TRR: Perception, Competition and Champions

So here’s a French sporting news
publication, L’Equipe, giving its annual awards to champions of the
year and the most prestigious to the Champion of Champions. It’s done this for
22 years and, in those 22 years, only two formula one participants have ever
been named Champion of Champions. The late Formula One driver Ayrton Senna won
the award in the mid 1980s and, Monday, Michael Schumacher was given the honor
for 2001.

Last season Schumacher became F1’s
all-time leader in victories when he passed Alain Prost’s record of 51 and
ended the season with 53. It was the third nine-win season in his brilliant
career.

Second in the L’Equipe voting was
Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, who won six gold medals at the World
Championships in Japan in July. And, perhaps, the crux of this, motorcycling’s
500cc Grand Prix world champion Valentino Rossi was third!

Two motorsports people in the top three in
voting for one of the most prestigious sporting awards in the world!

Now, I go back a long way in motorsports
journalism. I remember when motorsports in the United States was still fighting
for credibility within the mainstream of American sport. The mainstream mindset
then had all drivers with a death wish and all racing fans were bloodthirsty.
Motorsports had a niche but it was somewhere below the space carved out for
stick and ball sports.

The Europeans, however, have always given
legitimacy to motorsports. In fact, at the end of the century when lists were
flying about for very reason and season, L’Equipe had Juan Manual
Fangio number five on its list of Top 100 athletes behind only Pele, Muhammad
Ali, Carl Lewis and Jesse Owens. Jim Clark was voted 28th, Italian motorcycle
racer Giacomo Agostini 34th, Senna 45th, Alain Prost 57th and Graham Hill 62nd.
Obviously a severe respect for the motorsports!

Where’s that presence and respect in
America?

Last Thursday
I did prattle on about Bill France, Jr. being listed among The Sporting News
Power 100, the most powerful people in American sports. I suppose that’s the
hook. Americans are more concerned with power than substance.

NASCAR has become the unquestioned leader
in American motorsports. And, according to The Sporting News, NASCAR leadership
(including Jeff Gordon and Teresa Earnhardt, who were among the Power 100 while
billionaire car owner and multi-Indy 500 winner Roger Penske wasn’t!) deserves
to be counted among the stick and ball legions. We’ve come far, indeed!

Years ago I did some research on why
racers race. A sports psychologist explained that athletes have a genetic
disposition to team sports or individual sports. He said those who are attracted
to one probably won’t be attracted to the other. He went on to say that those
who are attracted to individual sports will be apportioned into two camps: those
who compete within themselves and those who must see an opponent lose. Don’t
jump to conclusions but think about that for a minute.

At the time we did some comparisons with
the U.S. and European sporting character and decided there was a deeper
appreciation for internalized competition in Europe than in the U.S. We
disagreed on whether it was genetic or cultural but we agreed that it existed.
You may want to argue that but I believe it and I’m sticking to it.

It’s why I believe there’s a deeper
appreciation for competitive athleticism over there than here. Here motorsports
is largely a perceived issue of power. There it’s a perceived issue of
competition – athleticism.

In a motorsports context it might explain
why sports car rallying has been a much bigger success there than here. It might
also explain why drag racing is bigger here. The often hidden technological
nuance of Formula One is much more appreciated there while the rough-and-tumble,
racin’-is-rubbin’ philosophy of NASCAR is accepted as religion here in the
U.S.

It might also explain why we’re still
arguing the athleticism of motorsports drivers here in the U.S. while he rest of
the world accepts the concept as a given!

What do you think?

I’ve been wanting to dig out those
articles and reprint them within this community. Maybe it’s time.