New Directions in 21st-Century Western Sports Historiography: Critical Review and Its Implications

From the question of "the end of sports history" in 1999 to the discussion of "AI and the future of sports history" in 2025, the study of sports history has experienced a series of turns in the Western English academic, including epistemological introspection, the expansion of problem domain, diversification of historical data forms, mixed method practice, exploration of new cultural history paradigm, upgrading of digital tools, expansion of knowledge commons, and so on, with the research breadth, interpretation depth, problem perspective and value dimension all taking on new forms. Since the establishment of Western sports history as an independent discipline in the 1960s, the field has undergone significant evolution, moving through the "golden age" of sports social history during the 1980s and 1990s, and has now entered a new phase of advancement in the first two decades of the 21st century. Based on the representative English materials and the method of knowledge archaeology, this study reviews the frontier progress of Western sports historiography in the new century, which will help Chinese scholars to follow up the latest international research trends, and grasp the general trend of sports humanities and sociology. By critically taking global perspectives and adapting international experiences to China's context, the development of an independent knowledge system for contemporary Chinese sports historiography is expected to be accelerated.