As with every great performance, the months immediately before the actual event are taken up with rehearsals at which unforeseen problems are sorted out and people are allowed to make as many mistakes as they like, in order – hopefully – to get them out of the way before The Day. Not far from the BL – at the old Aldwych underground station to be precise – the security forces are currently engaged in carrying out a disaster scenario (which we devoutly hope won’t turn out to be a prelude to an actual event); much further away a happier rehearsal will be taking place in a month or so’s time – for the London 2012 torch relay. In April the torch will be taken on an 80 mile trial run from Leicester to Peterborough in preparation for the real thing, which actually begins on the 18^th May when the flame arrives in the UK from Greece.

A lot of imagination has gone into determining the course taken by the Olympic torch once it reaches the UK: it will use a variety of means of transport, from the chair lift at the Isle of Wight Needles (where I went for my hols last year so I know this will be a picturesque event) to a boat across Loch Ness (with plenty of scope there for a monsterous – and purely incidental - surprise).

The Olympic flame is obviously full of meaning for the Olympic movement, as it is one of the symbols which has made the transition from the ancient Games to the modern. The concept of the sacred nature of the flame and the significance of those who bear it is central to the Olympic idea, although the torch relay itself is a modern innovation: it was first instituted at the Berlin Olympics of 1936 (the torch used on that occasion is shown below)

 

Although forming a vital part of the complex ceremonial of the Olympics and Paralympics, the torch relay has developed something of a raison d’etre of its own, in terms of the effects it may seek to create and the meanings with which the host countries invest it. The final team of torch bearers is chosen by the organising committee of the host country, and that choice can be founded on a number of factors, and indeed operates very much like a mini ‘honours’ system. The types of people considered worthy of the honour have expanded hugely since the original procedure was set up. Nowadays, the torch bearers need not necessarily be great athletes, but those who have contributed in some other way to the well being of the country or district concerned; so as well as fulfilling its original purpose of alerting the world to the imminent arrival of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and bringing the flame from Athens to the host city, the relay provides another means of reinforcing national pride and inclusiveness and of promoting the host nation to the world. Dramatic and beautiful scenery is chosen for the route and unusual means of transportation are often organised. The whole process is increasingly one which has wide non-sporting resonance. Lately, of course, we have seen the relay (especially in Beijing) become the focus of both international and national protest – a testimony perhaps to the power of the event itself – with all the logistical implications that this has for the organisers.

So nothing about the Olympics and Paralympics is simple, especially now that information technology has transformed ‘global’ events into 'local' ones.

 

Today’s blog is more of an announcement really. In other words: we’d love you to sign up to our forthcoming sports conference called Sourcing sport: current research; British Library resources which is to be held on the 21^st May 2012 in the BL Conference Centre here at St Pancras.

It was partly the prospect of the Olympic Games in London that focussed the minds of the organisers - myself and my colleague in the Arts & Humanities section of the Library, Philippa Marks. We were both aware that the BL sports collections were an absolute cornucopia of resources; not simply textual ones, but audio, visual and virtual too, and so what better year in which to showcase them than this one!

Curatorial colleagues and academic speakers will be discussing aspects of the sports collections held here as well as current research and where it’s heading. We’ll be talking about the particular items that interest us, smiling at some of the images we’ve discovered and asking what comes next in the way of collecting for the researchers of the future. It should be a learning experience for all concerned!

Full details are on our events page

http://www.bl.uk/sportandsociety/events/index.html

 

simone Bacchini writes:

Once again, it’s all about Greece. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about an episode in the story of Ulysses, told by Homer in the Odyssey (Book XII). It relates the hero’s encounter with the Sirens, sea nymphs who lured sailors to their death with their beguiling song. Ulysses wanted to hear the song but he knew well that if he did so he would jump into the sea and perish. The song just couldn’t be resisted. So he ordered his men to put wax into their ears and tie him to the ship’s mast. 

Fast forward a few thousand years, and the Sirens are still around. Two of them, to be precise; one is called Euro, her sister Olympics. And to be sure, Greece is still very much in the picture. 

I’m not going to say much about the common currency. This is not an economics blog and even if it were, my understanding of the topic is patchy at best. It is intriguing to observe, however, that in spite of all the troubles that countries in Europe are facing also because of the Euro, the gravitational pull of the common currency is still powerful. Not only are nations reluctant to leave it—even when it’s obviously part of their problems, as in the case of Greece is caused by it—but some are still queuing up to join. It’s the power of an idea, I believe. 

More pertinent to the topic of this blog is the power of the other Sire: the Olympic Games. Two sets of beliefs about hosting the Games seem to be at work, both exercising the Sirens’ bewitching power. The first has to do with De Coubertin’s vision of what this revived tradition represents: fair-play, the uniting power of sport, and international harmony, among other things. The second is a separate but related belief; a modernised, commodified version of it. It’s the conviction that hosting the Games is the solution to a country’s current problems. The economy is lagging? Host the Games. Unemployment is rising? Host the Games. People are overweight and not exercising enough? Host the games and they’ll become athletes and shed the extra pounds. 

Recently, the debate on whether or not to bid to host the Summer Olympics in 2020 has been raging in Italy, a country that faces problems similar to Greece’s. Pietro Mennea, a former Olympian whose achievements are revered in the Country, spoke out against it. In an interview with the Corriere della Sera daily, he said that—in spite of his continued support for the “Olympic ideal”—“Italy is a country that’s been bled dry, devastated by a scary economic crisis. How can one, today, suggest such a thing [i.e. hosting the Games in 2020]?” Yet, it wasn’t long before another former Olympian—gymnast Juri Chechi—came up with a riposte. In a letter to the same newspaper, he said that Roma 2020 would “represent an enormous opportunity not only for Rome but for the […] Country and for the whole Olympic movement. […] Rome could finally give birth to a sustainable Games, without cathedrals in the desert and on more ‘human’ scale.” A number of active athletes followed suite and addressed an open letter to Mario Monti—the Prime Minister—asking him to support the bid. 

I don’t think I’m truly qualified to evaluate all the arguments for and against hosting the Games. I’m quite sure they’re complex and there’s truth in both. What strikes me, however, is the power of the ‘Olympic myth’, as embedded in much of the discourse around the entire event, from the bidding to the actual hosting. Perhaps the Games are not a Siren but a real beacon, a lighthouse. But its power to attract is certainly impressive. 

References:

 

Olympic Games Impact Study: Final Report. Great Britain. Dept. for Culture, Media and Sport.

London reference collection shelfmark:

OPA.2006.x.73

 

Hayes, G. and Karamichas, J. (eds.) (2012) Olympic Games, Mega-events and Civil Societies: Globalization, Environment, Resistance. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.

DS shelfmark:

m12/.10082

 

Preuss, H. (2006) The Economics of Staging the Olympics: A comparison of the Games 1972-2008. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

London reference collection shelfmark:

YC.2006.b.1744

 

 

Whatever the outcome of the transport ‘issues’ surrounding the London 2012 Olympics, the problem has certainly been (endlessly) debated. Nearly 6 months in advance of the actual event a website has been set up to let people and businesses know what’s in store and plan accordingly : http://www.getaheadofthegames.com/ and London mayor Boris Johnson has suggested that Olympic officials think about taking the tube to get to the Games, so confident is he that the transport system will take the strain.

 The website pin points congestion ‘hot’ spots; and there are quite a spread of these throughout the UK, though obviously the hottest ones are centred in the capital. Clicking on these reveals the details of what will be happening at tube and rail stations and people are encouraged to try alternative forms of transport like the buses (subject to diversions) and the river.

The thought of sailing serenely up the Thames is an attractive one, and really opens up the prospect of an additional Olympic legacy: that of returning the Thames to its old prominence as a major means of transport for Londoners.

 This may not be news of course for those who regularly commute from Putney to Blackfriars or from Woolwich Arsenal to Embankment, as river buses have been happily plying their trades on these routes for some years, and especially since the advent of riverside housing and apartment blocks. It seems such a wonderful option to me, and a terrific way to start the working day – or indeed to go to the Olympics & Paralympics: back to nature, with the gentle plash of wavelets accompanied by a flotilla of weed-gathering waterfowl. If only we still kept above ground the old London rivers like the Fleet and the Wandle which fed into the Thames. I can quite easily see my self rowing into London on the River Effra (alas forced into a tunnel now by the tides of industrialisation) instead of slobbing it on the tube and bus.

Or even swimming my commute! Which brings me via a very circuitous route to sports involving water, which have undergone something of a revival in this country over the past few years. The British have always been enthusiastic sailors and pool swimmers, but with increased participation in the sport of triathlon, open water swimming has become extremely popular and we seem to be very good at it. For aficionados of icy water (and I know several) there is an outdoor swimming society which campaigns for waterways to be opened up to leisure swimmers, and it has a super website with lots of historical accounts of swimming and waterways old and new http://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com/. I’m also pleased to say that the BL’s sound archive has some cold water swimming interviews in its oral history collections- See below.

 As far as the Olympic Games are concerned, I’m expecting the wonderful Keri-Ann Payne, the British world 10K open water champion to emerge as one of the stars of the 2012 Olympics. Watching her swim in Beijing was one of the absolute highlights of that Games for me.

 References

 Cold water swimming interviews

British Library Sound Archive

 Gavin Mortimer The great swim New York: Walker & Co, 2008

DS shelfmark: m08/16107

 Janet Smith Liquid assets: the lidos and open air swimming pools of Britain

London: English Heritage, 2005

London reference collections shelfmark: YK.2007.a.6366

DS shelfmark: m09/18468

 

 

 

The announcement last week about the opening of the London 2012 anti-doping laboratory seems to have moved the focus of current media scrutiny away from Olympic security and towards the problem of cheating. Interest in the latter has always loomed large in academic research, however, not only from a scientific point of view but from a sociological one too. The London 2012 laboratory, based in Harlow in Essex, is equipped, we are told, to analyse over 6000 samples (a record for the Games), so the message emerging is that the issue is being taken as seriously as ever by practitioners. The questions are though: how sophisticated are the weapons being brought to bear on cheating, especially in this age of genetic modification, and should we be short-circuiting the problem by taking a fresh look at the ethics of doping?

One of the suggestions being tentatively tossed to at fro in academic circles centres on the idea of actually legitimising the use of performance-enhancing measures, and there are several arguments for this: it would mean that the escalating race to keep athletes ‘clean’ would cease to be an ever increasing burden on the authorities, and the effects of supplements on athletes’ health could be properly monitored in the  long-term. One of the principal supporters of this line of reasoning is Professor Andy Miah of the University of the West of Scotland who has published a number of books and articles on the subject. His argument is that regulated ‘enhancement’ is a legitimate practice for improved athletic performance, and that the sports authorities have something of a moral duty to ensure that enhancements are safe to use.

The struggle for ‘clean’ athletes is being waged on many different sporting fronts: in baseball, in cycling, in weightlifting. And there’s nothing new in the use of performance enhancing substances. In the 19^th century people took small doses of strychnine with brandy to aid endurance, and as time went on more and more artificial aids became available: amphetamines, steroids, even transfusions of blood with high levels of red blood cells. Nowadays the range of potential ‘procedures’ is even wider, and often increasingly harder to detect.

 The arguments against the legitimising of performance enhancing substances are powerful. They are allied in some ways to our attitudes to recreational drug use which seek to prohibit it on the grounds of the extreme harm it can do. However, we are currently losing that battle too, giving rise to calls for a decriminalisation of drug use. If athletes want to take performance enhancers they will find a way to do it, it is argued, and perhaps the best way of tackling the problem is to leave the onus for the decision on the individual. This would probably lead to a breakaway movement of ‘clean’ athletes – as has happened in bodybuilding – and a re-evaluation of our attitude to what sporting excellence actually means.

 Still, I can’t overcome my feeling that taking performance enhancers is wrong and that the messages such actions send out are wrong. If we regulate certain drugs for use because they are safe, how do we control the ones that are not? Aren’t we back with the same old dilemma again?

 References

Andy Miah Genetically modified athletes: biomedical ethics, gene doping & sport

London: Routledge, 2004

London reference collections shelfmark: YK.2006.a.3899

DS shelfmark: m04/31386

Doping in sport: global ethical issues edited by Angela J Schneider & Fan Hong

London: Routledge, 2007

London reference collections shelfmark: YC.2012.a.472

DS shelfmark: m07/26273

Verner Moller The ethics of doping and anti-doping: redeeming the soul of sport

London: Routledge, 2010

London reference collections shelfmark: SPIS362.29

DS shelfmark: m09/33766

Simone Bacchini writes:

“Critics of the London Olympics were today urged to get behind the Games and ‘stop grumbling.’” Thus reported London’s Evening Standard, on 9 February 2012. 

The peremptory invitation was issued by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt who—to quote him in full—said: “This is a year to celebrate and not for grumbling. We have got the chance to show the world everything that is best about London. We would be crazy [sic] not to make the most of it. Of course there is going to be disruption. But it’s going to be worth it.” 

Obliquely, my mind went to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitutions. This is the clause which protects important freedoms; freedom of religion, freedom of speech and, by implication, freedom from religion. Have the Olympics acquired religion-like status? Are we all being asked to believe? More importantly, are we being forbidden to disbelieve or to simply be agnostic? 

Perhaps, Secretary Hunt’s declarations needs a bit of deconstructing and a close reading. Let us begin with the first sentence: ‘This is a year to celebrate and not for grumbling.’ 

Two attitudes, one positive, one negative, are juxtaposed: ‘celebration’, which entails happiness and other positive feelings, and ‘grumbling’, which implies a bad temper on the grumbler’s part and—to an extent—lack of real justification. So on one side stand the ‘supporters’: rational in their belief; positive in their attitude. And on the other the ‘grumblers’: irrational, unwilling to play the game (the sport metaphor seems particularly apt), and—quite simply—party-poopers. 

But there is more: not standing firm behind the Games is “crazy”; ergo one must be insane not to see what great opportunity these Olympics are going to be for London and for Britain. But if you’re sane—the reasoning goes—you can’t fail to see that the minor disruptions that will inevitably be experienced are well worth putting up with. For the greater good, of course, and what will turn out to be a fantastic, unmissable, once-in-a-lifetime (you can add whatever other positive adjective springs to mind) event. No pain no gain, to use other phrase beloved of — among others — sport coaches. 

From the organisers’ point of view, it’s understandable that they should want the event to be a great success and for London and Britain to shine, not only in terms of medals gained. Like for other mega-events, we won’t really know how the system will cope until after the last athletes and visitors have left. My guess, for what it’s worth, is that—overall—things will turn out the way they’re meant to. And the closer we get to the opening ceremony, the more excitement we’ll see and most people will be caught up—at least temporarily—by the excitement. 

However, it is a fact of life that watching sport—of any kind, at any level—is not enjoyed by everyone. And this is for a variety of reasons, all of which legitimate. If sport is like a religion, and the Olympics one of its principal rites, then I would suggest leaving people the freedom to believe, disbelieve, or simply not care, or care just a little.

Now that 2012 is finally upon us we can all abandon ourselves to the contemplation of sport – at least that’s the plan!  And not just Olympic & Paralympic sport, but sport more generally, given that the British Library has a wonderful collection of sports research resources which illuminate leisure pursuits in the United Kingdom (and elsewhere) right from their very beginnings.

 With this in mind, I and my colleague Philippa Marks (from the Arts and Humanities section of the Library) have been pushing ahead with plans for a one-day conference in May this year which will, as we are saying in our marketing literature “ unlock the secrets of the British Library’s sport collections”

 We have recruited British Library curators from right across the Scholarship & Collections directorate to talk about resources which might interest sport (and indeed other) researchers. There will be a chance for participants to find out about oral histories of sport, sporting ephemera, serial and monograph publications (old and new) and see some wonderful images culled from a variety of British and foreign texts. The rationale behind the conference is to share with the audience the excitement that the curators feel when discovering a fascinating resource that has been lurking in the collections (perhaps unread) for many years. Here’s one visual gem:

 
 

The Library’s resources, vast and varied as they are, reveal new discoveries every day.  Some subjects are well mined by research, but sport – comparatively speaking – is not, although research in this area has certainly burgeoned over the last 50 years. So we hope the conference will be instrumental in stimulating new ideas,  particularly for those who want to look at sport from unusual angles and who relish the idea of ferreting around in the collections.

 To add to our intellectual gravitas we have attracted 4 wonderful academic speakers who will be giving the audience a glimpse into their own research and the resources they use. Hopefully this will be a learning experience for all concerned. The curators, in particular, love to know what use is being made of the collections, and also what materials people are keen to see being collected.

 Details about the conference will be available soon, on this website and elsewhere, so please watch this space.

Over the years the IOC has been faced with a number of nightmares concerning their elite athletes– from shamateurism to drug taking and gender ambiguity. These threats to the Games’ integrity have been dealt with in a number of ways with varying, but mostly satisfactory, degrees of success. The latest nightmare though – that of the possibility of bribery of athletes by betting syndicates – has caught quite a few people on the hop. How do you legislate for (or rather against) such a thing?

The issue of match fixing suddenly appeared on most people’s radar last year after three Pakistani cricketers were convicted for ‘spot’ fixing in a Test match against England in 2010. Evidence put before the court highlighted the illegal betting syndicates in the Far East, India and Pakistan which attempt to skew the outcome of sports matches in a variety of ways: by arranging for individual players to commit ‘faults’ like no balls, right up to the throwing of entire games. Unregulated and with large sums riding on the outcomes, they pose a huge problem because of the sophistication of their methods and the clandestine nature of their activities.

A big expose in the Sunday Times on New Year’s Day revealed the extent of the problem for Olympic sports: football, tennis, & handball have all been shown to be affected and there are strong suspicions about hockey. The claim is also made that syndicates are already preparing for the Games with plans which will potentially involve not only athletes but match officials as well. Olympics minister Hugh Robertson is reported as saying that “ Governments around the world need to put the necessary laws on their statute book that make…[match fixing]…illegal.”

As with the financial markets, the success of sporting events depends largely on confidence. No one would be interested in a ‘competition’ that had a prearranged outcome, and this is the reason sporting authorities come down heavily on cheats. The possibility of the match being fixed robs the whole event of its meaning and renders genuine achievements suspect. People quickly become disillusioned and sponsors want no part of it. That way lies complete disaster – for the Olympics and Paralympics in particular.

With this dire possibility in mind, the London 2012 authorities have set up a special task force composed of representatives from the Met, Interpol and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The task force will share information and monitor any unusual betting activity, and identify attempts to approach athletes by persons known to be linked to the syndicates. People will also be able to report any suspicious goings-on via an email hotline. The problem though - it seems to me - is that even more legislation and surveillance will be necessary at mega events, thereby giving ammunition to critics who are already accusing the Games of being too prescriptive and intrusive when it comes to domestic affairs.