James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
Again narrated by Jackie Stewart, his voice alternating between apprehension, expertise and holy pity for the damned men in the cockpits: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6eygHi26jQ] ..which is in stark contrast to this film, made only days later, that makes light, shall we say, of the danger and the risk the Nurburgring posed to the drivers of the day….
One of the most remarkable aspects of the current penalty shoot-out set-up is the way it transforms what has been up to that point a team game into an individual event. What’s more, it’s an individual event with perhaps the highest stakes in any sport. When your turn comes to step forward, you leave the…
At the risk of turning this into a Youtube site – but I don’t need any excuse to post this. Just dare tell me this isn’t fabulous: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEJtBb-Pfxs]
You wouldn’t necessarily know that an accident was in the offing from the opening minutes of this film of Le Mans 1955, let alone its sheer magnitude. I’m not sure that autre pays, autre moeurs quite covers it in this instance. Not Moss’s fault. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMDMJYcikt4] Here’s our hero at home:
..keeping just within the site remit, or near enough! First up, an extended, beautiful version of Joe Kittinger’s staggering 1960 skydive. Top Gear still has some way to go.. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMsL6Jt9VwQ] Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier – officially on behalf of the US armed forces, but I’m happy to classify this as sport: The magical…
..returns in just over a week. A great series, although I find Sam Tyler’s constant references to Bobby Charlton as a Manchester United player contrived (LoM is set in 1973, a bad year for United and the one in which Charlton retired and Denis Law left). And I just don’t believe his hero-worship of various…
Ignorance, cowardice, and for the exception to the rule, a glass ceiling. If he is proven right and a world-class performer lay wasted in the reserves of a club who were sinking deeper into relegation quicksand because his managers lacked the invention to make use of him, the shortcomings of certain English traditionalists will have…
Rumour has it that Steve McClaren will use the Spain friendly to continue his Grand Tour through the non-entities and also-rans of the Premier League. I don’t refer there to Barry, who, if included, will have earned his place for his recent genuinely international class showings, but to the likes of.. do I have to…
“Passion and Commitment” meet “Traditional Working Class Values”. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rbo__5f_28] Of course, I watched this kind of thing obsessively in the 1970s, absolutely agog and entirely unaware that there was anything ersatz about it. Disillusion was exemplary. But it’s given me a nose for the fake and the plastic, and this traditional-values stuff in football smells…
This film is where the Tour de France meets London to Brighton in Five Minutes, and rather encapsulates that old debate about courage versus foolhardiness. Which means it’s fun. Enjoy. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKgeCQGu_ug]