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Daddy's girl...

4:40pm Monday, 5th July 2004

I caught the end of the Wimbledon women's final on Saturday. On winning, Maria Sharapova burst into tears before leaping over the wall of the court to battle through to her father, to the delight of a sympathetic crowd. Subsequently, the trophy ceremony was put on hold while she stood on centre court, trying to ring her mother in America on a temperamental mobile phone.

This all started me thinking... Would you ever see similar scenes after the men's final? My guess is that we wouldn't, nor - I suspect - would you see quite so much emphasis on proud fathers sitting in the crowd. Do we treat successful sportswomen as mere extensions of their doting families, while celebrating the rugged individualism of sportsmen? Or does women's sport just permit a healthier level of emotional honesty?

Comments

1
utter hogwash. in recent years both pat cash and pete sampras have climbed to the friends enclosure to hug their loved ones. When Goran Ivanisevic won the title three years ago, so full were his eyes with tears on match point, that he served a double fault. to clame that we don't celebrate emotion in male sports stars would also be to forget federer's tears last year, and of course gaza's "hearts of the nation" bawling at italia 90 and maradonas at usa 94. my personal favourite though would have to be chris boardman's tongue pash with his girlfriend at the end of his devestating pursuit cycling triumph at the Barcelona games in 1992.
Posted by Charlie Tims  at 5:12pm on Monday, 5th July 2004
2
I think that Sharapova's extreme youth and turbulent family history is a relevant factor here. The story of how MP's parents gave up everything to get her to top tennis school in Florida age 7; how she learnt English from scratch and endured long periods away from a visa-less mother and father working two jobs - these are all humdinger narratives that hit the spot with a media hungry for new sporting talent (the leggy feminine blondeness being an additional bonus of course). Having said that, I suspect Bobby has a point. Can anyone remember how Boris Becker reacted on winning Wimbledon also aged 17 all those many years ago? Although again - a Germanic cultural variable there that could be relevant (Julia?). In some ways, women are still presented as appendages to men when the situation is reversed and it's the male player on court. With Henman, Rusedski and until recently Sampras, we were always catching lingering camera shots of their aesthetically pleasing girlfriends or wives.
Posted by Helen Helen  at 5:15pm on Monday, 5th July 2004
3
Fair dues. Is there a substantial difference between a sportsman hugging their (trophy?) girlfriend, and a sportswoman hugging their dad? And does commentary on men's matches generally dwell so much on their parents' efforts which brought them to prominence? To be fair, I suppose that Sharapova is a special case, as a) her family background makes a good story, and b) as she's new on the scene, there's not much else to talk about.
Posted by Bobby Bobby  at 5:28pm on Monday, 5th July 2004
4
I'm not sure the focus on women here is entirely fair - lots of the coverage of the not-quite-so-aethetically-pleasing Wayne Rooney in Euro 2004 centred around one relative or another (e.g. when his mum wore a t-shirt saying she could 'murder a pint' or when his dad said that he was really proud of him). I’m also not convinced by the cut-to-the-spouse moments either, they often cut to the coach instead for signs of agony/heartarche, whilst it also happens in Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’, which isn't reknowned for the beauty of its contestants. For me it indecates that as sport becomes increasingly professional and standards rise exponentially, the new generation of sportsmen are more and more the product of deliberate manufacturing on the part of their parents rather than examples accidential genius. Sharapova was destined to be a tennis player since the age of five (to the extent that she was separated from her parents for two years), whilst Tiger Woods was swinging golf clubs almost as soon as he could walk. Similarly, the careers of the Williams sisters have been driven by their father to such an extent that their successes have become inetricably linked with his own identity. On the one hand the Sharapova victory was a fairytale, but on the other it was symptomatic of an increasing loss of romance in modern sport.
Posted by Duncan O'Leary  at 5:39pm on Monday, 5th July 2004
5
"A healthier level of emotional honesty"? Was Federer's reaction less 'emotionally honest'....if anything, he seemed more overwhelmed, despite having won it before. + this ignores, as is rightly pointed out before, examples like Pat Cash, Goran Ivanisevic, Andre Agassi and Boris Becker: what an emotionless quartet, + the way we always get the usual spiel about Henman's parents, as if he's still 12....and the best example of all was when Pete Sampras, renowned as supposedly a 'cold machine' of a tennis player, broke down after winning his 7th title and went to hug his dad: the very epitome of a proud father.
Posted by Nick Temple  at 5:49pm on Monday, 5th July 2004
6
Rather than unveiling any hidden truths about gender and our attitude towards sports stars it probably says more about an increasing hunger throughout the media to titillate us with emotional responses. We?re increasingly encouraged to think about how people feel rather than what actually happened. We remember Paul Gascoigne?s tears not his goals, Sharapova?s mobile, not her backhand and Boardman snogging his girlfriend not his cycling. But this is somewhat deeper than sport. Everybody can relate to emotions which is why they're more commercially viable. While this is all well and good and probably not completely divorced from an emotionally intelligent, empathetic society, if the question becomes ?how did it feel? rather than ?why did it happen?, we are all left much the poorer. I think that this is the point that Nick Broomfield implicitly makes in ?Aileen: the Life and Death of a Serial Killer? and, possibly Michael Moore in ?Bowling for Columbine?, albeit with lashings of, unknowing irony. Anybody disagree with me, I prescribe lashings of CNN.
Posted by Charlie Tims  at 6:45pm on Monday, 5th July 2004
7
Ah well. Note to self: watch more sport before commenting on it.
Posted by Bobby Bobby  at 10:40am on Thursday, 8th July 2004

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