They may be geriatrics but they can still score

Dear Roger and Cristiano

What is it about you sports stars who father twins? Maybe it’s just that you do things twice as well as the majority of the population, but for you, Roger, to win your record eighth Wimbledon title and you, Cristiano, to consistently be one of the best footballers on Earth suggested to me there is a link between your prowess in the sports arena and the fact that you both fathered twins.

Also, neither of you guys is a spring chicken. Roger, I see you turn 36 on August 8 and Cristiano, you are 32. From the perspective of this 50-something-year-old, your lives are just starting. But in terms of professional sports stars, you are positively geriatrics.

I really reckoned I might be on to something until I thought of my middle daughter and her husband.

I am a grandfather to twins. The father, my son-in-law, is not the sporting type, and he’s 35. In fact, I’ve seen more dexterity and co-ordination in a newborn giraffe. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a lovely man and a wonderful father, but he was back of the line when hand-eye co-ordination was being dished out.

Guy Hawthorne

His wife – my daughter – is also not very sporty. She dabbled in netball and, very briefly, tennis at high school and was a better-than-average sprinter at primary school. But she also lacks hand-eye co-ord and these days she spends hour after hour tossing tractor tyres around and picking up ridiculously heavy weights at this new thing called “crossfit”. Her husband is also quite good at it (if you can be “good” at crossfit).

I thought they called it crossfit because when your trainer asks you to pick up a tractor tyre bigger than your car and run across a carpark with it hoisted above your head, you get cross. But apparently I’m way off the mark.

Anyway, guys, because my personal example proves to me that the parents of twins are not always blessed with sports prowess, I’m left wondering if you have passed on any of your sporting genes to your offspring.

My grandchildren – a boy and a girl – are just more than a year old and already he is showing signs of having some ball skills. He is lithe and athletic and it’s my hope that this continues to develop as he grows. His sister is shorter and stockier (or, more muscular, as my daughter prefers me to say) so she might become an MMA fighter or a world champion weightlifter.

I’m going to be buying him balls for his future birthdays and I’ll see if I can’t find some smallish tractor tyres for her.

If I look after them now and those skills develop to the point where they can earn money out of them, I might be rewarded when I’m no longer able to fend for myself.