Even Federer, himself, now recognises how alluring their rivalry could have
been. “We were almost too nice to each other sometimes,” he said.
Essentially they blew their chance of a Hollywood film. Tinseltown law deems
that a rivalry which does not extend beyond the tennis court, is a rivalry
that is incomplete and hence goes straight to DVD.
Granted, the purists will remember Federer-Nadal as one of the great tennis
match-ups. But for we armchair plebs, Borg v McEnroe remains the benchmark.
The awful secret is they actually liked each other, but were kind enough never
to show it. McEnroe would wail and curse like the brat he was, while Borg
would stand there like the coolest cat in existence. The “Fire and Ice”
comparison worked, they worked. They dragged us in and bound us in their
divergence.
As did Coe and Ovett, Ali and Frazer, Nicklaus and Palmer. In their cases,
opposites attracted like UKIP and Trotskyists. Whether rightly or wrongly,
real or imagined, they provided feud for thought. It is what Hamilton and
Rosberg offer and while we appreciate that the course of true hate never has
run smooth, those were some fantastically joyless first steps we witnessed
in Monte Carlo.
Of course, there is a line to be drawn when discussing the merits of sporting
rivalry. I would suggest that the decision of some of Tonya Harding’s
backroom staff to negate the threat of fellow American ice-skater Nancy
Kerrigan by attempting to break her leg before the 1994 Winter Olympics is
perhaps going a tad too far. And I would also suggest that it is not in the
interest of one rival to become all consumed with the other.
The surfer Andy Irons once admitted he would go to sleep thinking up different
ways of punching cover boy Kelly Slater “in his pretty face”.
After being beaten three times in a row to the world championship, Irons left
the sport and was dead, through narcotics, at the age of 32. Slater cried
his eyes out. The man whom Slater said “made me” had gone.
So with all these salutary lessons in mind, Hamilton-Rosberg should be
welcomed. It could be Senna-Prost all over again, although perhaps without
the ramming off the road bits. Yet the threat of anarchy, of going against
those awful “team orders”, will always be there, and this will only
accentuate the pure contrast between the pair who have chased each other
around sharp bends since puberty.
In one corner there is Hamilton, from the council house in Stevenage, who
drives on emotion, who is prepared to take all the risks, who is minded to
say what he believes when he believes he has been wronged. And in the other
there is Rosberg, who grew up as the son of multi-millionaire world champion
in Monaco, who drives on knowledge, who calculates the risks first, who is
clever enough to talk his way out of controversy.
It is all there and these seeds of bitterness and resentment are already
blooming into something wonderfully unseemly. Yes, Formula One’s loud
engines are gone. But the roar of rancour is back. Long may it blast.