● Kerre McIvor
Some things stand the test of time. Monty Python’s Flying Circus is still relevant today. Benny Hill — not so much. Levi jeans have been, and will continue to be, worn by generations. Stubbies have mercifully been posted into that great clothing collection bin in the sky.
And while the lap of honour remains a great athletic tradition, surely trophy tarts have had their day.
Sonny Bill Williams signed up for a charity fight in Australia to raise money for an organisation that looks after Sydney’s homeless. He was due to fight last night.
The bout was already controversial, given concerns that Williams’ opponent, Stu Laundy, the winner of Australia’s The Bachelorette show, would be horribly hurt in what looked to be a one-sided bout.
Laundy has never fought before; Williams has three knockouts and has never been defeated in seven professional fights. You can understand the New South Wales’ Combat Sports Authority’s concerns — especially in light of the injuries and recent death of part-time pugilists across the ditch in New Zealand.
However, it was Williams’ manager’s decision to ban scantily clad ring girls from the joint press conference before the bout that made headlines around the world.
Williams and his manager, Khoder Nasser, are devout Muslims and Williams supported his manager’s decision to reject a photo op with the two young women.
Williams said ring girls were part of the business of boxing but he didn’t feel it necessary to bring them to the photo op.
You don’t have to be Muslim to feel that scantily clad trophy girls are an anachronism.
Formula One chiefs announced at the start of this year that grid girls would no longer be a feature of racing, stating they believed the custom was at odds with modern values and societal norms and claiming the practice was neither appropriate nor relevant to Formula One and its fans.
The UK Professional Darts Corporation banned walk-on girls around the same time and even though a petition to bring them back garnered nearly 50,000 signatures, the corporation remained resolute — although their hotter-blooded European counterparts have maintained the tradition.
Cycling is coming under increasing pressure to get rid of the podium girls that window-dress major cycle races — and while some tours have accepted that having a couple of pretty girls in short tight dresses handing over a trophy and dispensing a kiss to the winner is not the best advertisement for the sport — others, predominantly in Europe, are adamant the girls are there to stay.
Presumably they mean girls in general, not the girls that are on the podium today.
Those girls won’t be there forever. Once they get old (past 30) or heaven forfend, if they got fat, their “careers” would be over.
It seems odd that cycling is such a hold-out. I could understand it in boxing, darts and motor racing, sports with an overwhelming number of male competitors and a large male fan base. But female cyclists are as common as men and treated every bit as seriously as athletes. I can’t imagine why they put up with their sport and their gender being trivialised in such a way.
But back to Williams. He’s landed a few blows in the ring and on the field but probably the biggest blow he landed was to the perpetuation of the embarrassing, archaic tradition of the boxing ring girl. Good on him.