Sport, Heroes and Myth

Abstract

A myth is a symbolic structure which expresses moral and aesthetic values; it is the realm through which ultimate reality is mediated to man. Ernst Cassirer notes that one of the central qualities of a myth is its social nature, and social myth since the Greeks has been a mixing of the mythic with scientific analysis. Sport as a conveyor of social myth functions both as teacher and interpreter of social reality, and is often found embodied in the "Heroes of Sport." The hero will embody some attributes of the myth and will affirm the myth by illustrating its reality. The hero shows us what we ought to be, and we make him a hero because we wish to be what he is. John W. Ward, in Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age, identified the three themes of the American myth as Nature, Will and Providence. The heroes of sport often express one or more of these themes.