The development of sport geography
The roots of sport geography can be tracked back to the antiquities. It started developing as a self-discipline at the beginning of 20th century. It was in the Anglo-Saxon culture where it came into the scientists’ vision. They were working with deterministic approach (Bánhidi M.-Farkas J., 2002). The economic and sport aspects of geography started becoming the focus of researchers in the 1930-ies. Carlson (1942) was the first to study the relationship between skiing and the transformation of landscapes of New England. Despite the increasingly obvious relationship between geography and sports (using land and land transformation of sports, athletes’ migration, the impact of sports on cultural identity, economics and architecture) was still an underestimated sub-discipline in the academic circles. The questions of these problems could be published only as marginal notes (Gaffney, C. 2014). Allison (1978), while studying the relationship among industrialisation, urbanisation and the rapid development of sports, arrived at the conclusion that sport phenomena should be examined in more depth. Unfortunately most social sciences neglected these crucial questions. The American Rooney’s works were mainly cartographic ones and not analytical-critical approaches and applied statistical analysis in 1960. They were the first scholarly study regarding sport geography. His first remarkable work dealt with the “production of elite” of the American football players. The focus of his analysis was the difference between local and regional processes (Rooney, J.F. 1969). The primary aims of his studies were to examine the impact of sports on landscapes, their special structures as well as their territory expansion. His views and theories dominated the American sport geography in the sixties. His publication, for example, “The Atlas of the American Sport” (Rooney, J., F.-Pillsbury, R. 1992) greatly affected the development of western- European sport geography. Thanks to him, geographers accepted sport geography.
Soon the American studies generated the European researches mainly within the French, Italian, German and British geography. When the spectacular sport geographical atlases were published they were favourably accepted and built in social sciences (Bánhidi, M. – Farkas, J. 2002). Studying these maps and atlases urged researchers to try to design the models of the territorial structure of sports as well as the changing immigration processes. By 1970 researches in the area of sport geographic crystallised three conceptual systems:
- local approach examining the spatial organization and the specific qualities of sports within an area/region;
- actual approach, which studies the space-time relationships among sports and their interrelationships;
- the image approach, which pursues to reveal the changes accompanying building and construction technologies which serve different segments of sports (Bale, J.R. 1993 in Farkas, J. 1998);
Although the British Bale was convinced that sport geographic should be studied, still he followed the cartographic traditions and did not try to deal with the relationship between cause and effect (Bale, J.R. 1982). His methods of geographic models were taken over and used to design new sport facilities as well as to choose the most appropriate venues for sport organizations (Gaffney, c, 2014). In the eighties football fields and racing tracks were in the focus while hooliganism, crowdedness and landscape changes were also studied as accompanying disturbances (Bale, J.R. 1992 in Bánhidi, M. 2011).
It was Bale who raised the attention to the role of sports as a unifying mass culture. Due to the recognition of how important sport geography is professionals started to apply its methods and models in the research of the mechanisms of social and ethnic identities. Naturally telecommunication, media have also contributed to the interdisciplinary attention and interest regarding the global-cultural complexity of sport. Increasing social demand has also supported the development and the acceptance of sport geography. There has been a growing claim and demand to learn more about our geographic environment so that greater athletic sport performances could be achieved.
Hungarian sport geographical studies were introduced only when the preferred dogmas of economic geography started to disappear. It also meant that the massively culturally affected social geography and social sciences also became the research tools of sport geography. It is also true that articles (Eiben, O.- Pantó, E. 1981, Barabás, L., at al 1986) published earlier also dealt with regional and territorial questions in relation to sports which studied mainly young people’ physical performance. In the nineties books and articles about the international history of sport geography and questions analysing its theories and practice were published (Farkas J., 1998, Bánhidi M., 1999). In 2002 the textbooks of sport geography raised the attention to the continental scale rearrangement and realignment of sport geography as well as the social and economic background of sport successes. (Bánhidi, M.- Farkas J., 2002). Soon researches began discussing world class athletes’ migrations as well as the reasons for triggering their mobility (Dóczi T., 2007, Ács, P., 2009, Molnár Gy.-Gál, A. 2008). Interesting data were published concerning the chance differences of becoming high achievers. The social-demographic background of young people’s physical activities was also discussed and examined (Keresztes, N.-Pikó, B. 2006). The geographic model examinations reveal the territorial anomalies of receiving and refusing talented athletes and describe space processes in historical contexts by using thematic map-models (Győri, F. and co workers 2011). Geographical questions were also touched upon in national and sub-regional strategies as well as in the talent development programmes. The talent care conceptions of sport academies were also studied (Kozma, G., 2010). The first Hungarian sport geographic monograph discussing both general and regional issues was published in 2011 (Bánhidi, M. 2011).
Several very useful interactive maps can be found see, for example,