Devil’s in detail for deadbeats
VILLAINS are intrinsic to the appeal of any sport
From Blatter’s downfall to the biggest scandal in athletics history, the last 12 months have seen lows that should not diminish achievements by heroes such as Ennis-Hill and Spieth. Oliver Brown charts the good, bad and the criminal
More often than not, the vitality of sport is rooted in villainy. Sonny Liston, who prefigured Tyson Fury as the heavyweight boxing champion nobody wanted, always understood what he gained from his casting as the anti-hero.
“That’s what people pay for – to see the bad guy get beat,” said Liston, a convicted armed robber who carved his name as the nefarious counterpoint to Muhammad Ali. So it is with Fury, a publicity godsend for tonight’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony, which millions will watch less for the syrupy tributes to Andy Murray than for the unscripted horrors of what Britain’s pariah of a pugilist might say.
It is apt that a soirée to close out this tumultuous sporting year should become a binary case of good versus evil, a pantomime which draws its interest from seeing if bad guy Fury will have his comeuppance at the hands of national darling Jessica Ennis-Hill, whom he belittled by claiming that she “slaps up well” in a dress. Throughout 2015, the grandest moments have sprung from the most polarised narratives. Floyd Mayweather, for all the turgidity of his May fight against Manny Pacquiao, was the conductor of a week of unparalleled hoopla in Las Vegas, his notoriety as a wife-beater thrown into sharp relief by his popular Filipino opponent and his relish in victory palpable as he boasted of earning a cheque with nine figures on it.
Justin Gatlin fell, albeit reluctantly, into the same role, a twice-banned drug cheat who had the temerity to threaten Usain Bolt’s supremacy at the world athletics championships in Beijing. It was a 100 metres final anticipated like no other, with Gatlin’s late stumble to gift the Jamaican the gold medal prompting commentator Steve Cram to proclaim that Bolt had “saved his title, saved his reputation – and maybe even saved his sport”.
Bolt had run faster, on countless occasions, than this 9.79sec dash at the Bird’s Nest, but it felt like a defining triumph as he gave the dastardly American interloper what he deserved.
At many levels, this has been a year of delicious retribution against the bogeymen, and nowhere more so than in those citadels of power where sport’s chancers and charlatans have been smoked out of their marble halls. Rarely has the shadowy lair of football administration bequeathed an image so resonant as that of seven Fifa executives being spirited out of the Baur au Lac Hotel at dawn by federal agents, under the cover of giant bedsheets.
It was to be the day that the roof came crashing down on Fifa’s house of knaves, as US Attorney-General Loretta Lynch laid bare the scale of wrongdoing alleged against Blatter and his fawning apparatchiks. These men, she said, had “used their positions to solicit bribes – they did this over and over, year after year, tournament after tournament. They corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and to enrich themselves”.
The feds threw in a few corny Americanisms about “showing Fifa a red card”, which only made the sense of downfall more satisfyingly complete.
Naturally, Blatter, tried to brazen it out for a few more days, even winning a fifth term as president. The pretence, however, could not last, and within a week he had resigned. By October, the three most powerful men in the game had been usurped: Blatter, his henchman Jérôme Valcke, and his heir presumptive Michel Platini – accused of receiving a “disloyal payment” of £2million (about R44.9-million) from the president for work performed nine years earlier – were all given 90day bans as Fifa’s often supine ethics committee belatedly showed some teeth.
Yesterday their exile, in all probability, became permanent. Platini was slapped with an eight-year ban from football, sabotaging any future leadership ambitions. It is to be hoped that Blatter, who suffered the same punishment, simply retires to his hometown of Visp, never to be heard from again.
In 2015, the sporting world has watched appalled upon discovering how far and how perniciously the creep of corruption has spread. For an example, it is worth looking back at a picture of the International Olympic Committee’s 13-strong executive board as it assembled for last year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi. At the right shoulder of Thomas Bach, the IOC president, stood Blatter.
At his left was Lamine Diack, former president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, once heralded by Coe as a “spiritual leader” until he was arrested last month amid claims of helping to cover up positive drug tests.
The unmasking of Russia’s statesponsored doping racket has threatened to bring athletics to its knees, but the allegation that Diack – the very man entrusted for 16 years with safeguarding the sanctity of his sport – had played a part in the scandal represented the most shocking twist yet. — The Sunday Telegraph