Honouring 2023 Lifetime Achievement Inductee, Robert K. Barney
By Jason Winders
In presenting Robert K. Barney with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, the Western Mustang Athletics Association is not only honouring a scholar dedicated to resurrecting and understanding our sporting past, but a teacher and mentor committed to securing his discipline’s future.
Proudly hailing from New England, Robert is a veteran of the Korean Conflict, serving four years in the United States Air Force as an atomic armorer, seeing service in nuclear and thermonuclear testing operations. He earned three degrees from the University of New Mexico (BS’59, MS’63, PhD’68). As an undergraduate student he was a three-sport athlete – football, baseball, and swimming.
In 1972, Robert arrived in Canada as Western’s Director of Athletics in the new Faculty of Physical Education, after spending a decade at three different universities in the United States. In 1979, he left university administration to turn his full attention to teaching, research, and service.
Robert has had an unparalleled academic career across six decades (and counting) comprised of research excellence, mentorship, great humour, and genuine kindness.
Robert has made notable contributions to changing the way we view sporting history, whether cementing Labatt Memorial Park’s legacy, tracing the sporting origins of the maple leaf, and nudging baseball’s roots back north of the border. He has published more than 300 scholarly items, including books, peer-reviewed articles, chapters in anthologies, proceedings papers, reviews, and abstracts.
Robert helped establish the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH), a body that recently celebrated a half century of advancing the academic study of sport.
Perhaps his most lasting accomplishment has been elevating the study of the Olympic Games into the realm of academia.
In 1989, Robert established the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western, the only independent body of its kind, as well as its scholarly journal, Olympika. The centre has made Western the go-to source for Olympics insights, while also making its founder a reluctant (but outstanding) media darling as the go-to interview for outlets around the world.
In 2002, Robert’s award-winning book, Selling the Five Rings, outlined the rise of the Olympic movement into a transnational commercial giant of imposing power and influence. Winner of the 2003 NASSH Book Award, the book was called “ an important contribution to understanding the modern leviathan of sports” by the Chicago Tribune.
His honours are numerous, including the Olympic Order from the International Olympic Committee in 1997, the Pierre De Coubertin Medal for Lifelong Achievement in 2009, and NASSH Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. In 2017, he was awarded a Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa from Western.
Although he retired in 1996, Robert continues to teach sports history graduate courses at Western, and supervises master’s and PhD students.
Robert’s influence cannot be counted in publications and lectures, but also measured in the legion of scholars, historians, athletes, and individuals he has prepared to contribute to sport history and the world of academia.
