Heroes, toxic ferrets and a large man from Leeds

Abstract

The world of sport, and sports coaching more generally, appears to be fertile ground for establishing an array of mantras (i.e. ‘fail to prepare and prepare to fail’ … ‘never say “me” instead think “we”’…), for the use of cliche (‘I'm just over the moon…really am’) and for the promotion of meta-narratives (‘sport is good’). The lexicon of cliche, mantra and meta-narrative often fuse to the point of being indistinguishable. However, despite the challenges of definition and categorization they can, in their confused collective, forge a kind of contextualised truth. If the reader can hold-close his or her own catalogue of inane sporting chatter then the story presented has a greater chance of gaining purchase. My auto-ethnographic tale ensconced in this paper is written against a backdrop of frustration with the nature of the contemporary sports-lexicon. I link this background irritation with the power-ridden and relentless nature of institutionalised pressures. The story explores the challenges I faced struggling to cope with personal location, feeling somehow ‘aside-from’ the thrust of working culture, alongside being ‘outside’ the public mood during the London Olympics of 2012. The storyline is reflective and reflexive in tone, seeking to document and make sense of physical events and contemplative moments as I navigated and eventually challenged the meta-narratives, clichés and mantras that surround us all in everyday lives. In this exercise I seek to relate the athletic notion of ‘hard work and sacrifice’ to events that might appear across a wider societal canvas. Issues raised here are related, sometimes in a direct sense, to the process of coaching (through a series of indented italic comment) and indirectly through the narrative itself.