MODERN. BRITISH SPORT
What does sport mean in Modern Britain? At the elite level it’s another branch of showbusiness: the technological arms race of Formula 1, the image rights and astronomical salaries of the Premiership, the monied razzmatazz of the biggest rugby games and more. It all feels far removed from the days when George Orwell ruminated on his love of county cricket, ‘a game full of forlorn hopes and sudden dramatic changes of fortune.’
But dig a little deeper, and British sport is still a strange, wonderful world of amateur enthusiasms that tells you an awful lot about what’s good in this country. Every weekend, around 150,000 runners turn up in their local Park Run to hack around five kilometres with no prizes, medals or other incentives. Skate parks all over the country have turned what was once a marginalised, outsiders’ sport into a wholesome pastime for everyone from fearless school children to elder Gen X’ers with busted knees and vintage caps. Chess has had an unlikely revival via meet-ups like Knight Club that are part strategic gaming and part community networking. Hook Lane has done something similar for ten pin bowling, bringing hundreds of young Londoners together beneath the neon lights of Rowan’s Bowl in Finsbury Park. And back outside, the freezing canals and waterways host teams like Lea Rowing Club, where 6am starts are the norm as the rowers push out through the houseboats, mist and occasional aggro swan.
Solo sports like boxing thrive everywhere from railways arches and amateur clubs, to modern training facilities like South London’s Bronx Gym, with the fighters talking of the sense of purpose and family they find there, even when they end up sparring with the people they lean on every other day for support and guidance.Younger people have bucked the stereotype of screen-obsessed dullards and revived what were seen as dusty, dying strategy games like chess, setting up their own practice clubs, tournaments and long strategy-heavy evenings hunched over the checkerboard. Run-down corners of provincial industrial estates and derelict warehouses like Romford’s Rock & Boulder have been revived, redesigned and brought back to life as world class climbing centres by committed wall-scaling locals like Max Hearne. And if there isn’t even a space to climb like that, Brits will find their nearest vertical space and scale it for a parkour session.
This whole world shows Britain off at its best: people using their wits and initiative to come up with new challenges; real communities being built around the things that people love; a healthy love of competition mixed with the absurd. The spirit of Brian Glover dominating a penalty shoot-out in Kes, John Barnes unleashing his rapping skills in World in Motion, people’s champions from Barry McGuigan and Frank Bruno to Jimmy White. The Lionesses dancing on a table during a post-match press conference and that bloke who ran the London Marathon dressed as Big Ben and got wedged on the finishing line. Winning’s nice in sport, but it’s really not that important (and you can always exaggerate your prowess when you give everyone the post-match analysis, anyway). It’s an egalitarian place where you turn up, put the work in, and back your friends. It’s not just a boxing ring in south London, or a climbing wall in Essex, or a shed full of boats on a freezing morning: it’s Britain at its best, and where we can all come together. Get moving.
