With little to chat about in the depths of the close season, I thought it might be interesting to discuss our sporting heroes from all sports and why we hold these performers in high esteem.
We all need heroes to lift us from the ordinary and mundane, even for a moment or two.
I've named nine (three footballers) - not ranked in any particular order - please feel free to comment.
Please post about as few or as many of your own as you like.
GEORGE BEST:
Before my time , but his presence and influence lingered for a long time after his heyday. Who could resist falling in love with his skill, style and glory as well as foolhardiness and vulnerability.
A legend.
IAN BOTHAM:
Some of my best sporting memories involve Beefy turning into a comic book hero v The Aussies.
It was great as a kid, when England were being thrashed, to have been able to say "It'll be OK because Botham will come in and smash a hundred and then take five wickets" - and it not turn out to be fanciful, childlike wishful thinking.
USAIN BOLT:
I still can't believe than an ungainly 6'5" man, who struggles to get up out of the blocks at more than a snail's pace can catch up and overtake the world's best sprinters before running away from them like they're standing still whilst performing a dance for the last 20 metres of a race!
Awesome.
JASON ROBINSON:
Of course a small, 5'8" winger from Rugby League with a questionable attitude in the past would never make it in Union. It was obvious. He wouldn't get enough of the ball, he wouldn't get enough space, nobody in the game would ever fall for his mid-air side step.....
There was no more electrifying buzz in any sport than the one felt when he was just about to receive the ball.
STEPHEN HENDRY:
I always admire the best in any sport - especially when the best, at their very best, are pretty much flawless.
When snooker was in its heyday, the World Championships at The Crucible were a major event. In the early 1990s the sport was graced by so many great players. Hendry combined the flair of Higgins with the grit and steel of Davis. He had all bases covered. And he played better and better, the greater the pressure. He trailed Jimmy White in one World Final 8-14 before winning the last 10 frames with five century breaks. Stunning.
ERIC CANTONA:
The upturned collar typified the egotism, the swagger, the strut, the superiority.....But he also had sublime skills and was a great talisman. He is the one person above all - even SAF- who was most responsible for putting Utd back on top of English football in the '90s and giving the club the arrogance of champions for the next 20 years. He was special.
MOHAMMED ALI:
Mostly before my time, but a man who was still unmissable and unmistakable long after his peak as a boxer.
And that was some peak he reached as a boxer.
But he transcended sport.
It's impossible not to admire a man who gave up nearly four years of his career, at his peak, because of his principles. And was as eloquent and articulate outside the ring as he was brilliant and courageous inside - and what he had to say was worth saying.
PAUL SCHOLES:
Everyone else on this list is extraordinary in some way or other - and most were stars who shone in the limelight. Scholesy is the opposite. He's an everyman. An ordinary 5'7" bloke with asthma, who lives a typically average life with few of the trappings of wealth and fame. It helps that I've met him a few times (his kids and mine went to the same school for a number of years) and I can testify that he is a very ordinary bloke like us. Very quiet, very unassuming, shy, no ego.
His own footballing hero is Frankie Bunn.
So it's very satisfying to know that this little ordinary bloke was the best English footballer of his generation.
Frankie Bunn still holds the record for most goals in a League Cup game - six (Oldham v Scarborough, 1989).
BRADLEY WIGGINS:
To become the first British winner of the TdF and be a great track and time trial/road race cyclist is a phenomenal achievement. To do it all with a deadpan expression and an apparent couldn't care less attitude, as if there was always something else he should really have been doing, is engaging.
An enigma.
We all need heroes to lift us from the ordinary and mundane, even for a moment or two.
I've named nine (three footballers) - not ranked in any particular order - please feel free to comment.
Please post about as few or as many of your own as you like.
GEORGE BEST:
Before my time , but his presence and influence lingered for a long time after his heyday. Who could resist falling in love with his skill, style and glory as well as foolhardiness and vulnerability.
A legend.
IAN BOTHAM:
Some of my best sporting memories involve Beefy turning into a comic book hero v The Aussies.
It was great as a kid, when England were being thrashed, to have been able to say "It'll be OK because Botham will come in and smash a hundred and then take five wickets" - and it not turn out to be fanciful, childlike wishful thinking.
USAIN BOLT:
I still can't believe than an ungainly 6'5" man, who struggles to get up out of the blocks at more than a snail's pace can catch up and overtake the world's best sprinters before running away from them like they're standing still whilst performing a dance for the last 20 metres of a race!
Awesome.
JASON ROBINSON:
Of course a small, 5'8" winger from Rugby League with a questionable attitude in the past would never make it in Union. It was obvious. He wouldn't get enough of the ball, he wouldn't get enough space, nobody in the game would ever fall for his mid-air side step.....
There was no more electrifying buzz in any sport than the one felt when he was just about to receive the ball.
STEPHEN HENDRY:
I always admire the best in any sport - especially when the best, at their very best, are pretty much flawless.
When snooker was in its heyday, the World Championships at The Crucible were a major event. In the early 1990s the sport was graced by so many great players. Hendry combined the flair of Higgins with the grit and steel of Davis. He had all bases covered. And he played better and better, the greater the pressure. He trailed Jimmy White in one World Final 8-14 before winning the last 10 frames with five century breaks. Stunning.
ERIC CANTONA:
The upturned collar typified the egotism, the swagger, the strut, the superiority.....But he also had sublime skills and was a great talisman. He is the one person above all - even SAF- who was most responsible for putting Utd back on top of English football in the '90s and giving the club the arrogance of champions for the next 20 years. He was special.
MOHAMMED ALI:
Mostly before my time, but a man who was still unmissable and unmistakable long after his peak as a boxer.
And that was some peak he reached as a boxer.
But he transcended sport.
It's impossible not to admire a man who gave up nearly four years of his career, at his peak, because of his principles. And was as eloquent and articulate outside the ring as he was brilliant and courageous inside - and what he had to say was worth saying.
PAUL SCHOLES:
Everyone else on this list is extraordinary in some way or other - and most were stars who shone in the limelight. Scholesy is the opposite. He's an everyman. An ordinary 5'7" bloke with asthma, who lives a typically average life with few of the trappings of wealth and fame. It helps that I've met him a few times (his kids and mine went to the same school for a number of years) and I can testify that he is a very ordinary bloke like us. Very quiet, very unassuming, shy, no ego.
His own footballing hero is Frankie Bunn.
So it's very satisfying to know that this little ordinary bloke was the best English footballer of his generation.
Frankie Bunn still holds the record for most goals in a League Cup game - six (Oldham v Scarborough, 1989).
BRADLEY WIGGINS:
To become the first British winner of the TdF and be a great track and time trial/road race cyclist is a phenomenal achievement. To do it all with a deadpan expression and an apparent couldn't care less attitude, as if there was always something else he should really have been doing, is engaging.
An enigma.
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