Good sports: half a whole

For some, half is good enough. We walk out half-dressed, with half a face on, half ready for a half-hour bus trip to swim half a kilometre in a pool that is half Olympic-size.

Sport challenges half-baked performance, and a match score at half-time is irrelevant. Although one can play half a game, be relegated to the sidelines for the remainder, the wonders of the half an effort we contributed are forgotten by the game’s end.

Although a mathematician may stop work halfway through a complex formula, a sporting match is not over till the final siren. At this point, half-backs, half-forwards, centre-halves, and all the complete players form a single, jubilant whole team.

Even the most ignorant spectator knew the match was lost at half-time, yet thanks to the half-backs in the defence, the centre-halves through the middle and the half-forwards in the attack, the score was turned around. The whole team? Not likely, it was the sum of halves that made the difference.

As a sign of modern times, the ultimate sporting challenge has suffered the greatest humiliation of all. The mental and physical challenge that will be undertaken successfully by less than 0.01 percent of the world’s population — the marathon — has been watered down to make it more ‘accessible’ to a generation of sedentary humans. By creating a ‘half-marathon’ will the statistic rise to 0.02 percent? Statistically this is unlikely, as more than half the participants are in training for the real thing — the whole marathon.

I am half saddened and half gladdened by this. Me, the pseudo-sports journalist, and part-time sports participant, regular half-hour swimmer who is more than halfway through his life, ponders how a finisher in half an event can gauge his/her outcome. Finishing first in half an event results in half a prize, half an achievement and half a success. Where is sport headed?

info: To make a difference to your life, join half of Melbourne’s gay and lesbian population and pursue a sport in one of the teams found at QSAM: www.queersportsmelbourne.org