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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:01.744)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. Ray Van Ploo, Professor Emeritus of Sports History at the University of Sterling. And we're here to talk about his book, Games People Played, A Global History of Sport. Dr. Van Ploo, wonderful to have you on today.
Wray Vamplew (00:18.353)
good to be here. Welcome to a very dark and wet Edinburgh.
PJ (00:22.566)
So tell me, Dr. Van Ploeuw, what led you, even kind of this career in sports history, specifically this book, what led to this project?
Wray Vamplew (00:36.625)
This project is really all the things I've been wanting to write for about 40 odd years while I've been an academic sports historian, but you have to have footnotes and things, nasty academic things like that involved. This was just a discourse that I let flow, hopefully bit like this interview. It had a bit of a script behind it and then I went where I wanted. I wanted to tell people how important sport had been historically and now sometimes
PJ (01:05.189)
Hmm.
Wray Vamplew (01:06.18)
It had been unimportant.
PJ (01:09.68)
Yeah, yeah, like it ebbs and flows. So before we get into why it's unimportant, let's start with why it's important. Why is sports important to history?
Wray Vamplew (01:21.745)
Sport has existed ever since people could throw stones, stones with sticks or whatever. It goes back as archaeologists have shown, you know, five millennia, even more. Serious sport, and I want to say it's serious because we know more about it, really starts with the Greeks and the Romans in antiquity. And from then on, apart from a
spot in the what we might call the dark Middle Ages we've increasingly find out more and more about sport that occurred and increasingly we find out what occurred at the so we say the the non -elite level of sport and that's why I think it's important because people worldwide time immemorial have watched sport and played sport and got satisfaction from doing so.
PJ (02:17.794)
And if you don't mind, you elaborate a little bit on what turns sport into serious sport? You say it kind of started with the Greeks and the Romans. Is that a like codification of certain rules or what makes sport serious?
Wray Vamplew (02:32.005)
money.
PJ (02:33.207)
Ha
PJ (02:36.979)
That's a simple answer. no, but anyways, continue please.
Wray Vamplew (02:37.323)
And yeah, well, lots of people think serious commercialized sport begins with the leagues in the 19th century American baseball, college football becomes similar. But historically, money has always been involved in sport. Without money, there's no sport. There's just recreation with kids doing something maybe in the schoolyard.
or historically the gymnasium in Greece. But money gets involved because you can't run any sport without some economic decisions being taken. Now, what you might know, or sorry, what you might not know is there were huge crowds in Greek and Roman sport. The...
Panathletic Stadium, that's the one where the last Olympics were actually held in a refurbished version, held 40 ,000 people. Olympia itself held about 30 ,000 people. The Circus Maximus in Rome, where chariot racing took place, held 150 ,000 people. Now these are large crowds in every sense.
But what we have to emphasize, nobody paid to watch sport in those days. These were gifts from the emperor and other members of the elite to keep the bread and circuses, you've heard the phrase. Keep the public happy, give them what they want, and what they wanted was partly sport, but all their festivals also included music and drama, but sport was the central feature.
So I would say yes, and then to have that, of course, it's got to be funded. Where's the money come from? Taxes? Gladiators were professional sportsmen. They weren't just there to have their thumbs down and have their throat slit. There was a career structure. There were four grades of gladiator and you worked your way up the career scale unless you got killed in the meantime.
Wray Vamplew (04:56.133)
But the aim was not to be killed. The aim was to put on a display of equally qualified combatants. It was choreographed. It was a bit like World Federation Wrestling.
PJ (05:11.61)
Maybe just a little bloodier. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wray Vamplew (05:15.178)
deliberately so but where you have sharp weapons you're going to get accidents and blood and things and of course at the end if
The fighter was to be killed. The crowd would decide that.
by, now people always thought it was thumbs up, thumbs down. That never happened.
what you got was the close fist and that meant kill the guy. But you got killed not because he was a bad fighter, because you were coward. You hadn't shown courage. And all these gladiators would come from the same stable of fighters. So you're fighting your mates. So you're not deliberately wanting to go out and kill your teammates.
Add to that, where do the gladiators come from? Well, they're slaves, etc. But I said they're in stables. They're owned by a faction. And they basically are a one -stop shop for people who want to put on a gladiatorial tournament. Come to us, we'll arrange the venue, we'll arrange all the fighters, and here's the hiring fee. And therein is the key to the lack of deaths. You pay 10 % of the gladiator's value to hire him.
Wray Vamplew (06:39.985)
You pay 100 % if you're seriously injured or killed. It's not in the promoter's interest to have all these gladiators wiped out.
PJ (06:45.818)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, then you have to find replacements and that's time and money too.
Wray Vamplew (06:55.537)
The stable has to be found for replacement. So there's plenty of slaves around, can do it. Because being a successful gladiator was a way of getting your freedom. You could ultimately earn enough to get what they call manumission, pay a sum of money and you become a free person. But some of liked it so much, even when they were freed, they stayed as gladiators. It was a professional career, as was it for the chariot.
PJ (06:58.02)
Yes, right. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (07:24.747)
the Ben Hur people. These guys made substantial money. There was prize money for them. There was a hiring fee that they got. And they came, it was organized like a modern international racing stable. One of the most famous charioteers came from Spain to the Roman circus. And he won races worth three and a half million cisteres, which is
a lot of money and you will get 10 % of that.
PJ (07:59.152)
So, I mean, you mentioned Ben Herr and I've watched Gladiator and it doesn't sound like what you're describing. Are you telling me that Hollywood wasn't historically accurate? That seems really, that's surprising to me. Sorry, I couldn't resist a little bit of sarcasm there. Like what? Gladiator wasn't historically accurate? No.
Wray Vamplew (08:11.345)
Would you say all westerns were historically accurate?
Wray Vamplew (08:19.8)
You
I've actually just written a piece for the conversation looking at, I wanted to call it gladiators to academics three.
PJ (08:32.358)
That's funny.
Wray Vamplew (08:35.109)
But, I mean, the new movie has a gladiator riding a rhinoceros. It didn't happen.
PJ (08:46.18)
that's yet we're not surprised thank you hollywood
Wray Vamplew (08:48.241)
But what did happen, you also had professional huntsmen. Quite often a gladiatorial tournament, which could last three days by the way, would be accompanied by beast hunts. But it wasn't gladiators that did the killing, it was professionally trained Venetouris, were men armed with spears or short spurs and they were there that fought the lions, not the Christians so much.
PJ (09:15.066)
Yeah, yeah. And you talked about money. Yes. Right, right. Actually, so that works perfectly with kind of the next thing I was going to ask. They're going to look for ways to recoup their losses.
Wray Vamplew (09:18.789)
So as I said, I'm saying, yeah, all this needed money.
PJ (09:33.808)
From what I understand, gambling has always been kind of intertwined. What's been the relationship historically between gambling and sports?
Wray Vamplew (09:41.425)
Lots of sports existed simply because of gambling. My horse is better than your horse. Okay, well you're going to have a bet on it. Once you've got gambling, you've got rules. Because then people want to know, am I having a fair bet? Does somebody know a way where they can cheat on this and make money out of it? Now, going back to the Romans and the Greeks, we know gambling took place. We can't establish there's any organized gambling.
that really develops in late medieval times, particularly in the Parisian tennis courts. They basically were run for gamblers by gamblers.
PJ (10:11.133)
really? Okay.
PJ (10:26.704)
That was not where I thought that was going. That's really fascinating. And tennis is that old then, like middle ages. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (10:28.751)
you
Wray Vamplew (10:34.075)
That's the middle ages. It was what we refer to as royal tennis or real tennis. The stuff that Henry VIII is supposed to have played. I think he was two -factor running around the tennis court.
PJ (10:45.658)
Yeah, probably more gambling than actually playing it.
Wray Vamplew (10:48.753)
Things like cricket, that was one household against another. And rules had to be set to make sure that the people you were employing in your household were not there because they were good cricketers. A like getting a university scholarship, you know. So rules came to determine who could play, how the game would be played. And that, I think, in many sports, emanated from the fact that gambling
PJ (11:06.052)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bringing in a ringer, yeah.
Wray Vamplew (11:18.373)
was present. quite often the people who want fair play in sport say, look gambling's ruining the sport, but it's not in the gamblers interest to have a corrupt sport. People won't bet. And if you know what the winner's going to be, people won't bet.
PJ (11:36.74)
Yeah, so if you are going to be corrupt, have to hide it very, well. There has to be at least be the facade of... So I...
Wray Vamplew (11:44.465)
But of course, mean, that is increasingly harder to do because of the betting markets. In most modern sport now, and of course this is new to America, legal betting on sport. What we found in Europe and in Asia is that the betting markets can show unusual events. How come a guy in the, I think it was the third round of a tennis tournament 20 years ago, it was six.
PJ (11:55.749)
Yes.
Wray Vamplew (12:13.617)
Two sets up, six four up and the betting market was having him lose. There's so much money going on and this was showing up and it led to an investigation of why did he drop out injured in such a...
PJ (12:26.852)
Hmm. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (12:28.729)
And that opened up a whole bucket about corruption in tennis about three or four years ago.
So betting markets are able to almost show that there's unusual patterns of betting. Let's investigate.
PJ (12:45.222)
As we look at kind of the different eras of sport you kind of mentioned there's like pre -industrial and then there's the industrial and then there's kind of this digital age How has sport changed over time and we've talked about gambling one thing that crops up from a financial standpoint is Advertising and how I'm sure that came up in the industrial but now I mean it's all over players right like the shoe market for for different players that sort of thing but
Kind of starting with that pre -industrial, how have we seen sport change over time with different technological advancements?
Wray Vamplew (13:21.201)
That's an interesting one, I've got think about this one. Of course, again, go back to your Romans. The starting gates in the chariot races were all mechanically operated, so each one, the starting gate opened simultaneously. We think that's a modern invention in horse racing. What they didn't have, of course, was photo finish cameras and things like that.
PJ (13:46.31)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wray Vamplew (13:49.251)
And historically, quite often, the people were interested in records. That's, some extent, a part of the modern version of sport. Higher, faster, stronger, all this sort of thing. All the Greeks were interested in who won. That's it.
PJ (14:05.914)
Yeah. Not how far, how fast. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (14:08.529)
Yeah. What has changed, I think, is the equipment side of sport. There have been estimates that Jesse Owens, if he'd had all the modern equipment and the modern tracks that enabled you to run faster, would only have been about two metres behind Usain Bolt.
PJ (14:34.788)
And never mind the changes in diet or nutritional and all that. So we talked quite a bit about the financial side of things, the economic side of things, but in general, what have you seen throughout history of the uses of sport? What are the purposes that we get from sport? Because sport seems to be used in a multitude of ways.
Wray Vamplew (14:38.437)
Yeah. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (14:59.675)
Yes, I could go on for about eight hours now if you're ready. Well, try and it short. yeah, sport essentially, both for the participant and the spectator, is or should be, ought to be for enjoyment. mean, I've been out playing golf this morning. I'm not a very good golfer, but I hit a couple of good shots. I come back happy. I know a lot of golfers who are good golfers get miserable because they have
PJ (15:01.574)
I know yeah, the hour is never long enough. Yeah
PJ (15:21.114)
Ha ha ha!
Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (15:29.289)
bad shots which are probably better than my two good shots. But enjoyment should be at the basis of everything, that's why sports starts I think. But then for particular individuals it changes. What's the purpose of sport for someone in the NFL, the NBA, is to make money. It's to make money out of being a very good sportsman, making sure you win enough games, score enough points.
PJ (15:31.769)
Ha!
Wray Vamplew (15:59.675)
for some it goes too far, becomes an obsession. And the mental health of athletes is something now which is only just being examined. So that's for the individual. Different individuals want different things. Owners of teams, do they want their team to win or make money? That's interesting one because most Europeans would say the team is there to win games, to win championships, whereas most
American owners there to make a percentage That they don't cheat they don't say let's not win this game, but during the season they might rest players
Wray Vamplew (16:43.811)
It's being heavyweight champion of the world if you've got nobody to fight.
And that's how American sport has developed, trying to get teams who are equally competitive. So you don't have the same team winning the Super Bowl every year. Whereas in European soccer, you'll find the same few teams dominate each National League because they're all wanting to win. And so they're willing to spend money or to lose money to win championships.
PJ (17:22.11)
And it's not a question of cheating, but a good example, I think, of what you're talking about is we do see it looks like sometimes American teams will hire players or recruit players based on like Jersey sales, for instance.
Wray Vamplew (17:37.861)
Yeah, I think that's ever happened in European sport to the same extent.
PJ (17:43.6)
Yeah. Am I tracking with you? that another good example that you're talking about?
Wray Vamplew (17:44.772)
Yeah, that's a fair example. But I mean, where you do get the cheating, if you like, in American sport is college sport, where the draft systems operating. Once you're not going to make the finals, you might as well lose all your games and get a better draft version. And there's lot of evidence that this has occurred.
PJ (18:04.13)
Right? Yes. Yeah.
PJ (18:10.65)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's almost more it's less almost seen as cheating. It's just like an unwritten rule sort of thing. Like it's like culturally accepted, even though it's on the books not to do that.
Wray Vamplew (18:24.133)
Yeah, I mean, and you don't deliberately, you just put out your second string theme, you know.
PJ (18:28.452)
Yeah, you're right. Well, yeah, it depends what you mean by deliberate there. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (18:34.693)
Yeah, and you know, the same is true amongst players. There's lot of evidence that players on a multi -year contract don't play as well consistently as players who are going to face the sack next year.
PJ (18:49.294)
Right, right. If there's a question of a renewal. So, wow, they had a record year.
Wray Vamplew (18:52.571)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's not that they don't, they just let themselves go. Maybe they don't train as hard in the third year. Maybe they have a few more parties, you know.
PJ (19:00.634)
Yeah. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (19:05.169)
That's for the individuals. Most people say, what's the purpose of sport so far as the state and government is concerned? And that raises a lot of things. Is it to make a nation healthier? So is that why sport is encouraged in schools?
PJ (19:05.2)
How does it? Good.
PJ (19:12.868)
Yeah. Hmm.
Wray Vamplew (19:27.793)
Is it to win gold medals? So the kudos of the country goes up. And that all these, all these happen. But if we can deviate into the winning gold medals, it doesn't bring a lot of reflected glory on the government except for maybe six months to eight to nine months.
There's no evidence. Economists use a thing called the measure happiness. Now let's not go into the background of that, but there's reasonable surveys that are done year by year. And they'll come out and say, who's the happiest country in the world? sort of thing. Well, same thing happens as regards sport. When people have held the Olympics, there's always a home nation advantage because of all the spectators from the home nation. And it's quite clear if you look at the Japanese,
Tokyo Olympics when they couldn't flood the stadium with because of Covid, the home team didn't win as many medals as you normally expect. So there's a home team advantage but it doesn't reflect much in feeling happier as regards that government after about six months. So the best way to get it is in fact to let some other nation pay for it all.
And then you use all that money you would have spent on it in getting real quality athletes, training them hard and they go off and win the medal.
PJ (20:59.236)
And there's also, and I just want to make sure I'm kind of tracking with you, there's kind of this ambassador side to it too, right? Where, and I think that breaks off to several sides of things where it becomes a political tool to use. And that may be within the Olympics, like that's why they host the Olympics, it showcases your nation's strength. But then also just transmitting your sport abroad in general. I mean, I think we definitely saw it in colonization.
with where that where different sports are passed out. Can you talk a little bit about like the cultural ramifications, kind of the social cohesion, the way that it is built out of culture and then reinforces culture? Does that make sense?
Wray Vamplew (21:42.081)
Yeah, mean, you know, first thing to say is Britain did not invent sport and take it to the rest of the world, as many British people seem to think. There's about five streams of types of sport and only four of them emanate from Britain. Britain is your conventional one of your team, football, like football, athletics, track and field. You've got the top of my head.
You've got the Scandinavian version which concentrated on snow sports. European version which concentrated on things like bicycle riding. The Asian with martial arts, they exported martial arts to Brazil and Brazil brought them up to the United States. Modern martial arts because it's very different from what the Japanese were doing a thousand years ago.
PJ (22:16.411)
Right.
Wray Vamplew (22:40.965)
But there are different branches of sport and they came from different foundations. That's one thing to say. But certainly Britain took sport to its empire. That's why most cricket teams for years and years and had been part of the British Empire, British Dominions, British Commonwealth.
But the issue is to what extent did the receiving company, country accept those games? And to what extent did they adapt those games to their own needs?
And again, if you look at cricket, West Indies were famous for playing cricket. Slight diversion, it's the only sport in which they play as a team. Otherwise it's Jamaica, St Kitts and Evis, all these are separate in the Olympics.
But cricket did bring them together. But it didn't become their form of sport until they stopped having a white captain. And when the indigenous Jamaican, well, can't call them indigenous because most of them emanated out of the slave trade, didn't they? But till coloured Westin. Is that right? I'm never shown PC these days. Yeah. First, yeah, well, okay.
PJ (24:03.088)
Pers - Yes, persons of color I think is the appropriate term at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wray Vamplew (24:09.265)
when all these 11 persons of colour took the field for once and they played West Indian cricket as opposed to the British version of cricket forced onto the West Indies. CER J, I think he basically finished up being Prime Minister of Jamaica, he wrote a book about what do they have cricket know, who only cricket know, and he was saying politically it became very important in the West Indies.
between the various islands competing against each other.
I think I've detoured a little bit there.
PJ (24:46.116)
No, it's actually, I'd love to pick up on what you were talking about with the combat sports, because that's another great example of how, it comes from a culture, but then it gets adapted to their needs. Can you talk about that journey from, say, China and Japan to Brazil and then to the United States? Because UFC has become huge in the United States.
Wray Vamplew (25:10.661)
Yeah, course, we Britain claimed credit for that because there was a couple of Scotsmen who went to Brazil, and I can't remember their names now, but they developed Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which was the forerunner of cage fighting, I suppose you might say. And they came to America in the 70s or 80s and took on all comers at any style.
PJ (25:16.336)
Yeah
Wray Vamplew (25:40.057)
And that became so popular, American corporations step in, the money's there, it becomes a big business.
PJ (25:43.098)
Yeah. Yeah, yes. Yeah. There is something. And I'm good.
Wray Vamplew (25:51.557)
They have to say, I mean, if I'm allowed to say this, of course, the World Federation Wildlife Fund, World, yeah, they had the same initials as the World Wildlife Fund and they had to stop that title because it wasn't seen as quite the same as sort of men fighting and animals being protected.
PJ (26:12.782)
Yes, yeah, yeah. So it became WWE. Yes. Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. How did it go from, and I'm not really familiar with this story. I'm not sure if this is part of the book, so I apologize, but how did it, combat sports go from Japan and China to Brazil though?
Wray Vamplew (26:16.515)
Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (26:32.879)
I honestly don't know. As simple as that. It just, I think the Gracie brothers, the Scotsman had been in Asia and that's why they went to Brazil. Brazil was already doing their version of judo then, so they didn't invent it. They just took a different style of fighting. Because judo actually is not vicious. It's supposed to be how to overcome your...
almost like Tai Chi, it? Tai Chi with blows. And they took it a step further and made it lot rougher and hence a lot more exciting to an audience. See, sumo wrestling has never traveled, has it? Most of us can't see the point of two big fat men pushing each other. But the Japanese, it's a tradition, it's still going strong. Though, of course, the last 30 years,
Japanese have not had their own champions have come from Hawaii or Bulgaria
PJ (27:36.112)
Hmm. Well, and the fascinating, think, do you think part of it is because of all the culture surrounding that? You can't just transport, like cricket, think transports because it's easily playable. I feel like when you look at that.
Wray Vamplew (27:50.614)
sorry, I'll take... Cricket is not easily playable.
PJ (27:54.342)
No, excuse me, I'm sorry, equipment wise. Equipment wise, it's easily playable.
Wray Vamplew (27:59.941)
Well, soccer's more easy. All you need for soccer is a ball and a pair of jackets for goal posts.
PJ (28:05.636)
Yes, absolutely. for that kind of, for sumo wrestling, really built into that is an entire commitment of someone's way of life. There's a huge, like much more, I wasn't contrasting, like there's a reason football's the most popular sport in the world. I mean, it's so easy to do, right? But for sumo wrestling, if I'm tracking with you, there's a lot that goes into that, right? Like when you look, I've seen a few videos on the diets that they have to do.
That's a full life commitment and there's significant financial commitment.
Wray Vamplew (28:38.449)
Yeah, and I don't know if you've ever watched the tournament, they have, I think it's 12, no, six tournaments here every two months, and the same group of wrestlers come together and fight. Though some get, it's a bit like live golf, the bottom few get dropped out and some more came in. But they also, as part of that, it's a show as well. It's a spiritual show, the incenses spread around the ring. And there's also young children, fat, obese.
10, 11 year olds who are paraded as part of this. They're not doing any sumo at the time, but they just show, you know, the large body is venerated among sumo.
PJ (29:17.918)
And how does this work? I mean, you talked about the incense and like the religious sides of things, or maybe the ritualistic would be a better term there. But how is the sport function for social cohesion, like bringing people together?
Wray Vamplew (29:34.769)
It doesn't, it doesn't.
PJ (29:36.676)
Hahaha!
Wray Vamplew (29:39.738)
Do you know the difference between what we call bonding social capital and bridging social capital?
PJ (29:45.368)
I'm not sure that I do, please.
Wray Vamplew (29:47.057)
Bonding social capital is where you use sport to create a network. Playing golf with your boss, making sure he wins. But it tends to be clubs, sports clubs are the obvious example. Who joins sports clubs? Usually there's a first it's to play, what's the second one? is it an old boys club?
people from the same college, people from the same school, people from the same religion, people from the same street. And they get together. It's like -minded people playing sport together. Bridging capital is where you go across, and this is what a lot of clubs are trying to do today. It's bridging out. We're not just going to have white men here. We're going to go for the ethnic minorities.
bring them in. But all the evidence is, historically, people didn't want that. The ethnic minorities might have wanted it, but in the end they didn't. They went off and formed their own sports clubs. They were rejected FC, you might say, something like that. So I think sport creates communities, but usually in the first place, from people who want it to be part of the same community.
And that's where you get into politics of sport. Picking a team is a political decision.
PJ (31:18.948)
Hmm. Hmm.
Wray Vamplew (31:21.765)
Why don't we pick the quarterback who didn't want to kneel for the American national anthem? It's a political decision. It wasn't anything to do with him, how good or bad he was as a player. It was his political motivation. And I think that happens very low. We're not having that guy in the team. He's gay. But it's changing. But it's not changing fast enough for what I would like.
PJ (31:44.905)
Yeah. Yeah.
Wray Vamplew (31:50.788)
I'm a grumpy old man.
PJ (31:52.24)
Hahaha
Yeah, mean, and we see, so sometimes the bridging works, sometimes it doesn't. I the example, you know, I know baseball probably isn't big in Scotland, but Jackie Robinson. but there's political, there was like clear motivation, obviously a great player, but his owners had to take a risk. Sorry, let me rephrase that. The owners of his team had to take a risk to have him play and they had to be behind some kind of agenda because
otherwise that would have been frozen out.
Wray Vamplew (32:27.771)
Yeah, and also this is one of the arguments why people think Americans were more concerned with money than with winning. A lot of the southern clubs would not integrate. Sorry, clubs in the southern states would not integrate because they feared it would affect crowd size. So they sacrificed the better players because of the wrong color, which could have won them something and stuck to what brought the crowds in.
PJ (32:55.92)
Hmm. So we see political and social mixed up with economic, I mean, that's just, that makes sense.
Wray Vamplew (33:06.118)
Does sport reflect society? Yes it does.
PJ (33:08.454)
In what sense would you say it shapes society? Is there a back -and -forth relationship there?
Wray Vamplew (33:16.613)
Hmm.
think the people who really push sport would say, yes, we create a better society. We believe in fair play. We try and instil this into youth. I'm more cynical. I believe that original STEM started on the first sports field.
Wray Vamplew (33:47.333)
When people want to win, they will win it all. You may not be aware, they... Go back to our Greeks again.
you came out of the what's called the sanctuary and you paraded all the athletes up to the stadium. Along that stadium were statues paid for by fines on those that cheated. Two millennia ago.
PJ (34:25.392)
What would you say are some common misconceptions that people make about sport? It almost sounds like you're kind of hinting at one earlier when you said, I'm a little more cynical than rah rah sport, sport makes us better people. But what are some other common misconceptions of sport that you see?
Wray Vamplew (34:35.857)
Yeah, yeah.
Wray Vamplew (34:43.761)
Well, the obvious one is, know, sport was big, big match sport is not a modern phenomenon. Things that have surprised me might be the way to look at it. You know that when the Romans, another Roman one, they used to have mock, mock, mock sea battles.
all these vessels, all the rowers, armed gladiators, gladiators, this was gladiators, were fighting, fighting on these boats, spectators up the hillsides watching them, usually on lakes, but in fact the Coliseum initially was flooded to allow it in the Coliseum, so you had 80 ,000 people watching that. But how many people were involved in that actual battle as participants? 18 ,000. That's more than you used to get in the
initial Boston and New York marathons participated. Medieval days, knights in shining armor, jousting, all this sort of thing, they were all professionals. They fought battles in which they could capture the opponents and then ransom their armor and their horses and their men back to them. It was an accepted part of it. There was a tour in circuit just like the PGA.
They play a tournée every two weeks and they would have up to 13 ,000 nights plus their retinue involved. mean, you only get, well, how many people do you get on a footy pitch?
PJ (36:28.262)
Yeah, yeah, got your 22 and then you got some people on the sidelines, yeah.
Wray Vamplew (36:31.279)
Yeah. And the other thing that tends to get ignored, see I'm saying myths, it's more this myth, what has sport done? Sports tourism, big business these days. The Olympics was for Greeks only, but those Greeks came from all over what was basically the known world, because that's how the Greeks, Greeks have spread, was the Greek diaspora coming.
PJ (36:50.692)
Mm.
Wray Vamplew (36:59.633)
coming back to show there were true Greeks coming up. bit, you know, to change it slightly that all Muslims have to go to Mecca once in their lifetime. Same sort of thing. And that created business. There's a souvenir industry back in 500 BC. Sorry, 500 BC, BCE we say these days. For sports tourism, nothing new.
Uhhh
The Knights, tourneys, people went, traveled 500 miles to go to watch these. And each individual town would set up, in medieval days, would set up archery tournaments. I you've got to remember, there was really no national armies anywhere. Towns had to be prepared to defend themselves. And one way to do that was, what's the weaponry at the time? Boznaros, okay, we'll have archery tournaments.
But they would then set up stands in town, people would come from all the neighbouring town, markets would be put on. So it became a form of business. You talk about sponsorship, that's exactly what was happening. The town would sponsor these events for defence purposes, but it was sport that people wanted to see, not the defence.
PJ (38:25.286)
and they are kind of utilizing the competition to make people better at skills they need it.
Wray Vamplew (38:30.501)
Yes, because people are not in practice, if there's money to be had by winning something, you'll try harder.
PJ (38:41.222)
So from a historiographical, how you study this history, are there any unique challenges to studying the history of sport?
Wray Vamplew (38:52.197)
The obvious one, and one I always ignore, is what is sport?
Wray Vamplew (39:00.081)
There's no Greek word for sport.
not until you get into the Latin that the Vludis Ludi comes in. So I've always tended to say if people were getting entertained by it and it has certain features like somebody against somebody else, it's a sport.
PJ (39:22.342)
So it has to be competitive and entertaining, roughly.
Wray Vamplew (39:25.061)
Yeah, well, I think, yeah, I think entertaining. Even if it's only the participants that are getting entertained. Back to my point about enjoyment. See, things change. E -sports. E -sports are in. E -sports are going to be, I think they're either going to be in the next Asian Games or it's going to wait for the one after that.
old timers would say that's not a sport that's people pressing buttons is chess a sport? there's a big debate about that but it's been accepted look at all the postage stamps that comes out of eastern europe with chess players on them except the russians they've now been banned haven't they for political reasons i've lost my chain of thought just now
PJ (39:58.97)
Yeah.
PJ (40:19.36)
We were talking about what is sport. Yes, esports, yes.
Wray Vamplew (40:19.697)
esports, right, esports, right. okay. Recent Olympics? Dancing?
PJ (40:31.635)
the break dancing, yes.
Wray Vamplew (40:35.662)
Is it a sport? To me, yeah. But it's the people in breakdancing say not really, it's a cultural exposition.
PJ (40:48.196)
Well, until we find out that the one lady cheated and then everyone's like, it's definitely a sport because you can cheat at it.
Wray Vamplew (40:54.225)
Yeah. But he said that the Spanish would never admit that bullfighting is a sport. I wrote about 20 years ago, I did a survey of sports museums and I contacted people involved in bullfighting in Spain and they were adding, it is not a sport, it is art.
PJ (41:14.48)
That's fascinating. I didn't know they made that distinction. Did they give any rationalization behind that or are they just very, just firm on the line?
Wray Vamplew (41:15.845)
Thank you.
Wray Vamplew (41:23.633)
I've talked to people, what do they say, not to be quoted, my name is not to be quoted, and essentially I think it is that they accept the bull has no chance, therefore it is not really competitive.
PJ (41:31.664)
Yeah
PJ (41:43.206)
interesting.
Wray Vamplew (41:43.483)
But it may be, you know, like Yosuimo, a lot of it's ritualistic.
PJ (41:52.07)
Dr. Van Ploew, it's been awesome having you on today. I want to be respectful of your time, but before we wrap up, I did want to ask for our audience, what's one thing that you would really just kind of give for them to meditate on, to think about over the next week as they see sport around them, as they, you know, maybe they go to local bar, they see it up on the TV or they're in their homes on their phone. When they see sport, what is something that they should stop and think about?
Wray Vamplew (42:23.493)
I would say, why isn't it the front page of the newspapers rather than in the sports section?
PJ (42:31.204)
Why isn't it? Go ahead.
Wray Vamplew (42:31.249)
Because I think it is, yeah, because it's political, it's business, it's...
socially confronting.
Wray Vamplew (42:47.119)
all the things that get headlines in the other parts of the newspaper or on your webcasts or your podcasts or whatever, it's just as important as those. I would say if you want some things up, what you want to say to people is, is sport important? No, it's not as important as politics because that determines very much how we live our lives. It's not as important as warfare.
Wray Vamplew (43:19.931)
but of the other things, it's the most important of the lesser important things.
PJ (43:30.032)
Dr. Van Ploeuw, it's been a joy having you on today. Thank you.
Wray Vamplew (43:33.989)
That's great PJ, thanks for having me.
PJ (43:38.992)
So how did you think that went?
Wray Vamplew (43:42.525)
as a damn god. Yeah, loved it.
PJ (43:44.986)
Yeah, awesome.