ABSTRACT
This chapter aims investigate the general nature of historical knowledge with specific reference to olympic history, and follows a framework developed by Alun Munslow who discerns three basic models of historical inquiry: reconstruction, construction and deconstruction. It examines more explicit applications of historical knowledge in sport history under the heading ‘explanatory paradigms’. Olympic history comprises seven basic explanatory paradigms: traditional narrative, advocacy, contextual, comparative, causal, social change and linguistic. Olympic history supports mainly reconstructionists and a number of constructionists; deconstructionists are largely absent. Deconstructionist historians are highly sceptical of the claims to truth made by objective empirical history and they view history as a constituted narrative devoid of moral or intellectual certainty. Comparisons involving allusions to another case in order to illustrate or highlight aspects of a particular case abound in olympic history. Olympic historians have overwhelmingly framed their questions with a view to debunking myths and contextualizing olympic events within international politics and, more recently, global commerce.
