The British summer is littered with sporting occasions that are really no such thing. Ascot, Wimbledon, Henley, Lords, they’re all an excuse for a day out.
Far from the distractions of home, the Warner stand at Lords is a wonderful place to read the Sunday papers. I spent a day at Royal Ascot admiring hats and losing money, with only a cursory glance at the Racing Post. A friend of mine makes a point each year of quizzing his mother as she sets off for the Royal Regatta. Who does she fancy in The Princess Grace Challenge Cup? How are the British men’s fours shaping up for the Olympics? Of course she hasn’t a clue, but why should she?
Wimbledon is the worst of all – the fetishistic fascination with strawberries and cream, the incessant harping-on about heritage, the line judges dressed as (bad) Bertie Wooster impersonators, the faux blitz-spirit-infused camaraderie when it starts to rain. Come Wimbledon fortnight, friends you never suspected of having the remotest interest in tennis willingly queue all night for a glimpse of Centre Court and are all too eager to pontificate on the sudden reemergence of del Potro in the ATP top twenty and what it really means. Barely two months later they’re not keen for a wager on the Cincinnati Masters.
No harm is really done by these annual, fleeting associations with sport, except to sport itself. You don’t raise interest or participation by hosting an increasingly exclusive jamboree year after year, and these events undermine themselves by doing so. In the long run it’s the sport that suffers.
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