A section of the front cover from Health and Strength, December 6, 1919. Caption "Flu. Fiends." with illustrations of a rat in human hand and insects, likely ticks and mosquitoes.
August 27, 2020September 11, 2020
Barbells and BiosBy
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Barbells and Bios: Health and Strength Magazine, Part I

Health and Strength magazine began publishing in the late nineteenth century and, up until very recently, was still in circulation. Designed for a British audience, the magazine quickly became one of the most well read and well esteemed pieces of its time. In an age when information on weightlifting was hard to come by, Health and Strength’s biweekly or biannual issues proved to be a treasure trove of information. In time the magazine spread from Great Britain to the far outreaches of her Empire, from Australia to India and everywhere in between. As a historian of physical culture, it is...

Émile Idée Cycling Photograph
August 27, 2020September 10, 2020
Collection in FocusBy
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Émile Idée Cycling Photograph

In any normal year, one of sports’ greatest spectacles, the Tour de France, would have concluded about a month ago. This year’s tour has unsurprisingly been rescheduled to begin August 29, but the event pictured in this photograph permanently ended its 85-year run in 2016. The Critérium National de la Route was for many years a de-facto French national championship of cycling, but was opened up to international competitors and renamed Critérium International in 1979. Over the years it was contested and won by some of the most illustrious names in cycling: Anquetil, Hinault, Indurain, Fignon, Voigt, Froome, and numerous...

A box for two of strongman (Eugen) Sandow's Adjustable Grip Testing Dumb Bells and the two dumbbells, with one lying horizontally and the other standing vertically.
August 19, 2020April 15, 2020
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Barbells and Bios: The Sandow Ringing Dumb-Bell

Old physical culture dumbbells really are a strange phenomenon. From squeeze grip dumb-bells to old wooden objects, the devices people used to build their bodies in the early twentieth century sometimes defy belief. One of my favorite examples of this is undoubtedly the Sandow ‘ringing’ dumbbell. Eugen Sandow, who was recently covered in a Rogue documentary, was one of the leading physical culture celebrities of his age. Possessing a body that few rivalled but many envied, his creativity and entrepreneurship knew no bounds. From the early 1890s to his death in 1925, Sandow put his name to early health supplements...

Photograph of Katie Sandwina posing from a German publication.
August 5, 2020September 10, 2020
It's a Good LifeBy
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An Unexpected Image…Sandwina at 17

In December of 1973, I took a workout at the Texas Athletic Club in Austin, Texas, and tested myself for the first time in the deadlift. I was inspired to see what I could lift that day by watching a young woman deadlifting at the gym who had entered a local powerlifting meet as a member of a men’s team. On the way home, after deadlifting 225 in my first workout, Terry (my husband) and I talked about why more women didn’t lift (in 1973 there were no women’s powerlifting, bodybuilding or weightlifting contests) and he told me that there...

August 5, 2020February 13, 2020
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Barbells and Bios: A Stark Experience with Graham Hudson

In 2019, I had the opportunity to spend a month traversing through the Stark Center’s numerous collections. Then in the final stages of completing my Ph.D. research, I left Austin after three weeks of frantic typing and photocopying with the unhappy realization that I had a lot more work to do than I realised. This, as I later learned, was not unique to me. Many researchers, myself included, underestimate just how much material the Stark Center holds which is unavailable anywhere else. As someone studying physical culture in Ireland, the idea that I needed to travel to Austin, Texas, to...

Photo of the cover of Jody Conradt's 1978-1979 scrapbook
July 29, 2020September 10, 2020
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Jody Conradt’s Early UT Career Scrapbooks

Here at the Stark Center, we are fortunate to have the Jody Conradt Papers, 1958-2017.  Several years ago, Jody Conradt, the University of Texas at Austin (UT) Women’s Basketball Coach (1976-2007) and Women’s Athletic Director (1992-2001) and the first female collegiate coach to win 700 games, generously gifted to the Stark Center documents, memorabilia, and scrapbooks that chronicle her career in collegiate women’s athletics. During Jody Conradt’s coaching career, her players won 900 games, 783 of those wins coming during her UT career.  At Texas, she also led the 1985-86 women’s basketball team to a 34-0 record and a national championships...

Photo of a New York Yankees Jersey folded inside of an archival box
July 23, 2020September 10, 2020
Collection in FocusBy
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New York Yankees Jersey, c. 1940

William B. Ward Collection, Box 220, Shelf 15-1 As the June days stack up and other sports leagues resume play, there still seems to be no prospect for the game that is most associated with the lazy days of American summers: baseball.  This New York Yankees road jersey is made of grey flannel with navy “New York” arcing across the chest and matching navy number 14 on back. It likely dates from the mid- to late- 1940s. Inside the collar, the black Wilson logo tag’s “Made in U.S.A.” declaration is still true, even as the official MLB jersey manufacturer changed...

Cover of the book The Magnificent Sandow: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding, depicting strongman Eugen Sandow in a front single biceps pose, by David L. Chapman.
July 22, 2020September 10, 2020
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Barbells & Bios: David Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent (Original Manuscript)

Few scholars of physical culture and bodybuilding more generally will be unfamiliar with the name Eugen Sandow. Known by many as the father of modern bodybuilding, Sandow helped to popularize health, exercise and weight training to large swathes of individuals in Great Britain, the United States and further afield. He counted Kings and Queens as his admirers, opened his own line of gymnasiums, promoted health foods, workout devices and even his own magazine. For later scholars, Sandow’s legacy and importance was brought to the masses through David Chapman’s Sandow the Magnificent. While previous scholars discussed Sandow’s importance, including some wonderful work...

Wilmer Allison and Dave Snyder Tennis Collection Photos
July 13, 2020September 10, 2020
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Wilmer Allison and Dave Snyder Tennis Collection Photos

As a center for the history of sport and physical culture, the Stark Center benefits greatly from the rich athletics tradition of the University of Texas at Austin. Today’s short post looks at one of the sports in which the University of Texas has excelled for most of a century, tennis.  The Stark Center has holdings relating to two of the school’s most famous tennis coaches, Wilmer Allison and Dave Snyder. This post discusses images of the two coaches found in the Wilmer Allison and Dave Snyder Tennis Collection. These photographs give a brief insight into the mens’ respective tenure...