Gambling on Bodies: Assembling Sport and Gaming in Japan’s Keirin Bicycle Racing.

Keirin - fixed-gear bicycle racing - is one of four forms of state-sponsored sports gambling in Japan. Originally started in 1948 as a way for prefectural governments to generate income for post-war reconstruction, keirin grew to become one of the country’s most popular gambling-sports. Today there are over 2,000 registered keirin riders, who compete in five main classes. Like with other sports, becoming a keirin rider requires intensive training of the body; however, it also requires training of the mind. Would-be keirin athletes must undergo an 11-month training course before they are allowed to compete. The aim is to produce bodies that can both perform athletically and conform to the sport’s strict rules, thus contributing to its legitimacy as a form of legal gaming. Keirin’s rules and regulations are meant to structure competition in a way that creates conditions for gambling by forcing cooperation, as well as competition, among riders, thereby introducing uncertainties and enabling odds. It is said that no rider can win a race alone. In this paper I employ an assemblage-theory approach to engage with the tension between gambling and sport that is central to the keirin enterprise. I argue that within the keirin assemblage rider-athletes are called upon to labor in ways that both enable the gambling-sport project and create coherence between the at times incongruent domains of sport and gambling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]