Knitting and the Olympic Games: Clothing, Competition, Culture, and Commerce

Abstract

This article focuses on the diverse and eclectic ways in which knitting has interacted with the Olympic Games. Using key themes of clothing, competition, culture, and commerce, it explores the historical and contemporary links between the Olympics and knitting. These include a survey of knitted garments for sportswear at the Olympics (Clothing), the presence of competitive knitting at the Wenlock Olympian Games, a forerunner to the modern Olympics (Competition), the presence of knitting and crochet-based projects in the Cultural Olympiad (Culture), and the issue of Olympic branding as it has related to voluntary and social knitting (Commerce). The article concludes that knitting's historical relationship with the Olympics is worthy of exploration for the light that it can shed on knitting (as social practice and as an industry) and on the Olympics (as inspiration and commercial entity).

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