{"id":1108,"date":"2012-12-03T09:49:34","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T09:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crankpunk.com\/?p=1108"},"modified":"2023-11-20T17:25:25","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T17:25:25","slug":"a-myth-exposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crankpunk.com\/ja\/2012\/12\/03\/a-myth-exposed\/","title":{"rendered":"a myth exposed"},"content":{"rendered":"

crankpunk was a boy in love with sport from the first day i kicked a ball. a lifelong love of football (of the English variety) began there and then and still endures, and though its place on top of the pedestal might have been replaced by cycling, i still love the unity of thought and movement required by a football team to score a goal. in that respect it’s a more socialist<\/em> sport than cycling – or it was til the mega-bucks came into the sport and created the current generation of spoilt playboys that fall over at the merest brush of a shoulder. yet there’s no doubt that you can’t win a football game alone at any level, whereas you can win a race alone.<\/p>\n

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cycling attracts individualists who, if they become successful, then have to bend themselves to fit a team – and even then it’s rare to find a truly unified bike team. of course, it gets easier when everyone is earning big money but the reality is that very, very few of us are. just about everyone is looking for a step up the ladder, constantly. the old saying\u00a0every man for himself<\/em> is nowhere in professional team sport more true than in cycling. i remember one short stint in a team that was so divided that it actually culminated in physical violence. riders on the same team were plotting how to make another lose his high place on the GC, and at one point the designated leader even tried (albeit a little half-heatedly – i’m a lot bigger than him) to knock me off my bike during a stage.<\/p>\n

it got so bad that i actually considered quitting racing at this level, so unhappy was the experience. i thought that perhaps all ‘top’ teams were the same (this was one of the best teams in Asia). later though i recounted all this to an old pro and he said (after he’d stopped laughing, which took some time) that i’d somehow managed to cram in similar experiences that he’d encountered over a 20-year period into just six months. lucky old crankpunk…<\/p>\n

for me though sport was always supposed to be Chariots of Fire stuff, all about amateurs toiling away to become world champions and to smash world records. i always admired the Rugby Union players who, up until 1995, incredibly, earned no money from their sport, no matter how high the level they played. it’s changed now and i am sure the quality of play has risen and that the players themselves are pleased with the change, but there was something irrevocably romantic about a Wales v England match when you had 50,000 fans cheering on these legends of the game, men who were policemen, barristers, doctors, teachers and the like. they were us, and we could, perhaps if we believed enough, have been them.<\/p>\n

like the athletes that chased the 4 minute mile as portrayed in Chariots of Fire, those rugby matches were played, generally speaking*, in the spirit of the game and with what looks now to be an outdated sense of gentlemanness. <\/em>sure, rules were bent, eyes were gouged by fingers and backs scraped by boot studs on occasion, but they all had a pint of warm stout or four after the game and went back to their jobs on a Monday with the cheers of the crowds ringing on in their cauliflower ears.<\/p>\n

*i say ‘generally’ speaking because every once in while things got really dirty, perhaps nowhere more famously than in 1974 when the Lions Rugby team (made up of the best players from England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales) went on tour in South Africa. here’s a video clip of\u00a0 a documentary made of that legendary tour, well worth a watch…<\/em><\/p>\n