We have ways and means of trying to bring down our heroes, don’t we? Today we try to undermine the legacies of two more, but in entirely different ways.
The glittering cycling career of Sir Bradley Wiggins remains just that. He was allowed therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) for a three year period from 2011 to 2013 for genuine medical reasons. Allow me to quote from the BBC website: “Wiggins’ TUEs were approved by British authorities and cycling’s world governing body the UCI, and there is no suggestion either he or Team Sky have broken any rules.” So, where’s the show?
If there is no suggestion of wrongdoing or rule breaking, then what is firing up this wall of insinuation of suggestion against one of our greatest athletes? The Daily Mail – who else? – has come up with a story about a mysterious package that was taken by courier to France and given to Wiggins in 2011, the decongestant Fluimucil, which could have been bought over the counter in that country. Tory MP Damian Collins said: “It just looks odd”, which to me is another way of saying “was he at it?” The comments cannot even be addressed by British Cycling because of an ongoing investigation by UK Anti-Doping (Ukad), yet their silence is interpreted by certain conspiracy theorists of evidence of some kind of guilt. Oh no it isn’t.
I read this stuff in the media and scratch my head. There is zero evidence to suggest that Wiggins has done anything wrong, but in this country the media bigs people up and then loves to bring them down. This time, it’s as if they are trying to plant a suggestion that Wiggins is the new Lance Armstrong. Until and unless some real evidence turns up, and I very much doubt that it will, then let’s stick to the facts. Sir Bradley Wiggins has been a credit to British sport in general and cycling in particular.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Daily Mirror descends to the same sewer where you will find the Mail and Sun to do a job on Paul Gascoigne. The photographer’s long lenses being put to good (bad, actually) use, they find a tearful, dishevelled Gazza, with a large plaster on his face, following an alleged incident – a “hotel brawl” reports the paper – a few days previous. Is there really a public interest in seeing Gazza hounded through the rest of his days? Does the ordinary woman and man in the street genuinely want to see him ruthlessly pursued as he struggles through his life? As the excellent Gary Lineker tweeted today, “Stop aiming zoom lenses at him and leave him alone ffs.” (In case you were wondering, ffs means for fuck’s sake.)
Thank goodness for Gary Lineker, the man described by the Sun as a “jug-eared luvvie” for caring about desperate refugees. He does not care about, nor is he intimidated by, the hate of the red tops and we, like Gazza, need people like him to speak out like he does and to stand up to bullies.
Lineker himself is a national sporting icon and hero who, by virtue of hard work and talent, has forged a new and successful career in the media. He’s successful so some people want to take him down. Well, I’ve got news for the media barons: Gary Lineker is not frightened of you and, even worse, a large section of the public respects him for saying what he wants. You do not have to agree with everything or even anything Lineker says, but you simply must not forbid him for saying it, as the red tops would have you believe.
There is a song called Dirty Laundry by Don Henley, to which I have referred in previous blogs. Henley rages against the type of media we tolerate so easily in this country like this: “I make my living off the evening news, just give me something-something I can use. People love it when you lose, They love dirty laundry” and later “It’s interesting when people die”. And that is precisely what we are talking about. There must be people who will buy the Mail because they want to read ‘scandal’ about Sir Bradley Wiggins (and to gaze at 15 year old girls in bikinis, as the on-line edition yesterday allowed paedophiles to do), people who will buy the Sun in order to see Gary Lineker attacked with the same level of objectivity they used when slandering the dead of Hillsborough and they’ll buy the Mirror, like perverted voyeurs, to see long-lens photos of a man in crisis.
I stand by Wiggo, Gazza and Gary Lineker, all heroes to me. If asked to choose between these three and Paul Dacre, Rupert Murdoch and Kelvin MacKenzie, it’s not difficult choice. Is it?
