Our Royals Should Loosen up and Hug a Champion!
Chris Bowers thinks Princess Anne and Steve Redgrave missed an opportunity.
24 Dec 2011, 17:31
BBC Sports Personality Lifetime Achievement Award
It's a striking memory from 20 years ago. On the final day of the Barcelona Olympics, the Spaniard Fermin Cacho won the 1500 metres, to the delight of the home fans. Shortly after collecting his gold medal, he was ushered up to the royal box, where the cameras caught King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia both giving him a massive hug.
I remember thinking then 'Now that's how a head of state should behave, with none of this repressed English standoffishness that protocol insists should happen in this country!'
In the past 11 years I've been lucky to be at four Davis Cup finals (tennis's premier team competition) in Spain where the Spaniards have lifted the cup. On all four occasions, representatives of the royal family were there, happy to give a big hug to sweaty tennis players.
It happened a few weeks ago in Seville when King Juan Carlos, who didn't look well, gave a bear hug to Rafael Nadal who had just won Spain's fifth Davis Cup title. It seemed so natural.
Contrast that with the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show, in which Princess Anne presented Steve Redgrave with the 'lifetime achievement award'. The award had been flagged up in advance so it wasn't a surprise, but the footage of Redgrave (these days 'Sir Steve') was still sufficiently emotional that when he walked up to the Princess Royal to receive his award, there was real feeling in the air.
And as he approached her, the occasion was absolutely right for the two to embrace. They have worked together on sporting charitable initiatives over several years, she is a great servant to all sorts of causes, and while she has much of the stuffiness of her breeding, she also has a down-to-earthness that could be the quality that saves the royals when the next bout of republican mania hits these shores (probably when the Queen dies).
Yet protocol prevents it, just as it prevented Emlyn Hughes from putting his arm around Anne when she was his team-mate on another BBC programme, 'A Question of Sport', many years ago. Someone should tell the horsey equerries and guardians of the royal stuffiness to go and jump in St James's Park lake.
In the 20 years since Cacho's gold, the British have had the emotional release of Diana's death and the semi-modernisation of the William & Kate marriage. Now is the time to loosen up, or the Royal Family really will seem hopelessly out of touch.
P.S. I was so pleased Mark Cavendish won the main Sports Personality award. I only hope the vote for a cyclist translates itself into a boost for cycling not as a sport but as an incredibly useful means of transport that dodges traffic jams and keeps riders healthy. The idea of a sustainable transport system of the future is simply not viable without a central role for cycling, so hopefully Cavendish can be the new standard bearer of a generation of adults who cycle to work, or at least to the train station.
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And after hugging Sir Steve, HRH could have gone and had her hair done. That really will be a sign we have a modern, in touch monarch, when Princess Anne gets rid of the worst hairstyle in history!
28/12/2011 12:10