This Sporting Life

Was it Terry Rogers who said the Irish are a gambling people? I think it was. In an Observer interview. I think he said that we d bet on two flies on a wall. As I remember it, he thought it was because we were a farming people, for whom everything is a gamble. Throw a seed in the ground, it s a gamble. Take a cow to be fucked, it s a gamble. That s what he said. His very words.

I remembered it as Sinndar crossed the line. And I recalled earlier successes this year by the equine Irish. At least they were hot. What would Gulliver say?
It s one of life s abiding mysteries, why our racehorses can win and the sporting humans can t. But that s the way it is. And maybe that s why we gamble because we can t be certain we ll win.
The irony is that we are such a sports-obsessed people. We love it anything. Jasus, we ll even give courtesy to truck rally cross as shown exclusively on Eurosport!! Two flies on a wall? Only the start!
So, how do we do so badly in the Olympics, with the solitary exception of Sonia O Sullivan? I mean, compare us with the Aussies - sure there s five times as many of them as us. But they won twenty times as many medals. And without Sonia, we d have won nothing!
I dunno. When you look at the effect on national pride and self-confidence of the exploits of the football team in the late eighties and early nineties, it would be worth really investing in sports. There are many who believe that Big Jack s success underpinned the emergence of the Celtic Tiger. And I d agree. But we need new food, and new heroes. Sonia may win the 10,000 metres in the next European Championship, and compete in the marathon in Athens in 2004, but others should be on the production line now. If anyone wants to see how it can be done, they should look to Australia, a place far more like Ireland than we might think.
Indeed, the Olympics were Australia s Riverdance, an event and an achievement that marked the country s coming of age. Great to see.
It was also interesting to see that, while drugs users probably got away with a lot, especially in the sprinting, the organisers attempted to take the issue seriously. This in itself cast a shadow over the achievements of a number of swimmers and athletes, and particularly Marion Jones.
Like Michelle de Bruin, Jones has been smirched by association with her husband. He s CJ Hunter, a guy who looks like he could be on MTV with a bunch of homeys complaining about this and that and how things is bad in the hood. A big lad, and he tested positive for nandrolone. He had a thousand times too much in his blood stream.
That s so outta here he might actually be innocent. But that cuts no ice with the authorities. He s out. Done for. History.
And actually, according to some reports, not only is he Olympic history, he s also herstory. Out of Marion Jones story, that is. At least, so it s alleged. As in the BOOT. Gone. On his ear. S long mate. Marion has had it with him. Worse still, it is said that this was because her sponsors advised her that the association with CJH was very bad for business. Yeah. That s right. The sponsor called time on the marriage.
Is this true? Does it matter? Actually, I think not. Things are now at a stage where we accept that such a thing could happen. True or not, we think it could be true, and that s enough. That fact, whatever about the truth of the story, marks a key stage in the commodification of sports stars. We re at critical mass.
So now, you don t sell a football boot, you sell an image, an idea, a lifestyle choice. Manufacturers no longer make their products, they farm them out. They go where labour is cheap and capital has room to move. I know it sounds like PD heaven, and perhaps it is. But it s a major issue. There are huge global companies whose turnover dwarfs that of many of the poorer nations of the earth, and whose employees (many of them in Ireland) earn enough in a year to supply water to an entire town in, say, Ethiopia.
How do we square ourselves with this?
Well, some do and some don t. And many companies have embraced a sense of duty as well. But there is a vast underground global movement out there that challenges those who don t. They ve been targeting the G7 summits and the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Prague, in Seattle and in London.
It s a really interesting movement, one that evokes memories of 1968 among greybeards. It is without organisation as such and operates through networks, and the internet. It may be delineating the politics of the 21st century. And we ll hear more soon!
Meanwhile, the grimmest old-style politics continue. Several dozen have died in Israel and Palestine. And the police have disrupted Real IRA plans on this island. The more we learn, the more we forget.
And all the while, the winds whine and the seas rage. Two trawlers so far, ten or twelve fishermen. Tough. Tough.
Now that s a real gamble.
The Hog