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Un Derby de doce más uno

Hace tan solo 50 años, si se preguntaba a un inglés cuál era la fiesta popular más esperada del año la respuesta más probable sería: ¡el Derby Day! La carrera se disputaba el primer miércoles de junio y realmente interrumpía la rutina de la nación: sin ser oficialmente festivo, cerraban bastantes comercios, se tomaban vacaciones muchos empleados, algunos actores de teatro estipulaban en sus contratos que ese día no habría función y la Reina vaciaba su agenda de compromisos. No hacía falta ser aficionado a las carreras de caballos para celebrar el Derby, lo mismo que no hace falta ser goloso para tomar turrón en Navidad.…  Seguir leyendo »

English and Belgian fans on Wednesday in Gdansk, Poland. From there many planned to take buses to Kaliningrad, Russia, where their teams were to play each other Thursday. Credit Kacper Pempel/Reuters

England plays Belgium in the World Cup on Thursday while Prime Minister Theresa May is in Brussels, for Brexit negotiations. I know which I’ll be watching: football, because nationalism is more fun with balls.

Football is simple and beautiful. Governance is neither. But I should be wary of loving, and certainly of trusting, football, even if I have already devised a sophisticated fantasy in which England wins the World Cup. (It is based on the 1987 victory of a spirited youthful team in the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and the aggressive tailoring of Gareth Southgate, the England team manager.)

I know that nationalism can begin with sports — I watch children in their white England football shirts adorned with the three lions, those symbols of English kings, awaken to it — but it does not end there.…  Seguir leyendo »

El Derby del Brexit

Sin duda Mary Shelley no hubiera votado a favor del Brexit el próximo dia 23: no hubo inglesa —nacida y fallecida en el corazón de Londres— más europea que ella. Viajó por todo el continente, conoció casi todas las lenguas, se interesó por todas las culturas y por las ideas más abiertas. Tenía un buen pedigrí intelectual, diríamos los hípicos, pues era hija del autor de Justicia política y de la autora de Vindicación de los derechos de la mujer. Fue primero amante y luego esposa del poeta Percy Bysshe Shelley (cuando se conocieron, ella tenía diecisiete años y él ventidós).…  Seguir leyendo »

Leicester City fans celebrating their team’s clinching of the Premier League title on Monday. Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

When the band Kasabian played a concert at Victoria Park in Leicester, England, in the summer of 2014, its singer and guitarist Serge Pizzorno came onto the stage sporting a T-shirt with “Les-Tah” written across it. Here, then, is the correct pronunciation of the city’s name; the East Midlands dialect loses a few letters, and the lazily clipped accent simplifies it perfectly.

Kasabian, formed in Leicester in 1997, represents the city’s musical claim to fame these days, although the 1970s crooner Engelbert Humperdinck was also from Leicester. Liverpool or Manchester it’s not. Aside from Richard III’s recent reappearance (his bones were discovered beneath a parking lot a few years ago) and the biggest potato chip factory in Europe, Leicester has very little to shout about.…  Seguir leyendo »

El Derby del vacío

Recordando el trauma de la muerte de su padre, escribió Alfonso Reyes: “Después me fui rehaciendo como pude, como se rehacen para andar y correr esos pobres perros de la calle a los que un vehículo destroza una pata; como aprenden a trinchar con una sola mano los mancos; como aprenden los monjes a vivir sin el mundo, a comer sin sal los enfermos”. ¡Afortunado él, que se rehízo! Cuando este cinco de junio tuve ante mí la bulliciosa pradera de Epsom, ferviente de gloriosas expectativas, me dije: “Aquí estuvo el jardín de mis delicias, ahora triunfo de la muerte”. Desolado, devastado y sin embargo idéntico.…  Seguir leyendo »

El Derby del destino manifiesto

Las cifras redondas nos producen una pueril satisfacción pero en ocasiones dan motivo para una no menos pueril melancolía. El Derby del 2014 hace el cuarenta de mi lista personal de asistencia ininterrumpida al gran evento hípico. Si como aseguraba Engels hay un salto de la cantidad a la cualidad, esta cita anual ya no debe ser para mí simple muestra de mi afición sino otra cosa. ¿Cuál? Ni idea. Prefiero no pensarlo. Creo que en el pasado me dije o dije a otros que seguiría yendo a Epsom hasta el Derby número cuarenta y ahí lo dejaría. Pero la longevidad me ha hecho cambiar de opinión (aquel veterano músico de jazz, borracho y mujeriego, que cuando cumplió inopinadamente ochenta años reunió a los amigotes en otra fiesta salvaje y les confesó: “Chicos, si llego a saber que voy a vivir tanto me hubiera cuidado un poco más”).…  Seguir leyendo »

In England, soccer loyalty is to club rather than country. For more than 50 years, I have watched and supported Aston Villa, one of the most famous, if not the most successful, clubs in the world. During that half century, there have been many ups and downs. And the same could be said of the British economy.

I first visited Villa Park on Oct. 8, 1960. Aston Villa beat Newcastle United, 2-0. The great stadium stretched out in front of us as the autumn mist fell over the Holte End. The club has a proud history, and played the main role in the creation of the Football League.…  Seguir leyendo »

El Derby del año 1900 fue ganado por Diamond Jubilee, tal como su hermano de padre y madre Persimmon había logrado cuatro años antes. Ambos eran propiedad del príncipe de Gales que luego fue Eduardo VII, hijo de la reina Victoria cuyos 60 años de reinado celebraba el nombre del ganador. El Derby de 2012 ha iniciado las celebraciones de otro jubileo de diamantes, el de Isabel II, bisnieta de aquel príncipe. Que en los últimos dos siglos y pico sendas reinas inglesas hayan llegado a ostentar la corona más de 60 años dice mucho sobre los ingleses y sobre su insólita y pertinaz monarquía.…  Seguir leyendo »

Poor old Robert Mugabe. Do you know what that guy needs? An Olympics. Harare 2012, he really missed a trick there. A well-run Games and nothing else matters. Put on a show, throw up a couple of impressive buildings and the world is your friend.

The road home from Beijing is lined with wide-eyed converts who've seen the light on totalitarianism. “China has set the bar very high,” Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said. “There are some things that London will not be able to compare to, or equal - such as the ability to bring hundreds of thousands of volunteers to different sites.”…  Seguir leyendo »

The Olympic Games are built on a series of fictions, but one myth towers above all others. It is that the four-yearly festival is a bastion of meritocracy, where success is determined by hard work and talent rather than privilege. This is central to the Games's global appeal and is particularly powerful because it chimes with common sense. Is not sport about the objective measurement of ability, leaving little room for entrenched privilege? Has not the Olympics been the traditional arena for the underdog?

Well, no.

Look beyond the propaganda and you will find that 58 per cent of Great Britain's gold-medal winners at Athens in 2004 went to independent schools.…  Seguir leyendo »

A black formula one world champion seemed, even last year, unthinkable, yet Lewis Hamilton so nearly made it. This is a sport that has long suffered from an almost total white-out. Apart from the Japanese, virtually every face in the paddock, let alone on the starting grid, was, until recently, white. This is hardly surprising. The more expensive and/or exclusive a sport, the whiter it tends to be: the fact almost has the force of a law. That is the main reason why the Rugby World Cup, the Pacific islands excepted, was so desperately white, the Springboks included.

But then along came Lewis Hamilton.…  Seguir leyendo »

George Monbiot's suggestion that "evictions of the poor, along with mentally ill people and beggars, are one of the [Olympic] games' best-established traditions" can't be allowed to stand without a response (London is getting into the Olympic spirit - by kicking out the Gypsies, June 12).How can he claim that "everything we have been told about the Olympic legacy turns out to be bunkum" - five years before the games have even taken place, and five years before we will see the start of what we plan to be a lasting legacy?

When London won the right to host the games, we promised to create a sustainable legacy for London and the UK.…  Seguir leyendo »

Everything we have been told about the Olympic legacy turns out to be bunkum. The games are supposed to encourage us to play sport; they are meant to produce resounding economic benefits and help the poor. It's all untrue. As the evictions in London begin, a new report shows that the only certain Olympic legacy is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.Both Lord Coe and Tessa Jowell, the sports secretary, like the boosters for every city to have bid for the Olympics, have claimed that the games will lever us off our sofas and turn us into a nation of athletes.…  Seguir leyendo »

When the Olympics last came to London, in 1948, their advertisements showed an easily understood combination of the Olympic rings, Big Ben and an ancient statue of a Greek discus thrower (a Roman marble copy of the original Greek bronze, which was and is still one of the British Museum's most prized possessions).

The games were an event rather than a brand. "Logo" existed only as a prefix in the Shorter Oxford: "logocracy, a community or system of government in which words are the ruling powers ... logotype, a type containing a word, or two or more letters, cast in one piece."…  Seguir leyendo »

There is no space to rebut all the inaccuracies in Simon Jenkins' article, but the claims that the Olympic stadium will cost £630m, and the London Evening Standard's latest invention of a £10bn bill, are just false (Jowell and Coe have been duped by the biggest overselling scam in history, March 2).The games have already unlocked billions in new transport investment right across London; they have made the massive regeneration project centred on Stratford and going south to the Thames deliverable when it was not before. This offers unparalleled new opportunities to some of the most deprived communities in the country, bringing with it 40,000 new homes and 50,000 new jobs.…  Seguir leyendo »

This newspaper recently made a stand for professional equality by deciding that both men and women who appear on stage and screen will be termed "actors". But, in showbusiness, fairness of opportunity and income having largely been achieved, language remained the final gap. In tennis, it was the other way round: though granted a unisex job description - players - men and women have played under different rules for widely divergent prizes.

Yesterday's announcement that the 2007 women's champion at Wimbledon will receive the same cash as (let's madly dream) Andy Murray finally removes a 39-year insult that began when, in the first open Wimbledon, Billie Jean King received a cheque two-thirds smaller than that handed to Rod Laver, her partner at the champion's ball.…  Seguir leyendo »

There is only one way to save the 2012 Olympics from six years of agony, expense and public outrage. It is to abandon the idea of a Stratford encampment and integrate the Games into London’s existing sporting life. This year is the last opportunity to do so.

The Commons culture committee was right last week to insist that the soaring cost of the Games be borne by the Treasury. Gordon Brown knew when he agreed to the bid in 2004 that this meant state underwriting. It is inexcusable for 10% of all lottery grants to philanthropic, arts, heritage and sports charities to be creamed off for six years to pay for three weeks of minority sports in 2012.…  Seguir leyendo »

Exactly 2,012 days from today, the London Olympic games will get under way. I know that the opening ceremony on July 27 2012 will spark the same sense of excitement and joy that erupted across the country when we heard that, against all the odds, London's bid had been successful. Everything leads to, and culminates in, a glorious festival of sport for Olympians and Paralympians. But it cannot end there. The enduring success of the games is measured in the years that follow, not in the time it takes for them to take place.

The 2012 games will be a catalyst for one of the most extensive urban and environmental regeneration programmes ever seen in the UK.…  Seguir leyendo »

No one really knows how much the London Olympics will cost - not Sir Roy McNulty, head of the grimly named Olympic Delivery Authority, nor Tessa Jowell, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, nor even the mayor of London. Common sense tells us to assume several billion more than the current figure. Onwards and domewards.To a national chorus of low-level grumbling, this lumbering, bullying, ill-tempered and overpoliticised roadshow will gasp towards completion, with a final hugely expensive sprint, run by relays of cheap imported labour. The games themselves will be short-lived, of course, but an event many, if not all, of us will whoop at in front of giant TV screens in smokeless pubs or, with take-aways on our laps, in the privacy of homes taxed to the rafters for the big event.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Hugh Muir (THE GUARDIAN, 29/11/06):

In the hours after the UK won the right to host the Olympics, Jacques Rogge turned to Ken Livingstone and Tessa Jowell and reflected on the positive headlines. "Enjoy it," the president of the International Olympic Committee told them. "That's probably the last positive coverage you'll have between now and 2012." Isn't it depressing that just 16 months have passed and yet all who feared the Olympic bid might get bogged down in a quagmire of whingeing have been proven right?

Here's a summary of the issues thus far. The financing of the games is going to bankrupt us.…  Seguir leyendo »