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Todd Cleveland, "Africa and the Olympics: Winning Away from the Podium" (Ohio UP, 2024)
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
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Commercial Narrator
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
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- [01:31]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Todd Cleveland about his book titled Africa and the Winning Away from the Podium, published by Ohio University Press in 2024. Now, as this book suggests, it it is focusing on Africa and the Olympics, which is maybe not a combination where we would most think of when we think of the Olympics, right? In many sports, African countries are not on the top of the podium, but as this book suggests and argues through a number of different examples. That is not to say that African countries aren't getting things out of participating. In fact, as we're going to discuss, African countries get a lot out of participating. African athletes get things out of participating as well for themselves, for their countries, and also for wider political goals too. So we're not really necessarily going to be talking about gold or silver or bronze, but we still have a lot to talk about. So Todd, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Dr. Todd Cleveland
Sure. Thank you so much for having me. The introduction was fantastic. Couldn't have done it better myself. So thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, speaking of introductions, I would love you to contribute to that opening part of our discussion by introducing yourself a little bit and telling us what. Why you decided to write this book.
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Dr. Todd Cleveland
Sure. So I teach African history, but also sports history at the University of Arkansas in the United States. I'm trained as an African historian, but I'm a lifelong sports lover and eventually figured out a way to sort of combine these two passions of mine. So I started introducing or generating or designing, I should say, classes. Teach a class called History of sports in Africa and teaching class on a World Cup. Currently teach a class on soccer. And so football. These are my sort of passions. And when I can combine Africa with these, it's. It's all the more enjoyable for me and my students. They've really resonated with my students too. In many respects, this book is sort of illustrative of that. Students go into a discussion about Africa and the Olympic Games thinking there's really not much there to discuss other than perhaps East East African long distance running. But of course, over the course of the book, we can see that there's a lot going on. As you indicated in the introduction, I decided to write this book well, for a number of different reasons. I had started a project years ago which ended up becoming a book on African soccer migrants to Portugal during the colonial period. And I felt pretty strong, and I ended up being right about it, that they were very conflicted. So they're playing for Portugal. Yep. Portugal's their. The sort of colonial oppressor. And so they were sort of very internally conflicted. And I wanted to see if this sort of held in the Olympic Games. So you did have African athletes participating for Portugal. But once I started getting into the sort of African Olympics more broadly, I realized I wanted the book to be much more encompassing rather than narrow, just sticking to the Lusophone countries of Africa. And so this book just sort of grew in scope over time and ultimately became what it was. And it was very sort of educational or edifying for me because, you know, as a historian, we're very comfortable, you know, decades, if not centuries ago, but as we get closer to current times, we get a little less comfortable. So it was really. But it was also very informational. And so it was really rewarding research experience for me. And I learned a tremendous amount, you know, I knew some of this history, you know, I'm in my mid-50s, so I grew up with some of this, the boycotts and things like that. But so much of this was new to me, and that meant that that made it really, really enjoyable. Enjoyable research experience.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's lovely to hear and a wonderful way, I think, to start our conversation. Don't worry, though. I'm not going to throw you in the deep end with the immediate current stuff straight away. We are going to go back in time first. So I think the interesting place to start, and certainly what I was immediately intrigued by, by Africa and the Olympics, is that obviously, you know, we're going to ignore the ancient, ancient Olympics. We're going to talk about the modern Olympics. And even though it's not that old in historical terms, it is still. Still older than most African countries, given that many of them didn't become independent until the 1960s or even later. If we're looking at Portuguese countries that were formerly Portuguese colonies. So what does that mean for African countries participation in the Olympics? Do they not show up until they become independent? Or do we see African countries or even African colonies involved in the Olympics before, for instance, the sort of 1960s moment?
- [06:11]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Yeah, great question. And this really struck me in my research. So while these future countries were still colonies, some of them were fielding Olympic teams. And somehow this was permissible by the ioc, which is usually a very sort of conservative body. So, for example, Nigeria starts an Olympic team, participates in 56. They start playing in the Commonwealth Games as well. And so these are locally organized sort of outfits. So they. The fundraising would be. They'd run raffles or have dances to raise money for these. These sort of embryonic Olympic teams. And they'd be very small. They'd be typically six to eight, 10 athletes, invariably coached by a white European. And they may have a trainer or manager. So they're very, very small contingents that are traveling to these Games. Yet there's. They're instilling a great deal of pride, you know, within these African populations. Keep in mind, in the context of European colonialism in Africa, the narrative was that, or that had been, you know, beaten into them was that Europeans were superior. Right. So oftentimes, Europeans didn't want to play Africans in sports because that could potentially dent or shatter even this sort of superiority myth. And so it was somewhat remarkable that these. These teams were fielded. They're competing against white athletes, of course, from all over the world. The European. The IOC was a very. Or the Olympics in general were very much a European or North American or we could even say maybe global north pursuit for decades after the sort of the return, if you will, of the modern games. And so these athletes are the very small numbers. They aren't really winning medals. They're still sort of. They're sort of feeding the swelling pride that's going to ultimately result in decolonization. And of course, decolonization is a much more complex process. But, but part of that is this sort of belief in themselves that Africans could self govern, could compete, were not inferior. Part of this happens during World War II when they served in the trenches with European troops and saw them fought together, died together, et cetera. So this was building. This is all part of. Maybe you could trace this back to the 1940s. Earlier than that, there wasn't a great deal of confidence within African communities. They were sort of unfortunately, probably taking that superiority myth far too much at straight at face value. Rather. It's not till the 1960s, of course, when the great majority of African countries become independent and then they sort of formally participate. But there are antisen antecedents, of course. You have Egypt and South Africa who were competing even before the 1950s. And actually Egypt was competitive, put it that way. Again, there weren't huge metal halls for these, for those teams, but still, and for many of the same reasons as we just talked about these teams prior to independence, you know, these teams are important to the populations of Egypt and South Africa respectively. And even though there were only white athletes participating for South Africa, with the exception of two athletes in 1904 who were sort of a long story, they were there two black athletes who were present in St. Louis for the World's Fair and ended up being drafted into the Olympic marathon that was occurring at the same time. So they were, I don't know what the right word. They were not deliberate athletes, but they ended up faring pretty well. But those were the last two black athletes for South Africa until the 1992 Barcelona Games. So 88 years, I suppose. Yeah.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
No, I mean, that definitely gives a kind of sense of what was and wasn't included. Right. And how this was sort of talked about in terms of the politics of it. But this idea of sort of the self confidence of just involvement, even if as you said, you know, we're not talking big metal holes. That of course doesn't just occur leading up to independence and kind of galvanizing towards independence. You also talk in the book about how newly independent African countries then kind of build on this to talk about confidence and independence. But Also sort of internal and external sovereignty. Is that right?
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Dr. Todd Cleveland
Yeah, absolutely. There was a great deal of emphasis placed on sports in the immediate aftermath of the various decolonization processes. And that's because these. Keep in mind, African countries had borders that were entirely. Almost all of them have entirely artificial borders. These were borders constructed by the European powers in 1884, 85, in Berlin at something historians call the Berlin Conference. And so these African nations inherited these political spaces that had very little logic in terms of ethnolinguistic communities. You might have dozens, if not hundreds of dialects and languages within a particular political space. And so one of the ways that they tried to. The early sort of first generation of African leaders tried to unite these sort of disparate, Whether they're ethnic communities, regional communities, religious communities, et cetera, with. Via sports. Right. If we're. Even though I don't feel Nigerian or I don't feel Angola, and that's what the Portuguese told me I was, or that's what the British told me I was, I can get behind my athletes who are wearing my colors and draping themselves with my flag because that. That should pull all of us together. And that sounds great, and it's often fleeting when you do have these. These sort of unifying moments. But still, the early leaders believe very strongly as utilizing sport as a tool for national unity, especially in these sort of the early days of independence, where arguably their biggest challenge, besides all sorts of different types of development, was to develop a sense of unity, of national unity, of nationalism. I mean, just a sense of, hey, we're all in this together. Like it or not, or however this ended up being, this is our new reality. So any sort of athletic competition, whether it was the World cup or the Olympics, these international. It gave them a sense of belonging. I like internal and external sovereignty. I like that, too. But really, this was about nation building in a way. In a way that we don't sort of typically think about it. Right. Because we're so used to nation states with the sort of Eurocentric view that was instilled upon us for decades.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah. And this sort of idea of we're all in this together is not just within each country. We're all in this together. You also talk about in the book the kind of growing idea that we African countries are all in this together, which leads to. In. Well, it leads to a bunch of things, but one of them is, of course, the most famous, trying to get apartheid South Africa banned for not being all in it together. Can you tell us about kind of how that effort came together.
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Dr. Todd Cleveland
Sure. And that's quite a process, of course. I mean, for a long time. So apartheid is instituted in 1948, 1949, and then, of course, laws follow annually, basically. But there are plenty of precedents for apartheid. It's not as if it came out of nowhere in 1948. But apartheid doesn't look any different really than colonial Africa. So it's not until these African countries. No one was alarmed at apartheid in the 1950s because this. The same thing was going on all over the continent. However, once these countries, starting with Ghana in 57, and then, like I said, the vast majority of them in the first half of the 1960s become independent, they're very understandably outspoken against apartheid. It's sort of the blight on the continent, if you will. But it still takes time. Right. The Cold War is raging. World powers aren't overly concerned about South Africa. Of course, the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom fully support apartheid, the apartheid regime, because they're staunchly anti communist. And so Cold war sort of calculations and politics sort of eclipse global concerns about apartheid. That starts to change in the 60s with the charcoal massacre, increasingly so in the 70s with the Soweto massacre. And now these are on images of South African townships, police shooting tear gas from bullets into townships. Black South Africans dying daily. This is, you know, over time, this is being beamed into TV sets all over the world. And so South Africa becomes an outlier. An outlier relatively quickly. They sort of become a pariah nation. They're banned by FIFA, they're banned by all sorts of international sports organizations. There's a great deal of lobbying and politicking and just energy and time spent by a great many Africans, some of whom risked their lives. If you think about Dennis Brutus, for example, Rhodesian South African activist, sports activist, who was shot by the apartheid regime. And so this was heady, this was important stuff. And of course, we know the anti apartheid movement became global at some point. So you had external actors and also individuals within South Africa who were sort of bravely pushing back on this. Unfortunately, as you might imagine, the IOC is a very conservative organization. Its governing body, sort of within the IOC is very, very white, European, sort of the folks who make the rules. And so there was a great deal of. I don't. Admiration is too strong of a word, but support for South Africa. And this is within the ioc. So this was very difficult for them. I mean, they looked at white South Africans as brothers. And these were folks who had. This was a Country that had participated in the Olympic Games since the early 20th century. So this was a long standing member of the Olympic movement, of the Olympic community. One of the issues that the IOC used for cover, if you will, was the idea that there's no room for politics in the Olympics, which is of course absurd. It's always been, there's been politics in every sporting event since the dawn of time. But this was the way that they could say that, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's not up to us how South Africa runs itself internally. That's up to its own government. We're simply a sporting body and all we do is facilitate, you know, competitions every four years. They can send whoever they, whoever they want. That's not up to us. And so they kind of hid behind that for a long time until they really couldn't anymore. And so it was a struggle, it was protracted, it was difficult. But ultimately the IOC capitulated, much to the chagrin of Avery Brundage, the long standing United States President of the ioc, who was a staunch South African supporter. But eventually even he was sort of outvoted by the members. So it's a very interesting, very complicated story, but you could layer it on to sort of the global struggle against apartheid and it fits pretty well.
- [17:04]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's definitely interesting to look at that aspect of it. To what extent was the effort to get Rhodesia banned sort of similar to this? Was it for the same reasons? Was it organized in the same sort of way? Are we looking at something very different?
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Dr. Todd Cleveland
That's a good question. There are many aspects of it that are similar. So you have a white minority regiment at a time when it's sort of no longer. Even though it was tolerated for decades on the continent. By the 1970s, I think there was a, or 60s or even earlier you could argue, but a sort of global consensus that African nations should have self determination, should have democratic elections and should not be governed by small white minority regimes. And so Rhodesia in that respect looks a lot like South African. If you ever talk to a white Rhodesian though, they will make it very clear that apartheid was much harsher, much crueler than the sort of, the sort of system, social system and Rhodesian legal system, I should say. So Rhodesia is sort of like, from the outside looks a lot like South Africa, but it's not really. And the important distinction here is that Rhodesian, sorry, Rhodesia does send black athletes as part of its Olympic team. So that's where the two countries are very divergent. But the fact that Rhodesia looks a lot like South Africa, maybe from 10,000ft and maybe even from ground level makes it sort of easy to clump in with South Africa. It's also adjacent. The white settlers who settled what became the colony of Rhodesia came from South Africa. So I mean there's all sorts of ways where it's easy to sort of couple these two countries. But again there is that important distinction that Rhodesian was sending multiracial teams, sorry mixed racial teams to Olympic games. And so it's a little bit trickier to try to get Rhodesia band. But of course they ultimately do.
- [18:56]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's interesting to understand the kind of similarities and differences, especially given these superficial similarities definitely kind of jump out at you. So that was interesting to read about in the book and obviously here you discuss. Now I admit one that seemed to come a little bit more out of nowhere though was New Zealand. Trying to get New Zealand banned.
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Commercial Narrator
So.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
So what was up with that?
- [19:17]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Sure, yeah. We don't think of New Zealand as sort of ever causing trouble. So their, their banding was a little bit different. They had a. They have multiracial sports, if any listeners follow rugby, you know, the third, the premier rugby nation in the world and they draw most of their best players from the Maori ethnic group. And so that was. That's not to say there's not racism in New Zealand. There is, but they're. They weren't in violation of any sort of script sporting taboos, if you will. However, I guess I shouldn't say that the one. They were rugby because it's so heavily dependent on South Africa as one of the major major clubs or major, sorry countries in sort of the elite rugby circles did not ban South Africa. Countries started to over time refuse to travel to South Africa to play them thinking that that indicated some sort of support for the apartheid regime. And that went for musicians, for other athletes and other sports too. The idea that. And they would often pay large amounts of money for cricketers to come to South Africa, most famously or infamously from the West Indies and subsequently the West Indian players were banned from playing for West Indies for the remainder of their lives. So it was difficult. So it was always very controversial to go to South Africa and play. And New Zealand kept maintaining these sort of sports, sporting ties with South Africa via rugby. And so they would travel to South Africa, South Africa would travel to New Zealand to play and they were controversial. There would be protests, sometimes the field would be stormed by protesters. So it wasn't as if every New Zealander was supported. This sort of continued Sporting connection to apartheid South Africa. But the fact is that. And it actually became a political issue of such importance that it was part of the campaign, I believe in the 72 election, might have been 74. So this was an important thing to discuss politically as well in New Zealand and Soweto happens. The Soweto massacre happens in the summer of 76. And so as African, different African organizations and countries, governments, activists, et cetera, are taking a really close look and critical look at the way that New Zealand is continuing to maintain sporting ties with South Africa. You have this sort of internationally tragic massacre of school children in South Africa. So this is right around this time. New Zealand has just played South Africa in rugby. The Olympics are starting in 76 in Montreal. And so the, this sort of, this campaign to ban New Zealand from the Olympics sort of launched right around then as well. It's very sort of disorganized initially. So African nations are sending teams, but they're telling them they're not quite sure if they're going to actually participate or not. So this sort of boycott being discussed, I mean, as teams are flying from, you know, wherever in Africa to Montreal, their fate sort of unclear, and their politicians are trying to determine what the right thing to do. The, the folks who are organizing the boycott are trying to build consensus such that all African nations threaten to boycott and that, that if that were the case, then the Olympic committee would be forced to ban New Zealand. Of course, in sort of ordinary New Zealanders are shocked, you know, at all this, like thinking we didn't do anything wrong. This has nothing, that rugby is not an Olympic sport. Sport. This has nothing to do with the Olympics. And so, but, but of course, it kind of bleeds into this, this sort of Olympic conversation. Ultimately the African nation. Some African nations boycott. Many boycott, actually, some don't. And New Zealand is allowed to continue playing. They do break off sporting ties with South Africa eventually though. So again, maybe call that a win away from the podium. But ultimately the, the, the movement to ban New Zealand is unsuccessful.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That was really unexpected to read about and fascinating because of it. So thank you for helping us understand how and why that came to be. Thinking then about winning away from the podium, it feels like we sort of got two items so far, right. One is kind of creating this feeling of national identity and confidence before and after independence. We've got the sort of using it as part of a way of leveraging these larger political goals around ensuring, you know, getting rid of, for example, of apartheid, South Africa, et cetera. There are, of course, some other wins you talk about in the book. So what, for instance, have been some of the ways that African countries have benefited from the participation of African athletes in different games. We haven't talked about the athletes as much yet.
- [23:51]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Yeah, that's true. I think, again, I mean, I mean, there's still a. A great deal of pride and confidence that is generated when African athletes are successful at the Games, especially female athletes, because it gives African girls and women a sort of sense of empowerment that they may not have in their home societies. And so I think that this is really important. These sort of intangible things, I think, are still very important, whether we're talking about building national unity in the 50s or 60s or instilling pride and empowerment in African communities and individuals in a way that in the United States, for example, we don't really have. We might laud a particular athlete for winning. Like, you know, in the upcoming Winter Olympics, surely there will be plenty of American athletes who win medals. Some of them will be more famous, if you will, at least momentarily, for sports that we generally don't follow, except for every four years. But it doesn't. You'd have to go back to the 1980 Olympics with the miracle and ice in America beating the Russians in hockey to win the gold medal. Actually, they didn't beat the Russians to win the gold medal. They had to beat the Russians along the way to get to the gold medal match. But in any event, this is the last time I think, that you could really look at the Olympics and say, wow, that instilled some sort of pride or sense of community in the United States. It just doesn't happen. It's too big of a country with too many other things going on. But a single athlete in an African nation can do a great deal of good in terms of, you know, just building confidence and pride and. And pride in this pride in their nation. And so there. Those. Those are still around these sort of intangible things. I mean, sometimes they get involved politically. There's been some, you know, they can. You. They can leverage their sort of athletic fame to get involved politically, but they more so use that. I think we're going to discuss this coming up here as well as a way to sort of improve the lives of sort of ordinary Africans and their respective countries through charitable foundations, through working for NGOs, for example, sort of being the face of an NGO that's doing, you know, really important work on the ground and in particular places around the continent. So. So they've used oftentimes leverage the sort of sporting fame or athletic fame to improve the quality of life for their countrymen or country women as it may be.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's definitely an important aspect of it. Can you give us some examples?
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Dr. Todd Cleveland
I think most famously you have a series of runners in East Africa that have set up foundations. I mean they end up going on to, I mean they end up, I mean the elite athletes from eastern East Africa end up earning a lot of money because they can win pretty sizable prize money on the marathon circuits, for example, but even just competing as a professional track and field athlete. And so they have the means and the money to go back to their respective home countries and set up foundations. So you see a lot of these in Kenya, for example, because there's been so many successful Kenyan long distance runners and building sort of foundations that they, I mean some of the Kenyans have set up, what would you call them, almost like running tourism. So you go, you know, let's say you're, you're a long distance runner, but you're certainly not elite. I mean just the opportunity to run with or, you know, train with or practice with an elite athlete, you know, might, might be something you dream about and then that money sort of funneled back into the community through different sorts of programming. So these are not schemes to get rich by, you know, by Kenyan athletes by any stretch that most of the money is being reinvested sort of locally or regionally in the areas especially where the long distance running is sort of at the epicenter of long distance running.
- [27:48]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Those are definitely some intriguing examples to be aware of. What about benefits to the athletes themselves who participate in the Olympics?
- [27:56]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Sure. I mean there's, I'm again sort of some of the intangible things we talked about sort of pride in country, but also tangible as well. Some of them have been able to, you know, improve their families lives. Of course there's not really a great deal of commercial fame or commercial sort of profit to be made, but some, I mean, beyond their winnings, I mean you might see an elite Kenyan athlete, for example, on billboards or things like that. So there, there are ways to sort of personally enrich themselves, but I think they're more, I think what's more rewarding and listening to these athletes speak and talk about the sort of benefits that they've or the comp, their accomplishments. I think they're more interested in what they can do sort of selflessly for their countries, for the respective countries, or maybe not even at the country at the national level, but regionally or locally. I think that that's been very rewarding for many of these athletes that they invariably. Not invariably, but many of them came from very sort of poor four backgrounds, and they sort of want to give back and realize that they have an opportunity because of the Olympic. Other Olympic fame, which again, goes a lot further. I probably will not recognize a single American who wins an Olympic, the name of any Americans who win Olympics in the upcoming Games. But if someone from an African country wins the medal, that person, every person in the country will know who that is. So there's a fame that's outsized. And if we use sort of Western standards to understand the importance of the.
- [29:25]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Olympics, yeah, that's definitely worth emphasising. The impact of that can be absolutely massive and as you mentioned earlier, lead to all sorts of kind of campaigns that don't seem to have anything to do with sport. But kind of the fame in and of itself has sort of additional benefits. I wonder if we can pick up on the thread then, that you mentioned at the beginning, which is the kind of number of cool things you got to find out about and learn and putting all of this together. You know, the history all the way up really till the present. And obviously I've mentioned a few surprises I came across in reading this, but are there any topics we haven't covered yet that you were surprised by and want to make sure we include?
- [30:02]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, and I don't want to, I don't want to sort of leave this on a negative note, but the, the power that Avery Brundage wielded, I think, really struck me and really how, how white the Olympics, the Olympic, the sort of, the power brokers within the IOC have been for a long, long time. So it's basically a European organization with participation from America and Canada. And even once we start to democratize the body, the sort of general body, the governing body within the IOC remains highly European and North American. And you have Brundage, who served for decades as the president of the Olympic Committee, who was outspokenly supportive of apartheid South Africa. And even when it was no longer sort of fashionable or even appropriate to do so, it was just a very, very conservative, very white and very, I mean, I'm hesitating to use the word racist, but I mean, it wouldn't be a stretch. This was something that was supposed. They like the idea of the sort of internationalism of the Olympics. You know, they want to have all the flags up there. But when it came time to make decisions, this was. The power was maintained within A very, very small circle of Europeans and Americans. And so that struck me, not in a good way necessarily, but it also made me realize how difficult the struggle was for Africans and stuff that I was naive about. Of course. I mean, I grew up during some of this at the very least. And so that had to feel incredibly daunting. To know that the president of the Olympic committee in the 1970s is supportive of South Africa indicates infamously at the 72 Games that the two terrible things that happened was the pressure to remove Rhodesia and the massacre of the Israeli athletes. I mean, those to him are equally as terrible. So it makes the Africans accomplishments even that much more impressive. The way that they came together and won, I mean, against an organization, against an individual who seemed undefeatable, if you will. So there's a negative sort of side of this surprising detail as I went through the research, but also sort of what came out of it was a deeper sense of. A deeper sense of how impressive Africans accomplishments were and taking on something that didn't look like it could be overcome. I will, I will say my statements. One of the greatest things that came out of this research is if you ever have an opportunity to go to Lausanne, which is where the Olympic, Olympic Committee's headquarters are, and also their archives, if you ever find yourself there, you can go in the library, which is doubles as an archive, and there's a reading room and the, the windows, you look out over Lake Geneva with the Alps in the background. And my. The desk I had for the summer was, was right next to the window. And every day I went in there and just stared at the lake and stared at the mountains and did my work. It was just a magical. From someone who's used to doing archival research in Africa, where, you know, there simply aren't as many resources and the conditions are more challenging. This was something akin to heaven for a researcher.
- [33:37]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that sounds pretty great. Thank you for the inside tip there. I think that will definitely be of interest to you listeners. And of course, aside from teaching on these topics, as you mentioned earlier, and the book is kind of out in the world, if anyone else wants to teach with it. Is there any projects you're currently working on, whether related or not, that you want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [33:59]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Oh sure. Speaking of wonderful places to do research, I'm just about finished with a book on history of tourism and the Seychelles. And so that's why I've been doing more work on tourism. And it's all sort of part of the sports, recreation and tourism. It kind of grew out of this interest in sports and so I've had a couple books recently on tourism, on the history of tourism and this will be I'll add that add this book to that list at some point. So it was exciting. It was wonderful to be I mean I did most of the the archival research in England because it was a former British colony in London but traveled to the Seychelles this past summer with my family and that was just a really, a really magical place, frankly. Just wonderful.
- [34:44]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, that sounds absolutely delightful. So best of luck in continuing that research. And of course, while you are off in the Seychelles, perhaps listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Africa in the Winning Away from the Podium published by Ohio University Press in 2024. Todd, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [35:05]
Dr. Todd Cleveland
Thank you, Miranda, thank you for having me. This was really enjoyable and I hope reaches as many folks.