Thirteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

In the final stretch of the London Marathon in 1981, the Norwegian runner Inge Simonsen reaches for the American Dick Beardsley and catches hold of his hand; they run a few paces, break the tape, and raise their arms in elation. Then Simonsen ruffles Beardsley’s hair. With these runners, we can see what the writer Joyce Carol Oates sees in boxing, “part dance, courtship and coupling.” Watching them race, we witness autonomy sweetly dissolve into contact. In the post-race interview, Beardsley says that it was beautiful to win together, and possible because this was not the Olympics, where the runners would have had to compete for national glory. Athletes ‘owe’ nations in contests like the Olympics, which makes a finish like this impossible. Running is not typically thought of as a contact sport, where there is an emphasis on the physical, often brutal, meeting of competitors that you find in boxing, football, roller derby, or wrestling. When contact is considered in running, it is often as a foul or disaster, where one individual causes harm to another. In this paper, I consider what contact in sport could mean if we think of the coming together of bodies in a more tender way. I also challenge the convention in defining contact in sport as always violent. Thinking with sociological research and queer theory, along with my own embodied experiences as a runner and researcher, I explore how running touches us, by considering contact outside and alongside individual, national, and team perspectives.