by No, I’m not leaving Romania or anything that ridiculous. But the month-long sport-fest finally came to an end today. It’s been a nice distraction, I must admit.
France won today’s highly entertaining final of a marvellous World Cup. One of the goalscorers, Mbappé, has such a fun name to say and even type. It reminds me of a certain Hanson hit from the nineties. Four members of Pussy Riot invaded the pitch early in the second half. I wonder where they are now. Even the presentation at the end provided drama: it was absolutely teeming with rain. Putin was duly provided with an umbrella, while Macron and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic (the Croatian president, who was decked out in national football attire) were left to soak. Croatia played very positively throughout the tournament and will have won plenty of fans. So France have now won two World Cups in my lifetime, as have Germany. And Brazil. And Italy. Argentina and Spain have won one each. Hang on, so that means I’ve lived through ten World Cups, so I must be nearly f… Oh shit.
To be honest though, over the last few days, my sporting mind has been in London. The later stages of Wimbledon were staggeringly good. I didn’t see it all, because I have to work occasionally, but I did pretty well. Much better, certainly, than I ever managed when I lived in New Zealand and it all happened at night. Anderson’s crazy 6½-hour semi with Isner was much better, and less serve-dominated, than some people made out. I was just the bit after 11-all in the fifth (admittedly quite a long bit!) that started to become monotonous as both players were holding with ease and not doing a whole lot else. Anderson was clearly the fresher of the two players as the fifth-set game tallies hit the twenties, and his improvised left-handed forehand while down on the ground was the killer blow in the end. Wimbledon will quite possibly change the rules in time for next year to prevent a 50-game final set from ever happening again. I’ll write another post on that topic specifically. Then came the other semi, itself an epic at 5¼ hours, which was played under the roof and spread over two days. It was probably the best match at Wimbledon since that final ten years ago. At 8-all in the final set, my parents phoned me from their hotel room in Singapore. They were stopping over on their way to New Zealand (they’ll now be on the plane). Mum is quite a big Djokovic fan and she was following the live scores on her phone, in the absence of tennis on their TV. I commentated the best I could (which isn’t very well) for what turned out to be the dénouement.
Predictably, Anderson was buggered today, after playing a stupid amount of tennis to get past Federer and then Isner. Although he found a second (third? tenth?) wind as the match progressed: he suddenly started to produce on his first serve and forehand, and Djokovic did extremely well to prevent a fourth set. Anderson came across as a thoroughly nice bloke, and is now firmly on the tennis map, even for fairly casual fans. Yesterday’s women’s final was a little disappointing, with Serena spraying errors everywhere, but she was so gracious in defeat and Kerber equally so in victory. Kerber was unbelievably consistent – only five unforced errors in the match, according to Wimbledon’s (possibly generous) stat-keepers. I even saw the men’s doubles final last night: extra drama was provided when they closed the roof between the fourth and fifth sets. The Kiwi Michael Venus came oh so close to grabbing a Wimbledon title.
So that’s it. Back to reality, and it’s just as well that’s not too bad these days.
