LET’S CALM DOWN, IT’S EVENTING...
The Olympics are grand, but they’re not football. We love them because these sports only come to the public’s mind every four years. They’re not the national obsession, so the external pressures are not quite the same. When england were due to play Germany in the european championship this summer, sam Quek, hockey gold medallist, compared the positive attitude the players should take into the game to Great Britain finally defeating holland in their gold medal match in 2016.
One difference. Nobody outside the world of hockey — so pretty much nobody, sadly, because it’s a fabulous sport and deserves more attention — really knew that Team GB didn’t often beat holland. it wasn’t engrained in the national psyche like playing the Germans at football. it wasn’t the source material for entire episodes of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?; songs hadn’t been written about it; there were no newspaper front pages prior to the event. Win or lose — it’s GB in the hockey. No one has ever been hung in effigy for losing a hockey match.
equally, a headline this week said that Britain’s eventers had ended 49 years of hurt since the last gold medal in Munich in 1972. This rather overstated the position the sport holds in the nation’s consciousness. lads, it’s horses. it’s a bloody hard sport; it’s a bloody dangerous sport; it requires no little skill and bravery and we are immensely proud of the team who stood atop the podium. But nobody was really hurting. eventing’s coming home? Not even Baddiel and skinner could get a chorus out of that.
WHEN Australia and New Zealand pulled out of Rugby League’s World Cup some very bullish stances were taken. Players were considering switching national allegiance to play in the tournament, we were told. There was always a whiff of desperation about that statement. The tournament has now been put back a year which was always the most likely outcome. The presence of three nations make the World Cup viable, and without two of them it couldn’t possibly go ahead.