The fans aren’t the problem in modern sport
Television and security present a far greater risk than the humble supporter, writes Mark Reason.
Chris Boardman, Britain’s gold medallist at the 1992 Olympics, said we are crazy people who are out of control. We caused the crash on Mont Ventoux. We caused Richie Porte to go over his handlebars into a motorbike. We caused Chris Froome to run up the hill in his yellow jersey.
You see, us fans are a bloody menace. We need to be roped off. We need to be kept behind crash barriers. We need to be caged in. Call in the lads and ladesses from health and safety. Add another 50 security outriders. Segregate the rabble.
And you really don’t have to take this crap. A couple of years ago at the Open championship at Hoylake some guy was going around with a pair of scissors cutting the security ropes. The general reaction was one of outrage, but I cheered. It wasn’t exactly anarchy in the UK, but at least someone was not putting up with this ‘us and them’ any more.
You see, the real trouble at these big events isn’t you and me, the people, it’s the great maw of mass media. Only the suits won’t admit it, because they’re all in on it. The riders and the golfers and the commentators and the organisers are all part of the obscene cash handouts that TV and its cronies provide. They are part of the celebrity culture that has created sport’s great divide.
If you look at photographs of the 1962 Open at Troon, the people are close to the players. They are crammed in round the greens and the fairways. Arnie is one of them. That’s why he had an army. But at the 2016 Open you sometimes need a telescope to see the fans. Oh no, television doesn’t want real people cluttering up its pictures. It just wants to show you the stars, the people who live in a sidereal world. Don’t you love that word.
But it’s OK, if you want to get up close, then use your device. Martin Slumbers, chief executive of The R&A, says, ‘‘The way people consume sporting events is changing and it is very important that we deliver the Open to people on every device in the way they want to consume it.’’
Yep, you’re a consumer. You may have paid to get into the Open, but if you want to get close up and personal you will have to consume it on your device. You can call up shot tracker and star tracker, if tracker is the word I’m really finking of.
It’s an illusion. The real menace to the cyclists and golfers and all the other sports people are the very people who are railing against you and me. It’s television and security and the rest of the commercial charabanc. Thomas De Gendt, the winner of the Ventoux stage, dedicated his victory to Stig Broeckx.
Broeckx is in a vegetative coma after being knocked from his bike by two motorcyclists earlier this year. In March, Antoine Demoitie, another Belgian, was killed after he crashed and was run over by the commissaire’s motorbike. There were 59 motorbikes at the race. With hideous irony 24 of those motorbikes were supposed to be providing race security.
The previous year New Zealand’s Jesse Sergent broke his collarbone at the Tour of Flanders when he was hit by a service car.
And guess what? No-one has stopped these ridiculous vehicles driving in such great numbers near to the riders. French cyclist Romain Bardet said on Friday, ‘‘There were so many motorbikes in the way it wasn’t safe.’’
But they won’t listen to him. They will listen to Boardman, a man paid by TV, who said he has been so angry about this for years and called the crowd an accident waiting to happen. They will listen to Porte who said: ’’We love the fans and 99 per cent of them are brilliant but why do some of them need to take their selfies and run along beside us? There’s passion and there’s stupidity.’’
But we love passion and stupidity. It’s part of growing up. Only now it needs barriers to contain it. That’s if you let them erect them and yes, I’m talking to you three teenagers reading this article, although I am aware that is a grotesque numerical exaggeration.
You have to decide what you want. Hard to believe, but 45 years ago there were no such things as celebrity magazines and you could get a glass of beer for 30 cents. A house was not a fantasy.
But now there is a huge wealth and attitude disparity of which you are the victims. And yes it is the fault of my generation and my parents’ generation and we should be begging your forgiveness. Instead we keep building barriers. Like the ones they now want to erect at the Tour de France. They want to keep you in your place, far from the action.
Steve Bruce, ex Manchester United and now a manager, said the other day of the England football team: ’’Call me old fashioned, but we’re now holding umbrellas up as our players get off a plane. Do they need that?‘‘
What a joke, when it is the young men and women out on the street who really need the shelter. It’s we who are at risk from all the vehicles on the gravy train. So cut the rope and shout out: ’’We’re as mad as hell and we don’t have to take this any any more.’’