The place of sport in life
Some might argue that the belief held by some that world sports constitute little more than contests between power-hungry nations vying for global pride, supremacy, power, influence and control continued by means other than war has been somewhat undermined by events over the last 100 days in Ukraine as conducted by Russia’s crackpot dictator Vladimir Putin.
Nevertheless, George Orwell’s 1945 dictum that serious sport amounted to little more than “war minus the shooting” did seem appropriate to describe the Soviet (Eastern European) bloc’s state-sponsored cynical disregard of the sporting rules on performance-enhancing drugs during the era since WW2. Success and prestige on the world stage (and the riches that could accompany it) – however achieved – seemed to matter as much to communists and Third World countries as it did to unscrupulous individual coaches and athletes who took the imperative of “doing whatever it took to win” way beyond the boundaries of rules, laws and indeed moral integrity.
Meanwhile the dangers of participation in physical contact sports such as boxing, mixed martial arts/UFC fighting, ice hockey, NFL (American football), football and rugby union (both codes) have always been known and accepted by those involved down through history.
For many, the fact that individuals became involved in them was effectively taken as their voluntary “informed consent” to risking not only possible short-term traumatic injury and but also later-in-life onset of innumerable conditions associated with anything from arthritis to the effects of repetitive-strain over time.
Let me here cite concussion-related issues as a current leading case in point. The medical scientific research is now overwhelmingly voluminous, conclusive and damning.
The truth is that – if this was at all possible – the human race “wouldn’t start from here” (as, in another context altogether, the proverbial rustic Irishman responded to a polite American couple who had stopped their car in order to ask him the way to Dublin).
If the “woke” safety-mongers among us had been around at the time, boxing would have been banned before it was even invented.
It would only be a small step from there for the likes of NFL, rugby and football to have suffered a similar fate.
Where is the line to be drawn between human beings being “protected from themselves” and allowing the men (or women) on the Clapham omnibus to make their own personal decisions as to what risks they take in life?
And another thing. Supposing that, as an example – for my own (as well as others’ well-being) – boxing and/or rugby union were to be banned tomorrow.
This might well save me from getting concussion and/or several other later-life conditions, but It wouldn’t necessarily stop me alighting from a Number 11 red bus in central London at some point this morning … and then being run over by a car in the street.
