The sporting gems who give us reasons to be optimistic
MAY I be honest? I didn’t really want to write this column. At least, not the version that you’re going to read. It had been suggested by the wonderful assistant sports editor I could take the festive period to reflect on reasons for optimism after the most turbulent, globally disruptive year of many of our lifetimes.
But I haven’t been feeling very optimistic. Or witty. Or insightful. I feel like I’ve made it to the end of this year, and that’s good enough.
Worry, loss of work or loved ones, not being able to see or hold family members for more months than we care to count, home schooling... it’s all too much now. Can’t I skip the optimism, hide in some time bunker and wait for it all to pass?
Except, of course, I am writing this column, so you can probably guess at a change of heart, or tone at least. When I started to think about it, I realised I don’t need to find reasons for optimism, they’re there whether I choose to pay attention or not.
For all the moments of majesty from any field or track, this was the year that, more than ever, has shown us sport’s place in the wider world. Yes, we realised in its absence just what it means to us, and why, but it’s more than that. When questions have been asked of all of us, key figures from this corner of our society have squared their shoulders and led from the front – 2020 was the year when sport was about so much more than just that.
Take Lewis Hamilton, whose seventh F1 world title was as much about the battle against racism as it was his competitors. His fearless, unapologetic stance forced his sport into a position that others have been able to hide from. No brand-polished slogan for the insta likes, it’s a mission statement that’s become woven into the fabric of his clothes, the fabric of his being. He’s shown it’s a fight that belongs, and needs to be fought, not just on the streets, but at the highest level of a multi-billion pound industry.
In a world where paymasters and sponsors expect their stars to be blank canvases upon which to superimpose any zeitgeisty message of the moment, he has made the fight against racism a living, breathing part of what he represents, as an athlete, a person. He challenges all of us to do the same.
Then there’s the more subtle form of campaigning, the living of the change you want to see. Hollie Doyle broke her own record of race wins this year, with a first at Royal Ascot. She is not doing it to bring gender equality to centre stage, but because she can, and for all the hidden motivations, fears and quirks of character that push her on.
And yet she is quietly, forcefully getting on with breaking barriers and shattering glass ceilings all the same. One day, female jockeys will lose the gendered prefix and be seen on equal terms to no-need-to-mention-the-factthey’re-male jockey equivalents, and it will be in no small part due to her.
And, of course, there is the man for whom no superlatives are sufficient, who has managed to make even his exceptional talent on a football pitch look almost paltry compared to what he can do off it. We have no equivalent here of Time magazine Person of the Year. If we did, there is no doubt it would be Marcus Rashford.
What this young man has done for countless children he has helped feed, and whose plight he has carried on his shoulders to Downing Street, has both broken and then refilled our hearts with a hope and faith in humanity that has been so desperately needed.
But it is the wave of socially conscious footballers alongside him that make a collective mockery of Matt Hancock’s attempted shaming and scapegoating of the sport in April. Remember his words at the beginning of this pandemic, insisting ‘given the sacrifices many people are making, the first thing Premier League players can do is make a contribution’? There was no need to call on footballers over, say, politicians to do their bit but they did, and then some.
There is Andy Robertson who’s just started his own charity to give young people an equal start in life; Callum Wilson and Hector Bellerin, who
This was the year that, more than ever, showed us sport’s place in the wider world
launched #FootballUnited to raise money for corona-impacted communities; clubs helping keep local foodbanks stocked up.
Again, we can say they can easily afford what is, to them, petty cash, but that’s not the point. The point is time and effort taken to implement each of these initiatives and the example it sets to the rest of us.
There are those, and many of them, who say politics has no place in sport, that racing or playing should be an escape from inconvenient truths of the world. But this isn’t politics, it’s life, in all its ugly, messy reality. This year has been uglier and messier than ever, and in more ways than it needed to be, sport has been our solace.
That is why I look ahead to next year with a Christmas sack load of optimism. Role models beget role models. There is the old saying that diamonds can only be made under intense pressure. If these are the Christmas gems I get to enjoy after the weight of this year, I’ll take them.