Andy Murray Fighting Back Against British Media’s Pressure at Wimbledon 2014

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: June 24, 2014

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LONDON — Britain is a country great with words—hey, Shakespeare, Milton and Churchill were Englishmen—but not so great at games.

It’s a faded empire where once the sun never set, but now—on fields and courts—it symbolically rarely rises.

It’s a place where athletic success, more significantly failure, is taken personally.

“Don’t you dare lose, Tim,” was the front-page headline in a tabloid a decade past when Tim Henman, “our Tim,” was about to play a Wimbledon semifinal for a fourth time.

He lost. All four times. Like the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl.



Ah, but last year, the anguish ebbed when Andy Murray ended the drought of British winners that had started before World War II.

Tennis was created in Britain. So was golf. So was soccer. And rugby. The English used to win everything. Now, the winners are Spaniards and Swiss, South Africans and Serbs, Americans and Australians.

After the country endured what is being called its worst World Cup performance in recent memory, The Daily Telegraph's sports-page headline was, “England's Shame.”

In British papers, the home guys may be brave and courageous and witty. But they’re rarely winners, despite the hectoring of sportswriters and the pleading of fans.

This may not be the exact quote, but the great sports columnist Hugh McIlvanney, now with The Sunday Times, conceding he was mixing metaphors, said of the manner Brits first build up and then tear down their athletes, “They fatten you up like cattle, then pull off your wings like butterflies.”

All sports in Britain, someone said long ago, are covered subjectively and politically. Brits are brave, courageous and in sixth place with the notable exception of Murray, who in 2013 won Wimbledon and Monday retur...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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