In Reply to: Just not interested ... posted by lafong on August 09, 2024 at 19:44:48
As Victorian Britain industrialized, villages became towns, and towns became cities, and leisure activity, including sport, became more prevalent.
"From the mid-nineteenth century public schools began to transform the nature and purpose of sport. Here, an ideology was developed which legitimised sport as helping keep order and discipline, encouraging team spirit, fostering qualities of leadership, taking minds off sex, grooming them for imperial service or other future professions and occupations or even preparing pupils for war."
Then religion got involved.
"The church saw this development and identified an activity that attracted youth, was justifiable in terms of instilling moral values and the qualities of self control, fair play and discipline, all of which they valued. This link between the healthy mind and the healthy body was incorporated in the Muscular Christianity movement, which was intended to keep boys busy in organised, improving physical activity that would keep them out of trouble and away from 'sin'".
This is where the class division creeps in.
"As sport had previously been mainly the prerogative of the wealthy, who had the time and the money to pursue it purely for the pleasure of it, it was essentially what was known as 'amateur' sport."
But the times there were a changin'.
"As the masses began to have the opportunity and the encouragement to pursue sport, now that they were together in the cities in large numbers, the question of money or payment began to arise. In order to participate in a football match the working man would require to take some time off work to get to the venue and to play. For most of the working classes this was not possible without some recompense."
Ultimately...
"The gentleman amateur, who pursued the activity for its own sake, did not welcome the involvement of the working class, seeing that the nature of their work, being essentially very physical, would give them a distinct advantage in terms of the physical capacities that were advantageous in many sports. Not only did they not welcome them but they actually wrote the rules to ensure that anyone involved in physical labour was banned from participating."
While this is primarily, of course, "white on white" classism, there can be no doubt of its racial undertones.
This was the very concept of "amateurism" Baron Pierre de Coubertin ebraced for the modern Olympics. However...
"he quickly discovered that it conflicted with his ideals of a global Olympics...
Non-Western athletes lacked the financial ability to participate without financial compensation and accepted under the table payments."
Of course, we also know many countries lavished luxury and wealth on their Olympic athletes.
The history of amateurism in the Olympics is not only classist and racist, it is also a farciful illusion.