Well, as a devotee of sport and gardening I find all my dreams coming true in the Olympic park, following accounts of great success with a wild flower meadow in the vicinity of the stadiums. This was reported by the BBC on 31 August and was accompanied by a beautiful picture of wildflowers creating a golden vista. See http://bbc.in/bBRk4M

 

The BBC tells us that with advice from experts from Sheffield University, an area as large as 10 football pitches has been sown with cornflowers, marigolds and poppies: the sort of plants which attract insects like Burnet moths and Marsh Fritillary and Meadow Brown butterflies. The success of the project this year seems to have surprised even the experts, for anyone who has tried it knows that it is by no means easy to create a successful wildflower patch. The seeds have to be scattered at just the right time and the soil has to be perfect: fertile for some wildflowers and gritty for others.  Which ought to bring me to some metaphorical reflections on the cultivation of young athletes, but I’ll spare you that, and talk instead about the pleasure it gives me to see the environment taking centre stage during the build phase of the 2012 Olympics.

 

Environment is one of the themes we are showcasing on the website, and we have discovered numerous publications in the collection which look at the impact of the Olympics on the countries which host them http://bit.ly/dbPRA4

The urgency with which cities have lately approached the issue reflects fears about global sustainability and puts into sharp focus the legacy of some of the Olympic Games stadiums of the past which now lie unused, and which provide a constant reminder of the danger of projects which are purely vainglorious. To its credit, the IOC quickly realised that host cities must be explicitly guided in the direction of doing the decent environmental thing. In 1994, it and the United Nations Environment  Programme signed an Agreement of Cooperation to incorporate environmental concerns into the Olympic Games: http://bit.ly/awrR8H and the two bodies co-host the Global Forum for Sport and the Environment whose website is full of interest. http://bit.ly/90w3AV The home page currently has a picture of our Olympic park’s floriferous achievement.

 

Culture and sport don’t always sit well together, but Pierre de Coubertin was very keen on the idea that the Olympic Games should be something more than a sporting event, and that it should include competitions for artistic excellence, with victor’s laurels for music, the fine arts, and literature. London 1948 saw the last of these ‘events’ however, despite the fact that some of them had been very popular with the public, particularly at Los Angeles in 1932 and Berlin in 1936. So why didn’t the concept of artistic competition work? Opinions differ, but it is generally agreed that logistical problems, changing tastes and concerns about the professional status of the best competitors played their part. After 1948, the ‘arts’ aspect of the Olympics began to be restricted to exhibitions celebrating the culture of the country in which the Games were being held, and this continued until the idea of a more prolonged Cultural Olympiad was pioneered by Barcelona in 1992. An interesting account of the arts and cultural history of the Olympiads is given by Margaret Gold and George Revill in Olympic cities […] (details below).

 How feasible is it to create a cultural festival in a city already gearing up for a massive sporting mega event? It clearly isn’t easy, for London’s Cultural Olympiad has come under fire from commentators already, being accused of lacking focus, of being late getting off the ground and of being poorly understood by the public. London is such a great cultural capital in any case, and that makes it hard to imagine what could take place, over and above what’s going on anyway.

 Perhaps a proper brand identity is once again key here, for there is plenty of eagerness on the part of London’s cultural institutions, including the British Library, to showcase their treasures and their cultural meaning in the support of the Olympic ideal. The questions are how best to do it; and more importantly, how best to link it up to the main event? It’s an interesting conundrum for the organisers in a city like this: do you opt for something entirely new, or do you attempt a spin on existing festivals and traditions (BBC Olympic Proms 2012 perhaps!). Or maybe you can attempt a mixture of both?

 Olympic cities: city agendas, planning and the world games, 1896-2012 edited by John R Gold and Margaret M Gold London: Routledge, 2007.

London reference collections shelfmark: YC.2008.a.11704

Lending collections shelfmark: m07/.34581

Gold, John Robert and Gold, Margaret M. Cities of culture: Staging international festivals and the urban agenda, 1851-2000 Aldershot: Ashgate, c2005.

London reference collections shelfmark: YC.2006.a.8347

Lending collections shelfmark: m05/.18513

Stanton, Richard. The forgotten Olympic art competitions: the story of the Olympic art competitions of the 20th century Victoria: Trafford, 2000.

Lending collections shelfmark: m02/36119

 

 

 

 

We have a new member of staff working with the social science team: Andrea Cunsolo, who is with us for six months as part of the Future Jobs Fund Scheme. He’s proving to be an enormous help in getting to grips with the work we are doing for the website on the Paralympics, and is searching for relevant materials in the BL collections and fashioning a bibliographical piece on the role of the Paralympic governing bodies in raising awareness of disabled sport. He also brought to my attention a great new website called Ability v Ability which has been created in partnership with ParalympicsGB and NASUWT. The site is intended for schools (although of course, anyone can use it) and provides resources on the Paralympic movement and its athletes for use by teachers in the classroom. Click on: http://www.abilityvability.co.uk/

 

Raising awareness of disability sport in schools is essential from a variety of perspectives, but most particularly for children with disabilities who may not have considered becoming involved in physical exercise because of preconceived ideas – their own and other people’s - about their abilities. Widening their horizons and awareness – as well as those of their able-bodied peers, and their teachers too – will contribute enormously to the legacy of the 2012 Paralympics. Ian Brittain’s article (written for the journal Sport, education and society in 2004) is very enlightening in this regard. In it he tells of the enormous influence that a proper sports education can have on children with disabilities, and argues that a positive experience can empower them in many different aspects of their lives. I was also fascinated by Hayley Fitzgerald’s Disability and youth sport, an edited collection of contributions on the subject. Her own chapter ‘Are you a parasite researcher?’ alerts us to the importance of working with disabled athletes and aspiring athletes to research the issues, to arrive at conclusions, and to put them into practice.

 

Ian Brittain ‘The role of schools in constructing self-perceptions of sport and physical education in relation to people with disabilities’ in Sport, education and society Vol 9, No 1, March 2004

London reference collections shelfmark: ZC.9.a.4559

Lending collections shelfmark: 8419.519500

 

Disability and youth sport edited by Hayley Fitzgerald Oxford: Routledge, 2009

London reference collections shelfmark: YC.2010.a.3510

Lending collections shelfmark: m09/10755

 

Most of the newspapers last week had pictures of Jessica Ennis’s smiling face as she celebrated her victory as European champion in the heptathlon. Actually watching her do it was even better, because then you could see how slight she is, compared to the other competitors, which to me makes her achievement all the more amazing. Heptathletes are clearly a race apart though, with skills necessarily spread over a broader range of endeavour. Are they more complete athletes than other elites? one wonders; not forgetting though that there have been a number of multi-talented performers, Jesse Owens being one of the most celebrated.

The history of the women’s heptathlon is an interesting one. In its current form, it consists of seven track and field events and is the successor of the shorter pentathlon event which it replaced in the 1984 Olympics. The pentathlon itself dates back to the ancient Greek Olympics, and took its place as one of the main events at the Athens Olympics of 1906, but it had a chequered history after that: being dropped and then included; and forever being tinkered with, with the events being swapped round or added to and different versions being adopted. It did generate some wonderful competitors though, whose multi-faceted athletics skills seem to have been reflected in an equally balanced attitude to life.

Mary Peters, the Olympic gold medallist in the pentathlon event in 1972 is a good example. Now a Dame, celebrated for her sporting excellence, charitable work and work within the sport itself, she really demonstrates the advantages of being an all-rounder.

The Library has a recorded interview with Mary Peters which forms part of the Sound Archive’s ‘Oral history of British athletics collection’. In it she tells of her early athletics career – when pentathlon seemed more of a hobby than anything else – to the dramatic effects of the coaching of her new trainer Buster McShane in 1961.

You can read an interview summary by looking at the Library’s Sound Archive catalogue.

Mary Peters. Mary P. Autobiography London: Paul, 1974
London reference collections shelfmark: X629/6254
Lending collections shelfmark: 86/01596

You’d have thought - wouldn’t you? - that the latest sports coaching books acquired by the British Library would be cutting edge modern titles replete with the latest research by sports physiologists and psychologists.  Not a bit of it: a couple of years ago we proudly took possession of a book on swimming published in 1595. This was an English edition, from a Latin original called De arte natandi which was written by Everard Digby and published in 1587.

As Professor Nicholas Orme wrote in his note to accompany a talk on the book at the BL in October 2008, Digby was a ‘rumbustious Tudor scholar, thrown out of Cambridge for offences ranging from crypto-Catholicism to fishing (when he should have been in chapel) and blowing a horn and shouting round the college’. Unusually, he seems to have been pretty nippy in the River Cam, with a love of synchronised swimming moves such as ‘to caper with both his legges at once above the water’ and ‘to swimme with one legge right up’. Woodcuts showed how this was done, should anyone wish to try it.

 

It’s such a wonderful book that one half expects it to be revealed as a daring hoax, like the Hitler diaries, but anyhow we rate it as authentic – so far…

Digby, Everard De arte natandi Libri duo, quorum Prior regulas ipsius artis, posterior vero praxin demonstrationemque continet. Excudebat Thomas Dawson: Londini, 1587.

London reference collections shelfmarks: 58.b.16; and C.71.h.11.

Orme, Nicholas. Early British swimming 55BC-AD1719 : with the first swimming treatise in English, 1595  [Exeter] : University of Exeter, 1983.

London reference collections shelfmark: X.629/20547

Lending collections shelfmark: 83/27528

Digby, Everard, [De arte natandi libri duo. Adaptation. English ] A short introduction for to learne to swimme. Gathered out of Master Digbies Booke of the Art of Swimming. And translated into English for the better instruction of those who vnderstand not the Latine tongue. By Christofer Middleton. At London : Printed by Iames Roberts for Edward White, and are to be sold at the little North doore of Paules Church, at the signe of the Gun, 1595.

London reference collections shelfmark: C.194.a.833

 

I’m absolutely certain that one of the results of London 2012 will be that sports which have not been seen as mainstream or ‘interesting’ by the Press will become enormously popular in the UK as a result of their exposure at the Games. My guess is that one of the greatest beneficiaries of this process will be Triathlon, which has grown exponentially as a sport for grass roots athletes and professionals alike over the past 5 years but which has never really been given the media exposure it deserves, even though British competitors are right at the top of the game. This struck me particularly when Norfolk-born Chrissie Wellington became World Ironman Champion for three successive years (in 2007, 2008 and 2009) breaking world records right, left and centre in a sport which demands almost superhuman effort and dedication. Blowed if I could find anything much on the back pages of the UK Press at the time, though! (Chrissie’s blog is at http://www.chrissiewellington.org/blog/ ). The good news is that she was the Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year for 2009, so belated recognition finally arrived.

 

Sunday saw an incredibly exciting finish in the Hyde Park international triathlon event when Javier Gomez of Spain won a tremendously hard fought final leg against the two Brownlee brothers from the UK. Alastair Brownlee’s faltering approach to the line as he succumbed to exhaustion was caught dramatically on BBC television, and need it be said that all this was ten times more thrilling and moving than England’s progress through the FIFA World Cup which earned all those column inches.

 

My secret spectator sport addiction is handball, which is enormously popular on the Continent but rarely - if ever - gets a look-in here. I first saw this sport on the Eurosport channel in a hotel in Cologne, and found it amazing to watch the players hanging in the air while taking aim at the goal.

 

So all power to the elbows of those sports, and to those neglected world champions

who languish away from the media glare. I’m banking on 2012 to give them their chance to shine.

I’ve spent the last few days reading up on the Paralympics, in preparation for some materials for the website, and I soon discovered - and became absorbed by - Paralympicsport.tv, an online television channel which was set up by the International Paralympic Committee to showcase disability sports and to broadcast more widely and in greater depth the Paralympic Games themselves. Although I saw some of the Beijing Paralympics coverage on terrestrial TV, I wasn’t aware, at the time, of the existence of an alternative source of coverage, or much about the range of international sporting events for disabled people that take place throughout each year, many of which are also publicised on the website. The channel is purely Internet based and is available at its internet domain http://www.paralympicsport.tv/ or via its Youtube and Facebook pages. Today it was showing videos of a variety of sports from goalball to seven a side football and swimming.

Things like this are gradually making it possible for the Paralympics to build up a brand identity of its own - arguably a precondition for the winning of sponsorship, influence and exposure. Everyone knows, of course, that media coverage of the Paralympics has increased enormously over the last few years, but it might well be about to take off in a very big way. Ian Brittain’s fascinating recent book The Paralympics explained shows how the number of accredited media at the Paralympics rose from under 2000 at Barcelona 1992 to nearly 6000 at Beijing 2008 and the TV rights to the London 2012 Paralympics were fiercely contested. According to the online Guardian (8 Jan 2012), Channel 4’s chairman designate, Lord Burns, celebrated the winning of the contract by saying that: "for Channel 4, the London Paralympic games will be the main event, not a sideshow to the Olympics; the games will define our year in 2012 and take over Channel 4 for their duration”. Which is about as unequivocal a statement of support as you can get.

All this media attention will come at a cost for the athletes in the form of the welcome and unwelcome trappings of fame: money, celebrity, gossip, notoriety, controversy, scrutiny. Are they ready for all that?

Ian Brittain The Paralympic Games explained London: Routledge, 2010

London reference collections shelfmark: SPIS.796.0456

Lending collections shelfmark: m09/30402

 

There’s much talk in the press at the moment about the 2012 volunteers, as the LOCOG website has announced that volunteering applications for specialist roles open on 27 July this year, and for generalist roles in September. Reading this, I immediately took a look on the BL catalogue, wondering if the experiences of the volunteers of previous London Olympics had been recorded, and if so how. Using ‘volunteering’ as a keyword in the catalogue, it instantly became apparent that there is a huge body of literature on the broad subject itself, which covers volunteers of all sorts, be they students on gap years in developing countries or unpaid sports coaches (and there are enormous numbers of the latter, without whom a lot of grass-roots sport clearly would not take place at all).

But there’s more to volunteering for the Olympics than that. According to David Brettell, writing in the Olympic review about the experience of the Sydney 2000 Olympic volunteers, the work of these 62,000 individuals during the games ‘linked the community to the event and provided a lot of people with direct ‘ownership’ of [it]’ (the full text of this article is available on the LA84 website; see the link below). Their efforts also contributed to a legacy of volunteering in the community, a hoped for outcome of the volunteering project for the London 2012 games. As LOCOG puts it on their website, London 2012 will leave a legacy of  “a new volunteering spirit, an improved volunteer network with more opportunities and better training for those who want to give their most important commodity – time’.

What is striking about Brettell’s article is the emphasis he puts on the importance of how the Sydney volunteers were trained, and treated. People were forbidden to characterise themselves as ‘only’ a volunteer, and it was made clear to them how much their contributions were valued. It all came down to ‘respect’ seemingly.

Anyhow, it will be interesting to see how the volunteering side of 2012 pans out. Personally, I hope the volunteers will record their experiences in some way, and that a few may even write books which will find their way here!

David Brettell ‘The Sydney volunteers’ in Olympic review 2001, vol 27, no 42 http://www.la84foundation.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/2001/OREXXVII42/OREXXVII42u.pdf

Volunteers, global society and the Olympic Movement (International symposium) (1999 Nov : Lausanne, Switzerland)

Lending Collections shelfmark: m00/45458

 

Max Walker and Gerry Gleeson

The Volunteers : how ordinary Australians brought about the extraordinary success of the Sydney 2000 Games

Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001.

London reference Collections shelfmark: YA.2002.a.10825