AS I SEE IT COLUMN: The agony of defeat

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2023 (521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sports fans of a certain vintage will remember the iconic opening of ABC Television’s “Wide World of Sports.” It featured legendary broadcaster and journalist Jim McKay narrating as we see video clips of a wide variety of sports.

In that show’s 60 second opening, McKay and the ABC writers capture the true essence of sport with the timeless line, “the thrill of victory….and the agony of defeat.” As we hear McKay say the word “agony” under a music bed that perfectly captures what impending doom and agony sounds like, we see video of a ski jumper slipping off the jumping platform and literally flying into the crowd.

We see more sports video while McKay then utters the core tenet of sports: “The human drama of athletic competition.” (For the younger sports fans reading this, type “ABC Wide World of Sport intro” in any search engine and you’ll see the video opening of a sports show from the 1970’s that was watched by millions of sports fans every Saturday afternoon).

The gut-wrenching drama of the Grey Cup, and the agony of the Bombers losing it in heartbreaking fashion for the second devastating year in a row, is about as dramatic as sport can get. (And Montrealers are no doubt experiencing the flip side of that same drama, celebrating their unimaginable win with pure joy and adulation.)

In sport, teams have a 50-50 chance of losing before the game even begins. Here we see the two main differences between the arts and sports.

One, in sports you never know what will happen. In the arts, you always know exactly what will happen. When I see Romeo and Juliet, they always both die at the end. Before I even walk through the theatre’s doors, I know with 100% certainty how the play will end.

No one ever goes to Romeo and Juliet and says to themselves, “maybe this time Romeo will get Juliet’s note that she will fake her death so they can be reunited.” Instead – and this happens 100% of the time – Romeo doesn’t get the note, thinks Juliet is dead, kills himself and when Juliet wakes from her sleep to see that Romeo is dead, she takes her own life. That never has and never will change.

In sports, there is no certainty. It’s precisely that uncertainty that makes sport so riveting, so guttural, so primal, so intensely emotional.

Would sport even be remotely interesting if you knew before you got to your seats precisely how the game would play out?

It’s a lot of fun when your team is winning but it’s crushing when they lose. And the hurt deepens exponentially when your team is considered unstoppable, unbeatable, a dynasty, as the Bombers were on Sunday.

The Bombers were picked by virtually everyone to defeat the Alouettes, as Winnipeg were clearly the better team on paper. But as the cliché goes, the Grey Cup wasn’t played on paper.

The other enormous difference between sports and the arts is the idea of choking. You almost never hear of a singer or performer making obvious mistakes because they can’t handle the pressure of the moment. There’s no choking in the arts and if it ever does happen, it’s exceedingly rare.

Sport, on the other hand, is riddled with stories of athletes and teams playing well below their abilities, of succumbing to the pressure of the moment. Just ask the Bombers and Argonauts.

Sometimes the crushing pressure of a game can make someone perform at their worst at the most inopportune time. And sometimes that same pressure magically brings out the best in a team, allowing them to find something special deep within themselves to play at a level they’ve never played before, to defeat an opponent they have no right defeating.

In the last 50 years, can you name a single time where you heard of a performer “blowing” it? That they succumbed to the pressure and performed way below their ability? The Bombers “blew it” twice in one year and conversely, the Alouettes pulled off two unthinkable endings in one calendar week!

And that’s exactly why sport is so fun – and so agonizing – to watch.