Simon Barnes - Epic: In Search of the Soul of Sport and Why It Matters

For all good colleagues, who kept

me halfway sane on the road, and especially

for Jim, who always had my back.

But what did it mean?

We seek understanding when its over. While its still going on were too much caught up in what happens from day to day. Thats true of a love affair and of a period in history, of a great life and of a small one.

And it really was all over: 32 years of watching sport across the world, following sportspeople wherever they led and trying to write about it all, ended in a brief and awkward phone call.

So what did it mean? How could sense be made of this vast chunk of experience?

Perhaps a memoir, rollicking about the globe in pursuit of other peoples glory: a tale of deadlines missed (none), late-night drinking sessions on the Ramblas (more than none), rows with sports editors (one, maybe one and a half), dear colleagues who made life on the road possible (a select but splendid few), global scoops (a somewhat brief chapter), and a general celebration of the life of the sporting journalist and in particular of the author.

Who was a chief sportswriter, you know, for 12 years, can you imagine? And youve heard about the chief sportswriter with the inferiority complex? He thought he was just the same as everybody else.

Said that before, but no matter.

But who the hell cares about chief sportswriters? What matters is sport. What matters is not the people who write about sport but the people who do it. Because, in sport, truth is only and always in the action.

Said that before, too. And will say it again. Because that does matter.

So look at the sport, not the sportswriter and sport had been telling its story to this sportswriter for every one of those 32 years.

At once it became clear. The task was to write sports story, not mine. Or at least, to write the chapters that were told to me. Here, then, is sports ghosted autobiography and I and this is more or less the last time that pronoun will be used in this book have the ineffable privilege of being the ghost.

Hear, then, what sport has to say.

The author or ghost was present at nearly all the events described. Where that wasnt the case, a reference to the television or photographic coverage will be found in the text. Most of the stuff between quotation marks comes from one-on-one interviews. The events of the book of necessity follow the authors career: which began with small stuff, rising to bigger stories, went through a period of relegation to a backwater and ended up with the big job.

At every stage, sport spoke. Here then is the story.

Hail muse.

Hail athletes. Hail victors. Hail losers. Hail nearly-but-not-quiters, has-beens, never-wozzers, young hopefuls, wily old pros, contenders, 12th men, bench-warmers, reserves, mavericks, rocks, leaders, followers, lone wolves, last resorts, team players, rampant individualists, misfits, joiner-inners, fading stars, heroes, villains and victims.

Hail coaches, hail officials, hail the good administrators, hail all those who make it possible.

Hail those who write and talk and shoot and do all the other jobs that bring sport to the many.

Hail those who watch. Hail those who care, hail those who love, hail those who love too much. This is for us.

Done.

Begin!

Noon.

A gunpowder day. Everything you touched seemed liable to crack and burn. Events had been ratcheted up to the limit: one more turn and something would snap. The sky was perfect blue. Everything else was red.

The rich colour of the track underneath the merciless sun. The vest of the man we were all watching. The black skin beneath the vest seemed touched with red. And as we were to learn later, when we saw it on television, his eyes. Red tinged yellow.

Face like the face of a warrior from the Terracotta Army, though running away was his fierce pride. The impossible muscles of the red-black man in the red vest with the red eyes on the red track.

Eight men dropped to their knees. The man in red splayed his arms out wide, as he always did. Low to the ground, so that when he rose up and started to run it was as if he was bursting out of the earth, a chthonic creature hurtling into the light and travelling as if seeking the fastest possible return to the darkness.

It was a revelation of the marvellous. How many times does sport provide such a thing? Times without number if you watch a lot of it, if you spend your life travelling round the world to seek it, if you spend countless hours and years of your life thinking about it. Marvellous beyond measure.

Here were the seven fastest men on earth, and with them an eighth who made them look slow.

Marvellous, yes. Marvellous in a slightly frightening sort of way. He seemed to be running beyond the physical capacity of the human frame, so much so that you half-expected bits of his body to come flying off in the frenzy of his speed. Ben Johnson seemed to be running away from his own humanity.

Two final floating strides with his right index finger pointed at the sky how much faster would he have gone had he raced to the line, without this premature celebration of dominance? His head lifted high, neck arched to the sun, an instant icon.

Victory.

But at what cost?

This was the final of the 100 metres at the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988. Sports primal scene.

They were seeking to be the best, or, at least, the best they ever could be. Of course they were, because this was sport. They were seeking excellence, both comparative and absolute. Above all, they were seeking victory. It was the Newquay Surf Classic and the restless sea was heaving beyond Fistral Beach.

For Chris Hines it was blasphemy. He looked out at the long line of Atlantic rollers but for once he had no wish to be out there. This wasnt a day to try conclusions with the ocean; God no, quite apart from all those competitors, these were no sort of waves. Itd be like surfing a washing machine. No one would go out into that. Unless he wanted nothing more from life than victory.

Hiness board was decorated with a view of sunset on Mars. It had a single fin, mark of a person who seeks to become one with the glory of the wave. Multiple fins are for those who prefer to tear a wave into shreds. For Chris, a surfing competition was like a love-making race.

The wave has come to you across thousands of miles of ocean and no one will ride it except you. Surf it, and its gone. You have a relationship with a wave, a complete involvement with it, and then its broken. You know those insects that mate once and die? Its like that.

He was the boy who won. He always would be. Knowing that nothing would ever be as good again. To fulfil your life to the very last degree is a fine thing but if youre 21 when you do so, you have plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of triumph.

There were tears in his eyes. A caf in Winchester, sitting in the June sunshine with the statue of Alfred the Great. Hed been working in Butlins. Coaching kids. He liked it, liked it a lot, but that wasnt really the point, was it? Now he was talking about the great things he wanted to do, that he still had to do, that he needed to do. If only theyd let him.