It was quite a year for some of the worst of sport – America’s golfers, already among the richest and greediest men on the planet, wanting a massive extra bung to pitch up for the Ryder Cup and, equally noisome, Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, paying himself £1.1 million while announcing a loss of £37.9 million. That salary included a performance-based one-off payment of £358,000. Performance? Well may you ask. As Francis Baron, a former RFU chief, observed sagely: ‘We are paying stellar salaries for junk-bond performances.’ Fair enough in my view, and that’s not even looking at the England rugby team’s less than stellar showing.
Roger Federer may not be everyone’s bottle of barley water, but by heaven he stepped up to life’s service line with his tribute to Rafa Nadal
As in life, sporting highlights are counterbalanced by lowlights, sometimes on the same afternoon, in the same event. I’m thinking of a not particularly special Australia rugby XV beating England at Twickers (or do we now have to call it the Alliers?). It was almost certainly the highlight of the Wallabies’ year and the lowlight of England’s.
But enough of this carping. At the season of, er, goodwill, it’s time to mark out the great performances of 2024. It was the year of the Paris Olympics and the Euros in Germany, both wonderful spectacles and proof that big events work best in countries with a history of sport, that know what they are doing and are accessible to visitors. And if the Gulf states want to own sport, and sadly there’s no sign that they don’t, they need to produce competitors rather than just host events. Personally I loved the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris, sluiced by torrential downpours as Celine Dion stood on the side of the Eiffel Tower to belt out the real Piaf classic ‘Hymne à l’Amour’ (forget ‘Je ne regrette rien’) as if there was no tomorrow. The medal performances were equally thrilling, but not so damp. If anyone can watch, without a tear in your eye, the queen of Lancashire, Keely Hodgkinson, surging away like a Porsche from the throng of other athletes on the final bend of the 800m final to take gold then do check that you still have a pulse.
Great sport is made up of magic moments like Keely’s supremacy in the two-lap lung-buster, which was so magnificent that rather than considering it a lowlight to finish behind the winner, I suspect that the majority of those who did so were pleased to be associated with a race so worthily won.
Equally stirring was the audacity of Tom Pidcock’s last-minute overtaking manoeuvre round a couple of trees to snatch the gold medal in the mountain bike cross-country. And who can forget Alex Yee in the triathlon, trailing his Kiwi rival and friend Hayden Wilde for most of the running stage, before suddenly finding a last ounce of strength in the final minute to move past and take the gold.
It was a pretty good year too for France’s no. 9 Antoine Dupont, who stood himself down from the Six Nations to try to win the Rugby Sevens gold medal for his country at the Olympics. Which he duly did, of course. Man of the Year I would have thought, as he usually is. And for Mondo Duplantis, the extraordinary pole-vaulter who flies ever higher: what next? Vaulting over his house? Why not. And never forget Sir Mark Cavendish, who notched up a record number of stage wins in the Tour de France. Not bad for a 39-year-old plagued by illness and depression.
Whoever devised this season’s Champions League format must be the lovechild of Messrs Duckworth and Lewis, the progenitors of cricket’s nigh-on impenetrable method of picking the winners of curtailed one-day cricket matches. Any attempt to understand how the Champions League table is worked out grinds to a halt once the dreaded word algorithm hoves into view. Not quite getting how it works makes it harder to rejoice at the fact an English club, Liverpool, sits atop the 36-team skyscraper. Though I am assured that it does make perfect sense – and Real Madrid will go on to win the competition for the 300th time despite having only just recently lost 2-0 to Liverpool.
It was the greatest era in tennis, and now sadly it’s all over with the retirement, finally, of Rafa Nadal. Roger Federer may not be everyone’s bottle of barley water with his over-monogrammed kit and such like, but by heaven he stepped up to life’s service line with a 500-word tribute to his great rival. It may not be Leonard Cohen’s letter to a dying Marianne Ihlen, but have the tissues ready when you read it. He ends: ‘I want you to know that your old friend is always cheering for you and will be cheering as loud for everything you do next. Best always, your fan, Roger.’
Comments