Crying games
So what was Nick Faldo blubbing about a week ago when he was talking to the media about his European Ryder Cup team’s meeting with Muhammad Ali on the Valhalla course at Louisville, Kentucky? He doesn’t strike one as the weeping kind, though he has form. I seem to remember him reaching for the man-size after tapping in to win the Open at Muirfield in 1992. And we’re used to sportsmen cracking up during the event (remember Darren Clarke red-eyed and tender at the K Club two years ago, only a few weeks after his wife had died). But before, a whole day before? All very peculiar, especially in contrast to Faldo’s general carry-on on Sunday after leading Europe to their biggest defeat for more than 25 years, when he was gambolling around like a teenager on a promise. I have a theory.
They arouse mixed feelings, do weeping sportsmen. Sometimes you want to slap them, but most of the time you can’t stop yourself joining in. France’s mighty flanker Sébastien Chabal, huge and hairy, strong and graceful as a lion, crouched on the mud in Paris weeping uncontrollably in the pouring rain after his side had been beaten by England in the semi-finals of the World Cup last year: now that’s a sight you won’t forget. And what’s a more potent symbol of the all-encompassing glory of sport: Chabal in tears or Jonny’s metronomic kicking? I know which means more to me.
Footballers are always weeping: Becks interminably; Gazza famously after being booked in the World Cup semis in 1990, knowing he would miss the final if England got through (he needn’t have worried, of course); Maradona too.
But you couldn’t help being moved by the scarily tough John Terry cracking up at the end of the Champions’ League final in Moscow in May.
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