This is a book of stories about sports persons: sports stars, less-known
athletes and relatively unknown physical education teachers and sports
scientists. More exactly, these 13 essays all deal with problems
associated with writing sport biographies - how does an author navigate
among myths and truths? Why do some athletes live on in the public mind
while others, whose achievements may have been greater, fade from
memory? Are sports biographies different from those dealing with people
from the non-sporting realm? The subjects range from direct theoretical
explorations of writing sport biographies to discussions of biographies
themselves. Topics include the following: The German-American sports-
and physiology scientist Professor Ernst Jokl; Danish gymnastics
pedagogue Niels Bukh; two studies of physical education teachers,
including Martti Silvennionen's work on autoethnographical pedagogy in
PE teacher training; women's sport in Denmark's intermediary period of
1920-1950; writing about women and sport, and the Finnish worker sports
movement experience from a woman's viewpoint. Another essay observes the
contrasts in the legends of two sports stars in twentieth century
Britain, the English footballer Jackie Milburn and the Olympic athlete,
Godfrey Brown. Other topics include the English sports hero from the
1940s and '50s, Denis Compton, the Swedish footballer Lennart Nacka
Skoglund and the Danish cyclist Niels Fredborg.Writing Lives in Sports
provides lively discussions of individual sporting lives as well as
important methodological and conceptual questions for writers and
biographers of sport figures and other genres.
