WINNERS AND LOSERS

The Spanish Grand Prix was won in fine style by Michael Schumacher, driving a Ferrari; the first win for the great Italian marque since the Canadian Grand Prix last year.

The race was run in appalling conditions, in incessant heavy rain with pools of water lying on the track. The fact that the race was allowed to start at all demonstrates the intense commerciality of the so called sport of Formula 1 Motor Racing. Anybody who watched the race could see that the plumes of spray thrown up by the cars made every driver but the leader virtually blind. Even with the best rain tyres on the cars were very difficult to control and the sand traps designed to catch and stop the cars if they spin off the track were flattened and hardened by the rain making them more like tarmac. However the great God Television and the lesser God Bernie Ecclestone made sure that the gladiators performed.

Third on the grid, and looking very unlikely to win on a track that rewarded flat out speed, Schumacher started the race slowly falling back to sixth place. By the twelfth lap he was in the lead, by dint of some rivals spinning off and shunting and two exquisite passing manoeuvres on Alesi and Villeneuve. He then proceeded to lap five seconds faster than anybody else to build up a lead of 59 seconds.

As he drove serenely around the track he could have been in a completely different vehicle to the other cars so complete was his superiority. In fact it was the driver who was supreme. Of all his many displays of mastery this was his most sublime. There are many other examples of sporting figures outperforming their immediate rivals by a disproportionate amount. 'It's an enormous one!' echoed round the world as Bob Beaman almost jumped out of the pit in the Mexico Olympics. Sebastian Coe's world record for the 800 metres set in the 80's still stands.

So what makes winners? Certainly innate talent - I know at least three guys who are so talented that you only have to give them the implements and explain the rules and they are scratch in any game - and hard work transmuting that talent into regular and consistently improving performance. But I believe the most important element is a lack of imagination. The lack of any ability to worry about what can go wrong, what happened last time, that this is the first time victory beckons or any one of a dozen devils that can rise up in the mind and destroy the purpose in hand. This can be construed as immense self belief, but even losers have that, otherwise why do they go on competing?

Reverting to the Spanish Grand Prix, in the race itself it appeared that Damon Hill was completely outclassed. Starting on pole, the only position in the conditions that gave any prospect of anything like a comfortable race, he was expected to lead all the way to the chequered flag. In fact he made a poor start, seemed to be not in full control of his car, spun three times and retired.

It looked as if the demons had got him. Actually, it turns out that a mechanic, by attempting to tweak his machine to the finest possible racing pitch in fact overdid it, leaving the machine in a far too lively state.

Thus the aspirant to the world championship was made to look weak and incompetent in comparison with the present champion by an over zealous helper. What, unfortunately, we will never know is how Hill would have performed in an untweaked car.

Another recent example of total outperformance in a recent sporting event was Stephen Ames winning the Benson and Hedges European PGA Tournament at the Oxfordshire Club. In near gale force winds he managed to play the last round in even par whilst all about were bottling out. Such mighty men as Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam and Colin Montgomerie completely lost their rhythm and shot scores in the mid eighties. In no way could any of these three be described as losers each being at some time first or second in the Sony World rankings, yet somehow on that day in spite of being in contention, Mongomerie was in fact leading, they blew it. Meanwhile the near rookie didn't. Was it the demons? I think so.



Grey Fox can be contacted at greyfox@londonmall.co.uk.

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