Live Sport 5: Yeaahhh ... No
Different sports evoke different chemical rhythms, some more satisfying than others. The powerful adrenaline rush (rush isn't even a strong enough word) of watching a big boxing match between two powerful punchers with vulnerable chins, one of whom you care about, is pretty impossible to match. You are on the edge of a heartbeat constantly, fearing not just defeat but harm but yet hopeful of harm being dealt. I don't know how relatives and friends manage to watch their boxers.
Then there's test cricket. It may have a reputation as having a sleepy, relaxed rhythm, but I don't think that's accurate, for either player of spectator. Sure, you can regularly switch off, take a break, whether after a ball, after an over or after a session, but you have to switch on again at any point. And yes, things can tick over quietly and undramatically for extended periods, but the point is that any single ball could change everything, could change the momentum. If cricket is gripping, it grips over and over again.
Perhaps sporting prices should more accurately reflect the quality of the chemicals they send around your body. In the end, the priciest sporting ticket I ever bought was ultimately the least satisfactory. The one big-money pair of tickets I won in the Olympic ballot was for an evening of swimming in the Aquatic Centre. There was a good selection of finals and semi-finals on, and we were due to see the American star of women's swimming, Missy Franklin and the great Michael Phelps himself in a semi-final.
Getting into the venue was spectacularly easy, the Aquatic Centre was fabulous to look at from the outside. Although mine were far from the cheapest tickets, the seats were pretty high up - the participants in the flesh were pretty tiny, though of course there were excellent big screens if necessary.
Swimming on TV is a pretty good spectator sport, with the close-ups, the underwater cameras, the commentators telling you the idiosyncracies of each particular stroke. In real life, it's just the backs (or fronts for the backstroke) of fairly indistinguishable bodies. The GB participants at least had red swimming caps to mark them out for support.
And, boy, did the British crowd support. That fierce patriotic fervour was, of course, one of the features of the Olympics. It was the red cap people were shouting for, not the person, in most cases, I imagine. But why not? Most folk probably don't get the opportunity to have the European Shortcourse Swimming Championships on a weekday morning on Eurosport on, in order to develop the back stories of our plucky British heroes.
And there were plenty of them that night. Liam Tancock and Hannah Miley, Robbie Renwick and Gemma Spofforth - these are the cream of British swimmers, good enough to win those European Shortcourse Championships, good enough to win world medals, to qualify in, or near, the centre lanes for Olympic finals, good enough to hope there might be a bit of Team GB medal business to go exaggeratedly mental for. To hope.
Tancock, Renwick and Spofforth were all in finals. There for the biggest moments of their life. This was the first Monday of the Olympics, before British medal fever had taken hold. The nation was nervous.
This is what watching a swimming final from 100m away featuring a home swimmer is like. "Go on ... who's winning ... hard to say ... go ooon .... they're in touch, definitely in touch ... oooh, they've turned second ....this is on .... goooo onnnnn .... aaaaaaaahh ....yeeeaaoooo.... ah. Hmmm. Where? Fifth, hmm, 5th I think. Hmm. Good effort. Hmm. Bugger."
Three times. Three top class British swimmers who had a chance, were at one point in the race in a medal position, who ended up finishing 5th. The session was around two hours long, and that two hours contained mostly waiting around, a bit of generous applauding, a few minutes of anticipation, about a minute of fevered hoping, about 10 seconds of raucous, gut-churning thrill and then minutes which turn into hours of ... crushedness ... of the endorphines and the whatevers just falling through the bottom to expose total and utter emptiness. 5th. Gutting. 5th. Gutting. 5th. Gutting.
What am I saying? Swimming is not a great spectator sport. British people are not great at swimming. 5th is not a great position. I've made out like I had a bad time. Of course not. It was thrilling and momentous, but if one of those three Brits had been able to swim a few tenths of seconds faster, then I'm quite sure my good chemicals would have kicked in for a sustained period and the whole thing would have felt dizzyingly wonderful. But it didn't.
At the same Olympics and Paralympics, I watched several other events at a much lower price which never came close to the rush felt in the possibility of a British swimmer getting a medal and 10,000 on steeped banks screaming them on, but they provided far more sustained satisfaction.
Then there's test cricket. It may have a reputation as having a sleepy, relaxed rhythm, but I don't think that's accurate, for either player of spectator. Sure, you can regularly switch off, take a break, whether after a ball, after an over or after a session, but you have to switch on again at any point. And yes, things can tick over quietly and undramatically for extended periods, but the point is that any single ball could change everything, could change the momentum. If cricket is gripping, it grips over and over again.
Perhaps sporting prices should more accurately reflect the quality of the chemicals they send around your body. In the end, the priciest sporting ticket I ever bought was ultimately the least satisfactory. The one big-money pair of tickets I won in the Olympic ballot was for an evening of swimming in the Aquatic Centre. There was a good selection of finals and semi-finals on, and we were due to see the American star of women's swimming, Missy Franklin and the great Michael Phelps himself in a semi-final.
Getting into the venue was spectacularly easy, the Aquatic Centre was fabulous to look at from the outside. Although mine were far from the cheapest tickets, the seats were pretty high up - the participants in the flesh were pretty tiny, though of course there were excellent big screens if necessary.
Swimming on TV is a pretty good spectator sport, with the close-ups, the underwater cameras, the commentators telling you the idiosyncracies of each particular stroke. In real life, it's just the backs (or fronts for the backstroke) of fairly indistinguishable bodies. The GB participants at least had red swimming caps to mark them out for support.
And, boy, did the British crowd support. That fierce patriotic fervour was, of course, one of the features of the Olympics. It was the red cap people were shouting for, not the person, in most cases, I imagine. But why not? Most folk probably don't get the opportunity to have the European Shortcourse Swimming Championships on a weekday morning on Eurosport on, in order to develop the back stories of our plucky British heroes.
And there were plenty of them that night. Liam Tancock and Hannah Miley, Robbie Renwick and Gemma Spofforth - these are the cream of British swimmers, good enough to win those European Shortcourse Championships, good enough to win world medals, to qualify in, or near, the centre lanes for Olympic finals, good enough to hope there might be a bit of Team GB medal business to go exaggeratedly mental for. To hope.
Tancock, Renwick and Spofforth were all in finals. There for the biggest moments of their life. This was the first Monday of the Olympics, before British medal fever had taken hold. The nation was nervous.
This is what watching a swimming final from 100m away featuring a home swimmer is like. "Go on ... who's winning ... hard to say ... go ooon .... they're in touch, definitely in touch ... oooh, they've turned second ....this is on .... goooo onnnnn .... aaaaaaaahh ....yeeeaaoooo.... ah. Hmmm. Where? Fifth, hmm, 5th I think. Hmm. Good effort. Hmm. Bugger."
Three times. Three top class British swimmers who had a chance, were at one point in the race in a medal position, who ended up finishing 5th. The session was around two hours long, and that two hours contained mostly waiting around, a bit of generous applauding, a few minutes of anticipation, about a minute of fevered hoping, about 10 seconds of raucous, gut-churning thrill and then minutes which turn into hours of ... crushedness ... of the endorphines and the whatevers just falling through the bottom to expose total and utter emptiness. 5th. Gutting. 5th. Gutting. 5th. Gutting.
What am I saying? Swimming is not a great spectator sport. British people are not great at swimming. 5th is not a great position. I've made out like I had a bad time. Of course not. It was thrilling and momentous, but if one of those three Brits had been able to swim a few tenths of seconds faster, then I'm quite sure my good chemicals would have kicked in for a sustained period and the whole thing would have felt dizzyingly wonderful. But it didn't.
At the same Olympics and Paralympics, I watched several other events at a much lower price which never came close to the rush felt in the possibility of a British swimmer getting a medal and 10,000 on steeped banks screaming them on, but they provided far more sustained satisfaction.
Comments
Post a Comment