Jørn Hansen

The Origin of the Term Handicap in Games and Sports – History of a Concept

Abstract Words and concepts may change in time, and this has certainly been the case with the term handicap. From the establishment of modern sports in the middle of the 19th century and up until the middle of the 20th century, handicap had an entirely different meaning within sports. Thus, handicap was understood as a disadvantage imposed on talented contestants to make the competition more equal in sports. Later the term handicap became much closer related to the concepts invalid and crippled than to concept originally employed within sports, With the gradual introduction of the welfare state measures to the political agenda the politicians in Denmark also started to take an interest in invalids and cripples and in 1925 the National Association of the Crippled and Maimed was founded. By the end of the 20 century the term crippled was seen by many as outdated and in 1988 the name was changed to the Danish Association for the Disabled (Dansk Handicap Forbund) and already in 1971 this organization helped to found The Danish Disabled Sports Association (Dansk Handicap Idræts-Forbund). The article tells the story of how the concept of handicap, which originally was an aim to provide equal opportunities, today has become a synonym for disability, while in the Paralympics and competitive disability sports, the original sports term handicap has been replaced by classification.

The 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm – The First Meeting of the Highly Trusted Men and What Happened to Them Since

At the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912, Johannes Sigfrid Edström, Avery Brundage, Carl Diem and Karl Ritter von Halt met each other for the first time and started to cooperate afterwards. From the 1930s they all played a very important role in IOC and in the Olympic System (I prefer system instead of movement). The article examines the role of the network in the international discussion about the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, the networks perceptions of the Jews and their cooperation with the Nazis, the networks importance for the denazification of Karl Ritter von Halt after the Second World War and the influence in IOC to West Germany and East Germany during the Cold War until the 1972 Olympics when East Germany participated for the first time as a sovereign state and Avery Brundage resigned as president of the IOC.