Building a Better Bike: The Evolution of the Modern “Safety Bicycle”

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Leisure activities, Old technology, Popular Culture, Society & Culture, Sport

The absence of cars in cities during the coronavirus lockdown has been a boon to cyclists, both for the recreational kind and for commuter cyclists. There has been an “unprecedented surge in popularity” of bicycle traffic—even in the land of the automobile, the United States—with many bike shops since March reporting a doubling of their average sales…such is the demand now that bike manufacturers can’t build them fast enough [‘Cycling ‘explosion’: coronavirus fuels surge in US bike ridership’, (Miranda Bryant), The Guardian, 13-May-2020, www.theguardian.com ; ‘Australia is facing a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ as cycling booms, advocates say’, (David Mark), ABC News, 16-May-2020, www.abc.net.au ] DA6811A6-36BE-4DE2-8932-FD04CEA9AE65⇧

The renewed present enthusiasm to take up bike-riding in response to the pandemic recalls earlier periods of “bike-mania”in the West—late 1860s to mid-1870s and the 1890s—as the humble bike was evolving into its modern form. Credit for the basic look of the standard, no-frills bicycle as we we think of it today is generally given to John Kemp Starley for his 1885 invention, the “Rover Safety Bicycle”. The Rover’s similar-sized wheels, chain drive attached to the crankshaft and rear wheel, diagonal frame and relative lightness (20kg) retains the basic design of the modern bicycle [‘Pedal Your Way Through the Bicycle’s Bumpy History’, [Evan Andrews),

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⇧

The bike by various other names

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1890s, the world gone crazy for the bicycle

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(Image:

Instrument of freedom and independence
Health-wise physicians gave their approval. And ordinary folk suddenly were able to explore the countrysides, visit towns and places – far and near. Just about everyone, it seems, got into the act of riding bicycles – royalty and rulers in places like Russia, Zanzibar and Afghanistan took up cycling; First-wave feminists – Susan B Anthony declared that “bicycling emancipated women more than anything else”; women were especially enthusiastic as the activity allowed them to escape their voluminous and cumbersome Victorian skirts for more practical attire such as bloomers. When the lighter, less unwieldy safety bicycles came along, police in the UK were quick to adopt them in their work. Likewise, the NYC police commissioner Teddy Roosevelt mounted the city police on bikes to apprehend the new “public danger” of ‘scorchers’ (“speed demon” cyclists ) (Smith).

The conventional explanation for the demise of the bicycle boom is the rise of the commercially-viable automobile, but other factors may have contributed to the bicycle’s decline, such as the rapid growth of the early mass transit systems such as streetcars and trams which were a more practical alternative to bikes, especially in bad weather (Britannica).

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(Source: Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal)

Endnote

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Pandemic Pastimes: Armchair Epidemiology 101 – Curiouser and Curiouser

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Medical history, Popular Culture, Public health,, Science and society, Sport

BC48FDE2-4DF8-4771-9E1B-C1F7C0F2963CFor most of us the coronavirus crisis is, if not all-consuming, at the front and centre of just about everything at the moment. This pandemic, this pandemocracy, is all over social media, and one of the most curious by-products is how the emergence of this novel virus has spawned a novel social media and sociological phenomena called the armchair epidemiologist… instant experts with their own special take on how COVID-19 should be handled, what it’s all really about, the whole thing de-mystified and unravelled in a nutshell. As you will see below, it is unfortunate at this pivotal moment that the practice of responsible social distancing hasn’t always been matched by the practice of responsible social media distancing.

29CD1A1A-6CD9-403A-B9C0-DA10957DA4D9Why is armchair epidemiology a burgeoning sub-industry at the moment? One general explanation lies in the character of the pandemic itself. It’s a troubling time right across the globe, people are naturally anxious about the disease—especially if you are unlucky enough to be living in a country that is one of the major hotspots at the moment—so talking about it can be a calming mechanism of sorts, working it all out in your head so it makes sense. As Noah Feldman neatly puts it, “one way for humans to cope with anxiety is to seek rational mastery over observable phenomena”. This becomes doubly the case in this situation because of the nature of this particular ‘beast’. The lack of “concrete empirical data” on the disease, the shortcomings in the science as it stands now, means that even amongst the genuine experts, uncertainty reigns (‘Will the Armchair Coronavirus Experts Please Sit Down’, Noah Feldman, Bloomberg: Opinion, 25-Mar-2020).  The experts have disagreed over which is the correct strategy to follow in the fight to contain the virus, what works, what doesn’t, full lockdowns, “let it rip” herd immunity, whether or not to use face masks, etc✱. Add to this the questionable way some countries have handled their outbreaks—eg, the slowness of for instance Italy, the US and Britain to take decisive steps in the early phase of the pandemic—the result, a critical failure to get on top of COVID-19 before the curve took off on it’s rapid skyward trajectory. Into this void the amateur epidemiologists have been only too happy to step.

BBFEF828-0542-42ED-992E-8C9D7E26485FOf course another reason for the house-bound commentariat directing it’s focus and energies towards the COVID-19 debate, could be sheer boredom. There’s only so much time on any given ‘Groundhog’ day you can spend bingeing on modish, ”must see” television series before you start to suffer mental fatigue and withdrawal symptoms.

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(Image: www.rfclipart.com)

Another explanation of Feldman’s that I am taken with is armchair epidemiology expert as a substitute for armchair sport expert. The suburban “Weekend Norms” of the world ritually delight in analysing the games of football and other sports they watch on the ‘box’ and on Fox,  but courtesy of the pandemic the sporting calendar is denuded, the presence of live sport on our screens is already a fading memory. The average punter, Feldman suggests, may simply, by necessity, have switched from analysing sport to analysing the coronavirus phenomena (the only game in town!).

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(Image: www.geneticliteracyproject.org)

Some observers of the armchair epidemiology contagion have noted an element of the Dunning-Kruger Effect at work here – “a cognitive bias in which people overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific domain” (‘Psychology Today’)◇. This contends that someone’s legitimate expertise in another field “gives them a false sense that their speculation and predictive powers are more informed” than the general person…and thus in this time of global upheaval, they don’t hold back in telling everyone  (‘Elon Musk is the Ultimate Armchair Epidemiologist’, Alex Lauer, Inside Hook, 01-May-2020, www.insidehook.com). Tim Requarth’s example are certain Silicon Valley “data wonks” who have produced “superficially convincing but flawed epidemiological analyses” and “sweeping predictions” of the pandemic to arrive at a conclusion that the emergency restrictions are an overreaction, contradicting the advice of public health experts. The criticism of much of the amateur epidemiology indulged in by non-public health professionals is that they tend to throw data round randomly, get the basic principles skew-whiff and make faulty assumptions. Spare us from the “good intentions” of a plague of DK-19 experts!  (‘Please, Let’s Stop the Epidemic of Armchair Epidemiology’, Tim Requarth, Slate, 26-Mar-2020, www.slate.com).

 

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✱  or perhaps, like President Trump, they just don’t trust experts, medical or otherwise
◇ described by one cynic as “people lacking the ability to understand their lack of ability”

 

Elite Sport in the Age of COVID-19: A Sporting World in Hibernation

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Society & Culture, Sport

The spectacle of sport—either viewed from the bleachers, the corporate box, or beamed into punters’ lounge rooms—is in a COVID-induced drought just about everywhere in the world. The sports’ governing bodies find themselves in the “Twilight Zone”, sustaining a massive hit to their revenue sources and at the same time desperately trying to keep their sport relevant to the aficionados. How well they’ve managed to keep their heads above water varies from sport to sport and from country to country.

All the world’s domestic cricket leagues are in indefinite abeyance and all upcoming test fixtures have had the red-ink drawn through them. National bodies like the ACB (Cricket Australia), suddenly with time on their hands, have more carefully examined their finances and discovered worrying “bottom-lines”. Many are anxiously pondering how they are going to connect all the dots moving forward (as they say). Meanwhile, international cricket’s online bible, ESPN Cricinfo, has taken to filling its content with nostalgia trips  – substituting the now non-existent live scores with scoresheets of some of the more memorable past world cups.

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Boxing has also delved back into the sport’s history, not to re-project grainy footage of epic bouts from the pugilistic past onto screens, but to stage simulations of the fights that could never be …pitting the heavyweight greats of different eras against each other in contests to ‘decide’ who is boxing’s GOAT, leaving fans to agree or disagree with the computerised outcome. The overriding objective, to keep the fans’ appetites whetted – until the actual thing becomes a reality again. Motorsport, with the Formula One series a non-starter, has followed boxing into simulation substitution, staging its first “Virtual Grand Prix”, E-racing proving a real hit for for the “petrol-head” fandom [‘Coronavirus: The sports turning to gaming during lockdown’, (Joe Tidy), BBC News, 26-Mar-2020, www.bbc.com/]. In contrast to boxing, the theatricality of professional wrestling in the US gets the go-ahead…in Florida at least that’s the case, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has deemed WWE wrestling an “essential service” to Floridians and has has given the ‘sport’ his gubernatorial blessing✱ [‘Pro wrestling company WWE is an essential business during the coronavirus pandemic, Florida Gov. DeSantis says’, (Yelena Dzhanova), CNBC, 14-Apr-2020, www.cnbc.com].

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(Image: virtuair.com)

The rugby codes have pulled down the shutters everywhere the game with the odd-shaped football is played. In Australia the 15-a-side game, rugby, has had its ongoing revenue source cut off, like everywhere else, but the difference is the ARU (Rugby Australia) was already in a parlous financial situation…before the virus hit. Now the code in Australia is undergoing an existential crisis, its own trial-by-fire. For the bedevilled ARU, massive player pay-cuts plus a wholesale bail-out from the IRB is the most likely end-game. The rugby league variant of football is in a state of flux as well. With the NRL, the sport’s national body, discovering that, despite its annal multi-million dollar TV and Foxtel revenue streams, it has found its cash reserves are sorely depleted. The NRL at least has a plan for restarting games, which it has styled the “Apollo Mission”. Mustering up the unilateral front of a Donald Trump, it announced early in April that it’s target date to resume playing was 28th May. Unfortunately, it didn’t consult with the relevant government authorities before taking this solo step. Given that, a) the state borders remain closed in Australia, and b) rugby league is a heavy body contact sport, the NRL’s 28th May quest may just turn out to be “mission impossible”. South of the Murray River, the AFL, custodian of the football code known colloquially as “Aussie Rules”, having formed a coronavirus ‘cabinet’ to chart the way forward is thinking aloud about different options for a possible winter restart (another “watch this space” scenario) [‘Mid-winter return likely for AFL restart after coronavirus shutdown’, (Mark Duffield), The West Australian, 17-Apr-2020, www.thewest.com.au].

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(Source: ESPN.com)

Interestingly, about the only sport in Australia at the elite level given the green-light to continue is horse-racing (and it’s offshoot harness racing) – sans on-course spectators❂. This is perhaps surprising considering that horse-racing seems to fail the social distancing test (involving as it customarily does a conga-line of 16 jockeys in pretty close proximity). But the so-called “Sport of Kings”, if no longer seeped in the landed aristocracy, is intimately connected with the corporate “Mr Bigs” of society. Considering this and the kind of very serious money thoroughbred racing attracts, that it’s managed to secure a special exemption shouldn’t really surprise. Money talks, as the cliche goes [‘Why racing is so keen to avoid shutting its doors’, (Damien Ractliffe), Sydney Morning Herald, 25-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].

The sports calendar’s prospects for the rest of 2020 are looking at the moment pretty much a blank slate. Most of the sporting tournaments around the globe once the COVID-19 crisis, were catapulted into a state of suspended animation… some not officially abandoned at this stage but just kind of hovering in the ether, nothing really happening. After much hand-wringing Japan and the IOC finally swallowed a bitter dose of reality and pulled the plug, postponing the Tokyo Olympics for 12 months (although it’s still going to be called the 2020 Olympics whatever year it’s done). This year’s Wimbledon has been cancelled, so the strawberries and cream set will need to find another diversion for June-July. US basketball and baseball were among the first franchises to be halted. The US Masters has been canned for the year and the remaining golf majors have been postponed to a (fingers-crossed) TBA date. The IPL was postponed indefinitely but the scale and magnitude of India’s struggle against the coronavirus doesn’t bode well for its 2020 chances. The cricket T20 World Cup for later this year, a case of wait and hope.

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🔺 In a game in Brazil in March before pro-football was suspended, the Gremio team took the field wearing masks to protest the dangers players were exposed to during the pandemic 

What of the world game, football, what’s it’s current state of play? Well, just as gloomy in the main, all of the world’s major leagues have been suspended. The showcase EPL is optimistically hoping to resume in summer, none of the clubs more so than Liverpool FC, which having dominated the season up to the disruption, sit tantalisingly close but still short of claiming the league title. But world soccer is not entirely without ‘premier’ league football in the time of coronavirus. A handful of maverick countries have ploughed on regardless, or should I say, in disregard (or even denial) of the virus crisis. Belarus, with it’s “gung-ho” president, continues to play football⊰ – in stadiums with supporters in attendance, shoulder-to-shoulder, despite having recorded nearly 4,800 corona cases to date. The Vysshaya Liga, virtually unknown outside Belarus prior to the crisis, has by default, been elevated implausibly to the centre of the football universe. Fans from other soccer-starved countries like England have adopted Belarusian teams and now keenly follow the fortunes of these proxy clubs from afar. Both Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, the governments of which have buried their heads in the sand over the COVID-19 pandemic, have followed Belarus’s lead in keeping their peoples sated with bread and association football [‘In Belarus, unlike most places, soccer plays on despite virus’, (Yuliya Talmazan), NBC News, 20-Apr-2020, www.nbcnews.com].

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🔺 Taiwanese baseball: synthetic “seat-fillers”, creating the illusion of making the stadiums look less empty during games (Photo: Cronkite News)

Some mass-supported sports played a few games behind closed gates before calling a halt to the season due to the pandemic. Many of the players commented on the strangeness and the flatness, the lack of atmosphere in the games. Taiwan, one country which has managed an effective response to coronavirus, has come up with a novel and innovative way of countering this problem. The country’s new baseball season opened a week ago with a ban on spectator attendance…in a bizarre move the organisers  have installed dummies and cardboard cut-outs of fans in the bleachers, a contrivance intended, I guess, to make the players out on the diamond feel like they’re not all alone [‘Dummies replace fans at baseball in Taiwan’, Reuters, 14-Apr-2020, www.mobile.reuters.com].

Postscript:  Odd man out in the Americas
All the football-obsessed countries of Latin America have suspended their 2020 competitions due to the Covid-19 crisis except one, Nicaragua. The refusal of the Central American state’s president, Daniel Ortega, to halt Liga Primera soccer games (and other sporting events) is in keeping with his general, ‘ostrich’ stance of not taking any preventive measures against the pandemic✧ [‘Nicaragua Not Backing Down Despite Criticism Over Lax Measures During Pandemic’, (Carrie Kahn), NPR, 18-Apr-2020, www.npr.org] .

⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳

✱ which no doubt pleased President Trump, a longtime friend of WWE head ‘honcho’ Vince McMahon
❂ horse-racing has been suspended in New Zealand, the UK, Ireland and South Africa among others, but still receives the thumbs-up in horseracing-crazy Hong Kong and California
⊰ and ice hockey, another favourite game of the president
✧ the only other country that didn’t close down it’s domestic football competition, the tiny African nation of Burundi, finally called a temporary halt to matches earlier in April

The FA and the 1921 Ban on Women’s Football: The ‘World Game’ – “Quite Unsuitable for Females”

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Gender wars, Leisure activities, Social History, Sport, Sports history

Britain’s sporting lingua franca has by general consensus long been football (better known as ‘soccer’ in Australasia and the United States). For the bulk of the 19th century the “round-ball game” was exclusively the domain of men, but by the 1890s women in Britain were embracing the popular outdoor pastime with passion. Women’s clubs, many based in North London, were formed at this time, beginning with the British Ladies’ Football Club (BLFC), comprising mostly middle-class women (see Footnote).

Working class women discover football
What really kicked the sport along for women however was World War I. The escalating demand on manpower to feed the war effort depleted the country’s vital industrial factories of its male blue-collar workers. The same priority had a similar draining effect on the (English) FA’s (Football Association’s) player stocks. The manpower shortages took women in large numbers out of the home to meet the factory shortfall of men. With few men around to play the game, after season 1914/1915 the premier men’s competitions, the FA Cup and the English championship, were suspended and didn’t get going again until 1919/1920. Into this breach, almost by a process of natural evolution, stepped the newly employed (working class) women of England’s factories ‘FA History’, www.thefa.com].

Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC
With the new infusion of working women taking up football competitively, the stronghold of women’s football moved to Preston in the north-eastern county of Lancashire. Over the next several seasons up until the early years of the interwar period, one women’s club team stood tallest…Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was created out of the female workforce of Dick, Kerr & Co, Preston locomotive and tramcar manufacturers. The highly successful Dick, Kerr’s Ladies side was spearheaded by one of football’s most remarkable ever female players, the chain-smoking, openly gay Lily Parr who scored over 1,000 goals in a 31-year career✱.

Dick, Kerr’s Ladies were pioneers of international women’s matches with French women’s sides⍟ and the Preston team’s popularity soared through and beyond the war years. In 1920 a game between Dick, Kerr’s and St Helens’ Ladies at Goodison Park (Everton) drew a crowd of 53,000 – with the gates locked leaving thousands more outside! [‘WW1: why was women’s football banned in 1921?’, (Gemma Fay), BBC News, 12-Dec-2014, www,bbc.com].

Notwithstanding the enormous contribution of Lily Parr, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was no “one woman band”…centre-forward Florrie Redford netted a phenomenal 170 goals for the Preston-based club in 1921 [Dick, Kerr Ladies FC 1917-1965′, www.dickkerrladies.com]. Another female football star of the day – who DIDN’T play for Dick, Kerr’s XI – was Northumberland’s Bella Reay who played in the north-east Munitions’ comp. Bella’s 130-plus goals in the 1917/1918 season propelled her unbeaten club Blyth Spartans Ladies FC to victory in the Munitionettes’ Cup (drawn from women workers in munitions factories and docks in the north-east who played amateur football to raise funds for charity) [Fay, ‘BBC’, loc.cit.].

Bella Reay, Blyth Spartans star striker ⬆️

The (FA) empire strikes back
Immediately following the Great War the women’s game was at a high point and on the ascent✥. But after demobilisation, able-bodied men who had fought in the global conflict, streamed back into the English workforce…this meant that the great bulk of the women who had filled their boots on the factory floor were now surplus to requirements and so were “quietly shunted back into domestic life” [ibid.]. Englishmen also returned to playing the number one sport with the Football League recommencing in 1919/1920. The FA authorities in England had tolerated rather than supported women’s football during the enforced absence of the men’s league.

Football – a “health hazard” for women!
The FA’s disapproval had an ally in some prominent members of the medical profession which shared its lack of enthusiasm for female football – on medical grounds!◘ These medicos tended to endorse the assumption of Harley Street specialist Dr Mary Scharlieb who opined that football was a “most unsuitable game, too much for a women’s physical frame” [ibid.]. At this point (1921) the FA stepped in, banning women and the country’s female competitions from using FA grounds, echoing the (predominantly male) medicos’ sentiments that the sport was “quite unsuitable for females, and ought not to be encouraged” [‘The FA’, op.cit.]. Aiming for overkill, the FA decreed that its officials (referees and linesmen) could not take part in women’s matches, a step intended to further hamper the development of the female game.

To underscore the justification for its arbitrary and discriminatory treatment of the women’s’ leagues, the FA alleged (without any proof) that the women’s setup had failed to give an adequate percentage of its gate revenue towards charitable objects”. This was a classic double standard posture as the men’s clubs was never asked to donate any gate receipts to charity. In response, the captain of the Plymouth Ladies team accurately described the FA as being “a hundred years behind the times”✫ and said the ban was nothing more than “purely sex prejudice” [‘1921: the year when football banned women’, History Extra, (Jim Weeks), Dec. 2017, www.historyextra.com].

So was the FA simply exhibiting a blatant, sexist chauvinism towards the women players? The short answer is yes…but could there be something else behind their draconian action as well? During the war the women’s leagues had built up a considerable following and were enticing impressive crowd numbers to the matches. The FA’s overwhelming remit has always been the health of the men’s game and it was concerned that the women’s demonstrable pulling power might have a detrimental affect on attendances to the Football League (men’s) games [ibid.]. Applying a handbrake to the burgeoning women’s game, indeed sidelining it altogether, was considered a great ‘leg-up’ boosting the FA’s objective of rebuilding men’s professional football after the WWI hiatus.

Aftermath of the ban
The FA’s ruling did not put an end to women and girls playing football altogether, but the effect of it was to relegate the top-tier players in England to mostly friendly matches. The elite Dick, Kerr’s Ladies team (later renamed Preston Ladies FC) did its best to stay active. In 1922 it organised a tour of North America but even here the meddling hand of the English FA was at work doing what it could to stymie the club’s tour. On direction from the FA the Canadian FA banned the Dick Kerr women from playing in Canada. The team did however manage to organise nine matches in the US which were played against men’s sides [ibid.].

Preston Ladies, 1939 ➡

“Fem-soccer”: Women’s football goes “gangbusters!”
The ban stayed in force…beyond the formation of the Women’s FA in England in 1969. It was not until July 1971 that the FA, and then only under pressure from UEFA (Union of European Football Associations), finally lifted the ban. Held back no more by gender stereotypers, the women’s game has gone from strength to strength – in 1972 the first women’s FA Cup, in 1984 the first women’s European Championship, followed by the World Cup in 1991 (the 2011 World Cup Final was played in front of a packed 83,000-strong crowd).

Footnote: “Nettie Honeyball”
The founding of the first women’s team British Ladies’ FC is attributed to ‘Nettie Honeyball’…this was a pseudonym for the middle-class female activist (identity unknown, possibly one Mary Hutson) who organised the first women’s match in North London in 1895 (“The North” thrashed “The South” 7-1 before an estimated 11,000 spectators) [‘British Ladies’ Football Club’], Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

PostScript: The Scottish FA, closed ranks with its English brethren
The FA in England was not “Robinson Crusoe” among the home countries in enforcing discriminatory practices against women players. Other football associations took a similarly blinkered view. In the 1924/1925 season three Scottish clubs (Aberdeen, Queen of the South and Raith Rovers) all had their requests to use their club grounds for women’s matches uncermoniously vetoed by the men of the Scottish FA [‘The Honeyballers: Women who fought to play football’, BBC News, 26-Sep-2013, www.bbc.com].

– —– ——–– — -– ——–– —– —– —– ——–– — -– ——–– —–—- ——- —
✱ in 2002, many years after her death, Parr was the first (and so far only) woman player inaugurated into the FA’s Hall of Fame
⍟ although there had been a much earlier women’s match between a Scottish XI side and an English XI that took place in 1881
✥ in 1920 there was around 150 women’s teams playing the sport in England plus many more in Scotland and Wales
◘ back as far as 1894 medical professionals had advocated that women and girls be barred from taking part in football [‘The Honeyballers’, loc.cit.]. Aside from “medical concerns”, another reason that has been suggested for the opposition to female footballers at the time was that they were seen as threatening the perception of football as a “masculine game” [Mårtensson, S, ‘Branding women’s football in a field of hegemonic masculinity’, Entertainment and Sports Law, 8 (June 2010)].
✫ 8.4M British women had recently received the vote, the breakthrough achievements of women’s football was paralleling the Suffrage Movement [Weeks, op.cit.]