SPECTATOR SPORT
War or picnic?
Simon Barnes
LAST week I was going on about chivalry. Michael Schumacher must have missed that one. Last weekend, the Formula One driver was in yet another crash. He is, of course, tremendously good at crashing; it is one of the strongest parts of his game. Short on chivalry, long on crashing — that's Schu- macher for you.
Last weekend's shunt — you have to use these dismissive it's-only-a-scratch terms if you want to cut the right kind of swagger in Formula One — involved David Coulthard, who was leading at the time. Now if racing in Formula One has a fault, it is that no one is able to overtake anyone else. Races tend to be decided on such matters as how many times you stop for petrol.
So Schumacher was unable to overtake Coulthard. But that is no problem to a per- son like Schumacher. Instead of overtaking, he crashed just a little bit. He sort of shoved him to one side. Coulthard ended up com- ing sixth instead of winning, and he was frightfully upset. `I don't think it was for me to give way to him,' he said. 'There has to be some give and take between drivers.'
Indeed there does, and Coulthard has been doing the giving, and other drivers have been doing the taking. In the first two races of the season, Coulthard has said `After you, Claud' to his team-mate, Mika Hakkinen, and kindly let him win. Now he has been the doormat for Schumacher. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and in Formula One you'd better make sure everybody else can see you doing it, in case they miss the point. So Coulthard very pub- licly went to see Schumacher to have it out, man to man, and ended up having it out man to boy. Schumacher told Coulthard he would do exactly the same thing all over again when he had the opportunity.
Well, that's Schumacher for you. He shunted Damon Hill out of his world cham- pionship, and last year attempted to do the same to Jacques Villeneuve and missed, destroying his own chances and attracting global condemnation. But not this time. The Formula One consensus is that this time Schumacher was within his rights. Unchival- rous? No, just a bit rough. The problem was that Coulthard was too soft. `To win you have to race, and when you are behind you have to be aggressive,' Schumacher kindly explained to him. No doubt Coulthard thanked him for clearing that point up. Let's be quite clear about it all. Schu- macher was only trying to do the decent thing. Have you heard of a thing called the Mobs test? Apparently it is the test for hardness of abrasives. One of the reasons for watching sport is that it is a continuous Mohs test. Schumacher and Coulthard were tested for their hardness last weekend and one was shown to be considerably harder than the other.
Last week I was going on about the importance of chivalry; this week I am going on about the importance of hardness. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contra- dict myself. Sport is large, it contains multi- tudes. If sport is not a genuine Mohs test, it is nothing. But if sport is genuine war to the knife, it is worthless.
Sport is a balancing act, caught forever halfway between a picnic and a war. This wild and next-to-impossible balance is what gives sport its beauty and its point. Schu- macher, deliberately crashing into Hill and Villeneuve, fell onto the side of war. It was ridiculous, and it made a nonsense of every- thing.
Coulthard, with his after-you stuff, has taken sport too far towards the picnic. Schumacher and Coulthard have both sinned against sport. One chose a way that is lethally dangerous, the other a way that is just plain silly. Both ways are equally destructive of sport.
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