Sport Record :: Sports Records Papers

Sport Record The founding father of the Olympic Movement, Pierre de Coubertin, referred to the sport record as having the same function in the ideology of Olympism as the principle of gravity in Newtonian mechanics (Loland 1995). The record was, so to speak, the eternal axiom of sport. No doubt, Coubertin was right in many ways. The fascination for records is a key element in our fascination for sports. Records are the stuff of which legends and myths are made. Johnny Weissmuller's 1924 one hundred meter freestyle swim under the minute, Wilma Rudolph's fabulous sprint records from the early 1960s, and Michael Johnson's explosive two hundred meter record run at the 1996 Atlanta Games, are all paradigmatic examples of Coubertin's ideals. The record stands as a symbolic message of human greatness and infinite possibility. However, as will be shown in this paper, the record idea is not unproblematic. First, sport records are defined. Second, based on critical, conceptual analyses, the logic of the record is examined and possible consequences are discussed of the continuous quest for new records. Finally, some reflections are presented on alternative lines of developments in sport in which the status of the record idea is drastically reduced. Record Sports, Quasi Record Sports, and Games A sport record is a performance, measured in exact mathematical-physical entities (meters, seconds or kilograms) within a standardized spatio-temporal framework defined by sport rules, that is better than all previous performances measured in the same way. Typical record sports are athletics, swimming, and weight lifting. Record sports have to satisfy strict requirements on both standardization of conditions and on exact measurement of performance. A series of sport disciplines satisfy one of these two criteria. In marathon running and cross-country skiing, performances are measured and compared by exact timing, but there are no standardized arenas. The Boston Marathon is rather different from the one in Oslo. The conditions and trails of cross-country ski races vary from race to race. We sometimes talk of records here, but in an inaccurate way. Disciplines with exact performance measurements but without strictly standardized frameworks can perhaps better be called quasi-record sports. Other sport disciplines have well-defined standardized spatial frameworks but do not measure performances in exact ways. In terms of arenas, soccer and tennis are more or less identical from match to match. Performances, however, are measured in non-precise entities like goals, points, sets, and games. Moreover, performances are in a sense relative as they depend upon social interaction with other competitors.