Remember the story? Patrice Dockery won the Dublin women's mini-marathon. She was presented with her prizes, a Waterford Crystal trophy and a voucher for a pair of runners. Very nice, except Patrice Dockery is a wheelchair athlete. "I wrote back to them asking if I could change the runners for something else," she said, "but I haven't heard anything yet." True, that degree of stupefying ignorance pales in comparison with the wicked comments on the Paralympics that have occupied our thoughts all week. But assuming, if we can make that assumption, that they are the disturbed views of one person, in the long run you'd have to imagine that it's the wider scale degree of ignorance and indifference that proves to be more harmful to the lives of the disabled, whether they be athletes or not.
In her interview with Johnny Watterson of The Irish Times last year, Dockery spoke of her struggles to gain the funding she needed to prepare for Sydney, leading Watterson to conclude that "Corporate Ireland simply doesn't have the stomach for wheelchair athletes". That being the case, Dockery and her fellow Paralympics competitors must be somewhat amused by the sudden interest most of us are taking in their existence and the talk of "corporate Ireland" withdrawing its advertising from The Sunday Independent, the paper that published those views.
And a sudden interest it is, for most of us. Me? Well, I'd watch two flies crawling up a telly screen so long as they were competing against each other, were trying to beat their personal best, were sponsored by Nike and there was half-time expert analysis of their contest. But did I tune into the nightly highlights from the Paralympics on television before the current debate erupted? No, not once.
Too busy watching the Premiership, the Champions League and any other glamorous, hyped-to-the-gills, sparkly, razzmatazz contest I could find. Yes, yes, the Paralympics are a whole lot closer to the original Olympic ideal than the laughably commercialised drug-fuelled hyperbole-fest that the able-bodied version has become, but damn it, the "corporate world" ain't interested and if they're not why should you and me be? Let's face it, if they ain't being paid at least 50 grand a week, they ain't worth watching, right? Why? Well, I reckon it's because like most of my fellow couch sporty spuds I've been seduced by elitist sport.
If you don't make a football talk like Rivaldo you're not worth watching ("the National League is rubbish, eh?"). If you don't accelerate around a bend like Michael Johnson you're an also-ran ("Our Olympics shower were an embarrassment, weren't they?"). If you can't putt, drive and chip like Tiger Woods you're a worthless no-hoper ("That Keith Nolan is a useless tosser, isn't he?"). If you're incapable of slam-dunking like Shaquille O'Neal then you have no right to appear on my television screen. Which, of course, you won't because television (like much of the media these days), only takes a shine to the sporting elite. The channels that don't have the money to win the rights to show us Rivaldo, Johnson and Woods occasionally fill their air-time showing us the sporting non-elite and we all laugh and ridicule them. RTE's Sports Stadium? RIP. Because we slagged them for not showing us the big boys.
"If you're not a winner does that make you a loser?" Father Peter McVerry asked on Questions and Answers last Monday night, during the discussion on the week's controversy. An unequivocal "of course not" resounded from my armchair. . . "but". I thought again, thought back to how I felt about the "failures" of our athletes at last month's Olympics, all the cheap wisecracks, and I changed my answer, mumbling an embarrassed "yes". Indeed, if you're not a winner you are a loser.
And then I remembered meeting an old pal in the press room at Lansdowne Road after the recent football international against Estonia. He was livid, barely able to contain his fury after hearing a section of the crowd giving dog's abuse to Niall Quinn during the game. Quinn had had three or four good chances to score but didn't take them so these lads on the terraces took it upon themselves to question his parentage.
Quinn is one of life's good guys. His commitment to his sporting cause, whether he happens to be wearing a Sunderland or Ireland shirt at the time, could never, ever be questioned. Granted, you'd never confuse Rivaldo with Quinn in a footballing skills identity parade but, one doubts whether the Brazilian has ever discharged the same quantity of sweat that Quinn gives up in the course of an average 90 footballing minutes. And damn it, that should be enough to satisfy you, me and the lads on the terraces. After all, the lad can't give any more than everything, right?
Mmm, truth is there's an ugliness and nastiness on the terraces these days, no matter what the sport, no matter that we're the lovely, inherently decent Irish. . "My arse," as the Da in the Royle Family would put it. Remember the days we cheered Irish full-back Dave Langan and his sweat-drenched jersey at Lansdowne and Dalymount? Langan was no Roberto Carlos, but we adored him because we knew he'd run himself in to the ground to make that tackle. And that was all we asked for.
Now? First is gold, second is nowhere. If you're not a winner you're a loser. And if you're not on Sky Sports you're nothing. C'mon, time to have a think. Time for you and me to concede that your best will always be good enough, even if it's desperately uncool to admit it. And time for you and me to stop slagging the unsponsored non-elite. Nothing shameful about the pursuit of sporting excellence, but nothing shameful about missing out on those lofty peaks so long as you gave it your best shot.
