ABSTRACT
It is easy to gain the impression from the copious literature that each Olympic Games has been carefully assessed by academics. Certainly, a wealth of detail and statistics have been generated about particular Olympic sports, the careers of prominent athletes and the performance of their respective nations on the unofficial medal table. However, some sports and some nations remain under-represented in the literature of the Games. This is especially the case with several post-colonial, non-Western countries and some sports that have had a relatively low-profile on the Olympic stage. In the case of Pakistan, formed after the partition of India in 1947, only a modest amount of medals have been won, and the majority of its Olympic success has been achieved in field hockey. The aim of this paper is to examine the historical background associated with Pakistan’s early involvement in the Olympic Games (with a special focus on the example of field hockey), thereby expanding knowledge about a range of issues facing this Islamic country in the context of the development of elite sport.
