The Queen’s presence was a golden thread running through sport
++ Bobby Moore wiped his muddy hands before receiving the World Cup from her ++ Virginia Wade’s Wimbledon triumph came on her Silver Jubilee ++ She even ‘jumped out of a helicopter’ for London 2012 ++
OWhen she came to the throne, nobody had run a mile in under four minutes
F the millions of words our longestreigning monarch uttered, four of her most resonant were delivered on the warm evening of July 27, 2012.
‘Good evening, Mr Bond,’ came her greeting.
Moments before, as the Corgis waited at the drawing room door and 007 cleared his throat to get the attention of the figure sitting at her desk, nobody at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics believed this was actually elizabeth II.
It was as we learned, jaws hitting the floor. her Majesty, accompanied by Daniel Craig’s Bond, then took a helicopter across London. Churchill, her first Prime Minister by chronology and reputation, waved his cane in appreciation from his plinth on Parliament Square before ‘ the Queen’ parachuted down.
hers was an iconic turn — the importance and humour of which she saw the moment director Danny Boyle, a boo-hiss republican, outlined the idea to her — that no host city has or ever could match. So began a fortnight of national unity during which people even conversed on the London Underground.
It is barely credible, but it is true that a few days later two American ladies were watching beach volleyball on horse Guards Parade when one turned to the other, a new acquaintance, and said: ‘Did you see the Queen the other day? She jumped out of a helicopter.’
‘I know!’ exclaimed her neighbour. ‘You’d never see Obama doing that. And she’s 86!’
But it was not just this coup de theatre she contributed to Olympics. As Lord Coe, the face of the Games, recalled last night: ‘ She was supportive from the moment London threw its hat in the ring for 2012. She hosted an evaluation Commission meeting at Buckingham Palace on a Friday night. that is unheard of. the royals are never in London over the weekend other than for Remembrance Sunday. She even waved goodbye to the commission members from the balcony.
‘One Australian on the commission said, “You b*******.” I wondered what we had done wrong. he said he had written republican speeches back home all his life, but he suddenly got “it” — the Queen’s magic.
‘Across all walks of life, I have never known anyone whose devotion to service and public duty was so complete, and she did so much for sport quietly in a way people never saw.’
Indeed, the Queen’s presence was a golden thread running through sport during the period in history when it captivated more millions than at any other time. If the Victorian Age was when organised games were codified — beginning on the playing fields of the public schools of england and
represented in the founding of the modern Olympics in 1896 — the Second elizabethan Age was when sport transported itself, not least through the long reach of television, into a popular religion.
the portents were there from the start. For news reached London on the eve of her Coronation in 1953 of the historic success of a British-led expedition high in the himalayas. the Daily Mail front page declared: ‘ the Crowning Glory — everest Conquered.’
New Zealander edmund hillary and British leader John hunt were knighted for their daring — two of 120 or so sportsmen and women to be so honoured during her reign. Only a handful of sporting knights were created before she acceded to the throne in 1952. As we were saying, hers was the sporting age.
No single occasion represented this truth more vividly than the World Cup final of 1966. From 1-0 down, Geoff hurst’s fabled hattrick gave england victory. Bobby Moore, whose free-kick set up hurst’s first goal, wiped his muddy hands on the velvet rail of the Royal Box before accepting the Jules Rimet trophy from the white-gloved Queen, who was waiting for the captain-hero in a lemon dress and matching hat.
It changed football and footballers suitably for the fashionable Sixties. As my Sportsmail colleague Jeff Powell, a friend of Moore and guardian of his legacy, wrote: ‘the game was no longer just opiate of the masses, it was the creator of gods.’
Another celebration fell on her Silver Jubilee with Virginia Wade’s triumph at Wimbledon in 1977.
When elizabeth came to the throne, nobody had run a mile in under four minutes. that landmark feat in human evolution occurred at Oxford University’s Iffley Road an hour before twilight on the wet afternoon of May 6, 1958, when a shy medical student called Roger Bannister flamed across the cinder track in 3min 59.4sec.
No athlete had covered 100 metres
in less than 10 seconds until the Afro-America Jim Hines reset the clock of the possible in thin air at the mexico Olympics of 1968.
Sport, not least cricket, was bound up by class distinctions. initials before surname denoted an amateur or gentleman, initials afterwards a professional. The division was done away with in 1962.
The Queen, incidentally, was less than besotted with cricket and would not stay longer than necessary on her annual visit to the Lord’s Test. The Duke of edinburgh enjoyed it more, but then again he was less keen on the horses and reputedly watched cricket on TV while attending royal Ascot. racing was, of course, the abiding sporting passion of the Queen’s life.
A countrywoman who relished equine sports of every sort, she rode into deep old age, and took great delight in the eventing successes of her daughter Princess Anne, a long-standing and incorruptible iOC member, and her granddaughter Zara Tindall, nee Phillips, both of whom paid their respects at Her majesty’s court last night.