Aging Bodies, Aging Sport Histofians

Sport History Reuieru, 1998,29,18-29
O 1998 Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.
Aging Bodies, Aging Sport
Histofians, and the
Choreographing of Sport History
Patricia Vertinsky
University of British Columbia
I said "we were not sticks and stones"-'tis very well.1 should have added,
"nor are we angels." I wish we were-but men cloathed with bodies governed by our imaginations. (Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy)
There are very few historical narratives of sport, exercise, and aging, even
though those who write narratives about sporting bodies are often themselves
distant in time and place from the sporting pleasures of their youth.' While old
age has appeared as a new section on the library shelves of educational institutions and in public bookstores in the last three decade^,^ we have not seen a
corresponding spurt of interest in stories about elderly sport heroes, sporting
prowess among grandmas, or fitness endeavors tried by the aging in the past.3
Even though the health and exercise needs of aging bodies are increasingly articulated by public health experts and in popular health and self-help literature:
from the sport historian's perspective the participation of elderly people in sport
and exercise, as well as social and cultural attitudes toward the aging body and
its physical potential, remain relatively ~nexplored.~
One would think that aging sport historians would want to know more
about bodies like theirs, that they would seek to yield versions of historical bodies "whose relation to one another is determined as much by [their own] body
history as by the times they repre~ent."~After
all, the sport historian also has a
body with a past and is affected by the knowledge that today's creaking knee is
not yesterday's knee running, kicking, and scoring! The most compelling ideas
about aging are those deriving from encounters with it. However, in evaluating
fragments of past sporting histories, the aging writer's body (of the sport historian) often imagines the body written upon in another time and place, avoiding
the perspective that age and experience could provide. Emancipation from
society's infatuation with youth may permit the choreographing of sport history
in quite a new way.7So too might a revision of mechanistic views of the body,
Patricia Vertinsky is with the Department of Educational Studies at the University
of British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 124, Canada.
THE CHOREOGRAPHING OF SPORT HISTORY
19
which have historically fostered negative rather than positive stereotypes and
images about physically inactive elders at sport and play. Yet while many of us
might agree that the body belongs at the center of all sporting discourse, and
would not completely dismiss the potential impact of our own experiences and
conceptions of the body, nevertheless it is the youthful and vigorous, machinelike,masculine body that remains the focus of most sporting historical narratives
and that underlies the grand narrative encompassing the body's relationship to
sport.8
As demographers point out, however, it is the aging body that we now
need to accommodate within this grand narrative. The aging body, one of the
most important potentials, is an inevitable one in light of increased longevity
and the aging of western ~0ciet-y.~
Our appreciation and criticism of sport will
need to take cognizance of it. Like others in the pioneering fields of social history, sport historians will need to confront the mass of popular and scholarly
stereotypes that get in the way of a deeper understanding of aging in the past
and into the present.lOAfterall, the value of an historical approach to aging is
that it provides us with benchmarks against which we may measure current
attitudes and approaches to the body, and it poses models of past changes that
may sensitize us to the forces transforming attitudes and structures in the
present."
Nor can we ignore the fact that while age and aging are certainly real, they
do not exist in some natural realm independently of the ideals, images, and
social practices that conceptualizeand represent them.12Aging (likegender) cannot be viewed as exclusively biological or pathological, but must be seen as a
socially constructed and historically specific proce~s.'~
Within this context, attitudes toward the elderly body in regard to sport, exercise, and recreation need a
closer reading by sport historians to understand the context and development
of negative metaphors and stereotypes about the weakness and obsolescence of
old age, which have had a major impact upon the health of western society and
sporting possibilities for older people.
My suggestion is that these images are difficult to change in a society that
still "reads" sport as the prime domain of men, especially young and strong
men, and still conceives of the body as a machine that wears out and becomes
increasingly useless as it ages. If nations that idealize youthfulness and masmline strength continue to stigmatize their old people, what happens to notions of
sport and exercise when they must confront the reality that age, rather than
youth is in the ascendancy?As aging women multiply (in comparisonwith men),
what happens to that "essence" of national identity that has traditionally been
r e f l e c t e d i n the body of the vouthful male athlete or soldier? And what happens
- -in the parallel discourse suggesting that if the body of its citizens can be shaped
and strengthened by hard exercise and disciplined sport, the social body will be
correspondingly strengthened and made more fit? In a rapidly aging and more
global society, can the capacity of the chest, as Sir Duncan Gibb of the London
Anthropological Society insisted a century ago, still "count for something very
considerable as an indication of national power?"14 Or, in a technologically
advanced society, will the cyborg replace the human body (the last site of hu-
--
20
VERTINSKY
manism)? Will it completely alter our notions of the mechanistic limits of the
body and the relative contribution of youth, gender, and aging to social progress,
and will it open new possibilities for the aging body in the world of sport?
The Aging Body and the Effects of the Dominant Paradigm
of the Body-as-Machine
The proclivity of western culture to see the human body as analogous to a
machine has led to a mechanistic and limiting view of the aging body's potential, which is often reflected in exercise programs for seniors and public policy
recommendations concerning sport and recreation for the elderly.Overcaution
on the part of fitness professionals leads to wasted time and disinterest in many
senior-center exercise programs; healthy seniors walk into class and are then
seated for most of an hour program, doing gentle chair exercises. Many physicians remain reluctant to prescribe the kind of vigorous daily exercise and strength
training required for the elderly to maintain mobility. Few community centers
celebrate the comprehensive variety of sporting options for their elderly members that they make available to younger populations (in spite of the fact that
Master's athletes are beginning to shatter some of the records of the young in a
number of sports).Rarely are studies about exercise and aging designed to listen
and respond to the expressed experiences of the elderly themselves, whose latelife patterns are rooted in a variety of different ways compared with their pasts.15
Rather,until recently, the homogenization and scientific management of old age,
based on the "biomedicalization" of aging and the body-as-machine concept,
has painted the elderly with a broad brush and framed the "problems" of aging
around the technical and biological limits of their bodies.
John Hoberman in Mortal Engines has pointed out that while "the temptation to treat the body as if it were a machine comes in conflict with our most
deeply rooted ideas about human identity ...the result of this conflict is a reckoning with the idea of human limits."16That nature sets some of these limits is
without doubt, although the idea of natural limits must also be seen as a social
construct. Definitions of limits have historically been intimately connected with
popular views about the potential capacity (or lack of it) of the aging body (especially the gendered aging body) as these notions have developed in western
society.
While I would agree with Achenbaum that it is a fruitless distortion to
invoke a single motif to capture the many and varied images of late life in Western society, bodily decline and disability have been dominant stereotypes that
have led to restrictions on the mobility and social or physical space of the elderly.17For centuries, images of aging represented bodies that grew and then
steadily declined over a life's course,becoming increasingly fixed and inflexible
in terms of the cultural messages they were allowed to depict.Those who talked
about appropriate physical behaviors for the elderly tended to view life either
from a life-course perspective, as a journey affected by multiple personal factors, or as a set of uniform and progressive ages or stages across the life course,
a staircase or curve with a predictable set of idealized behavioral expectations at
THE CHOREOGRAPHINGOF SPORT HISTORY
23
each stage or step.ls At times these views existed simultaneously,supporting a
spectrum of views about behavior in the aging and the importance or inadvisability of exercise and sport.But the dominant tendency was to focus on old age
as a stage of life wherein sport had little role, and passivity, contemplation, and
rest were the expected behavior^.'^
Females were typically perceived to age sooner than men,indeed to experience all their life stages at earlier times in their lives. They were sooner fit for
reproduction, sooner to mature, and sooner to wear out and wither in old age.It
was assumed that an aging female should adopt the appropriate old-age behaviors of inactivity, passivity and spectatorship earlier than her male co~nterpart.'~
These ages- or stages-of-life schemes thus helped to provide the cognitive maps
and behavioral norms necessary for individuals to envision life as a natural sequence of roles and activities. Old people learned to acknowledge the limits of
being old not necessarily by how they felt but by how they believed old men or
old women should look and act and, indeed, how the state increasingly came to
insist upon it."
Such restricted images fit comfortably within the paradigm of the body as
machine that became a dominant model for scientificunderstanding in the eighteenth century. When positivist mechanical science began to emphasize the importance of empirical observation and the physical causation of observed phen0mena,2~Ren6 Descartes, in his Treatise on Man could describe the body as a
machine moved by physical necessity and indifferent to the existence of thinking.23ASthe early nineteenth-century medical field became integrally involved
with the development of mechanistic science, studies in anatomy and physiology began to demonstrate the power of empirical observation and mechanical
explanation. Medical clinicians were able to describe a machine-like body that
could be "read and controlled by the application of the objective scientific knowledge that was emerging, and to explain disease as a pathological deviation from
the norm, with its cause located in the body's cellular and biomedical systems.
Physiological actions were thus translated into the language of machines, fostering a fundamentally mechanistic view of the human being.24
This disease theory of medicine had important and lasting consequences
for machine-like conceptions of the aging body, for it consolidated beliefs about
aging as an inevitable decline through debilitating illness that invariably limited the physical potential of the aging body. Merely by growing old, the elderly
could expect their bodies to become subject to the pathology of disease. Even if
they felt well, scientific medicine told them that deterioration and debilitation
were certain to follow. As the nineteenth century advanced, the notion of irre- - - m r s i h ~ ~ b ~ o c l y - m a c h i n became
e
well established in medical and popular literature and widely disseminated in the w e s t e m X G Z i ~ spite a continuing tradition of longevity experts' painting old age as a triumphant manifestation of the survival of the fittest.25
The mechanical model of the body and classical-diseasetheory provided
the foundation and legitimization for the social construction of old age during
the nineteenth century as a distinct stage of life, requiring only the mildest exercise and the circumscription of vigorous participation in life's affairs.To do more
,;uaw my) d1rn.n~axom p m xauoos ysem ay*uo ~ n o)
d axaM 'asxno~jo ' u a m o ~
.ampap ~ e ~ l s d y
pue
d 2ul2e uaawaq uoyeposse pazrpxepmp MOU p m paspa
- 1 ~ 0 q 3 eay) 2 q m ~ l f ~sny)
0 3 % q s e 30 ysem ay) uo ~ n 0)
d p m ')sax o) ' m o p
MOIS 0) axaM a~doad
p10 ;s-[eo2 asay) analyae 04 4pede3 Bqyslqunp s,uew 30
am?)e se dldmls paxeadde d12uyseax3q aR1jo j ~ e qpuo3as ay) '&ngmpoxd pue
'xo2la 'huapgja lnjy~nodjo s1eo2 ay) 30 uogexqalas Mau dpeay ay+pue msqe!x
-slew pue msgenplalpq 30 sanlen sroaSxnoq ayq ansmd o+ysm ay) uan~3.uop
-19- 1epadmlp m 2qp1lnq uo!~eujoaqsua ay+anpp 03 paqnbax axaM Bxaua
pue y~8ua.q~
asoyM'2unod ayq jo p p o ay*
~ s e 'uayl'uogx
~
jo p p o ayJ
~
,;(xaSuo~
2qnq dq) xayTmy 1aneq lIaM ~y2lmpue sagxea paxwem ays asnwaq s e 41~
's,mm I? Jey)anlsuaJxaasom S ~ M
uopsneyxa o~a q p a p xayj~-s+lnsmd
anlpe moq
a2e2uaslp 03 'sagxoj lay q 1lgs apyM ' m m o ~
e apensxad ppo3 qey) papaau
axaM aspxaxa xoj suol~dp~saxd
anyeMasuo3'axojaxayl'yqamraye SITu1.a2e plo
30 aseasrp ay) jo Jasuo ay) pue h q g n lepos s , m m o e~30 pua ay) payxem 'panaq
-aq saqpoyqne 1e3lpam 'asnedoua~.a3uapuadap pue h p o p a p r s,uamoM jo
MaIa plo-saprqua~e uodn qlnq J! a3qs uauIoM 2 q B 01
~ dlsnonp!sse alour uana
paqdde s e d ~ x a p a~ y
a jo
~ s a y ~ q e d e le~rsdyd
3
ay) pxe~oqsapnpne ange2au jo
2quadaap a y L e p u pxqndod ayl q IIaM ssa1uana pare3 uamoM p l o .yeaIq s e ~
apm hsapla ay? xoj yool+noayq 'ajq snonuaxTs ay* p m 4rq1nssew 1yq)n0d
30 aqxpop ayq 03 pa)expap d12qseax3ur p p o a~uIoE-ssalasndlalnlosqe axaM
hxys xano asoy) a1ry~'panq)uo3
ay 'ssalasn d-[anyexedu103axaM 4x03 xano uam
~ ang-buaw 30 sa8e ay) uaawaq auop seM p p o a~q jo 3 x 0 2~ q
,;sxead 4 x 0 pue
-zgeqa '2uynom 'anypajja ayT,, ~ e y%u!)srsq
)
s e 'htsxanlun
~
s u ~ y d suyoj
o ~ ay+
0) ssaxppe pa~onb-y3nme q 'lap0 meqI;[M?a'htqua3 y)al)uaw a q jo uxw
ay) lia ,;a1@e xo 'anqeax3 'anrpnpoxd aq o) dpyq ssa1 xej s e ' ~ ~ ur
8 paspa
1
- 1 ~ o q s pey
e la1a?anT>'a2ep ~ q
o uosxad v ,;pa%sneqxa pue $nou x o se
~ plo ay)
30 suoyda3sad paJexala3se dl1expes hrqua3 yJuaa+aquay) jo suopeuuojsueq
slmouo3a pue 1~e!30sSqdex20uIap ay) snyL 'pang day) y ~ ! yuy~Sapos ay+30
ssaxBoxd p w ~ ~ 0 ay)
x o)2xo sapads a q jo uo!)nIona a q o) asn al))gjo axaM1a3np
-0xd 0) 4 y q e aq) 2ugsel se pa)no) MOU 'SIenppupuF 2qCdv . s x a ~ o danlpnp
-016 qayljo yead ay) Je pasaplsuo3 xa2uo1 ou asoyq +sqeSepayxoM d~lextqeu
g 'Lqngsnpoxd xay2ly xoj puemap ay) pup uoyezllerqsnpu!: 8ur+exala33eo~pay+
ame3aq ssax2osd hreuognlona jo suoyou a m 0 ,<&apos jo lo dxoq3e~aya 30 h a
-qy~em
ay) q y ~aloyM
l ~ e 30 sped alqea8uey~xa+ul
se p a p ~ 8 a x
aq 02 awe3 q e
-nplnrpul y 3 l y u
~! htqua3 y)uaa)auy a)eI ay) 30 4al3os %qzyelx)snpqd1prde.x
ayq 04 appdoxdde A~xelrw~ped
axaM dpoq ay) 30 sxoydelaur 1e3pIey3am
9 z ' ~ ~le3:sdqd
~ j j a 2 q ~ w dla~anas
q
liq yueq Bxaua qay*30 sTupumax
Isel ay) anxasuo3 03 h~pinoys a2e pro yxax 04 y2noua a4eqxoj axaM O ~ M
asoy) )ey$paqdm! ) e q
m 30 smaln uraqsam 30 gadse Ieguassa ue parno3
~ p m amqajq e xano ~ u a d Bxaua
s
dpoq 2q2e a y 30 uogsneyxa ~ u a n b a s u oa94
30 suogou ' s s a ~ a y ~ x a n.(aIdoad
a~
panq-2uol 'angse q anxasqo 02 qrwgjxp uaaq
aney )snm )ey) uogenba ue) xaqoue o) aIqellene lafauoj ou seM )! uog3uq auo
uo papuadxa uaaq pey axoj a3uo )ey) )maw 'sa1d~~qxd
uepIo)MaN o) %ulpxo3
-3e 'y3!y~ 'lo)om uemnq ay4 w o p . ~ r m
p m Bxaua 1e)ln ataldap o) aq plnoM
THE CHOREOGRAPHING OF SPORT HISTORY
23
Youth, Masculinity, and National Progress
- - -
Western imperialistic policies at the turn of the twentieth century, and the
desire to develop strong and aggressive nations endowed youth, strength, and
vigor as the most valued resources, while aging, indeed anything old, was increasingly denigrated. Judgments of the physical capacity of old and young
people came to play a pivotal role among statesmen and physicians concerned
about the fitness and efficiency of a nation.Admiration for youthful energy and
ambition as well as new notions of "manliness" as possessing a strong and muscular body, led the American president Theodore Roosevelt, for example,to retort that "Weaklings and those who fear hard work should vanish from the
earth."34Weakness is a crime, declared the cover of the first issue of Physical
Culture in 1899 and in England, a popular educator's maxim taught that "Weaklings are despised and a weakling nation is doomed."35Thus, the substitution of
a national body for a territorial one, serving the functions of imperial expansion
and domination,became an increasingly important symbolic gesture.36
To be young was to be healthy, beautiful, and good, for this leads to the
preservation and continuance of the collective-through reproductionand conquest. Youth was the norm against which the deviant was to be measured, the
deviant being old, ugly, and diseased.The old thus embodied the antithesis of
the good citizen-a citizen whose value could be seen at a glance by his muscular, youthful, and well-proportioned body and whose mettle could be cast on
the playing field.37
Central to debates about masculinity and the growingemphasis on a strong,
muscular body (rather than on moral characteristics)was the increasing popularity of sport and physical culture as manly pursuits with social functionswhose
ramifications extended far beyond the mere promotion of health. Masculinity,
to a considerable extent, was viewed as a martial concept, with the youthful
male body representing a political icon whose sport was a pre-eminent instrument of the socialization process. It was sport that could bind the individual to
the state and enroll him in
It was "the process of experiencingthe play
of the sport [that] was itself the actual process of gaining and living the values
that supposedly typified the nation."39It would be impossible to stress the more
virile virtues too much, Roosevelt explained in The Value of an Athletic Training,
for those virile qualities help form a race of statesmen and soldiers, of pioneers
and explorers. And these are the very qualities that are fostered by vigorous,
manly sports.40"Success can only come to the player who hits the line hard!041
The same outlook that denigrated the aging body and viewed sports as
effective
_ _ _ _ mechanisms to invigorate youth, to inculcate nationalisticfeelings, and
to foster manly character and leadership drove scienti-bEduoard Brown-Sequard)to experimentwith the rejuvenating properties of the
testicular extracts of young guinea pigs upon elderly men. By 1890 some twelve
thousand physicians were giving testicular extract to their patients in a bid to
enhance their manliness and retard the aging process.42
The special affinity for male society, youth, and strength that accompanied the rise of nationalism and imperialism both legitimized the continued
domination of men over women and enhanced the "feminization" of old age
(with all the meanings of frailty and dependence that this carried).43The youth
male preserve over sport was dominated by narratives of nation and citizenship,44even while gender power relations were being increasingly contested on
the sports field (as well as in public and professional spheres). Because the role
and rewards of good citizenship were traditionally offered to men, who were
expected to act to save or protect the nation through strength and military strategy (and here sport was the training ground), women were scripted into the
national imaginary in a different manner than men.They were typically seen as
imagined mothers and vulnerable citizens in need of protection. Not equal to
the nation but symbolicof it (as mothers) they were denied relation to aspects of
national agency (and denied the kinds of sporting privileges available to young
men).45It was their reproductive capabilitiesthat were privileged in the national
interest, just as a particular type of masculinity (young,heterosexual, attractive,
and strong) was prized in the national imaginary.46Hence, for both men and
women in an era of national and imperial aspirations, aging represented a devastating loss of social utility. The loss pertained to both sexes: the women no
longer able to produce future citizens; the aging men increasingly "feminized
by the decline of their physical powers and body machine and their separation
from the active worlds of work, war, and sport.
Images of Aging and Sport in the World of the Cyborg
Looked at from a historical perspective, says John Hoberman in Darwin's
Athletes, there is a tendency to conflate the importance of physical prowess during the "heroic" era of colonial domination (and national development) with the
meaning of athletic prowess today, despite the fact that athletic superiority is, in
a Darwinian sense, a vestigial trait that possesses ornamental rather than strategic value for nations.47The strength and malleability of the youthful body are
now seen to have finite limits, and the sustainabilityof the western world's model
of development and progress has been cast in doubt.In a post-modern and postcolonial world4*the image of the body has become less a mechanical machine
(with the engineering tasks of transferring and conserving energy) and more a
communications network or electronic system.49No longer the productive force
of industry, the body-system necessarily bears a new relationship to notions of
the aging body's capabilities. Former theories of body-machine exhaustion and
disablement cease to have the same relevance in a society in which personal
strength no longer carries much importance in labor or military pursuits and
reproduction can be accomplished in a test tube.
Yet negative imagery persists. Even though seniors constitute a larger and
more numerous portion of western societies' populations than they did in any
generation before, substantially more women are living more years than men,
ever more elderly people are demonstrating sportive abilities and the desire to
be physically active, and it seems increasingly possible to intervene directly in
the life processes and environments of aging populations, stereotypes, and distortions concerning older bodies still are difficult to dislodge.Inpopular culture,
THE CHOREOGRAPHING OF SPORT HISTORY
~ e
25
muscularity and masculinity continue to be conflated and glorified. Public
fantasies fed by blockbuster Hollywood movies about bodybuilding and heroic
feats of strength and aggression are turning the massively muscled, heroic male
body into a cyborg, a robot-like machine-an invincible human being, new
superman of our times.50Sport is one of the few ways in which the youthful
male body, even while increasingly reshaped and remade, fused with machines and empowered through technological devices, continues to be represented, examined, and worshipped-all too often to the continued exclusion
both of the female "body-as-active" and the aging "body-as-p~tential."~~
One solution may be to resist the tendency to always see the anatomical
body as the site of d i s c o u r ~ eIn
. ~an
~ era in which risks to the health and wellbeing of the fleshly body abound, in which aging and death are feared, the cyborg offers both an idealized escape route and a way to escape the anatomical
and physiological limits of the body.The cyborg form represents the ideal body
as one that spurns the physical declines of aging, is invulnerable to illness, and
wards off susceptibility to disease and death through using new replacement
parts or drug therapy. In film portrayals, the cyborg body is far stronger than
the human body (of any age), and it is capable of unimagined physical and
sporting endeavors. Yet here, too, the cyborg in popular culture is predominantly a male and often youthful body, reformulated to meet the fantasies of
contemporary young population^.^^ (For example, the growing popularity of
the martial arts as mediated by the Hollywood and Hong Kong film industries
is a rich illustration of refashioning longstanding martial-arts traditions to exacerbate new cultures of masculinity and violence, which are, in turn, the fuel for
increased violence in national and international p o l i t i ~ s . ~ ~ )
In contrast to this bleak scenario re-linking male sport, violence, and nation, Donna Haraway has argued that the idea of the cyborg is potentially liberating to women.55She suggests that a feminized machine could overcome the
damaging mind-body split (constructed in favor of men), undermining the stability of gender relations by proposing a new set of relationships between the
body and intelligence, gender, and the state. By the same token, an imagined
cyborg could overcome the effects of aging (and its concomitant feminization)if
the bodies of men and women could be re-worked technologically to change
their limits and aspirations, eventually allowing virtual sport for virtual participants in a more global world. Once sport has left the body and narratives of
nation have lost their relevance in a postmodern world, then, one might argue,
links among sport, youth, masculinity, and technology are bound to be redefined in our rapidly aging society.Such a redefinition might engender the cho~ r l n l . \ l n r r n f a more
n attuned to the realities of an aging
-. -society living in an age of virtual reality and more realistically articulated by
aging sport historians in the twilight of the current millennium.
Endnotes
'For example, Andrew Blake in The Body Language: The Meaning of Modern Sport
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996), 178, 186, suggests that the average sports
26
VERTINSKY
biography is actually a hagiography, recounting the great sporting deeds of a saintly
person-with the emphasis on his sports statistics, rather than on his social or private
life. Lives and careers of great players have thus typically recounted their playing averages, not their aging bodies. Richard Holt and Tony Mangan agree that until recently
hagiography has been the order of the day, recording outstanding achievement rather
than personal moments. "Prologue: Heroes of a European Past," International Journal of
the Hzstory ofsport 13 (March 1996): 10.
2JennyHockey and Allison James, Growing Up and Growing Old: Aging and Dependency in the Life Course (London: Sage Publications, 1993).
31tis not easy to find stories about elderly sport heroes or participants in the sport
history literature. Every society has its model old person, as well as the old people it
deserves, suggests George Minois, History of Old Age: From Antiquity to the Renaissance,
trans. Sarah Hanbury Tenison (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1989),4, but sport
historians have not much explored these in relation to sport and exercise.Discussionsof
"old soldiers" in sport have tended to refer to athletes in their thirties and forties.Most
studies of old age can be found in the fairly abundant literature on "prolongevity," exercise, and aging. Among the more interesting recent studies to focus on aging sporting
individuals, however, are those by Peter Radford on eighteenth-century pedestrians in
England. In Escaping the Philippedes Connection: Death and Illness in 18th Century Sport in
Britazn, a paper presented at the IVth Congress of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport in Lyon, July 1997, Radford has collected some
fascinating data on aged male and female pedestrians from newspaper accounts about
their exploits and wagers, and analysed the shifting public and medical attitudes toward
physical exertion.His evidence suggests that many competing pedestrians were middleaged or old campaigners (p.5): "Mr. Eustace was 77 when he walked 216 miles in 1792,
but the first prize for age must go to Donald McLeod who was said to be 101 when he
walked from Inverness to London and back, 1148 miles."
4Formore details, see Patricia Vertinsky and Sandra O'Brien Cousins, "Aging, Gender and Physical Activity" in Sport and Gender in Canada, ed. Kevin Young and Philip
White (Oxford,Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
SMikeFeatherstone and Andrew Wernick note that given the universality of the
aging process, it is remarkable that there is an almost complete absence of study of culture and self-image of the old. Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life (London: Routledge, 1995).
6Theproduction of history is a physical endeavor, suggests Susan Leigh Foster, in
Choreographing History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)."To that end, historians' bodies amble down the corridors of documentation inclining toward certain discursive domains and veering away from others." Throughout the process of researching
and writing, the historian's own techniques of the body, past practices of viewing or
participating in body-centered endeavors, nurture the framework of motivations that
guide the selection of specific documents. Whatever is selected will yield versions of
historical bodies whose relation to one another is determined as much by the historian's
body history as by the times she or he represents (see p. 6).
The best analogy to sport historians I can find is the example given by Roland
Barthes, who argues that the best singers pay less attention to the words they sing than to
their joy in the physical act of singing ("The Grain of the Voice: in Image-Music-Text, ed.
S. Heath (London: Fontana, 1977).
8Formen, says Andrew Blake in The Body Language, "discussions of their body and
its desires are approached, if only obliquely through the discourses of sport more than
anywhere else....The workings of the body, its successes and failures as a machine, are
debated.. .in ways that are not replicated in political or social discourse." (p. 192)
91n 1800,2 percent of the population was over 65; in 1900,4 percent; and in the
1990s, over 12 percent. Two-thirds of all gains in life expectancy have been made since
1900.In North America life expectancy currently is 76 years for males, 82years for females. Women over 65 outnumber men by 3 to 2, and women over 85 outnumber men 3
to 1. Edward S. Golub, The Limits of Medicine (New York: Random House, 1994).
THE CHOREOGRAPHING OF SPORT HISTORY
27
loAndrewBlake, The Body Language, 212; David I. Kerzer and Peter Laslett, eds.,
Aging in the Past: Demography, Society and Old Age (Berkeley,CA: University of California
Press, 1995).
"Graeme Davison, "Our Youth is Spent, Our Backs are Bent: The Origins of Australian Ageism," Australian Cultural History 14,(1993):40-62.
IThomas R. Cole, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
I3Changesdo occur in the body over time, of course, but it is very difficult to say
what they are, independent of cultural symbolization. What is more important are the
ways in which the social, economic, and political context and biomedical discourse have
shaped lasting stereotypes of old people that have persisted to perpetuate negative or
ambiguous views about the elderly.Notions of old age have flourished whether or not
they have constituted an accurate description of actual circumstances.See, for example,
Sara Arber and Jay Ginn, Gender and Later Life: A Sociological Analysis of Resources and
Constraints (London: Sage, 1991); see also Barry D. McPherson, "Sociocultural Perspectives on Aging and PhysicalActivity'' Journalof Aging and Physical Activity, 2 (1994):329-353.
14AthenaVrettos in Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture (Stanford,
CA: University of California Press, 1995),124-176, discusses how during the nineteenth
century the sources of national identity and the national health were located in the body;
Sir Duncan Gibbs's statement is drawn from Frederick L. Hoffman, "Race Traits and
Tendencies of the American Negro," Publications, American Economic Association, 11
(August 1986); 127.
15PatriciaVertinsky and Sandra O'Brien Cousins, Physical Activity, Aging and Stereotypes (Ottawa: Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute,1997);Sandy O'Brien
Cousins and Patricia Vertinsky, "Recapturing the Physical Activity Experiences of the
Old: A Study of Three Women," Journal of Aging and Physical Activity 3 (1995):158.
16JohnHoberman, Mortal Engines: The Science ofPerfomance and the Dehumanization
of Sport (New York: The MacMillan Press, 1992),25.
I7AndrewW. Achenbaum, "Images of Old Age in America, 1790-1970. A Vision
and Revision," in Featherstone and Wernick, Images of Aging, 19-28.
I8J.A.Burrow, The Ages of Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
19PatriciaVertinsky, "Sport and Exercise for Old Women: Images of the Elderly in
the Medical and Popular Literature at the Turn of the Century," International Journal of the
History of Sport 9 (April 1992):84-86.
20PatriciaVertinsky, "Stereotypes of Aging Women and Exercise: An Historical Perspective," Journal of Aging and Physical Activity 3 (1995):223-237.
2'ThomasR. Cole, "What Have We Made of Aging?" Journalof Gerontology50B (1995):
S342.
22L.Mumford, "The Myth of the Machine," in The Pentagon of Power, Vol. 2 (New
York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1964); G.A. Lindeboom, Descartes and Medicine
(Amsterdam:Editions Rodopi, 1978).
23Ren~
Descartes, Treatise on Man, quoted in R.S. Westfall, The Construction of Modern
Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1977), 93.
24SamuelOsheron and Lorna AmaraSingham, "The Machine-Metaphor in Medicine," in E.G. Mischler, L. AmaraSingham,S. Hauser, R. Liem,S. Osheron,and N.E. Waxler,
- - A c i a l C ~ d e x t s qf Health, Illness and Patient Care (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,
1981), 224.
25Assurnptionsemanating from Greek culture and Renaissancehumanism promoted
views of aging as a positive process of development into maturity, supported by appropriate attention to health laws, such as moderate diet and exercise. Jack W. Berryman,
"The Tradition of the 'Six-things Non-Natural': Exercise and Medicine from Hippocrates
Through Ante-Bellum America," Exercise and Sport Sciences Review 17(1989):515-559; see
also Gerald J. Gruman, "The Rise and Fall of Prolongevity Hygiene, 1558-1873," Bulletin
ofthe History of Medicine 35 (1961):221-29.
26Fora discussion of energy, see Patricia Vertinsky, "Old Age, Gender and Physical
-uogeu 30 x a ~ o day) ~ e jagaq
q IWSIM S N apdsaa .amg m o jo y q 1espqod ay) q anIen
a l e q @ a l A ~ p s r a ~p omw a q a m s a q sey ( Z I .d 'sAes a y ) ,,ssau-uogeu,, a o g e u jo sang
a $k r u n u n u o s e jo ajg d1rep ayJ o ) q UaAOM
-exxeu pa%al!~!xdou axe a x a q a l y ~ i b o ~ r x xxo
a E a x q q atp xoj suogexrdse p w ?sed a y jo~ s p a d s e axay~~suazrqys
ayJjo ,,suogeq2emr,,
a q 30 ~ s n p o x de se u o g e u e jo u o ~ + d p s aap y o~ ~ s)y%rsur
q
Mau sap!noxd (£961 ' o s x a ~
~ j o pun u!8?*0 ayl uo suo!?3aZja~:sa?g?unluluo>p a ~ X n l uur~ uos
:uopuoy) l u s ~ l n u o ? ~ npuands
urapopy u?s l u n o ~
- s a p w p!pauaa.(9861 'ssaxj p s u o s s r ~jo L p s x a n m : u o s r p e \ ~adorn2
)
~
lzlnxas purt h j ? u ~ l n 3 sssnl3-alpp?,y
n~
:/i?!lnnxa~pun w s ~ j v u o ? ?' an s~s o n .l a 2 x o a 'a~durexa
xoj faaS5?u;rpuoqa p m pue ' k n e a q 1 q y ) n o X ' s s a y p w jo sIeapr ay) u o q!nq s e (adorns
~
q A ~ p p a d s am
) s g e u o r p u uxapour jo s y e u l i p ayJ ~ o s ~y o y aswexaaq
s
$sen v,,
.a%epue xapuas 30 sa&oaxals uounuos %u!~xofu!ax-%u!8e y$rM auo s e ~ ? u ~ r s
e oJur Apses paddgs s n q xapua8 pue ssauyeaM u a a l a q drysuoye1ax a y L -3uapuadap
p w p ! ~ e ~ use: paMarn 2uyaq s,Apoq alemaj a v o 3 +xedxa?unos lexqsnr+se seM 1oqmAs
Ieuoyaeu a q l n s s e m A ~ ~ p q du ewse~Apoq 1ryylnoA 'lopadns e jo u o g e z p a p y a y ~ ~ ,
~ L - Z L ,'saul8ug ln~noy,pemxaqoHu y o l u! passmsrp o s p axe aurpap 1esrsllyd 2uysxanax
u! s~uam!xadxas,pxenbas-woxa 'z-161 'auppapy /o s?!lu!7 a y '~q n l o 3 p x e ~ p & *
'9s ' ( [ ~ 6 9 1~]0 6 's,ueuqnj
1
: y x oM
~ ~ N slnapI
)
un3.rnaluv'qanasoox axopoayL,,
' 0 0 ~ - 6 6 1 ( ~ g 6Issaxj
7 : pooMuaax3 : J J ' J J O ~ J S ~ M )
k n ! d s .a.pa 'san!q3adsnad ln3!no$s!H mJN :ns~naluvu! ?.dads pun ualuoM 'U!ML.7 arueydals
w o q uayel sr 8u!u!nn~xqaly?v un/o anlnA ayJ m o y a ~ o n bs,qaAasoox ! o L - L ~ ' ( E ~ '~sTs a q
L q s x a ~ ~ a2prxqurey)
un
:a%prxqure3)u o ~ q oejy s n m p w x a p v u a a w e x .pa 'asuass?nuaxay?
~ ,;~eJn1es,sulyeg s e m o u
a3u?g sannjln3 lrtns?A pun WAOJ untunH a y j :paXntu~fipog a y u!
u~d p o g a p m a y : ~p q \ 'sIexopq
~
'sapsnm,, q sanssr asayJ sassmsrp
Iaeysrnm
5391 'hj?ln~ua~/\~
um?ratuy pun ?nods 'yazoxm .I pIeuoa,,
' ( ~ 9 6'1s s a l j 2 u ~ y :ry~x o M~ ~ N l)u s ~ ~ n p dpurt
t u ~3 j y l ~sawn3 a y ' ~u e 2 u e m y I OSIP aas . g ~
-01 :(LJj61$ s & ~ v )Zl &l0dg/0 ~ O J S ? HJ ~ J I ~~ UO. L ? ~ OlUUOl$f%4LJJUI
~
,,'wsqqxaduq MaN a v j 0
3 %ay?
~ q wsneJ!l;rnpue 4 r u 1 1 m s e my s r ~ u g
: q e a a o w n &a,, ' w 2 - n .v.I,,
'99 ' ( ~ 6 6 1
'syoog u o g y e a x : u o p u o ~a3uana&/o
)
sa8nw1 :ssaurl~pun y ~ p q ~ ' u e uxapues,,
r~~~.~
' 9 ~' S1U O ? ?J~ ~3jqnluos ' s o ~ a x ~ ~ ~
y~~
' u e m x a q o u~y o i aas,,
'911 ' s a ~ a l s,u?mnna
'ZZZ-IZZ '(£061
' w u q n d :yxoh M ~ N sassanppv
)
pun sfirtssg :dl7 snonuanJSayL 'qanasoox a.xopoayLt,
: J m g s a u u o 3' ~ ~ ~ u a a x 3 )
'(9961'ssasj I V ~
hjg?uas jo uo!qnz?uv8~0anydu3saa a y :,snaw?ayzly
~
pun sautz~plo, 'mnyqn3 .I,,
' t 9 :~( ~ 9 6?1s n % n v )pz ~s,z8o~o~uora3
,;esyxaurv q a 8 v p r o jo uogsnx4s
-uosaa ayt pue IIeH ka1ue)s '3:aJuaJsauaS $0 lGayd0.r~ayL,, 'a103 .x s e m o y ~ ~ ~
' ( ~ 6 6' 1s s a q s ~ o u jo! Lpsxanrun
~ ~ ~
: B W ~ J ~h )n ~ u a yJuaa?au?N
3
a4v7 ay?
u? asr3naxZ puzl ' s ~ o p o a' u a t u o ~:uatuoM papunoM tipuna?3 ayJ % y s u ; r y ae~p ! x ~ e j , ,
:~P@I~P
'Z-186 ' ( ~ £ 6 'UoJsn@Ia
1
- " P ~ J')p a PJC 'SJssanPpV*ay?OYJ.1M :S~?!"?U"~JV,,PO!"d PaX?J WJ,, 'Jars0~ ! I I ! M K
' ( ~ ~' s8~ 1a q w " y 3JJaclOXPmme!II!M
\ I asj?nanJ v /?a1a+angylsz
:y2xnqu;rpg)sa??ln3n~s?yjo quaudojanaa a y ~pun U ~ Z ~uo
. ( ~ 9 6 lssaxj
1
k ! s x a n p q a2pnqure3 :aSpyxqure3)qsnd s,n3?naluy u? a 8 ~
plojo nlulual!a a y 'an,zj-/i+x!s
~
puofiag 'JaqeH [ o l e 3aas ' u o y s s m s ~ JuaIIasxa
p
ueJ O ~ ~ ,
'(0665'syooa J W %:AN)
&!unapopyjo su.@?no a v puzl 1an8,2?n3fBnau3 ~oqopyuzlunH ayL ' y ~ e u ! q e xu o s u v L z
)
' ( ~ 1 6"1u o p ~ d d.a
v :x.~oAM ~ N aUOX!j
'1~ m x .suex~
g
'napuago alnucaJayJ loxasxag u r e q ~ pue
! ~ o s o ~ q m axesa3
o~
.Bxaua 30 u o ! ~
u
m s e 'axojaxay)
~
L&r
-emasuos ~ r y a xo
n ~ssassns heuogn1ona jo d l s e ~ o '&rleuouqe
-ha%uo~.xa2uolan11o~A p y g axom may* a p e m osle 3 e y ~uo!pnx)suos s n o m a u xorrafur w
01 a n p ' q e d 03 an!Jlsuas ssal m a y apem'panarlaq a y ' s ~ y ~ . s a s sxauaq
e p m o y uaur alryM
wv d r y s p x ~ pue
y u!ed axom OJ pasodxa axaM (sasex p w ) sassep x a ~ ayl
o ~p w u a u r o ~
ihrquas q u a a 4 a u y s q q h o a q 'papqax @ n o q '~uaxajjrpe pey o s o x q u r o ~axesa3 .og
3 9 :(I961 S p s d s ) 91 h 0 4 s . 1rnodsjo
~
launnol ,,*y%v
jo uo!JeqIesrpamora a% :rClrny~sv
THE CHOREOGRAPHINGOF SPORT HISTORY
29
alism might recede, Eric Hobsbawn in Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme,
Myth, Reality (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990),143,suggests that its resistance means that it must satisfy a continuing need for love and allegiance often demonstrated through symbols connected to sport and the body. What has made sport so
uniquely effective as a medium for males, he notes,& the ease with which even the least
political or public individuals can identify with the nation as symbolized by young persons, excelling at what practically every man wants to be good at.
45Nonationalism in the world, notes McClintock, "has ever granted women and
men the same privileged access to the resources of the nation state." Anne McClintock,
"No longer in a Future Heaven. Women and Nationalism in South Africa," Transition
51(1991): 105.
46JoanneSharp has an excellent discussion of these issues in "Gendering Nationhood: A Feminist Engagement with National Identity," in Body Space, ed.Nancy Duncan
(London: Routledge, 1996),97-108.
47JohnHoberrnan, Darwin's Athletes, 119.
48See,for example, Gyan Prakash's edited volume, After Colonialism (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1995); Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Modernity (London:
Routledge, 1989).
49NorbertWeiner, foundingfigure of the science of cybernetics,drew attention to the
parallel phases in the body's functionalreimaging as a fundamentalelement in a machine
culture. Cybernetics proposed a completely new vision of the human body in its relationship to the organic world and the world of machines. There is no reason, he said, why
madunes may not resemble human beings.See David Tomas, "Feedback and Cybernetics:
Reimaging the Body in the Age of the Cyborg," Body and Society 1(November 1995):21-44.
50Theconcept cyborg was proposed by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in
1960 to describe self-regulating,man-machine systems, in "Cyborgs and Space," Astronautics (September 1960):26-27. A man-machine combination allowing man-made devices to be incorporated into the human body, it was the harbinger of more recent popular cyborg images presented in the Robocop and Terminator Series. See Tomas, "Feedback and Cybernetics," 37.
51Blake,The Body Language, 155, notes that the developed female body has not been
allowed massive muscularity, as one can see in the general ambivalence about female
bodybuilding and criticisms of muscles "developed to extremes."
52NicholasJ. FOXurges us to look at the postmodern body by examining the inscription of sets of discourses upon it, such as illness and dependency or fitness and
beauty; to challenge these concepts; and not to see them as attributes of the biological
body or even as psychological states,but as relations of power positively constituting a
body while at odds with it and its desire. One may begin, he suggests, by recognizing
how fitness or dependencybecame attached to bodies. Postmodernism, Sociologyand Health
(Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1994),26-27.
531tis difficult to see cyborgs as androgynous when one looks at actual cyborg texts,
which enthusiastically explore boundary breakdowns between humans and technologywhile treating gender boundaries less flexibly.Cyborg turns out to be simply a vehicle by
which the assertion of a violent but ultimately "good" masculinity is really at stake, says
Samantha Holland, "Descartes Goes to Hollywood: Mind, Body,and Gender in Contempoya-gborg
.-Cinema," Body and Society 1(November 1995),165.
54A
jun A p p a d u r a i , ~ W a ~ o n o n ( M i i n n e apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996),41.
55DonnaHaraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist
Feminism in the 1980's" in FeminismlPostmodwnism, ed. L.J. Nicholson (London:Routledge,
1990).Harawayfscyborg was distinguished from the Clynesl Kline cyborg and from more
recent, popular cyborg images, in that it was conceived as a creature in a postgender
world--oppositional, utopian, and without innocence. Its essence was uncertainty and
the transgression of boundaries.