Stella Walsh, who was born in Poland but raised in the United States, competed for Poland at the 1932 and 1936 Olympics, winning gold and silver in the 100 meters. Running and jumping competitively for three decades, Walsh also won more than 40 U.S. national championships and set dozens of world records. In 1975, she was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, yet Stella Walsh’s impressive accomplishments have been almost entirely ignored. In The Forgotten Legacy of Stella Walsh: The Greatest Female Athlete of Her Time, Sheldon Anderson tells the story of her remarkable life. A pioneer in women’s sports, Walsh was one of the first globetrotting athletes, running in meets all over North America, Europe, and Asia. While her accomplishments are undeniable, Walsh’s legacy was called into question after her murder in 1980. Walsh’s autopsy revealed she had ambiguous genitalia, which prompted many to demand that her awards be rescinded. In addition to telling her fascinating story, The Forgotten Legacy of Stella Walsh provides a close look at the early days of women’s track and field. This book also examines the complicated and controversial question of sex and gender identity in athletics—an issue very much in the news today. Featuring numerous photographs that help bring to life Walsh’s story and the times in which she lived, this biography will interest and inform historians of sport and women’s studies, as well as anyone who wants to learn more about a Polish immigrant who was once the fastest woman alive.

A Cultural History of Sport in the Modern Age covers the period 1920 to today. Over this time, world-wide participation in sport has been shaped by economic developments, communication and transportation innovations, declining racism, diplomacy, political ideologies, feminization, democratization, as well as increasing professionalization and commercialization. Sport has now become both a global cultural force and one of the deepest ways in which individual nations express their myths, beliefs, values, traditions and realities. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Sport presents the first comprehensive history from classical antiquity to today, covering all forms and aspects of sport and its ever-changing social, cultural, political, and economic context and impact. The themes covered in each volume are the purpose of sport; sporting time and sporting space; products, training and technology; rules and order; conflict and accommodation; inclusion, exclusion and segregation; minds, bodies and identities; representation. Steven A. Riess is Professor Emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University, USA. Volume 6 in the Cultural History of Sport set General Editors: Wray Vamplew, Mark Dyreson, and John McClelland

The histories in Twin Cities Sports are rooted in the class, ethnic, and regional identity of this unique upper midwestern metropolitan area. The compilation includes a wide range of important studies on the hub of interwar speedskating, the success of Gopher football in the Jim Crow era, the integration of municipal golf courses, the building of a world-renowned park system, the Minneapolis Lakers’ basketball dynasty, the Minnesota Twins’ connections to Cuba, and more.

This timely and urgent text presents cutting-edge research exploring the complexities of barriers to inclusive access to sport and physical activity, and discusses how sport, and society, can move forward beyond the gender binary, in both theory and practice. Sport is one of the most influential, powerful, and visible institutions upholding the gender binary, even as the number of people identifying as transgender and non-binary increases rapidly worldwide. With this rising visibility, societal pressure has been increasing for the equal acceptance of gender diverse people, but while gains have been made in many areas, the participation of intersex, trans and non-binary people in sport remains harshly contested. Bringing together a world-leading team of established and emerging scholars from the UK, USA, and Australia, this collection presents an interdisciplinary analysis of current issues related to the participation of gender diverse individuals in sport and physical activity. Engaging with psychological ideas around identity, prejudice and discrimination, and sports psychology and performance, authors examine evidence that the rules, regulations, and practices that surround physical activity participation – from elite sport to sport in schools, universities, and society at large – are grounded in heteronormative, cisgendered, and sexist practices which unfairly discriminate against gender diverse people. Also including analysis of personal accounts from non-binary and transgender athletes from a range of sports, this is fascinating and essential reading for education, health, and sports professionals who work with and support gender diverse children and adults, as well as academics and students in the fields of psychology, sport psychology, sociology, law, and sports science, and those participating in, and navigating, sport and physical activity spaces.

Research Methods in Physical Activity, Eighth Edition, offers step-by-step information for every aspect of the research process, providing guidelines for research methods so that students feel capable and confident using research techniques in kinesiology and exercise science disciplines

On an April morning in 1896, unemployed single mother Stamata Revithi ran the 40 kilometers from Marathon to Athens, finishing in 5 hours 30 minutes. Barred from the first Olympic marathon, she was determined to prove herself. Through more than a century of Olympic Games history, women athletes--who were held back from swimming because long skirts were required, limited to running single-lap races because of fallacies about fragility, or forced to endure invasive gender exams--competed in spite of endless challenges. From Athens 1896 to Tokyo 2020, this history of women's participation in the Olympic Games centers on athletes who overcame entrenched inequity to gain inclusion.

"Michael Waters performs an Olympian act of storytelling, using the stories of these extraordinary athletes to explore in brilliant detail the struggle for understanding and equality." —Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life The story of the early trans athletes and Olympic bureaucrats who lit the flame for today’s culture wars. In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news; both became global celebrities. A few decades later, they were all but forgotten. And in the wake of their transitions, what could have been a push toward equality became instead, through a confluence of bureaucracy, war, and sheer happenstance, the exact opposite: the now all-too-familiar panic around trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming athletes. In The Other Olympians, Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the gripping true stories of Koubek, Weston, and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era. With dogged research and cinematic flair, Waters also tracks how International Olympic Committee members ignored Nazi Germany’s atrocities in order to pull off the Berlin Games, a partnership that ultimately influenced the IOC’s nearly century-long obsession with surveilling and cataloging gender. Immersive and revelatory, The Other Olympians is a groundbreaking, hidden-in-the-archives marvel, an inspiring call for equality, and an essential contribution toward understanding the contemporary culture wars over gender in sports.