Introduction

This special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport is a collection of selected essays presented at the annual 2020 Congress of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport (ISHPES) in Sapporo, Japan – the first ISHPES Congress ever held online. The original idea for the ISHPES 2020 Congress was in fact to provide the opportunity to discuss on site the theme ‘Sport History and Interdisciplinary Relations’ in the year of the Tokyo 2020 summer Olympic and Paralympic games. However, the tragic consequences of the global Covid-19 pandemic postponed the games and prevented international travel and big events. Therefore, the organizers of the congress and the chair, Professor Keiko Ikeda, made it alternatively possible for the participants to discuss the proposed theme online. The number and quality of the sessions and presentations that animated the congress showed that this was the right choice in order to get continuity to the debate on sport history within the international community. However, this came at a price, and demanded an unprecedented effort by the Society and the Organizing Committee to manage everything in a new and digital way. The collection is opened by Martin Polley who offers a study on ‘A fine solidarity in the life of the countryside: The Ashbees and Sport in the Cotswolds, 1902–1907’. This is an analysis of a multi-disciplinary couple, C.R. and Janet Ashbee, who were influential in the Arts and Crafts movement, and active social experimenters between 1902 and 1907. In particular, running a Guild in Gloucestershire, they promoted an innovative model for sport, based on solidarity, community bonds, and health, that the author draws out by focusing on the Ashbees’ published and unpublished writings, archival sources and newspaper reports. Daniel Svensson provides an overview of the development of elite sports education in Sweden since the 1970s. The topic is largely unresearched until now and interrelates nationally existing egalitarian ideas about education on the one hand with the requirement of an elite sport system on the other. The author sheds light on how sport high schools developed within a field of tension with sportification and an egalitarian welfare society as key dimensions. The study is based on archival material from the Swedish Sports Confederation, the Swedish Ski Association and the Swedish National Agency for Education. Findings indicate that the development