0:11

Lessons from the world's top professors

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anytime, any place, world

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history examined and science explained.

0:18

This is one day University.

0:21

Welcome, and

0:26

we're back on the untold history

0:28

of sports in America. I'm

0:30

your host, Mike cosca

0:32

Relli. Today we're looking at

0:34

the thing that you should do regularly to

0:37

compete in sports exercise.

0:40

No, we're not giving you tips on how to lose

0:42

weight or keep that butt tight. We're talking about

0:44

the fitness revolution of the nineteen seventies.

0:47

So get a good stretch, dust

0:49

off those barbells, and adjust your

0:51

leg warmers. Here's Matt. We

0:56

begin in September of night.

0:59

It turns out, just a couple of weeks before Tommy

1:01

Smith and John Carlos famously raised

1:03

their fists in Mexico City.

1:05

It's early September night,

1:08

and a small group has gathered at the National

1:10

Mall in Washington, d C. And they

1:12

are there to publicize something brand new, National

1:16

Jogging Day. There

1:18

were members of a Baltimore jogging club,

1:21

a former United States Surgeon General,

1:23

there was some Democratic congressman, and

1:26

there was the Republican Senator from South

1:28

Carolina, Strom Thurmond,

1:31

the then sixty six year old strom

1:33

Thurmond, most known for his firm beliefs

1:36

in racial segregation. He was

1:38

the oldest of the group, and he was

1:40

just the type of man at risk for a

1:42

heart attack that doctors had in mind

1:44

when they began recommending jogging in

1:47

this era. Look, it's a

1:49

test case of only one, but strom

1:51

Thurman would live to be one hundred years

1:53

old. He served in the Senate for almost

1:56

a full half century,

1:58

so maybe he was onto something here

2:00

with this jogging thing. Strom

2:03

Thurman and the rest of the pack they ran and

2:05

a few laps around the reflecting pool

2:07

in front of the Washington Monument, and the reflecting

2:10

pool is one quarter mile around, the

2:12

exact same distance as a regulation track,

2:15

and then it was back to work. Though actually

2:17

this was part of their job. As

2:20

we have discussed, was

2:22

a cantankerous political year, with

2:25

the nation dividing over the war in Vietnam

2:27

and things like black power. But on

2:29

this day we had Democrats and Republicans

2:32

coming together to make a bipartisan

2:35

statement that physical fitness

2:37

was a matter of national importance.

2:41

So let's use this moment, the first National

2:43

Jogging Day in n as our

2:45

launching point to explore the growing

2:48

interests in physical fitness among Americans

2:50

in this era. It was

2:52

not that long ago that most Americans

2:55

stopped exercising almost entirely

2:57

after they graduated high school. You know, they

3:00

had endured pe classes and now

3:02

they were done. It's hard

3:04

to imagine that because everywhere you

3:06

look people are running and

3:08

mountain biking, lifting weights, doing

3:11

yoga. I saw a guy balancing on a tight rope

3:13

the other day. There are fancy

3:15

gyms that cater to adult clients

3:17

all around US. Gold's gym,

3:20

Planet Fitness l a fitness title

3:22

boxing that the list goes on. But

3:25

this dedication to being physically

3:27

fit as an adult, this

3:29

is a relatively new phenomenon in American

3:32

history. Yeah, we talked a while

3:34

ago about how physical educators

3:36

they promoted the idea that children

3:39

needed to exercise in play games. At the

3:41

turn of the twentieth century, this was known

3:43

as the Gospel of play. And

3:45

we talked more recently about how, in the context

3:47

of the Cold War and winning the Metal Count

3:49

against the Soviets, physical fitness

3:52

for school children it was promoted as a

3:54

patriotic necessity. But

3:56

what was happening at the National Mall in night

3:59

this was different. Those were

4:02

adults who were dedicating themselves

4:04

to the idea they needed to be

4:06

fit, and they were telling other adults

4:08

that they needed to get in shape as

4:10

well. And in retrospect,

4:14

I think this was the beginning of a fitness

4:16

boom or or a fitness craze

4:18

in this nation, a boom or

4:20

a craze that we are still living through.

4:24

So today, let's kind of trace the

4:26

contours of this fitness boom, this

4:28

emerging dedication to adult

4:30

fitness in this era. We've

4:33

reached the nineteen seventies in this course, and

4:35

that's why I'm doing this lecture now, because

4:37

it's in the nineteen seventies that the

4:39

modern American fitness boom really

4:41

began. And what I want to do today

4:44

is try to figure out why why did Americans

4:46

start working out in this decade. So

4:49

let's intellectualize

4:51

exercise. Let's think deeply

4:54

about sweat. That sounds

4:56

weird, I know, but let's give it a shot.

5:00

Alright. The first thing to say here is that the

5:02

push for physical fitness among adult Americans

5:05

it has its root in a perceived

5:07

physical fitness crisis. In

5:09

the nineteen fifties, doctors

5:14

were warning that Americans were unfit now

5:18

chalk this up as a what we call now a first

5:20

world problem, because the general

5:23

lack of fitness among Americans was

5:25

the result of growing comfort and

5:27

and ease and material affluents

5:30

in the United States after World War Two,

5:32

especially in the suburbs. In

5:35

the suburbs, men drove their cars from

5:37

their garages to the train station and

5:39

then rode the train to work, you know, sitting

5:41

for two hours a day. Then they sat

5:44

nine hours a day in their offices.

5:47

Suburban women they drove their automobiles

5:49

to the grocery store and then back. And modern

5:52

appliances certainly made house were

5:54

easier. This was all

5:56

good. This was all easy, that was

5:58

the point. But it was not good

6:00

for one's physical fitness. There was

6:02

nothing especially physical or strength

6:05

with about modern suburban life. And

6:07

American doctors started to realize,

6:09

we have a problem on our hands. And

6:12

I think that this is revealing. When

6:15

doctors and cultural commentators

6:18

worried about the lack of fitness among

6:20

men and women in the suburbs, they

6:22

focused on different parts of the body

6:25

for each For

6:27

men, the concern was about their

6:30

hearts. American

6:32

doctors in the late nineteen fifties they observed

6:34

a rise in the number of heart attacks among

6:36

American men. They declared that

6:38

there was a cardiac crisis

6:41

in the United States. There

6:43

was a pretty famous ninety eight

6:45

book called The Decline of the American

6:48

Male, and it explained the problem succinctly

6:51

like this. Take the suburban

6:53

commuter lifestyle, adding some heavy

6:55

cigarette smoking in the three martini lunch,

6:58

and of course the long hours at the desk,

7:01

and you have a heart attack in the waiting.

7:05

According to this book, it was the wife's

7:07

responsibility to make her husband

7:09

healthier. I mean, after all, her husband

7:12

was ruining himself at his job for

7:14

her and the kids. Or at least

7:16

that was the argument American

7:18

housewives. They were instructed of the importance

7:21

of the low cholesterol diet.

7:23

They were told to avoid fried foods

7:25

and to feed their man fruits and vegetables.

7:29

And one of the things that I find really interesting

7:31

here is that the remedy

7:33

that doctors were proposing it

7:36

was dieting. It wasn't really exercise

7:39

that comes later. You know,

7:41

most adult men in the nineteen fifties,

7:43

they just did not give much thought to

7:45

to exercise. It was grooming

7:49

a well shaved face and

7:51

slicked back hair. These

7:54

were the important physical qualities. I

7:57

think this is one of the things that the show mad

7:59

Men got so right about this era. If

8:01

you've seen it, the main character Don

8:03

Draper, he sped is a lot of time

8:06

combing his hair, but we never once

8:09

saw him exercise. The

8:12

concern for women in this era was not

8:14

the heart. Instead, the emphasis

8:17

was on her appearance, and in particular,

8:19

the focus was on her waistline.

8:23

In his best selling book

8:26

The Overweight Society, Peter

8:28

Widen warned the American housewife

8:31

that she needed to get thin,

8:34

and that was the buzzword of the era.

8:36

Thinness. You need to get

8:39

thin and regain your honeymoon

8:41

figure. Your husband wants

8:43

you thin. He wants you to look exactly

8:45

the way you did on your honeymoon back when

8:47

you were twenty one years old. I mean, talk

8:49

about an impossible task. And

8:52

the way to get thin, he said,

8:55

was by eating less

8:57

more than any suggested exercise

9:00

regimen. Women's fitness was

9:02

wrapped up in the idea that women just

9:04

needed to eat less and get

9:06

thinner. Fashion magazines

9:09

they told American women that the goal was

9:11

twiggy that wayfish it

9:14

model of the nineteen sixties. I

9:16

mean, never mind that a woman would have to almost

9:18

kill herself through calorie depletion

9:20

to look like Twiggy, the very

9:22

thin honeymoon figure. That

9:25

was the goal. All

9:27

right, I did that part quickly. But with

9:29

all we have talked about in our course regarding

9:31

gender, it should come as no surprise

9:33

that fitness for men and fitness

9:35

for women meant different things. For

9:38

men, it was about inner health

9:40

the heart. For women, it

9:42

was about appearance. It was about

9:44

thinning down and looking good for her

9:47

man. But there's

9:49

a class component here as well.

9:52

Let me point out the middle classness

9:54

of these concerns that I just outlined. You

9:57

know, the soft sedentary

9:59

lifestyle was not the concern of

10:01

the garbage man in Pittsburgh or

10:03

the domestic work in Mississippi.

10:06

Now, the figure around which the physical fitness

10:09

crisis orbited it was the middle

10:11

class, suburban American. And

10:14

it's middle class Americans,

10:17

with their abundance of leisure time,

10:19

who are going to be the foot soldiers

10:21

of the exercise boom in the nineteen

10:24

seventies. In

10:26

the nineteen seventies, more and more

10:28

adult Americans start exercising,

10:31

and it's in this decade that we get the

10:33

rise of what one historian calls

10:36

the new strenuosity

10:38

adult Americans exercising

10:41

strenuously. The

10:44

guru of the new strenuosity

10:46

was Dr Kenneth Cooper, a former

10:48

Air Force surgeon General. In

10:51

nineteen sixty eight, he published a

10:53

simple but very influential book

10:55

titled Aerobics. It

10:58

was Dr Cooper who introduced Americans

11:00

to the idea of aerobic exercise,

11:03

which is the idea that you need us a stained,

11:05

elevated heart rate for true

11:07

physical fitness. Aerobic

11:10

exercise will do it all. He said. It

11:12

will reduce fat, tone muscles,

11:15

it will strengthen the heart, It will make

11:17

you healthy on the inside and look

11:19

good on the outside. And

11:21

the Americans ran with this

11:24

idea, get it. They

11:26

took his ideas to heart. All

11:28

right, I'm on a roll. The

11:31

new strenuosity is clearly

11:33

a response to the physical fitness

11:35

crisis of the preceding decades. But

11:38

let's dig deeper here, because

11:40

we might also think of the new strenuosity

11:43

as a reaction to larger social

11:45

and political issues from the nineteen sixties

11:48

and the early nineteen seventies. And

11:50

here's what I mean. Let me begin with

11:53

a comparison. The

11:56

most direct predecessor to this

11:58

new interest in exercise and physical

12:00

fitness was Teddy Roosevelt's

12:02

call for the strenuous life. At the turn of

12:04

the twenty a century. We talked

12:06

about this how vigorous and robust

12:09

physical activity. It was being

12:11

promoted as a way to transform young

12:13

men into the leaders of tomorrow.

12:16

So the goal of Teddy roosevelt strenuous

12:19

life, it was social because

12:22

the goal was to invigorate oneself

12:24

in the name of preparing oneself

12:26

for national leadership. You know, young

12:29

men need to engage in these strenuous

12:31

activities and then the whole nation

12:33

will benefit later from their leadership.

12:37

But there was no such civic

12:39

mindedness to the new strenuosity.

12:41

With the new strenuosity, the focus

12:44

was entirely on the self. The

12:47

focus was on the individual and

12:49

not society. And

12:52

here's the argument that I find these ideas

12:54

fascinating. The

12:56

argument goes like this. In the

12:59

nineteen sixties, young people, well,

13:01

they had very serious goals to work towards

13:03

your racial justice and the oftl rights

13:05

movement, or ending the war in Vietnam,

13:08

or pushing for feminist legislation.

13:11

But now here it was the men in late nineteen

13:13

seventies, and for many Americans,

13:16

this was a time of disillusionment. You

13:19

know, civil rights leaders like Martin

13:21

Luther King and Robert Kennedy. They had been

13:23

assassinated in ninety The

13:26

Vietnam War had been a long, draining

13:29

tenure, bloody mess. Watergates

13:32

had exposed the corruptness of the political

13:35

system. The Equal Rights

13:37

for Women Amendment it had gone down to

13:39

defeat. And so

13:41

in response, frustrated

13:44

and disillusioned Americans

13:47

they turned away from civic engagement

13:50

and the public and instead

13:52

they turned inward toward the self.

13:55

They had learned a lesson. All Right, maybe

13:58

I can't make society

14:00

perfect or even make it better, but

14:03

I know I can perfect or

14:05

better the self. I can perfect

14:07

or better my body because I

14:09

have control over that.

14:12

That's the theory. One

14:15

historian of the nineteen seventies get named Christopher

14:18

lash He called this turn inward

14:20

the culture of narcissism, though

14:22

I've always thought that was too harsh of a designation.

14:26

I prefer how Tom Wolfe described

14:28

it. He called the nineteen

14:30

seventies the me decade.

14:33

It was a decade when a generation of Americans,

14:36

he said, they tried to distance themselves

14:38

from the larger troubles of the era,

14:41

and they turned inward. They sought

14:43

personal satisfaction and well

14:45

being in their own lives. This

14:49

turn inward and searching it

14:51

took many forms. This is

14:53

one Americans began reading self help

14:55

books. They began attending motivational

14:58

seminars. This is

15:00

when Americans turned to Eastern religions

15:02

and began practicing forms of bodily

15:05

arts like yoga. It

15:07

was in the nineteen seventies that Americans

15:09

began through hiking on the Appalachian

15:12

Trail. You know, the first person

15:14

to ever hike the entire two thousand

15:16

and eight one mile trail, he had done

15:18

it way back in His

15:21

name was Earl Schaffer, and he was a World War

15:23

Two veteran, and he said he hiked it

15:25

to quote, walk the army out

15:27

of my system.

15:29

Well, in the nineteen seventies, thousands

15:32

of Americans did it for the same general

15:34

reason. It was an escape. It

15:37

was a disconnection from the troubles

15:39

of the world. It was a strenuous

15:41

form of physical therapy after

15:47

the break jogging, just

15:50

do it. But

16:07

the most popular manifestation of

16:09

this turning inward and and improving

16:11

the self through exercise in this era

16:15

was jogging. The

16:17

running craze, or the jogging boom,

16:19

whenever we want to call it. It began in

16:21

the nineteen seventies, and it was spurred

16:23

by a few things. It

16:26

was partly the result of a book talking

16:28

a lot about books today, in nineteen

16:31

sixty seven, Bill Bowerman. He published

16:33

a slim book titled Very Simply Jogging.

16:37

Bowerman was a cardiologist and

16:39

the track coach at the University of Oregon,

16:42

and he urged Americans to take up

16:44

jogging, non competitive running.

16:47

Said take it up as a way to combat the cardiac

16:50

crisis of the era. Bouerman

16:52

is going to go on to also be one of the founders of Nike

16:55

at that story as a few lectures from now. The

16:58

jogging boom was fueled by the successes

17:00

of a few American distance runners. At

17:03

the nineteen seventy two Unich Olympics,

17:06

Americans were treated to an amazing

17:08

performance by the Yale graduate Frank

17:10

Shorter, who came from far behind

17:12

in the pack to win the gold. Frank

17:15

Shorter would be exceeded in popularity

17:18

by a long haired, mustachio

17:20

University of Oregon runner named Steve

17:22

Prefontaine. They called him

17:25

pre and pre like

17:27

to say that running was not about talent, it

17:29

was about guts. Prefontaine

17:33

died at the height of his career in an

17:35

automobile accident. He was just

17:37

twenty five years old, and like

17:39

the young musicians Jimmy Hendrix

17:41

and Jim Morrison and Janice Joplin,

17:44

pre gained semi mythical

17:47

status after his death. But

17:50

more than the call coming from Bill Bowerman

17:53

or or the success of elite American

17:55

runners, I think the jogging

17:57

boom was spurred by the simple fact

18:00

that jogging offered salvation

18:03

to many Americans. Jogging

18:06

was a different kind of physical activity

18:08

on many levels. It

18:10

was non competitive. In order

18:13

to win at jogging, one

18:15

only has to get off the couch and

18:17

just do it. And hey,

18:19

that's a good phrase. Just do it some some

18:21

sports market or how to use that one. So

18:25

the jogger is in total control

18:27

of their craft. And to go

18:29

back to my point about exercise

18:31

as a retreat from society,

18:34

I think this idea of control is

18:36

really important. Yeah, the

18:38

seventies were tough. There there's a

18:40

sharp economic downturn in the nineties

18:43

seventies. People were losing their jobs

18:45

as factories were shipping them overseas,

18:48

the jobs, not the people. There

18:50

was rising unemployment. Americans

18:52

were stuck in lengthy lines for gasoline.

18:56

The American hostages were stuck

18:58

in Iran. But

19:01

jogging gave many Americans a

19:03

sense of control over their own lives,

19:05

a feeling of control that they lacked

19:07

in the nineteen seventies. So

19:10

that's the argument. Americans

19:13

felt as if they lacked control over

19:15

their own lives. They felt like they lacked

19:17

the ability to transform American

19:20

society. But these new

19:22

strenuous activities like jogging,

19:25

it gave them the feeling of control.

19:27

It gave them transformative

19:29

power over their bodies. And

19:32

so Americans engaged in strenuous

19:35

activities, you

19:38

know, the the the emphasis on

19:41

strenuous exercise and reshaping

19:43

the body. It would of course continue in the nineteen

19:46

eighties, but the desire

19:48

to reshape and perfect the body would

19:50

take different forms in that decade. It's

19:53

in the nineteen eighties that we see a shift

19:56

in the exercise regimens of many American

19:58

men, for example, a shift

20:00

away from aerobic exercising

20:03

like jogging, in a move towards

20:05

anaerobic pastimes like weightlifting,

20:08

anaerobic, meaning basically muscle

20:11

building. It's

20:13

in the nineteen eighties that the very

20:15

muscular physique starts

20:17

to be viewed as the ideal American

20:20

body, and I mean very muscular. Dolph

20:23

Lungren, Carl Weathers,

20:25

still Vester Stallone. The new

20:28

fad was pumping iron and getting

20:31

buffed. One of

20:33

the inspirations for this shift may

20:35

have been the president of the United States

20:37

for most of the nineteen eighties, Ronald Reagan.

20:41

When he took office in Ronald

20:44

Reagan was well at the time the oldest

20:47

man to become president. But

20:49

despite his age, it was Ronald

20:51

Reagan who masterfully used

20:53

interest in physical fitness for political

20:56

gain. Photos

20:58

of Reagan lifting barbells,

21:01

working out on nautilus machines, throwing

21:04

footballs in the Oval Office, Ronald

21:06

Reagan riding a horse, Ronald Reagan

21:08

getting all badass with a chainsaw. These

21:11

photos were everywhere during the early

21:13

years of his presidency, and

21:16

Ronald Reagan promoted the idea

21:19

of a strong, rejuvenated,

21:22

hyper competitive America.

21:24

He was much more militaristic

21:26

than his immediate predecessors.

21:29

He dramatically built up America's

21:31

nuclear weaponry and

21:33

so the argument that cultural historians

21:36

make is that there's a link. Just

21:38

as Reagan was flexing America's

21:41

muscle and building up its arms,

21:44

it's arsenal, many American

21:46

men were inspired to build up

21:48

and flex their arms and muscles

21:51

as well. I

21:53

just think it's a fascinating thought. Um

21:56

maybe it's true, or maybe we all just wanted

21:58

to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know

22:00

who, by the way, translated

22:02

that hulking physique of his into political

22:05

power and the governorship of California.

22:09

For women in the nineteen eighties, the

22:12

number one exercise fad was

22:14

aerobics aerobicizing.

22:16

There were exercise videos coming from

22:19

TV and movie stars like Victoria

22:21

Principle of Dallas and Jane

22:23

Fonda. Jane Fonda's workout videos

22:25

were immensely popular, and

22:28

there was a very interesting argument

22:31

out there about aerobics. Now,

22:35

some American women celebrated aerobics

22:37

as liberating. They emphasized the

22:39

idea that women sweating and engaging

22:42

in this strenuous form of exercise

22:44

it's a very important means towards

22:46

physical health and greater self

22:48

confidence. But

22:51

at the same time, there were some feminists

22:53

who were troubled by the aerobics fad. They

22:56

had worked to get title nine passed

22:59

and have it applied to competitive sports

23:01

in the United States, and

23:03

now, all of a sudden in the nineteen eighties

23:05

there seemed to be a shift away from competitive

23:08

sports and are exercising in the

23:10

name of building character, and

23:13

a shift toward exercising to look

23:15

good and more than that as

23:17

they feared exercising in the

23:20

name of being more sexually alluring.

23:24

Yeah, there's all these pieces of evidence

23:26

we could point to here. You actually saw this shift

23:28

in Barbie dolls. In

23:31

the mid nineteen seventies. The most

23:33

popular Barbie doll was gold

23:35

Medal Barbie, a female Olympic

23:38

athlete who had won a gold medal

23:40

in competitive scheme. But

23:42

the most popular Barbie in the mid nineteen

23:45

eighties it was Great

23:47

Shape Barbie, an aerobics

23:49

instructor, decked out in a spandex

23:51

leotard and leg warmers. The

23:55

critics said that aerobics

23:57

emphasized passive

23:59

femininity. They said, but

24:02

first of all, like with the Honeymoon figure

24:04

of the nineteen fifes, aerobics

24:06

emphasizes a body ideal that

24:09

is just unattainable. Although at

24:11

least this was attempted through exercise

24:13

and not starvation. But

24:15

mainly they bemoaned the fact that women

24:18

seem to be aerobicizing in

24:20

hopes of making their body more

24:22

appealing to men. So

24:25

they said, it's not exercise for the

24:27

self, it's exercise for

24:29

the male gaze. The athletic

24:32

female was becoming a sexual

24:34

and sexualized object. Look

24:37

whatever you think of the argument, no doubt

24:40

about it. There were a bunch of videos

24:42

and movies from the nineteen eighties that

24:44

equated women exercising

24:47

with sex. Oh chief,

24:49

there was Olivia Newton John's song and

24:51

music video Let's Get Physical,

24:54

a song that explicitly links the

24:56

gym with for play.

24:58

She is exercising now, she says

25:00

in this song, in the name of getting horizontal

25:03

later. I mean that's her lie. There

25:06

was movie Perfect,

25:09

starring Jamie Lee Curtis as a hotshot

25:11

aerobics instructor. John Travolta

25:13

was one of her students, and the

25:16

title Perfect is

25:18

revealing, like with the

25:20

smash hit from the era, the movie ten,

25:23

in which Bo Derek jogs, whether it's jogging

25:25

she jogs down the beach in her swimsuit.

25:28

The idea here is that the goal

25:30

of exercise is female physical

25:33

perfection. Critics

25:36

said, sports and exercise are not supposed

25:38

to be about achieving some level of physical

25:40

perfection. They're supposed to be about

25:43

building character, just getting

25:45

healthy and doing your best. But

25:48

American culture made it about beauty

25:51

and sex. Once

25:53

again, agree, disagree.

25:56

I find these ideas fascinating.

25:59

But the eighties were still to come. So

26:02

let's end like this. Let's go back to the end of

26:04

the nineteen of these and wrap up with the

26:06

story of one more jogging politician.

26:11

Back in the sixties, joggers

26:13

were seen as odd balls at worst,

26:16

kind of health freaks at best, kind

26:18

of like vegetarians used to be seen. But

26:21

by the late nineteen seventies, jogging had

26:23

gone totally mainstream. It was an American

26:26

craze, you know. In nineteen

26:28

seventy seven, the TV celebrities

26:30

Lee Majors, the six Million Dollar Man,

26:32

my personal hero of that era, and

26:35

Farah Fawcett, one of Charlie's angels.

26:37

I may have had her poster on my wall. They

26:40

appeared together on the cover of People magazine

26:43

jogging with the headline Farah

26:45

and Lee and Everybody's Doing

26:47

It. Stars joined the jogging

26:49

craze, but the

26:51

nation's most famous jogger in this

26:53

era was the President of the United States,

26:56

Jimmy Carter. And Jimmy

26:58

Carter had a complicated relationship

27:01

to the pastime of jogging. Carter's

27:04

public syst like the boast of his jogging

27:07

skills. They told the press every

27:09

week the number of miles that Carter had

27:11

jogged, and we learned that the president

27:13

he could run a sub six thirty mile. We

27:16

learned that through jogging, Carter had reduced

27:18

his weight from a hundred and fifty seven to

27:20

one forty nine pounds, his

27:23

resting pulse rate had been lowered from

27:25

sixty to forty beats per minute.

27:28

All this was announced to the press because

27:31

Jimmy Carter's publicists were making the

27:33

argument that because Jimmy Carter

27:35

was physically fit, he was fit

27:38

to rule the nation. Presidents

27:40

make this argument using sports all the

27:42

time, but this

27:45

jogging propaganda it came back

27:47

to haunt Jimmy Carter. In

27:50

v nine, while at the presidential retreat

27:52

at Camp David, Jimmy Carter participated

27:55

in in a local ten k run right

27:57

six point two miles, and the press

27:59

was invited to tag along and see their physically

28:01

fit president to his thing. It

28:04

was a he steep and hilly

28:06

course, and it was a humid day.

28:09

And at the four mile mark, the president

28:11

became dehydrated, His legs

28:14

wobbled, his his face drained

28:16

of color, and he sagged

28:18

helplessly into the arms of his aids.

28:21

And photographers captured the entire scene

28:24

as Jimmy Carter was whisked into a car

28:26

and rushed back to Camp David. I mean, there

28:28

was a real fear that the President had

28:30

suffered a heart attack. Now

28:34

Jimmy Carter quickly recovered, and in

28:36

fact he handed out trophies to the winners

28:39

ninety minutes later, but

28:41

the damage had been done. Instead

28:43

of Carter demonstrating his strenuosity,

28:47

many Americans saw his inability

28:49

to complete the race as a metaphor,

28:51

a metaphor for, as they saw it, his

28:54

weak and ineffective leadership.

28:57

I'm not here today to debate Carter's presidency.

28:59

I actually think he was a much better president than

29:01

most people give him credit for. But I

29:03

know one thing. Sagging

29:05

helplessly into the arms of your aids.

29:08

That is not a good look for

29:10

someone trying to make the argument that because

29:13

he's physically fit. He's fit

29:15

to rule the free world. That's

29:19

all for now. Next time on the Untold

29:21

History of Sports in America, presented

29:24

by One Day University, The Wide

29:26

World of Sports, School

29:39

of Humans,