An Athletics Compendium

The Uterature of Athletics Bmndagefor hisdishonest report to the UnitedStates AAU on the Jewishissue, one whichstaved off an AmericanOlympic boycott bya mereone and a halfvotes. The latterhalfof the centurydid, however,seeseveral workson the history of the modern Olympics, the best of these coming from the United States from physical educationists such as John Lucas and John J. MacAloon. Here Wallechinsky's The CompleteBook of the Olympics (1984) must also be mentioned,for though it would lay no claimto be a comprehensiveOlympichistory, it is the definitivecompilation of results and a richpuddingof Olympic trivia. The most impressiverecentOlympichistorieshavecome fromwritersoutsideof sport and relateto the 1936OlympicGames. Duff Hart-Davis's Hitler's Games (1986)and Mandell's The Na^i Olympics (1972) havealready been mentioned and are worksof the highest quality. Similarly, it was an outsider, Peter Ueberroth, who was to provide a significantearly insightinto the arcane worldof the International OlympicCommittee, in his Made in America (1986). Ueberroth's book is compulsive reading, although it is significantthat for all his franknesshe makesno mentionof hisorganisingcommittee's attempt to exclude drug testing or of 'lost' positive urine samplesin the Los Angeles Games. This apart,most Olympichistory has been relativelyuncritical, withoccasional lapsesinto hagiographysuch asDavid Miller'spreviously noted biographyof Olympic PresidentJuan AntonioSamaranch, Olympicdevolution (1992). Simson and Jennings' The Lords of the Kings (1992) could not by anymeasure be calleda hagiographyand is a notablecontribution to modern Olympichistory. If even half of what is contained in The Lords of the Rings is true, then the modern Olympic movement, for all its windyrhetoric about 'Olympism', stands discredited.Alas, the main problem with Simson and Jennings' book is not the accuracy of its claims, but the relentlessshrillness of its tone. Thus we still awaita rigorous,clinicalevaluation of the Olympicmovement,worthyof suchpast writersasDuff Hart-DavisandMandell. The final,more limited,category,is the Olympic Report. Of these, the 1908 and 1912Reports standout as magnificentaccounts, not onlyof the Games themselves,but of the minutiae of their preparations.Here, the 1912StockholmReport ismost revealing, recording that the Swedes were probably the first nation to formally prepare for the Olympics.In doing so, they drove a coach and horses through amateur regulations by basingtheir athletesin Stockholmfor over three months before the Games. There is no mention of broken-time payments,but no doubt that theywere made.This is the first occasionof Olympicauthorities turninga blindeye to blatant breachesof the amateur rulesto which theyexpressedsuch dedication. The sports historian occasionally comes upon a work which is the athletics equivalentof the Dead Sea Scrollsand, outsideof earlyOlympicReports, I have recently become aware of two rare treasures. The authorship of The OlympicGames and the Duke of Westminster's appealfor£100,000: ahistoricalsurvey of the movementfor betterorganisation in the British preparationsfor theBerlinGames of 1916, compiledfromThe Times and officialsources(1913) is uncertain,though SirArthur ConanDoyle is a likely suspect. It is an account of the first Britishattempt to formally preparefor an Olympic Games (Berlin,1916)and contains [ xxviii ]

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