Wrote this in 2002... and came across it again a few days ago, when I was clearing my comp. Made interesting reading...
So, here goes - The French Connection.
Two incidents , two days apart…both determinant of a champion’s mettle. Not too often are champions humbled at the highest stage for all the world to see. But when it happens, what then ??……. Well, then there is a lot of talking and thinking to do.
Now the two events that I am talking about are – 'The Great' Pete Sampras’ loss to an unknown ‘watizname’ in the first round of the French Open and the second the shock defeat of France in the hands of the unfancied Senegal in the football world cup. What is common between these two other than the obvious 'French Connection' ??
Even to the untrained eye what would not be missed is the fall from the high perch of two Champions….. Guess to study these we’ll have to see them separately.
Sampras is no more the phenomenon that he was, surely. No more is the Great Man invincible and even his most devoted supporters have lost hope….. and like a jockey would care dearly for his old horse, they want him back , with at least his pride if not reputation , unhurt. Even the greatest fan known to me ( Nirmal Shekar from the HINDU) could do no more than a paragraph ( or should I call it a passage) on Pete’s latest loss!!…. What is a stare-in-the-face fact to most people is invisible to the 'immortal'. But alas! what goes up must come down….
France.. golden boys of world football, No.1 for 2 years now, unbeaten in the qualifiers, Euro champs… we thought they could never put a foot wrong and surely you don’t expect them to lose to Senegal … but when the final whistle blew, it was a slap in the pretty French faces.
What champions do is constantly raise the bar of performance and unlike the pedestrian watchers, clear it … with finesse and panache. This is the hallmark of a champion.
But the most important aspect to all this is INSPIRATION. What pushes these champs to get what they get?…. my guess is that these people or teams are on a higher quality of a commodity called Inspiration. And this is the elusive “French Connection”. Inspiration or rather the lack of it is the connection….
A Pete with a French open albatross around his neck; a France team without the monk like Zizou- what more does one need as proof for the observed fact??…. Sampras has clearly lost what had kept him apart for all of the nineties, the French looked lost without their compass Zidane. Truly, the punch was missing.
What is most important is to have a goal….and even more to be “ inspired” enough to get at it.
