The Changing Role of Local Television Sports

Submitted by: Dr. Brad Schultz & Mary Lou Sheffer

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess how the sports segment within the local television newscast is changing. Literature suggests that many stations are eliminating or otherwise revising the sports segment in response to industry conditions.

Results indicated changes but more in terms of style and presentation than in time allotment. The sports segment is emphasizing more localism and appealing to casual fans. Major factors for change were audience ratings and competition from all-sports networks. The implication of these changes for the broadcast industry and journalism education were discussed.

Introduction

If there has been a constant throughout the history of television in the U.S., it has been local news. Almost from the time stations first signed on the air, they began delivering local news in which sports has always had an integral role. Lacking a consistent source of programming in these early days, many stations turned to sports to fill their broadcasting schedule. WNBT television in New York signed on the air in July 1941, and its very first telecast was a professional baseball game (“NBC history,” 2003). In developing local newscasts to suit their audiences, these stations usually included sports and weather. In 1961, for example, WKMG started the first full-time news department in Orlando. The newscast included a sports report by Frank Vaught (“The history of,” 2003).

Sports maintained an unchallenged position in the local newscast for several years, but recent trends within the industry have called this position into question. Fragmenting audiences, changing demographics, and declining news profitability have caused stations to reexamine their local sports segment. “Sports is one of the last areas of TV where people do things the way they’ve always done them,” says television executive Elliott Wiser. “(Today) you have to have a new approach” (Deggans, 2000).

The Problem for Local TV News

Several factors have combined to threaten the supremacy of television as the main provider of news for Americans. According to a study conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (2002), television newscasts are losing viewers. In 1998, two-thirds of stations reported a decline in viewership for their local newscasts. By 2002, that number had risen to 76%. Even in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in September 2001, local news viewership fell seven percent.

The emergence of media sources such as the Internet, cable channels, and home satellite has given viewers a news alternative. According to research from the Radio and Television News Director’s Association (“Changing channels,” 1996), a “significant portion of the public tunes into a variety of other sources on a regular basis.”

As more and more stations become controlled by larger media companies, local television news has also become more bottom-line oriented. In the first few weeks of 2002, for example, three station groups decided to completely eliminate local news at their subsidiary stations (Trigoboff, 2002). “I think there’s going to be a shakeout,” said television news consultant Jim Willi. “Do we really need to have four or five newscasts in the same market at the same time?” (Trigoboff, 2002).

The Problem for Local TV Sports

None of this is good news for the local television sports segment which has come under increasing scrutiny from station executives. Despite its traditional presence within the local newscast, sports has long been considered a “tune out” factor. A survey by the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation indicated that only 31% of viewers said they were ‘very interested’ in the sports segment while 32% said they were ‘somewhat interested’ (“Journalism and ethics,” 1998). This compared to 72% who expressed an interest in the weather. “Sports is extremely polarizing,” said television news consultant Brent Magid. “The majority can either take it or leave it, or despise it” (Greppi, 2002).

Research suggests that women have much less interest in the sports segment compared to men (Gantz and Wenner, 1991, Perse, 1992), and many stations have acted accordingly. In 2000, WTSP in Tampa dropped sports from both of its early evening newscasts. According to station news director Jim Church, “Telling a story when nobody’s listening is not a good use of air time” (Deggans, 2000).

While some stations have eliminated sports, others have reduced the time allotted for it. Depending on the day of the week (weekends get more sports time), sports segments have traditionally received anywhere from three to five minutes of the local newscast. Now that number has dropped to as little as a minute. In 2002, KDKA in Pittsburgh reduced its time commitment to only three and a half minutes of sports for its three hours of news. Others in the industry have implemented new approaches such as sports stories that focus more on people than scores, or that cater to more of a news audience. “What we’re trying to do now is treat sports more as news,” says KDKA news director Al Blinke. “We want to do the stuff that transcends sports” (Finder, 2002).

Research Questions and Methodology

These conditions prompted the following research questions:

RQ1: Is local television sports changing, and if so, how?

RQ2: What factors are most responsible for causing this change?

RQ3: Where does local television sports appear headed in the future?

These questions were investigated with a national stratified sample of 340 news directors. News directors were chosen because they are the ones with direct control over placement, time allotment and presentation style of the local sports. In total, 163 valid responses were collected for a response rate of 49%.

Results

Most stations (84%) reported that the local sports segment within their major evening newscast gets three to four minutes, and the time for sports is declining slightly. In addition, not many stations (70%) were willing to completely eliminate the sports segment from their newscasts.

While time did not appear to be a factor, stations are considering changes to style, presentation, and content. The overwhelming response was more emphasis on local sports coverage and less coverage of national sports (62%), followed by more feature-oriented stories (14%).

The results of a correlation indicated that audience perception of the sports segment (r=.45, r2 = .20, p < 0.01) and ratings (r = .43, r2 = .18, p < 0.01) were the most influential factors for stations that changed the time allotted for sports. The higher the audience ratings and perception of the sports segment, the more time the station devoted to sports. Stations that viewed other all-sports networks as detrimental (r = -.40, r2 = .16, p < 0.01) were much more likely to reduce the time allotted to sports. A multiple regression indicated that after controlling for financial stability and audience perception, audience ratings (b = -.11, p = .04) and all-sports networks (b = -.29, p < .001) were significant predictive factors.

The majority of news directors (63%) believed that the sports segment will decline in importance and time allotment in the future. Another 27% said that no significant changes will take place, while only 2% said that sports would increase in time and importance.

Discussion

The changes taking place in the sports segment have more to do with content, style, and presentation than time allotment. Perhaps in an effort to offer viewers a contrast to all-sports networks, local television sports is focusing more on local stories, athletes, and events and making its coverage more feature-oriented and viewer friendly for the casual sports fan. Typical of the responses was the news director in the Midwest who commented, “We want sports to be interesting to non-sports fans. Here, sports is news, is community. Give the viewer local as opposed to anything the many cable sports channels offer. Only we can go local. They can’t.”

As for the future of local television sports, news directors were more pessimistic which suggests two distinct time frames for this study-now and in the near future, and while local television sports seems safe, news directors have it on a very short leash. One news director noted, “I considered eliminating the sports department and reallocating those resources to put more news gatherers on the street. I am reluctant to do so now, but may in the future.”

Implications

Changes in local sports may be a reflection of the tremendous upheaval going on throughout broadcast news. If the sports segment is no longer safe, what does that say for other news elements? “[All of this] forces us to reexamine the [news] model,” said CBS Group News Vice President Joel Cheatwood (Trigoboff, 2002).

On a more immediate level, changes in the local sports segment directly affect thousands of aspiring sportscasters. Stations that are reducing their commitment to sports are also reducing their sports staffing levels which has an impact on the job market. “[Sports in the newscast] is dying,” said another news director. “We have gone from two full time sports people to one full time and one who works news three days a week, and keeping that position has been a fight.”

Just as important, the change in the way sports is presented requires would-be sports broadcasters to learn new methods. No longer can sportscasters focus on scores; they must make their presentation more engaging for the casual fan. This is also important for journalism schools around the country which must take note of what stations want in a sports segment and update their teaching curricula.

Will these changes work or even last? Commenting on KDKA’s changes, sportswriter Chuck Finder (2002) noted, “Let’s reserve final judgment until September, when the Steelers, college and high school football seasons fully get underway. We’ll see then if the station . errs in clock management.”

References

Changing channels: Young adults, Internet surfers and the future of the news audience. (1996). Radio and Television News Directors Association. Retrieved November 15, 2002, from:http://www.rtnda.org/resources/channels/chsum.html

Deggans, Eric. (2000, April 27). Local TV eliminating some sports reports. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved December 11, 2000, from: http://www.sptimes.com/News/ 042700/Sports/Local_TV_eliminating_.shtml

Finder, Chuck. (2002, July 18). The big picture: KDKA-TV alters sports approach. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved November 20, 2002, from: http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/columnists/20020718thebig5.asp

Gantz, Walter and Wenner, Lawrence. (1991). Men, women and sports: audience experiences and effects. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. 35, (2), 233-243.

Greppi, Michelle. (2002, August 19). Time out for sports? Local stations debate how much coverage viewers really want. New Orleans Times-Picayune, p. 9.

Journalism and ethics integrity project. (1998). Radio and Television News Directors Foundation. Retrieved January 13, 1999, from: http://www.rtnda.org/research/judg.shtml

Local TV news project. (2002). The Project for Excellence in Journalism. Retrieved November 15, 2002, from: http://www.journalism.org.resources.research/reports/localTV/2002/disappearing.asp

NBC history. (2003). WNBC television. Retrieved January 9, 2003, from: http://www.wnbc.com/wnbc/1169359/detail.html

Newsroom profitability survey. (2001). Radio and Television News Directors Association. Retrieved March 18, 2003, from: http://www.rtnda.org/research/money.shtml

Perse, Elizabeth. (1992). Predicting attention to local television news: need for cognition and motives for viewing. Communication Reports. 5, (1), 40-49.

The history of WKMG-TV. (2003). WKMG Television. Retrieved January 9, 2003, from: http://www.local6.com/orlpn/insidewkmg/stories/insidewkmg-20000911-122225.html

Trigoboff, Dan. (2002, February 11). Live at 11? Maybe not for long. Broadcasting & Cable, p. 3.

 

2016-04-01T09:46:52-05:00January 7th, 2004|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off on The Changing Role of Local Television Sports

Olympic Education

1 Introduction

“Olympic education” is a term which first appeared in sports education and Olympic research only in the 1970s (cf, N. MOLLER 1975b). Does “Olympic education” mean the revival of the educational ideals of ancient Greece, or is its purpose merely to bring credibility to the marketing of Olympic symbols? The question must be answered in terms of principles, and the answer ranges deep into the history and concept of the modern Olympic Movement. Its founder, the Frenchman Pierre DE COUBERTIN (1863-1937), saw himself first and foremost as an educator, and his primary aim was educational reform (cf, RIOUX 1986). His aim, initially restricted to France and the French schools, was to make modern sport an integral part of the school routine, and so introduce into that routine a sports education which would embrace both body and mind. He had learned from modern sport in England, and especially from his knowledge of public school education at Rugby, that the moral strength of the young can be critically developed through the individual experience of sporting activity and extended from there to life as a whole. COUBERTIN did not use the term “Olympic education”, but referred initially to “sporting education”, and indeed that was the title of the book he published in 1922, Pedagogie sportive. Since as early as 1900, and not exclusively within schools, he had been encouraging the idea of making sport accessible to adolescents and even to older people as a newly discovered part of a complete education (cf. COUBERTIN 1972).

2 Peace education as a starting point

As a young man, in 1892, COUBERTIN had had the idea of renewing the ancient Olympic Games, which duly took place in Athens in 1896. Whereas his educational aspirations had additionally been confined to France, the success of these first Olympic Games marked, for COUBERTIN, the internationalization of his educational visions, where his main priority at first was the idea of “peace among nations”. In his early writings, he refers to international sporting encounters as “the free-trade system of the future” (COUBERTIN 1967, 1), seeing the participating athletes as “ambassadors of peace” (COUBERTIN 1891), even though by his own admission he still had to take care, at the time of the founding of the IOWA in 1894, not to say too much about this, not wanting – as he says in a document that has come down to us – to ask too much of sportsmen or to frighten the pacifists. With his ideas of peace, however, COUBERTIN associated an ethical mission which, then as now, was central to the Olympic Movement and – if it were to succeed – had to lead to political education. On the threshold of the 20th century, COUBERTIN tried to bring about enlightened internationalism by cultivating a non-chauvinistic nationalism (cf, QUANZ 1995). It is precisely the relationship between nationalism and international peace – a one-sided one hitherto, because invariably regarded as a contradiction in terms – that forms the challenging peace ethos and fascination of Olympism. From the beginning, COUBERTIN’s sights were set upon an interplay between nations united by enthusiasm for peace and an internationalism that would set a ceremonial seal on their peaceful ambitions. In these ambitions he was influenced by his paternal friend Jules SIMON. SIMON had been a co-founder of the Interparliamentary Union, established in Paris in 1888, and the International Peace Bureau, founded in 1892 (cf, QUANZ 1995, 170 et seq. ). COUBERTIN’s plans thus extended from the outset beyond the organizing of Olympic Games every four years. He wanted mankind in the 20th century to experience sport in the harmonious interplay of physical and intellectual skills, so that – set in an artistic, aesthetic frame – it would make an important contribution to human happiness. The participants in the Olympics were, to COUBERTIN, the models of a young generation that changed every four years.

3 “Religio athletae” as an anthropological foundation

The question of the content and purpose of an “Olympic education” can only be answered if we consider COUBERTIN’s call for a contemporary application of the “religio athletae” (cf. NISSIOTIS 1987). COUBERTIN advocated the knowledge of Greek and other European philosophy. The return to antiquity was his starting point, though with the option of adapting it to the modern age as far as possible. COUBERTIN was an eclectic: he read a little of everything, hunted out subjects that interested him and so formed his own opinion. He engaged in a continuous “dialogue” with the events of his age, from which he formed his “Olympic ideal”. Three aspects played an important part in this:

(1) COUBERTIN’s age no longer had any schools of philosophy of its own. HEGEL had been the last proponent of an all-embracing philosophical system. COUBERTIN followed HEGEL in his ideas about the application of philosophy to life, actions and morals. (2) The social issue came to a head in that period with the ideas of Karl MARX and the Russian October Revolution of 1917; previously, COUBERTIN had already absorbed the ideas of the French social reformer Frederic LE PLAY and the English historian Arnold TOYNBEE. COUBERTIN himself considered himself to be travelling a road between idealism and social philosophy towards a new realism, with romantic overtones, which had displaced the philosophy of positivism and become established as a “new science” within the universities. (3) The spirit of internationalism, or universalism as it was not infrequently known, went hand in hand with the development of the mass media and transport and telecommunications links. World exhibitions (Paris 1889 and 1900, St. Louis 1904) promoted international exchange and comparisons.

As COUBERTIN saw it, this new world called for a comprehensive worldwide “philosophy”, which could better be described as an “ideology” (MALTER 1969). The Dominican friar Henri DIDON, probably the strongest influence on COUBERTIN apart from SIMON, introduced him to the spirit of ecumenism propagated by his Order (cf, N. MOLLER 1996b). This was the origin of COUBERTIN’s idea of universalism, to which by syncretic transfiguration he gave the name of “Olympism”. But COUBERTIN’s postulate was and remained Greek philosophy. He was a philhellene (cf. MOLLER 1986). As a result, his ideas were at odds both with the non-philosophical aspects of antiquity and with modern European philosophy. In his view, Greek philosophy was not a theory of life but life itself. In his reconstruction of COUBERTIN’s ideas, the Greek religious philosopher NISSIOTIS points out that, according to COUBERTIN, the right “mean” arose from an unending struggle between the upholders of principles and their detractors (1987, 133-6). Values as such were therefore unattainable extremes for most philosophers, and the same applied to the Olympic ideals. But those ideals were to be set up by a conscious effort as something to be striven for. It was from this basic concept that COUBERTIN then developed his “sporting ontology” (NISSIOTIS 1987, 138). Instead of the word “sport”, however, COUBERTIN often uses the term “athletics”. Sport as he sees it is not something innate in man: rather the athlete pursues the Greek athlos, meaning the prize awarded after the contest. The athlete, then, needed instinct, character and movement. These formed the essentials of the perfect man, the “homme sportif” (cf NISSIOTIS 1987, 139). In this version of anthropology, muscular strength is linked to strength of will – in other words, the athlete must consciously make a sacrifice and not merely indulge in the unthinking exercise of strength. It is man’s striving to go higher and farther that is what makes him man in the first place. According to COUBERTIN, then, man is not what he is but what he can become. If man could be defined, that would be the end of him, so that he must always look ahead to see what comes next (cf NISSIOTIS 1987, 139). This definition is basically a contradiction in terms, since it denies the possibility of defining man; so it is not so much an attempt at a definition as a new style of “philosophy”, an “explosive philosophy of life” (NISSIOTIS 1987,140).

4 Coubertin’s Olympism between education and ideology

From Olympism to Olympic education

COUBERTIN says, “Athletics and the Olympic Games are the manifestation of the cult of the human being, mind and body, emotion and conscience. Will and conscience, because these are the two despots that fight for domination, the conflict between them often tearing us cruelly apart, because we must achieve an equilibrium” (1986b, Vol. 2, 418). 15 It was for this reason that COUBERTIN was unwilling to provide an unambiguous definition of Olympism, but calls upon us to reflect on the meaning and value of the human body. Olympism is the entire collection of values which, over and above physical strength, are developed when we participate in sport (cf. MALTER 1996). 16 This principle contains the basics of a modern theory of sport education on an anthropological basis (cf. GRUPE 1968; 1984a; 1985; MEINBERG 1987; 1991b). It is from COUBERTIN that we have the following paraphrase of the word “Olympism”: “Olympism combines, as in a halo, all those principles which contribute to the improvement of mankind” (1917, 20). COUBERTIN’s “Olympism” is therefore aimed at all people, irrespective of age, occupation, race, nationality or creed. Its general characteristic is that it brings together all men of good will, provided that they take their commitment to humanity seriously. It is, in Hans LENK’s phrase, “multi-tolerant”, allowing no ideological conflicts to arise (1972d, 17). “Olympic education” endeavours to provide a universal education or development of the whole human individual, in contrast to the increasingly specialized education encountered in many specialized disciplines. Consequently, it can only be based on the fundamental values of the human personality. COUBERTIN understood the Olympic Games as being the four-yearly “celebration of the universal human spring” (1986b, Vol. 2, 288). It followed that both participants and spectators had to be prepared for the festival. His concept of the process of training the Olympic athlete was based on the following pyramid principle: “In order for 100 people to develop their bodies it is necessary for 50 to practice a sport, and in order for 50 to practice a sport it is necessary for 20 to specialize; but in order for 20 to specialize it is necessary for 5 to be capable of outstanding achievement” (1986b, Vol. 1, 436). Thus, the “sports education” propagated by COUBERTIN encompassed all young people and the population at large insofar as its members included sport in their search for the experience personelle. He saw no contradiction here with his Olympic idea and Movement, since he had from the outset combined his educational and organization aims. Back in 1897, at the second Olympic Congress in Le Havre, those attending had been surprised to find themselves dealing not with details of future Olympic Games but with the propagation of sport and physical education in schools. Even in the aftermath of the unsuccessful 1900 and 1904 Olympic Games, COUBERTIN used the 3rd Olympic Congress of 1905 in Brussels to discuss models for the practice of sport and physical education in schools and other areas of life. After the breakthrough eventually achieved by the Olympic Games at Stockholm in 1912, COUBERTIN ventured to take on the universities, with a 1913 Congress in Lausanne on “Psychology and physiology in sport”. Although this was asking too much of his IOC colleagues, concerned only with international sporting relations and the four-yearly Olympic Games, this was yet another demonstration of his more ambitious educational mission and his independence (cf. N. MOLLER 1983). “We must reach the masses” (COUBERTIN 1986b, Vol.2, 389) was the motto with which he reacted to the impression made by social revolution. Consistently, he said in 1918, “It cannot be enough that this pedagogie Olympique – of which I recently said that it is based simultaneously on the cult of physical effort and the cult of harmony – in other words, on the taste for excess combined with moderation – should have the opportunity to be celebrated in the eyes of the whole world every four years. It also needs its permanent production facilities” (1966, 66). This quotation contains COUBERTIN’s first reference to “Olympic education”; clearly, he was at this time’convinced of the need for, and the conceptual strength of, his complex educational ideal. Away from his home country, he used the Olympic Movement for an international Olympic education network. When he wrote in November 1918 that “Olympism is not a system but an attitude of mind”, he called at the same time for the consistent pursuit of an “Olympic education” (1966, 65) in contrast to the traditional educational models which, in his eyes, were alien to sport. In 1921, when COUBERTIN tried to extend an urgently needed technical Olympic Congress in Lausanne to include a parallel event on sports education for the workforce, he failed to gain the support of a majority on the IOC. COUBERTIN pursued many schemes outside the IOC designed to create examples of such “production facilities” (cf N. MOLLER 1975b). Before the First World War had ended, he had founded an Olympic Institute in Lausanne, offering practical education in sport and more general subjects to interned Belgian and French prisoners of war. He repeatedly called for the building of urban sports centres on the model of the “gymnasia of antiquity”, and stressed the democratic role of sports clubs in which, he said, inequality between men did not exist (COUBERTIN 1986b, Vol. 3, 592 et seq. ). His programme of Olympic education comprised including sport as a matter of course in the daily routine, to give the individual the opportunity “to adapt the good and bad qualities in his nature to the exercise of sport” (1966, 97) and to orient his life in accordance with this experience. The public at large, as he proclaimed in his 1925 speech taking his leave of the Presidency of the IOC, should not be expected to indulge in the noisy worship of sporting idols without participating in sport themselves (1966, 111). He devoted the remainder of his life exclusively to new educational schemes. In November 1925, he founded the Union Pedagogique Universelle in Lausanne, which would hold conferences, seminars and other events connected with the educational mandate of the modern city. He also drafted a Charter of Educational Reform (1986b, Vol. 1, 636 et seq.), which in 1930 was passed through the League of Nations in Geneva to all Ministries of Education – without, of course, receiving any significant response (cf. N. MOLLER 1975a, 75-9). As a specific counter to the decline of sport as a significant factor in education, COUBERTIN in 1926 launched – again from Lausanne – the Bureau International de Pedagogie sportive (cf. N. MOLLER 1975a, 79 et seq.), which published an annual bulletin and a number of books, including COUBERTIN’s Olympic Memories and a new edition of his Pedagogie sportive. All of this passed almost unnoticed by the public, although COUBERTIN wrote more than I 100 articles and 30 books (cf. MOLLER and SCHANZ 1991). Even within the IOC, COUBERTIN was able to recruit only a handful of enthusiasts, and often criticized the leaders of the sports world as being technical consultants rather than defenders of the Olympic spirit. The educational aspect of the Olympic ideal only became public knowledge during the protracted debate about amateurism. For COUBERTIN, this very question was of no more than secondary importance: looking back, one might believe that the Olympic Movement spent all those years using this problem as a demonstration of its high ethical standards, in the same way as the doping problems of the present day. COUBERTIN thought differently: he was interested in the inner, moral, responsible attitude of the athlete to which the “Olympic education” was to contribute. As a repository of his educational efforts, COUBERTIN during his lifetime expressed the desire for a Centre d’etudes olympiques, which in fact came into being in Berlin between 1938 and 1944 under the control of Carl DIEM, using funds provided by the Reich (N. MOLLER 1975a, 108-1 1).

Reception of COUBERTIN’s educational concept

The International Olympic Academy (IOA), which has steadily developed at ancient Olympia since1961 as the main centre of Olympic education, professes a comprehensive commitment to COUBERTIN’s mandate (N. MOLLER 1995b). It is surprising to see how this educational programme has survived over so many years despite widespread incomprehension of its fundamental ideas. It is surprising, too, to see the various ways and forms in which this commitment finds expression today in so many countries and continents, in line with the Olympic tradition and the current status of sports education. The seventy National Olympic Academies (NOAs) which have sprung up since 1966 have in various ways given a new emphasis to the Olympic concept in schools and universities and among the public (cf. N. MOLLER 1994; 1997b), although their substance has often been masked by structural issues.

  • The IOC Charter, in force since September 11, 2000, refers on several occasions to the content and form of Olympic education:
  • Even in the Fundamental Principles which introduce the Charter (Article 2) reference is made to the blending of sport with culture and education as the foundation of Olympism.
  • The Olympic Movement aims to contribute to building a peaceful and better world, especially through sports education (Article 6).
  • The IOC is committed to the sporting ethic and particularly fair play (Rules 2,6.-7), and, to that end, supports the IOA and other institutions dedicated to “Olympic education” (Rules 2, 14-15).
  • The IOC Charter obliges the National Olympic Committees to promote Olympism in all areas ofeducation and, for example, to adopt independent initiatives for “Olympic education” through national Olympic Academies (Rule 31, 2. 1).

For many years, the Cold War overshadowed the Olympic Games and – like the First and Second World Wars before it – posed endless new challenges to the Olympic ideal of peace. The manipulation of the Olympic Games for political ends, especially in the case of the boycotts at Montreal 1976, Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984, cast doubt on the Olympic ideals and, at the same time, highlighted the need for Olympic education. Prompted by the successful efforts of the IOA, the National Olympic Committees recognized the need to begin “Olympic education” at the grass roots, partly to testify to the credibility of the Olympic Movement in the face of increasing commercialization. The efforts of the IOA, organizing some one hundred thousand people to participate in about eight hundred seminars and conferences between 1961 and 1998 on a very wide range of subjects relating to Olympism, have provided important stimuli for efforts in the field of Olympic education in many countries since the 1970s. The National Olympic Academy of the German NOC was founded in 1966 under the name Kuratorium Olympische Akademie. In addition to specialist conferences, the Kuratorium has organized school and university competitions on Olympic subjects since 1984, and has since 1988 developed multi-disciplinary Olympic education programmes through its specialist educational committees. Since 1986, education in fair play has been prescribed as an essential aspect of an Olympic education, the target group including not only schools but also, especially, sports clubs and associations, and the general public as well. Well-attended teacher training seminars run by the Kuratorium Olympische Academie with the support of the education ministers and schools senators of the German Lander to broadcast the idea of Olympic education with particular emphasis on fair play show not only that teachers are keenly interested in projects relating to the Olympic Movement but that the world of the Olympic Games is one that repays the long-term involvement of both teachers and pupils. The Olympic Movement is an educational mission which is becoming increasingly topical as a result of media coverage. The fact that its values may seem unattainable does not mean that the idea is obsolete or misguided. Olympism contains visions which offer an ever-changing field of opportunity to athletes and everyone else concerned.

5 Olympism as part of the school curriculum

Among COUBERTIN’s copious body of writings is an essay entitled “L’Olympisme A l’ecole. Il faut l’encourager!” (1934). In it, COUBERTIN expresses his preoccupations at the end of his life. It is of little use to schools today to offer COUBERTIN’s interpretation of Olympism as an educational subject without practical examples. In particular, his much-quoted philosophical retrospective of 1935 entitled “The philosophical principles of modern Olympism” can only be understood by picturing this value structure of Olympic education as the end product of a process that continued over many years. If we are to answer the question of what Olympism can mean in educational terms and what an “Olympic education” can contain, we must seek a starting point, once again, in COUBERTIN, since nothing has been done since his time to revise its content. The IOC Charter adopted COUBERTIN’s principles to that effect. This makes sense, since otherwise there was a danger of exaggerated adaptation of those principles to the spirit of the age. In the case of the Olympic Movement, too, there is the danger that external forms will completely overwhelm issues of content. On the other hand, in the attempt to implement the Olympic ideal in school curricula, there is no circumventing topical issues and problems of the Olympic Games, since they are familiar to the pupils. So the Olympic ideal as COUBERTIN’s educational vision must be retained, but it must also be continuously reviewed and revised.

The topicality of “Olympic education ” in schools on the beginning of the 21″ century

Under this heading we can group the following six features of an “Olympic education”, all of which can be traced back to COUBERTIN’s philosophical legacy:

(1) The concept of harmonious development of the whole human being; (2) The idea of striving for human perfection through high performance, in which scientific and artistic achievement must take equal rank with sporting performance; (3) Sporting activity voluntarily linked to ethical principles such as fair play and equality of opportunity, and the determination to fulfil those obligations; also included is the ideal of amateurism, which has been almost totally abandoned in international sport today; (4) The concept of peace and goodwill between nations, reflected by respect and tolerance in relations between individuals; (5) The promotion of moves towards emancipation in and through sport.

These educational conclusions, derived from COUBERTIN’s writings, appear at first sight somewhat theoretical and problematical for a practical programme in schools. They will be discussed in more detail below (cf N. MOLLER 1996a; GRUPE 1997a, 1997b).

The concept of harmonious development of the whole human being

The education of the young focuses not only on the mind and intellect but also on the body. “Olympic education”, then, means both physical and mental education. It endeavours to make children and young people aware that the lifelong pursuit of sport is an enrichment and necessary complement to other endeavours, in order to develop and sustain a fulfilling sense of identity. This is the starting point for the ideas and activities making up “Sport for All”. What COUBERTIN wanted for Europe at the end of the 19th century – physical education as a mandatory part of school education for boys and girls – has not yet become a reality in 50 of the world’s countries, according to UNESCO statistics. In the remainder, the issue is the importance of school sport by comparison with the “academic disciplines” and ways of improving its quality and quantity. School sports days, for example, are an important part of the experience of school pupils, particularly as regards fostering the sense of community. Just as the Olympic Games provide a model on the global scale, so too school sports days, if they are properly planned and run, become educationally important landmarks in school life. This is particularly true of comparative competitions within the framework of the Olympic development programme. This offers a particularly good opportunity to act on COUBERTIN’s call for the involvement of art and music as an aesthetic setting for sporting competition, with a view to perfecting the ideal of harmony.

The idea of human perfection

Every human being, and every school pupil, wants to do his best, and sport – especially the Olympic Games – provides a documentary record of supreme human achievement. A comparable academic area is the awarding of the Nobel Prizes, whereas the arts are unsuitable for such objective yardsticks. The achievement of new personal bests and the desire to compete with fellow pupils reflects a natural endeavour on the part of the individual, encouraging others to emulate him. Top-level Olympic achievement and optimum sporting achievement at all other levels encourage young people, too, to excel themselves, not to be content with the average or a past performance, and to set an example. This principle is often contested today, and it can only be credibly maintained if this form of human perfection is achieved by honest, independent means. Manipulation and interference with the natural development of the young (genetic engineering, growth inhibition, etc.) exploit them instead of contributing to their “self-perfection” in the human sense. COUBERTIN constantly urged, “Ne troubler pas l’equilibre des saisons! “, because even in the early years of this century he regarded premature specialization as a serious danger to the educationally appropriate development of children in accordance with their age. “Olympic education” is intended for all, including “poor students” and the handicapped. Article 2 of the IOC Charter says that Olympism aims to further a lifestyle in which the pleasure of physical achievement plays an important part. So the experiencing of achievement, in the Olympic sense, contributes to the development of the personality of any athlete, not just those at the top level.

The voluntary commitment to ethical principles in sporting activity

None of the Olympic values is better understood in sport than the concept of fair play, for which COUBERTIN always used the French term esprit chevaleresque. Even though Olympism is based on the culture of the Christian West, and hence that of Europe, comparable ethical values also form the foundation of human life and coexistence in other religions and social systems, too. In an “Olympic education”, the utmost importance must be attached to the pursuit of sport on the basis of fair competition. Students must learn, not only in their own sporting activities but also in the critical reflection of other disciplines:

  • that rules in sports and games (and in life, too) must not be broken;
  • to practice fair play, so as to train their characters for all areas of life;
  • and to use fair play in sport to improve the personal worlds in which they live, so that the pressures of the school routine (and later the working routine) play no part.

But it is not appropriate to appoint supervisors to monitor all this, within a concept oriented towards education; the need is for a voluntary commitment and a personal endorsement of fair play. For most participants in the Olympics, this ideal no longer exists, nor does the Olympic Charter now make provision for it. In many countries, especially the less industrially developed ones, top-level sport has in many cases remained the preserve of amateurs. “Olympic education” can teach the lesson that sport, for the majority of those who pursue it, has not lost its meaning as the striving after perfection in the traditional sense of amateur sport. The influence of business and the media has gone too far if it reaches a point where sportsmen become a “property” and lose their personal freedom. This aspect of the old amateur ideal is still relevant and educationally important.

Peace and harmony between nations

Apart from fair play, the Olympic value to which most attention is paid today is the idea of peace. Olympic internationalism can be taught in many ways as part of an “Olympic curriculum”; it encompasses the following aspects:

  • it seeks to promote understanding of the specific cultural features of other nations and continents;
  • it seeks to help familiarize people with the forms of sport played by others;
  • it seeks to improve familiarity with the cultures of those countries which organize the Olympic Games;
  • and it endeavours to assist and promote internationally sporting contacts and personal contacts between individuals.

Almost all schools in Germany have highly multiracial student bodies. This is a microcosm of an extensive field of action, because sport speaks all languages. Olympism, as a part of world culture, is unaffected by financial resources, colour or creed. The Olympic Games are the greatest of all peaceful global gatherings, taking place every four years. COUBERTIN’s idea of peace education as a core area of Olympism is more real today than ever.

Promotion of trends to emancipation in and through sport

To be credible, the Olympic Movement today is committed to a substantially emancipatory approach. Taking as its starting point COUBERTIN’s guiding principle of “all games, all nations”, it stands for equal rights not only among nations but also among sports, not just equal rights for all races but equal rights for both sexes. While the protection of the environment is becoming an increasingly important commitment for all applicants to host the Olympic Games, the Olympic programme – and, as a result, equality between forms of sport – are increasingly being called into question by the issue of telegenicity. Transposed to the school environment, there are some important educational lessons here: tolerance for the opposite sex, acceptance of the most varied forms of physical education and competitive sport, and the development of the pupils’ sense of responsibility within and through sport.

Forms of practical implementation

The ability to bring the many different aspects of “Olympic education” into the school environment calls for consideration of all school disciplines. Apart from sports education, which is determined not only by club sport but also by the early practical experience of children and the young, the main focus in elementary schools is on general knowledge, art, music, German and (where provided) religious education. At secondary school level, the curriculum is broadened to include social sciences, history, biology and foreign languages. Topics relevant to the Olympic Movement can be dealt with in different ways in the various disciplines, though a better way is to present them as a multidisciplinary educational project (or part of one). An Olympic exhibition is another way of stimulating interest within the school community, as was demonstrated by the poster series “100 Years of the Olympic Games” produced by the German NOC in 1996. The interest taken by schoolchildren will be particularly strong in the weeks preceding the Summer and Winter Olympics, and during the period of the actual Olympic Games. The six-to-twelve-year-old age group can be particularly highly motivated by Olympic themes. The involvement of pupils in a reasoned development of opinions on problems confronting the Olympic Movement is desirable as pupils get older, in view of extensive television consumption. This may be a way of reaching a consensus on the Olympic values which pupils should endorse.

The Olympic Games as an event and educational model

GESSMANN, among others, emphasizes that “Olympic education” must be capable of the most positive association possible with the Olympic Games as an event. This is not self-evident, since the public – in view of the violations of the Olympic philosophy and the tangle of political, commercial and drug-related intrigue surrounding top-level sport -perceives the Olympic Games as an event that is rarely exemplary and is not to be taken seriously educationally. The negative examples cannot basically erase the validity of Olympic values as an educational idea. Ideals are never completely achieved – there are always compromises. So the battle for meaning has to be constantly re-thought. What educational models can be created by the Olympic Games as an event? People of all nations come together, some as competitors and others as spectators, in the utmost spirit of friendship. Through the media, the Olympic family at the venue of the Games becomes the symbol of the Olympic concept of universalism. The great achievements of the participants symbolize the striving and achievement of all humanity. If this symbol is also associated with fair play and mutual respect, the athletes set an example of successful coexistence between people in critical situations. The ceremonial character of the Olympic Games gives their achievements particular significance. It is in this context that the Olympic Games, as an event, must be critically considered and put to educational use (cf. GESSMANN 1992). This also avoids the risk of reducing “Olympic education” to nothing more than improved sports education (SCHANTZ 1996), although some aspects of the values described above are traditionally inherent in the teaching of sport and can be effective in sports education even without any Olympic reference. An “Olympic curriculum” must highlight what is specifically Olympic and, over and above historical considerations, involve COUBERTIN’s ideals in a contemporary form. These educational fundamentals are what has characterized the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games to date, raising them high above the status of world championships (cf. N. MOLLER 1991).

6 The future of an “Olympic education”

Television links the general public to Olympia every two years. Exerting an Olympic education influence on the public is something that can only succeed through the media. The media, however, are under pressure to achieve high advertising figures, and their intentions are hardly educational. This makes the role of top-class athletes as models even more important if “Olympic education” is to succeed. This also applies to coaches, doctors and officials. But only if the Olympic athletes are involved can the standards be given a binding quality. Both in their actual sporting activities and in their public pronouncements on fair play, top-class athletes show a sense of commitment to a “sporting ethic” and hence to the basic values of Olympism. This opens up a broad field for potential activities, such as Olympic discussion sessions and spare-time lectures during the months of training. The future is not without hope. The much-prophesied abandonment of Olympism and hence of the “Olympic education” has not come about, nor are there any signs that it will do so. We must speak more about the “Olympic future”, and to do that we have a vital need for “Olympic education”, especially after Sydney 2000 with wonderfull examples of the Australians (1997b, 62). Anyone who thinks in terms of perfectionism and makes the total achievement of his aims a basic condition, has failed to understand COUBERTIN and his Olympism.

2016-10-12T14:42:50-05:00January 6th, 2004|Sports Facilities, Sports Management|Comments Off on Olympic Education

Traumatic Swimming Events Reprocessed with EMDR

Abstract

Athletes who have experienced an upsetting competitive experience not
only may perceive competition negatively but relive the upsetting performance
event when they approach competition or contemplate competition which
results in an increase in anxiety. EMDR was performed with competitive
swimmers to aid them in reprocessing an upsetting swimming event. Their
coping beliefs were measured and level of anxiety prior and after the
EMDR. Vignettes are presented as examples of the changes in the athletes’
level of anxiety coping beliefs after three sessions.


When individuals have perceived a situation negatively and have created
negative cognitions about that experience, it is often a reflection of
their perceptual style (Bandura, 1997). He also suggested that positive
visualization enhances self-efficacy by reciprocally inhibiting negative
visualizations. This negative interpretation of the event predisposes
the individual to react in a manner indicative of poor self-efficacy.
Hardy (1990) has investigated a catastrophe model of performance in sport.
It appears that an individual’s cognitive interpretation of the anxiety
is important by the impact it plays on performance (Jones & Swain,
1992; Jones, Swain, & Hardy, 1993). The athlete’s perception and interpretation
of anxiety as positive or negative in regards to his or her performance
maybe detrimental to performance if perceived as threatening (Jones &
Swain, 1992; Jones, Swain et al., 1993; Nordell & Sime, 1993; Rotella
& Learner, 1993).

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) has been used extensively
with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Van der Kolk, 1997), but there is
little knowledge in the area of EMDR and performance anxiety (Oglesby,
1999). Most of the work in this area to date has been anecdotal. EMDR
uses bouts of 20-40 rapid, saccadic eye movements by requesting the athlete
to visually track a light which moves laterally in sequence from left
to right. This technique was discovered by Francine Shapiro (1989), and
she found it resulted in the brain processing information in much the
same manner it does during rapid eye movements. Shapiro believes this
results in traumatic memories being reprocessed in a more positive or
coping light. This process requires the individual to visualize an upsetting
sports event and reprocess that event employing all senses and simultaneously
reframing cognitively. Foster and Lendl (1995, 1996) used EMDR to enhance
performance in athletes and as a tool for executive coaching. Crabbe (1996)
used the technique to improve riders’ performance in dressage competition.

Athletes who have experienced an upsetting competitive experience are
an important subgroup of competitive athletes who have difficulty with
competitive anxiety. This group not only perceives competition negatively
but additionally relives the upsetting performance event when they approach
competition or contemplate competition which results in an increase in
anxiety. The purpose of this paper is to provide a number of examples
as a means of illustration of the technique of EMDR and reprocessing an
upsetting swimming event.

Method

Participants

Volunteers (N = 21) were recruited from four competitive swim
teams without compensation: a state college, two Y.M.C.A.s, and a public
high school. Participants ranged in age from 16-21 years of age with twice
as many women as men.

Measures

Anxiety. Each athlete rated an upsetting sports event according
to the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS). Wolpe’s (1991) scale
is a continuum from 0 (no disturbance) to 10 (highest disturbance).
Heart rate was also recorded by having the participants take their
pulse and count out loud each beat while focusing on the upsetting event
as the researcher timed and recorded.

Self Perception. Validity of Cognition Scale (VoC) is part of
the EMDR protocol. It is a self-perception measure that Shapiro (1992)
developed to measure a person’s positive coping self-beliefconcerning
the upsetting event. This belief is rated on a 7-point scale from 1 (completely
false)
to 7 (completely true).

Procedures

EMDR. The purpose of EMDR is to facilitate cognitive reprocessing,
so that an individual is able to secure all the learning possible from
a given upsetting experience and interpret that information in the most
positive light for personal growth. The athlete focused on an anxiety
provoking or unpleasant swimming competitive experience to investigate
the possibility of reprocessing this in a positive format to impact favorably
on future competitive performance. The actual desensitization of the anxiety-provoking
event began with the athletes holding that event in their awareness. The
person is asked to compose a possible coping statement (VoC) concerning
the upsetting event that he or she presently does not believe. The person
then rates the upsetting event on the SUDS scale, and the heart rate is
simultaneously taken.

The researcher induced bouts of (20-40) rapid, saccadic eye movements
by requesting the athlete to visually track a light which moves laterally
in sequence from left to right. All measures are taken again at the conclusion
of the session. The athletes had three sessions of EMDR with the last
session focusing on an ideal swimming experience. The standard EMDR protocol
was followed (Shapiro, 1998).

Vignettes

Backstroke. This young lady recounted an experience of doing the
backstroke in competition when she missed her count for the turn and hit
her head on the wall. She sunk to the bottom and inhaled water. The feelings
reported were the following: confusion, panic, and thinking “I could drown.”
“How could I be so stupid as to miss the turn?” When asked to rate the
SUDS, she rated it as a 7, and her heart rate was 110. She described a
tense, upset feeling in her stomach as she envisioned the event. Her coping
statement was “I got that turn down pat,” which she rated on the VoC at
a 5-6. By the third EMDR session she had a SUDS rating of 2 and a heart
rate of 70 with her VOC up to a 6.5.

Goggles. Miss Goggle was also performing the backstroke when her
goggles came off, and she hit her head on the wall and lost her breath.
She described having a sick feeling in her stomach and difficulty breathing.
She placed last in the event and was terribly embarrassed and felt horrible.
The location in her body that she felt the anxiety as she recalled the
event was in her eyes and shoulders. Her SUDS rating initially was a 5,
and her heart rate 100 with a VoC rating of 5 for the statement “I learned
from my mistakes.” At the conclusion of the three sessions her SUDS was
a 3 with an 80 heart rate and a VoC score of 6.

Disappointment.Mr. Disappointment described a competition
where he swam the 50 fly and the 200 relay. When he came out of the pool
and toweled off, the coach said to him, “I thought you were better than
what you showed.” Mr. Disappointment described this statement from the
coach as devastating. He experienced a tight, tense jaw as he summoned
up the image and gave this a SUDS of 10 with a heart rate of 110. His
VoC for “I know I am a good enough swimmer” was 5. After our third session
his SUDS fell to a 1 with a 90 heart rate and a 7 VoC.

Seated Back:Mr. Seated Back recalls a 200 backstroke competition
where he was seated back 6 to 7 seconds slower than he expected. His feelings
were embarrassment, nervousness, anxiety, and physically felt his back
tense up. His thoughts were “I did the worst.” He gave a SUDS rating of
8 with a heart rate of 85. His VoC rating was 5 for “I tried my best.”
At the conclusion of our sessions, he reported a SUDS of 1 with a heart
rate of 80 and a VoC of 7.

Mr. Disqualified. Mr. Disqualified’s upsetting event was that
he was swimming in a sectional meet on the relay team. He was the first
one to swim and he “did great.” When the last leg of the relay finished,
he was so excited because they won that he jumped into the water which
resulted in the team being disqualified. He remembered looking up in disbelief
at them being disqualified. His thoughts were “I screwed up.” He felt
tightness in his chest as he recounted the story and reported a SUDS of
8 with a heart rate of 90. His VoC was “It is ok because we made it up
the next week” was a 2. He actually became teary eyed during the procedure.
At the conclusion of our sessions, he rated the SUDS at a 0 with a heart
rate of 75. His VoC rating was 6.5.

Mr. 50 Breaststroke. This last young man in the New England
Championships broke the 50 breast record on the first day. He volunteered
that he began obsessing over the 100 breast, and self-doubt crept into
his thoughts, “I doubt I can do it.” He ended up swimming his worse time
on the 100 with a 1:01. This experience was felt as a tingling in his
stomach with a SUDS of 8 and a heart rate of 80. His VoC for “It’s over
I won’t obsess” was rated as a 5. When we finished our work together,
he rated the SUDS at a 0, his heart rate a 55, and his VoC was a 7.

Conclusion

These vignettes serve to demonstrate that upsetting sport events are
often held in athletes’ consciousness long after the event has taken place
and may have the ability to arouse unpleasant feelings, and the physiological
effects correlate when they think of them. Concurrently, these cognitions
have the ability to color the lens through which the athletes envision
their self-efficacy in competition. Many of these athletes reported as
they approached a competitive event the negative self-statements and recollections
from the prior upsetting sport event would creep into their thoughts and
result in self-doubt and anxiety. This would even occur as they stood
on the blocks at a competition.

The upsetting event was replayed in their mind’s eye in a freeze frame
image. It is as if an upsetting event is a kin to a log jam, and there
is no movement with the same scene and emotions playing over and over.
The EMDR is not merely a recounting of the event but more a kin to a re-experiencing
of the event. Physical, physiological, and emotional feelings are re-experienced
as they relive the event in their mind’s eye. This allows the athlete
to reprocess the event and resolve some of the conflict in a more adaptive
style. EMDR is not for the average athlete, but it is for the one who
cannot let the demons of an upsetting sport event lie to rest. Some teams
have a sport psychologist to help them. If this person is trained in EMDR,
this may be a viable approach to such an athlete. If this is not an option,
a serious athlete may pursue EMDR on her/his own to deal with such a limiting
event.

References

  1. Crabbe, B. (1996, Nov.). Can eye-movement therapy improve your riding.
    Dressage Today, 28-33.
  2. Foster, S., & Lendl, J. (1996). Eye movement desensitization
    and reprocessing: Initial applications for enhancing performance in
    athletes.
    Journal of Applied Sport
  3. Psychology, 7 (Supplement), 63.
  4. Hardy, L. (1990). A catastrophe model of performance in Sport. In
    J. Jones & L. Hardy, (Eds.), Stress and performance in
    sport,
    (pp.81-106). Chichester, England: Wiley.
  5. Jones, G. & Swain, A. (1992). Intensity and direction as dimensions
    of competitive state anxiety and relationships with competitiveness.
    Perception and Motor Skills, 74, 467-472.
  6. Jones, G., Swain, A., & Hardy, L. (1993). Intensity and direction
    dimensions of competitive state anxiety and relationships with performance.
    Journal of Sport Sciences, 11, 525-532.
  7. Nordell, K. A. & Sime, W. (1993). Competitive trait anxiety, state
    anxiety, and perceptions of anxiety: Interrelationships in practice
    and in competition. The Journal of Swimming Research, 9, 19-24.
  8. Oglesby, C. A. (1999). An investigation of the effect of eye movement
    desensitization reprocessing on states of consciousness, anxiety, self-perception,
    and coach- perceived performance ratings of selected varsity collegiate
    athletes. (
    Doctoral Dissertation, Temple University, 1990). Abstracts
    International: Section B The Sciences & Engineering. 60 (3-B), Sep
    (1999). P1292. US: Univ. Microfilms International.
  9. Rotella, R. J. & Learner, J. D. (1993). Responding to competitive
    pressure. In R. N. Singer, M. Murphey, & L. Tennant (Eds.), Handbook
    on research in sport psychology
    (pp.528-541). New York: MacMillan.
  10. Shapiro, F. (1989). Efficacy of the eye movement desensitization procedure
    in the treatment of traumatic memories.Journal of Traumatic
    Stress
    , 2, 199-223.
  11. Shapiro, F. (1992). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing:
    The Behavior Therapist, 14, 133-136.Level I basic workshop
    manual. Palo Alto, Ca: Mental Research.
  12. Shapiro, F. (1995). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
    basic principles, protocols, and procedures.
    New York, NY: Guilford.
  13. Van der Kolk, B., McFarlane, A., & Weisaeth, L. (1996). Traumatic
    stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society.
    New York, NY: Guilford.
  14. Wolpe, J., & Abrams, J. (1991). Post-traumatic stress disorder
    overcome by eye movement desensitization: A case report.Journal
    of Behavior
    Therapy and Experimental psychiatry, 1(22),
    39-43.

Contact: Louise Graham
Bridgewater State College
Kelly 102
Bridgewater, MA 02325
lgraham@bridgew.edu
Fax 5-8-531-4011

Acknowledgements: I wish to thank the coaches for them allowing the disruption
to their practices and willingness to participate in the study; Associate
Professor Joseph Yeskewicz, Klye Browing, Ann Murray and Chuck Hickey.
This work was partially supported by a CART grant.

2015-03-20T08:58:01-05:00January 5th, 2004|Sports Exercise Science, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off on Traumatic Swimming Events Reprocessed with EMDR

Evolution of Scholars’ Approach to Studying Consumer Loyalty in Recreational Sport and Fitness Businesses

Customer loyalty is of great value to recreational sport agencies in terms of their effectiveness and success. In recent decades, students in the field of recreation and leisure have paid growing attention to the phenomenon of customer loyalty. This paper reviews how exploration of consumer loyalty began, especially in the field of recreation and leisure. There have been three stages of evolution: the one-dimensional approach, two-dimensional approach, and multidimensional approach. The latter two developed out of critiques of an established approach. The authors find the multidimensional approach to be the most comprehensive, and thus the most promising, perspective for future research on consumer loyalty in the field of recreation and leisure.

Evolution of Scholars’ Approach to Studying Consumer Loyalty in Recreational Sport and Fitness Businesses

Because it is much cheaper to serve loyal customers and easier to maintain their support, customer loyalty is of great value to organizations (Seybold, 2001). Rosenberg and Czepiel, whom Park and Kim cite (2000),  claim that attracting a new customer costs 6 times more than retaining an existing customer. To a great extent, the success of a recreational sport and fitness business depends on how the business manages customers’ loyalty (Backman & Crompton, 1991a, 1991b). As Park and Kim note, consumer loyalty is embodied not only in economic transactions with a business but more broadly in general support for the organization (Park & Kim, 2000).

Glimpsing the importance of consumer loyalty to sport-related businesses, in recent decades scholars in the field of recreation and leisure have paid growing attention to the phenomenon of customer loyalty (Gahwiler & Havitz, 1995; Howard, Edginton, & Selin, 1988; Park & Kim, 2000). What has been the result of this increased focus? For one thing, a gradual evolution in how researchers approach the phenomenon of customer loyalty has resulted. Three stages can be roughly identified. In the very beginning, most investigators focused on only one dimension of consumer loyalty, either the behavioral or attitudinal dimension. Next, as a result of criticism of this initial research model, models that approached both behavioral and attitudinal dimensions of customer loyalty were developed. Finally, the latest studies of customer loyalty incorporate multiple attitudinal or psychological facets. This has led to a deeper, better-integrated understanding of loyalty. The following describes in more detail each evolutionary stage of the historical development of customer loyalty research.

]One-Dimensional Approaches to Studying Consumer Loyalty[

Behavioral Approaches

The majority of early studies of consumer loyalty looked only at its behavioral dimension. A customer was viewed as loyal to a product or service if he or she demonstrated “consistent purchase of one brand over time” (Backman & Crompton, 1991b). According to Prichard and colleagues, one-dimensional behavioral approaches were classified in four groups by Jacoby and Chestnut (Prichard, Howard, & Havitz, 1992, pp.156–157). The first group comprises researchers who located loyalty in the customer’s purchasing sequence, for example George N. Brown. The second group comprises researchers such as Ross M. Cunningham who defined loyalty on the basis of the proportion of the customer’s purchases that featured the brand in question. Jacoby and Chestnut’s third group includes the scholars who applied probability models to analyze consumers’ purchasing behavior. To this group belongs Ronald E. Frank, who in the early 1960s investigated repeat-purchase probabilities using a simple chance model. The fourth and last of Jacoby and Chestnut’s groups integrated several behavioral variables to generate its definition of customer loyalty (Prichard et al., 1992). Burford, Enis, and Paul (1971), as an example, put forward an index combining three behavioral measures of customer loyalty: proportion of resources spent on brand or store, amount allocated to switching, and the number of alternative brands or stores.

While operationalizing such behavioral approaches is easy enough, at the same time they may exhibit fatal weaknesses as theoretical frameworks upon which to hang studies of consumer loyalty. Beginning in the late 1960s, some consumer loyalty researchers began to criticize behavioral approaches to their task (Howard et al., 1988, p. 42). They pointed out, for example, that because the associated measures relied on overt, observable behaviors, behavioral conceptualizations of consumer loyalty were doomed to such error as the classification of particular consumers as loyal in one study and nonloyal in the next (Backman & Crompton, 1991b, p. 206). Moreover, failure to identify relations between loyalties measured by different patterns of use brought many researchers to the conclusion that “brand loyalty encompassed more than repeat use” (Backman & Crompton, 1991b, p. 206).

Attitudinal Approaches

Conceptually, behavioral models could not, Day noted (1969), discriminate between true or intentional loyalty and spurious loyalty (Backman & Crompton, 1991b; Prichard et al., 1992). Day (1969) and Jacoby (1971) proposed an attitudinal conceptualization of customer loyalty in order to better understand it. According to Jacoby (as cited in Prichard et al., 1992), a customer who shows brand loyalty by implication “repeat[s] purchase based on cognitive, affective, evaluative and predispositional factors: the classical primary components of an attitude” (1971, p. 26). Prichard et al. (1992) also briefly review those early researchers who looked at psychological aspects of consumer loyalty as well as behavioral. Guest, Monroe, and Guiltinan; Bennett and Kassarijia; and Jain, Pinson, and Malhotra all made an effort to study consumers’ attitudes or intentions.

Just like approaches focused one-dimensionally on consumer behavior, however, approaches focused one-dimensionally on attitudinal loyalty had limitations. According to Prichard et al., the early studies of the attitudinal components in consumer loyalty, when they were reviewed by loyalty theorists, were often found to lack adequate theoretical conceptualization. A result of this was a multitude of measures that confounded research. Examination of the theoretical and empirical rigor underlying the development of various attitudinal measures raised certain questions about construct validity (Prichard et al., 1992).

Overall, then, early definitions of customer loyalty as solely a behavioral construct or solely an attitudinal construct could be accused not only of superficiality but also of insufficiency. In time, a two-dimensional approach would replace these flawed perspectives.

]Consumer Loyalty as a Two-Dimensional Construct[

As noted by Jacoby and Chestnut, neither behaviors nor psychological attachments alone could well explain customer loyalty (Backman & Crompton, 1991a, p. 2). Criticism of the old models (which was most vigorous against the one-dimensional behavioral models) informed the development of a new model integrating behavioral and attitudinal dimensions. Day’s (1969) new two-dimensional definition of consumer loyalty (cited in Selin, Howard, Udd, & Cable, 1988, p. 220) provides an example of the advances at the research’s next evolutionary stage. Day’s results showed his consumer loyalty index combining behavioral and attitudinal dimensions to have twice the predictive power of the behavioral approach.

Olson and Jacoby’s (1971) six-point definition of loyalty followed Day in supporting with empirical evidence the idea that loyalty’s “cognitive” and “behavioral” parts were separate and identifiable (Backman & Crompton, 1991b, p. 207). Olson and Jacoby defined loyalty as “a biased, behavioral response, expressed over time, by some decision making unit, with respect to one or more alternative brands out of a set of such brands, and [moreover] . . . a function of psychological processes” (Prichard et al., 1992, p.159). The definition came to be  “widely accepted as the conceptual basis for loyalty research” (Backman & Crompton, 1991b, p. 207).

After Day (1969) and Jacoby (1971), a consensus developed in the field that loyalty should be treated as a two-dimensional construct, a concept including both behavioral and attitudinal facets. As Backman urged, “to measure loyalty necessitates assessing both affective attachment to an activity as well as measuring behavioral use of the activity” (1991, p. 335).

According to Selin et al. (1988, p. 219), the two-dimensional model offered by Day and Jacoby was improved on in a study Jacoby reported with Kyner (1973). They used a two-dimensional definition of loyalty weighing both repeat purchase and consumers’ attitudes, and their definition became the next “definitive” standard for the measures used in loyalty studies.

Once the two-dimensional model was available, many researchers applied it in investigations of consumer loyalty. Most representative is Backman and Crompton’s operationalization of this approach in loyalty research (1991a), following their review of the conceptualization of loyalty proposed by such earlier researchers such as Pessemier, Day, Olsen and Jacoby, and Howard, Edginton, and Selin. Backman and Crompton studied golf and tennis participants and used attitudinal and behavioral scores to segment the respondents in their study. A semantic differential scale with 13 items was used to measure participants’ “general feelings” about golf and tennis (1991a, p.208); a two-dimensional matrix next was used to distinguish four discrete levels of loyalty. The resulting four-quadrant matrix served to group participants according to their weak versus strong attitudes and their high versus low “behavioral consistency” (Mahoney & Howard, 2000, p. 16).

Backman and Crompton (1991a) divided studied consumers into four groups having different levels of loyalty: low loyalty (weak psychological attachments and weak behavioral consistency); latent loyalty (strong psychological attachment but weak behavioral consistency); spurious loyalty (weak psychological attachment but strong behavioral consistency); and high loyalty (strong psychological attachment and strong behavioral consistency). Mahony and Howard (2000, p. 17) judged Backman and Crompton’s research to offer an improved grasp of consumer loyalty in a context of sport and leisure, because their two-dimensional operationalization “reaffirmed and extended Day’s claim” about loyalty and also “provided important insights into the complexity of the construct” (Mahony, Madrigal, & Howard, 2000).

The two-dimensional approach combining behavioral and psychological facets of consumer loyalty advanced the literature on loyalty by overcoming weaknesses of earlier, one-dimensional approaches. As it turned out, however, most two-dimensional studies of consumer loyalty were themselves deficient, in that it proved very difficult to measure consumers’ psychological attachment to brands. In the end, even the operationalization of Backman and Crompton’s attitudinal loyalty was far from sufficient (Mahony et al., 2000, p.17). In recent years, the further exploration of the attitudinal dimension has led to the conceptualization of consumer loyalty as a dynamic process.

Beyond the Two-Dimensional Model

The complexity of the attitudinal dimension, in particular, has drawn the attention of many recent researchers to the multifacetedness of the concept of consumer loyalty. Park and Kim’s analysis (2000) of attitudinal loyalty within the recreational sport industry indicates three components of attitudinal loyalty: normative loyalty, based on “social expectation or normal pressure”; affective loyalty, based on “affective attachment”; and investment loyalty, based on “accumulation of investments.” Park and Kim further suggest that all of these dimensions are distinct and should be simultaneously taken into consideration to explain attitudinal loyalty.

Prichard et al. (1992) note that in past decades, commitment as a component of attitudinal loyalty attracted much attention from loyalty researchers. They further describe how multidimensional models of commitment based on Buchanan’s work (1985) paralleled the studies of composite loyalty. (Buchanan had defined commitment using three dimensions: behavioral consistency, affective engagement, and degree of investment.) They also argued for Crosby and Taylor’s conceptualization of commitment (1983) as the one to “provide a sound theoretical basis for operationalizing the attitudinal dimension of recreation loyalty.” Crosby and Taylor used both “cognitive consistency” and “position involvement” when conceptualizing commitment.

Acknowledging that consumer loyalty was multidimensional, some scholars went a step farther and began to investigate the relationships between dimensions of loyalty. Applying hierarchical multiple regression analyses, Park (1996) studied the  relationships between involvement and attitudinal loyalty constructs in a fitness program, reporting the two constructs to be “highly intercorrelated” though independent. According to Park, both involvement and attitudinal loyalty are multidimensional.

Gahwiler and Havitz (1995) also sought to understand these relationships. Dissatisfied with how earlier research had investigated in isolation from one another such factors as social subworld, involvement, psychological commitment, and behavioral loyalty, Gahwiler and Havitz studied the four simultaneously (p. 3). Analyzing data from a study of YMCA patrons, they found that a relatively high level of consumer loyalty was positively related to each of the following: relatively greater social-world integration,  relatively greater position involvement, and relatively greater psychological commitment (p. 1).

Iwasaki and Havitz (1998) proposed a path analytic model of the relationships among loyalty’s dimensions (involvement, psychological commitment, and loyalty). They criticized studies by Park (1996) and by Kim, Scott, and Crompton (1997), arguing that the development of consumer loyalty really was a dynamic process. Iwasaki and Havitz outlined the progressive stages consumers went through enroute to becoming loyal customers; these sequential psychological processes included (a) formation of high levels of involvement in an activity, (b) development of psychological commitment to a brand, and (c) maintenance of strong resistance to any change of brand preference (p. 256). In addition, Iwasaki and Havitz believed that variables such as personality and social status “moderate the developmental process” (1998, p. 256).

These relational studies involving multiple dimensions of consumer loyalty facilitated understanding of the loyalty concept and are more comprehensive than the one- and two-dimensional approaches had been. The path analytic model, especially,  in representing a dynamic process, advanced an investigation of the mechanism by which an individual develops consumer loyalty. The model may be less parsimonious than previous models, but it provides an insightful theoretical framework for further study of consumer loyalty.

]Conclusion[

Reviewing the evolution of the consumer loyalty concept, looking at several decades’ worth of loyalty research, suggests that the concept’s complexity was not adequately acknowledged by the behavioral approach, attitudinal approach, or even composite approach to its study. Only recent multidimensional modeling of consumer loyalty that incorporates relational analyses of loyalty’s dimensions and a path analytic model, as Iwasaki and Havitz did (1998),  is dynamic enough in its approach to psychological processes to offer a useful direction for future research.

]References[

Backman, S. J. (1991). An investigation of the relationship between activity loyalty and perceived constraints. Journal of Leisure Research, 23(4), 332–344.

Backman, S. J., & Crompton, J. L. (1991a). Differentiating between high, spurious, latent, and low loyalty participants in two leisure activities. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 9(2), 1–17.

Backman, S. J., & Crompton, J. L. (1991b). The usefulness of selected variables for predicting activity loyalty. Leisure Sciences, 13, 205–220.

Buchanan, T. (1985). Commitment and leisure behavior: A theoretical perspective. Leisure Sciences, 7(4), 401–420.

Burford, R. L., Enis, B. M., & Paul, G. W. (1971). Functional and behavioral application: An index for the measurement of consumer loyalty. Decision Science, 2, 17–24.

Crosby, L. A., & Taylor, J. R. (1983). Psychological commitment and its effects on post decision evaluation and preference stability among voters. Journal of Consumer Research, 9, 413–431.

Day, G. S. (1969). A two-dimensional concept of brand loyalty. Journal of Advertising Research, 9, 29–35.

Frank, R. E. (1962). Brand choice as a probability process. The Journal of Business, 35, 43–56.

Gahwiler, P., & Havitz, M. (1995). Toward a relational understanding of leisure social worlds, involvement, psychological commitment, and behavioral loyalty. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 13(2), 1–23.

Howard, D. R., Edginton, C. R., & Selin, S. W. (1988). Determinants of program loyalty. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 6(4), 41–51.

Iwasaki, Y., & Havitz, M. E. (1998). A path analytic model of the relationship between involvement, psychological commitment, and loyalty. Journal of Leisure Research, 30(2), 256–280.

Jacoby, J. (1971). A model of multi-brand loyalty. Journal of Advertising Research, 11, 25–30.

Jacoby, J., & Kyner, D. (1973). Brand loyalty vs. repeat purchasing behavior. Journal of Marketing Research, 10(2), 1–9.

Kim, S. S., Scott, D., & Crompton, J. L. (1997). An exploration of the relationships among social psychological involvement, behavioral involvement, commitment, and future intentions in the context of birdwatching. Journal of Leisure Research, 29, 320–341.

Mahony, D. F., Madrigal, R., & Howard, D. (2000). Use the Psychological Commitment to Team (PCT) Scale to segment sport consumers based on loyalty. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 9(1), 15–25.

Olson, J. C., & Jacoby, J. (1971). A construct validation study of brand loyalty. Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, 6, 657–658.

Park, S. H. (1996). Relationships between involvement and attitudinal loyalty constructs in adult fitness programs. Journal of Leisure Research, 28(4), 233–250.

Park, S. H., & Kim, Y. M. (2000). Conceptualizing and measuring the attitudinal loyalty construct in recreational sport contexts. Journal of Sport Management, 14, 197–207.

Prichard, M. P., Howard, D. R., & Havitz, M. E. (1992). Loyalty measurement: A critical examination and theoretical extension. Leisure Sciences, 14, 155–164.

Selin, S. W., Howard, D. R., Udd, E., & Cable, T. T. (1988). An analysis of consumer loyalty to municipal recreation program. Leisure Sciences, 10, 217–223.

Seybold, P. (2001). Loyalty incentives. Executive Excellence, 18, 15.

Author Note

Tian-Shiang Kuo; Chia-Ming Chang, D. S. M.; & Kuei-Mei Cheng, D. S. M.

2015-03-20T08:55:06-05:00January 4th, 2004|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off on Evolution of Scholars’ Approach to Studying Consumer Loyalty in Recreational Sport and Fitness Businesses

Sport in Cuba: Before and After the “Wall” Came Down

Before 1959 the Cuban state made little contribution to the development of sport. In 1955 the Batista government would not fund the Cuban team’s attendance at the Pan American Games, and in 1957 and 1958 only 1.75 million pesos, or 0.5% of the total budget, was spent on sport. Sport in Cuba was characterized by limited facilities which were unavailable to most of the population. Most athletic equipment was imported from the United States. Physical education and sport were almost unknown in schools, and there were few qualified physical education teachers. Equality of opportunity in terms of participation did not exist, and participation tended to reflect the gender, racial, and class divisions that characterized Cuban society before 1959. Hence access to sport was almost exclusively restricted to wealthy, white males (Petavino & Pye, 1996).

]Castro and Sport[

Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, with overwhelming public support. Cuba’s economy was near to collapse, as it had been developed simply to satisfy American tourists, investors, and gamblers, not the Cuban people. Castro’s first act was to seize American assets without compensation. This enraged the United States and triggered economic retribution. Castro found a new partner in the Soviet Union, whose ideological and financial support he accepted. From the Soviet model of government, Castro adapted a centralized, bureaucratic political system, which he imposed on the Cuban people (Sugden, 1996). As a consequence of Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union and its socialist allies, Cuban trade with socialist countries expanded and  with capitalist countries diminished.

The United States severed diplomatic links with Cuba on 3 January 1961. Unhappy at having a socialist country 80 miles south of Florida, President John Kennedy promoted the destabilization of Cuba. The Central Intelligence Agency in the United States recruited 1,400 anti-Castro Cubans who had fled north and gave them military training. On 17 April 1961, they invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, or Playa Giron, in the south of the island. Aiming to overthrow Castro, they were repulsed, and the invasion galvanized the Cuban people’s support for Castro. A further conflict with the United States ensued on 22 October 1962, when President Kennedy announced that the Pentagon had observed a buildup of military activity in Cuba. Surveillance aircraft had spotted a Soviet convoy heading to Cuba with a cargo of atomic weapons, so the U.S. Navy was mobilized to prevent the missiles reaching Cuba. Confrontation was avoided, however, as Kennedy eventually reached agreement with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier. Kennedy remained concerned about the threat from Cuba, however, so he ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to increase efforts against Cuba and its leader. As a consequence, there were several attempts to assassinate Castro. The United States tightened the economic embargo as well, and trade between the countries was prohibited in an additional attempt to destabilize Cuba.

There was also internal unrest in Cuba during this period, such as a particularly fierce campaign waged in the Escambray Mountains until 1965, when those rebels who remained were defeated. As part of a campaign to deter further uprisings, neighborhood Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución) were established and are still visible on every street or block of flats. With the help of the Soviet Union, schools were built, clinics were opened, and education and health became widely available to all Cubans. Generally, wealth was diverted from urban to rural areas, and the standard of housing was improved. In comparison with other developing countries, poverty, disease, and illiteracy were virtually eradicated (Calder & Hatchwell, 1996).

Initially, Castro was unclear as to the political direction that Cuba should take (CBS, 1996). However, due to an uncooperative United States, which with its allies imposed a trade embargo, Castro aligned the country towards the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was only too willing to have an ally to the south of the United States at a time when diplomatic relations were strained. In response, the Soviet Union subsidized the Cuban economy, and Cuba established its republic on a socialist model. Sugden (1996) argued that in the early years, Castro’s regime was more “popularist than orthodox communist” (p. 137). According to Sugden, it was

a model which emphasised collective goals over individual freedoms, the dictatorship of the proletariat over democracy, and a command economy over market forces. It was justified by a Marxist-Leninist ideological principle that true communism had to be dragged from the womb of capitalism and, in its infancy, nurtured by a cadre of committed and informed revolutionaries who would seize the apparatus of the state and use it for the benefit of the people until such a stage that the economic and social foundations for genuine collectivism had been securely laid. (p. 136)

The model would have its effect on Cuban sport.  The organization of Cuba’s government “according to notions of Marxist-Leninist democratic centralism, with decision making centralised at the national level” meant a centralized policy-making and funding apparatus “in all areas including sport” (Petavino & Pye, 1996, p. 117). Sport now became a means of displaying antagonism towards the United States and a vehicle for confirming solidarity with the Soviet Union.

The new Cuban system of sport was not necessarily a copy of the Soviet system, but the infrastructure of Cuban sports is unmistakably Soviet. Cuba is a socialist dictatorship and is structured along the lines of the Eastern European countries which collapsed after 1989. Once established in power, Castro reformed all aspects of Cuban society, including sport. In this respect, Cuba and its sporting success became a “shop window” for the display of superior socialist values (Petavino & Pye, 1996; Pickering, 1980).

]INDER: Marxist Cuba’s Sport Ministry[

The body responsible today for the organization of sport in Cuba is the Instituto Nacional de Deportes, Educación Física y Recreación (INDER), which was established in February 1961, 2 years after Castro’s military victory. INDER built upon the work begun by the Ministry of Education, army, and General Sports Council. In effect, INDER became the ministry of sport and was bound up with central government and reflected its views (BBC, 1977). For Coghlan (1986), the system INDER adopted is the key to bringing mass sport and physical education and high-level performance to developing countries, and even some developed countries. (John Coghlan was deputy director of the Sports Council and made numerous ministerial visits to Cuba. He was commissioned by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, to write about ways to reduce sport and physical education disparities between developed and developing countries.) For others, the INDER system is too governmental, but while this may be a valid criticism, there is no doubt that sport prospers because government backing is forthcoming. In democracies, a centralized system will always be questioned in terms of the balance between collective goals and individual freedom.

The limited sport tradition in Cuba prior to its revolution made the work of INDER difficult. Therefore, INDER initially planned to physically educate the population, from whose schools physical education had been virtually absent. Fitness has in many countries become a priority for governments at times of crisis; to ensure military survival, Cuba needed a physically fit nation. The need had been highlighted by the abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and by the threat of war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it was not surprising that the Cuban government wanted to produce a physically fit nation ready to meet any foreign invasion and demonstrate the superiority of a socialist over a capitalist system. The army’s role was expanded as Cuba sought to extend its military influence overseas, especially in Africa, and Cuba today has a large standing army (as well as a comprehensive civilian militia). Sport in Marxist Cuba clearly involved ideological and military considerations, but there were also altruistic considerations. As in other developing countries, sport in Cuba has been linked to providing health education, fitness, and well-being for the whole population. Hampson (1980) reported, for example, that in 1961 INDER organized two large gymnastic/athletic displays involving 25,000 and 70,000 people, respectively, showcasing the new capacity of the population to demonstrate its fitness.

In order to stimulate participation and discover athletic talent, INDER organized the Ready to Win physical tests (Listas para Vencer, or LPV). With their fairly high militaristic content, these resembled the Soviet program for earning the “GTO (signifying ready for labor and defense) badge.” Cuba’s athletic examinations were established in 1961. By 1964 nearly 1 million people participated in the tests (Griffiths & Griffiths, 1979), although the socialist propaganda machine has no doubt exaggerated participation, in the same way that this was done in the Soviet Union (Hardman, 1996). John Coghlan thinks that, “the number of participants were probably falsified [because] sport was used as a tool for propaganda” (personal communication, June 2, 2003). In order to generate interest in these tests, the mass media provided television, radio, and press coverage, and the postal service issued a set of stamps illustrating the various tests. No prizes were awarded, but successful participants were awarded certificates and badges. In 1965, the LPV tables were revised, and more ambitious physical objectives were set out of concern to know the population’s physical efficiency not only as a reflection of sports participation, but also as a result of better nourishment and better public health.

The limited sport facilities in Cuba before 1953 were located in the capital, Havana. INDER wished to promote sport in rural areas, too, and so devised the “Plan of the Mountains,” a scheme to involve the rural population in sport. In 1963, the Escambray Mountains (located north of Trinidad, in the Las Villas province) were chosen for a pilot study. INDER representatives visited the rural towns and villages to determine the type of sport facilities required to increase participation. The administrators did not impose their own ideas; they asked rural citizens what facilities they would like, working with them on a plan. INDER’s study pointed out a wealth of untapped sport talent in the Escambray Mountains region, and 31 installations were built there (Hampson, 1980). Each installation was attached to a farm, consisting of an outdoor area or possibly a barn-type covered building. They were not complex sports centers by any means. John Coghlan (personal communication, June 2, 2003) notes that the simple facilities allowed playing of football, baseball, basketball, and volleyball, sports requiring little capital expenditure. The Cubans were attempting to resolve a problem unique to their situation: how to promote participation in sport with so few sport facilities.

As Coghlan (1986) notes, people, not facilities, ultimately make things work. Cuba also attended to training volunteers in sports administration and coaching. From each area in which a sports installation had been sited, two volunteers were selected for a course preparing them to increase sport participation in their community. They were taught the basic rules of sports as well as coaching fundamentals, how to develop interest in a sport, and how to organize competitions. The volunteers were largely responsible for the success of INDER’s plan, freely giving time to learn skills and, on their return from the courses, to lead and motivate the population. Also key to success were scholarship students returning from studying in East Germany and required to spend 6 months working in the Escambray Mountains. INDER’s initial success led to a further sport-promotion effort in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where 22 sport installations were constructed. The proliferation of such projects resulted in organization of an intermountain regional games, further promoting sport participation in rural areas and contributing to the success of the schemes (Hampson, 1980).

In 1964, in an attempt to provide more qualified physical education teachers, Castro launched a plan known as INDER-MINED. The plan symbolized the involvement of the state in organizing sport in socialist Cuba. Its particular aim was to provide a qualified physical education teacher for every Cuban elementary school. Hampson (1980) describes the 1964 INDER-MINED summer school attended by 26,000 elementary school teachers who were taught basic physical education activities. Later, an additional 14,500 teachers were retrained to teach physical education. Such an effort would have been impossible in a less centrally controlled country, but it was a commendable scheme and suggested the advances possible given the enthusiasm of the state and its power to encourage teachers’ involvement. Although some Cuban government claims have been shown to be fictional, the quality of physical education teaching was raised.

In 1966, another sport-participation campaign was launched, called the “Plan of the Streets.” Children 6–12 years of age were given the opportunity to play sports in the streets of towns and villages each Sunday from 0800 to 1300. To promote participation, INDER organized the Consejos Voluntarios del INDER, unpaid men and women orchestrating the street activities. The Plan of the Streets, according to John Coghlan, was

a very impressive scheme in which the volunteers came forward to assist children develop. Cubans felt that the revolution had taken place, and there was a great upsurge in pride in the country compared with the dead-beat awful situation that had existed in the country with Batista and the disgusting American regime. (personal communication, June 2, 2003)

Again, voluntary service in sport was a distinctive feature of sport  throughout Cuba. Because even governments having substantial power can only do so much, it was people who made it work.

Castro’s overarching strategy was to unite the population behind common sporting goals and also to use sport in establishing a shared national identity for his young nation. The Plan of the Mountains, INDER-MINED, and the Plan of the Streets all aimed at promoting “sport for all.” The government also thought that every person should be given the opportunity to achieve excellence in sport. As INDER argued, from this reservoir of participation, top international athletes would certainly emerge, to the glory of Cuba. Athletic talent identification would take place in Cuba’s schools. Pupils who were shown in school testing programs or through interscholastic competition to be the most promising performers would be sent to Escuelas de Iniciacion Deportiva Escolar (EIDE), or Schools for Initiation into Scholastic Sport. There are 30 such schools located around the island, boarding schools where student-athletes train and are monitored while also completing a typical school curriculum. Hampson (1980) describes in detail the impressive facilities at the EIDE at Holguín in southeastern Cuba. These include its own hospital and facilities for pediatric, dental, orthopedic, and psychological care (the school’s pupils also receive supplementary food rations to compensate for the expenditure of energy while training). Such facilities are indicative of the emphasis government places on developing athletes.

Yamilé Aldama, a Cuban international triple jumper, describes how her athletic talent was identified and led her to an EIDE:

I was playing games at school, and the teachers noticed that I was fast. So I went to a sports school at the age of 10. It was a boarding school and catered for all sports including chess! We did our academic work, but also trained for two to three hours each day. We also had doctors and sports psychologists to look after us. It was good fun. (personal communication, June 4, 2003)

Admission to an EIDE usually comes at age 12, although swimmers and gymnasts may enter at 8 or 9. The schools are primarily concerned with producing the sports elite providing the basis of Cuba’s national teams. The very best of the schools is the Lenin School, situated outside Havana. According again to John Coghlan,

It is very impressive. The elitism of the Lenin School is based on the interpretation of Marxism–that is the development of intellectual and physical ability. There is the best part of 4,000 students there, and the facilities are not lavish, but they are very adequate. The school day is similar to those developed at sports schools in the U.S.S.R., where they combined the development of academic and sporting excellence. The Lenin School is involved with the development of the intellectual and sporting elite. (personal communication, June 2, 2003)

The young student-athletes receive a general education like any other child; such students who do not perform academically may lose their place at sports school. Yamilé Aldama remembers, however, that “Good athletes who were not very good academically were given extra tuition to help them on their course” (personal communication, June 4, 2003). All pupils attending sports schools must maintain their athletic performance as well as a high academic level, and they must also show strong political commitment. After several years at an EIDE, very promising pupils graduate to the Escuelas Superior de Perfeccionamiento Atlético (ESPA), or High Schools of Athletic Perfection. There are 13 of these schools, 1 in each province plus 1 in Havana (Griffiths & Griffiths, 1979; Hampson, 1980). Typically, a student-athlete remains at school until age 19, when top athletes transfer to the national training center in Havana known as Sports City (Ciudad Deportiva) and serving as well as INDER headquarters. Athletes attending the national training center have a nominal occupation but are essentially full-time athletes. Other athletes follow up EIDE and ESPA with study at the University of Havana, where athletic training is accommodated by an extension of the number of years allowed for degree completion.

Alternatively, an EIDE/ESPA student can go on to become a specialist physical education teacher, studying for 5 years at the Escuela Provincial de Educación Física (EPEF), one of Cuba’s seven specialist institutes. The entrance requirements are completion of seventh grade (minimum age 13) and an interest in sport. The very best EPEF students can go on to study at Havana’s specialist physical education college, the Escuela Superior de Educación Física (ESEF), whose graduates are expected to initiate research in sports sciences, biological sciences, and teaching techniques and are furthermore expected to work in the community to raise the general level of physical and sport education. In the past Cuba sent its best athletes to study in the Soviet Union and East Germany. Between 1963 and 1985, 45 Cubans graduated from sport-related educational programs in other countries, 35 in the Soviet Union, 6 in East Germany, and 2 each in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.

INDER headquarters at Sports City is situated on Havana’s outskirts. It is a large complex, not unlike a national sports center in England or a sports facility on a U.S. university campus. It is dominated by a 12,000-seat indoor stadium; murals featuring Ché Guevara are everywhere around the building and on the walls of apartment blocks nearby (the Argentine revolutionary is regarded affectionately in Cuba). At Sports City  Cuba’s best athletes are given advanced sports coaching and all attention necessary for them to represent Cuba at international competitions (Griffiths & Griffiths, 1979).

INDER has readily acknowledged the support of other socialist countries (Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany) for its efforts. The countries developed a system for exchange of expertise. In the period 1969–1972, more than 50 Soviet coaches helped train Cuban athletes for major international events. Initially, Cuban boxers were particularly successful, but it must be remembered that they compete with other countries’ amateur boxers; those countries’ best boxers fight professionally and are excluded from, for example, the Olympic Games. With time, Cuba also became successful in some sports more associated with developed countries: weight lifting, judo, and water-polo. During a 1976 visit to an EIDE on Cuba’s Isle of Pines (Isla de Pinos, renamed in 1978 as Isla de la Juventud), Pickering (1980) noted  priority was given to swimming, diving, water polo, canoeing, and sailing. The Cubans’ success in water sports is surprising, perhaps, as these are not traditionally associated with their culture. Ironically, as the country has no cycling velodrome, Cuban cyclists are very successful in the Pan American Games. This indicates that performance depends as much on commitment and determination as it does on expensive facilities.

What Cuba achieves in sport is, in fact, based on political philosophy, borrowed from Eastern European ideology integrating sport and politics. Successful development of sport by the Cubans must “be located in the political and social context” it occurred in (Griffiths & Griffiths, 1979, p. 260). In Cuba, sport is an integral part of political culture and is available to all. This is the case in most countries, to greater or lesser degrees, yet sport in Cuba, like sport in Eastern Europe, stands out as a “service to the people no more and no less than any other component of the culture” (Griffiths & Griffiths, 1979, p. 260).

]Cuban Sport in the 1990s: After the “Wall” Came Down[

The Cuban news media minimized events in the Soviet bloc between 1989 and 1992, for authorities were concerned that Cubans would follow that example and rise against communism. The Soviet Union, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist. This radical power shift and the resulting economic chaos in Eastern Europe precluded further material support for Cuba from communist governments it had relied on (Riordan,1999); the $5 billion annual subsidy from the Kremlin evaporated. In Cuba, the economic effect of the changes in Europe was devastating. The United States was not inclined to lift the economic boycott, and it pressured its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to follow suit. Cuba began to suffer material shortages, and in 1990 Castro implemented an austerity package known as the “Special Period in Peacetime.” Energy conservation was a top priority: Power cuts became a feature of everyday life. Factories and offices closed, bus services were reduced, oxen and carts took the place of tractors, bicycles were imported from China, and rationing was introduced.

Washington increased the pressure on Cuba, introducing further sanctions in order to destabilize the country and its president. The U.S. Congress in 1992 approved the Torricelli bill that forbade overseas subsidiaries of American firms to trade with Cuba and authorized the president to bring economic sanctions against, or cut off trade with, any country that assisted them. At a later stage, the Helms-Burton bill was introduced by Sen. Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican, who described Fidel Castro as “a bloody, murderous dictator, a brutal tyrannical thug” (CBS, 1996). The Helms-Burton bill has been described as the toughest legislation ever enacted to bring about the fall of the Castro dictatorship, and it indicated the animosity felt by some U.S. citizens towards Castro and Cuba.

In addition, unrest recurred within Cuba. Arnaldo Ochoa, a popular figure rumored to favor Soviet-style perestroika, was executed. This was clearly a message to Cubans who thought of undermining Castro, and in 1991 the Communist Party Congress reiterated the message that Cuba had no intention of following the recent example of its former allies. There was a spate of small demonstrations in Havana in 1993, and hundreds of Cubans were imprisoned while others tried to flee across the Florida Straits to the United States. That country could not handle the estimated 30,000 people who attempted to gain entry to it, so President Bill Clinton had to reverse the long-standing policy of granting political asylum to Cubans. In Cuba, many thousands of people have been imprisoned since the 1990s, perceived as threats to social and political order; known dissidents are closely watched by security forces. There are approximately 300 prisons in Cuba containing 5,000 people whose political beliefs are not to the liking of the authorities (Sugden, 1996).

However, there does appear to be momentum behind economic liberalization in Cuba. For example, private markets and restaurants have been legalized, and this creates more pressure for political change. The Cuban economy is weak, and goods are in short supply. Whenever products are available, long queues form to buy them. Many products, even basic ones, are rationed. Old Havana is dominated by dilapidated Spanish-style buildings and utilitarian Soviet-style high-rise office buildings. At night, most of the city is only dimly lit for a few hours. American limousines, relics of the 1940s and 1950s, pollute the atmosphere; old Soviet Lada cars, ancient trucks, and Chinese bicycles transport citizens around the city. The streets are in disrepair. People wait patiently at the side and in the middle of roads for a bus or a lift from a passing motorist. Children play in and out of doorways and in the streets. Adults lounge on the doorsteps or in the open-grilled windows of houses devoid of luxuries and chat, smoke, or gaze into space. In 1995, Cuba had the highest suicide rate in the western hemisphere. There is a feeling of resignation and little time for insurrection. Dissatisfaction with the regime has risen during the “Special Period,” but few dare express their feelings. Many Cubans believe the revolution has become stagnant because Castro has failed to adapt his political and economic views, despite radical changes in the former Soviet countries (Sugden, 1996).

There is still only one political party in Cuba, the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC); it maintains rigid centralized control and does not allow any opposition. Castro has survived 35 years of American sanctions, the death of the Soviet Union, and the political upheavals of 1994. He is still at center stage in terms of international events like the investiture of Nelson Mandela and 50th anniversary of the United Nations. The leadership has had to display increased openness towards the West in order to boost tourism and foreign investment. Cuba is now one of the most popular destinations for British and Canadian holiday makers on long-haul flights. Tourism has surpassed sugar as the main currency earner for Cuba, grossing $1 billion in 1995; the number of workers employed in tourism has risen from 630,000 in 1994 to 740,000 in 1995.

Predictions are that there will be over 2 million tourists by the year 2000. The presence of tourists with a “daily spending capacity in excess of $100  . . . in a country in which a doctor might earn $20 per month, and manual workers far less, presents problems, and therefore tourists are a target for unsolicited attention” (Sugden, 1996, p. 145). Young men and women patrol tourist quarters, hotels, and beaches seeking ways of making money in the tourist industry. Cuba is in need of hard currency, U.S. dollars in particular (in 1993 it became legal in Cuba to possess U.S. dollars). The Cuban peso is worthless on the international currency market, and the government will do almost anything to earn hard currency; Cubans are paid in pesos, however, making life a constant scrabble for dollars. One consequence is Cuba’s thriving sex trade, in which Cubans prostitute themselves individually and collectively to foreigners, and petty thieves make a living by robbing tourists.

Cuba is the largest and most fertile island in the Caribbean, and it ought to have the strongest economy. The breakup of the Soviet Union and Cuba’s highly centralized command economy has resulted in a weak economy. Traditionally the main element of the economy, the sugar industry has been hit by a shortage of fuel and spare parts, so harvests have declined; prices, moreover, have fluctuated on the world market. Manufacturing industries are running at 50% of full capacity, and imports have been reduced. Since 1989, Cuba has lost most of its Warsaw Pact trading partners that used to account for over 85% of its trade. Hence, Cuba has turned to Latin America for assistance, so imports from this area rose from 7% in 1990 to 47% in 1993 (Calder & Hatchwell, 1996). An increase in foreign investment is necessary, and this has been forthcoming from Mexico, Colombia, Canada, Spain, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Spain has given Cuba $12.5 million in aid and $100 million in soft loans over a 4-year period and much more in private investment associated with the tourist trade (Sugden, 1996). These countries have shown an interest in all areas of the economy including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, oil, and partnership with foreign capital (usually Spanish, Canadian, or British), through which the foreign investor receives 49% of the profit and the Cuban government 51%. Such developments are attractive propositions for European investors, who need not compete with North American companies to invest in Cuba.

Each year, Cuba continues to invest $80 million in sport, representing 2% of its gross domestic product. The government invests a disproportionate amount of its resources in its athletes, educating , feeding, and clothing them, paying for their equipment and travel. Being a top-class athlete brings opportunity for foreign travel denied most other Cubans. Yamilé Aldama offered the following about being an athlete in Cuba:

I attended an Escuela Superior de Perfeccionamiento Atlético  from the age of 17. We were trained by Cuban coaches. [Prior to 1990 there had been coaches from the U.S.S.R. and East Germany.] It was a boarding school, so we had plenty of time to train, usually about 2 to 3  hours per day, in the afternoon. But we had to study hard as well. Then I went to the University of Havana to study physical culture and took 6 years to graduate. As an athlete, the government paid for everything, and we were well looked after, as we had the use of doctors, nutritionists, and sports scientists. (personal communication, June 4, 2003)

Athletes in Cuba lead a marginally better life than the average Cuban, receiving special schooling, an apartment, a car, and an allowance for better food and clothing. When, in 1991, 70 athletes defected from Cuba, that was very irritating. Much money had been spent on their development. The most likely of Cuban athletes to defect are the baseball players and boxers, drawn to the high pay in the United States for their sports. Yamilé Aldama describes her experience as a full-time athlete this way:

On graduating from the University of Havana, I became a full-time athlete. We did not have a job so I trained for 3 or 4 hours each day under the supervision of the national coaches. We received some money, but it was not a huge amount. For the rest of the day, I relaxed at home with my parents. The system allowed me to travel to international meetings and to take part in the Olympic Games in 1996. On retirement, some of the athletes were employed within the sports system as coaches or as sports development officers.

With Cuba’s economy in chaos, its sports facilities are deteriorating. They are now outdated and in need of repair, many consisting of shabby, rusty buildings with gaps in the roof through which rain enters. The author witnessed the junior handball team training in the Sala Polivalente Kid Chocolate (Kid Chocolate Multipurpose Hall, named for a famous Cuban boxer), when there was a power cut. The athletes continued as if it were a common occurrence, undeterred by this “slight” inconvenience. The weight training room was in disrepair, but the Cubans were quite proud of its dilapidated machines.

There are no longer enough facilities to meet demand. Gone are the lavish community recreation and leisure centers, and there are few swimming pools and no velodrome or ice rink. There used to be organized gymnastic classes in clubs and workplaces along with locally organized public physical efficiency classes and groups meeting to exercise within housing communes or blocks of flats. There is no evidence of this happening now.

Fidel Castro once proclaimed that, “One day when the Yankees accept peaceful coexistence with our own country, we shall beat them at baseball too, and then the advantages of revolutionary over capitalist sport will be shown” (Pickering, 1980, p. 52). During a time when diplomatic links between the United States and Cuba have been minimal, sport has occasionally been used as a means of communication. There were exchanges in basketball, baseball, and volleyball in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, the Baltimore Orioles baseball team’s 28 March 1999 visit to Cuba was of great significance, the first time in 40 years a Major League Baseball team had played in Cuba. Although the game had no political agenda, Orioles owner Peter Angelos said, “If this leads to an improvement in relations between our two countries, and ultimately much greater contact between our two people, millions of Americans would be delighted” (Whitworth, 1999, p. 4 ).

After the revolution, professional baseball was abolished in Cuba. Cuban and U.S. teams meet only in major international tournaments like the Olympics, in which U.S. professional players do not play and which Cuban teams dominate. (Cuba in 1992 became the first Olympic champion in baseball.) During their historic visit, the Orioles beat a Cuban all-star team 3–2 at the Estadio Latinamericano (Latin American Stadium) in Havana. In the return match in Baltimore on 5 May 1999, however, Castro got his wish as the Cuban national team won 12–6. It is claimed that this was a huge propaganda coup for Fidel Castro.

Despite things like baseball exchanges, relations between Cuba and the United States remain bitter, because the countries have different motives for cultural exchanges. The United States continues to work to undermine Castro’s administration; Cuba seeks to highlight the injustices of U.S. policy. But even so, cultural exchanges may offer a vital contribution to overcoming political differences. The solution in the short term might lie with Cuba’s attempt to boost tourism and increase foreign investment, which could lead to increasing openness towards the West. This may occur simply because Cuba is in need of hard currency. The tourist industry is designed to earn as much money as possible, with resorts such as Varedero and Cayo Coco, an offshore attraction for tourists only, exclusively dedicated to tourism. These resorts feature long stretches of Cuba’s best beaches adjoined by luxury hotels in which mainly Canadian and European tourists congregate.

To boost tourism and foreign investment, the leadership must display increased openness towards the West (including the United States). Of course, the economy should not rely completely on the tourist industry: It is in the nature of many if not most tourists to prefer new destinations, as they present themselves, over established ones. Cuba is essentially an agricultural nation; therefore, an economy based on its natural resources along with the influx of tourists should be the government’s goal. In the short term, funds generated by the tourist industry should be used to sustain and improve Cuba’s infrastructure. For example, the deteriorating quality of education and physical education need to be addressed. With every new reform, the Cuban people’s expectations of new facilities rise, stoking political pressure for yet more change and a reorientation towards Western political ideology. As more money becomes available, the shabby, rusty, and dilapidated sports facilities should improve. An obvious method of sponsorship and commercialism, as in the United States, has no place in Cuban ideology.

]The Theory Underlying Cuban Sport[

Discussion of sport and the state includes ongoing debate between the proponents of different perspectives. Understanding the Marxist perspective facilitates discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of sport in communist countries like Cuba. Taking Gramsci’s neo-Marxist perspective, specifically, one would interpret political power as the outcome of a balance between force and consent (Horne et al., 1999; Poulantzas, 1973; Sage, 1997; Sugden & Barner, 1993). In Gramsci’s view, states attempt to rule either by consent or by the ideological, cultural, and moral authority of the ruling class Gramsci refers to as hegemony.

Hargreaves (1982), more specifically, says that the concept of hegemony is used to explain the contradictory features of the connections between culture and ideology and the economic and political aspects of the totality. For Hargreaves, hegemony “defines a specifically historical form of class domination, throughout civil society and the state, which becomes embedded in the consciousness as ‘commonsense’ through the ordinary experiences and relationships of everyday life” (p. 14). The state always attempts to rule by consent. This is sometimes difficult as both the ruling classes and the working classes are fragmented, and because individuals have ideas and opinions that at once support and oppose those of the dominant classes: so-called dual consciousness. The state tries to maintain hegemony despite the existence of dual consciousness, or contradictory beliefs. From this perspective, power does not reside in the wealthy elite alone. Power is distributed throughout the range of institutions, and no one group has access to all social power, which nevertheless is unevenly distributed. It is suggested that governments maintain hegemony by involving the population in a national project, such as sport, in order to construct a national popular culture.

Gramscian concepts have considerable explanatory powers when applied to Cuba. However, with the collapse of regimes in the communist societies of Eastern Europe, though the model remains influential, the pull of Marxist thought, insofar as it was identified with the official imposed state ideology, has receded (Bottomore, 1993).

More recent accounts of the role of the state include a “society-centered” approach (McGrew, 1992, p. 95) that sees the state as influenced by society, and the “state-centered” approach (McGrew, 1992, p. 99) that sees the state determining policies.A society-centered state may be viewed as weak, while a state-centered government may be viewed as strong (Horne et al., 1999). A strong state is “able to implement its decisions against societal resistance and/or can resist societal demands from even the most powerful groups” (McGrew, 1992, p. 105). A weak state fails at both of those tasks, “owing to societal resistance and the lack of resources” (McGrew, 1992, p. 105).

In terms of sport, Cuba is  certainly an example of a strong state. Sport comes under the direct jurisdiction of the government, although that could change in time, some liberalizing of the state apparatus in Cuba having already occurred. In various ways, this model provides valuable insight into the relationships among the state, power, infrastructure, and sport. In addition, globalization processes affect the international context of contemporary state activity, which may limit state autonomy while at the same time enhancing state ability to pursue wider, external objectives (McGrew, 1992). A reaction to internationalism and globalization is that local, regional, and national communities will retain those traditions developed through sport to define cultural identities, some of which are associated with the making of some nations (Jarvie, 1993).

In his analysis of the relationship between sport and ideology, Hoberman (1984, 1993) suggests that the ideological interpretation of sport is subordinate to what he calls “sportive nationalism” (1984, p. 15). This is the acceptance of high-level ideals and a competitive ethos in which scientific methods are being used to improve performance. Sportive nationalism is the ambition of the political elite in a variety of political cultures who wish to see their athletes excel at major international sports events.

For Hoberman, there are tensions between states and individuals who support sportive nationalism and those who do not. He maintains that with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its satellites between 1989 and 1992, long-standing rivalries between East and West have been reduced (although they still exist in Cuba). The international sport system continues to encourage sportive nationalism, as does the increasingly commercialized Olympic Games. Hoberman (1993) informs us that all types of political ideologies support international sport competitions “as a testing ground for the nation or a political system” (p. 17), and this is still very apparent in Cuba. More specifically, Hoberman suggests that sportive nationalism is not a single generic phenomenon, but rather a complicated response to challenges and events of different forms in different political cultures. Hence Cuba, a small country with a population of 11 million people, practices intense sportive nationalism as a desirable policy, especially prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Under INDER, its organizing body for sport, Cuba created a structure focusing on mass participation and preparation of elite athletes, to win both international stature and domestic credibility. Castro’s scheme utilized available resources to produce a successful sporting nation.

In Cuba, high-level sport creates an ideal subculture in which the communist ideology motivates athletes to perform well against their capitalist rivals, especially the United States. The regime creates an optimal environment for the development of high-performance athletes. The system in Cuba represents a perfect example of a well-organized structure that enables elite athletes to progress. Investment in sport in Cuba was and is a means of identifying the citizen with the state. Hoberman further maintains that high-level sport was, and still is, synonymous with communist countries like Cuba. Driven by ideology, communist regimes are relatively enthusiastic about developing elite athletes through the application of science; under communist regimes, certain ideological factors contribute to promoting a scientific approach to athletic performance. The organization of elite sport, however, is not necessarily the sole domain of a Marxist-Leninist ideology. Nor is reliance on scientific approaches necessarily inherently communist; the end of the communist era does not mean the end of scientific pursuit of better athletic performance, as practitioners of Western sport science are just as ambitious as communist sport scientists. The one difference, in Cuba’s case, is that development of elite athletes was and is state sponsored.

]Conclusion[

Despite many social problems in Cuba since 1990, the country is still very successful in international sport. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, Cuba won 25 medals, taking an additional 27 at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Research by Nevill and Stead (2002) indicates a very strong relationship between a nation’s gross national product in U.S. dollars and its success in the Olympics, but Cuba’s GNP is modest and it performed better than any other nation at the Sydney Olympics. It is difficult to imagine that over the next decade Cuba can maintain the same levels of success at international sport. There is evidence to suggest a halt to social programs during the “Special Period.” It seems unlikely that Castro will be able to maintain socialist structures while moving towards a free market economy. Whether or not there are social and political changes in Cuba during the next 10 years might depend on the longevity of Castro. However, it is hoped that the sport system adopted by Cuba can be fine-tuned rather than radically altered. Those involved in sport must decide how to break with the past and adopt a system based on market conditions.

]References[

BBC. (1977, August 16). Cuba, sport and revolution. [Television broadcast].

Bottomore, T. (1993). Political sociology: A classic of modern politics. London: Pluto Press.

Caldwell, S., & Hatchwell, E. (1996). Cuba. Oxford, England: Unwin.

CBS. (1996, July 18). The last revolution. [Television broadcast].

Coghlan, J. (1986). The reduction of current disparities between developed and developing countries in the field of sport and physical education. Paris: International Council for Sports Science and Physical Education, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Griffiths, J., & Griffiths, P. (1979). Cuba: The second decade. London: Writers and Readers Books.

Hampson , L. (1980). Socialism and the aims of physical education in Cuba. Physical Education Review, 3(1), 64–82.

Hardman, K. (1996). The former Soviet Union. In K. Hardman (Ed.), Comparative studies in physical education and sport (pp. 46–64). Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.

Hargreaves, J. (1982). Sport, culture and ideology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Hoberman, J. (1984). Sport and political ideology. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Hoberman, J. (1993). Sport and ideology in the post-Communist age. In L. Allison (Ed.), The changing politics of sport (pp. 15–36). Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.

Horne, J., Tomlinson, A., & Whannel, G. (1999). Understanding sport: An introduction to the sociological and cultural analysis of sport. London: E. and F. N. Spon.

Jarvie, G. (1993). Sport, nationalism and cultural identity. In L. Allison (Ed.), The changing politics of sport (pp. 58–83). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

McGrew, A. (1992). The state in advanced industrialised capitalist societies. In J. Allen, P. Braham, & P. Lewis (Eds.), Political and economic forms of modernity (pp. 65–127). Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Nevill, A., & Stead, D. (2002, July). The relationship between national sporting success and gross national product: A law of diminishing return. Paper presented at the 12th Commonwealth International Sport Conference, Manchester, England.

Petavino, P., & Pye, G. (1996). Sport in Cuba. In L. Chalip, A. Johnson, & L. Stahura (Eds.), National sports policies: An international handbook (pp. 116–139). London: Greenwood Press.

Pickering, R. (1980). Sport in Cuba. In J. Riordan (Ed.), Sport under communism (pp. 143–174). London: Hurst.

Poulantzas, N. (1973). Political power and social classes. London: Sheed and Ward.

Riordan, J. (1999). The impact of communism in sport. In J. Riordan & A. Kruger (Eds.), The international politics of sport in the 20th century (pp. 48–67). London: E. and F. N. Spon.

Sage, G. (1997). Power and ideology in American sport: A critical perspective. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Sugden, J. (1996). Boxing in society: An international perspective. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.

Sugden, J., & Bairner, A. (1993). Sport sectarianism and society in a divided Ireland. Leicester, England: Leicester University Press.

Whitworth, D. (1999, May 5). Baseball diplomacy works to Castro’s advantage. The Times, p. 41.

]Author Note[


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2015-03-20T08:53:14-05:00January 3rd, 2004|Sports Coaching, Sports Facilities, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off on Sport in Cuba: Before and After the “Wall” Came Down
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