My Sports Heroes
Trying to write a more positive post than the ones I've been writing lately (it's the end of April 2023 as I start drafting).
I was awake at 5:30 this morning, and turned on the TV to discover that I'd just missed the broadcast of the Baku Grand Prix and Sergio Perez had beaten his teammate Max Verstappen. I gave a little cheer, and was disappointed to miss the race. I like Perez as a driver and he's doing well this year in a good car by Red Bull. I am not a Verstappen fan: I think he's a bully on the circuits. When I choose what athletes to be a fan of, I go for intellect, self-control, and artistry. I preferred Alain Prost to Ayrton Senna. I was a Roger Federer fan back before he started winning championships.
Now, let's pause to pick apart some of the implications of those preferences.
Why, you may be asking yourself, is Nicky a fan of F1 motor racing when she's a committed environmentalist and F1 is so wasteful of land and resources, and burns so much fossil fuel? The answer goes back to 1977, when Niki Lauda was world champion: I was so impressed that someone named Niki could be world champion at anything (I was used to people treating Nicky as a name denoting cuteness and softness--it was a name many North American people gave poodles when I was a child) that I began watching race coverage. And I got hooked. Not only was Niki smart and calm and determined, he came back from horrendous injury to reclaim greatness.
In my years living in basement suites during university and my first years teaching sessional jobs, I had a twelve-inch black-and-white television, and from March to November on Sunday mornings before church I'd be watching race coverage.
The other sports I like to watch, televised or in person, are tennis, figure skating, diving, gymnastics, curling, freestyle aerials skiing, and synchronized swimming. I don't like team sports, having had some pretty lousy experiences being forced to play them in school, and I'm not a fan of track sports for the same reason. And the individual sports I do like are ones where you need a combination of physical skills, intellect, and artistry. I may not have much in the way of athletic physical skills personally, but I pride myself on my intellectual and artistic capabilities, so I guess these sports give me the pleasure of fellow feeling and vicarious achievement.
Back to the implications of my being a fan of F1, because it's a sport that is not female-friendly and is very white dominated. Yes, a lot of my sports heroes are white men. I also put Martina Navratilova on the list, and Kim Yuna, and 脡milie Heymans, but there are a lot of white men. This is partly because television and other media show us more men's sports than women's...sadly, the program guide on my TV still lists " tennis" and "women's tennis." Even sports where men and women compete as equals, for example equestrian show jumping, tend to give more airtime and celebrity to male competitors: how many Canadians would recognize Ian Millar's name versus Gail Greenough's?
If I were able to influence sports coverage (TV and online), I鈥檇 say 鈥渕ore doubles tennis, please.鈥� I love watching doubles (mixed, women鈥檚, men鈥檚). It鈥檚 an event where you need speed, accuracy, and brains more than just physical power. I鈥檓 not a fan of the kinds of singles matches described as 鈥渟lugfests.鈥� And doubles is a fun event for spectators to watch, often more interesting than singles.
Let鈥檚 see, what else should I tell you about my sports heroes? Do you know about Gary Beacom? He was a fabulous Canadian figure skater, inventive, quirky, somewhat temperamental. He shaved the leather off the sides of his skating boots to get deeper edges and lower to the ice. He experimented with wearing skates on his hands as well as his feet. He sometimes rubbed the judges the wrong way, but he was great in professional ice shows. In 1984 he not only competed in the Olympics but also graduated from U of Toronto with a degree in Physics and Philosophy.
I saw Beacom on tour with Stars on Ice (I think it was in Montreal around 1990?). In one number he came on in a black body suit that also covered his head and face, skated across the middle of the rink, and turned a ninety-degree corner just before the boards to open the routine. He looked like something humanly impossible. Beacom went on to be a choreographer. I think he should be remembered and celebrated more! There鈥檚 not a lot of video of his work online, mostly a clip of a 70-second spin filmed when he was in his thirties. I wish there was more鈥擨 know he made a couple of films with then partner Gia Guddat.