The intersection between sport and spirituality has attracted
unprecedented academic interest in the first decade of the twenty-first
century, as a general survey of the field in this volume by Rob Hess
shows. One sign of a quickening of interest in the area has been the
emergence of academic conferences devoted to the theme, with one (held
in the United States in 2004) generating considerable interest among the
sport history community, and another (held in Great Britain in 2007)
providing the impetus for the establishment of the International Journal
of Religion and Sport. Other beacons have been tertiary courses devoted
to the field, notably a new unit ‘Sport and Spirituality’ taught by former
Olympian Richard Pengelly at the University of Western Australia, and
the newly established Centre for the Study of Sport and Spirituality at
York St John University in England.1