Sportsmanship

It's been a while since I've had a good rant about the media, so I felt it was time I let rip in earnest.

Let's talk about the British Media's treatment of Sports Personalities, shall we? Starting, quite obviously, with Paula Radcliffe.

I felt sorry for her yesterday, not just because of the way she 'crashed' out of the Olympic Marathon, but also for the way the media had been continually piling pressure on her to succeed. While she was in the race the two British commentators were talking about her as if she was the Second Coming and didn't seem to think that anything other than her getting Gold was possible. Then when she dropped out everyone started talking about "Britain's Olympic Dream" being shattered.

For. Fuck's. Sake.

We do this to all our sportsmen and sportswomen. We complain about our lack of high-profile trophies in whatever sport, and then the minute someone turns up with a decent amount of skill or talent, we expect them to succeed, just like that. Look at the pressure Tim Henman gets at Wimbledon every year. It's no wonder that half the time he bottles it, given the amount of scrutiny his every game is put under.

Then, when they do have a bit of success, we make every effort to tear them down. As soon as Wayne Rooney became an international star at Euro 2004, his personal life was scrutinised in the papers. Also during Euro 2004 everyone was talking about Beckham being off his game. Given the amount of stories going around about whether or not he'd been having affairs and all that shit, I'm not surprised.

Now that the England Cricket team are on a massive roll, I expect we'll start seeing muck dug up about them. Something to look forward to, isn't it?

But when you think about it, we can't really blame the media, can we? We can only blame ourselves. We're the ones that buy the newspapers and magazines and watch the TV. Yes, the media should have more scruples and sensitivity, but we don't exactly encourage that, do we? We just want blood, and the more the better.

Sick bastards.