Wimbledon next week. Like the tournament dress code, all sports want their heroes white. In terms of virtue rather than skin colour. Sport demands the appearance of righteousness. Its default position is to pride itself on the moral lessons it teaches the rest of us.
All of which makes sport one of the great hypocrisy opportunities of modern times, lagging behind only religion and politics. A sports star who wants to make serious money must set himself up as a ‘role model’.
So when the great tennis player Andre Agassi was a boy in ‘hot lava’ shorts, he set himself up as a lovable ‘rebel’ who embraced Christian virtues. He spoke of his pride at being a role model. He played under a long-haired fright wig, sometimes terrified that it would fall off at match point, and developed a taste for crystal meth. He knew despair.
Then he rebelled against hypocrisy. He shaved what was left of his hair and made a comeback from 141st in the world. He later released a ghosted autobiography — Open — that told the truth. And sport was appalled. Not because of the bad behaviour and the despair, but because he told us about it. He broke the code of hypocrisy.
Sport is hooked on self-righteousness. This is because modern sport is a living contradiction. It was founded and codified as a tool to teach morality: but it is now a global business. This has created the extraordinary situation in which money-making is intimately connected with the appearance of morality.
Sport was supposed to teach the virtues of sacrificing self to a cause and obedience to authority. It offered fun and taught virtue. That principle remains fossilised in the sports industry. You need the appearance of virtue to make the tills of multinationals ring.
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