The great Scottish newspaper writer Hugh McIlvanney often spoke of “the magnificent triviality of sport”. He wrote beautifully on so many things, but especially boxing and horse racing, sports where death is always at your elbow. He saw boxers die in the ring and jockeys die at the track, and he wrote about them with the right mix of detachment, precision and compassion.
Those columns were thankfully rare. Underpinning everything else he wrote was the belief – that agreement between writer and reader – that the great joy of sport lies in its insignificance. We obsess over it, analyse it and argue about it, but ultimately, it really doesn’t matter.
