2000? How was it for you? Tiger Woods set the tone did he not? All Tiger Woods, all the time. Enough for everybody. Except Tiger. Tiger won everywhere with a majesty which was unprecedented but he sang dumb on Nike employment practices in the Third World and then scabbed on striking actors to make a car ad in Canada before rounding off the year by letting it be known his unimaginable income is, frankly, insufficient. Tiger would like a bigger slice of that TV pie please. Eurotrash caught the mood. Richard "I Am Absolutely Innocent" Virenque, who denied for two years he had permitted anything stronger than an Anadin to pass his lips, cheerfully admitted to a courtroom that, well, he was gobbling the gear just the same as all the other boys. Quelle surprise! Willy Voets, whom Virenque had coldly sold down the Swannee River, stood and embraced Virenque.
By year's end we had a new word to add to the lexicon of cheating: Actovegin. "I am absolutely innocent," said Lance Armstrong as authorities investigated why his team car had so much Actovegin in the glove compartment. Respect, too, to CJ Hunter, trundling around Europe in the grand style. Hey, if it's Tuesday, I must be testing positive in Oslo. What a touch to come to an Olympic press conference and weep before the media lowlifes. And bravo to his lovely wife, Marion Jones, who had the chutzpah to launch her "drive for five" and then entertain us by suggesting she never noticed anything different about her bad-tempered, souped-up chappie. He's just a big ole testosterone bear . . .
Merlene Ottey was forcibly inserted on to the Jamaican track team. Ouch! You know, once upon a time we found Merlene inspiring.
Robbie Keane without a full season of Premiership football under his belt was whisked away to Internazionale. All's well that ends well. He finally found a decent home and we must wait to see how being transferred for more than £30 million before you are 21 years old affects him.
Hopefully he will be untouched. In Lisbon one night, Luis Figo, the most expensive footballer in the world, spent more time talking with Irish journalists than did the Irish team collectively. And that was on a good night. Genetic scientists are said to be reaching the breakthrough stage in their work on the first non-surly Irish player of the post-Charlton era. Wasn't their a time when to be young, gifted and rich meant being happy as well?
At home, the Gaelic Players Association became the first people ever to attempt to gatecrash GAA Congress, therein to sample the pious grooves. Relations between top players and the media became so distant and joyless a hack would have a better chance of interviewing Lord Lucan between the months of July and October. Speaking of the disappeared, that odd woman from the Sindo made it a touchstone of all virtue here in the land of the saints and scholars to announce piously that all paralympians are a great wee bunch altogether; which is a pity, because any event that includes an entirely phoney Spanish basketball team, 10 juiced weightlifters and athletes tying piano wire around their scrotums or clamping their catheters in order to get their central nervous system illegally kick-started deserves closer examination than a quick pat on the head allows. Kevin Keegan spat his dummy out. Ronnie Delany and Michelle Smith schmoozed with Marion Finucane, shiny, happy, champions all. Inge de Bruijn metamorphosed.
Ian Thorpe felt obliged to offer to have his blood frozen for future examination. When we heard that we didn't even know what Actovegin was, but it seemed like a good idea anyway. The Irish Olympic effort dissolved into all-out civil war. Watch this space for news of the tribunal. The FAI deployed blue smoke and mirrors to convince itself it needed a big stadium with a roof and an oppressive mortgage over it more than it needed life itself. In a moving humanitarian gesture, An Taoiseach, The People's Champion, Wearer of Anoraks and Drinker of Bass, The Little Flower of Drumcondra, insisted he would be building his BertieBowl even if only to stage three rugby games a year. Give us your huddled, prawn sandwich-eating masses . . .
Mike Tyson announced that he would like to eat Lennox Lewis's children. Paul Ingle almost left us. Wayne McCullough sped through the warning lights. The NBA airbrushed the jewellery and tattoos from the picture of a black player gracing the cover of its official magazine; the same player, Allen Iverson, released a record apparently endorsing hate crimes against gays.
What else? The US Olympic Committee's former anti-doping head, Wade Exum, launched a legal action against the USOC alleging consistent attempts to suppress positive tests . . . the Irish Amateur Boxing Association refused to release the name of one of its members who tested positive for drugs . . . two NFL stars were charged with separate murders . . . NHL star Marty McSorley received a record ban after assaulting Chris Brashear on the ice; McSorley said that his axeman's swing at Brashear was merely intended to provoke a fight . . . cricket was blown apart by a match- fixing scandal. The rivalry between southside rugby schools in Dublin spilled over into something more ugly than songs about bestiality . . . Dianne Modahl lost her case, alleging that she had been treated unfairly by a British athletics federation disciplinary hearing . . . Marie Jo Perec fled the Olympics claiming intimidation . . .
There was more, lots more, but my head isn't right this morning and this is just a scoop from the top of it. 2001? Well sure, here's to sport retaining its lovely, uncomplicated innocence in these crazy times.
