TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘I Consider Myself a Political Prisoner’
T2 - The Long and Strange Journeys of American Rebels Enmeshed in Ironies of the Athletes’ Rights Crusade
AU - Sikes, Michelle M.
AU - Fredericks, Jacob J.
AU - Rodríguez, Paulina A.
AU - Macedo, Emmanuel
AU - Poorman, Michael
AU - Lyons, Matthew
AU - Pandit, Rucha
AU - Dyreson, Mark
N1 - Funding Information:
While she questioned Laut’s protestations of naivety, Cart did establish that Petranoff had a long commitment to what he understood as the cause of ‘athletes’ rights’. In addition to being a former world-record holding thrower, she noted that he had been one of the ‘leading critics’ of 1980 US boycott of the Moscow games by President Jimmy Carter. He had also during the 1980s led the TAC Protective Testing Committee which oversaw the development of doping controls. Cart observed that he had a long record of outspoken commentaries that sometimes veered into incendiary remarks. Cart remarked that just as he had run afoul of the track and field establishment in the US, Petranoff had already irritated South African athletic potentates. ‘Petranoff, with his flashy tights and sunglasses, combined with his unheard-of ideas about athletes’ rights, was simply too much and too loud’, she acknowledged. ‘To say he was instantly unpopular is not an overstatement’, she stated. In fact, Petranoff commenced preaching the athletes’ rights gospel as soon as he arrived in South Africa. Almost from the moment he immigrated he began to organize South African track and field competitors into a coalition demanding better financial support from athletic organizations and the government.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Flaunting international anti-apartheid bans, two groups of American track and field ‘rebels’ toured South Africa in the late 1980s. In defending their incendiary treks, they asserted their rights both to act on their own political principles and to earn a paycheck. Heavily criticized by a global coalition that supported the South African athletic embargoes, they were punished with long suspensions and public humiliation. A few of the ‘rebels’ remained in South Africa after the tours, most prominently world-class javelin thrower Tom Petranoff who moved his family to the apartheid state and continued his career in the only nation in the world that would still allow him to compete. As apartheid unexpectedly and rapidly crumbled in the early 1990s, Petranoff became a South African citizen, sought a place on the South African 1992 Olympic team that returned to the games for the first time since 1960, and touted his particular, libertarian doctrine of athletes’ rights. Petranoff painted himself as a ‘political prisoner’ shunned by both his native US homeland and the new multi-racial government emerging in South Africa in the post-apartheid era. His career offers a window into the complexities of national and international sport in confronting apartheid regimes.
AB - Flaunting international anti-apartheid bans, two groups of American track and field ‘rebels’ toured South Africa in the late 1980s. In defending their incendiary treks, they asserted their rights both to act on their own political principles and to earn a paycheck. Heavily criticized by a global coalition that supported the South African athletic embargoes, they were punished with long suspensions and public humiliation. A few of the ‘rebels’ remained in South Africa after the tours, most prominently world-class javelin thrower Tom Petranoff who moved his family to the apartheid state and continued his career in the only nation in the world that would still allow him to compete. As apartheid unexpectedly and rapidly crumbled in the early 1990s, Petranoff became a South African citizen, sought a place on the South African 1992 Olympic team that returned to the games for the first time since 1960, and touted his particular, libertarian doctrine of athletes’ rights. Petranoff painted himself as a ‘political prisoner’ shunned by both his native US homeland and the new multi-racial government emerging in South Africa in the post-apartheid era. His career offers a window into the complexities of national and international sport in confronting apartheid regimes.
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U2 - 10.1080/09523367.2022.2109625
DO - 10.1080/09523367.2022.2109625
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85141078575
SN - 0952-3367
VL - 39
SP - 1059
EP - 1087
JO - International Journal of the History of Sport
JF - International Journal of the History of Sport
IS - 8-9
ER -