American Sport

The Russians Are Coming

The Cold War was a military contest, a fight to secure economic markets, a race for scientific breakthroughs—and it was an athletic competition. Every four years, the Olympic Games provided an arena where American and Soviet athletes could meet and wage a battle for international supremacy. “The Russians are Coming” is the story of hotly contested medal counts, secret political defections, how heroes are made, and why you did the standing broad jump in elementary school.

Bibliography:

Susan Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sports (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1994).

David Goldblatt, The Games: A Global History of the Olympic Games (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2016).*

Allen Guttmann, The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

Toby Rider, Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017).

* Special mention to David Goldblatt and his line about getting “tased from a drone”...so good I had to steal it!

What is American Sport?

Americans love sports. We are fanatics who dress in team colors, root, root, root for the home team, and live and die with the success and failure of our favorite athlete. But if we take the time to look beneath the surface and beyond the simple factual question of who won and who lost, we are also presented with some of the most fascinating stories from our nation’s past.

In this new podcast series Professor Matt Andrews goes beyond telling entertaining tales of races won, touchdowns scored, players rounding the bases, and highlights the historical significance of sports in the United States. He explains to us why sports have mattered so much in this country and he reveals how sports have actually changed the course of American history.

Sports are a highlight reel of history. Join us as we explore the stories that are more than just exciting tales of athletic competitions. ​American Sport ​is about some of the most compelling moments and significant turning points in American history.

American Sport is created by Professor Matt Andrews and is an original podcast by Trailblazer Studios, Executive Produced by Katye Rone, and Co-produced by Aurelia Belfield and Casey Helmick.