The contributors to this collection of essays explore the symbolic meanings that have been attached to sport in Europe by considering some of the mythic heroes who have dominated the sporting landscapes of their own countries.

Historians of popular culture have recently been addressing the role of myth, and now it is time that social historians of sport also examined it. The contributors to this collection of essays explore the symbolic meanings that have been attached to sport in Europe by considering some of the mythic heroes who have dominated the sporting landscapes of their own countries. The ambition is to understand what these icons stood for in the eyes of those who watched or read about these vessels into which poured all manner of gender, class and patriotic expectations.