By the end of this July’s ‘second chance sale’, over three and a half million tickets had been sold for the 26 sports making up the London 2012 Olympics. There were [...]]]> I have a piece in the Feb 2012 issue of Prospect magazine, on squash. Here’s one I did last year, on wrestling (August 2011):

By the end of this July’s ‘second chance sale’, over three and a half million tickets had been sold for the 26 sports making up the London 2012 Olympics. There were seats unsold for football and volleyball, but the only individual discipline with tickets left over was freestyle wrestling. In the competition for least-loved Olympic sport in Britain, freestyle wrestling was the winner.

What is it, exactly, that no-one is in a rush to see? Freestyle wrestling differs from all-male Greco-Roman wrestling (sold-out) in three ways. Holds below the waist are allowed, the legs may be used in both attack and defense, and since 2004 the sport has included four weight-categories for women.

Not enough, it would seem, for a nation of discerning sports-fans, even though the highlights play well to rock music. The crisis moment of a freestyle bout is a flurry of explosive athleticism, bodies driven hard into the ground and wrestlers in barely credible contortions, legs awry and ears cauliflowered to the mats.

In 3000 years the objective of a wrestling contest has barely changed – to overpower and gain total control over an opponent. This can take a while. A bout at the 1912 Olympics lasted eleven hours and forty minutes, which led to the introduction of a points-scoring system. Points require rules: wrestling would never be so simple again.

At London 2012 the freestyle wrestlers will grapple on a circular area nine meters in diameter for three two minute sessions in a best-of-three contest. If a session ends in a draw, there is a thirty-second tie-break mechanism called The Clinch. The attacking wrestler locks his arms around one of the defender’s legs and has thirty seconds to make a decisive move. This is more complicated than it looks.

The Clinch was not a feature of wrestling as first recorded at the Olympic games of 708 BC. This was a direct hand-to-hand contest to discover the fortius in the Olympic refrain of Citius Altius Fortius (Faster Higher Stronger). It soon became evident that in wrestling ‘stronger’ requires brain in addition to brawn, strategy before a fall. The philosopher Plato (meaning ‘broad’) was a keen wrestler, and his name may have been decided by his wrestling coach.

As a sales angle, the cerebral side of wrestling doesn’t appear to have worked. The chief executive of the British Wrestling Association, Colin Nicholson, calls freestyle wrestling ‘combat chess’, and while the combat can be astonishing the chess is a problem. The technical manoeuvring for a hold or a takedown registers in minor shifts of balance and leverage, almost imperceptible to the casual spectator. The psychological battleground, so vivid to the competitor, is masked by stoicism and concentration.

Olympic wrestling must also contend with the shadow of what it is not. The razzamatised World Wrestling Entertainment organization pushes televised wrestling as pure ‘sports entertainment’. By comparison, Olympic wrestling can seem like fighting with the entertainment taken out. Nicholson would like to change this perception.

‘We’ll have at least three wrestlers involved in London 2012 because of the wildcard entries for the host nation. Unfortunately, for each wrestler we qualify by right we lose one of those places, but our objective is at least one top-eight finish.’

Televised wrestling has always understood the importance of personalities. At London 2012 the British wrestler to watch is Ukrainian-born Yana Stadnik, a 48 kg silver medalist at the 2010 European Championships. For the men, Britain’s  top freestyle hope is Bristol’s 96 kg fighter Leon Rattigan.

Olympic success can revive an obscure sport – curling is the most obvious recent example. The next best shortcut is to get a sport into schools. All sports administrators know this, but wrestling has the advantage of needing little or no equipment. It is more controlled than boxing but can claim similar benefits as a self-help sport – encouraging self-control, self-confidence, self-esteem. The British Wrestling Association can plausibly claim that wrestling leads to ‘greater physical development’ (muscles! – wrestlers are ripped), ‘flexibility, strength, balance, co-ordination and razor-sharp reactions’.

If Olympic medals and school sportsdays remain a distant ambition, the fate of wrestling is more likely to be influenced by immigration. The arrival of fighters from Eastern Europe, a stronghold of world wrestling, can provide a solid base for future British participation and success. The Olympic pot currently pays for wrestling’s full-time chief executive, an administrator and a national coach. Five wrestlers have received funding. The brooms will be out after London 2012, but there is hope for spending rounds to come – wrestling will also feature at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Between now and next August the wrestlers will be working hard at the British Wrestling Academy, a low-roofed single-storey gym in Salford (bookable for events). By then, the last seats at the Excel centre will surely have been sold, as this is a rare chance in Britain to see the world’s best compete at one of the original Olympic sports. Wrestling may not have fared well in the ticketing ballot, but it is a sporting truth that someone has to come last. Otherwise there would be no winners.

In principle, I like all games until my children start winning. And until recently I was a big fan of Scrabble. So much so [...]]]>

Spot the Clinamen

Over on our site in development (wait for it, wait for it), we had an interesting discussion about Scrabble and this year’s British National Champion, the fantastic Mikki Nicholson.

In principle, I like all games until my children start winning. And until recently I was a big fan of Scrabble. So much so that on my shelves I have a copy of Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis. I have this book partly because The Times claims that ‘Stefan Fatsis is the Hunter S. Thompson of Competitive Scrabble’, but also because the book was published by Yellow Jersey Press in the days (2001) when Yellow Jersey published brilliant sports books no-one else would touch.

The story follows US sports-writer Fatsis as his Scrabble Rating rises from zero to 1697, and you’ll have to believe me that 1697 is both unimaginably good but also not quite good enough. Like being British No 3 at tennis.

I remember not quite sharing Stefan’s passion for Scrabble as far as 1697 – I was perhaps rooting for him whole-heartedly as far as about 1501, but nearly ten years later the best way of remembering what I liked about the book is to cite the sentences I marked with pencil in the margins.

‘But this – the money, the pressure, the tension, the egos, the pride, the prestige. This isn’t just about playing a board game. This is about skill and achievement and self-worth.’

‘The distances and location of the premium squares are just right.  The game is a carefully choreographed pas-de-deux, a delicate balance between risk and reward.’

‘For Matt, as perhaps for James Murray, William Minor, and Joe Leonard, words are the objective reality of life.’

‘In the Book of John, Pontius Pilate asks Jesus, Quid est veritas? (“What is truth?”). His answer is an anagram: “Est vir qui adest” (“It is the man who is before you”).  The word anagram itself anagrams to the Latin ars magna, or great art.’

Scrabblers and cross-worders preserve the cabalistic talent for anagrams that the internet otherwise makes banal – Richard Beard as Drab Hard Rice in a millisecond at http://wordsmith.org/anagram/ However, there comes a stage in every Scrabble player’s development when language turns to maths. The game becomes a riddle of patterns, not meanings.

Maybe this happens in every field, for anyone who thinks long and hard enough, about anything.  And everything.  The other lesson Scrabble teaches is less exotic: don’t hold out for better letters.  Make the best of what you have now.

At least I think that’s true.  If not, it may explain why my children beat me – they believe in the luck of the life to come.

Bad workmen blame their tools.

In South Africa there have been three major goalkeeping howlers after four days of matches.  England, Algeria and Paraguay have all seen their keepers bamboozled by what most people would think was a familiar sight to the man in goal: an approaching round object known as a ball.

We get along famously, because these sporting nicknames are names stripped down.  They [...]]]>

'there are no winners'

As a sportsman, I am a member of the ‘ -y’ family.  I’m related to Straussy and Backy.  In our small sub-species, Homo Olympiens, there are three primary families.  We are joined by the ‘-o’ family (Wilko, Johnno) and the ‘-ers’ family (Aggers, Athers).

We get along famously, because these sporting nicknames are names stripped down.  They are names in the dressing room in their jockstraps.  They’re no respecters of names.   On the team-sheet nobody escapes – the system is automatic and egalitarian, and amid the mud and studs everyone is quickly allocated to one of the families.

The same does not happen in individual sports.  One of the horrors of golf coverage on the TV is the smarmy use of first names – ‘Tiger’, ‘Lee’ – as if everyone was on first name terms.  You’re not fooling anybody.

I’m thinking about this because I was surprised to be referred to on the net as  Beardy.  Over on his excellent blog designed for auto-didact, spliffy, anti-establishment ranting polymaths (who like trains), Ian Marchant reminded me (and all those in his wide constituency) that I’d offered to take the Physical Education Classes at the Free University of Radnorshire.

(This will be free like the National Gallery and not like Westminster Abbey, which is free except if you don’t pay you can’t go in.  At the National Gallery there’s no bullying, and you’d have to have a heart of socialist stone not to bung a few coins in the tin or pay a couple of quid for some overpriced postcards).

But Ian is right.  I have put myself forward as the Professor of PE at FUR.   He was therefore correct to give me my active sporting name, and you know what,  Marchers?  That’s going to be the first class we take, before preparing for the more philosophical  Race With No Finish Line (practical). 

What are team nicknames all about?  They announce an intimacy.  They also infantilise, which makes them true.  Those of us who like games and rolling about on grass are in touch with our inner child.  A baby name is the best we deserve, and there is no room for airs and graces.

I was reminded of this once in the letter pages of the Times.  A show-off Dad proudly wrote in to say that his eight-month old son was a keen fan of BBC’s Test Match Special.  Not only did he like to listen to every ball of a Test match, at the age of eight months, but only the day before he’d uttered his first words:  ‘Aggers.’

The next day another reader replied that his son, too, was eight months old and listened to every ball of the Test match.  His first words were ‘Christoper Martin-Jenkins.’