Look Both Ways Before Looking up to Somebody

It’s a sunny, Sunday afternoon, a great time to take your kids to the soccer game for quality time with the family. Well not if the players start head-butting each other like mountain goats in the  Rockies. What is the world coming to when experienced and even- tempered players like Zinedine Zidane behave like animals on the field during the final of the World Cup.

In my youth athletes were whiter than white, pristine role-models, not a reason for my dad to cover my eyes. The first sportsman I truly admired was the “Icelandic Viking” Jon Pall Sigmarsson, winner of four World’s Strongest Man titles in the late eighties and early nineties. Not only was he the strongest man in the world, but a great communicator as well. He used to shout “I am a Viking, not an Eskimo!” To a ten-year-old boy, a statement like that gave me cause for a lot of headache: why did people think he was an eskimo, did people think I was raised in an igloo? For a while, just to be sure, I told every foreigner I met that I was not an eskimo. The beefy, hunk of a man ate like a horse. Somewhere I read that he ate ten eggs for breakfast. I tried that at age eleven resulting in a day spent in the bathroom and one angry mom. I thought endlessly about his motto “There is no point in being alive if you cannot do the deadlift.” Was that really what life was all about and did I have to eat ten eggs a day to accomplish this? Tragically in 1993 Jon Pall died at the age of 32 while performing this exercise in the gym.

I was devastated by Jon’s death. I changed my diet and lost about 50pounds. Not being as meaty as before I had to change sports. I left the macho atmosphere of the gym for a cooler place. I decided to find my tender side on the ice. From now on I would focus completely on figure skating. I fell completely for Tonya Harding the first time I laid my eyes on her. I admired her rise to stardom: in-spite of a tough childhood in an unstable family, as well as being plagued by asthma (only made worse by smoking), Tonya became an elite figure skater. Only a year after I gave my heart to the graceful sport of figure skating, my idol figured that she had a better chance of winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championships if her main competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, would have to crawl on to the ice. She and her ex- husband hired a crony to strike Kerrigan on the knee. Harding won the event, while Kerrigan’s injury forced her withdrawal. In the beginning I could not believe my darling could be a part of such a horrendous affair. Then she pleaded guilty to conspiring to harm Kerrigan. I did not lose faith in my role model, we all make mistakes. I was convinced that the tenacious woman would get on the straight path again, both on the ice and off. Eventually I was let down by her never ending run in with the law, an appearance in a wrestling show and in a pornographic “Wedding Video”. Finally she crushed my heart by taking part in the Fox TV network’s pitiful Celebrity Boxing.

At this time, having seen my shining star go from hero to zero, I had lost all hope in sports. Everywhere I looked, “SCANDAL”. I wandered around the desert for years without as much as watching one soccer game. Whenever I saw sport on the horizon it turned out to be a mirage, jocks charged with violent behavior off the field or even worse, rape. Spoiled owners controlled only by money, athletes demanding sky-high salaries. I gave up all hope of future interest in sports.

That is, until just recently I wandered into a theater to see a movie called Wordplay (hopefully to be shown soon in Iceland). The movie falls into the same category as Spellbound and other documentaries about out of the ordinary sports such as spelling bees and underwater- polo. In Wordplay people compete at crossword-puzzles. I had no idea a puzzle tournament could create such passionate sporting. What struck me most about this movie was the great atmosphere of sportsmanship. The competitors seemed to have a greater goal than winning. Fair play, enjoyment of the game and time with other players mattered more. This new side to competitive sports was refreshing to see, one which is often overshadowed by outbursts such as Zidane’s. Sure, you can say that the general public does not care who wins a crossword-puzzle championship and that the competitors are nerds with nothing better to do with their time. But should people really care so much about winning in general? And, these people ‘are’ nerds who probably have nothing better to do. They are also a great example of how one should behave--well, maybe not off, but definitely on, the field. Take me to the puzzle page of the New York Times, I have found my new sport.

Baldur Héðinsson is student of mathematics and Dj in Boston.