Good sports Sydney: 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.

Lunch breaks have been reduced to half the regular ‘lunch hour’ and our golf game is a half-round nine holes.

But can one really have half a hole? In the millisecond one ceases digging, the hole is whole, complete.

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.

It is OK to play for half an hour, run for half a day, sail halfway around the world, but not to come in the ‘top half of the field’ or be placed halfway on the league ladder.

Ponder whether it is possible to achieve the miraculous golfer’s goal divided by two. Is there such a thing as half a hole in one?

Although a mathematician may cease 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. The game rhetoric starts within half a second of the siren’s dying decibel, with all heaping accolades on the power of the ‘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, it is the ultimate sporting challenge that 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 has been watered down to make it more ‘accessible’ to the current generation of sedentary humans. The question is, by creating a ‘half-marathon’ will the statistic rise to 0.02 percent? Statistically this is highly 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 event. 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. Mathematically, 1 times 0.5 equals, in a very best scenario, half a medal. Where is sport headed?

To make a whole lot of difference to your life, join half of Sydney’s gay and lesbian population and pursue a sport in one of the teams found at Team Sydney: www.teamsydney.org.au