A Weakened Warrior
Newcastle Herald
Monday January 19, 2004
IN sport and outdoor recreation it seems (as in the workplace or the nightclub), clothes maketh the man.
Hence we have cricketers with blowfly sunglasses, swimmers and sprinters in clingy suits and tennis players who could be mistaken either for fashion plates or advertising billboards.
Which is fine at the so-called ``elite" level, I guess, because even if you don't appreciate the fashion, at least the sport is fun to watch.
Where it all goes pear-shaped, if you can excuse me applying that expression to amateur sportspeople, is when garden-variety weekend warriors start obsessing about the appearance of their apparatus.
Like those hilarious pushbike riders who wear snazzy lycra outfits for half-hour excursions on the cycle track.
To look at most of them you'd think you were watching the Tour de France. The skin-tight duds, the plastic drink bottle with the ludicrous straw (see the way they spit the water sideways as they zoom past: duck out of the way if you can), the funny-shaped helmet designed to minimise wind resistance.
Let's not even think about their bikes, which have got about 5million gears and cost more than a small house.
These riders have got the lot. In fact, when they zip past you on the track they have a way of making you feel like you have no business being there, especially if you are wearing a pair of stubbies and a T-shirt and happen to be tootling along on an ancient Speedwell.
Fair dinkum, some people take their leisure activities seriously. It's like they can't have fun unless they've got the brand-name gear and look like they're training for the Olympics.
We non-sporting types don't stand a chance. Somebody asks us to go for a ``friendly" hit of tennis. We reach into the cupboard for our racquet. We must decide: the old cane one or the slightly newer aluminium one we used at school sport?
We settle on the aluminium one because the cane one is badly warped and is missing a couple of strings.
We arrive at the court in our ancient stubbies and paint-spattered T-shirt, carrying our black vinyl ``Gear'n'stuff" sports bag bought from Kmart in 1980. We come face-to-face with our ``friendly" opponent who is dressed in brand-new, brand-name clobber and a pro-standard sneer. Let's call it 30 to love, even before the first serve.
This is clearly going to be a very serious friendly game.
But geez! Have a look at our opponent's racquet! It's got to be three times as big as ours. Let's go home.
Every time I see somebody playing squash or tennis they are using a bigger racquet. The modern squash racquet is about the size of the things we played tennis with when I went to school. And the tennis racquets: crumbs, those things are massive. The way they are going pretty soon you won't have to move around the court at all.
You'll just stand and prop the racquet towards the net (your doubles partner will hold the other end) and away you'll go.
And apparently it's much the same in bowls. Although I can't vouch for this, my neighbour swears the bowl-makers keep changing their designs. He reckons they used to have more bias than at present and it makes him cranky to think they are trying to railroad him into buying a new set.
They tell me that technological advances in golf balls mean that even dummies can make monster drives (not necessarily straight though).
And what about fishing? Not only are the crafty fisherfolk using all sorts of hi-tech lures and carbon fibre rods, but they are counteracting the inevitable shortage of prey by using ``fish finders", global positioning technology and all sorts of other whizzbang gear to corner the last few of our scaly friends in their underwater homes.
It makes me wonder how long it'll be before the authorities cut to the chase and just install fish-vending machines at popular angling spots.
To be honest, I won't mind when they do: at least I'll have a sporting chance of success, even without the latest apparatus.
© 2004 Newcastle Herald
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