26/03/2024
FEATURE BY MAX NOBLE
In the original 1986 Highlander film, a group of immortals seek to gain energy, and ultimately the prize of immense power, by severing each other's heads in time-honoured one-on-one sword fights.
While some segments of it have not aged so well, and was something of a bomb when released, it swiftly it became a cult classic, thus ensuring Sean Connery continued to be viewed as a legend and that Christopher Lambert was briefly a star. We had some fine fight scenes, a bit of mythical pixie dust, sweeping Scottish highlands and a suitably evil villain. Plus a few cracking Queen tracks which is never a bad thing.
The climatic boss-battle as the evil villain does evil things to (mostly) nice people, and immortals while Gimme the Prize! Rang around the cinema was a moment to remember.
So now we have Felipe Massa singing the same tune. Oh dear. And it has taken less time than it does to swing one's claymore off one's back for that 2021 season finale to be thrown into the same song. Universe, Gimme the Prize!
Revisionist history has gone mad. A most uneven-handed application of retrospective disqualification is the erasure of Lance Armstrong's name from all his Tour de France titles. It was subsequently discovered that all but one of the folk that appeared on the podium during his years on the top step were drug cheats. That being around 23 other riders. All of them! Yet they all received just the regular time-scale ban. They didn't have their entire record burned to a cinder. The Tour organisers declined to eliminate all confirmed drug cheats, letting all other results stand while leaving the winner as a blank for all those years, and watching Lance burnt as a Warlock at the stake. It was, depending on your view, either a highly mixed standard of applying the rules, or a clear case of "Destroy Witch-King Armstrong at all costs".
One magazine ruminated at the time that the gentleman who finished around 14th on that year's Tour was the possible winner if all drug cheats were disqualified and removed from the record as was Lance. So from Marco Pantani, first active and winning as a professional in 1994, with a tragic drug induced death at the age of 34 in February 2004, until Lance retired in 2011, it was a tragic time of shadows, doubts, triple standards and a keen understanding of "Glow Time". Which is to say how long after one had a drug dose that the afterglow would be too small to detect. After much grubby washing of soiled linen in public Lance gave a qualified admission of doping in January 2013 on the Oprah Winfrey show.
So where did all this partial correction of wrongs get cycling? Today? More or less nowhere. Blood doping and genetic treatments, and other new methods of getting around drug tests abound, and we are left, as ever, with the rider's honesty to inform us as to their possible clean status. In short, no one has won the prize from nearly thirty years of a sorry mess.
As I write this an Australian entrepreneur is trying to get the "Enhanced Games" up and running. He wants athletes to be free to take whatever they want, and may the best doper win. Australian swimming great Kieren Perkins has already come out strongly against it saying, "Someone will die". Oh dear, the prize at any price, is it worth it?
So Massa feels the prize is worth what could be a torrid, drawn out expensive legal case in which everyone becomes a loser. The FIA looks silly, Bernie looks silly, Liberty Media its Golden Goose dragged backwards through the farmyard by a torch and pitchfork welding mob, and we the fans are once again left out in the cold, as power brokers across the F1 universe do what they do best, gather together off track to argue, fighting like meerkats after too many Vodka Red Bulls, for the prize...
Massa "wins"? Then we can overturn the 2021 race. Then we could possibly look at binning a couple of Michael's wins. Then the flag mess at Canada 2018. Then the Scot on the back straight, and then... It will be an endless list of revisionist finishers. Ferrari burning oil for a season? A black flag when it should have been red? Red when it should have been a safety car? A safety car when it should have been double waved yellows? Official and unofficial team orders? The jack touching the car while a penalty is being served? Ten second time penalties served after the finish line?
Horror on horror. Just as Donald Trump has turned using high-grade lawyers to pull apart the foundations of the rule of law, so any team, driver or official with pockets deep enough can take to litigation with all the glee of a crocodile using a trampoline to jump the fence into a chicken farm.
What price the prize dear people? When is the win at all costs worth the loss of moral and ethical standards? Yet does our instant news universe rate coming third as a clean athlete as better than winning dirty? Or is it, as criminals oft remind us, that the only crime is getting caught?
You cannot cheat physics, you can cheat the rules, but this is a human invention being circumvented at another human.
Prior to World War Two it was all handheld mechanical stop watches, clipboards, paper and pencil. The race was as it happened that day and once the stewards had confirmed all was good. That was it! No endless slow motion reviews. No consideration of the timing of a hay bale falling on to the track. Heck, Fangio even took team mates' cars on occasion to continue the race and score points. Can you imagine that today? Actually as I was writing this it just happened to Logan and you can see how well that was received...
The prize only has worth because we humans give it worth. Yet stewards, referees, umpires all are human and, as God knows, to err is human, to be human is to fail. In the heat of battle errors are made. I've personally experienced the anger of parents of the opposing under-18 soccer team for calling what was clearly an offside play (us parents shared linesman's duties, only the ref was an impartial third party). Well from where I was standing level with the ball on the sideline of the wind swept, bitter pitch with rain lashing me, it was offside. While they all huddled 300 yards away using the modest shelter on offer near the pitch had parallax error to thank for it looking on side.
Walking over to all the shouting I offered the linesman's flag to them and they all said: "It's fine you continue doing it." Not one of them took up the offer. No video umpire to call in, just my moral certainty I had the call correct, and they did not have the angle, so to them their guy looked on side. What to do? I stood my ground. They called the senior ref for that day. He listened to both sides, nodded, and said: "Ok. It is the Linesman's call. Linesman, was it off side?" "Yes," I answer. "There we go," says the senior ref and walks off without another word.
Say now, some eight years later, we could go back in a Time Machine look at it from all angles, and discover the rain in my eyes (and all over my glasses) had blinded me enough that I missed the precise second the player got the ball, and it really was on side? Who wins? How do we unravel it? The entire scoring for every team in this junior league for the year would need adjustment and we might well have different teams making the semis, and the finals. Result? A total mess, and no prizes...
Every sporting referee has moments of self-doubt. Yet in the end you need to trust yourself, and back yourself. Then in the event, especially in professional sport, where a video replay or computer line judge overturns your decision, accept it in good grace. In return sports people, and fans need to accept that once an issue is reviewed and closed... it is closed. The score stands. Accept it and move on!
Yes civil, or criminal charges, or other penalties might apply for wrong doing such as physical assault on the playing field. But on that day with the evidence before them, the stewards awarded the positions as stated. The results stand. Other issues can be dealt with via the relevant channels. 2008 and 2021 are history. They were decided at the time by people with the authority to make those decisions. You don't like it? Well, unless it was criminal, or systemic cheating as per Lance... accept it and move on!
Wanting this prize has eaten at Massa all this time. Just as Lance was once described as a cancer on cycling, so Massa has a black cancer in his heart which yearns for the prize. He is now obsessed with gaining the prize.
The desire for this prize is poisoning Massa, and it is not a force for good. My growing concern is he might well win the prize of the 2008 title, only to make losers of us all.
Max Noble
Learn more about Max and check out his previous features, here