He’s streaked soccer games, golf tournaments, Wimbledon, the Olympics, and a Miss World beauty pageant. The most successful is Mark Roberts of Liverpool, England, who has streaked more than 550 events since he started with a Hong Kong rugby match in 1993. This laid the foundation for the modern superstar streaker. Michael O’Brien, the first streaker to gain fame, ran onto the field of a rugby match on ApTony Duffy // Getty Images As O’Brien was hauled away, a police officer placed his hat over the man’s nethers, which led to one of the most iconic photos of streaking, if not all of sports, in the 20th century. An Australian named Michael O’Brien made good on a bet with an English friend when he ran nude onto the pitch around the match’s halfway mark. The first notable sporting event to be interrupted by an attention-grabbing solo streaker was the England-France rugby match at London’s Twickenham Stadium in-of course-1974. During the Me Decade, streaking expanded to become a “Me” activity, a way for a person to claim 15 minutes of fame.
Streaking thrived through the 1970s and evolved as we approached the Reagan era. My Fighting Irish were beset by the streaking craze then as well, and I can imagine that Our Lady’s first batch of female students, admitted in 1972, probably felt as shocked by all the library dong as I was 30 years later. (Think “The Purge,” but bouncing genitals instead of murder.) The largest group streaking event on record occurred in March 1974 at the University of Georgia, when 1,543 people got naked and went for a jog. Austin State University in Texas that college administrators made time and space designated for a nude run. It became such an “epidemic” at Stephen F. A solo streaker even interrupted the 1974 Oscars, in an incident that some say was a pre-planned way for the award show to grab the zeitgeist, like a stadium security guard grabbing a nude interloper.ĭuring streaking’s 1974 peak, masked students from Cal Poly State University run into the Cigar Factory restaurant in San Luis Obispo, CA Bettmann/ // Getty ImagesĪround this time, streaks became more organized, involved more people, and transformed into spectacles. Streaking made the cover of Life magazine. People love attention!īut 1974 was the year that streaking went from a countercultural campus joke on The Man to full-on craze, like pet rocks or Slinkies. Observers can’t pinpoint exactly why young adults suddenly decided to take their clothes off and run around in nude groups, but it could have been due to several factors: changing attitudes toward sexuality and nudity, generalized distrust of authority and institutions, and the fact that streaking tended to garner a lot of media attention, which begat more streaking. He would go on to become a doctor and, later, a congressman.īy the 1960s, American college students would rediscover the Adamite joy of gathering in groups and running naked through public places, much to university administrators’ chagrin. Though his motivations were lost to time, he was suspended for a semester after being arrested for running nude through his college town in 1804. Historians say Quakers-Quakers!-revived the practice in the 17th century, protesting the Church of England and often urging onlookers to repent.Īmerica’s first streaker was a Washington & Lee (then called Washington College) student named George William Crump. During the 15th century, the Adamites protested the Holy Roman Empire’s buttoned-up morality by running naked through their Bohemian village, as Adam and Eve would have intended, if Adam and Eve, like the Adamites, had regarded monogamy as a sin. Running through a public space fully or partially nude has a long history with motivations to match the era. And it’s a reflection of how seriously we take our own rules, and ourselves. It is running’s wacky cousin, its quirky neighbor. Just as an asthmatic pug is the same species as a greyhound, so too is streaking in the same species a Kipchoge marathon. Yes, streaking-the kind people first think of when you talk about run streaks, and the silly counterweight to the emotional heaviness of giving your all. A streaker warms up the track before the final of the men’s 100m at the 2017 World Championships Antonin Thuillier/AFP/ // Getty Images
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