Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing by Roger Giles

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 362-364
Author(s):  
Robert J. Turpin
Keyword(s):  
1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Albert

The subculture of bicycle racing provides a situation in which the relationship between formal rules and dominant sport ideologies, and the taken-for-granted informal structures produced by athletes during competition, may be observed. Ethnographic and interview data suggest that such structures as pelotons and pacelines create both the opportunity for and the requirement of cooperative efforts between opponents, standing in stark contrast to more conventional conceptions of sport in which only unambiguous conflict between competitors is seen as legitimate. Here the informal norms of cooperation are central to insider definitions of the social order and are accompanied by strong sanctions for noncompliance. This cooperative informal order is seen as especially problematic for novices, as it diverges from widely held beliefs in the independence of competing units and the importance of overcoming opponents through maximum individual effort. Media coverage of the sport, in disregarding cooperative efforts, both creates and perpetuates erroneous stereotypes, making socialization into the sport more difficult.


Spine ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (17) ◽  
pp. 1965-1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Usabiaga ◽  
Ricardo Crespo ◽  
Ion Iza ◽  
José Aramendi ◽  
Nicolas Terrados ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
M. Ann Hall

During the nineteenth century in North America, a small group of working-class women turned to sport to earn a living. Among them were circus performers, race walkers, wrestlers, boxers, shooters, swimmers, baseball players, and bicycle racers. Through their athleticism, these women contested and challenged the prevailing gender norms, and at the same time expanded notions about Victorian women’s capabilities and appropriate work. This article focuses on one of these professional sports, namely high-wheel bicycle racing. Bicycle historians have mostly dismissed women’s racing during the brief high-wheel era of the 1880s as little more than sensational entertainment, and have not fully understood its importance. I hope to change these perceptions by providing evidence that female high-wheel racers in the United States, who often began as pedestriennes (race walkers), were superb athletes competing in an exciting, well-attended, and profitable sport.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-136
Author(s):  
Ari de Wilde

The bicycle has a unique status as a moniker of several things: a practical piece of transportation, a sporting tool, the imprimatur of modernity, and, relevant to this special issue, a symbol of gender and class equity. But the racing of bicycles by women has been oddly absent from the literature in sport history. Women have been part of the bicycle’s experience since the bicycle’s inception in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet until recently, one would be hard pressed to know of this lengthy tradition of women in cycling and, especially of, women’s racing. This special issue seeks to rectify this situation.


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