SPECTATOR SPORT
Victor ludorum
Frank Keating
THE FOOT-RACE distances on the Olympics track are, in metres, 100, 200, 400, 800, 110 hurdles, 400 hurdles, 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000. Each of those nine races during the next fortnight in Barcelona will be won by black men from the continents of either Africa or America. The only two men who might upset the certainty of that forecast are also black — but British: Christie (born Jamaica) in the 100, possi- bly; and Jackson (born Cardiff), probably, in the shorter hurdle event. On the Olympic track, white-skinned men turn up these days simply to make up the numbers.
Such ruminations are triggered by the disastrous demise last week of Alf Tupper, `the tough of the track' — slain, just like that — when the publishers, D.C. Thom- son, announced the closure of the school- boy comic, Victor, after 30 years. There is more money, apparently, in 'character mer- chandise which "spins-off' from television and video games', like the excruciatingly awful Teenage Mutant Hero magazine and Bucky O'Hare, a ludicrous, grotesquely drawn rabbit whose job is to exterminate toads in space.
In fact, Alf Tupper is much older than the Victor. In my day, in the 1940s and 50s, beloved Alf was jostling for our affections alongside Wilson of the Wizard. Alf was a Steve Ovett-type bloke, a man of t'people, who'd have to sprint ten miles or so once he knocked off work, to make it to the sta- dium just in time to start the AAA 1,500 or 10,000 metres. He'd see off the snobby Oxbridge types or, preferably, the cheating
foreigners, with an explosive burst down the final straight — and then have to hurry home another ten miles, at the double, to get to his fish-and-chip shop before it closed. Or clock in for his night shift. Exag- gerated, sure — but not a million light years away from genuine olde-tyme ama- teur athletes.
Here's my point re Wilson in the Wizard. Devotees of a certain age cannot possibly have forgotten one of his best series — Wil- son and the Black Olympics. Remember how the Africans bred such a master-race of athletes that the Olympic Games ceased to be held in Europe and became exclusive- ly African — till Wilson emerged from his cave in the Yorkshire dales, trained on his herbal teas (`the elixir of life'), and went down to the dark continent in his Bradford- made leotard and beat them hollow at everything, including the hop-step-and- jump?
Life might have to imitate D.C. Thom- son's art-room if Europe wants its Olympics back occasionally. There have been other instances. Also in the Wizard, one of my favourites was `Limp-Along Leslie', who doubled as England's finest- soccer winger, as well as champion sheepdog-whistler on account of his left leg being six inches shorter than his right. At football his impediment would unbalance and bamboo- zle full-backs and goalies as he dribbled towards them; and in midweek, at one- man-and-his-dog, his disability enabled him to scuttle up hillsides with goat-like aban- don.
It took only a dozen years for that fiction to become fact — when the mesmerising Brazilian side won two World Cups on the trot (1958 and 1962), their coruscating for- ward line revolving round the incomparable Pele and a shepherd's son from the hills, a little bird-like winger called Garrincha, who baffled full-backs because he had one leg six inches shorter than the other.
What about 'Cannonball Kidd' in the Rover? Or was it the Hotspur? More pluper- fect prescience from Thomson. 'Cannonball Kidd' was the actual Daily Express banner headline the morning after Man. United won the European Cup in 1968 for the first time (a Brian Kidd scored the decisive goals) exactly 20 years after the Rover's team of aging, former prisoners-of-war (led by young Cannonball) had won the then totally mythical 'United Nations Cup' which took the place of future wars. I can still recite half that team — Danny the Did- dler, Old Man Dallas, Daddy Lucas, Stiffy Miller, Baldy Brown — and good ol' Wheezy Keys on the wing ...
Alf will be seriously needed in Barcelona. Ditto Wilson.
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