Athletics, Class and Nation: The Oxford-Cambridge University Tour of Canada and the United States of America, 1901

ISSN： 1746-0263

Source： Sport in History, Vol.33, Iss.1, 2013-03, pp. : 1-18

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Abstract

It is the aim of this article to explore the relationship between sport, class and nation in the early twentieth-century English-speaking world. It will do so by examining the visit that a combined Oxford and Cambridge University team of athletes made to Canada and the United States of America in 1901. The tour is of particular interest because while the visitors won easily against McGill, Montreal and Toronto Universities in Montreal, they lost decisively, though not catastrophically, against Harvard and Yale universities when they competed in New York. Despite American criticisms of the tourists' preparations, their loss did little, it seems, either to shake the visitors' faith in the English, upper-class way of doing things or to undermine the goodwill that existed, in elite circles, between the young men of England, the United States of America (and possibly Canada).