolution: the Biography of Juan Antonio Samaranch (1992)is a classic example,with barelypassing referenceto His ExcellencySamaranch'sfascistantecedents. The best biographyof the pre-warperiod is probablyW. R. Loader's Testament ofa Kunner (1960),a vividaccount of the author's struggleto break even time for 100 ydsin pre-warOxford University.Rooted in a similarenvironmentand period,Olympicfour hundredmetre hurdlerRobert Tisdall's The YoungAthlete (1934)is less rich, but providesa clearpictureof aworld that now seems asdistant as that of the ancientGreeks. In the post-war period, we have Roger Bannister's First Your Minutes (1955), probably the bestathletics autobiography ever written, andNorman Harris's TheLegendof Lovelock (1965), a sensitive account of the career of the 1936 Olympics 1500m gold medallist. Americanbiographies of the highestquality are Mike Sweeney of the Hill (Putnam, 1940- regrettablynever published in this country),and HighAbove the Olympians (Bud Spencer,1960),the story of 'Dink' Templeton. Both are basedon the livesof American coachesand it isperhaps a reflectionof the importanceof the coach in the UnitedStates that SweeneyandTempleton havemerited such fulsomeand substantial biographies. Of the twoworks, that on Templeton is the more interesting,relating as it does to an irascible iconoclast, a leaderin his field. No one with an interest in the history of coachingin the United States should fail to read HighAbove the Olympians. Templeton spent his life asa university coach,but MikeSweeney spent forty years at the Hill as a preparatoryschool coach. World high jump record-holderfor seventeenyears, he was clearlya magnificentmentor of youth. Both Sweeney and Templeton wereexcellent examples of a long-past breed of American coach, men like Knut Rockne, 'Pop' Warner and Dean Cromwell. Bred in Americanhighschools and universities, theyhad, alas,no equivalentin Britishsport. The best biographical account of an administrator is unquestionably Peter Ueberroth's Made in America (1986), hisdescription of hiswork in organising the 1984 Los AngelesOlympicGames. The latter markeda watershed in an Olympic movement blighted byscandaland boycott sincethe 1972 MunichOlympics.Ueberroth made the Olympic Games for the first time a prized object, sought by governments in every continent. He is ruthless in his assessmentof Olympic bla^erati, and it is perhaps not surprisingthat no place wasever found for him in the councilsof the IOC. [ xxvi ]