I don’t think “sporting aristocracy” has much currency as a phrase. I mean the class of European aristocrats to whom the trades and business and educations suitable for the trades and business were mostly taboo (they could be warriors or clergy or, until the field was professionalized, scientists). The men hunted and sailed and raced and rowed. They also invented the various types of football, and started intercollegiate athletics in the US.
See The Shooting Party for an example: Lord Hartlip is a good shot, but is ashamed to be seen practicing. Also Chariots of Fire in which Lord Lindsay “trains” by jumping hurdles topped with flutes of champaign and is contrasted with Harold Abrahams, the Jewish runner who hires a professional coach. Goes all the way back past Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, which discusses the way a true gentleman does everything right while making it seem easy and unpracticed.
I don’t think “sporting aristocracy” has much currency as a phrase. I mean the class of European aristocrats to whom the trades and business and educations suitable for the trades and business were mostly taboo (they could be warriors or clergy or, until the field was professionalized, scientists). The men hunted and sailed and raced and rowed. They also invented the various types of football, and started intercollegiate athletics in the US.
See The Shooting Party for an example: Lord Hartlip is a good shot, but is ashamed to be seen practicing. Also Chariots of Fire in which Lord Lindsay “trains” by jumping hurdles topped with flutes of champaign and is contrasted with Harold Abrahams, the Jewish runner who hires a professional coach. Goes all the way back past Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, which discusses the way a true gentleman does everything right while making it seem easy and unpracticed.