This is a thank-you note. Not a conventional thank-you note. It is not addressed to an individual, or a group of people. It is a thank-you note to an entity, a thing, a concept really. It is a thank-you note to sport.
For just being there. For its ability, if not to literally heal, then to simply take a load off. For its life-affirming nature. For its positivity, its stimulation, the way it can provoke a conversation that lasts an hour or two, and that’s an hour when you are not submerged in whatever grim reality might have occupied your thoughts otherwise.
We lost mum last week. In the small hours of Thursday to be specific, but we knew for some time. She had one of those cancers. You know the type. From beginning to end, three-and-a-half years, but from January without any hope at all. And we’re not special. There will be many thousands of people living that way in Britain right now. Waiting for the inevitable.
Maybe you know someone. And, if you do, maybe you are taking small pleasure from whatever gets you high: the concertos of Rachmaninov, the films of Humphrey Bogart, a good play on Radio 4. But us, in our house, we like sport. We like watching it, we like playing it, we like arguing about it. And while sport won’t save a person from metastasizing tumours, it can perhaps save those in the vicinity. It can, for a moment, occupy their minds or lift their souls.
So, in that spirit, dad went to the Olympics on Sunday. We had tickets for the gymnastics and he took the train with Arthur, his grandson. They left together, happily enough. Not much has brought a smile to his face in the last week, but the prospect of this outing did. ‘It would be something to look forward to,’ he said, when the idea was floated.
We didn’t expect him to take it up, actually. It was a desperate throw of the dice on a very bleak day. And sport isn’t going to beat the agony of loss. We know that. But every now and then it scores a goal on the break against the run of play. It is unpredictable like that, bless it.
Unpredictable like three gold medals in a stadium on one special night, or Murray beating Federer; unpredictable like Chelsea in the Nou Camp; unpredictable like Manchester City winning the Premier League with the last kick; unpredictable like the conclusion of the 2012 Open. And even when it is predictable, it can be beautiful, too: beautiful like Frankel or Spain in the first half of the European Championship final. We’ve thrilled to them all.
For this is not just a paean to Olympic sport, as easy as that would be to write today. “All sport for all people,” said Pierre de Coubertin, and this is not an address to a select few, the heroes of the last seven days.
It’s a thank you also to Didier Drogba, Vincent Kompany, Andres Iniesta and Andrea Pirlo, to Ernie Els, to Sir Henry Cecil, to Alastair Cook, to Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams. It is a thank you to those who have, throughout this year, given my dad somewhere to go beyond the obvious when the telephone rings.
On Sunday, in my kitchen, he was talking about Victoria Pendleton. We sat together and watched Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah race. These are present distractions. But we won’t forget those who did their bit through the long winter, or the part the most thrilling football season of recent memory played in both our lives.
My dad likes Frank Lampard. He thinks Frank Lampard is one of the greatest players he has seen, and he’s seen a few. He likes the way he keeps the ball, he likes his unselfish work-rate, he likes him because he scores so many goals from midfield. And because he likes Lampard, he also likes Chelsea. Drives my brother mad. What self-respecting fan of West Ham United has a soft spot for Chelsea? They argue. And when Chelsea were edging their way past the elite of European football, they argued a lot.
But in a nice way. In a way that was positive because, at home, the backdrop to Chelsea’s progress in Europe was unremittingly gloomy. So if an afternoon could be lost rowing over whether Chelsea were good or bad for football, or whether dad was just a closet Chelsea fan anyway, then that was a good afternoon.
If the old man could share his pleasure at the next Chelsea victory against all logic with the daughter-in-law and grandson who are genuine Chelsea supporters, it cheered him greatly. And briefly, the world was a kinder place. Although medical evidence suggests it probably isn’t. We just think it is, because the Olympics are on and everybody is lovely; but that is the power of sport, too.
Lord Coe said he met a volunteer on public transport last week, and instinctively thanked him for his work. The man was working on the medical team at the boxing arena. Coe asked what he usually did. He said he was a consultant at the accident and emergency department of a major London hospital. He described his Olympic duty as closure.
He had been there, he said, on July 7, the day after the bid had been won, when four men tore parts of the capital to smithereens. “I saw the worst of humanity that day,” the doctor explained, “and now I’m seeing the best.” Sport did that. Sport teased that goodness out of mankind. Sport won the day.
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball,” said Rogers Hornsby, who played 23 seasons in the major leagues, mostly with the St Louis Cardinals. “I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
What would my father have done these last three years, without the opportunity to lose his thoughts on the 18th green, or the square at Headingley? Much the same as Hornsby. He plays golf, but hardly since his wife fell ill. Here was his escape. The way a kid who is failing at school might become engaged in class again on discovering his place on the football field or in the athletics team.
Sport, like the Yellow Pages, does not just help with the nasty things in life. If this government fails to bottle the spirit and positivity that has flowed through these Games it will be one of the greatest failings of imagination of modern times.
If sport can earn the odd away point in days of unremitting darkness, imagine its potential for good when given a level playing field; or any playing field at all, considering what has been happening to the land around state schools in recent decades.
Imagine the possibilities if those in power considered the inspiration of a generation as more than a neat slogan. Imagine if instead of merely hitching a ride on a bandwagon, ministers saw the worth in school sports, stopped bleating about the proliferation of independently educated pupils in our Olympic team and did something about it?
Wonderful things have happened at Eton Dorney for British rowers, but few sights were as heartening as the moment when Sizwe Ndlovu helped guide South Africa to gold in the lightweight men’s four. Ndlovu is rowing’s first black African medal winner, and further evidence of social and cultural change in the region.
Yet looking at the make-up of Team GB’s rowing squad, he has no equivalent on these shores. “This inspires people back home in a big way,” said South Africa’s chef de mission, Patience Shikwambana. “Sizwe has proven it wrong that blacks can’t swim or be in water. We are encouraging our youth to not just focus on netball or football, but to get involved in any sports.”
What if Sizwe’s inspiration extended beyond South Africa’s borders, breaking down barriers in our own society? Is there a nobler representation of what modern Britain is about than 10,000 metres champion Farah? He did not win a distance race because he is from Somalia. He won despite being from Somalia. He won despite being uprooted from his home in Mogadishu at the age of eight and taken to a foreign land. He won despite representing Britain, a lonely task over 25 laps when the best East African runners operate almost as gangs, intimidating and clearing trespassers from their territory.
Somalia is the easternmost point in Africa but it shares none of the Olympic history of its neighbours. The country first competed in an Olympics in 1972 and have never won a medal. Their best athlete is Abdi Bile, who came sixth in the 1500 metres in Atlanta in 1996. Neither Farah’s country of birth, nor his homeland make him a natural fit as a 10,000m champion.
His success is testament to what can be achieved by a driven individual, with support. It is a wonderful tale, one that should be taught in schools, as a way of demonstrating that life does not have to be lived with limitations.
And not in fear, either. There were a great many reasons for Ennis to fail over 48 hours in London, not least her status as the face of the Games. Liu Xiang was her equivalent in Beijing, but pulled up lame on the track at the Bird’s Nest in the heats of the 110m hurdles.
The sprint duo Konstantinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou shared the honour in Athens in 2004, until a surprise visit from the drug testers prior to the start of the Games developed into one of the biggest scandals in Olympic history. Neither competed, let alone won gold. So it was not given that Ennis would be triumphant in London, not with seven events and so much to go wrong.
In 2000, Cathy Freeman had to stay upright and fast over 400m. Ennis had to do so over hurdles and a high jump, had to leap long, throw far, sprint and then endure through 800m. That she turned the final strides of her middle-distance race into an early lap of honour was among the great achievements of these Games.
Rebecca Adlington, by contrast, was as good as crushed by the pressure of living up to expectations created by her performance in the Beijing Water Cube. Ennis absorbed the intensity of the moment and turned it into the third highest score in Olympic heptathlon. She was not out of the top 10 in any event and came first and second twice each. She was stunning. She often goes on training runs with her chocolate Labrador, Myla. That’s pretty stunning, too, in its normality.
Yet, already, this being sport, Ennis’s time has come, and gone. Tomorrow there will be new feats to consider. As if it matters, the cynics say. As if sport has relevance. Yet it does. Even last Thursday, especially last Thursday, sport mattered. It reached out beyond the arena; it tried to touch hearts and minds. And it will continue to perform, to stir the blood or provide momentary escape.
So thank you. From the gentleman in the navy jacket at the gymnastics, from anyone who needs that portal from reality right now, from those who seek inspiration or simple entertainment, thank you all so very much. – Daily Mail