Old faces, new hopes
The past kept rearing up on various fronts but a few performers rose to the occasion to script terrific tales of triumph
Focusing on the present was often a challenge for those who followed the sports world in 2011. Much of what transpired had more...
Focusing on the present was often a challenge for those who followed the sports world in 2011.
Much of what transpired had more to do with future billions than the numbers on today’s scoreboards. There were extended labour tussles in North America that threatened the National Football League season and scuttled the first phase of the National Basketball Association season. There were well-founded concerns about the finances of Europe’s soccer powers and about the merits of those, like Sepp Blatter and his disgraced rival Mohamed bin Hammam, who were candidates to lead the world’s game forward.
There was continued scrutiny of FIFA’s dubious decision to award the 2022 World Cup to the resource-rich, population-light micro-state of Qatar, which also tried (and failed) this year to land the 2017 world athletics championships (reeled in to London by Sebastian Coe).
The past keep rearing up, too, and it wasn’t pretty, with top Pakistani cricketers, including the Test captain, Salman Butt, convicted in Britain of spot fixing.
Sport, a reflection of societies on multiple levels, marches on, however. It continues to fulfill human needs: for competition, be it individual or tribal; for spectacle; for suspense. And despite the unsavoury revelations and all the haggling over future revenues, there were moments in 2011 – some inspiring, some heart-rending, some in between – when we were very much in the present...
April 2, Mumbai: Hockey, thanks to eight increasingly distant Olympic gold medals, remains the official national sport in this country. But anyone who understands the current balance of power knows that cricket rules. No surprise then that millions fast, pray and worry, worry, worry as the World Cup final against Sri Lanka approaches. It has been 28 years since India won the big one. At the end of a tense day, the team and its people get their happy ending in a city that is home to the country’s brightest cricketing jewel, Sachin Tendulkar. As India win, Tendulkar, gets quite a view of delirious Wankhede Stadium as he does a victory lap on his teammates’ strong shoulders.
April 10, Augusta, Georgia: Rory McIlroy’s coronation day at the Masters turns into a mad scramble for the throne, which is a pity for McIlroy who, in Normanesque fashion, blows a four-shot lead, but a treat for global viewers, many of whom have a local angle to reel them in. Late in the wild final round, six continents are represented in the top 10. Africa, more specifically South Africa, ends up the winner as young Charl Schwartzel, unlike young McIlroy, refuses to look the least bit nervous.
April 30, Moscow: What happens on ice in Moscow was supposed to have happened on ice in Tokyo, but the March 11 earthquake that devastated areas of coastal Japan has changed all that. With thousands dead and hundreds of thousands of buildings and dwellings damaged or destroyed, the loss of the world figure-skating championships to Moscow is understandably no more than an afterthought amid the aftershocks. But it is a deeply symbolic occasion to the skaters from Japan.
Miki Ando, once a great jumper, rises to the occasion, upsetting a rusty Kim Yu-na to win the women’s gold medal with a mature performance poised between athleticism and artistry. “Maybe,” Ando says, “I was able to bring back a little smile to the people of Japan.”
June 12, Miami: It is supposed to be the year that LeBron James finally wins an NBA title after spurning Cleveland and bringing his prodigious (and expensive) talents to Miami along with his friend Chris Bosh. Instead, it turns into the year that Germany’s less flashy star, Dirk Nowitzki, finally wins an NBA title, and in a nice moralistic twist, he does it for the franchise he never left. With Nowitzki shrugging off illness and the Heat’s collective heat, the Dallas Mavericks roar back twice from one-game deficits in the finals, taking the trophy in Game 6 in Miami.
June 19, Bethesda, Maryland: Coronation day again on a famous American golf course, and Augusta clearly did not scar the 22-year-old McIlroy for life. He handles this big lead with aplomb, shooting his fourth consecutive round in the 60s at Congressional Country Club to win the US Open, and his first major, by eight strokes.
July 23, Grenoble, France: The tears and victory speeches in Aussie-accented English and halting French come the next day, after the final stage in Paris. But Cadel Evans secures the Tour de France far from the Champs-Elysses by overcoming his fatigue and bad karma and finishing second in the time trial, more than two minutes ahead of each of the Schleck brothers. Evans’s first victory in cycling’s premier road race is also the first for Australia. It means all the more because of the wait. Evans, 34, is the oldest winner in 88 years.
Aug 28, Daegu, South Korea: Who can stop the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, at the world championships? Only Bolt himself on this anticlimactic, yet still fascinating night.
When the pistol is fired a second time to indicate his false start and disqualification from the men’s 100-metre final, Bolt jerks his singlet up over his anguished face and then off his rippling torso altogether. His Jamaican training partner, Yohan Blake, sprints to victory and Bolt has to settle for two golds at this major meet instead of his customary three. The question now: Can Blake keep him from three – even without a false start – at the 2012 London Olympics?
Sept 10, New York: Novak Djokovic has been Roger Federer’s foil on this court before, grinning and bearing it in the 2009 US Open semifinals as Federer hit a winner between his legs. But momentum has made quite a swing since then, and it is Djokovic’s turn to hit the shot of the tournament. Facing two match points at 3-5 in the fifth set on Federer’s serve, the Serb looks disgruntled, perhaps even resigned, but decides to go down ripping, swatting a full-force forehand return off a too-conservative first serve from Federer. It is a clean winner, and Djokovic is soon grinning, playing to the pro-Federer crowd and coming back to win this semifinal and his third Grand Slam title of the season. It is his year at last, and no match underscores it quite like the one he really should have lost.
Oct 23, Auckland, New Zealand, and Sepang, Malaysia: Triumph and genuine tragedy, fulfilled roars and horrified silence. Sports generate both on this eerie, long-awaited Sunday. In Auckland, captain Richie McCaw and the All Blacks keep the promise they made to themselves and New Zealand by winning the rugby union World Cup at home, just as their predecessors did in 1987. It is no processional, with major injuries during the tournament demanding major adjustments from Coach Graham Henry and with the French nearly playing the spoiler in the final before losing by a single point. But in the end, there is no stopping the celebration in New Zealand, which accounts for quite a different scene than the one during the Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang, where the 24-year-old Italian Marco Simoncelli lies inert on the track, his helmet gone along with his chances of survival after he loses control of his motorcycle and dies.
International Herald Tribune
