Keith Thompson
Should we regard high-level sport as significant? It is obviously of great importance as a matter of fact in many contexts; significant in economies, in the media, in many people's lives and so on. But in other respects, sport can seem essentially trivial, unimportant, time wasting. Serious attention should be given to serious things, which tend fall under one of three broad categories: first, knowledge and understanding of the world (such as science, mathematics, history); second, dealing with the world's challenges and problems (such as politics, economics, education, health); third, the arts. Any such categorisation is crude but it is sufficient for my present purpose.
The rhetoric is along these lines, with deliberatively emotive language: “How can anyone bother about whether a ball was or was not caught; whether a ball did or did not cross a line; whether x ran 0.01 seconds faster than y; when fundamental academic research is under-funded, when education and health are desperate for more investment, when war looms or is actually occurring, when millions starve? Further how can one rate sport highly alongside great painting, sculpture, literature or music?”
I suggest that the broad lines of an answer rest on the time-honoured distinction between the instrumental and the intrinsic. Many of the world's problems, pressing and distressing though they are, concern the instrumental. Means have to be found whereby conflicts can be avoided, poverty ameliorated, illiteracy removed, disease eliminated. But then what? People have to live for something, pre-eminently for those things which they value in themselves. Thus the arts often find their place. As a lover of sport, I would argue that sport, at its best, ranks with the arts. It is not an unnecessary display of the physical to burn up surplus energy but a means of harnessing brains and bodies in rule-governed procedures to produce memorable and beautiful outcomes.
If this much is granted, what are the implications for the significance or otherwise of particular sporting events, both for participants and for spectators? Sporting interest is often short-term, ephemeral even. The question is what gives a sporting event significance, meaningfulness, over the longer term, or even through time.
Here is one specific example: the men's singles quarter-finals in the Australian Open in Melbourne on 22 January 2003. Expectations prior to the match were low. In the previous round the Australian top-seeded favourite, Lleyton Hewitt, had been beaten by a 31-year-old Moroccan, Youness El Aynaoui. Thus the home crowd were deprived of the chance of seeing “their boy” against the young American, Andy Roddick. Roddick probably thought that a path had been opened up for him; giant killers often surrender tamely on the next occasion. Not so. Roddick won but it took all but five hours: 4-6, 7-6, 4-6, 6-4, 21-19. The press called it “One of the greatest matches in grand slam history,” a match of “passion, stamina, courage and skill,” and “a sporting battle for the ages.” Superlatives were piled on superlatives. For John McEnroe it was “the most extraordinary match I've had the privilege of calling.” Moreover it was played with ever-increasing respect between the players. As Roddick said: “When we see each other ten years down the line we'll know we shared something very special.”
So here, it seems, we have an unarguable example of a significant sporting event. Except that some would argue that essentially it is context that gives significance. And here the argument for the significance of Roddick v El Aynaoui seems to wobble. Although El Aynaoui had not faltered against Roddick, Roddick faltered in losing his semi-final to Schuettler and in turn, Schuettler was overwhelmed in the final by Agassi, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1. So then the significance of the 2003 Australian Open is that it was won by a dominant American who had won it three times before in a final which will be significant statistically and for no other reason.
Those who saw the Roddick/El Aynaoui match were in no doubt that what they had witnessed was outstanding as judged by the criteria commonly and properly used to evaluate a tennis match. Skills, sportsmanship, stamina, variety, tension… each criterion is ticked. It had it all. So nothing of that can be taken away. Roddick spoke of remembering the match ten years down the line; his defeat in the semi-final will not erase those memories. So in its own context, as a unique sporting contest, its quality made it highly significant. As an element in a series of events, the grand slam championships or, more widely, all elite men's singles championships, it proved insignificant because of Roddick's subsequent elimination.
Thus we have a significant/insignificant distinction again but of an entirely different kind from that with which I began the article. Now it is the unarguably insignificant aspect which is a matter of fact.
What if we now ask which of the two distinct senses of “significance” is more significant (sic) than the other? I judge that it would be a mistake to dismiss this question and would argue that the assertion that the match was significant is in a fundamental sense more important than the assertion that it was not.
Significance in the sense of what the match means for the progression of a player or team in a competition should take second place to significance in terms of the quality of the fare provided in the match. When interviewed after a particular Liverpool-Arsenal match both managers accepted the cliché that “football was the winner”. Each was disappointed at only drawing, Wenger (Arsenal) apparently the more so because victory had been snatched away, Houllier ( Liverpool ) having relief at the end to soften the overall disappointment. So what of the cliché? We should not dismiss it just because it is a cliché. “Football was the winner” indicates that regardless of the outcome which, by definition, could not be wholly satisfactory to either side, the players had created/experienced a fine game and the crowd had shared the experience, as had those watching on TV.
Sometimes it is argued that the quality of the match should take second place to the result. Here too there are clichés – “you can't score a bad goal”, “I don't mind if it was dull, we won”, “style doesn't get you points”. My answer to this is that whilst there may be a case on occasion for giving winning total priority over the style by which it is achieved, to do so as a matter of course defeats the whole purpose of sport.
This is a bold claim so let me consider it further. If overall priority is given to winning then sport is distorted. It cannot be true that one takes part solely in order to win. Were that the case logic would require that an individual or team sought out only those opponents who were demonstrably so much weaker that they could not emerge as winners. In which case there is no contest and no meaningful sport. What is true is that once one is engaged in a sporting contest one should be playing to win; not to do so is to rob the contest of its competitive essence. But the purpose when playing is not to be equated with the purpose of playing.
The purposes of engaging in sport can be many (often instrumental – to relax, to keep fit, to make friends) but at the highest levels it is to produce an artefact (the game, the match, the race) which stands as an example of human achievement. This highest level may be rare, it may occur only as one element in the whole (the goal, the pass, the tackle) but unless it is pursued the whole sporting enterprise will lapse into mediocrity and pointlessness (as opposed to “pointslessness”).
Thierry Henry, indubitably one of the English Premiership's outstanding soccer players, has been quoted as saying “Everyone knows all the goals count the same. But I like the beautiful ones.” Just so.
Some moments last through many years. In an article published in June 1980 I wrote of the wonder of the “unforgettable” rugby match between the Barbarians and the All Blacks at Cardiff Arms Park on 27 January 1973. Attention was focused on it again on its thirtieth anniversary, as it was on its tenth and twentieth, and its twenty-fifth. In particular attention is focused on “that try”. It did not determine the result, being scored in the fourth minute of the first half. But, thirty years on, a press poll leads to a renewed verdict of “the greatest try of all time” – and a case can be made for a later try in the same match being a worthy candidate for the same honour.
Beauty, skill, drama from one particular match in which no championship or league title was an issue, still remembered and treasured thirty years on. I rest my case.
Keith Thompson is a former vice-chancellor of Staffordshire University and is secretary of the British Philosophy of Sport Association.
