Statuesque

Is any new sporting arena fit for purpose without a statue to adorn it? Critics of the apparently workaday new Wembley Stadium reckon the most striking thing about it is the towering bronze at its entrance by sculptor Philip Jackson of the straightbacked, relaxed good fellow, lamented Bobby Moore. Statues of sporting figures are suddenly all the rage. Forty years or so ago, when Bob was still captaining the England football team, I’d cover the rugby at Paris’s decrepit, fondly remembered Colombes (where they’d staged 1924’s Chariots of Fire Olympic Games) and, waiting for my ticket check, would always offer a sentimental nod towards the chunky four-square stone sculpture of France’s fabled flying ace and fly-half, Yves du Manoir, who’d died at just 24 when the biplane he was piloting at a Red Arrows-type exhibition gimmick over Colombes crashed before the kick-off of the French XV’s match against Scotland in 1928.