Blood, sweat, and ink
Sporting endeavours from Gonville and Caius
14 March to 26 July 2024
The 2024 Paris Olympics recall the famous victory of the Caian sprinter Harold Abrahams, 100 years ago in the same city. To celebrate that centenary the College Library and College Archive jointly present a selection of notable treatments of sport in early and modern books, and of the materials that document sporting life at Caius.
A hunter pursues a beaver and a family of apes across the pages of a thirteenth-century manuscript; Renaissance print recovers Pindar’s obscure praise of the victors in the original Olympic Games, and Pausanias’ historical hints. The physicians Girolamo Mercuriale in the sixteenth century, and Francis Fuller in the seventeenth, advocate the benefits of exercise to very different readerships.
We look at some of the fragmentary evidence for early modern popular sports, both in attempts to ban them and a rare sympathetic description, as well as a Georgian effort to collect that evidence. A Victorian Caian describes his pathbreaking climb of Mont Blanc, and another shares in print his rowing knowledge; as later Abrahams writes on sprinting, the year after his gold medal. The College Archive reveals photographs, drawings, documents, and even fragments of celebrated racing boats.
We also present a table of the College's twenty-one Olympians to date, including the sailor Hannah Snellgrove, who will compete in Paris.
