I have to confess to being one of those people who, when the newsreader says “and now for the sport”, switches off!  Switching off can be both literal and metaphorical! This is not something I am proud of and I know that I am missing out, but that’s how it is.

 

Nonetheless there is one exception: Wimbledon tennis. The reason for this is quite simple. My mother loved it and introduced me to it at an early age, so I know the rules!! I have wonderful memories of us sitting together for whole afternoons watching tense tennis!  This was before the introduction of tie-breaks and I recall one of the the longest matches ever played at Wimbledon between Pancho Gonzales and Charlie Pasarell in 1969. The first set went to 22-24 and the third set 16-14. The whole match went on for over five hours. Gonzales was 41 at the time and sixteen years older than Pasarell and he won. I just recall the feeling of hardly daring to watch. It was so exciting - every point painful!  So I still enjoy watching it today although I am not the fan that my mother was. My father knew to keep out of her way when Wimbledon was on. Woe betide anyone who would interrupt her viewing of a match.  She watched nearly all of them.

I was impressed this week with the young British player Emma Raducanu. Her play was simply stunning and it was sad that she had to pull out of her match with Tomljanovic.  I bristled when John McEnroe implied that it might all have been too much for her and questioned her ability to ‘handle it.’ The fact that she is only eighteen, has never played in front of more than 100 people before and had already beaten experienced players in previous rounds seems testament to her resilience and ability to 'handle' things.  Nonetheless I suspect that he might have been
right.  We tend to want to make a divide between the physical and the psychological and yet the two are intimately connected. It would seem that her breathing became difficult and the medical team advised her to withdraw. Hence it is appropriate for her to say that she withdrew not because she wanted to but on the basis of medical advice. But why unable to breath and why perfectly fine the day after? You cannot help but think that on some level her body decided it had had enough. She is too young yet for a Wimbledon final; that is for future years. It had become too much. There can be a wisdom in the unconscious.   However, this is not a fixed character trait and does not mean it will always be too much! She will learn what she needs to learn. 

Then, of course, there is the football! I decided to watch the match against Ukraine and found myself falling asleep after twenty minutes. If you don’t understand the rules and know nothing about the players then it does just become a moving picture of men chasing a ball!  However, the match against Denmark succeeded in holding my interest and I too was holding my breath during extra time.  I am glad so many people gain so much from it and it does seem important, despite the attendant risks, that people can once again get together in crowds to shout for a team and to hug each other in collective joy! We need to belong: to a family, a work group, a team, a country. In belonging we can lose ourselves and know ourselves as part of something bigger. Whatever happens on Sunday there is always the shared emotion. Let’s hope it’s joy!