Let's face it: the sporting week got off on the wrong foot.
In the US, there were the primitives of the UFC and their appalling "show". In China, there was the ever more trying Nick Kyrgios. Here, there was the grotesque antics of Alan Jones, and those – governments mostly – who fawn over him, and the whole sordid circus of the Everest, a gimmick if ever there was, sure to be gone within five years, but in the meantime re-enlivening suspicions in Melbourne that Sydney still does not know the difference between price and worth.
There was also the release of sobering figures on the way alcohol advertising has swamped live sportcasts: 118 instances during the AFL grand final, 365 for the NRL, exploiting heroes to exploit hero-worshippers. "Stop jamming alcohol ads down our throats," pleaded former St Kilda president Rod Butterss, remembering how sport once thought it could not live without cigarette ads, too. "There's enough money. We don't need it."
Meantime, Australia's dismembered cricket team was disappearing again down the black hole of Dubai. It was a bleak landscape.
UFC aftermath. Call that sport?Credit:AP
And then came Thursday, and the annual Sport Australia Hall of Fame dinner. Truthfully, trussed up in their black ties and bows, these vets are a reminder of the mortality in immortality. But as their eyes shine again, and ours turn cloudy – there was plenty of rheum for all – their joy is never to be past their best.
And so, after such a week, this was anecdote as antidote. Here is basketballer Robyn Maher, playing at the Olympics with a broken hand. "It was my left hand. People said I can't go left. So I went left!" And won a medal.
Here is Allan Moffat at Bathurst in 1977, at the top of the hill, brake pedal pressed to the floor, uselessly. He couldn't slow, so he didn't try to. It's one way to win.
Here is surfer Wendy Botha in her South African childhood, running eight kilometres to the beach each day, board under her arm. Here she is in 1987, being declared world champion while sulking at home, thinking she had lost. "I still hate losing, and it's pretty embarrassing."
Here's tiny Sam Coffa, the Italian immigrant who as a teenager lobbied successfully for girls to be admitted to the Hawthorn Boys Club – this was the 1950s, remember – who graduated from doorman at the Melbourne Olympics, to weightlifter, to heavyweight administrator. He's Aussie as, now; reflecting on the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, he exalted: "We clobbered the Poms."
Here's Drew Ginn, of the Oarsome Foursome, putting a pic of his kids in the boat to keep him going, though he had another ruptured disc in his back. With 400 metres to go, his legs went "all floppy", but he hangs in for another gold.
Here's Gai Waterhouse, ecstatic to be enrolled in NIDA until her father, gruff old TJ, learns of it. "You're not doing that; it's full of poofs." Instead, she follows in his stirrups, but look where she is now. BTW, "When people say I'm a lady trainer, I say, no, I'm a horse trainer."
Here's everyone's favourite, Richie Benaud, as fondly recollected by brother, son and wife. Daphne met him while working as a typist for English wordsmith EW Swanton. "I thought the Australians were much more dashing than the English," she said. He did a bit of cooking, asked Bruce McAvaney. "As an amateur only," replied Daphne. "He tried."
Kurt Fearnley with his wife and children: gone to Disneyland.Credit:AAP
Here, surpassing all, is wheelchair racer Kurt Fearnley. He spoke of the shame past Paralympians had felt, now replaced, he hoped, by hope. "Hope that somebody can be judged by substance and not image. Hope that if sport can adjust to include those with disabilities, maybe the community can follow.
"And when our community is shifting to this idea of perfection where life – within even a picture – is filtered within an inch of humanity, our movement has greater importance than ever, because the image of perfection isn't real, it's not sustainable and it's not healthy.
"Our ability to share beauty and strength in this perceived imperfection just cannot be matched."
You could have heard split pin drop. Suddenly and plainly, all that early-week posturing, pouting, preening, pettiness and pomposity could be seen for what it was.
Fearnley wasn't in the room on the night. His mum said he was with his family, in Disneyland. Momentarily we all were.
Coincidentally or cosmically, as the clock struck 12 and the party began to break up, Australia completed the faraway saving of a lost Test match, and all without a sneer, jeer or leer.
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