Speaker 1: Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place, world
Speaker 1: history examined and science explained. This is one day University. Welcome,
Speaker 1: and we're back on the untold history of sports in America.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mike cosca Relli. Today we're looking at
Speaker 1: the thing that you should do regularly to compete in
Speaker 1: sports exercise. No, we're not giving you tips on how
Speaker 1: to lose weight or keep that butt tight. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the fitness revolution of the nineteen seventies. So get
Speaker 1: a good stretch, dust off those barbells, and adjust your
Speaker 1: leg warmers. Here's Matt. We begin in September of night.
Speaker 1: It turns out, just a couple of weeks before Tommy
Speaker 1: Smith and John Carlos famously raised their fists in Mexico City.
Speaker 1: It's early September night, and a small group has gathered
Speaker 1: at the National Mall in Washington, d C. And they
Speaker 1: are there to publicize something brand new, National Jogging Day.
Speaker 1: There were members of a Baltimore jogging club, a former
Speaker 1: United States Surgeon General, there was some Democratic congressman, and
Speaker 1: there was the Republican Senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond,
Speaker 1: the then sixty six year old strom Thurmond, most known
Speaker 1: for his firm beliefs in racial segregation. He was the
Speaker 1: oldest of the group, and he was just the type
Speaker 1: of man at risk for a heart attack that doctors
Speaker 1: had in mind when they began recommending jogging in this era. Look,
Speaker 1: it's a test case of only one, but strom Thurman
Speaker 1: would live to be one hundred years old. He served
Speaker 1: in the Senate for almost a full half century, so
Speaker 1: maybe he was onto something here with this jogging thing.
Speaker 1: Strom Thurman and the rest of the pack they ran
Speaker 1: and a few laps around the reflecting pool in front
Speaker 1: of the Washington Monument, and the reflecting pool is one
Speaker 1: quarter mile around, the exact same distance as a regulation track,
Speaker 1: and then it was back to work. Though actually this
Speaker 1: was part of their job. As we have discussed, was
Speaker 1: a cantankerous political year, with the nation dividing over the
Speaker 1: war in Vietnam and things like black power. But on
Speaker 1: this day we had Democrats and Republicans coming together to
Speaker 1: make a bipartisan statement that physical fitness was a matter
Speaker 1: of national importance. So let's use this moment, the first
Speaker 1: National Jogging Day in n as our launching point to
Speaker 1: explore the growing interests in physical fitness among Americans in
Speaker 1: this era. It was not that long ago that most
Speaker 1: Americans stopped exercising almost entirely after they graduated high school.
Speaker 1: You know, they had endured pe classes and now they
Speaker 1: were done. It's hard to imagine that because everywhere you
Speaker 1: look people are running and mountain biking, lifting weights, doing yoga.
Speaker 1: I saw a guy balancing on a tight rope the
Speaker 1: other day. There are fancy gyms that cater to adult
Speaker 1: clients all around US. Gold's gym, Planet Fitness l a
Speaker 1: fitness title boxing that the list goes on. But this
Speaker 1: dedication to being physically fit as an adult, this is
Speaker 1: a relatively new phenomenon in American history. Yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: a while ago about how physical educators they promoted the
Speaker 1: idea that children needed to exercise in play games. At
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, this was known as
Speaker 1: the Gospel of play. And we talked more recently about how,
Speaker 1: in the context of the Cold War and winning the
Speaker 1: Metal Count against the Soviets, physical fitness for school children
Speaker 1: it was promoted as a patriotic necessity. But what was
Speaker 1: happening at the National Mall in night this was different.
Speaker 1: Those were adults who were dedicating themselves to the idea
Speaker 1: they needed to be fit, and they were telling other
Speaker 1: adults that they needed to get in shape as well.
Speaker 1: And in retrospect, I think this was the beginning of
Speaker 1: a fitness boom or or a fitness craze in this nation,
Speaker 1: a boom or a craze that we are still living through.
Speaker 1: So today, let's kind of trace the contours of this
Speaker 1: fitness boom, this emerging dedication to adult fitness in this era.
Speaker 1: We've reached the nineteen seventies in this course, and that's
Speaker 1: why I'm doing this lecture now, because it's in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies that the modern American fitness boom really began.
Speaker 1: And what I want to do today is try to
Speaker 1: figure out why why did Americans start working out in
Speaker 1: this decade. So let's intellectualize exercise. Let's think deeply about sweat.
Speaker 1: That sounds weird, I know, but let's give it a shot. Alright.
Speaker 1: The first thing to say here is that the push
Speaker 1: for physical fitness among adult Americans it has its root
Speaker 1: in a perceived physical fitness crisis. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: doctors were warning that Americans were unfit now chalk this
Speaker 1: up as a what we call now a first world problem,
Speaker 1: because the general lack of fitness among Americans was the
Speaker 1: result of growing comfort and and ease and material affluents
Speaker 1: in the United States after World War Two, especially in
Speaker 1: the suburbs. In the suburbs, men drove their cars from
Speaker 1: their garages to the train station and then rode the
Speaker 1: train to work, you know, sitting for two hours a day.
Speaker 1: Then they sat nine hours a day in their offices.
Speaker 1: Suburban women they drove their automobiles to the grocery store
Speaker 1: and then back. And modern appliances certainly made house were easier.
Speaker 1: This was all good. This was all easy, that was
Speaker 1: the point. But it was not good for one's physical fitness.
Speaker 1: There was nothing especially physical or strength with about modern
Speaker 1: suburban life. And American doctors started to realize, we have
Speaker 1: a problem on our hands. And I think that this
Speaker 1: is revealing. When doctors and cultural commentators worried about the
Speaker 1: lack of fitness among men and women in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: they focused on different parts of the body for each
Speaker 1: For men, the concern was about their hearts. American doctors
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen fifties they observed a rise in
Speaker 1: the number of heart attacks among American men. They declared
Speaker 1: that there was a cardiac crisis in the United States.
Speaker 1: There was a pretty famous ninety eight book called The
Speaker 1: Decline of the American Male, and it explained the problem
Speaker 1: succinctly like this. Take the suburban commuter lifestyle, adding some
Speaker 1: heavy cigarette smoking in the three martini lunch, and of
Speaker 1: course the long hours at the desk, and you have
Speaker 1: a heart attack in the waiting. According to this book,
Speaker 1: it was the wife's responsibility to make her husband healthier.
Speaker 1: I mean, after all, her husband was ruining himself at
Speaker 1: his job for her and the kids. Or at least
Speaker 1: that was the argument American housewives. They were instructed of
Speaker 1: the importance of the low cholesterol diet. They were told
Speaker 1: to avoid fried foods and to feed their man fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables. And one of the things that I find
Speaker 1: really interesting here is that the remedy that doctors were
Speaker 1: proposing it was dieting. It wasn't really exercise that comes later.
Speaker 1: You know, most adult men in the nineteen fifties, they
Speaker 1: just did not give much thought to to exercise. It
Speaker 1: was grooming a well shaved face and slicked back hair.
Speaker 1: These were the important physical qualities. I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that the show mad Men got
Speaker 1: so right about this era. If you've seen it, the
Speaker 1: main character Don Draper, he sped is a lot of
Speaker 1: time combing his hair, but we never once saw him exercise.
Speaker 1: The concern for women in this era was not the heart. Instead,
Speaker 1: the emphasis was on her appearance, and in particular, the
Speaker 1: focus was on her waistline. In his best selling book
Speaker 1: The Overweight Society, Peter Widen warned the American housewife that
Speaker 1: she needed to get thin, and that was the buzzword
Speaker 1: of the era. Thinness. You need to get thin and
Speaker 1: regain your honeymoon figure. Your husband wants you thin. He
Speaker 1: wants you to look exactly the way you did on
Speaker 1: your honeymoon back when you were twenty one years old.
Speaker 1: I mean, talk about an impossible task. And the way
Speaker 1: to get thin, he said, was by eating less more
Speaker 1: than any suggested exercise regimen. Women's fitness was wrapped up
Speaker 1: in the idea that women just needed to eat less
Speaker 1: and get thinner. Fashion magazines they told American women that
Speaker 1: the goal was twiggy that wayfish it model of the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. I mean, never mind that a woman would
Speaker 1: have to almost kill herself through calorie depletion to look
Speaker 1: like Twiggy, the very thin honeymoon figure. That was the goal.
Speaker 1: All right, I did that part quickly. But with all
Speaker 1: we have talked about in our course regarding gender, it
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that fitness for men and
Speaker 1: fitness for women meant different things. For men, it was
Speaker 1: about inner health the heart. For women, it was about appearance.
Speaker 1: It was about thinning down and looking good for her man.
Speaker 1: But there's a class component here as well. Let me
Speaker 1: point out the middle classness of these concerns that I
Speaker 1: just outlined. You know, the soft sedentary lifestyle was not
Speaker 1: the concern of the garbage man in Pittsburgh or the
Speaker 1: domestic work in Mississippi. Now, the figure around which the
Speaker 1: physical fitness crisis orbited it was the middle class, suburban American.
Speaker 1: And it's middle class Americans, with their abundance of leisure time,
Speaker 1: who are going to be the foot soldiers of the
Speaker 1: exercise boom in the nineteen seventies. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: more and more adult Americans start exercising, and it's in
Speaker 1: this decade that we get the rise of what one
Speaker 1: historian calls the new strenuosity adult Americans exercising strenuously. The
Speaker 1: guru of the new strenuosity was Dr Kenneth Cooper, a
Speaker 1: former Air Force surgeon General. In nineteen sixty eight, he
Speaker 1: published a simple but very influential book titled Aerobics. It
Speaker 1: was Dr Cooper who introduced Americans to the idea of
Speaker 1: aerobic exercise, which is the idea that you need us
Speaker 1: a stained, elevated heart rate for true physical fitness. Aerobic
Speaker 1: exercise will do it all. He said. It will reduce fat,
Speaker 1: tone muscles, it will strengthen the heart, It will make
Speaker 1: you healthy on the inside and look good on the outside.
Speaker 1: And the Americans ran with this idea, get it. They
Speaker 1: took his ideas to heart. All right, I'm on a roll.
Speaker 1: The new strenuosity is clearly a response to the physical
Speaker 1: fitness crisis of the preceding decades. But let's dig deeper here,
Speaker 1: because we might also think of the new strenuosity as
Speaker 1: a reaction to larger social and political issues from the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and the early nineteen seventies. And here's what
Speaker 1: I mean. Let me begin with a comparison. The most
Speaker 1: direct predecessor to this new interest in exercise and physical
Speaker 1: fitness was Teddy Roosevelt's call for the strenuous life. At
Speaker 1: the turn of the twenty a century. We talked about
Speaker 1: this how vigorous and robust physical activity. It was being
Speaker 1: promoted as a way to transform young men into the
Speaker 1: leaders of tomorrow. So the goal of Teddy roosevelt strenuous life,
Speaker 1: it was social because the goal was to invigorate oneself
Speaker 1: in the name of preparing oneself for national leadership. You know,
Speaker 1: young men need to engage in these strenuous activities and
Speaker 1: then the whole nation will benefit later from their leadership.
Speaker 1: But there was no such civic mindedness to the new strenuosity.
Speaker 1: With the new strenuosity, the focus was entirely on the self.
Speaker 1: The focus was on the individual and not society. And
Speaker 1: here's the argument that I find these ideas fascinating. The
Speaker 1: argument goes like this. In the nineteen sixties, young people, well,
Speaker 1: they had very serious goals to work towards your racial
Speaker 1: justice and the oftl rights movement, or ending the war
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, or pushing for feminist legislation. But now here
Speaker 1: it was the men in late nineteen seventies, and for
Speaker 1: many Americans, this was a time of disillusionment. You know,
Speaker 1: civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 1: They had been assassinated in ninety The Vietnam War had
Speaker 1: been a long, draining tenure, bloody mess. Watergates had exposed
Speaker 1: the corruptness of the political system. The Equal Rights for
Speaker 1: Women Amendment it had gone down to defeat. And so
Speaker 1: in response, frustrated and disillusioned Americans they turned away from
Speaker 1: civic engagement and the public and instead they turned inward
Speaker 1: toward the self. They had learned a lesson. All Right,
Speaker 1: maybe I can't make society perfect or even make it better,
Speaker 1: but I know I can perfect or better the self.
Speaker 1: I can perfect or better my body because I have
Speaker 1: control over that. That's the theory. One historian of the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies get named Christopher lash He called this turn
Speaker 1: inward the culture of narcissism, though I've always thought that
Speaker 1: was too harsh of a designation. I prefer how Tom
Speaker 1: Wolfe described it. He called the nineteen seventies the me decade.
Speaker 1: It was a decade when a generation of Americans, he said,
Speaker 1: they tried to distance themselves from the larger troubles of
Speaker 1: the era, and they turned inward. They sought personal satisfaction
Speaker 1: and well being in their own lives. This turn inward
Speaker 1: and searching it took many forms. This is one Americans
Speaker 1: began reading self help books. They began attending motivational seminars.
Speaker 1: This is when Americans turned to Eastern religions and began
Speaker 1: practicing forms of bodily arts like yoga. It was in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies that Americans began through hiking on the
Speaker 1: Appalachian Trail. You know, the first person to ever hike
Speaker 1: the entire two thousand and eight one mile trail, he
Speaker 1: had done it way back in His name was Earl Schaffer,
Speaker 1: and he was a World War Two veteran, and he
Speaker 1: said he hiked it to quote, walk the army out
Speaker 1: of my system. Well, in the nineteen seventies, thousands of
Speaker 1: Americans did it for the same general reason. It was
Speaker 1: an escape. It was a disconnection from the troubles of
Speaker 1: the world. It was a strenuous form of physical therapy
Speaker 1: after the break jogging, just do it. But the most
Speaker 1: popular manifestation of this turning inward and and improving the
Speaker 1: self through exercise in this era was jogging. The running craze,
Speaker 1: or the jogging boom, whenever we want to call it.
Speaker 1: It began in the nineteen seventies, and it was spurred
Speaker 1: by a few things. It was partly the result of
Speaker 1: a book talking a lot about books today, in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, Bill Bowerman. He published a slim book titled
Speaker 1: Very Simply Jogging. Bowerman was a cardiologist and the track
Speaker 1: coach at the University of Oregon, and he urged Americans
Speaker 1: to take up jogging, non competitive running. Said take it
Speaker 1: up as a way to combat the cardiac crisis of
Speaker 1: the era. Bouerman is going to go on to also
Speaker 1: be one of the founders of Nike at that story
Speaker 1: as a few lectures from now. The jogging boom was
Speaker 1: fueled by the successes of a few American distance runners.
Speaker 1: At the nineteen seventy two Unich Olympics, Americans were treated
Speaker 1: to an amazing performance by the Yale graduate Frank Shorter,
Speaker 1: who came from far behind in the pack to win
Speaker 1: the gold. Frank Shorter would be exceeded in popularity by
Speaker 1: a long haired, mustachio University of Oregon runner named Steve Prefontaine.
Speaker 1: They called him pre and pre like to say that
Speaker 1: running was not about talent, it was about guts. Prefontaine
Speaker 1: died at the height of his career in an automobile accident.
Speaker 1: He was just twenty five years old, and like the
Speaker 1: young musicians Jimmy Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janice Joplin,
Speaker 1: pre gained semi mythical status after his death. But more
Speaker 1: than the call coming from Bill Bowerman or or the
Speaker 1: success of elite American runners, I think the jogging boom
Speaker 1: was spurred by the simple fact that jogging offered salvation
Speaker 1: to many Americans. Jogging was a different kind of physical
Speaker 1: activity on many levels. It was non competitive. In order
Speaker 1: to win at jogging, one only has to get off
Speaker 1: the couch and just do it. And hey, that's a
Speaker 1: good phrase. Just do it some some sports market or
Speaker 1: how to use that one. So the jogger is in
Speaker 1: total control of their craft. And to go back to
Speaker 1: my point about exercise as a retreat from society, I
Speaker 1: think this idea of control is really important. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: seventies were tough. There there's a sharp economic downturn in
Speaker 1: the nineties seventies. People were losing their jobs as factories
Speaker 1: were shipping them overseas, the jobs, not the people. There
Speaker 1: was rising unemployment. Americans were stuck in lengthy lines for gasoline.
Speaker 1: The American hostages were stuck in Iran. But jogging gave
Speaker 1: many Americans a sense of control over their own lives,
Speaker 1: a feeling of control that they lacked in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So that's the argument. Americans felt as if they lacked
Speaker 1: control over their own lives. They felt like they lacked
Speaker 1: the ability to transform American society. But these new strenuous
Speaker 1: activities like jogging, it gave them the feeling of control.
Speaker 1: It gave them transformative power over their bodies. And so
Speaker 1: Americans engaged in strenuous activities, you know, the the the
Speaker 1: emphasis on strenuous exercise and reshaping the body. It would
Speaker 1: of course continue in the nineteen eighties, but the desire
Speaker 1: to reshape and perfect the body would take different forms
Speaker 1: in that decade. It's in the nineteen eighties that we
Speaker 1: see a shift in the exercise regimens of many American men,
Speaker 1: for example, a shift away from aerobic exercising like jogging,
Speaker 1: in a move towards anaerobic pastimes like weightlifting, anaerobic, meaning
Speaker 1: basically muscle building. It's in the nineteen eighties that the
Speaker 1: very muscular physique starts to be viewed as the ideal
Speaker 1: American body, and I mean very muscular. Dolph Lungren, Carl Weathers,
Speaker 1: still Vester Stallone. The new fad was pumping iron and
Speaker 1: getting buffed. One of the inspirations for this shift may
Speaker 1: have been the president of the United States for most
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties, Ronald Reagan. When he took office
Speaker 1: in Ronald Reagan was well at the time the oldest
Speaker 1: man to become president. But despite his age, it was
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan who masterfully used interest in physical fitness for
Speaker 1: political gain. Photos of Reagan lifting barbells, working out on
Speaker 1: nautilus machines, throwing footballs in the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: riding a horse, Ronald Reagan getting all badass with a chainsaw.
Speaker 1: These photos were everywhere during the early years of his presidency,
Speaker 1: and Ronald Reagan promoted the idea of a strong, rejuvenated,
Speaker 1: hyper competitive America. He was much more militaristic than his
Speaker 1: immediate predecessors. He dramatically built up America's nuclear weaponry and
Speaker 1: so the argument that cultural historians make is that there's
Speaker 1: a link. Just as Reagan was flexing America's muscle and
Speaker 1: building up its arms, it's arsenal, many American men were
Speaker 1: inspired to build up and flex their arms and muscles
Speaker 1: as well. I just think it's a fascinating thought. Um
Speaker 1: maybe it's true, or maybe we all just wanted to
Speaker 1: look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know who, by the way,
Speaker 1: translated that hulking physique of his into political power and
Speaker 1: the governorship of California. For women in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the number one exercise fad was aerobics aerobicizing. There were
Speaker 1: exercise videos coming from TV and movie stars like Victoria
Speaker 1: Principle of Dallas and Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda's workout videos
Speaker 1: were immensely popular, and there was a very interesting argument
Speaker 1: out there about aerobics. Now, some American women celebrated aerobics
Speaker 1: as liberating. They emphasized the idea that women sweating and
Speaker 1: engaging in this strenuous form of exercise it's a very
Speaker 1: important means towards physical health and greater self confidence. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, there were some feminists who were
Speaker 1: troubled by the aerobics fad. They had worked to get
Speaker 1: title nine passed and have it applied to competitive sports
Speaker 1: in the United States, and now, all of a sudden
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties there seemed to be a shift
Speaker 1: away from competitive sports and are exercising in the name
Speaker 1: of building character, and a shift toward exercising to look
Speaker 1: good and more than that as they feared exercising in
Speaker 1: the name of being more sexually alluring. Yeah, there's all
Speaker 1: these pieces of evidence we could point to here. You
Speaker 1: actually saw this shift in Barbie dolls. In the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. The most popular Barbie doll was gold Medal Barbie,
Speaker 1: a female Olympic athlete who had won a gold medal
Speaker 1: in competitive scheme. But the most popular Barbie in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen eighties it was Great Shape Barbie, an aerobics instructor,
Speaker 1: decked out in a spandex leotard and leg warmers. The
Speaker 1: critics said that aerobics emphasized passive femininity. They said, but
Speaker 1: first of all, like with the Honeymoon figure of the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifes, aerobics emphasizes a body ideal that is just unattainable.
Speaker 1: Although at least this was attempted through exercise and not starvation.
Speaker 1: But mainly they bemoaned the fact that women seem to
Speaker 1: be aerobicizing in hopes of making their body more appealing
Speaker 1: to men. So they said, it's not exercise for the self,
Speaker 1: it's exercise for the male gaze. The athletic female was
Speaker 1: becoming a sexual and sexualized object. Look whatever you think
Speaker 1: of the argument, no doubt about it. There were a
Speaker 1: bunch of videos and movies from the nineteen eighties that
Speaker 1: equated women exercising with sex. Oh chief, there was Olivia
Speaker 1: Newton John's song and music video Let's Get Physical, a
Speaker 1: song that explicitly links the gym with for play. She
Speaker 1: is exercising now, she says in this song, in the
Speaker 1: name of getting horizontal later. I mean that's her lie.
Speaker 1: There was movie Perfect, starring Jamie Lee Curtis as a
Speaker 1: hotshot aerobics instructor. John Travolta was one of her students,
Speaker 1: and the title Perfect is revealing, like with the smash
Speaker 1: hit from the era, the movie ten, in which Bo
Speaker 1: Derek jogs, whether it's jogging she jogs down the beach
Speaker 1: in her swimsuit. The idea here is that the goal
Speaker 1: of exercise is female physical perfection. Critics said, sports and
Speaker 1: exercise are not supposed to be about achieving some level
Speaker 1: of physical perfection. They're supposed to be about building character,
Speaker 1: just getting healthy and doing your best. But American culture
Speaker 1: made it about beauty and sex. Once again, agree, disagree.
Speaker 1: I find these ideas fascinating. But the eighties were still
Speaker 1: to come. So let's end like this. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to the end of the nineteen of these and wrap
Speaker 1: up with the story of one more jogging politician. Back
Speaker 1: in the sixties, joggers were seen as odd balls at worst,
Speaker 1: kind of health freaks at best, kind of like vegetarians
Speaker 1: used to be seen. But by the late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: jogging had gone totally mainstream. It was an American craze,
Speaker 1: you know. In nineteen seventy seven, the TV celebrities Lee Majors,
Speaker 1: the six Million Dollar Man, my personal hero of that era,
Speaker 1: and Farah Fawcett, one of Charlie's angels. I may have
Speaker 1: had her poster on my wall. They appeared together on
Speaker 1: the cover of People magazine jogging with the headline Farah
Speaker 1: and Lee and Everybody's Doing It. Stars joined the jogging craze,
Speaker 1: but the nation's most famous jogger in this era was
Speaker 1: the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. And Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter had a complicated relationship to the pastime of jogging.
Speaker 1: Carter's public syst like the boast of his jogging skills.
Speaker 1: They told the press every week the number of miles
Speaker 1: that Carter had jogged, and we learned that the president
Speaker 1: he could run a sub six thirty mile. We learned
Speaker 1: that through jogging, Carter had reduced his weight from a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty seven to one forty nine pounds, his
Speaker 1: resting pulse rate had been lowered from sixty to forty
Speaker 1: beats per minute. All this was announced to the press
Speaker 1: because Jimmy Carter's publicists were making the argument that because
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter was physically fit, he was fit to rule
Speaker 1: the nation. Presidents make this argument using sports all the time,
Speaker 1: but this jogging propaganda it came back to haunt Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 1: In v nine, while at the presidential retreat at Camp David,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter participated in in a local ten k run
Speaker 1: right six point two miles, and the press was invited
Speaker 1: to tag along and see their physically fit president to
Speaker 1: his thing. It was a he steep and hilly course,
Speaker 1: and it was a humid day. And at the four
Speaker 1: mile mark, the president became dehydrated, His legs wobbled, his
Speaker 1: his face drained of color, and he sagged helplessly into
Speaker 1: the arms of his aids. And photographers captured the entire
Speaker 1: scene as Jimmy Carter was whisked into a car and
Speaker 1: rushed back to Camp David. I mean, there was a
Speaker 1: real fear that the President had suffered a heart attack.
Speaker 1: Now Jimmy Carter quickly recovered, and in fact he handed
Speaker 1: out trophies to the winners ninety minutes later, but the
Speaker 1: damage had been done. Instead of Carter demonstrating his strenuosity,
Speaker 1: many Americans saw his inability to complete the race as
Speaker 1: a metaphor, a metaphor for, as they saw it, his
Speaker 1: weak and ineffective leadership. I'm not here today to debate
Speaker 1: Carter's presidency. I actually think he was a much better
Speaker 1: president than most people give him credit for. But I
Speaker 1: know one thing. Sagging helplessly into the arms of your aids.
Speaker 1: That is not a good look for someone trying to
Speaker 1: make the argument that because he's physically fit. He's fit
Speaker 1: to rule the free world. That's all for now. Next
Speaker 1: time on the Untold History of Sports in America, presented
Speaker 1: by One Day University, The Wide World of Sports, School
Speaker 1: of Humans,