‘Athlete as role model’ sounds more like a painting by Monet than a cultural catch-cry.
The phrase gets thrown around so frequently it has become mostly meaningless but at its core, the purpose of athlete as role models is to provide a platform for sponsors to leverage off in order sell to merchandise to the mums and dads of future world-beaters everywhere.
Glorification leads to idolisation leads to emulation. And you can’t emulate properly if you’re not wearing the right clothes or using the right equipment. But is it right to gloss over or ignore the darker side of sport to sell sports drinks and equipment and underwear?
The truth is we know next to nothing about the athletes that we watch competing around the world. We like to think we do, we like to think that those articles we read offer us an insight into the ‘real’ personality of a sportsperson but let’s face it, that’s rubbish.
For most of us, the only way that we ‘know’ an athlete is through their performance on the field, in the pool or on the court, through the sound bites they provide during interviews and through the brands that pay them to advertise products.
How many times can you recall someone talking up player X seems like a good bloke only to open a news website a month later to see something along the lines of : “Player X charged with assault/ DUI/ drunk and disorderly conduct/ tax fraud/ match-fixing/ choose your poison”.
Most of the time in the sporting world we don’t know who has punched their girlfriend, who has ripped off their mate, who has dealt drugs, who has slept with their teammate’s wife, who has run an illegal dog-fighting ring.
These things stay out of the public eye until, occasionally, they don’t. The media uproar that follows these kinds of revelations is laughable, feigned shock and quick denouncement of “privileged” individuals who have thrown everything away in the blink of an eye.
It’s an ongoing cycle of flawed people elevated to cardboard cut-out role models because of their physical prowess then lit on fire and burnt because of various wrongdoings – sometimes perceived (moral), sometimes proved (criminal).
Nick Kyrgios is just the latest athlete to be placed in the crosshairs of the social arbiters of Australia i.e. sports journalists, talkback radio presenters and old blokes at the pub. His crime? Well, about that…
The tide has turned on Kyrgios because he was anointed as the golden child and has refused to follow the script. He’s so good that he doesn’t need a coach, or to practice, and still somehow finds himself in the top 20 tennis players in the world. Just take a moment to comprehend that.
He was the one sharing a Bonds commercial with Pat Rafter – the epitome of the sporting hero/ good bloke – and now Kyrgios is moping around after losing a match he should have won and copping it from all sides for every conceivable reason.
When Kyrgios burst on the scene everyone loved him because he was a slightly unbridled but generally positive kid who could do what Australians care about most, he could win. He had a rawness to him that was clearly different to the polished and well-managed public personas of most of the other tennis pros getting about.
He’d smile and laugh and be self-deprecating and he was so young and so full of world-beating potential that we just couldn’t help but fall in love with the little tyke.
Now he’s throwing rackets and abusing ball boys and talking about the lack of monogamy on the professional tennis circuit and giving up on the sport halfway through competing in it and everyone has changed their tune. Now everyone wants to stick the boot in.
The level of public resentment is a little extraordinary though. That people have found a way to convince themselves that Kyrgios’ world view and work ethic somehow apply to them is perverse. Why do we care so much that a bloke wants to play Xbox and knock-around basketball more than professional tennis?
The answer is that the Australian public view Kyrgios’ behaviour as a slap in the face because someone with so much talent has so little interest in cultivating it “properly”, of making the most of it.
The unique thing about Kyrgios as an athlete is that although his flaws and issues are put on public display, in no way does he try to hide them. He accepts that he’s poorly prepared, that he doesn’t like to be pushed outside of his comfort zone, that he’s to blame. But where Kyrgios appears to grate with people the most is that he not only does he break conventions associated with sport, he breaks conventions of life more broadly.
Work hard, get ahead. Be humble and appreciative and thankful for what you have. Kyrgios doesn’t fit into the mould that people want him to. He doesn’t try hard enough for his success so his lack of success is met with glee.
He takes for granted what he has, therefore he doesn’t deserve it. These puritanical views stem from societal mores, not sporting conventions, because in sport, as Lombardi said, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
So we judge Kyrgios now both because he is losing and because we believe he deserves to lose. But if he starts winning then that winning will become self-fulfilling. He must deserve to win simply because he has done so.
The ‘Aussie battler’ is one of the more beloved cultural clichés of our wide brown land. If there’s one Australian who’s very clearly battling right now, it’s Nick Kyrgios.
Twitter: @brinpaulsen
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