À propos toppidrett og dens vesen som ble diskutert tidligere: Her er Jeremy Clarcksons kronikk i The Times denne uken. Han fornekter seg aldri, som vanlig.
Step aside, RoboPlayer, sport will simply die without Johnny Hapless (Feb. 8.)
Like half the population of Britain, I spent last Sunday morning watching Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have a game of upside-down tennis in Australia. And halfway through the third set I realised something: I was watching the beginning of the end for sport.
Both players had plainly spent every waking moment of their lives playing tennis and every sleeping moment dreaming about it. Both had been force-fed with the right sort of lumpy nutritional sludge and tweaked, mentally and physically, until they had become human G-strings. No avenue had been left unexplored. No crease had remained unironed. And as a result they were evenly matched. Both could play any stroke faultlessly. Both had the best rackets that current technology could provide, both had comfy shoes and both were fit enough to play for a year, should the score line necessitate that.
But then something began to trouble Murray. It could have been a fly buzzing around one of the lights, or a bit of self-doubt. And because of this tiny detail, his game went to pieces, he lost the fourth set 6-0 and that was the end of that.
Well, I'm no particular fan of Murray, but I don't think that a tennis Grand Slam final should be decided by a fly buzzing around a light. Or by some teenage issues about self-worth.
Things are even worse in the athletical world of running about and throwing things for a great distance. Your success in a high-jump competition now can be affected by a light breeze and in a cycle race by a microscopic drop in barometric pressure. And then it gets worse.
In 1954 Roger Bannister covered a mile in less than four minutes and everyone wondered if the human being would ever be able to go more quickly. But just 25 years later Sebastian Coe shaved 10 seconds off the time.
So what does this mean? That man will one day be able to cover a mile in three minutes? Two? A thousandth of a second? Plainly the answer is no, so at some point no more records will ever be broken. High jump. Long jump. All of it is doomed.
Football too. Last year the Premier League was won by Manchester City simply because one of the Liverpool players fell over at a crucial moment. All that training, all those Aston Martins and all that television time, and it all comes down to a dodgy shoelace. This year's Champions League could easily be decided by a header that's knocked off course by a player's idiotic hairstyle.
I went last week to watch Chelsea play Manchester City, and both teams were so good and so well disciplined that nothing interesting was going to happen. As indeed it didn't.
Even Scrabble has been ruined these days because you get two people who have spent their lives learning the dictionary and think it is acceptable to use words such as jo, qi and fiz, and I sit there in a puddle of incandescent rage, shouting: "It's a game of imagination. Not to see which of you is the best at being a parrot."
We've reached the point in all professional sport where the rewards are so bountiful that it's worth pushing your body and your mind to a point where the only way you can shine is by growing an extra lung or two brains. Which means you can't shine at all.
Technology is the only answer. I'm talking about tennis rackets that can read the position of an opponent and then adjust the head to ensure the ball goes to a point on the court where he can't reach it. Or snooker cues that work out the correct angle. And cricket bats that emit a loud and piercing whistle to keep the crowd awake.
But do we want to live in a world where I could become the world golfing champion simply because my bat, or whatever it's called, can direct the ball to the hole thing in one go, in all weathers, and on all courses? Not really. Because that's not sport.
For evidence of this we need to turn our attention to Formula One motor racing, in which the driver simply drives around in a computer algorithm and can win only if his agent has secured him a place in whichever team happens to employ the best aerodynamicist.
Yes, he could throw caution to the wind and try to drive outside the box, but if he does that, the stewards, a Honda dealer from Jersey and a man with an earwig on his face will make him sit on the naughty step until he has no chance of winning at all.
The time is fast approaching when all governing bodies need to start appointing judges who are not especially bothered by how well a person has boxed or how efficiently a team has defended, but are very bothered about who has shown the most grit and determination and spirit.
It would be a sort of Eddie the Eagle-type deal in which the person who flies for the longest time after leaving the ski jump gets a pat on the back, a £2 postal order and a medal of some kind. But the chap or chapess who comes down in a tangle of limbs yet with a suicidal grimace of determination parked on their face gets £1m.
If someone wins a motor race having done nothing interesting at all, then his place on the podium is taken by someone who has. Even if he's in a pine box as a result.
And football? Yes, the number of goals will still count, but the number of tackles and shots on target will be considered as well, to stop managers parking the bus, or settling for a draw.
It is often said these days that sport is business, and that's true. But the business in question is entertainment. And in a world where all the competitors are trained, fed, massaged and psyched to perfection, it's like watching robots. And that's not entertaining at all.
..Jeg mener safety first.
