Most of those in my Hall of Fame have been footballers but surprise, surprise not many from recent years. I am sorry to say that there is little respect and admiration for them because of their huge pay packets and profiles which are more about their off pitch lives, loves and excesses than for skill and courage in open play.
My first footie hero was Peter Osgood who played for Chelsea in the 1960's and 70's , a lanky, athletic player but clever and crafty in attack and a scorer of some of the greatest goals in what I call the black and white era of the game.
I was a collector of football cards and one of the first albums that I saved up for along with the packets of stickers was for the Mexico World Cup in 1970.
There was, and I can still feel now, that certain excitement about spending an old sixpence worth of my pocket money or the newly introduced decimal equivalent on a new packet with its image of Booby Moore being carried aloft on the shoulders of the victorious England Team from just four years earlier.
The realisation that other nations played football was quite a shock.
I soon switched my allegiance to Pele and his exotic and magical Brazil team mates. If the English game was black and white then the different version played by Brazil was positively multicolour.
I enjoyed most sports and reckoned myself to be a good runner in the sprint and up to 800 metres. There was a big step up in sporting activity at Secondary education level from juniors. Out went the bean bags, hoops, spoon and egg and in came a proper running track, sharp javelins and dusty, sand and dog mess filled long-jump pits.
1976 was Olympic Games year with the host country Canada. I was determined to watch the spectacle avidly.
The main stadium was in Montreal and I soon became aware of a new sporting hero in the persona of the Cuban runner, Alberto Juantorena.
He was of striking appearance well, in my opinion, being even lankier and more athletic than Peter Osgood and complimented by long sideburns and a mop of almost Afro style hair.
It was clear that he had natural ability to move with power and speed and not, as many commentators alluded to, because of the adoption of the shady, drug fuelled programmes on which other Communist countries appeared to be relying upon in track, field, gym and boxing ring in order to perform to medal standard.
In his younger years he had been destined for a basketball career having been selected for streaming into that sport but a Polish Coach in Cuba encouraged Juantorena to take things seriously and pursue some initial promise at the distance of 400m on the track. His progress was quite rapid under a dedicated training regime reaching the 400 metre semi finals at Munich in 1972, a gold medal at the 1973 World University Games (400m) and also the Pan American Games in the run up (!!!!) to the Montreal Summer Olympics.
It was not until the year of the Games that he discovered a talent for the 800 metre distance. The intensity of competing in heats for two gruelling events in Montreal tested him to his limits but he won through to take the Gold Medal in both and only three days apart.
I remember watching the spectacle of the well built Cuban trouncing the opposition. He became not only the first non-English speaker to be victorious in the 800m but also set a new low altitude World Record in the 400 metres.
Heroic performances indeed and thereafter I adopted his high stepping running style when doing my usual circuits around the housing estate where I lived, aged 13. There the comparison ended. If only I had been able to get hold of an Afro and stick on sideburns I would have, in my fertile imagination, been the spitting image of the athlete known as El Caballo-The Horse.
Alberto Juantorena is still fit and strong today at the age of 65. His career at his peak was cut short by injury from being flat-footed, controversy and a political boycott by Cuba of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
No comments:
Post a Comment