Bulimic practices and alcohol consumption: Performance enabling and performance enhancing mechanisms in nineteenth-century British sport

Search of contemporary documents and secondary literature based on primary source material has revealed that nineteenth-century British jockeys faced health problems because of wasting forced on them by the low weights assigned to the horses that they rode, a situation aggravated by an over supply of riders in a highly competitive labour market. A second investigation using similar materials showed that nineteenth-century British sportsmen more generally were advised to drink alcohol to aid their performance, particularly in events requiring stamina. A third line of enquiry involving biographies and the press suggests that weight-watching and alcohol consumption still influence the careers of modern sportsmen.