Saturday, February 27, 2010
Six of the best
The Six Nations is so good it shouldn't have a table. The ranking list introduced by John Inverdale minutes after the finish of the latest epic provided no interest, in a competition - a battle is a more adept description - in which there is no such thing as finishing second, and even finishing first is defined not by picking up the trophy but by winning every game - or, closer, somehow managing in five fixtures not to be beaten.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Love the loser
I’ve been told I’m a bit of a sucker for the cliché, so I’ll start as I mean to go on. Bob Paisley used to say: ‘First is first and second is nowhere’. The American football version comes in the form: ‘Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing’. Parents everywhere counter, reassuring the kids picked last in the playground with: ‘it’s not the winning, but the taking part that counts.’
They’re all wrong. The way I see it, the real glory comes in falling at the final hurdle, being defeated having given everything; in losing.
For spectators in the stand – or, more often than not, on the settee – there are two types of loser (and I use ‘loser’ in a literary and not derogatory sense, mindful of how I wince when reading that San Marino’s qualifying campaign was ‘pointless’). The first kind are those who we know will not succeed, who will always be the bridesmaid and not the bride, and yet we rejoice in their gallant failure, the hard-luck story; we wouldn’t know what to do if they actually won. The England football team, Tim Henman, and Jimmy White.
‘The Whirlwind’ reached the World Championship Final six times without winning snooker’s most prestigious title. Stephen Hendry was his arch-nemesis, the cool Scot defeating the more exuberant White four times in the early nineties. Jimmy had his chances, but could never get over the finishing line. By the time he was at the table, on a break, in the deciding frame of the 1994 final, you knew what was going to happen. White missed an easy black, Hendry stepped in to clear up and take the title, but not the crowd’s affection. Of course, Jimmy was back on our screens last month, in the ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ jungle, and nearly went all the way. He finished… third.
The prize for 2009, though, goes to Andy Roddick. The American was beaten by Roger Federer in successive Wimbledon finals, 2004 and 2005, and returned to face the Swiss in this year’s decider. The comeback tale was sweetened by the way he’d overcome persistent injuries and a real stagnation of his career, rejuvenated by the support of new wife Brooklyn and new coach Larry Stefanki, and playing the tennis of his life to beat British hope Andy Murray in the semis. The American took the first set in the final, and led the second set tiebreak 6-2, missing a straightforward backhand volley as Federer found a way back. Sets three and four were traded and the decider went with serve. Roddick – whose serve hadn’t been broken for the entirety of the match – served eleven times to stay in it from 4-5. An eventual Federer victory was inevitable; obvious to everyone it seemed, except the man on the other side of the net. His defiance heroic, Roddick finally faltered in his 37th service game after four hours and seventeen minutes. He had given everything he had, and somehow it wasn’t good enough. The victor’s achievements looked at best anticlimactic, at worst repellent. Roddick looked a broken man. To us though, he was triumphant in defeat.
Influential literary critic Northrop Frye pinpointed four archetypal narrative patterns: romance, irony, tragedy and comedy. The reader, viewer, spectator is able to identify with hints within the plot that lead them, through the inevitable twists and turns, toward a finale in line with one of the four genres. Othello was always going to be a tragedy, Shakespeare’s protagonist built up and up to fall from a greater height. You learn to recognise a rom-com, and guess the plot (boy meets girl, they fall in love, something happens that makes them break up, they get back together with a wonderfully over-the-top kiss) pretty early on. Sport is the finest of dramatic narratives because, so often, the narrative isn’t decided until the last breath; its protagonists’ definition as winner or loser is so far from formulated. The second kind of loser is he or she who is not supposed to lose. It doesn’t end how it was meant to.
Champions League Final, Moscow, May 2008. The script seemed written. The much-maligned far-from-special-one Avram Grant was to succeed where Jose Mourinho had failed. Pantomime villain Cristiano Ronaldo saw his penalty saved. Our leader, Mr Chelsea, John Terry stepped up to win the trophy. A Chelsea fan, I’d written this story a hundred times as a kid, and I knew the ending off by heart. But he missed, and after Edwin van der Sar saved from Nicolas Anelka, Manchester United had won.
Sport allows us almost unparalleled views into the character of its professionals. They say that you learn the most in defeat. As Terry, the puff-out-your-chest, body-on-the-line superman, sat on the pitch, desolate, tears streaming down his face, he became, to me, more heroic than ever. You love the girl’s imperfections, not in spite of the funny little freckle above her lip, but because of it.
They say that nobody remembers who came second. But in years to come, nobody will remember who came first at the 2009 Open Championship at Turnberry. Tom Watson, leading going into the final day, leading going onto the 18th green, was to become the oldest man to win a major, aged 59 and with a replacement hip. Watson had last won a major 26 years before, and his remarkable success provided inspiration to aging golfers – aging people – everywhere. He raged, raged against the dying of the light, leaving younger men in his wake. The week was all about him. Yet he missed an eight-foot putt to bogey the final hole, and succumbed by six shots in a four-hole play-off, to Stewart Cink by the way.
As Watson himself said: ‘The old fogey almost did it. It would have been a hell of a story.’ But, somehow, eventual failure made Watson’s achievement a greater one. When memories of noble victories fade away, heroic defeats will linger long. Every great tale is a tragic one.
They’re all wrong. The way I see it, the real glory comes in falling at the final hurdle, being defeated having given everything; in losing.
For spectators in the stand – or, more often than not, on the settee – there are two types of loser (and I use ‘loser’ in a literary and not derogatory sense, mindful of how I wince when reading that San Marino’s qualifying campaign was ‘pointless’). The first kind are those who we know will not succeed, who will always be the bridesmaid and not the bride, and yet we rejoice in their gallant failure, the hard-luck story; we wouldn’t know what to do if they actually won. The England football team, Tim Henman, and Jimmy White.
‘The Whirlwind’ reached the World Championship Final six times without winning snooker’s most prestigious title. Stephen Hendry was his arch-nemesis, the cool Scot defeating the more exuberant White four times in the early nineties. Jimmy had his chances, but could never get over the finishing line. By the time he was at the table, on a break, in the deciding frame of the 1994 final, you knew what was going to happen. White missed an easy black, Hendry stepped in to clear up and take the title, but not the crowd’s affection. Of course, Jimmy was back on our screens last month, in the ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ jungle, and nearly went all the way. He finished… third.
The prize for 2009, though, goes to Andy Roddick. The American was beaten by Roger Federer in successive Wimbledon finals, 2004 and 2005, and returned to face the Swiss in this year’s decider. The comeback tale was sweetened by the way he’d overcome persistent injuries and a real stagnation of his career, rejuvenated by the support of new wife Brooklyn and new coach Larry Stefanki, and playing the tennis of his life to beat British hope Andy Murray in the semis. The American took the first set in the final, and led the second set tiebreak 6-2, missing a straightforward backhand volley as Federer found a way back. Sets three and four were traded and the decider went with serve. Roddick – whose serve hadn’t been broken for the entirety of the match – served eleven times to stay in it from 4-5. An eventual Federer victory was inevitable; obvious to everyone it seemed, except the man on the other side of the net. His defiance heroic, Roddick finally faltered in his 37th service game after four hours and seventeen minutes. He had given everything he had, and somehow it wasn’t good enough. The victor’s achievements looked at best anticlimactic, at worst repellent. Roddick looked a broken man. To us though, he was triumphant in defeat.
Influential literary critic Northrop Frye pinpointed four archetypal narrative patterns: romance, irony, tragedy and comedy. The reader, viewer, spectator is able to identify with hints within the plot that lead them, through the inevitable twists and turns, toward a finale in line with one of the four genres. Othello was always going to be a tragedy, Shakespeare’s protagonist built up and up to fall from a greater height. You learn to recognise a rom-com, and guess the plot (boy meets girl, they fall in love, something happens that makes them break up, they get back together with a wonderfully over-the-top kiss) pretty early on. Sport is the finest of dramatic narratives because, so often, the narrative isn’t decided until the last breath; its protagonists’ definition as winner or loser is so far from formulated. The second kind of loser is he or she who is not supposed to lose. It doesn’t end how it was meant to.
Champions League Final, Moscow, May 2008. The script seemed written. The much-maligned far-from-special-one Avram Grant was to succeed where Jose Mourinho had failed. Pantomime villain Cristiano Ronaldo saw his penalty saved. Our leader, Mr Chelsea, John Terry stepped up to win the trophy. A Chelsea fan, I’d written this story a hundred times as a kid, and I knew the ending off by heart. But he missed, and after Edwin van der Sar saved from Nicolas Anelka, Manchester United had won.
Sport allows us almost unparalleled views into the character of its professionals. They say that you learn the most in defeat. As Terry, the puff-out-your-chest, body-on-the-line superman, sat on the pitch, desolate, tears streaming down his face, he became, to me, more heroic than ever. You love the girl’s imperfections, not in spite of the funny little freckle above her lip, but because of it.
They say that nobody remembers who came second. But in years to come, nobody will remember who came first at the 2009 Open Championship at Turnberry. Tom Watson, leading going into the final day, leading going onto the 18th green, was to become the oldest man to win a major, aged 59 and with a replacement hip. Watson had last won a major 26 years before, and his remarkable success provided inspiration to aging golfers – aging people – everywhere. He raged, raged against the dying of the light, leaving younger men in his wake. The week was all about him. Yet he missed an eight-foot putt to bogey the final hole, and succumbed by six shots in a four-hole play-off, to Stewart Cink by the way.
As Watson himself said: ‘The old fogey almost did it. It would have been a hell of a story.’ But, somehow, eventual failure made Watson’s achievement a greater one. When memories of noble victories fade away, heroic defeats will linger long. Every great tale is a tragic one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
