An Athletics Compendium

The literature of Athletics the argumentsfor and against in the columnsof The Times. This is a workof surpassing excellenceand prescienceand is required readingfor anyathletics historian.An earlier work, though narrowerin scope, is almost equally absorbing.That is The Olympic Gamesof 1908 in London (1909) by Theodore A. Cook, and representsa robust and splendidly- arguedresponseto Americancharges of Bridshfoul playin the 1908 London Olympics. Literature and the Visual Arts To be brutal, there are fewworksof highliterary merit listed in this section, but there is much of interest; and, more importandy, much that affords insights into little-appreciatedareasof the sport and its history. Eminent writershavesometimes used athletics as a theme or background, among them Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Walt Whitman,A. E. Housman, EvelynWaugh, W. H. Auden, Alan Sillitoe,John Cheever, Dannie Abse and Roger McGough. In the visual arts, Rowlandsonand Cruikshankdepicted earlyathletics,and sculptors havealwaysderived inspirationfrom athletes in action, but the richest bodyof workis in photography,by practitioners as skilled as Tony Duffy, Gerry Cranham, Eamonn McCabe and Chris Smith. The great advantage of fiction is that it canhighlightcorners of the sport otherwise overlooked. In the little-known Man and Wife (1870), Wilkie Collins gives as vivid a pictureof a Victorianathleticsmeetingas we are likely to find anywhere.Parandowski's The OlympicDiscus (1939) is a reconstruction of the classical sports of ancient Greece. Peter Lovesey's Wobbleto Death (1970) is a crime novel set entirelywithin a Victorian six-dayrace. Myown Flanagan's Kun (1982) attempts to recapturethe flamboyanceand eccentricityof the transcontinental races,while The Fast Men (1986)does the same for the barnstormingprofessionalsknownmisleadinglyas pedestrians.These novelscan supply the immediacy, atmosphere and attitude which is outside the scope of conventional sports histories. The Olympic Games as a topic for fictionhas defeated morewritersthan it has inspired,but Brian Glanville's The Olympian (1969) standsout. Victorian schoolboy fiction of the style of Talbot Baines Reed and Walter C. Rhoadesoften featuredhare andhounds racesand sports day triumphsthat show school athletics in its heyday. More rarely, as in Our Marathon Race (1910), the girls are put through their paces. The super-heroof the 1940s, the greatWilson, onlyever appearedin one book, althoughhis numerousadventures in the Wizard, writtenwith a fineblend ot fantasyand expertiseby Gilbert Dalton, are still rememberedwith affection by senior citizens.Morerecent children'sfiction, such as CynthiaVoigt's Ihe (1986),tends to show runningas a journeyto self-awareness. Of allthe art forms, poetrybest encompassesthe richvarietyof the sport. There is the pathos of Housman's To an Athlete Dying \oung (1896) and Hendersons A. E. Flaxman— HammerThrower (included in F. A. M.Webster's Great Momentsin Athletics, 1947) the fine evocationsof the early Border Games by the Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg; the heroicachievementof Pheidippidesin Browning'spoem (1879);the grindof trainingruns in Cyril Norwood's Sweats (1969);a glimpseof greatness in \ : anny Blankers- [xxix ]