Analysis Of Hanlan And Gaudaur's 'Refused To Shake Hands'

Economics of sport during thi time was likely a driving factor for Hanlan and Gaudaur 's antics. The cycle of exclusion in England existed because the empowered elites created and maintained it – no such exclusion was established in Canadian rowing, providing employment for labourous working class athletes. It is estimated that Hanlan 's worth (from both direct prizes, and betting earnings) would be in the range of 10-20 million dollars in today 's currency. In terms of a career, Riess criticized the perception of sport as an opportunity for social mobility in this time period, though his focus is on the iterations of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League (NFL). By 1910, MLB players were earning an average of $3,000

Hanlan, with his “tricks” comes off as a well-informed, well-prepared, yet cocky and aggressive individual. His key trait was keeping his audience – either immediate fans watching a race, or those following his career in the papers – on edge and unsure of his next move. There is a report of his meeting with Beach in 1887, to whom he lost his world title three years earlier. The headline of this report is “Refused to Shake Hands,” itself a fairly straightforward description of Hanlan 's approach to what might be termed sportsmanship. The act of ignoring one another not being enough to draw attention, Beach himself showing some public character, played with the media by calling Hanlan a “gasbag” to Hanlan 's dismay. In 1893, following a loss to Gaudaur, Hanlan announced his retirement from professional rowing. In this newspaper article he states that he does “ 'not intend to do any more rowing '” resultant from his loss to Gaudaur. In typical Hanlan fashion, he ends the article with a lamentation of Canadian professional rowing, and that Gaudaur would not “set the world on fire” and that Hanlan himself was “the only single scull champion of the world that [North] America has ever produced”. Despite Hanlan 's apparent disdain for his fellow Canadian scullers, just five months later it was announced that Gaudaur would compete in England in a double (two-person boat), with none other than Hanlan as his partner. This agreement calls into question how much of their rivalry was indeed real and how much was constructed to create a compelling narrative to be consumed by fans of the