Discrimination in sport: Olympics for everyone: the dream of participation

There are authors who claim that it took them longer to search for a book title than to write entire chapters. The Berlin author Martin Krauss was spared this difficult fate and accepted the idea “Being there would be everything” It came to him in the early stages of a writing process that was also successful in the following 450 pages.

Books that address forms of discrimination in sport have recently appeared in large numbers. A systematic historical review is now available in Krauß’ book. And despite all the seriousness it does so in an entertaining form – in the best sense of the word. Anyone who knows his columns “About the Ball and the World” in the “Taz” already knows that Krauss is an exceptionally good stylist. The chapters that document the systematic discrimination against women, a phenomenon that goes back to the prehistory and early history of sport, are particularly vivid. In passing, Krauss dispels the belief, even in those who consider themselves enlightened, that men are inherently better at sports. In swimming alone, “14 of the 23 endurance records were held by women at the beginning of the 2020s.”

Like fish in water

The sources cited from the 15th and 16th centuries are also informative, in which European sailors report with amazement that they found people on African coasts who moved in the water “like fish”. Krauss wonders how it can be explained that today almost exclusively white swimmers are among the world’s elite. His answer: Between the 1940s and ’60s, 90 to 95 percent of white swimmers left a public pool as soon as blacks entered it. That – and the dilapidated infrastructure in many US suburbs – had consequences.

So what helps against ignorance and stupidity? Krauss implicitly provides a few answers. For example, moral courage, as shown by tennis player Naomi Osaka, who wrote a different name of a victim of police violence on her corona mask on each day of the tournament at the US Open in 2020 and had the role models: “The Americans changed Alice Marble and her in a revolutionary way Althea Gibson the sport,” writes Krauss. The former, a committed civil rights activist, paved the way for the latter, an African American, to win four Grand Slam tournaments between 1956 and 1958. And throughout this century, the black tennis legend Serena Williams has repeatedly pointed out how powerful racism and misogyny still are today.

Thankfully, book author Martin Krauss does not fall into the trap of alarmism in which some colleagues pirouette with relish. The belief that the description of such a phenomenon is only legitimate if it is teased with phrases like “more and more” and “increasingly” is fatal because it contradicts the impression of people who – in contrast to many authors – every week Attend sporting events. And who draw from this dynamic the motivation to break down the many forms of discrimination in sport that are still unquestioned.

Anyone who reads “Being there would be everything” will find out how much there is still to do.

Martin Krauss: Being there would be everything. How athletes continue to fight against exclusion today. A new history of sport. C. Bertelsmann, 448 pages, hardcover, €28.