What power does sport really have to increase international understanding and to promote peace? I ask this having just read Theodore Cook’s ‘The Olympic Games’ which was published in 1908 and which looks back on the events of the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896. In his preface to the book, Cook, who was one of the British representatives at the IOC on behalf of the British Olympic Council, mentions the truce between the warring Greek states which prevailed during the period of each of the ancient Games. For Cook, a sportsman and an aesthete in the old tradition, this was one of the most significant justifications for resurrecting the Olympics, and he reflects that “of all the influences now at work to stay the cruel hand of war, who shall say that any single one is more potent in its effects than the increase of international athleticism which is the most significant factor in the intercourse of modern nations?” Knowing what we know about the rapidly approaching cataclysm of 1914-18 (one of the minor results of which was the cancellation of the Games scheduled to take place in Germany in 1916), his remarks seem all the more poignant.

 

The concept of a truce brokered by sport is something which is resonating more and more with modern commentators. The IOC now has observer status at the UN, and one of the latest UN agencies to be set up: the United Nations Office of Sport for Development and Peace, sees sport not only as a powerful tool for international understanding, but also as a basic human right which empowers the individual. That empowerment transforms sport into a ‘low cost, and high impact tool’ for development http://www.un.org/themes/sport/ (click on ‘Resource Centre’ for lots of full text content).  

 

The UN’s Inter-Agency Task Force - which was set up in 2002 to review activities involving sport within the UN system - concluded that “well-designed sport-based initiatives are practical and cost-effective tools to achieve development and peace objectives…sport is a powerful vehicle that should be increasingly considered by the UN as complementary to existing activities”.

 

I find this really exciting and encouraging, because it seems totally do-able.

 

International Olympic Truce centre

http://www.olympictruce.org/publications/resolution1.php

 

Theodore Andrea Cook

 

The Olympic Games: being a short history of the Olympic movement from 1896 up to the present day…

London: Constable, 1908

London reference collections shelfmark 7907.ff.57

 

 

 

 

The attempt of a Dutch brewery to grab the spotlight at the FIFA World Cup by dressing a group of young women in its promotional outfits must have sent shivers down the spine of the IOC, and one can see why. The financial success of sporting mega events depends on the willingness of corporations to pay huge sums for exclusive rights to market their products, and if the organisers can’t guarantee their exclusivity then the reason for spending such sums no longer exists.

The problem is that - particularly with the explosion of social networking and digital media - it's becoming increasingly harder to police the marketing process. Not only are the venues themselves vulnerable, but the immediate environment of a mega event also poses potential problems. In 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, Nike bought up billboards in the vicinity of the games venues and advertised its products, to the chagrin of the official sponsor of sports shoes, Reebok; so with this upping of the ante, it quickly became clear that the net of regulation had to become larger and larger. But where do you draw the line? The numerous attempts at product ambush at the Olympic Games have meant that the organisers have had to become more and more feverish in their attempts to safeguard their sponsors, and are frequently made to look ridiculous by their efforts to combat anything even remotely contentious. Each nation which hosts the Games passes legislation to protect the Olympics brand. The London 2012 Olympics for example, are protected by the Olympic Symbol etc (Protection Act) 1995

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/plain/ukpga_19950032_en_1

However, the point of successful ambush marketing is that it finds loopholes in legislation to circumvent the spirit of the law. This is why LOCOG’s brand protection document is such a detailed one.

http://www.london2012.com/documents/brand-guidelines/guidelines-for-non-commercial-use.pdf

 

There are two books in the collection which deal specifically with ambush marketing and its game theory. Fascinating stuff, but it’s a matter of life and death for the Olympics organisers, and their difficulties can only get worse (it seems to me).

 

Scaria, Arul George. Ambush marketing : game within a game

New Delhi; Oxford : Oxford University Press, c2008.  

London reference collections shelfmark: YK.2009.a.14775

DS shelfmark: m08/.33254

 

Skildum-Reid, Kim. The ambush marketing toolkit

Sydney ;London: McGraw-Hill Australia, 2007.

DS shelfmark:Vm07/.50782

 

 

I’ve just finished reading Janie Hampton’s fascinating book ‘The Austerity Olympics’ which describes the events surrounding the London Games of 1948.  The comment of Peter Kemp of BBC Radio 4’s Bookshelf, which appears on the back cover, prompted a rueful smile “it’s about putting on the Olympics in London during a financial crisis”.

Books like this, and contemporary accounts of the 1948 Olympics, reveal a world in which technological change was only just beginning to pick up pace. The Athletic Review’s Olympic Games souvenir designated the 1948 games ‘A boffin’s paradise’ on account of the new technology that was about to be applied to the events, notably a remote-control starting pistol (whatever happened to that?), photo-finish cameras, electronic timing and ‘walkie-talkie control of the marathon’ (coincidentally, the ‘boffin’s boffin’ - Alan Turing - was in the running for a place in the marathon: he had a personal best over this distance of 2 hrs.46). 

This Olympics can also be said to have inaugurated the era of mass broadcasting of mega events. The BBC produced a special broadcasting handbook for the occasion, to be used by the large influx of foreign correspondents. It gave them useful information about the arrangements for booking microphones and studios as well as details of which bus to take to the sporting venues (“There are frequent trains from Marble Arch on the Central Line to Chancery Lane Station and thence by Trolley Bus (routes 517 and 617) to Finchley Open Air Pool”)  

The BBC Yearbook of 1949 – looking back on the experience of the Olympics - thought the Corporation’s efforts represented “the most ambitious undertaking in broadcasting history” which involved the employment of 200 engineers, the erecting of broadcasting facilities at 25 venues, and a total of 130 commentary positions, 500 amplifiers and 150 microphones. Impressive, but these arrangements seem almost pre-historic compared to the media centres created for the London Olympics of 2012 and its immediate predecessors. These in their turn will probably seem ‘prehistoric’ to the Olympics consumers of the future.

  

Hampton, Janie. The austerity Olympics : when the Games came to London in 1948  London : Aurum, 2008.

London reference collections shelfmark: YC.2009.a.10264

 

British Broadcasting Corporation.

[BBC yearbook (1943) ] BBC year book.

London, British Broadcasting Corporation, 1943-1952.

London reference collections shelfmark: P.P.2491.cpe.

 

The Athletic Review Souvenir of the XIVth Olympic Games, London, 1948 Manchester, [1948.]

London reference collections shelfmark: 7917.d.38.

 

British Broadcasting Corporation.

Broadcasting Handbook. Olympic Games, London, 1948.

Wembley, 1948

London reference collections shelfmark: 7919.de.23.

One of the most interesting (and sociable) tasks involved in managing the Olympics website is that of meeting up with new people and encouraging them to contribute to the site. Apart from the external contributors, we’ve had two interns so far who have worked on the environment and politics pages, exploring our collections and making discoveries which have benefits for both the interns and the Library itself. Currently we have Jade McKenzie working with us for three weeks. She has just completed a psychology degree and is looking at the finer points of motivation in sport, in order to produce a bibliography of materials held by the BL which can then be added to the site. She will be searching across the range of different media that we have in the collections, including the sound archive recordings, which are increasingly being used in qualitative research.

It may come as a surprise that there are always fresh discoveries to be made in a Library that is now over 250 years old, but the collections are so vast (and constantly being added to) that even the most experienced curators hedge their bets when asked what we hold on a particular topic. Subject access has obviously improved out of all recognition now that catalogues are searchable online, but even I remember when the British Library collections were subject-searchable only by dint of intensive detective work, allied to a knowledge of the sometimes arcane details of the British Museum Library cataloguing rules. In those days we were helped by printed subject catalogues and also by other people’s recollections of seeing something on a shelf somewhere, or recorded on a 5x3 card at the reference desk.

 

The British Museum Library subject catalogues could quite legitimately be the objects of research themselves and it is interesting to see how descriptions of sport, and the organising of its various subdivisions have evolved over time. ‘Sport’ in the earliest volumes of the catalogue consists mainly of books about the hunting of animals. What a good job our notions of sport have evolved from that sorry state of affairs!

 

Catalogues 'within' catalogues also have to be available online these days. The following poster of ‘the greatest lady swimmer in the world’ is not separately indexed in the main BL catalogue, being part of a larger collection of items, those of the Evanion Collection. However, you will pleased to know that the online catalogue of the collection, with digital images of many of the items, is available on the BL website by selecting ‘Evanion collection of ephemera’ from the menu under ‘catalogues’

 

 

The Olympic mascots of the past have usually been animals specially associated with the Olympic city, and you can understand - in a world culture saturated in Disney - why this option might appeal to Games organisers. If London had taken this route, what might the 2012 mascots have looked like: lions maybe, or sparrows; pigeons, or urban foxes? In the end, it’s probably easier to create something new and avoid the clichés. Wenlock and Mandeville are certainly new, and in their electronic form at least, they manage to be cute without being fluffy. The video on their website also gives them a context, which makes them even more appealing, particularly from a child’s point of view. In short, I like them, though I doubt if anyone wearing those outfits will be able to bounce about with quite the same vigour as the bear at the Berlin world athletics championships. Maybe some intelligent tailoring will have to be employed between now and 2012 to make them less clunky and more mobile in the ‘flesh’. http://www.london2012.com/mascots

The perils of coming up with an idea for a mascot are many and varied, so I feel for LOCOG in their attempts to please everyone (or indeed anyone), especially after the criticism they received for the 2012 logo. As for the names, they’re a timely reminder of the role GB has played in inspiring the modern Olympics and Paralympics. Much Wenlock is of course the town where William Penny Brookes organised the first modern Olympic Games in 1850, and those Games still take place every year. If you wish to know more, the Much Wenlock Olympian Society has an informative website at http://www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk/ and the BL has a copy of:

 

William Penny Brookes and the Olympic connection [authors Muriel Furbank…et al]

Much Wenlock: Wenlock Olympian Society, 2007

London reference collections shelfmark: YK.2010.a.14872

 

Mandeville owes his name to the pioneering work of Sir Ludwig Guttmann with spinal injury patients at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Believing in the value of sporting endeavour to improve the physical and mental condition of disabled patients, Guttmann organised what was to be the first Paralympic Games in 1948.

 

Scruton, Joan

Stoke Mandeville road to the Paralympics: fifty years of history

Brill: Peterhouse, 1998

London Reference collections shelfmark: YK.1998.b.6102

DS (lending) shelfmark: 99/16790 

 

The interesting thing about the initiatives at both Stoke Mandeville and Much Wenlock is that their originators were inspired by a desire to pursue athletic and moral excellence through peaceful competition. The line of descent to the modern Olympic movement is therefore unbroken.

By the way, does anyone remember World Cup Willie? (I can even remember his song).

There was a wonderful picture in the Times on Monday of Paul Collingwood celebrating England’s win over Australia for the World Twenty20 cricket trophy, and naturally I immediately thought what a pity it was that cricket hadn’t made it into the Olympic Games pantheon. A friend of mine soon put me right on that misapprehension though, for cricket was one of the sports played at the Olympic Games of 1900. On that occasion, Great Britain beat France by 158 runs at the Municipal Velodrome in Vincennes. An interesting account of the match by Ian Buchanan appears in the Journal of Olympic History, which is available on the LA84 website. This website, incidentally, is a wonderful resource for Olympics-related content in full text, including all the official reports of the Games going right back to the beginnings of the modern Olympics.

http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JOH/JOHv1n2/JOHv1n2c.pdf .

 

There is now talk of cricket in its Twenty20 form being included in the Olympics, as the IOC has formally recognised the International Cricket Council. It won’t happen until 2020 at the earliest, but that date would be really rather appropriate wouldn’t it?

 

The IOC’s website explains how the choice of new sports for the Olympics is organised. They say that:

 

‘To make it onto the Olympic programme, a sport first has to be recognised: it must be administered by an International Federation which ensures that the sport's activities follow the Olympic Charter. If it is widely practised around the world and meets a number of criteria established by the IOC session, a recognised sport may be added to the Olympic programme on the recommendation of the IOC's Olympic Programme Commission’

 

There is every incentive, as far as individual sports are concerned, to be recognised as ‘Olympic’. By taking part in the Games, they showcase their sport in an arena which provides them with undreamt of publicity and world-wide exposure. Not surprisingly, the IOC has a continuing number of difficult choices to make about which sports to include, and it is invariably criticised by the sports that don’t make it. Recently, rugby sevens and golf were approved for the 2020 and 2016 Games, with squash and baseball being passed over. In the wings, body building, cheerleading and bridge are putting forward their cases to be included, so will the Olympic Games ever be ‘full up’ and how will the IOC deal with the controversies that some of its decisions create? Not only does it have to justify the inclusion of one sport over another, it also debates ideas about which sports are appropriate for which sexes. I’ve often wondered why men can’t participate in synchronised swimming; and why women haven’t been allowed to ski jump, given that they are now entitled to box.

 

At the time of the Beijing Olympics a lot of publicity was given to Michael Phelps’s astonishing intake of food, which came to over 10,000 calories per day, most of them in the form of carbohydrates. The BBC listed everything in awe-inspiring detail at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7562840.stm and it struck me on reading it that the list flew in the face of the usual advice about the correct proportions of fats, sugars and proteins in the diet, and the importance of vitamin-packed superfoods like leafy vegetables and brightly coloured fruits. Clearly, Phelps’s first need was to cram down daily as many calories as was humanly possible, given his huge expenditure of energy in training and competition, but the report did get me thinking about how advice on nutrition changes over time. One of the pleasures of working here is that in the course of your work you run across all sorts of publications that lurk in the archive largely undisturbed, and while researching an article on early coaching books I became fascinated by the types of foods that athletes were recommended to eat.

 

Walter Thom’s Pedestrianism (1813) was one of the first books to be published on running (and walking). His ideas on coaching were adapted from those of the celebrated race walker Captain Barclay who was a folk hero in England as a result of his feats of physical endurance. Captain Barclay recommended that a competitor train on beefsteaks, mutton chops, bread and beer, and laid stress on “a regular course of physic…(Glauber salts are generally preferred)” to purge the system. Exactly one hundred years later Sam Mussabini, the trainer of the Olympic gold medallist Harold Abrahams, was also putting his faith in the power of the purgative by providing a recipe for one of his own, namely “Epsom salts brewed up with liquorice, gentian root, camomile and ginger”. In these days of the advanced science of sports nutrition you don’t hear so much about ‘purging’. Will it ever come back into fashion?

 

Mussabini, Scipio Africanus.

The Complete Athletic Trainer. By S. A. Mussabini, in collaboration with

Charles Ranson. With thirty illustrations.

Methuen & Co.: London, 1913

London reference collections shelfmark 2271.c.19.

 

Thom, Walter.

Pedestrianism; or, an account of the performances of celebrated Pedestrians during the last and present century; with a full narrative of Captain Barclay's public and private matches; and an Essay on Training.

Aberdeen, 1813

London reference collections shelfmark1040.d.23.

 

 

 

 

Dr Gordon Mellor of the University of Bedfordshire came in to the Library yesterday morning to talk about the work of his newly formed Department of Physical Education and Sport Studies. Over coffee we had a good chat about the ways in which the hoped-for legacy of enhanced sports participation in the wake of the London Olympics could be brought about. Clearly, there have to be many different approaches to the question of how to engage the diverse communities in the UK for there to be any chance of real success, and the experience of the London 2012 games is not enough on its own to make things happen, though it may well create an environment in which practical ideas can be addressed. There are already lots of local initiatives throughout the country which have been attempting to foster sports participation in their areas and it would be good to hear about some of these and find out about the lessons learned and what common denominators there are – if any. From the HE perspective, Bedfordshire’s Sport and Community Leadership BA Honours programme is an interesting attempt to address the issue by providing both an academic framework and practical experience for those wishing to pursue a career of this sort. Based on areas of study such as community and society; sport leadership and community cohesion; sport equity and sustainability, the course aims to turn out graduates with skills in developing active lifestyles at community level - particularly among disabled people, the elderly and those ethnic minority groups who have been resistant to messages about sports participation in the past.

  

On the Olympics website, we have a discussion about grass roots participation and government policy on community sport, accompanied by a bibliography of British Library resources http://www.bl.uk/sportandsociety/legacy/articles/grassroots.html

(© 2010 The British Library)

 The picture above is part of the BL’s Evanion Collection and shows what purports to be a facility for local sporting activity in 1881, though there seem to be rather more spectators than participants! You can click on it to open a larger window in Images Online on the BL website.