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Magazine
THE STATE OF THE NATION
No guarantees
ROHIT BRIJNATH
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There’s plenty to look forward to in the sporting arena, both national and international.
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Photos: Agencies
HEROES ALL: Roger Federer, Michael Phelps, Liu Xiang, V. Anand, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Narain Karthikeyan have much to look forward to.
In 2008, the world will look to China, and China will look to Liu Xiang. In a sporting universe of no guarantees, this is a certainty. It might be said, without any flirtation with exaggeration, that few athletes have faced as much expectation as the 110-metre hurdler will next year.
Pressure of wins
The Athens gold medallist is the face of China’s Olympic challenge, and China is not in the business of losing face. Recently, Liu’s coach was quoted as saying “Officials from the State General Administration of Sports once told us if Liu could not win gold in Beijing, all of his previous achievements are meaningless.”
However, if this hurdling hero wants to have a small whinge about pressure, he can always place a phone call to a swimming pool in Michigan, the U.S.. The lord of that pool is Michael Phelps, and Michael Phelps knows pressure. The man who makes seals blush with his fluency in water and whose focus on Beijing is evident in the fact that his website can be read in two languages (English and Chinese), will possibly be trying to erase Mark Spitz and his seven golds from the record books. It takes an extraordinary strength of character to merely attempt it for, be sure, if he wins six golds some idiots will insist he failed.
For four years most Olympic athletes are forgotten as they oil their art with sweat in virtual anonymity, but for two weeks next year, rowers and gymnasts, archers and the divers, will have the entire planet as their audience. Like the athletes, China will be on show, and stadiums have been designed, cab drivers given courtesy lessons, spitting frowned upon and crowds instructed on how to cheer decorously. An insular nation is opening its doors to an inquisitive world.
By the time the Olympics arrive on August 8, one competitor may already have ascended to the peak of his sport. If Roger Federer is victorious at the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon next year (and it is a tribute to him that we can say this and not sound completely absurd), he will have overtaken Pete Sampras with 15 grand slam titles and be worthier than Rod Laver by virtue of his triumph on clay.
More realistically, a healthy Federer could triumph in two slams through the year and equal Sampras’ 14 grand slam titles, itself an astonishing feat for he would have done so in six years; Sampras took 12.
A friend of the Swiss will continue his own historic quest, and we are not talking of Tiger Woods closing in on becoming the first billion dollar athlete. Jack Nicklaus’ 18 majors is out of reach for Woods (13 slams) next year, but he will want to inch closer. Winning, Vince Lombardi said, is a habit, and Woods’ stoic face suggests he swears by that adage. We will, meanwhile, try to decipher how a man from a country club sport has become the most famous athlete in the world.
The most famous sport on the planet will have its own moment, in Austria and Switzerland, as Euro 2008 unveils in June. Incredibly, some will still be discussing England’s failure to qualify, or at least its new coach, though why a team of such footballing unattractiveness should be paid so much attention is a continuing mystery.
Cricket’s future
Football is in good health, cricket is not. Few nations play the game, fewer still play it well. No sign has emerged yet of a team able enough to sink Australia, though India will get the first opportunity to try, commencing 2008 with the second Test in Sydney.
Intriguing questions await the game: will the Indian Premier League attract young people outside India to take a fresh look at cricket; will India’s older warriors continue to demonstrate they are unready for their pension checks; is it time for the sport to belch out a batsman of the luminosity of Tendulkar or Lara; and more vitally will the game discover fast bowlers who can restore sanity to the inflated batting averages of this generation?
India’s challenges, fittingly, will stretch far beyond cricket. In Beijing, two ancient racket-men will briefly agree to a ceasefire as they mount a final campaign for a tennis doubles medal that has eluded them. V. Anand will confront his first test as world champion from an ambitious Vladimir Kramnik. Indian golfers will hope to demonstrate their sport has a powerful future in their homeland, and an army of shooters will attempt to turn a suitcase of Commonwealth gold into at least a few Olympic medals of any colour.
Drive will be an issue for two athletes. Narain Karthikeyan wants one in Formula One, Sania Mirza must wonder if hers is strong enough. Like all purposeful players, she must ask herself, have I worked hard enough, do I want this more than the next person? Greatness, after all, arrives from desperation.
Any story on the future, and thus a story of hope, is incomplete without a mention of hockey. Revolutions are arduous and lengthy processes, but India will look beseechingly to Joaquim Carvalho and Ric Charlesworth and will search excitably for tiny signs of progress. Of all sports, this is the one whose resurgence would make Indian hearts sing loudest.
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