When we played quite badly at football – I’m not saying you and I, who have always played badly at almost everything, but those who wore the national team shirt – we had to talk about all the merit that surrounds the sports practice of those who have no talent . For this reason, the flag of our idols in shorts was for decades “the fury”, that is to say, the point of honor, sacrifice, surrender, determination and an infinite number of synonyms that, summarized, meant that, when talent or technique don’t adorn you, perhaps you can reverse the misfortune by sweating the bacon.
As a game elevated to industry, sport is completely irrelevant in terms of real-world impact and this allows it to become a dramaturgy of a thousand batuses. It is its irrelevant condition that gives it such importance, which is why it can be experienced as a passion or as a delight, as an epic (which is the majority choice of the “enthusiasts”) or as a lyric (where the “fans” “). In epic terms, one militates in certain colors, shirts or flags, to the exclusion of any other consideration, and does so forever. In lyrical terms, one subscribes to a way of understanding a sport, to an aspiration of virtue in the mastery of the game and, of course, there is no other militancy than excellence, the formal prodigy.
Rafa Nadal, in whose tennis – not without spells – there has always been more determination than fantasy, more epic than lyrical, has tended to announce that he has broken again and that he will not compete in the Australian Open. It remains to be seen whether he chooses to fall like a gladiator, standing in the arena of June, or rather surrenders to the evidence that his last luster is a struggle against time and death – against aging, in a word in a more prosaic way – punctuated by boisterous press conferences where they don’t talk about tennis but traumatology.
In a culturally Catholic country, which measures moral virtue in suffering and counts dignity in sackcloth, the figure of this recumbent Christmas, this Saint Sebastian of the injuries, subjugates it. His painful ascent to Golgotha ??equals in veneration with the painful images of Salcillo, of which the tennis player has become a tableau vivant that arouses as much devotion or more than when he bit the most beautiful chalices.
There was an award-winning TV spot in which a man dressed in pink sequined tights, slipped on a pair of ice skates and jumped onto the ice ready to do a grand jetée when suddenly a dozen seasoned hockey players appeared behind him . The image would freeze before he was caught and an insurance company’s name would be superimposed. The lyric, condemned to succumb under the boot of the epic. I remember that skater smiling every time I see some crazy tennis player execute the beauty and lightness of the one-handed backhand. But don’t pay much attention to me, I’m not very Catholic.
