Putting a shape on the dark art of exercise

Commercial sport can no longer dazzle every time . . . much of modern sport is a cynical crock

GOD BLESS America is the first thing we have to say on the morning of this Fourth of July. We haven’t forgotten you, Barack Obama of Moneygall. May your giving hand never fail. And may your gym habit never falter. This week, after a pretty busy sporting weekend both nationally and internationally, we are mostly writing about exercise.

There may be quicker ways to forget about the state of the country – our politicians’ retirement plans, the disappearance from our schools of the special needs assistant, the fact that even Garda cars don’t bother indicating anymore (insert your own lament here) – but walking up a mountain is one of the most efficient.

By the time you’ve wiped the sweat from your eyes, been scalded by your own lactic acid for a full hour, and wondered what would happen should you faint, the words Healy Rae will mean little to you. You don’t really care whether Prince Albert of Monaco marries or not. And while the grim reality that you are better off being a prisoner in this country than being a patient in a public psychiatric hospital does not diminish, it does recede a little.

It would be wrong for this column to represent itself as an expert hillwalker, of the neatly folded map and sturdy shorts variety. This column is a remedial hillwalker. Has to be helped over the lowest wall, talked down the gentlest incline and on Saturday took a nasty tumble whilst trying to descend at a pace quicker than a snail’s.

On a mountain this column is beyond embarrassment. Once, while being guided by the hand down a particularly innocuous hill, this column’s minder spotted other walkers approaching. This column did not give a curse (it was beginning to rain). But this column’s minder must have felt that the two of them looked less than dignified, inching their way down the slope, because he did say “I’m going to pretend that you’re blind.”

This column has a lifetime of athletic non-achievement behind it. Its life in sport is best summed up by Caitlin Moran, whose lively new book on feminism was so enthusiastically reviewed by Anna Carey in Saturday's Irish Times. However, even those of us who have read and enjoyed How To Be A Womanfeel that this is not Caitlin Moran's greatest writing triumph. That came when she described herself as someone whose first reaction, when a ball was thrown in her direction, was to close her eyes.

There you have it, a lifetime of suffering encapsulated in one simple sentence.

But the thing is, even klutzes can walk up mountains, given a bit of counselling and a following wind. Moran wrote that sentence about closing her eyes when a ball was thrown towards her as an introduction to an account of her new expertise in running. (The most interesting part of her book, to me, was her upbringing as a member of a very poor family in Wolverhampton. An account that should be read by anybody who thinks that the obesity epidemic is not a social equality issue. The Morans, lively and super-literate, were so poor they lived on cheese, becoming clinically obese in the process. They never talked about being fat. As Moran puts it “We were the elephants in the room.” )

The non-athletic get a bum deal, on the whole. We are nothing to the sporting lobby but objects of derision – yes, I suppose I am a little bitter. We are bombarded by the media with examples of sporting perfection. We are worried to death by the health pages. But, as anyone who steels him or herself to go up a mountain will tell you, the amazing thing is how many people are up there already. Lone runners, slipping past you without a drop of sweat on them. Trios of ladies having a good walk and a gossip. And not one of these people the right side of 50.

For most of us, sport is something we watch. (In this connection straight men may find walking up a mountain a good way to get over the defeat of Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon on Saturday. I would have thought that Petra Kvitova looks pretty much the same as Maria Sharapova, but apparently this is not the case.)

Despite some thrilling matches at Wimbledon last week, much of modern sport is a cynical crock. The David Haye versus Wladimir Klitschko fight left both of them looking cool and unmarked in the 12th and final round. Presumably they were warming up for a rematch. And we’ve been hearing about this match, ad nauseam, for weeks.

Sport has become like the beauty industry, to which it was already so close. The constant images of unattainable perfection have demoralised the public. Commercial sport can no longer dazzle every time. The good thing about unglamorous exercise is that it is, for the most part, unobserved, unsellable and one of the pleasures of life.

And to the lady who asked my minder, as I was being helped down the Devil’s Ladder on Carrauntoohil some years ago, sweating and exhausted, if that person was Ann Marie Hourihane, I would now like to reply in the negative.