By RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR

Sport has a way with heroes.

This ain’t all. The charming, but difficult, vocation has also had that uncanny knack of throwing up great sportspersons with every generation: to excel, even revamp “impossible” records.

Like the runs of Sunil Gavaskar, Allan Border, and Sachin Tendulkar; the wickets of Sir Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev, and Shane Warne; the golf titles of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus; the Wimbledon victories of Fred Perry, Bjorn Borg, and Roger Federer; the goals of “King” Pele; the limitlessness of Sergei Bubka; the magic of “His Airness” Michael Jordan; and, the sumo triumphs of Japanese “mountain-like” wrestlers, to name… but only a select few.

The world of athletics has, for long, had its own share of heroes, no less: a list, which maybe the most exhaustive, perforce, and also the longest in all-sport. Of skills handed down through history; of immortal sportsmen and women, who took it upon themselves to drape their professed activity, exquisitely and resplendently, with all their abundant talents.

Fame Game

From the first known champion of the Greek Olympiad — a cook named Coroebus — who won the sprint in 776 BC, to the gold medals of Jesse Owens, the halcyon days of Nadia, the Olympics’ “Perfect-10″ girl, the magic of Carl Lewis, the zooming leap of Mike Powell, the aquatic goldmine of Kristin Otto, the sheer grace and viola of Florence Joyner… the statistical roll-call at athletics’ Hall of Fame seems endless.

Add to this the very rakish swagger of the Italian skiing ace Alberto Tomba and the artistic songs of Kristi Yamaguchi, not to speak of the phenomenal exploits of several “marathon” men and women. You now have a grand gallery of human excellence — a spectacle as grand as the Olympics themselves.

Upsets, triumphs and defeats, have all been part of athletics’ folklore. Men and women of outstanding variety have come and gone. From the jaws of defeat, teams and individuals have rallied to win, thanks to that one great human quality: steely brilliance, or never-say-die spirit.  On the other hand, there have been several instances when sportspersons have lost their nerve, only to lose events, which were, at one stage, firmly secured in their grasp. A case of touch-and-go, or sporting “disasters,” by wafer-thin margins. But, that’s the name of the game: you win some, you lose some.

Else, where would the law of averages fit in, or even relate to human fallibility? Yes, in the lexicon of sport, there has to be a word called failure — a word that is as dreaded as the big “C” alphabet in one deadly disease.

Element & Spirit

What has made athletics such a gloriously predictable, but unpredictable, sport is its own penchant for “hurling” innate surprises, in both element and spirit. Natural ability, for instance. Just look at the way the “coloured” race has been able to conjure a host of stupendous athletes, one after another, as if the community had a factory for it. But, the fact remains: no individual, howsoever great, is greater than the sport itself.  Sport is, quite simply, permanent.

Not also events or records, for that matter… However, if you go down memory lane, you’d surely come across some great names immortalised till kingdom come.  Among them, a select band has also become greater than the rest. The likes of Owens, Sir Roger Bannister, Mark Spitz, Sebastian Coe, Said Aouita, Ed Moses, Daley Thompson, Marita Koch, Ingrid Kristiansen, Chen Cuiting, Katrin Dorre, Mary Decker et al. And, the star-parade is in no way comprehensive again.

Perfection Rules

Now to delve into the specifics, the theme of this piece: the search for the Perfect Athlete.  Common knowledge leads us to place the name of Owens, as being the closest to fit the description. Because, he was the finest ever one saw in an athlete — as far as all-round abilities in a single individual were concerned. Owens was a natural; not “made-to-order,” hi-tech persona. He was thoroughly gifted, talented; an athletic marvel. His athleticism was divine, chiselled to perfection by hard work and methodical training. Yet, there’s nothing robotic about him. His anato-physiology and/or somatic and mental athletic chemistry were no less instinctual. It was not programmed on sophisticated, scientific training, state-of-the-art technology, or equipment, or biomechanics.

Judging by his capabilities, in a different age, Owens has, perhaps, had no peer. His background was anything, but advantageous. Yet, he could just do anything one wanted him to do on the field. Without drugs, or anabolic concoctions. He did not need them. Besides, Owens was a paradigm of every Olympian ideal, a Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr of the athletic world. However, with all his near-impossible qualities, Owens, like all human beings, was not infallible.

So, who, then, is the Perfect Athlete?. As Michelangelo said: “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.”

Fitting The Bill

What about the near-perfect athlete?  The idea is practical — to the extent possible.  And, we have had only a few that could fit the bill. Each of them in his/her own way, Owens being the foremost individual in this elite group of athletes. A man whose super-duper abilities were often related to cosmic consciousness, and ability. To cull a famous quote: “The more a person can preserve his being and seek what is useful to him, the greater is his virtue.” To Owens, sport was a psychological need. His sense of healthy competition; of fair play, candor and achievement. Of creativity too — a characteristic of thought and problem solving, original, novel and appropriate. A model of divergent thinking — for the production of new information from known frontiers of physical and mental endurance, or logical possibilities, serving as the touchstone, or basis of ingenuity.

The Perfect Fact-File

Owens was too special. Why? For especial reasons.

Which brings us to a cricketing allegory, which Owens displayed by coalescing all the great qualities of a host of great players in their intrinsic manner — including the order of their conscious evolution and totality — even if the objective and essence of their essentiality would be a fanciful exemplar.

More so, by way of “appraisals.”

• The natural talent of Gary Sobers
• The consistency of Don Bradman
• The artistry of Jack Hobbs and Gundappa Vishwanath
• The power of Viv Richards
• The doggedness of Allan Border and Rahul Dravid
• The versatility of Kapil Dev
• The instinctive magic of Richard Hadlee
• The sportive spirit of Frank Worrell
• The quicksilver reflexes of Keith Miller
• The dynamism of Sachin Tendulkar.

Result? A “Perfect-10.” Well almost — because, Owens had that qualification under his belt! A feather in his athletic cap. A cap, which he wore lightly, because, he was ethereal. Yet, he was also real. A humanist-sportsman, who believed in the Old Testament. This was his greatest appeal — an attribute that has stood the test of time.

Great athletes are born, and not made. What comes first is their ability to win; “maturity” ensues only later. When the two unite to make a perfect marriage, one would not need extra grey cells to predicting the career-graph of any given sportsperson, with some degree of accuracy… even if, in our technological age, that good, old “Chariots of Fire” nobility, in sport or life, is almost extinct.

However this maybe, one thing is certain: what will endure and inspire generations is human excellence, whatever the odds. Like the legendary, unsurpassable talent of a phenomenon called Owens — or, Sobers, in the willow sport.

In other words, perfection is what perfection can be.