Seek not the 'shrieks of woe'

[Guest guest]

Elfi Pallis

 

Seek not the 'shrieks of woe'

 

Having always instinctively hated sport, I have this

month, at last, understood why.

Elfi Pallis

June 26, 2006

 

Having always instinctively hated sport, I have this

month, at last, understood why.

 

What helped was Sean

Wilsey's claim in the latest National Geographic that

football is akin to God, in that it provides us with

iron rules and an uncontradictable referee.

Gee,

thanks for this paean of authoritarianism. I was right

to boycott games all those years, and not just because

they were dull or humiliating.

 

Wilsey's piece was followed by a succession of related

stories. One revealed that the nation's interest in

sport is steadily rising, especially among the young,

the next that obesity among this group is rising even

faster. Soon after, the British ambassador to Germany,

Sir Peter Torry, surely a patriotic source, described

our football fans in Berlin as " great fat " drunks

This

suggests that those keen on sport and those prone to

over-indulging may well be identical.

 

The alleged benefits of sport, especially in physical

terms, nevertheless, continue to be treated as a

given. On the strength of those, construction

companies put up huge, staggeringly expensive sports

stadiums (yes, classically educated bloggers, I know

the Latin plural is stadia) at tax payers' expense;

sports gear manufacturers get obscenely rich and the

UK Sports Council commands a budget of £100m a year.

 

Yet the sports lobby with all its millions is actually

trying to sell us a pup: sport, as we know it, has

nothing to do with fitness.

Watching other people

exert themselves on TV while you swig three cans of

lager will not improve your health. Nor will two

weekly periods of PE at school, a football match

played fortnightly in the park or a weekly game of

squash. To keep our circulation flowing and our

muscles alive, we need to work up a sweat four times a

week. This is hard to squeeze into most of today's

busy timetables.

 

So, fitness instead has to come from activities that

can be integrated into ordinary life. Kids need local,

covered play spaces in which they can rush about in

all weather. A giant sports centre two bus rides away

is of little use to them. They also need proper

cycling lanes, built at pavement level. It's no good

funding " get on your bike " campaigns while a cyclist's

life depends on whether a tired lorry driver will

notice those pathetic yellow cycle lane markings on

the road. Adults, too, might benefit from such lanes,

but even more so from being coached in forms of

exercise they can practise daily at home.

 

We also need more joint-up thinking by planners. If

people are housed near their jobs, rather than in some

distant flood plain an hour's train ride away, they

might actually walk to the office. Once all local

schools are equally good, kids will not become

commuters in search of better education at the age of

ten. The government's favourite people, " hard-working

families " are desperate for time to play together on

the floor.

 

If the government really wants to make us healthy and

fit, it should therefore forget about athletics,

aquatics and the Olympics. Instead, it ought to

implement the European working time directive. Being

hunched in front of a computer screen for longer than

the 48 hours a week stipulated there can cripple you.

 

As for the alleged social benefits of sports, these

should be treated with deep suspicion. Games do build

communal spirit, but not always of the right sort.

Theodore Dalrymple has argued that football,

especially, is surrounded by a culture of intolerance

which makes even extremely violent behaviour

acceptable. That the World Cup has so far been a

relatively bloodless certainly seems more due to good

policing than good will.

 

So, where does the idea that sport is such a wonderful

thing for individuals and society come from? The

answer, as in many other cases, is from the Greeks,

together with other original ideas like democracy.

Greek sport, though, was a preparation for war. Far

from seeking you to provide you with a long and

healthy life, it was aimed at giving you a short but

glorious one.

 

The Victorians brought sport into the life of genteel

English boys in pursuit of quite another aim,

" muscular Christianity " . The educationalist Matthew

Arnold, who had pioneered the idea of mixing strictly

regulated games with uplifting texts, was not setting

up a healthcare project. A Victorian gentleman

required strength to ensure that the more muscular

working man did not take over. He also, Arnold pointed

out, had to defend the empire.

 

Arnold's university, Oxford, duly fell in love with

some competitive sports, as did Cambridge. Boys'

public schools adopted them with sadistic abandon.

" Shrieks of triumph, shrieks of woe/Heads like nuts

together go " was how the Uppingham school song

celebrated the joys of rugby. Golf and lawn tennis

were rejected as " insufficiently painful " . Pupils were

encouraged into the slaughter of WW1 by hearing it

elogised as " the game of games. "

 

Fortunately for human survival, sport remained a

minority pursuit. Middle class girls were told by

Victorian doctors that they would become infertile if

they as much as vaulted a crossbar. Ordinary lads got

their fitness from manual labour or unstructured play,

which was banned, as corrupting, in schools like

Harrow.

 

There has been gradual change.

On the one hand, sport

has become mandatory in all schools. On the other, it

is no longer an informal entry ticket to our top

universities. Having long criticised the practice of

asking candidates about their sporting skills because

there are no cricket pitches in urban slums, I was

delighted at a recent Cambridge announcement: such

interview questions, the public was told, " are now in

the past " .

 

Sport, though, continues to be mythologized. This

year's fiction best seller, Jilly Cooper's novel,

Wicked - a tale of two schools, tells how a couple of

semi-literate teenage thugs, Feral and Paris (!!) are

transformed into fit, charming and successful chaps by

a brief stint of rugby couching.

 

David Beckham, a full-time footballer whose sporting

talent makes him about one in ten million, is sold to

slow, chubby punters as a realistic figure to emulate.

 

 

What we badly need are more suitable role models and

the one I would pick is Roadrunner. He may be a

cartoon bird, but he is fit, successful and willing to

exert himself. As a result, he always gets the better

of his opponent. Running is great stuff indeed. It

does not require you to submit to an all-powerful

referee. It will make you strong without doing

violence to yourself or others. And, if you run for

long enough, you won't even need to diet.

 

Comments

 

Tomahawk

June 26, 2006 03:46 PM

London/gbr

 

" All that I know most surely about morality and

obligations, I owe to football. "

 

Albert Camus

Szwagier

 

 

June 26, 2006 03:54 PM

Krakow/pol

 

" Give me an athlete and I'll give you an army. "

 

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf.

 

 

 

altrui

 

 

June 26, 2006 04:08 PM

Cambridge/gbr

 

Roadrunner is an appalling role model. The smug,

self-satisfied click of the heels; that sanctimonious

" Meeep Meeep " is beyond hubristic; and his barely

concealed shadenfreude at the misfortunes of a poor

pitiable creature lacks any sense of grace.

 

Consider instead the indefagitable Wile E Coyote,

surely the epitome of the Schopenauerian Will. His

understanding of the need to keep a clean credit

record, and complete rejection of the modish

bourgueios ambivalence towards mail order shopping is

an glowing example for any young mind. Sure, he does

have a penchant to strap himself to rockets and

falling from cliffs - but then its only a cartoon.

 

 

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006.