Sports Mythology

                Sports mythology can be seen in almost every painting, sculpture or piece of artwork that deals with sports or athletes in the British Museum.  The way the athlete is displayed or depicted is a part of the sports mythology.  It is not just about the sport.  Many times in the past, athletes were depicted like gods or heroes.  They had perfect bodies.  The athlete was a representation of the man that everyone looked up to.    

                A very famous sculpture of a man preparing the throw a discus is displayed in the British museum right now.  There are many variations and replicas of the original sculpture.  The original sculpture was done by a man named Myron around 450 BC and it is called the Discobolus.  The sculpture is still popular today because it represents a sport that is a normal sport for people to participate in today.  The sport mythology of the sculpture is not that is a current sport but it is what the man represents.   The man in the sculpture has a perfect body.  It is proportional and beautiful.  It is a representation of a hero.  His muscles are perfectly sculpted and he is a very beautiful and desirable man.  This is what the people back in ancient Greek and Roman days thought a hero or god would look like. 

                Sui Jianguo recreated the discus thrower but with his own twist on the sculpture.  Growing up and living during the reign of Mao in China.  He decided to clothe the discus thrower in a typical suit that you would find many men in China wearing at the time.  There were many restraints when it came to education and art during the leadership of Mao.  The sport mythology in Sui’s interpretation of the discus thrower is that this is supposed to the hero that everyone looks up to and admired. This wasn’t the case though.  While Sui was growing up, there wasn’t a hope of a hero, even the special people were constrained by the leader of the country.

                The sculpture started off as standing for a representation of hero or god, but throughout the years, many people changed the meaning to what they thought it should be.  Hitler used the statue to represent his ideal version of the person.  The idea of sports mythology in the sculpture as a representation of a hero or a perfect person is still used by Hitler, but he used it in the wrong way.  Then years later, the same sculpture that Hitler used to describe his perfect person was used for the Olympics main poster.  The Olympics is about bringing all these different people together and competing in different sports and activities.  The sports mythology of the sculpture was literally used as a perfect athlete and representation of the person who would be competing and winning during the Olympics.  This sculpture was used in many different ways throughout the years.