An Athletics Compendium

The literature of Athletics The Olympics Olympichistoriesfallinto three broadcategories. The firstcomprisesaccountsof the ancientGames. The revivalof the Games in modern times sparked historicalstudies such as Arthur Lynch's Religio Athletes (1895), and The Olympic Games, BC 776-AD 1896 (1896).The earlytwentiethcentury producedwhat is probablythe definitivebook on the ancientOlympics,Norman Gardiner's GreekAthleticSportsand Festivals (1910).This is a magnificentwork, matchedonlyby Harris's Greek Athletesand Athletics (1964). It isdoubtful if BaronPierrede Coubertinhad the work of suchhistorians in mind when he revivedthe OlympicGames in 1896. If he did, then he ignored the essentially professional nature of the ancient Games, preferring instead to give them a public school/Oxbridge ethos. Many years later, in his Olympic Memoirs (1931; English translation 1979), a slim, tantalising work, de Coubertin was to confess that he saw neithervirtue nor logic in amateurismand that as earlyas 1912 he had lost allbeliefin it: To me, sport was a religion, with its church, dogmas, service ... but above all a religious feeling and seitemed to me as childitsoh make all thidsependent on whether anathlete hadreceived a five franc coinas automatically to consider the parish verger an unbeliever because he receives a salary for looking after the church. Alas, by then it was too late. The nations of the world, bedazzled by a British Empire which,likede Coubertin, they believedto be basedon publicschool gamesand sports and the amateur ethic, had bought into 'Olympism' and therewas no wayback. De Coubertin's expressed lackof beliefin the amateur ethic is rarelyreflected in the secondcategoryof Olympicbooks, the historiesof the modernOlympicmovement. Written in the main by physical educationists, theseworks rarely record or reflect de Coubertin'sdeep reservationsabout amateurism.Neither do theypaymuch attention to the wayinwhichthe IOC ignoredthe holesgougedin its amateurcode by the Swedesin 1912,Americancollegesfrom1920 onwards, the Nazis in 1936or the CommunistBloc in the secondhalfof the century. Such histories also tend to play down the fact that de Coubertin was cold- shouldered bythe Greeks in 1896and the French in 1900. He did not attend the 1904 Olympics,wasignoredby the Greeks in their IntercalatedGames of 1906, and his1908 Games (originally planned for Rome) took place only because Britain took over responsibilityfor them. By1926, de Coubertinhad relinquishedcontrol of the IOC and he died in 1937with a pension fromHitler's government. There is usuallylittleattention paidto such inconvenient factsin most Olympic histories,or to the drug-taintednature of muchmodern Olympicperformance.Here, a handfulof workswritten by professionalhistorians or journalistsstand out as notable exceptions.Two accountsof the 1936Olympics, Duff Hart-Daviss Mitlers Games (1986) and Mandell's The Nay Olympics (1972) approach the Olympic movement with cool, academic rigour. Both writers conclude that the IOC failed miserably to challenge the Nazi regimeon its persecutionof Jewishsportsmenand women. They also indictAvery [ xxviiJ