March 20, 2020March 10, 2020
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Barbells & Bios: Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book

  As an avid, but unsuccessful golfer, I have a deep appreciation for those skilled in the sport. In a career spanning several decades, Penick was involved with the game at every level. From 1913 to 1923 he caddied at the Austin Country Club.  In 1923 he became the head professional right out of high school.  He remained the pro until retiring in 1971, when his son, Tinsley, took over the position.  From 1971 to 1995, Harvey continued as golf pro emeritus, coaching Ben Crenshaw, Betty Jameson, Tom Kite, Sandra Palmer, Betsy Rawls, Kathy Whitworth and Mickey Wright among others. Recently, and...

Lorenzo Ghiglieri painting of a weightlifter in a tavern, with the face of publisher Joe Weider, from the Weider Art Collection, in the main lobby.
March 16, 2020April 3, 2020
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Weider Beer Hall Painting

In 1989, Joe Weider commissioned Lorenzo Ghiglieri to produce this oil painting based on a famous print depicting a training session at the Hercules Club in Vienna. The original print was made over one hundred years ago. Close observers will see Joe’s likeness painted into one of the beer hoisting onlookers and, on the wall, a portrait of Hans Steyer, the Bavarian Hercules. The painting was received in 2011 as one of eight significant pieces of art donated from Joe and Betty Weider’s private collection related to the history of physical culture. It is now displayed in the Stark Center...

Headshot of Tanya Jones
March 11, 2020April 29, 2020
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Tanya Jones Awarded Research Grant from the British Society of Sport History

PhD candidate Tanya Jones was recently awarded a prestigious research grant from the British Society of Sport History. This grant is for aiding graduate students undertaking original research in the field, and Tanya will use it to travel to Boston, MA. There, she will spend time in the archives of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University researching the life of Richard Lapchick for her dissertation. The now-deceased Lapchick ran the center for almost two decades, and also founded the influential Institute for Sport and Social Justice. In earlier years, Lapchik was an important figure...

Photo of football coach Darrell K. Royal's 2005 National Championship Rose Bowl ring.
March 9, 2020April 29, 2020
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Darrell K Royal 2005 Championship Ring

When Mack Brown was named head football coach at the University of Texas in 1998, he was immediately tasked with returning Longhorn football to a place of national prominence and a culture of winning. Wisely, he sought out the insights and expertise of Darrell Royal, a man who coached the Longhorns for twenty years, won three national championships, and never recorded a losing season. Coach Royal became a close confidant to Coach Brown and was a source of guidance and inspiration to the team. When the Longhorns won the BCS National Championship Game in the 2006 Rose Bowl, they presented...

March 6, 2020February 19, 2020
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Barbells & Bios: The Tom Pevier Scrapbook

Tom Pevier is not an individual familiar to many weightlifters today. Nevertheless, his physical culture interest holds a great importance for scholars of the early twentieth century. An avid weightlifter, wrestler and all-round physical culturist, Pevier went on to referee several of the early British weightlifting competitions in the early twentieth century. Pevier’s scrapbook, a recent addition to the Stark Center, details his career as a weightlifter in Britain, the burgeoning growth of British weightlifting in general and also his start as a referee. Pevier’s own lifting and wrestling career was interesting enough – Pevier won a wrestling medal as...

List of the forty-nine lifts sanctioned by American Continental Weight-Lifters Association (ACWLA), created by George F. Jowett and Ottley Coulter; this list was enclosed with a June 22, 1922 letter from Jowett to Coulter, from the Ottley Coulter Collection.
March 2, 2020July 13, 2020
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George Jowett’s letter to Ottley Coulter 6/22/1922

One of the most fascinating aspects of working in the Stark Center is the ability to work with personal letters from one physical culturist to another. This letter from George F. Jowett to Ottley R. Coulter represented a conversation between two prominent American physical culturists. In the letter, the two men discuss the foundation of the American Continental Weight Lifters Association (ACWLA).  Five years previously, Coulter wrote an article in Strength magazine calling for a way to standardize weightlifting in the United States. It was incredibly important to have a sanctioning body for American strongmen and weightlifters so that the...

The Four Laps to the Mile Narragansett dual bicycle racers in the closed stacks room.
February 24, 2020January 31, 2020
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Narragansett Machine Co. Standard Bicycle Trainer

Manufactured by Narragansett Machine Company of Providence, R.I. around the turn of the twentieth century, this pair of stationary exercise bikes are relics of the “bike boom” that swept the country in the 1890s. Each bike connects to a color-coordinated hand on the nearly 4-foot diameter dial measuring distance; the first rider to cover the four laps equaling one mile was the winner of bragging rights and, it is easy to imagine, a friendly wager or two. Retailing for $200 at a time when the average wage in the United States was 22 cents per hour, these trainers were most...

Cover of the book De Arte Gymnastica, by Hieronymous Mercurialis in 1573; from the collection of David P. Webster, OBE; and donated to Stark Center co-founders Jan and Terry Todd at the Arnold (Schwarzenegger) Strongman Classic, in Columbus Ohio, in 2005.
February 21, 2020February 19, 2020
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Barbells & Bios: De Arte Gymnastica

  Published by the Italian physician Hieronymous Mercurialis in the sixteenth century, De Arte Gymnastica has long been cited by historians as a pivotal moment in the revival of European gymnastics. Coming at a time when interest in Greco-Roman culture was growing, Mercurialis’ work was one of the first monographs to focus almost exclusively on exercise and the building of strength. De Arte was significant then, for three reasons. First it was highly regarded on publication and indeed, stayed within circulation for close to a century. Second it included several wonderfully illustrated plates of muscled men exercising, wrestling and fighting. It thus served as...

Gymnast Cathy Rigby, just before performing on the uneven bars in competition, from the Steve Wennerstrom Papers.
February 17, 2020February 13, 2020
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Photo of Cathy Rigby

Born in 1952 in Long Beach, California, Cathy Rigby was a popular American gymnast whose fame extended beyond the sport. The highest scoring American gymnast at the Mexico City Olympic Games of 1968, Rigby’s sporting prowess was beyond reproach.  She followed her ’68 Olympic performance with United States National Championships in 1970 and 1972. Fun fact? In 1974, Rigby moved from sport to the theatre, when she headlined a tour of Peter Pan! Thanks to the Steve Wennerstrom Papers, we have a series of clippings and photographs on Rigby’s career. When Steve became a women’s track and field coach in...