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Sports

Simone Biles (pictured) and Naomi Osaka, both Black athletes at the top of their sports, have been vocal about their struggles with mental health.

Race in America

The Relationship Between Race and Wellness Has Never Been More Pressing

A new Smithsonian initiative kicks off this week with a virtual summit examining these urgent issues

Olympic runners compete during the 10,000 meters race in Tokyo. In ancient times, running was likely used to push animals to exhaustion during hunting.

Five Ways Humans Evolved to Be Athletes

An archaeologist explores how our prowess in sport has deep roots in evolution

Will an American athlete from the Tokyo Games grab gold and become the next to be featured on the cover of Wheaties?

The Paris Olympics

How Wheaties Became the ‘Breakfast of Champions’

Images of Olympians and other athletes on boxes helped the cereal maintain a competitive edge

Interest in gymnastics soared during the Cold War, when the Olympics emerged as a cultural battleground for Western and Eastern nations.

The Paris Olympics

A History of Gymnastics, From Ancient Greece to Tokyo 2020

The beloved Olympic sport has evolved drastically over the past 2,000 years

A view of Progressive Field, the team's home arena, in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2008

Cleveland Baseball Team to Rebrand as the Guardians

The new name references the “Guardians of Traffic”—larger-than-life statues that appear on the city’s Hope Memorial Bridge

A mural in Munich's former Olympic Village features Otl Aicher's pictograms.

The Paris Olympics

This Graphic Artist’s Olympic Pictograms Changed Urban Design Forever

Having lived through Germany’s Nazi regime, Otl Aicher went on to pioneer democratic design

Team USA Stamps

Smithsonian Voices

The Science Behind a Faster, Higher, Stronger Team U.S.A.

The unsung heroes behind the Summer Olympics are the scientists and engineers whose inventions and innovations help athletes

Babe Didrickson’s brash behavior along with her decorated athleticism (above: second from right in the 80-meter hurdle) challenged every imagined ideal for a woman athlete in the 1930s.

The Paris Olympics

Olympian Babe Didrikson Cleared the Same Hurdles Women Athletes Face Today

The star track and field athlete of the 1930s boisterously challenged gender expectations with her record-setting athleticism

Detail of medieval roll showing England's Henry VIII tilting at a joust in front of his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. In the West, chariot racing died out rather quickly, but beginning in the second half of the 11th century, knightly tournaments were the spectacle of medieval Europe.

The Paris Olympics

What the Medieval Olympics Looked Like

The Middle Ages didn’t kill the Games, as international sporting competitions thrived with chariot races and jousts

Pure athletic prowess wasn’t really the point—the People’s Olympiad was about cultivating a spirit of equality, in direct contrast to Nazi ideals.

The Paris Olympics

The ‘Protest’ Olympics That Never Came to Be

A leftist response to the 1936 Games being held in Nazi Germany, the proposed competition was canceled by the Spanish Civil War

Yakumo Academy High School karate team members practice a kata. Competitors are judged on such things as strength/power, deportment and interpretation.

The Paris Olympics

The Centuries-Old Sport of Karate Finally Gets Its Due at the Olympics

With the games set for Japan, the martial art will at last debut at next month’s competition

Lacey Baker's personalized skateboards

Smithsonian Voices

How LGBTQ Skateboarders Have Carved Out a Place at the Park

The Smithsonian has collected from members of the diverse and fiercely dedicated LGBTQ skate community

Tsökahovi "Louis" Tewanima became an Olympian while being forced to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

The Olympic Star Who Just Wanted to Go Home

Tsökahovi Tewanima held an American record in running for decades, but his training at the infamous Carlisle school kept him from his ancestral Hopi lands

Effa Manley, co-owner of the Negro Leagues' Newark Eagles, poses in the dugout of Ruppert Stadium in Newark, New Jersey, in 1948.

Baseball’s Leading Lady Championed Civil Rights and Empowered Black Athletes

Effa Manley advocated for Black rights as a Negro Leagues team owner in the 1930s and ‘40s

A scrapbook about Alonzo Orozco and David Salazar, semipro players in Los Angeles in the 1920s and ’30s.

This Summer, a New Smithsonian Exhibition Takes You Inside Béisbol

At the American History Museum, cover all the bases with Latino ballplayers

Clockwise from top left, caps worn by: Chris Lindsay of the Detroit Tigers during the 1906 season; Ila Borders, the first woman to pitch in an NCAA or NAIA game; Christy Mathewson (1880-1925), history and date unknown; Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees; Dennis Eckersley of the Oakland Athletics when he logged his 300th career save in 1995; Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves, 1972-73. (Richard Gary / National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)

How the Baseball Cap Went From Athletic Gear to Fashion Statement

A tip of the cap to the nation’s crowning accessory

James Earl Jones (right) played Jack Johnson, while Jane Alexander (left) portrayed Eleanor Bachman, a fictionalized version of the boxer's first wife.

Based on a True Story

Looking Back at the Legacy of ‘The Great White Hope’ and Boxer Jack Johnson

James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, the two stars of the play and movie, reminisce about their experience adapting the life story of boxer Jack Johnson

Satchel Paige pitches during warmups for Cleveland on August 30, 1948. Signed midway through the MLB season, Paige became the first African American to pitch in the American League.

Fifty Years Ago, Satchel Paige Brought the Negro Leagues to Baseball’s Hall of Fame

One of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, the seemingly ageless wonder inspired awe among the public and his opponents

Taken in 1922, the ship Jose Gaspar passes the Lafayette Street Bridge in Tampa during the Gasparilla Festival

The True History and Swashbuckling Myth Behind the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Namesake

Pirates did roam the Gulf Coast, but more myths than facts have inspired the regional folklore

Alan Shepard, who was both an astronaut and a golf lover, said he got the idea while training for his Apollo 14 mission. “I thought: What a neat place to whack a golf ball.”

When Astronaut Alan Shepard Hit the Golf Shot Heard ‘Round the World

“The Moon is one big sand trap,” the astronaut said after he brought the game to a new frontier

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