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Home > A Point of View > A Sporting Catharsis
Podcast: A Point of View
Episode:

A Sporting Catharsis
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:09:51
Publish Date: 2013-07-12 15:00:00
Description: As Britain basks in post-Wimbledon glory, amid the Ashes, Sarah Dunant reflects on how sport has - throughout history - been used by the authorities to help populations let off steam. In Florence, in the late 1500s, townspeople played a form of football that allowed them to wrestle, punch and immobilize their opponents in any way they liked. Venice had a spectacularly violent sport of bridge-fighting where opposing teams "armed with sticks...dipped in boiling oil beat the hell out of each other". Civic sporting therapy - past and present - has for centuries, Sarah argues, "proved a creative alternative to our recurring tendency to kill each other". Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Total Play: 0

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