Sport is often trivialised, and perhaps rightly so. But in times of strife, war, suffering and grief, it is there for us to turn to. Sport is something we can hold onto when all around us is threatened and crumbling. Sport brings us together and provides us with an identity above ourselves. This year, at this European Championships, that has rarely seemed so important. Throughout its recent history, sport has often represented a beacon of hope when things are not looking as bright as they might be.
In 1936, an African-American named Jesse Owens walked into the Olympic Stadium in a city that was in the midst of a violent and hate-filled revolution plotted by Adolf Hitler. Each time Owens leapt and ran on those glorious August days, the world forgot the looming threat of the horror that lay on the horizon and allowed time to pause. To hold still in the presence of greatness. In a place that would later play witness to untold terror and where, at that point in time, he should have felt fear and isolation, Jesse Owens came to run.
In 1972 eleven innocent Israeli athletes who had been resting in their beds in the Olympic Village were kidnapped and killed by Palestinian terrorists. After a 24-hour delay, the Games continued, swimmer Mark Spitz the star, as the world tried to forget its vulnerability and despair in the face of violence and evil. Sport seemed at once both utterly trivial and indescribably important as the world watched athletes compete, celebrate victory and mourn loss. In the aftermath of the atrocity those involved in the Olympics and those who loved sport did the only thing they could do: they kept living. And they did so through the conduit of sport.
On the eighth of June, 1985, Barry and Pat McGuigan stood in the middle of a ring in London’s Loftus Road stadium and brought two warring communities together in the name of sport. Pat performed a spine-tingling rendition of ‘Danny Boy’, neither an Irish nor British anthem but a song carefully chosen as one deeply beloved by people on the north of this island, and the sound of the thousands of voices that joined him in the stadium that night sent shivers down spines of every creed. It was the precursor to his son’s tenacious world title-winning performance against Eusebio Pedroza on a night that transcended boxing. Hundreds of thousands of Protestants and Catholics, Nationalists and Unionists greeted McGuigan on his return to Belfast. In a city in the midst of bloodshed, a man from Monaghan used his fists to help people forget about violence, if just for a little while.
In the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final, fifteen white men raced onto a pitch in a stadium where all but 1000 spectators were white and in a country still reeling from years of conflict and vicious inequality. With the backing of Nelson Mandela, the South African nation let rugby and not history occupy its minds. On the 24th June, 1995, sport helped forge a nation’s identity and start the road to recovery.
Tonight at 8pm, the French national football team will jog onto the glorious Stade de France surface to be greeted by an avalanche of ecstasy and noise. Across France, men and women will sit together proudly clad in blue and cheer on their country with lumps in their throats and tears in their eyes. In a city that only a few months ago saw horrific terror attacks that ripped the heart from the French people, in a country in a state of emergency and security lockdown, two countries will come together to play a game of football. And hopefully, when this tournament is over, we can look back and reflect on how sport was once again a tonic, an escape, a release for a nation that has been through so much.
