Memories

Abstract

Chapter 3 explores the to and fro of remembering and re-remembering which is frequently invoked in sport, whether in commentary, following and fandom or in the enfleshed experiences of training which is so often informed by the observation and rehearsal of previous performances. In the Games, past records are re-visited and re-invoked in the run-up and in the coverage of the events. This chapter looks at what is and what is not remembered and how these memories are made and remade, perceived and expressed. Memories are reproduced through the narratives which pervade sport in all media but this chapter uses Bergsonian understandings of the movement of memory to challenge the linear chronology of sports storytelling and to look at who is silent in the stories and at who speaks and is spoken. Sporting memories are profoundly connected to social exclusion, notably in terms of sex gender, which has presented an area often marked by silences, invisibility and absences of women in sport, but which is also part of changing times; the excitement and exhilaration of women’s events from rowing to boxing in 2012 showed the promise of changing times so well.