Let’s be good sports

IF YOU want your faith in the future restored, just cast your eye over the young champs we regularly feature in our Junior Sport section.

We can take a lot of solace from these young Geelongites who beam and glow with health and promise.

They are learning all the great life lessons that being involved in physical competitions from a young age can teach.

These include learning to push yourself under pressure to find hidden strength and determination you may not have known you had.

Not to mention learning how being a team player rather than a lone wolf makes victory more likely.

But most important is the lesson that the umpire or referee’s ruling is final and that frustration and disappointment can be handled with grace — also known as ‘being a good sport’.

And so we come to the recent ‘bad sport’ displays of tennis superstar Serena Williams.

Williams is not Robinson Crusoe in the bratty tennis stakes. Temper is a close neighbour of passion and drive. And there’s a long line of unsporting conduct and ‘diva tanties’ running through John McEnroe to Australia’s own Nick Kyrgios.

What is different here is some are now, as is the ridiculous current fashion, seeking to make this about identity politics.

Williams’ claim that she was subject to sexist umpiring (in that a male player’s emotional outbursts would not be penalised as much) may be right.

But it’s obscene that Williams, a multi-millionaire and a dominator of international sport, should play the victim card.

Especially when the real victim was the actual winner of the US Open, Japan’s Naomi Osaka, who was left in tears as the homecrowd backed Williams and booed Osaka’s victory.

Fortunately, our junior sports stars are less likely to turn on diva tantrums. This is a case where the adults could learn a thing or two from the kids.