‘The Greatest’ challenge in sport
RI’M old enough – or perhaps I prefer to say I was once young enough – to remember the days when boxer Muhammad Ali went by his birth name of Cassius Clay.Which means I also remember the world heavyweight title fight in 1964, when Clay pulverised reigning champion Sonny Liston so comprehensively in the first six rounds that Liston stayed put in his corner and wouldn’t come out for the seventh. Clay won by a technical knockout.
For the next decade Clay/Ali was an incredibly fast-moving, dancing, prancing, punching force in the ring; a devastating combination of grace and power. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” was his selfproclaimed slogan. He was superquick in media interviews too, funny, clever, charming.What a mind.What an intelligence.
But initially rare blows to Ali’s head began to increase and accumulate. Recordings of his public speaking show that by the time he reached his mid-30s, his speech was steadily slowing and slurring. Parkinson’s disease was diagnosed at 42.
It’s generally agreed that Ali’s boxing career led to the Parkinson’s. At 38, the man’s neurological symptoms were glaringly obvious. His last fight was horrible to watch.
We now know that boxers are at greatly increased risk of developing dementia.They were once described as “punch-drunk”, a nasty, dismissive little expression.The
word “drunk” carried obvious judgmental overtones.That they once might have been fast and capable and clever and were now clinically brain-damaged wasn’t a consideration.
Today we know different. But boxing continues. I certainly don’t condemn it, but I just can’t watch it any more. For example, I couldn’t watch the recent Tyson Fury fight, much as I admire the man and his extraordinary achievements. The slamming uppercut that sent Dillian Whyte tumbling to the canvas, completely “out of it”? That’s brain damage. Hopefully, temporary – but we’ve no way of knowing.
Boxing isn’t the only sport now strongly linked to dementia in later life (and sometimes, not-so-later). Heading the ball in soccer is increasingly suspect. Dementia experts insist it should be eliminated from the game.Why? Because former professional players
are more than three times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease than non-players their age. Look at the 1966 England squad: FOUR are dead with dementia – Ray Wilson, Martin Peters, Jack Charlton, and Nobby Stiles.
A new study into the dangers of headers began this week. Simultaneously, it was announced that portable brain scanners are to be deployed at rugby games to measure the effects on players carried off with concussion. Many former rugby professionals have been diagnosed with permanent brain damage and early-onset dementia after years of thudding collisions on the pitch.
I think the day is coming when blows to the head will be outlawed in the ring, headers banned on the pitch, and the more brutal collisions ruled out of rugby. I really hope so.
Brain injuries in sport? Time we used our heads.