Finding the Truth: Hoping for Certainty

Abstract

The previous chapter focused upon the regulatory bodies which have developed within the organisational frameworks of the Olympics and the relationship between these bodies and the wider social and historical contexts in which the games have been performed, experienced and structured. Chapter 2 set up the importance of classifications and definitions of sex gender within the disciplinary mechanisms of the Olympics and the Olympic Movement and the evidential traces of the Ancient Games in those of the modern period and the endurances of gendered ideologies, especially in relation to whether or not women were allowed to participate at all. If women were included, which sports they might be permitted to play and the rules of their engagement were often distinguished from male competitions, for example, through shorter distances, as was manifest in the controversy about the 800 metres, which was for a long period in the Modern Games deemed to be too exhausting for women. The Games have been characterised by transformations and the persistence of classifications based upon sex within the regulatory mechanisms which make up the governance of the Olympics. The rules of the Game and the sex gender of the participants have been co-constitutive. The regulatory bodies of sport declare what embodied practices are permitted and which bodies can participate and thus constitute appropriate embodiment for athletes, and those who are not permitted to be athletes in these competitions.