Conclusion

Abstract

The Conclusion sums up and looks tentatively forward. By 1960, competitive sport was a vital and irreplaceable part of modern life. The older understanding of ‘sport’ as fun or showing off had lost some of its meaning. For most British history, the heroes had been military or naval, often posthumous. By the 1930s, they were increasingly sporting. From the 1950s, they were increasingly female and, from the 1960s, with the advent of television, they were increasingly seen as ‘personalities’ or ‘celebrities’ rather than heroes or champions. This experience was not unique to the British. All twentieth-century nation-states raised competitive sport as the mark of their success, nowhere more so than the Modern Olympiad, revived in 1896. In our own day, the commercialization of elite sport threatens to unhinge it from its roots in everyday life. But away from the glamour and the money, this sporting life still goes deeper than the agencies of the state and mass media. Although the meanings of sport have shifted, the shift has not been absolute, with no sharp divide between the traditional and the modern. The sporting life remains closely connected to liberty, to heart, to custom and practice, to a sense of belonging and to the bonds of friendship.