Don’t know about you, but I thought that Cristiano Ronaldo’s first goal against Tottenham Hotspur was a thing of beauty. The blind flick from Fred, head turning one way as the ball turned the other, followed by a thumping detonation of virtuosity into the top right corner, leaving Old Trafford on its feet.
Was it the sporting moment of the week? How about Shane Lowry’s hole in one at the Players’ Championship at Sawgrass, a vaulting wedge from the 17th tee that reached 93 feet in parabolic height, bounced, checked, then spun backwards towards the target? Think about that for a moment: a 6ft 1in bipedal ape whacking a thermoplastic ball more than a hundred yards into a tiny cup with a glorified piece of iron. Isn’t that the kind of thing we might call a miracle?
Although I am not sure that even Lowry’s strike was the high point of the week. The match between Emma Raducanu and Petra Martic in the third round at Indian Wells didn’t contain a single moment that one would pick out as miraculous but it was stunning to watch: two fine athletes battling it out over three sets, matched almost perfectly, a symbiosis that captures the essence of competitive sport. Raducanu faded in the end but she did so after giving it everything.
Then there was the goal at Stamford Bridge, another moment to savour. The cross was exceptional in weight and trajectory, but the first touch of Kai Havertz was near mystical, taking the pace off the ball with his left toe, even as he was hurtling forward with his right, a masterpiece of multitasking. Such was his poise that he nudged the ball into his unfolding stride, before dinking it into the net with his left foot.
Isn’t this the meaning of sport, the reason we are consistently drawn back to these escape routes to collective ecstasy? I think of Rafael Nadal’s comeback against Daniil Medvedev at the Australian Open in January, the Spaniard straining to find inspiration as he ceded the opening two sets, and then turning it around as the crowd veered between admiration and astonishment. When the players embraced at the end, I was reminded of the words of Rudyard Kipling about “treating those two imposters the same”.
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Over the past few weeks, it is understandable that sport has taken a back seat in the minds of most of us to what has been unfolding in Ukraine. War has returned to Europe and we have watched the tribulation through barely parted fingers, wondering what more we can do from afar. It is easy to say at moments such as these that sport is trivial, perhaps even frivolous. Why waste one’s time with this ephemera when there are matters of life and death unfolding?
But may I humbly suggest that this is when we need sport the most. We need it not just because it is a safety valve for our collective anxiety but because it reminds us of why life is precious. On Sunday, I took my son to his football club and stood on the sidelines as he and a dozen other eight-year-olds kicked the ball into small nets as parents watched, cheered and chatted at one of innumerable matches taking place in southwest London alone. Sport is part of the connective tissue of social life, bringing people together in ways few other things can.
And is it really fair to say that sport is self-indulgent at a time of crisis? During the Second World War, even as people were fighting and dying in their millions, sport offered collective solace. “On 22 June 1941, the day the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the decisive act of the entire conflict, 90,000 spectators watched the German league final in Berlin,” Simon Kuper has written. “What were they thinking of? Perhaps — like the combatants in Flanders — they were seeking to escape the horrors of war [in] an emotional breathing space provided by a game with a ball and 22 men.”
But if sport is to be an escape, can we allow it to become overly politicised? Of course, when sport is being used as a tool for political purposes, whether by the Russian state or anyone else, it is imperative to point this out. We should not be taken for fools, nor allow these games to be used as pawns by hostile actors who threaten our way of life. I am glad that Russian athletes have been banished from many sports, if not yet all. It would have been intolerable for Ukrainian sportspeople to miss competitions because their nation is under siege while rivals competing under the flag of their oppressor face no such consequence.
But while we should not separate sport and politics entirely, I hope I am not alone in seeing a danger of moving too far the other way (was it Henry Kissinger who warned that the pendulum of history always overcorrects?) as, over the past few days, I’ve seen sportspeople quizzed on geopolitics, athletes asked whether they would put up Ukrainian families in their homes, managers quizzed on the logic of oil embargoes. How does this help anyone, except perhaps those who take delight in cancelling people on the flimsiest of pretexts? Isn’t there the whiff of the Colosseum here, the hope that a famous person will fluff an answer and be ripe for digital evisceration?
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If we go too far down this route, I can see Roger Federer facing a barrage of questions after his next Centre Court appearance on what he thinks about the Swiss tradition of neutrality, or England cricketers in Antigua being asked for a soundbite on slave reparations, or Caroline Seger pushed on whether Sweden should join Nato. If we get to this point (and I can see it on the horizon) sport will have morphed into something quite different; an aspect of the culture wars rather than the most blessed means of escaping from it.
It is sometimes said that sport and politics cannot be separated and I agree. But perhaps I might put it this way: they should not be betrothed either.
