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Victory Journal

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The Journal of Sport and Culture

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TENNIS FOR SAVAGES

According to Tom O’Connor’s History of Handball, the earliest mention of the game can be found as far back as 2000 BC in Egypt. The priests of the Temple of Osiris in Thebes were depicted on the tombs, striking the ball with the hand. The game meandered to Europe, before Alexander the Great spread it around the Greek Colonies and the Apennine peninsula (Italy). Accounts of handball are found in Scotland in 1427, where King James was a known fanatic, amongst the aristocracy of 18th Century London, and finally, in its most reliable depiction, the United States where it was introduced by Irish immigrants in the waning years of the 19th Century. The game eventually settled in Brooklyn where it made its way into the DNA of an adolescent Jerome Liebling.

Check out the full story at the Substack link in bio.

📸: Jerome Liebling courtesy of @stevenkashergallery from Issue #6, “Blood & Asphalt.”
Words: Rachel Liebling and @budschmeling by @victoryjournal

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7 days ago

MAN OF MACAU

“There were the annual pre–Grand Prix cocktail parties where he’d hand out $100 casino chips to all the race volunteers. There was the 1981 bash he threw on the Queen Mary, where he hired cranes to lift Theodore Racing’s new F1 cars onto the deck so his 800 guests could get a better look. Yip once paid Macau’s entire electricity bill. He liked to refer to himself in the third person.”

Read the incredible story of Teddy Yip at the link in bio.

📷: Bernard Bakalian
Words: Tim Struby by @victoryjournal

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13 days ago

FREESTYLE

“Kyle Snyder has two life goals: conduct himself as much like Jesus Christ as possible, and technically, creatively, and aesthetically master the sport of wrestling. The first is pretty straightforward, if by definition unattainable—though Ohio State head coach Tom Ryan speaks so effusively about how Snyder lives that he has to pull back and make it clear that Snyder is, in fact, not God.”

Read the full story from our archives at the link in bio.

📷: @anthonyblaskophoto followed Kyle‘s successful pursuit of the 2018 NCAA Heavyweight title for issue 15.
Words: Dennis Young

#ohiostate #buckeyes by @victoryjournal

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20 days ago

SPEED & GRACE

“She doesn’t burst out of the blocks looking any more powerful and special than any of the other runners. And as the race moves through the first third, it looks like she might not have a shot to win. But when she turns the corner out of the shadows, her mighty thighs effortlessly churning, you realize that you’re watching the fastest woman who ever lived.”

Read more at the Substack link in bio.

📷: @henryleutwyler
Words: Neil Pollack

From Victory Journal Issue 8, “Heroes & Villains.” by @victoryjournal

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a month ago

OK DEATH

“We had more fun in a week than most of the weenies in the world had in a lifetime.”

Read about the fascinating life and times of Pancho Barnes at the Substack link in bio.

Words: @ericnusbaum
🎨: Adam Villacin by @victoryjournal

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a month ago

BIKERNI

“The Bikernis are proud of their visibility. It reflects on both their fight against restraints at home and those on the women whose homes they pass. Some ride in secret; others, playful, wrestle with husbands and brothers for the keys to the family vehicle. They know they are combatants in a kind of battle. People stare, of course, but in the rearview mirror, through the dust cloud, the Bikernis can see them watching. As Vaishali Master says, they look glorious—‘like woman icons and real-life heroines.’”

Read the full story at the link in bio.

📷: @sophiegreenstudio
Words: Supriya Nair by @victoryjournal

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a month ago

GYMNASIUM

“They were white kids [in the photograph], and I decided to paint them as Black kids. I just painted myself into the painting. I’ve just done without really even thinking about it, just inserting Black figures into what we think of as a largely white space or a white sport with a white history. Except that now, it’s no longer a white sport. It’s impossible to think about it as a white sport anymore.”

Read our interview with artist Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi at the link in bio.

🎨: @thenjiwe_niki_nkosi by @victoryjournal

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2 months ago

THE SOUL SET

Calli Gilchrist has wrestling in her blood. Now she’s helping build out the next generation of women wrestlers at Brown. Read her story at the link in bio.

📷: @katiemccurdy_ by @victoryjournal

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2 months ago

AIM HIGH

In Bhutan, a small country east of Nepal in the Himalayas, archery is both the national sport and a deep-seated ritual, a common man’s game and sacred practice. Transcending its obscure geographic origins, Bhutanese archery has risen to world renown, with the tiny nation’s best archers taking an international stage in every Summer Olympics since 1984. With the recent introduction of women to the sport, the tradition has embraced a new era.

📷: @karankumarsachdev, from Issue 13, “Tooth & Nail.”
words: @noahedavis by @victoryjournal

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2 months ago

COLD BLOOD

“They can get you with their tail,” Willie says. She means the gators. “You gotta haul ass!” She moves her arm from left to right, exhibiting the exact method in which I have to haul ass. “Zigzag!” “You know about the death roll?” Jill asks. I do not know about the death roll. “They don’t like fresh meat,” Willie says, “so they’ll roll you and roll you and roll you and then drown you and then…” She walks away to tend to a customer before providing any more details, but I get it, I think.

Read the full story at the link in bio.

📸: @balaramaheller
Words: @bashba
Issue 15, Proving Grounds, Fall 2018 by @victoryjournal

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2 months ago

THE SPAWN

“The river is crowded, claustrophobic, wall-to-wall with rotting flesh. In the beginning, the bodies are strong, moving fast against rapids and walls of water. By the end, those same bodies, exhausted from the effort, just barely keep course. The fetid smell is persistent, overwhelming, something out of nightmares.”

Read about the relentless march of life and death in the salmon kingdom at the link in bio.

Words: Jaime Lowe
🎨: @yes_seoinji by @victoryjournal

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2 months ago

THROUGH LINE

Mainstream America knows Neiman for his splashy and colorful oil paintings of famous athletes, all captured in his loose, kinetic style. He contributed to general-interest publications like Time and Playboy, as well as commercial outlets like Burger King and Wheaties. The world’s first, and maybe last, official sports illustrator, Neiman was present at virtually every major sporting event during the latter part of the 20th century, feverishly sketching away at Super Bowls, Kentucky Derbys, Olympics, World Cups, World Series, Grand Prix races, Wimbledons, and countless other championship games and title bouts.

Read the story at our SubStack link in bio.

🎨 : Leroy Neiman
Words: @budschmeling by @victoryjournal

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3 months ago