Cover of the book Eternal Health Truths of a Century Ago, edited by naturopathic doctor Christopher Gian-Cursio, from the Sydell Herbst-Christopher Gian-Cursio Collection.
May 20, 2020February 19, 2020
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Barbells & Bios: The Sydell Herbst–Christopher Gian-Cursio Collection

Born in Rochester, New York in 1910, Christopher Gian-Cursio was one of America’s most outspoken, popular and reviled commentators on alternative medicine. Trained at Dr. Benjamin Lust’s American School of Naturopathy, Gian-Cursio came to practice what he termed Natural Hygiene for several decades. Like many practitioners of alternative medicine at this time, Gian-Cursio was against traditional medicines and nostrums, believing that natural methods could cure all diseases. This opinion, somewhat unsurprisingly, often brought Gian-Cursio into conflict with established medical authorities. In fact, Gian-Cursio was arrested several times during the 1940s on the charge of practicing medicine without a license. Acquitted...

Three commemorative "Game Ball" footballs given to Mack Brown for the 1998 The Cotton Bowl, the 1999 Graveyard Game (Texas vs Nebraska), and the 2004 Texas vs Oklahoma game
May 14, 2020May 15, 2020
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Mack Brown’s Commemorative Footballs

One of the amazing things about working at the Stark Center is the opportunity to see and interact with materials related to the amazing athletics programs at the University of Texas at Austin.  As one of the most storied programs in sports history, the University of Texas football program is a phenomenal resource for archival items. The Stark Center is fortunate to hold many items from the personal collection of former Texas football head coach, Mack Brown.  Arriving on the Forty Acres in 1998 and leading the Longhorns until 2013, Brown compiled a record 134 wins and 34 losses at...

April 30, 2020April 30, 2020
It's a Good LifeBy
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Records, Vitriol and Hafthor Bjornsson’s Quest for the 501 Kilo Deadlift

I’ve been in isolation ever since I returned on March 9th from directing the 2020 Arnold Strongman Classic (ASC). Like other fans of Strongman, I’ve watched with sadness as show after Strongman show got canceled last month as the coronavirus spread around the globe.  In recent weeks, I’ve been listening with yet more dismay to the vitriolic barbs Eddie Hall has been hurling at Hafthor Bjornsson as the big Icelander gets ready to attempt to set a new all-time Strongman deadlift record on Saturday, May 2nd from his gym in Iceland.   If I didn’t know all the principals, I might...

Drawing of a woman playing field hockey in 1920s attire, from the pages of The Sportswoman magazine, from the Anna Hiss Collection.
April 22, 2020February 19, 2020
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Barbells & Bios: The Sportswoman Magazine

Published for several decades, beginning in the 1920s, The Sportswoman marks one of the earlier, and indeed, most fascinating insights into female sport in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Part of the Stark’s Anna Hiss Collection, the magazine covered a range of women’s sports including, but not limited to field hockey, lacrosse, badminton and horseback riding among other pursuits. The Center’s earliest edition, coming in May 1928, details hockey, badminton, tennis alongside articles on Greco-Roman ideals, the ‘Sportswoman’s creed’ and miscellaneous observations on women’s sports. In recent decades, a great deal of historical interest has been directed towards...

Warren Lincoln Travis' show barbell viewed at an angle, to show full length but also the star detailing on the end of the globe closest to the camera.
April 20, 2020February 9, 2021
Collection in FocusBy
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Barbells and the Brooklyn Strong Boy

Warren Lincoln Travis began his strongman career as the “Brooklyn Strong Boy,” but quickly graduated to circuses and vaudeville and also worked long stints at Coney Island. Travis was America’s most famous strongman in the early years of the twentieth century. Most other touring professionals of the era were Europeans or Canadians – Sandow, the Saxon Trio, Apollon, Louis Cyr, and Horace Barre. To distinguish himself from these other contemporaries, Travis’ performances were marked by the lifting of monstrous amounts of weight in back lifts, in hip and harness lifts, and in the crowd-pleasing one-finger lift (a note from Stark...

Cover of the book Giovanni Belzoni: Strong Man, Egyptologist, by Colin Clair.
April 8, 2020February 19, 2020
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Barbells & Bios: Giovanni Belzoni, Strong Man Egyptologist

Published by Colin Clair in 1957, Giovanni Belzoni – Strong Man Egyptologist is a dramatized account of one of the nineteenth century’s most fascinating characters. An early strongman by trade who travelled around Britain and Ireland, Belzoni made his fame as exploring Egypt and reporting back to the British press. Based primarily on Belzoni’s own travels accounts, produced in the 1820s, Clair’s short monograph attempts to recreate, oftentimes with a fine sense of exaggeration, the danger, mystique and adventure which dominated Belzoni’s life. At first glance, this small monograph appears an odd creation. Few individuals have heard of Belzoni and dramatizations of...

Bodybuilder Siegmund Klein in formal attire, including a hat and a cane, in a photograph dedicated to wrestler and strongman George F. Jowett, and dated October 14, 1926, from the scrapbooks in the George F. Jowett Collection.
March 30, 2020April 27, 2020
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Sig Klein in Formal Clothing

Sigmund Klein was one of the most fascinating, and indeed, successful physical culturists of the 1920s and 1930s. Operating a gym in New York, the same gym run by his father in law, Professor Atilla, Klein’s unique position in the fitness industry made him the envy of many. Not only was he incredibly strong and athletic, but he was part of physical culture royalty. Given the fact that he ran a gymnasium and was a weight trainer in his own right, many of the images we have of Sig tend to be him in workout clothes. This is what makes...

March 24, 2020November 22, 2022
It's a Good LifeBy
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Lessons from The Arnold Strongman Classic

On Monday, March 2, 2020, I met my graduate course, The History of the Sport Industry in America, at the Stark Center to talk about a series of readings they’d been assigned that dealt with the business of strength.  They were asked to read an article Ben Pollack and I wrote about 1950s gym-chain magnate Vic Tanny, several chapters from Dominic Morais’ dissertation about Bob Hoffman’s marketing tactics to promote the York Barbell Company and, finally, a long essay that Terry wrote about The Arnold Strongman Classic (ASC) in an anthology called Philosophical Considerations of Physical Strength that he also...