SPECTATOR SPORT
Cup runneth over
Simon Barnes
LEAVE 'em wanting less. That has been the triumphal effect of the World Cup on the watching world. The final saw Brazil in a state of mental exhaustion, confusion and perhaps sheer disbelief that the damned thing was still going on. They lost because they conceded two goals headed in from corners, goals that would make an English non-league side blush for shame.
We watchers have felt much the same way. All that last week, we have looked on and muttered, 'They can't still be playing football out there, can they?' There have been 32 teams and four and a half weeks. I have watched most of it, missing by shrewd management only such things as the best game of the tournament (Nigeria 3, Spain 2) and the best goal of the tournament (Denis Bergkamp for Holland; I was watch- ing all right, but went out for a pee at the crucial moment).
There has been too much World Cup for anyone to seek omniscience. The only pos- sibility was to follow the competition as a specialist, through the narrow niche of patriotism. The England run was great enough while it lasted, the final match, bar- ring the penalty nonsense, a rich sporting occasion.
Naturally, the World Cup claims to have been the greatest sporting show in history. So it was, but only in quantity. The sheer extent of it, expanded to a size beyond a single person's comprehension, made it bewildering. Besides, some of us have a normal life to lead.
The World Cup always tries to claim it is bigger than the Olympic Games — and it always fails. The Olympics are compact: 17 days, three weekends. The centrepiece, the track and field, lasts only nine days. Every day brings different action: sword fights, cavalry charges, flying pixies, giant berserk- ers.
There were 32 nations at the World Cup, 180 odd at the Olympic Games. The World Cup had too many, the Olympics did not. And for all its obsessive gigantism, the World Cup misses out on 50 per cent of the human race. There are no women at the World Cup and — call me perverted if you like — four and a half weeks is too long to be without women.
The Olympic Games throw women at you. Right from the start, they come at you, ploughing the waves in the pool, flying through the air in the gym. Fascinating fact: Svetlana Chorkina posed naked for Rus- sian Playboy to prove that real women do women's gymnastics.
Women come brandishing swords and rifles and pistols, they go for their oppo- nents with bared teeth and bare hands in the judo, they come spinning on bicycles, and skimming on boats. There are even sports that no men compete in: softball, syncronised swimming, rhythmic gymnas- tics. In the horsey events, women take on men on equal terms and win.
The Olympic Games offer endless vari- ety, endless exoticism, endless women. At the last Olympics, I watched Chorkina, more or less fully clad, win the asymmetric bars. I watched Isabel Werth, in top hat and swallow-tail coat, win the dressage. I watched the great Fu Mingxia, clad mainly in an expression of inward-looking menace, win her second diving gold. Glorious stuff. Boys' games are all very well, but after four and a half weeks — well, you begin to yearn for some real grace under pressure.
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