Sporting interviews don’t have to be banal
LAST Saturday columnist Carolyn Hitt explored the changing landscape of Welsh rugby coverage – but sidestepped sport’s unremitting parade of trivial pitch, track and pool-side interviews.
Just as there are only seven basic plotlines in fiction, there are only seven sensible sport-related questions, everything else is just stuff and nonsense – made worse by sports stars now coached what to say and, crucially, what not to say, which renders such interviews futile banality.
European bike racing boasts a skilled interviewer. I don’t know his name, I don’t even know what he looks like – I just see his microphone and hear his distinctively clipped English accent – but he asks intriguing questions, often amusing takes on well-worn clichés.
Not only do I remember them, but I recall who was asked – for example...
The Italian Elia Viviani had won the third of a five-stage race and was wearing the leader’s jersey and in control: “Do you feel as if you’re already standing on the moon?”
Fast-forward to this year’s Tour de France, and Geraint was tightening his grip on the jersey: “Do you sense the Tour de France reaching out to embrace you?” It was perfect, given Team Sky’s fraught love affair with le Tour.
Earlier in the Tour, and just before the infamous cobbled section, he asked the then leader, Belgium’s Greg van Avermaet, a whiz on such testing terrain: “This stage must be on your bucket list?”
All the aforementioned riders smiled at the questions and gave elegant responses, confirmation that they accepted the interviewer as a friendly foe.
Not only was rugby supremo Carwyn James an elegant interviewee, but also a masterful interviewer.
He once said that he paid extravagant attention to the first question – if he got that right, then subsequent questions flowed naturally.
Time for Oxbridge then to launch a new media degree course: “You too can ask insightful, witty and wise questions of politicians, civil servants, business people, bankers, sports stars, celebrities – not forgetting the man on the moon and his dog.” PLEASE! Huw Beynon Llandeilo
The standard of British education is like much else – being brought down, not raised. K Clements Llangyfelach