SPECTATOR SPORT
Golden oldies
Frank Keating
GEORGE FOREMAN wins world heavy- weight boxing title at 45. Do you whoop or weep? It is not often a professor of geriatric medicine is doorstepped by the sporting press.
The mistake that many people make,' William Maclennan, of Edinburgh Univer- sity, tells me, is that they equate chrono- logical age with physiological age. The two are not necessarily the same thing. Of course, there is a decline in muscular foun- dation and exercise capacity as we get older, but it is becoming more and more clear that we can do a lot to keep ourselves fit and active. I think you will find that more and more older people will remain competitively active.'
Jersey Joe Walcott — 'I ain't old, just ugly' — had been the all-time oldest champion, at 37, and two years later he was floored in the first by Rocky Mar- ciano as he attempted to win it back. Wal- cott apparently subsided at the Rock's first left jab, waited on one knee till ten had tolled, then stood up and sauntered to his corner to collect a bumper bundle first instalment on his pension. It had last- ed two minutes and 25 seconds. The crowd jeered, 'Fix!'
, 'So what?' remarked A.J. Liebling at the ringside. 'This year's Kentucky Derby last- ed two minutes and two seconds and nobody cried "Stop, thief!"
In fact, before Foreman, Archie Moore was the most venerable ever to challenge for the big boys' title. He was a month off 43 when Floyd Patterson stopped him in five in 1956. Archie was some fine boxer and also a wise man. He said, 'It is not the length of the career that wears out a fight- er. It's the amount of punches he takes. I didn't ever take too many. I learned defence from an early age. I learned what defence was as a kid when I used to get a whipping from my auntie. She used to swing the switch at me and I'd pull in close to her. Then the switch would wrap around me. That was my first lesson of defence.'
Like Archie, the good Scottish professor of geriatrics may have a point. Last week- end, on. Guy Fawkes' day, as the final horse-race of the Flat season was run, Lester Piggott celebrated his 59th birthday, came eighth on Mr Confusion in the November Handicap at Doncaster, and then began his annual quest to find himself next June's Derby winner — 40 years after first kicking one home on, nicely, 'Never say die'. In England's first two proper matches, which began the cricket tour in Australia, 41-year-old Graham Gooch out- batted all his juvenile confreres by scoring a century in each of them. Jack Hobbs scored half his 197 first-class centuries after the age of 40. Is Graham actually just limbering up? Certainly, he is always in the nets an hour before any of the morning-faced kids have finished their breakfast. In his lugubri- ous way, Gooch will recite his mantra: 'If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.'
But suddenly, surely, age catches up with even such determined and heroic ancients, and it socks them as painfully on the jaw as did old George clobber young Mike in Las Vegas. Arnold Palmer said he realised he'd never win another golf tournament that mattered when he bent over his putter and lined up his ball with the hole: 'That old hole used to be scared of me. I'd just look at it, and the hole got scared. Now, for the first time ever, I was scared of the hole. And that old hole knew it, too.'
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