In an exciting development, I am thrilled to introduce you all to the very talented Lisa Davison today. She has been as swept up with the Olympics as I have, but has an interesting take on it all. I hope you all enjoy her guest post today. If you do, check her out on Twitter @LisaJaneDavison . If you'd like a taste of her excellent fiction, you can get your hands on her very creative prose response to Wendy Cope's 'After the Lunch' as part of the Ripple 2012 Anthology. And now, on to her Olympic ruminations.
Sinéad
***
As the warm glow of the Olympic Games
continues to pulse and talk of capturing that fuzzy feeling on a more permanent
basis buzzes around politicians and media, something about all this has started
to bother me: David Beckham.
I confess I love David Beckham. I didn’t
used to. Like millions of other football fans I remember cursing the guy for
his petulance at the 1998 World Cup match against Argentina and swearing I’d
never forgive him. It wasn’t so much that he got sent off as the fact that it
was against the team that inflicted such misery 12 years earlier when Maradona
invoked the ‘hand of God’ in order to score the winning goal. It still hurt and
Beckham’s red card for kicking out at Diego Simeone just rubbed salt in the wound.
What surprised everyone, though, was the
way in which Beckham handled himself in the aftermath. Instead of trying to
make excuses, he kept his head down and let his football do the talking. Within
a few short months, many of us had fallen in love with him all over again. No
matter who you supported, or more precisely how much you despised Manchester
United, the one thing many football fans could agree on was that Goldenballs,
as he would eventually become known, was generally an all-round good bloke and
a demon with a free kick.
So I don’t think anyone was terribly
surprised when Beckham began to play an increasingly important role for London
2012 – he was part of the delegation in Singapore when London’s successful bid
was announced back in 2005. And as an East London boy with a global fan base
and an unwavering passion for sport, he was an ideal candidate to become a
London 2012 international ambassador.
A lot of us also thought he was a
shoe-in for the Team GB football squad, not simply because of this role, but as
a mark of respect for his incredible career – he’s made 115 appearances for
England. He’s certainly not the fastest player out there and not always the
greatest, but on the evidence of previous World Cup campaigns, the bloke plays
his socks off. He also draws a crowd like no other footballer I can think of.
The London 2012 motto is ‘inspire a generation’ and I’m in no doubt that
Beckham is one of those great athletes who has every right claim to have done
just that.
When the news came that Stuart Pearce
had not selected him as one of the ‘over-age’ players that you’re allowed to
have in your Olympic squad, Beckham pulled out the trademark humility saying, "Naturally
I am very disappointed, but there will be no bigger supporter of the team than
me. I would have been honoured to have been part of this unique Team GB squad.
Like everyone, I will be hoping they can win the gold."
Lord Coe read the national mood and
quickly began hinting at a spot in the Opening Ceremony. And I confess, as Beckham
came tripping down the Thames, giving Daniel Craig a run for his money as ‘Bond
on a boat’, I, along with the rest of the merry crowd in our local alehouse,
raised a cheer.
The irony of course is the football team
came nowhere near winning gold, losing to South Korea on penalties on the same
night that Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah were all busy rewriting
British sporting history. It’s hard to say whether Beckham would have made that
much of a difference but it was an interesting moment that for a nation
obsessed with the ‘beautiful game’, barely an eyelid was bat at the team’s
exit.
The man is a sporting legend and well on
his way to reaching that peculiar British status known as ‘national treasure’,
alongside the likes of Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley. But here’s the thing –
David Beckham is currently appearing in Sainsbury’s advert as a Paralympic
ambassador. He’s not the only athlete in the ad – it also stars a series of
British Paralympic hopefuls including cyclist Jon-Allan Butterworth, basketball players Helen Turner and Claire
Strange and swimmer Ellie Simmonds – and he’s only in
it for a few seconds at the end to tell us that Sainsbury’s is proud sponsors
of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. He’s also a face of the supermarket’s
Active Kids campaign, along with Ellie Simmonds.
Beckham could probably sell coals to
Newcastle such is his brand value and Sainsbury’s knows this. I’m sure they’re
thinking someone of Beckham’s star quality will inspire more people to watch
the Paralympics and get involved in sport – be they able-bodied or otherwise.
But the fact that we have to rely on an
able-bodied athlete to tell us how brilliant our Paralympic athletes are, how
awe-inspiring their tales of adversity and courage, sticks in my throat. I’d
much rather hear that straight from the horse’s mouth. Simmonds appears in the
ad and on the Sainsbury’s website, but her image sits below Beckham’s and she
has no speaking role in the ad.
I’m proud of the fact that London is
hosting the Games this year and I’m genuinely excited that Paralympic tickets might
sell out for the first time in their 52-year history. Sport is sport and it’s
exciting to watch no matter the back story. And there is something very special
about the way the Olympics and Paralympics are reigniting this nation’s passion
for sport beyond 11 men running around on a football pitch.
I’m in no doubt that Beckham’s career
has earned him the right to be a part of our collective warm glow and he has
more credentials than most to be encouraging the Great British Public to get
out there and get active, but I just can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that
we shouldn’t always have to take an able-bodied athlete’s word for it.
Lisa Davison
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