TV replays can never replace my golden memories

AS TELEVISION fills the schedules with reruns of historical sporting moments, I have a confession to make.

I have never watched our 2016 Olympic Hockey Final in Rio when England beat the Netherlands to win gold.

It will come as little surprise to anyone, except perhaps my husband, that the day I won my gold medal (above) was probably the best day of my life. But it may shock people that I wouldn’t want to relive my most cherished moment over and over.

My memories of that final are so clear, but that’s not to say everything went perfectly for me. I gave away a penalty in the first quarter and was confident I could make a goal-saving tackle, but my legs were like jelly with nerves so I mistimed it. But I also gained confidence from that play, thinking, ‘Well it can’t get much worse than that, you can relax now’.

I want to preserve my recollections of the match. I worry my memories would be tainted or tempered as the camera captures a different angle of a big moment, or a commentator makes an opinion on a specific play.

Watching the match back would no doubt show all sorts of things that I didn’t appreciate then. But no amount of re-runs will tell me what emotions I was experiencing.

Those emotions are inextricably linked to every memory and make them special. You see, my memories feel perfect, because they are quite simply… mine. Don’t get me wrong, I love the reruns currently being shown. I watched England’s infamous loss to West Germany in the 1990 football World Cup semi-final. I was only one-years-old when the match took place. I found it interesting to see some of our nation’s most iconic football moments, such as Gazza (below) crying and Chris Waddle sending his penalty into orbit, in the context of the whole match, as opposed to highlights. After the game, though, my emotions weren’t of great sadness. My overriding thought was, ‘Thank goodness the football authorities brought in the back-pass rule!’. I can’t imagine how boring some games must have been as teams ran down the clock before its 1992 inception. Gazza and Co may not want to be reminded of their painful classic moment. But I never want to forget mine – in the form that they are preserved... inside my head.

UFC President Dana White has claimed that he has an island which can be self-contained and will have the ability to beam his fights to the world. While I applaud his ingenuity to try to stay ahead of the Covid-19 curve and also potentially have a captive audience worldwide in which to grow his sport, this all sounds a little too fantasy island to me. I hope it comes off, but I’ll only believe it when I see it.