An Athletics Compendium

The Literature of Athletics Koenat Wembley by Jeff Cloves(1986);and, in casewe takeit alltoo seriously,the wicked humour of Roger McGoughin his collection Sporting delations (1974). The Governing Bodies The main official histories are those dedicated to the first fifty years of the Amateur Athletic Association and its Scottish counterpart, the SAAA, and to their centenaries.Littleother than theseofficial accountsexistsin the literature. We are, therefore, left withtheseofficialhistories,with their inevitable limitations. For outside of sport, in such areasas politics, there are inevitablytwo 'histories'.The first is the officialaccount,what Marxcalls 'the propaganda of the victors', sometimeslittle more than hagiography.The second,whichusuallyhas to be culledfromdiverse sources, fromsuch areasas biographyand autobiography,anecdote,articles,specialisedhistories etc., is the stuff of real history.It does not, of course, represent absolute truth, but it almost invariablyservesto penetratethe self-justifyingcurtainof officialaccounts. Suchhistories are uncommon in sport. This is becausethere is rarelyavailablein the formal literature the volume of unofficial material that exists in more public areas such as politics. Thus, we will never know the details of the discussions within the AmateurAthledcAssociationwhichbrought W. R.Knox into employmentas a national coach in 1913.Sadly,too, we haveno knowledgeof his fewmonths of work beforewar broke out in 1914, or why he was not re-appointed subsequent to the Great War. Similarly,most of what occurred in the seminal1947-62 periodin Britishcoachingwill never be known, for it has passed with the deaths of protagonists such as Geoffrey Dyson, HaroldAbrahamsand JackCrump. Thus, the historyof Britishathletics is, to some extent, pallidand incomplete.The half-century history ofthe Amateur Athletic Association, Fifty Years of Progress, 1880-1930 (1930),is, in the main, a collectionof self-congratulatoryessaysof variablequalityabout which it is easy, at thisdistance, to be cynical. The book exudesthe ambienceof a series of self-indulgent after-dinner speeches by the patricians of an exclusive club, to which membersof the lower orders and Fritz and Johnny Frenchman have been grudgingly allowed access. Its Scottish equivalent, Fifty Years of Athletics 1883-1933, is dour and unimaginative,giving little hint of the rich Scottish rural athletics culture from which Scottishamateurathleticsemergedin the latenineteenth century. In the former work, the essentially publicschool/Oxbridge nature of athletics at that time is clear,with fulldetailsgiven of the public schoolschampionshipssince their inception, but narya mentionof the EnglishSchoolsAAChampionships.There is little mentioneither of women, thoughit is observed that in 1924 it had been decidedto let them take their own path. In FiftyYearsofProgress, H. B. Stallardcomments; In spite of the conflicting opinion.s.. Ibelieve that training and judicious competidon wwilliden awoman's oudook, teahcehr the valueof teamsport, and help makeher a pleasant companion. Luckily,the centenary handbooksare of a totallydifferent feather.Peter Lovesey's fhe Official Centenary History of the Amateur Athletic Association (1979) is a brilliant [ XXX ]