As that bundle of fun T S Eliot put it, “…human kind/Cannot bear very much reality”.
I found those words tumbling about in my skull last week, during a chat with a man who knows a thing or two about sport. The subject of Leicester City FC came up, and I told him how comforting it was to live in a universe where a team like Leicester City, with its meagre resources, its players like Jamie Vardey and Riyad Mahrez from lower leagues, a team which played a season of such magical football it got compared to Nottingham Forest in the 1970s – how deeply comforting, I said, to know we live in a universe where such a team can stride to success and win this season’s Premier League title.
My acquaintance nodded and noted that last September, the odds against Leicester City winning the Premier League were 5000/1. I shook my head and chuckled; but then my companion said “Supposing in this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio, you had a guy running in the 100 metres”. “OK” I said. “I’m supposing”. “And supposing that that guy was at odds of 5000/1 to win the 100 metres – and won it. What would be the first thing that’d enter your head?”
Well you know the next bit yourself, because it’s the thought that just entered your head too. You could of course be wrong , but the odds against this imaginary runner’s success would drive you there. And remember the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson? Or the Irish swimmer Michelle Smith? Their success seemed too good to be true, and it was.
“What I’m surprised at” said my companion, a man, as I say, who knows about sport, “is that no one has queried the success of big football teams”.
Rattle-rattle- bonnnngg. That was the sound of a fairytale biting the dust.
My acquaintance then went on to state the obvious: where you have big money involved in sport, there’ll at least be the temptation to enhance performance or to shape success using illegal means.
Think of all the talk there now is about drugs in tennis. Or among Russian athletes.
The Premier League and the Champions League are biiiiig money competitions. Have enterprising journalists explored them to ensure that all is well? Do we know what laws govern them, what tests are habitually run? I don’t.
And what about cycling – how come it took so long to winkle out that Lance Armstrong was something more than a naturally gifted athlete?
And because this blog can only be so long, I won’t go into the question of the GAA being a strictly amateur sport – including managers and players, not only at county but club level. There’s a lot of money sloshing around in the GAA. Does none of it find its way to coaches or players?
“Human kind/Cannot bear very much reality” –Is mor an trua sin – more’s the pity. Because we need heroes, we need fairytales, and we need to believe in the purity of the underdog. So it’s a shock when you begin to suspect that the underdog or even the overdog may have been gobbling what it shouldn’t.
Old gloomy-guts Eliot may not have known much about sport but he knew a thing or two about the human heart.
Mr Gallagher is wrong about James Connolly (and 1916). Connolly stood, but was not elected for the Wood Quay Ward..
Who elected Gallagher to the Bilderberg Group?
Jude, either Leicester City Footballers are taking something they shouldn’t. Or the Premier League has massively declined in standards and quality, declined so much so that a low ranking team such as Leicester can clinch the Premier League trophy.
I think maybe both of those things have happened. I became instantly suspicious of Leicester’s sudden success. Obviously I don’t have evidence to prove anything but that doesn’t mean to say none exists or it isn’t true.
There is an ideology called “Transhumanism”. To cut a long story short, its all about improving the human condition, both physically and mentally, by using Technology. Now I know drugs that greatly improve human performance are illegal in sport but why not make them legal? why not let athletes use drugs if they want to? Yes it may not be “natural” but what is “natural”? Human beings are natural, so couldn’t it be argued that our technology is also “natural”? A Chimpanzee makes and uses stick tools to feed on insects, it may not be advanced technology but strictly speaking its still technology but we still regard Chimps as natural. You might even get better entertainment in football, in boxing, etc if all the Athletes were allowed to take performance enhancers.
I was also watching a documentary once on cheating in examinations. On the internet “Brain enhancing drugs” can be bought. These drugs can be taken before examinations and can make people think far clearer, faster and better. Hence it rises examination results. But the issue is they are illegal and its considered cheating. But as the presenter asked: “Why not just let everyone use these drugs?”, well as the presenter found out, many important professors and scientists DO use these drugs from the internet. Coffee, strictly speaking, could be classed as a brain enhancing drug, caffeine is a chemical that improves brain performance in the short term. So strictly speaking, Tea/Coffee should be illegal to students taking exams, so should green leaf vegetables and Fish Oils, which improve brain function over a long period of time because these things increase brain function like those drugs bought off the internet. Many prominent scientists and psychologists took drugs or were drug addicts themselves. The famous psychologist Sigmund Freud was a cocaine addict, he didn’t take it the way people do now (up the nose) and his cocaine would’ve been 100% pure, not the cheap, cut version you could buy from dealers now.
Transhumanism is an interested subject. I don’t ever see Sport performance enhancing drugs being legal but for the average joe? Wouldn’t it be better (as long as its safe) for people to take drugs that will improve their human condition? for example, their IQ? Its been proven that societies with high IQ’s have far less crime, more wealth and are more advanced and modern.
“Jude, either Leicester City Footballers are taking something they shouldn’t. Or the Premier League has massively declined in standards and quality, declined so much so that a low ranking team such as Leicester can clinch the Premier League trophy.”
What exactly does that mean? And where can I get these brain enhancing drugs?
Pardon me, Colum – where did you get that quotation? I don’t remember writing it. Ia it from some other source? Because it strikes me as verging on libel…Do explain, otherwise it comes down.
Jude
It was in Ryan’s post to which I was replying. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to post it in full as intended.
“Jude, either Leicester City Footballers are taking something they shouldn’t. Or the Premier League has massively declined in standards and quality, declined so much so that a low ranking team such as Leicester can clinch the Premier League trophy.
I think maybe both of those things have happened. I became instantly suspicious of Leicester’s sudden success. Obviously I don’t have evidence to prove anything but that doesn’t mean to say none exists or it isn’t true.”
Colum
Leicester City were being investigated re the financial fair play rule in their promotion season in the English Championship.
They may have fewer resources than some of the teams in the EPL but like most of them they are owned by a foreign billionaire as well as having access to the huge sums that come their way for just being in that league.
Hardly “Roy of the Rovers” stuff.
Whaddaya men “Old Gloomy Guts”, Jude? .
“…..Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow”….
…the man had something there… or as old Laughing Leonard Cohen might have it…
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”