ABSTRACT

I think I always knew that sport was political, in the ‘small-p’ sense that those in sport and those outside it continually jostled over the decisions and conditions that determined meanings, opportunities and rewards. I also came to realize when I studied and then became involved in the Fitness and Amateur Sport Program that the different mainstream Canadian political parties – the Progressive Conservatives, the Liberals and the New Democratic Party – brought different perspectives and priorities to Canadian sport policy. But during the 1960s, none of them took strong political positions on the sport issues of the day; it was almost as if they agreed with the widespread mantra that ‘sport and politics do not mix’. So, I was well along in my athletic and political careers before I discovered that there had been an explicitly political, openly contestative sports movement a generation earlier, and that that movement had not only opposed the 1936 Olympics in Germany but also attempted to hold their own counter-Olympics in Barcelona. This revelation came in a footnote in Richard Mandell’s The Nazi Olympics, published in 1971, and during the next few years, as I weighed into the debates about the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, I began to uncover the debates about Olympic sport that had occurred 40 years previously. This article is the first result of those efforts. It was an eye-opening experience, particularly as I knew many of those who had taken part in the earlier debate, but who had never mentioned it, including my own father. The experience whetted my appetite for sport history and led me back to graduate school to learn how to do it better.