The sportsman’s curse
Fred Archer was the greatest jockey of his time. Historians of the Turf have him up there with Steve Donoghue and Gordon Richards, Lester Piggott and Frankie Dettori, all not only great jockeys but popular heroes. Archer committed suicide at the height of his fame and the pistol with which he shot himself is, or was, on a somewhat macabre display in the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket.
Recent suicides of popular young jockeys, Liam Treadwell and James Banks, have drawn attention to the problem of mental health in racing; a problem we are much better equipped to understand than in Archer’s days. Sport promises glory and brings disappointment. Jockeys, especially jump-jockeys, are more likely to suffer concussions than most other sportsmen except perhaps rugby players, and we all now recognize the long-term damage that concussions can do to the brain. (Though Treadwell and Banks were both young men in their thirties.) Archer was judged to have killed himself when the balance of his mind was disturbed, principally because of the dreadful concoctions he dosed himself with to keep his weight down.
Sportsmen experience success and failure more publicly and dramatically than most and do so when they are young and sometimes ill-prepared for it. Dick Francis, champion steeplechase jockey turned bestselling novelist, understood this very well. The title of what I consider the best of his forty or so novels is “Nerve”. Its hero, Robbie Finn, finds a promising career turning sour, he has had a bad fall and his horses don’t seem to run for him as they used to. Word spreads he has lost his nerve. The villain, a TV journalist, publicly accuses him of being afraid and Robbie is brought to the point of contemplating suicide. In the end, Robbie consults a doctor (psychiatrist?) and exposes the villain, so he comes through. But, other jockeys in Francis’s novels do kill themselves. The heroes of Francis’ best novels, the earlier ones, almost all experience at least some moments of fear (usually justified) and mental fragility (which proves unjustified). If the later novels are less successful, though still enjoyable, it is because the heroes have become all too competent, ruffled by nothing.
One dictionary meaning of the verb “ruffle” is “to disturb the equanimity,” that is, the balance of the mind. Cricket threatens this repeatedly and very publicly. Michael Brearley, England cricket captain turned consulting psychoanalyst, has written: “For a batsman, getting out means leaving the arena and being hors de combat for hours or days – a symbolic loss or death.” He may sit for hours in the pavilion watching team-mates make the runs he has failed to make. This is more than disappointment; it is deprivation. Even if your team wins, it is a test of character to rejoice in the victory when you have failed yourself. Nevertheless, Brearley sees the other side of the coin: “In this way, cricket helps us, I imagine, to learn to accept the pain and loss.” No doubt this is true.
Yet, it is only recently players that we have started to understand and make allowances for the disturbed mind. This is thanks to the courage with which some players, notably Marcus Trescothick and Monty Panesar, have opened up about the loneliness of an individual even within a team, and the scarcely tolerable pressure imposed by high expectations.
The list of Test cricketers who have killed themselves is also quite long, though this is also true in other walks of life. But it points to the challenge in professional sport of adjusting to an often-abrupt end to the career for which you are best suited. The career which brought you fame. Players are often comparatively young at the time of retirement; how do you face the years ahead? Cricket, one might say, has caused few to kill themselves. It is the inability to find a successful replacement for the game, masked by money troubles, alcoholism, marital breakdown, business failure.
The problem that faces anyone who has played sports as a career, is starting afresh, making a new life when the glory you have lived with has departed. Happily, there are more opportunities now to remain under the sport’s protective wing than there used to be, whether as coaches or administrators or working in the media. It’s also the case that earnings in most major sports are much higher than they were, so retired players and athletes may enjoy financial security. You now find fewer top-league footballers running a pub and drinking its profits than you used to.
Retiring at any age can be disturbing. It leads to a sense of futility, boredom and depression. This may be hard to deal with when you are sixty-five or seventy, but it’s surely harder when you are thirty or forty years younger, and the work that gave your life meaning is suddenly taken away. Making a success of the second half of your life in the shadows of your limelight is no doubt difficult. Perhaps the surprising thing is not that a few sportsmen kill themselves when their occupation’s gone, but that so many adapt successfully to a second life when the cheering is still a vivid memory. Doing so takes courage of the kind we used to call “moral fibre.” Not even riding a thoroughbred over Cheltenham fences, facing a fast bowler, or holding your nerve when a batsman lays into your bowling prepares you for the grey afternoon of retirement.