Memorable Experiences
Following on from Tim Welch's excellent article in the last issue, I thought I'd offer my armchair guide to memorable experiences.
This doesn't mean that I have never watched sports events live, but mostly these have been football matches, and primarily QPR football matches. Now much as I would love to regale you with my recollections of all the QPR games I have attended, I felt this might not be the most interesting thing for most of you to read. Suffice to say that my support has taken me to every London team's ground, and up and down the country from Grimsby to Portsmouth. I also went to Wembley for our League Cup Final (1967) and our FA Cup Final (1982). Apart from football, I have been to Twickenham a couple of times (just down the road from me) to see the Army v Navy and England v The Barbarians (this year).
So although not a great live sports attendee, I am an avid armchair fan and as a Sky Sports subscriber, I have a lot to watch! So here in chronolgical order are my Top 5 TV sporting moments. All of these are from memory, so some of the facts may not be 100% accurate, but I felt that if I had to check my facts, then the events couldn't have been that memorable! I'm sure readers will correct me where I get it wrong.
Apologies to those non UK readers, but I'm sure that you can understand my bias in my sporting memories.
1964
Tokyo
Olympics Ann Packer winning the
Gold medal in the women's 800 metres -
Televised sport was
quite a novel thing in the
early 60's, and I can't remember whether I watched this
live or as a recording. It was certainly in
wonderful monochrome. Ann Packer
(GB) was married to Robbie Brightwell (GB), and he had
gone to the Olympics as a strong contender for a
gold medal (400 metres or
400 metres hurdles - told you my memory might fail me)
but came away without a medal at all. Ann's race
was after Robbie's event,
but she was certainly not one of the favourites.
Coming into the last bend she had several athletes
in front of her, but suddenly she
came off the bend at great speed and started to overhaul
the leading runners in the home straight and got
to the front to take the
gold medal. David Coleman was almost beside himself at this
stage in the commentary box. Having won the race,
she went to the side
of the track to be hugged by hubbie Robbie. As an aside it
might seem incredible now, but in 1964 the 800
metres was the longest
track event allowed for women!
1981
The Headingley Test Botham's
(and Willis') test England beat
Australia - With
apologies to our Australian readers. For those of
us in England this
was one of the most incredible cricket matches we
had ever witnessed. England were 1-0 down in the
series, and
facing certain defeat in this match at Headingley. They
had to follow on and were struggling to even make
Australia bat again. Then
Botham came to the crease. Having nothing to lose (except
the match) he started chancing his arm and hitting
out at everything.
With, it has to be said, a fair degree of luck he started to
rattle up the runs. He and Graham Dilley put on
over a hundred for either
the 7th or 8th wicket. I have read that when Dilley joined Botham
at the crease, Botham said to him 'there's no
point hanging around
here, just hit everything'. Well they did just that. Botham made
a massive hundred, and when England were all out,
Australia needed
about 120 to win. Even at this point, Australia were still firm
favourites (although allegedly Dennis Lillee and
Rodney Marsh had
thought differently when England were batting, and put money on
England to win at 500-1). But they hadn't reckoned
on Bob Willis
bowling his heart out. I have always thought that he must feel a bit miffed
at this being called Botham's test. Admittedly
without
Botham, Australia would have won by an innings, but even after Botham England
still had to bowl them out for a very low score.
Which as most people know, they did, with Bob taking 8 for something. England levelled
the series, and went on to win the Ashes, with
more outstanding performances from Botham and the team.
1985
World Snooker Final Dennis
Taylor beats Steve Davis - I
guess that Snooker is most popular in the United
Kingdom, so a lot of you
won't have seen or know about this match. In the
early 80's Steve Davis was king of the snooker
world. He had won the World title 2
or 3 times (memory gone again), and was considered
alomst unbeatable at the Crucible in Sheffield,
where the World Championships
were held each year. His opponent Dennis Taylor, was a
bit longer in the tooth (he had been runner up in
the late 70's) and was
expected to get beaten quite easily. I have to admit that
because I thought the game was likely to be a
walkover, and I didn't
particularly like Steve Davis at the time (he's more interesting now
though), I didn't watch the start of the match. I
kept up to date
via Teletext and it soon became apparent that Steve would walk the match.
He took a 7-1 lead (I think) in the first session,
and that
seemed to be that. Taylor fared better in the second session, and going
into Sunday had an outside chance of catching
Davis, although
it would have to be The best fightback ever in a Final, for him to do so. But
suddenly during the Sunday afternoon session,
Taylor was
winning more frames than Davis, and was slowly catching up. I started to
watch more and more of the game, and by the
evening
session I was glued to the TV. Could the impossible happen? I obviously can't
remember the exact scores, but it got to either
15-15 or
17-17. The World Final is a long game spread over two days and it was either the
best of 31 or the best of 35. By the time of the
deciding frame, it was about midnight (evening sessions normally end about 10 pm.) The
BBC carried on live coverage into the early
hours
of Monday morning. As was To be
expected, the final frame was a tense affair and
ended up as a total safety battle, with lots
of
reds sitting on the top cushion. Gradually they were cleared and each player had
chances to wrap up the frame. But the tension
was getting to both of them, even the ultra cool Steve Davis. The reds were cleared and
it came down to the colours. Dennis Taylor
was at the table, and again excuse my memory, he had a chance to win by doubling the
black into the middle pocket, but he missed.
Davis then tried a safety shot, but left a difficult black for Taylor to win the match. He
lined up the shot, but missed by some
distance.
The black ball came to rest not far from the top cushion, and all Davis had to do was pot
it to become World Champion.
As the saying goes,
99 times out of a hundred, he would have done just that. But the 100th time was the
World Final and to gasps of
amazement from the
crowd, he missed! This left Taylor with a comparatively easy pot to become World
Champion. One can only
imagine how he must have
felt as he stepped up to the table. He lined up the shot...........took his
time..........and connected with the
white
ball..............................it made contact
with the black ball which sailed into the pocket! Taylor
was World Champion at
about 1.30am on Monday
morning! The TV audience at the time was one of the biggest for a sporting event in
England, certainly for
one at 1.30am in the
morning!
1995 World Athletics
Championships Jonathan Edwards
breaks the world record and wins gold
- I am
a great athletics fan and enjoy
watching the major championships, especially when
there is a British interest. Jonathan Edwards is
the greatest triple jumper Great
Britain has ever produced. In 1993 he had won a
bronze medal at the World Championships, and in
1995 he was unbeaten as he went
into the World Championships. He was the favourite
to win the gold medal, but favourites don't always
win (as he was to find out at
the Olympics in 1996, but that's another story - he
took Gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000). The
final of the competition was in the
afternoon, and for some reason that I can't
remember I was at home. I tuned in to watch the
event and waited for Jonathan to make
his first jump. He may even have been the first to
jump in the whole competition. He was an extremely
fluent runner and an explosive
jumper. He started his run, and it looked good. He
hit the board perfectly and soared through the
air. It was an enormous jump, and
he looked back anxiously to see what colour flag was
showing. It was white. Now for the distance. He
had jumped 18.16m. He had
become the first man in history to jump further than 18m,
so a new world record had been set. It also seemd
as if he had killed the
competition stone dead, and won himself a first Gold medal.
Surely no-one else would clear 18m. However
the new world record only
stood for 20 minutes, until Jonathan jumped again! On his
second jump he cleared 18.29m, another world
record. He became the first
man to jump 60 feet! I don't think he jumped again in the
competition, and took the gold medal with ease.
The excitement of watching
those two jumps has stayed with me, and I can still picture
them in my head. As close to athletic perfection
as you could get, all in the
space of 20 minutes.
2000
Sydney Olympics 2000 Men's
Coxless Fours Redgrave's 5th
Gold Medal - Those
of us who watched the Atlanta Olympics and
heard
those famous words from Steve Redgrave about
shooting him if he ever went near a boat again,
wondered whether his decision to go
again at Sydney, was one row too far (well I did,
anyway). Nobody had won 5 Gold medals at
consecutive Olympics before, so the
temptation must have been great. But rowing is one
of the most demanding sports physically, and he
wasn't getting any younger. The
build up was not perfect, as one of the crew, Tim
Foster got injured in the build up to Sydney, and
had to be replaced by Ed Goode.
Once Tim was fit again, the decision had to be
made whether to re-instate him or leave Ed in the
boat. It must have been a tough one
for the coach, but Tim was re-instated. It must
have been devastating for Ed, who did then switch
to the coxless pairs, but failed to
win a medal
(however, he did win Gold at Greece this year in
the coxless fours). The final itself took place at
about 12 midnight GMT,
and I suspect the TV audience was quite large. I find
watching rowing quite compelling, especially the
side on view, where you tend to
end up moving from left to right in your seat to try and
propel the boat along (Ah, just me then). There
were some good crews in the
final and this wasn't going to be a pushover. The race got
underway, and the GB boat did what it usually did
and went into the lead.
Their normal plan was to build up momentum early and
break the other crews. They maintained their lead
through 500m, then
1,000m, then 1,500m. But suddenly it seemed that the other
crews were gaining......Their philosophy and
tactics were to do what
they had to do, and not worry about how much they won by, as long
as they won. But come on lads, this was getting
too close! I'm sure
I can't have been the only person who was jumping up and down on the
sofa and screaming at the TV for them to make one
more push,
and take the gold. Then suddenly Matthew Pinsent called for one last
effort, and you then knew that they were going to
do it. It was
still extremely close on the line, but GB hung on to take the gold, and
give Steve Redgrave his 5th Gold medal. Then the
emotion of the
moment took over and Matthew Pinsent clambered over either James
Cracknell or Tim Foster to get to Steve Redgrave
and give him a
big manly hug. He just about did this, befre tumbling head first into the
water. A magic moment.
So there you have it. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my top 5 armchair moments, and that you feel inspired to send me your most memorable sporting experiences for inclusion in ERR.