Olympian warfare, art and Tipperary hurling

Olympian warfare

George Orwell’s view that sport was ‘war minus the shooting’ has been borne out by countless examples, most dramatically at major international sporting events such as the Olympics. The United States and sixty four other countries boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics completely, in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and as a general symptom of Cold War politics. Four years later, The USSR led thirteen Eastern Bloc and affiliated Communist nations in a retaliatory boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics. There are also many examples of bilateral collisions during Olympic games between nations with intense rivalries, such as the three hockey finals contested between Pakistan and India in 1956, 1960 and 1964 and the controversial basketball final of 1972, between the United States and the USSR. 

And if Orwell was right and sport is a kind of tame warfare, then your country's medal count is a proxy measure for where you’re at in the international pecking order. Scanning over the table for Olympic medals won, there are vast levels of disparity between the top dogs such as the United States (2,827 medals), Great Britain (883 medals) and France (840 medals) in comparison to nations such as Paraguay and Jordan, with only one medal each. In fact, such has been the dominance of the United States that they have won 15% of all medals since the first modern games in 1896.

However, interpreting the medals table is not as simple as it might seem. The 124 years of Olympic games has seen multiple changes in national borders, with many countries disappearing and new countries appearing at different stages and in different forms. It gets particularly complicated when you look at countries such as Russia and Germany, as they have both had Olympic Games representatives under the guise of several different national flags, e.g. German athletes have represented East Germany, West Germany, Saarland and Germany, while Russian athletes have represented the Russian Empire, the USSR and Russia. When all the different German guises are combined, their medals total is 1,754 while the Russian haul is 1,910.

Then it gets even more complicated when you consider the relative populations of different nations. When calculations are done for medals won per population, Finland (55 medals per million population) comes out on top. This gives Finland fifteen times more medals than Ireland, with a population only slightly larger than ours. But then to complicate things further, countries such as Finland compete at both winter and summer Olympics, thus increasing their medal chances considerably. 

And I won't even get into the complexities of 'weighting' the gold, silver and bronze medals in terms of their relative value.

Ireland’s Olympic medals

So where does all this leave Ireland? The answer is, in short, not too bad. It is pleasing to see that our 31 medals outranks those of European neighbours Portugal (24 medals) and even Nigeria (25 medals), a country with a population 40 times bigger than ours (although they have competed as a nation at 5 less Olympics than Ireland). However, when we look at countries of similar population, similar wealth and with a similar number of Olympics appearances as Ireland, the picture is not so positive. And I’m talking specifically about the overachieving New Zealand here, with their 120 medals.

So for Ireland, every Olympic medal we can squeeze out is precious. And while we are a long way behind the Kiwis, just two more medals would push us up the medals table above Indonesia (with a population 55 times that of ours). 

Going through the history books reveals a lot of precious medals won by Irish athletes that are assigned to other nations. For example, the Great Britain (England) team beat the Great Britain (Ireland) team in the 1908 hockey final – that’s a silver medal we don’t get credit for. And there’s the gold medal in tennis won by John Boland in Athens in 1896, again credited to Great Britain. And there’s Peter O’Connor, with gold and silver at the 1906 games, again credited to Great Britain, despite his dramatic and passionate protests, climbing a flagpole at the medals ceremony to unfurl 'the old flag of Erin'.

An example of 'the old flag of Erin', heroically hoisted at the 1906 Olympics by double medal winner Peter O'Connor

But we can’t blame everything on the British. A review of the official record of Irish Olympic medals includes 16 won in boxing, 7 in athletics, 4 in swimming, 2 in sailing, 1 in rowing and 1 in equestrian. However, there are a further three precious medals won by Irish competitors, competing under the Irish flag, that seem to have slipped from memory.

Following the old maxim of ‘mens sane in corpore sano’, Baron de Coubertin was keen that art competitions be included in the Olympics and that was the case from 1912 to 1948, with the competing entries required to have a sporting theme. And here’s where our three missing Irish medals come in.

Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878 - 1957), doctor, writer and forever immortalized by James Joyce as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in Ulysses, won a bronze medal in the 1924 Paris Olympics in the Literature competition for his ‘Ode to the Tailteann Games’.

Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878 - 1957) 

Letitia Hamilton (1878 - 1964), landscape artist, also won a bronze medal (London Olympics, 1948), in the category of painting and graphic art (oils and water colours) for her painting ‘Meath Hunt Point-to-Point Races’.

The Meath Hunt Point-to-Point Races, 
by Letitia Hamilton (1878 - 1964) 

And the third medal winner is a special one for me as it happens to be probably my favourite painting by my favourite artist and, until I started to do some background reading for this blog, I hadn't realized that it was also an Olympic medal winner. Confusingly listed in some places as ‘Natation’ (because it was entered in the 1924 Paris Olympics), the raw Dublin vibrancy of ‘The Liffey Swim’ by Jack B. Yeats won him a silver medal for Ireland.

'The Liffey Swim' by Jack B. Yeats (1871 - 1957)

And then - Tipperary hurling

Finally, another Olympian artistic entry also has a very special place in my heart, and that is Limerick artist Sean Keating’s evocative ‘The Tipperary Hurler’ that was entered for the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. Keating produced a range of works that proudly displayed the confidence and special cultural qualities of the newly independent Ireland in the 1920s and this painting was based on a composite of legendary Tipperary hurler John-Joe Hayes and Ben O’Hickey (an IRA member and art student, from Bansha).

So while the great and ancient game of hurling remains primarily a passion for the Irish and our diaspora and has not as yet achieved Olympic status (wouldn't that be an easy gold medal for us), hurling did make a brief appearance at one Olympics, embodied (of course) by a Tipp man.

The Tipperary Hurler, by Sean Keating

Emil Zátopek and pandemic running

Emil Zátopek: a brief history

Emil Zátopek always had it tough in every respect, from the very beginning until the very end. Born in 1922 into extreme poverty, the seventh of eight children, he lived through the cruel Nazi occupation of his Czech homeland, followed by decades spent enduring the tyrannical and paranoid Soviet backed Communist regime that only finally came to an end a few years before his death in the year 2000, following a number of increasingly disabling strokes. 

Added to the stifling and potentially spirit-crushing geopolitical environment of his lifetime, his parents initially discouraged him from running and, based on reviews of videos and contemporary accounts of his unconventional and tortured running style, he was probably not a naturally talented athlete. And he never had a coach. 

But it was his smiling acceptance of the toughness and challenges in his life that made him a legend.

Emil Zátopek with that characteristic pained look  

Richard Askwith's wonderful biography - providing the inspiration and most of the source material for this blog

And not only did he manage to survive through tumultuous and dangerous times but, training alone at gut wrenching intensity levels never seen before, he became the greatest runner of his generation, if not all time. His novel training methods became legendary in themselves, e.g. those flat-out 400m sprints up to 100 times a day or running in heavy army kit and boots through the forests near his home, sometimes in snow. 

At the height of his powers, he was as famous and adored as Usain Bolt and Lionel Messi are now. And little hints of his fame were evident long after his retirement from running. His biographer Richard Askwith tells the story of Emil visiting Finland in his twilight years, to meet some old running friends. He asked a local for directions, speaking in his self-taught Finnish. When the local asked him where he had come from and Emil told him, the local, not recognizing the old man before him, said ‘Ah, the land of Zátopek’, to which Emil replied ‘I am Zátopek’ and broke down in tears.

Following a gold (10,000 metres) and silver (5,000 metres) at the first post war Olympics in London in 1948, he won an unprecedented three gold medals (5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon, his first race at that distance) at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 while his wife Dana also won gold, in the javelin. I have also alluded to these events in two earlier blogs:

https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/memories-of-helsinki.html

https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/emil-and-dana-olympian-love-affair.html

Throughout his career, he won countless track and cross-country races at distances from 1,500 metres upwards, over a ten year period of absolute dominance. Along with his medals and awards, he set eighteen world records in the process.

Emil and Dana

When he fell out of favour with the Communist regime because of, among other things, his role as a brave supporter of the Prague Spring movement in 1968, he was dismissed from the army and went on to spend several years in enforced work in squalid conditions as an itinerant manual labourer with only limited contact allowed with his beloved Dana.

Emil addressing the crowds during the Prague Spring of 1968

As a soldier himself, Emil tried to communicate with the Russians and other Eastern Bloc soldiers when their tanks rolled in to Prague in August 1968 to crush the popular uprising against an increasingly restrictive Communist regime

But despite all the hardship he endured and his multiple glittering achievements, it is his warmth, humour and love of people that comes through most in Richard Askwith’s biography. During his running career, Emil made lifelong friends from all over a bitterly divided Cold War world. His natural charm and interest in others meant that he was able to reach across political and ideological divides and connect with the humanity in all of his competitors. His self-taught ability to converse in at least eight languages was an indication of his interest in and respect for people from vastly different cultures and backgrounds.

With his great friend and rival Alain Mimoun of France, who said on his passing: 'I am losing a brother, not an adversary. It was fate that brought me together with such a gentleman'. 

Australian runner Ron Clarke with a surprise gift from his friend Emil Zátopek: 'I do know that no one cherishes any gift more than I do, my only Olympic gold medal, and not because of what it is but because of the man whose spirit it represents'.

Of course there are also many unanswerable questions about his life, especially considering the dark and troubled times in which he lived. As an officer in the Czechoslovak army during the Cold War, his athletic prowess was utilized by the ruling Communist elite and propagandists. And darker questions have been raised about him being a spy or informer. The latter issue has been addressed by Richard Askwith and his conclusion, based on multiple interviews with contemporaries and reviews of previously secret government documents, is that Emil was if anything ‘a person of interest’ (i.e. himself under suspicion) and, at most, passively compliant with a brutal and all powerful regime.

Some lessons from Emil Zátopek

Our current radical restrictions in business, sporting activities and all aspects of social behaviour that have been invoked to help combat the global COVID-19 pandemic have caused abrupt changes in our lifestyle that have never been seen in most people’s living memory. Now heading into the third week of such restrictions in Ireland and with tighter restrictions in place from midnight last night, people are trying to make the most of their newly limited lifestyles while also keeping themselves and their families safe.

Like many involved in running and outdoor pursuits generally, until yesterday it was a relief for me know that it was still permissible to have unlimited exercise outdoors, while bearing in mind the necessity of social distancing from others. And because of the mentally and physically restricting nature of our recent societal changes, running and other outdoor activities have had something of a boom in recent weeks, as could be seen anecdotally in towns and villages in Ireland and also recently noted in New York. However, from midnight last night, outdoor exercising is limited to brief periods only, and only within 2 kilometres of one's home. 

And although our current societal restrictions are a tiny drop in the ocean of decades-long societal restrictions endured by Emil Zátopek, it is tempting to draw a few parallels right now, especially as he is on my mind so much having recently read his biography.   

Emil Zátopek was not unscrupulous or calculating enough to collude with and profit from association with the ruling Communists or, earlier in his life, the Nazis. One of my theories about him is that he realized that by excelling in running he could escape the shackles of his military and political masters, briefly at least. And I believe this explains why he always seemed so joyful when he attended the Olympics or other major competitions, where he reveled in meeting with competing athletes from all over the world. These competitions were brief periods of freedom and escapism away from the repressive regime of his homeland, just as running or other outdoor pursuits (albeit in limited terms from today) during this global pandemic gives us very welcome respite from worry and boredom. 

So I set out for a run this morning that was within the new government restrictions, asking myself what Emil Zátopek would do in such a situation. And I just made the very most of it, as he would have done, seeing it as a brief mental and physical break. As a result I found that, instead of feeling like just another Saturday morning run, it took on the feeling of a guilty pleasure. I kept within two kilometres of home at all times, doing loops of local roads until I hit 10 km on my watch. And mindful of keeping the session brief, I ran at a faster pace than my usual 5 min/km for the 'long slow' Saturday morning run. As a result, the session was intense (although not at Zátopek levels of intensity) and especially satisfying and, forced to run on a different route than usual, I saw Ballina, Killaloe and the Shannon from some novel angles. And the locked down eeriness and lovely Spring sunshine added to the novelty, while seeing a few other runners and walkers out gave me a great sense of solidarity in our shared freedom.  

Some final words

When reading the biographies of great athletes, it is always tempting to pluck out some inspirational quote from them that neatly sums up their attitude to training, competing and to life in general. And Emil Zátopek, being such a warm, garrulous and extroverted individual, had plenty of wise words and reflections to impart. Summing up his views on hardship and endurance, he said: ‘It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys’. Reflecting his warmer side, he said: ‘Great is the victory, but the friendship of all is greater’. Regarding his famously tortured demeanour while running, he said 'I was not talented enough to run and smile at the same time'. And the list of quotations, anecdotes and parables from his life could go on and on.

However, I will leave the last words here to Alžbeta Vlasáková, a Slovakian former farm-worker who remembers Emil at perhaps the lowest point in his life, after his dismissal from the army and when he was living in exile, doing hard manual labour drilling wells throughout the countryside, and with military and government agents watching his every move:

‘He used to run to Becov Bečov or Mnichov, just by himself, on the roads. He wasn’t racing then. But he kept running - because if you’re running, you’re alive’.

His finest moment: Emil entering the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki to win the marathon and pick up his third gold medal of the 1952 Helsinki Olympics 

Alan Partridge: a sporting legend, of sorts

Special celebrity guest for this blog, Alan Partridge

For this (parody) blog I am very honoured and excited to welcome the curiously compelling Alan Partridge as a special celebrity guest. I have followed Alan’s television and radio career closely over the past three decades and I have always found him to be an endlessly earnest, (self) interested, occasionally informative and at times even entertaining character.

Keen to be seen as a hero in these strange pandemic times, Alan has been reaching out to various blogs and websites with ideas on how he can contribute to the common good and ‘the betterment of man all over this planet we call Earth’ (his words). In making such a contribution, his only condition would be that he could make a new 'Partridge-centric' (his phrase) television series about the experience. I was one of those who sent a reply to the generic email that landed in my inbox this morning from his long serving assistant, Lynn Benfield.

Almost immediately after I replied to the email, I received a phone call directly from the great man himself and we (he) decided to plan the interview there and then. In view of current travel restrictions, I could not take up his initial kind invitation to visit him at Denton Abbey, his Norwich ‘massive mansion’ (his words) so we decided to conduct the interview over the phone. Alan was keen to highlight how he could ‘become a humble champion for the world in this time of need’ (his words), drawing from his ‘world-class broadcasting and journalistic skills combined with an easy charisma, appealing to men and women alike, both intellectual and working-class and of all colours and none’ (again, his words).

I have to admit that the interview felt a little stilted from the outset. I had a strong impression that Alan had a definite list of items to cover and I felt that he was nudging me along to suit his own agenda.

Here’s a summary of what we covered initially at least, before the interview became increasingly one sided. Towards the end, Alan was sounding like he was merely reading out a prepared script focused on his development of a new television series.

Alan and handwashing

Alan began by outlining how, even before there was ever any knowledge or mention of ‘this COVID-19 debacle’ (his words), that he had already devised a ‘super-hygienic’ method for hand-washing. He shared with me a video clip from his most recent television outing, ‘This Time, with Alan Partridge’. I told him that it felt like he was clumsily shoe-horning in this clip in order to make him suddenly relevant in the fight against COVID-19. 

He dismissed my observation, saying that the clip had nothing to do with shoes or indeed horns but it was all to do with hand-washing. He went on to tell me how he has patented the hand-washing method (he refers to it as Partridgean handwashing) but he is willing to share the technique with world governments for a small fee and the condition of state funding for a 'thought-disturbing' (his term) documentary about how he devised it.

A still from Alan’s demonstration of Partridgean super-hygienic handwashing

And here is a link to the actual handwashing video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IZttD_pU8

Alan’s CV

Once he had finished with the handwashing discussion, Alan moved me on swiftly to give an overview of his ‘meteoric’ (his word) rise to fame in the early 1990s with the radio show ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’, followed by a televised version of the show, the series ending prematurely when he accidentally shot a guest live on air.

Alan in his younger years

Alan live on air with Forbes McAllister, moments before accidentally shooting him (Alan describes this as 'my very own JFK in Dallas Texas moment', except that Forbes McAllister - and not Alan - was the actual shooting victim)

After the ‘shooting fiasco’ (Alan’s words), Alan parted company with the BBC (his decision, he stressed to me on a number of occasions) and did some ‘gritty, fly-on-the-wall documentary making' (Alan’s words) for two seasons of ‘I’m Alan Partridge’. Then followed ‘Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge’, a feature film ('Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa'), various other ‘televisual jewels and gems’ (his words again) such as ‘Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life’ and ‘Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle’.

As an example of his ‘classic clothing elegance and easy camera charm’, he asked me to include the image below (Alan's self-styled 'l'homme du sport' look), from the mid 1990s when he was enjoying 'the early cream of my youth' (Alan's phrase). Also of particular relevance to this blog, Alan developed in the 1990s a specific look that he refers to as 'sports casual'.

L'homme du sport - a unique Partridgean look, modelled by Alan in Paris, 'the well known uber-posh fashion city' (Alan's words)

And here's the video clip from which that image is taken (and also keep an eye out for Alan's 'sports casual' look):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfDD7dX3l14

Alan the sports commentator

Having run me through his 'glittering crown of televisual family jewels’ (his own, somewhat mixed up metaphor), Alan brought me back, rather abruptly, to his early days as a sports commentator with ‘On the Hour’. Although described at the time by reviewers as being ‘hapless’, 'woefully inadequate’ and ‘comically out of his depth, in terms of both sporting and broadcasting knowledge’, Alan seems to feel that this was the high point of his early broadcasting career.

Here is a still from Alan's time as a sports presenter, his first love (apparently):

Alan as sports presenter on 'On the Hour' - he insisted on 'Sport' in large lettering behind him, for clarity regarding his role. He later clarified in one of his autobiographies, 'I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan', that the sign was in fact 'a savvy move to get the the deaf on side'.  

And here are some video clips from that era.

In this first clip, Alan interviews a jockey and initially ('quite understandably', according to Alan) mistakes him for a child:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGc8GD0Njy4

And in this next clip, Alan is doing some 'orgasmic commentary' on 'men in shorts with fast balls' (again, his phrases).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhlx43rTs2Q

Finally, the television series proposal

Alan then nudged our conversation on to football (he simply startled me into silence by shouting ‘football!’), referring to my earlier blog on the non-completion of the current season: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/football-life-and-death.html  

Being a proud Norwich man, I would have thought that Alan would be happy to see the current Premier League season declared null and void, as Norwich City look highly likely to be relegated down to the Championship as the table currently stands. However, Alan has some ideas on how he can capitalize on Norwich's poor season. ‘I’m visualizing a televisual football journey for Norwich over the next few years’, he began. I could hear papers being ruffled and what sounded like his assistant Lynn prompting him in the background. I started to feel like Alan was making some kind of pitch for a new television series and I was reminded of that incident in a restaurant with BBC Chief Commissioning Editor Tony Hayers from all those years ago:

Alan pitching 'high brow ideas that were sadly before their time' (his words) to Tony Hayers, Commissioning Editor with the BBC

And here's some video footage from that meeting:

https://youtu.be/X06g7_LHiGo

Alan then goes on: ‘Following their hopefully inevitable relegation this season, I will faithfully follow Norwich in their fight down in the Championship next season as they attempt to get back with the Premier League big boys. Norwich like trying to hang out with big boys and I want to enjoy that experience with them’. He paused and I could hear him snapping a comment at Lynn about the ‘inadvertently homoerotic wording’ of what she seemed to have written for him.

‘So what I’m proposing is that I will be there at the last few Norwich games this season, hanging around the stands and interviewing sad fans blubbering and crying, as they seem to do when relegated, but not getting to the point of taking their shirts off to display man-boobs, as they do in places like Newcastle and Sunderland (he chuckles as he pronounces these placenames using a rather generic northern English accent). Then the series will really get underway properly for the 2020-2021 football season, when Norwich have to battle their way back up to the Premier League’. 

At this stage, I find it hard to interrupt Alan, so I just let him talk.

‘I will attend all Norwich home games (assuming I get unfettered access to a corporate box where I can mix with local dignitaries, along with a generous appearance fee) and I may even attend a selection of the away games (weather and time permitting, travel and subsistence expenses to be covered fully by Norwich City FC). At the home games, I will introduce each match on the stadium public announcement system, possibly with some self-selected background fresh musical soft-rock accompaniment (e.g. ELO, Bee Gees or the ever reliable and vastly underrated Swedish outfit Abba). I will hold impromptu interviews with proud Norwich fans. I have the common touch, even with simple football folk, so this item should work a treat’. 

I hear another rustle of papers as it seems that Lynn is handing Alan some more reading material.

‘Then at half-time I will bring on a special celebrity guest and interview them in a mock-up of my Denton Abbey study, set in the centre-circle of the pitch. This will help keep the crowds calm and completely silent for the half-time break, preventing them from fighting or from shouting out those ghastly and often poorly rhyming football chants’.

For the half-time mini-chat-show with celebrity guests, Alan plans to 'strike a perfect balance between intellectual and, bearing in mind the audience, football-casual' (his words), conducted in a mock-up replica of his Denton Abbey study

‘Throughout the match, I will also occasionally come on to the public announcement system to shout words of encouragement at the Norwich lads when needed (e.g. just prior to kicking a penalty goal-shot). Likewise, I will lead the crowd in booing and hissing mercilessly at the opposition teams when they’re in similarly crucial field positions. I will thus become a kind of twelfth man for the team, giving them a, let's face it, much needed edge. A camera crew will monitor every second of this season long journey, nay odyssey, and we will then package it as a 12 part series for sale to the highest bidder; I'm talking Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. and I may consider mere terrestrials such as the BBC. The series will have some similarities to that charming little ‘Sunderland 'Til I Die’ documentary, but it will be more, well, middle class. It will be more intellectual and far less emotional - less football and man-boobs and more Partridge’.

And still he goes on:

‘If Norwich are promoted, then we will repeat the series in the Premier League campaign of 2021-2022, when Norwich are aiming for top class sports awards such as the Community Shield. But if Norwich continue in the Championship, or are relegated again, then I will just repeat the series wherever they are. Whatever happens, I will have guaranteed material for top class television every football season, forever’. There is a triumphal tone to his voice as he says the word ‘forever’ and I imagine that he is smiling broadly and expectantly, similar perhaps to the image below.