BackLeicester City: Full throttle through the finish line
The club's Premier League triumph is the classic sports underdog story, only multiplied many times over
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You sports watchers who follow this column, all two of you, will by now have absorbed plenty about Leicester City winning the English Premier League (EPL). The possibly sacrilegious thing is that I don’t much like football and don’t follow the various leagues—yet even I have read more than my share about their fairytale season. (There’s a reason for that, which I will get to.)
Like: “9 of Leicester’s Best Moments", and their “Impossible, Anomalous Season", and comparisons to other great sports upsets, and remarks about how we will never see another season like this. There were even occasional lines on how to pronounce “Leicester" (“Lester", but you probably knew that), now that it’s become a household name.
It’s really the classic sports underdog story, only multiplied many times. I mean, we had Lukas Rosol knocking Rafael Nadal out of Wimbledon in 2012. Or James “Buster" Douglas defeating Mike Tyson in 1990. Or Kenya beating the West Indies in the 1996 cricket World Cup. Or the 1980 “Miracle on Ice" that Americans so savour, when their team of amateurs edged a powerful USSR team at the Winter Olympics.
All unexpected, jaw-dropping upsets—but different from Leicester’s title. Each of those happened on a given day, in one match (or bout, in Tyson’s case). In contrast, the EPL is a league championship, meaning teams accumulate points through the season. The team that have the most points at the end win. Sure, a team might pull off one unexpected, jaw-dropping upset on a given day, but that won’t win them the championship.
To finish at the top of the table, Leicester has had to perform through an entire season, over several months and dozens of games.
Which means they were probably seen as a team good enough to contend for the title at least several weeks ago, if not months. Which also means that to understand the magnitude of this accomplishment, you have to understand where they were before the season began. For that, one measure may say it all: a year ago, if you wanted to place a bet on Leicester winning the EPL, sports bookies were offering odds of 5,000 to 1.
Compare that to Buster Douglas: before they fought, he was listed at 42-1 to beat Mike Tyson.
There’s really no parallel in sports to the sustained excellence a winner of a league like the EPL must keep up through a season. I believe a lot of that excellence is mental: the self-belief, the strength you need even just to turn up for every match, ready to play hard and aiming to win. More than likely, Leicester did approach their games this way. Otherwise, they could not have won as often as they did.
That story of commitment every time you go out to play is one more classic sports story. It’s why the greats know never to let up in intensity. It’s why they know to play each minute, each point, each session, each game, as if it is the most important, or the last.
Many years ago, I read an interview with a champion runner—Paavo Nurmi or Milkha Singh or Michael Johnson, I forget now—in which he said he always imagined the finish line as 10 metres beyond where it actually is. This meant that as he neared the line, and no matter where his competitors were, he would not even think of slowing down. It meant that as he ran through the finish line, he would be churning at full throttle.
Perhaps, all good runners think that way, I don’t know. But fierce focus like that produces stellar sporting performances. I’m sure Leicester’s winning season was no exception. If you think about it, it’s why we mortals find top-flight sports so compelling.
Fairly or not, we expect that kind of unyielding commitment from sports stars. After all, without it, it might as well be me running desultorily around the track and struggling to make it to the finish line. Not a spectacle you would find particularly inspiring.
It’s also why we mortals are so disturbed when we run across athletes who lose that focus, deliberately or not. One such made the news, ironically enough, just two days after Leicester’s triumph.
This was Bernard Tomic, a young tennis talent from Australia. Tomic has made a name for himself in tennis circles, though not really for his undoubted skills at the game. For example, John McEnroe accused him of “tanking" a match—deliberately seeking to lose it—at the US Open a few years ago. In 2014, he contrived to lose a match in, get this, 28 minutes: 6-0, 6-1 to the Finn Jarkko Nieminen.
There’s more in that vein. And on 4 May, he was playing the Italian Fabio Fognini at a tournament in Madrid. Outplaying Tomic, Fognini had reached match point. As he got ready to serve, Tomic turned his racquet around in his hands so that he was holding it by its head, the handle out in front.
Clearly he had no intention of even trying to play the upcoming point. Clearly he hadn’t heard the runner’s remark about the finish line that left such an impression on a decided non-athlete like me. Sure enough, Fognini’s serve flashed past him, and Tomic simply walked up to the net to shake hands.
Whatever you think of that, Tomic actually managed to compound his folly when speaking to the media later. “I don’t care about that match point," he said. “Would you care if you were 23 and worth over $10 million?"
Hey, Bernard, I will say just two things.
One, if that’s your thinking, the $10 million will be gone before you know it, and you will wish you had cared. Because nobody else will.
Two, I’m glad you pulled this stunt this week. It actually made me, no fan of football, appreciate more fully the magnitude of Leicester City’s achievement.
So, thanks for that.
Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Final Test: Exit Sachin Tendulkar.
His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun
Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com
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