Speaker
Description
Sports, and in turn, sporting events, shape us mentally, physically, and socially, as much as they bond us collectively. Thus, each society has its own definition of what constitutes an outstanding moment in sports history. In this context, our conference analyzes, with the concept of frames (Goffman, 1974), what it takes to "make history" in sport and how this concept has evolved: are we marking history more today than yesterday? Does it suffice to break a record through a result? Or rather, must you break a social barrier (becoming the first athlete of a specific social category to do so)? To answer these questions, we analyzed 758 newspaper and magazine articles from Europe (L’Équipe and Le Monde) and North America (USA Today and Sports Illustrated) from the last three decades (2003; 2010; 2020). Our study has shown that: 1) As time passes, more sports history is made; 2) Individual performances mark sports history above collective performances; 3) There has been a growth in recent sporting history of social dimensions. Thus, we do not mark sports history independently of the society in which we live. Indeed, to mark sports history is to mark the normative, social, and cultural history of a society at a specific time. The emphasis on individual performances reinforces the myth of the democratic ideal of sport (Queval, 2004), and the breaking of social barriers (gender, ethnic origin, etc.) demonstrates modern concerns for inclusion and the fight against discrimination in Western societies.
