Osaka’s prerogative
Sport mirrors the society it is played in but in the modern age that society has got unimaginably more complex. Take for instance the walkout from the French Open by one of the most talented players in women’s tennis — Naomi Osaka, four time Grand Slam winner. Facing mental health issues as in dealing with a psychosis over media conferences, which she thinks only induce doubts in players’ minds, she decided to abandon the Grand Slam rather than face up to her demons. But what did sport do but throw the book at her in pedantic action and which proved so unpopular, with public opinion swinging hugely in sympathy with her condition, that the sports administrators were running for cover.
Professional sport can no longer be run like a circus ring into which athletes are corralled to perform while taking home fat pay and endorsement cheques. The finest athletes are subjected to extreme anxieties, which their skills help tame sometimes. But they all suffer the same human frailties as John Doe and that calls for empathy rather than stentorian diktats from the keepers of the codes of behaviour. Ironically, the men running the most from the press and media were the admin men of the Grand Slams just when they were required to come clean and act in the interest of inclusivity in sport by explaining themselves.
The mental well-being of sportspeople is also important for the entertainment they offer through their artistic skills that please the aesthete and the aficionado as well as the common man. The complexities of individual behaviour under competitive pressures in young people may seem administratively difficult to handle. But sport must endure all that besides taking a stand against so much else that is wrong with the world, such as racism, sexism and jingoism. They made the debutant England Test cricketer Ollie Robinson apologise cringingly and in public for tweets of 2012 and 2013 that were racist and sexist. It is in addressing sympathetically the issue of his career that sport can show it has the equanimity and the empathy when it comes to dealing with sportspeople.