Taking sport too seriously

There's just been so much. I've just watched such an awful lot of sport, it's been rather hard to narrow this strand down. What ten moments of sport that I've watched have I enjoyed the most? Really and truly. Well, enjoyed is the wrong word for this one. I enjoyed it only so much. And it was also a strange, fractured, watching experience for me. But 2005 was a summer when cricket was truly joyous and life-affirming, for me and, for the last time in England, for countless millions of others. Cos after that, of course, Sky came and stole our cricket for good. Fuckers. I gave in a couple of years later, and more than Premier League football or Boxing or Sunday Supplement (croissants and all), it was the absence of live test cricket on terrestrial TV that forced me to the dark side. The Ashes on 2005 were on Channel 4, and they did a phenomenal job of it. Mark Nicholas, Richie Benaud, Michaels Slater and Atherton, Tony Greig, Geoff Boycott, Simon Hughes, their voices...

"One shot", a line that runs through Michael Cimino's 'The Deer Hunter', that underlies Eminem's 'Lose Yourself'. One shot. Take it clean or it's gone. I never had a shot, not like that. At least I don't think so. If I did, it came and went without my noticing, which is probably for the best. So the concept of "One shot" can mean something different. It simply reminds us of a time where we nailed it, where we hit or struck one shot with such pure timing, such out-of-context perfection that, years or decades later, that one split second still lives on through the haze that surrounds it. And we imagine Alan Partridge soundtracking it by saying "Shit, what a goal/shot/smash!" I'm not quite talking about the "aristeia". In The Iliad, our common heroes have brief periods when they are at their very best, when they rise above themselves and destroy all before them. In modern parlance, there's "the zo...

You know the one. The guy who took the tour, traditionally the exclusive preserve of Europeans, by storm, whose career was shocking interrupted by a life-threatening event only for him to make a triumphant comeback, who stands for everything good about his sport ... oh, no, not that guy, of course not that guy. The one great American cyclist, Greg LeMond. There are others who have won more Tours, not even counting the now-expunged Armstrong - Hinault, Indurain, Anquetil, and the one usually considered the greatest, Eddy Merckx, but I hope history will put LeMond, winner of three Tours, right up there with them. First of all, as a trailblazer - he was the first (and still only one of two) non-European to win the Tour. Secondly, he could well have won more but was required, early on, to ride for Hinault, which he certainly did more loyally than Hinault did for him (or than Froome did for Wiggins). Thirdly, he had to miss two Tours after being shot in a hunting accident which almost k...

When it comes to the defining moments in global sport, I had to think long and hard about whether or not to include anything from "the American sports". World Series, my arse, we say. America is not the World, as Morrissey once sang. But are they the insular ones? Well, yes, yes, they are, but we Brits would be wrong to think that the four team sports they traditionally build their culture around have no currency elsewhere. Basketball is truly one of the biggest sports all over the world, especially in the rest of Europe, likewise ice hockey is particularly big in Eastern Europe, baseball in South and Central America and Japan, and it's only American Football that, in terms of international teams and high class leagues, remains North American. They did try pretty hard with NFL Europe (remember the London Monarchs?) but it was always second-rate and ended up folding. Yet, it's the Super Bowl I'm choosing, because the Super Bowl is something a bit special, easil...

I only recently remembered this one, which fits perfectly into my plot and provides a good bit of variety. New York Mets vs St Louis Cardinals at the old Shea Stadium, or, as they bizarrely do it in the USA, St Louis Cardinals vs New York Mets. I'll try to avoid too many uses of the phrase "as they bizarrely do it it the USA", but I suppose that's what I'm writing about. America wins film, it currently wins music, but, hell, it does not win sport. Does it win global cities? Tough one. I watched my first baseball game on my first ever full day in New York City - a good, long, cliched day. New York lived up to expectation (apart from the first thing I saw, as I've said before, in a cab through Brooklyn, being cricket). I arrived on the Sunday night to my friends' apartment on Bowery and we went straight out to have lovely corn and Mexican beers at a street cafe, and Morgan Spurlock was there, and, ignoring jetlag, went to bed late and woke up early on th...

I wrote in a previous post on the shame of tacitly supporting Manchester United about how, because England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland have not actually WON anything for 48 years (apart from the "fabled" Tournoi in 1997) if one wants actual glory in football spectatorship, it is natural to engage with the heights of club football, be it Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League even if that doesn't involve your own club. That's how it works for me, but of course it's not how it works for most people. England is all. When Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea or Man Utd reach the Champions League final (you know, actually give themselves a chance of winning) you don't see their flags draped all over the nation. Their fans are passionate, a fair few football fans back them a bit, a lot of fans of other clubs rather want them to lose, and the majority don't really give a shit. England is all. It's primarily the actual Championships which bring ...

There's obviously something completely different, completely special, about being the 100m World Record Holder and/or the winner of the 100m at the Olympic Games. The fastest man in the world, the fastest human that's ever lived, across ground, with no artificial support. Would that it were always without artificial support, eh? The first I remember watching live is Carl Lewis in 1984, the great Carl Lewis - so that makes eight 100m men's Olympic finals I've seen, not to mention several World Championship finals. There's nearly always a story, nearly always something remarkable, though of those 8, there are two which are particularly fabled, for different reasons. Carl Lewis was an all-American superstar of the 1980s, graceful, arrogant, untouchable, winner of four golds at the Los Angeles Olympics.  Then, all of a sudden, he wasn't untouchable. There was a new guy, all bulging muscles, stocky and stern, explosive rather than fluent. Ben Johnson burst on t...