Sports Letters: Ugly truth

Thursday 04 February 1999 00:02 GMT

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Sir: A letter (27 January) referred to sport being a source of pleasure... not warfare by other means. Sadly the word sport is quite discredited. We hear much of drug-enhanced performance and the endemic power of money, but baser instincts reveal themselves in excessive triumphalism. If sport is a metaphor for life, then we are finished, as the ugliness portrayed in triumphal gestures and facial masks can only be bettered by the higher primates.

The mass adulation and will to win of Nazi Germany and Nuremberg rallies seem no longer ghosts. If only there was more of the self-mockery of - ironically - Jurgen Klinsmann and his celebratory dives, then maybe we could regain some perspective.

ROBERT FRENCH

Kingskerswell, Devon

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