The double lives of sports people

Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, arguably one of the most celebrated pieces of fiction in the Western world. War and Peace is a story, grossly simplified, about five aristocratic families and how Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, including the spectre of the invasion itself, goes about bringing change to the Tsarist society, which the five families habituate.

Tolstoy himself didn’t see War and Peace as a novel, saying it is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle”. The Russian did satisfy his novelistic urges with Anna Karenina, another work believed by many to be the best ever written. I do find it quirky however that the longer story, by some 600 pages (Anna Karenina is “only” 860 pages long), is considered by its author as being a narrative, if even that is an adequate word for it, living beyond the borders that defined its creation.

The metaphor of living beyond one’s normal confines can be seen all around us, and none more so then in professional sport. To become a professional sports person, you need a combination of skill, physical and mental aptitude, drive, luck and a little piece of hubris built into the psyche that lets the individual know they belong at the highest level.

However, what happens after that career comes to a finish? A life built for a single purpose, made up of many goals, is a train that goes into a tunnel where the end of the tunnel marks the end of that person’s career, their sports career at least. But once they leave the confines of the protective cocoon that defined who they were for most of their adult life, they are at times left naked to the glare of a world which they need to learn to navigate without the security of that next fixture in the horizon.

That isn’t to say that all professional sports people don’t consciously think about their second life after their first. Enough former sports people permeate our lives (especially in sports broadcasting) to suggest that there is life after retirement, but there are only so many commentary jobs out there, and it isn’t the easiest to walk away from an activity which defined who they were for many years. It should be said that the media play a very large role in forging the myth of the professional sports person, the cult of character which enlarges the impact of a person’s sporting career beyond the normal ramifications of kicking a ball from point A to B.

Jake White is an interesting example. He rose through the ranks, winning a junior World Cup on the way, and eventually reached the pinnacle of his profession by guiding South Africa to World Cup success in Paris in 2007. For a World Cup winning coach, his career since the end of tenure as Springbok coach has been rife with change. He hasn’t coached formally since, started a company which has been or is pending liquidation, has his own rugby website, and he has now applied for the position of technical director with England’s Rugby Football Union (RFU). He also ensured, through his contacts in the rugby media in South Africa, that whenever he has “advice” or something to say about Springbok rugby, his story will be heard.

It appears from this vantage point that White is looking for the next challenge, that next mountain to overcome to cement his legacy as a prodigal rugby mind, beyond South Africa. He is attempting to discover and verify what the end of his tunnel is like, and after going in several directions, his application for the RFU’s position seems to be an approach to the known, an approach to a position that would allow White to have a larger impact on the game than he had in South Africa. Is he chasing the dragon of rugby union? Who knows, but his name in rugby today has an indefinable nature to it which wasn’t the case when he was Springbok coach. The fact he could be seen this way isn’t of his doing.

Herschelle Gibbs is another man whose days on the field are numbered. He recently published a book detailing all sorts of naughty things from within the Proteas camp. Gibbs, talent limitless, seemed as focused on his career (when he was at his peak) as he is when batting. When focused, he is unstoppable but the hunger needed to move into the league of the Kallis, Smiths and Amlas of this world seemed to not be there, or existed within Gibbs batting demeanour in atypical form.

I’ve seen Gibbs score a double century at Newlands before, and while he was cantering towards the landmark in the breathless manner which describes his batting at his best, there was always the sense that he could get out at any moment. This meant that the good moments were really good, the troughs particularly deep. What drives Gibbs is difficult to discern, but following the candour of his book (in the Agassi vein), it seems that Gibbs is attempting to chisel out his own little place in a society that, to a certain degree, has never fully understood him.

Lance Armstrong, the former eight-time winner of the Tour de France, also reminds one of the pull competition brings. After winning eight Tour de France titles, Armstrong retired but promotes his foundation LiveStrong, which generally tells people that anything is possible. He beat cancer before those eight wins, so he knows what he is talking about. While his message against cancer is very noble, it is also slightly self-serving as he also seeked to stay in the limelight beyond what the physical aspect of this chosen career would have allowed. He showed us that the competitor within and the heat of competition was difficult to replace, which saw him make his comeback and while not disgracing himself by any stretch of the imagination, perhaps it would have been better if he had stayed away.

Michael Schumacher also decided to get back into F1 after being retired for several years. While the boffins at the FIA must have drooled over the fact they have the German along with four other former and current champions in their ranks, Schumacher had nothing to prove to anyone, and his comeback speaks more of personal yearnings for competition that need to be quenched more than just handing the sport over to the next generation. For someone who is noted as being incredibly focused and astute when discussing the finer points of an F1 car, perhaps Schumacher just wanted to feel “home” again, in a world he understands and where he is held in high regard.

To move in the world of professional sport is living life in the blaze of friction, a meshing of attitude, ambition, attack and defence. For some, this world is the only one that can generate the type of atmosphere needed for these type of individuals to feel a sense of belonging in the world. It’s a cabal that many can’t or don’t want to walk away from until it is too late. Professional sports people are to be admired within the context of what they can do within their given sport, but at the same time they dedicate the best years of their lives to a past-time that has a limited time, or more pointedly a limited time to their participation in it.

Those who love sport had dreams of being at the top, of representing the teams and being the people they admired. Most don’t get to experience such a thrill, which is why those ambitions are channelled into following a particular side and sport. We assume, watching from the sidelines, that to be a sports superstar is to be it, to live the charmed life where everything is dream-like, or the closest thing we understand to equal such a state.

Let us admire those who engage in sport for what they can do, because in some small way, professional sports people leave a fragment of their soul on their respective field or court. Some, like Shane Warne for example, have managed to continue in the same vein beyond the confines of the field which takes a certain amount of chutzpah and mind to do. But others aren’t so lucky. They can never feel the way they felt while they were on the team, at the height of their powers.

Soldiers suffer from the psychological scars of battle, and though no one is killed, sports people know the feeling of embarking on a journey and not being the same person upon their return. The next time a former sports star is in the news for doing something human, something flawed, remember that there second life is very different from their first.

Life isn’t easy as it is, just imagine having to go through it twice.