The Ultimate Athlete: Re-Visioning Sports, Physical Education and the Body

We are born with the God-given right to move efficiently, gracefully, and joyfully. We lose this right only through society's mind-body split, faulty modes of physical education, and overemphasis on "winning." George Leonard's simple and radical notion is that within each of us, regardless of age, sex, or physical condition, there exists an ultimate athlete waiting to be born. With a poet's passion, fifth-degree aikido black belt Leonard evokes the transcendent moment in sport—the catch that defies gravity and chance, the play that makes time stand still—as emblematic of the Greater Game of embodiment itself, of life and death, a Game we all can play to depth and breadth of body and soul. The Ultimate Athlete helped create the participatory sports boom of the 1970s and 1980s. This revised edition is addressed to a new generation of ultimate athletes.