Reason #5: The Equaliser
Life’s not fair. Sport is.
You don’t get on in sports based on “who you know” (save for the occasional coach picking their child to start a game ahead of more deserving teammates), the England team isn’t full of Old Etonians whose parents sponsored their ski trip to Val d’Isere. Sport couldn’t be more meritocratic if it tried. Sport doesn’t care what your background is, how old you are, what colour your skin is, whether it is “acceptable” to show your nipples in public or not. Sport only cares about one thing: how well you play, and therein lies its power.
Don’t believe me? Go to a park on a Sunday and ask some of the players on each team what they do: builder, assistant, lawyer, personal trainer, gardener. Sportspeople come from all walks of life. Try as you might, you would find it nigh on impossible to use these backgrounds as an indicator of ability, it’s irrelevant. What about age? Well I myself have been humbled on several occasions by opponents on the squash court that I was surprised weren’t wheeling oxygen tanks around behind them prior to the game. Gender? Did you not hear about the female U14 football team in Spain who just won a ‘male’ Catalonia football league (they lost only 1 match)? Race? Don’t make me laugh.
This is what makes sport so powerful. Today diversity is more important than ever and there are few forums that encourage mixing of backgrounds so proactively.
So go out there and beat that banker at their own game (table tennis I believe it was). Join Tmup now.
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