The end of amateurism in American track and field
By: Joseph M. Turrini
Series: Sport and society; Sport and society
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9780252035159; 9780252077074
Description: This unique sports and labor history charts the revolutionary transformation of track and field over the past thirty years. In this time, the sport has changed from an amateur effort whose governing bodies unfairly controlled its athletes' lives to a professional arena in which athletes have the power to make decisions in their own best interests. While historians have chronicled labor history in team sports such as baseball and football or have lumped track and field into larger studies of Olympic history, Joseph M. Turrini is the first to scrupulously detail the efforts of athletes to reorder labor relations in track and field and to end their decades-long power struggle with governing bodies.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.