Is it possible to find the best all-round sportsperson?
Spoiler: Probably not… but let’s give it a go
My all-time favourite TV theme tune is Superstars, which sounds like it has just had five cans of Red Bull and is being conducted by the Prodigy.
The show itself was even bolder than the music.
Nowadays, it’s rare to find professional sportspeople venturing far outside the training regime for their chosen sport.
They typically wait until after their career has finished to try anything that might risk their health, then chance their arm with Strictly Come Dancing or Celebrity Bake Off.
Back in the day though, top level athletes had either not been alerted to the danger of extra-curricular competition, or because there were only three channels on the TV there was zero media work to occupy their spare time.
This created a space between 1973–1985 for a TV show that pitted sports stars from around the world against each other in a set of events designed to find the best all rounder, including everything from gym tests, track and field, to cycling, archery, basketball and more.
When I say ‘sports stars’, these weren’t retirees and Z-listers that you might find propping up our current reality TV shows.
Instead, in the European version, some of the select names included Bjorn Borg (Wimbledon tennis champion), James Hunt (World Formula 1 motor racing champion), John Conteh (World Light Heavyweight boxing champion), Tony Jacklin (British and US Open golf champion), Joop Zoetemelk (Tour de France winner) and Kevin Keegan (England football captain and European player of the year).
Nobody would allow professional footballers out of their protective wrapping nowadays, but apart from Keegan, other players from the ‘golden era’ of hard drinking, heavy smoking and knocking about with Page 3 models should have been kept away from the competition, because it embarrassingly displayed their lack of fitness.
The show was filmed in glamour venues around the world including Hong Kong, Bahamas, La Manga and Cwmbran in Wales (where I was once strongly heckled during a best man speech at a wedding) in which an important point was proved.
For anyone who thinks, ‘well, a decathlete would just walk it, wouldn’t they’, Daley Thomson, (Olympic Decathlon champion the same year), came third in Cwmbran, robbing us of another opportunity for him to whistle the national anthem.
The winners of Superstars, domestically and internationally, were in fact the athletes with the highest fitness levels, all-round body strength, no scheduling issues so they could make it to the finals, and usually a ‘super-power’ event where they could wipe the floor with everyone.
British Olympian and judo star Brian Jacks ticked the boxes for all the above.
His event, where the leader-board always read: 1) Brian Jacks 2) Daylight 3) Everyone Else; was the dips.
If you’ve never tried the dips, it requires suspending yourself from parallel bars, dropping your entire body down until your chest is level with your hands and then pushing yourself back up again, with the Superstars points being based on how many times you could do that in a minute. Jacks set a record of 100 dips in 54 seconds in one attempt.
To give that some context, while I was thinking about this blog a couple of days ago, I ground out 5 dips using the angles of the kitchen work surface.
Today, my pectoral muscles feel like someone has performed the Blood Eagle on me.
After its heyday, there were a couple of attempts to get Superstars going again, including around the 2012 Olympics, but it never quite managed to generate the same level of enthusiasm as back in the early ’80s, when 10 million people were watching each episode and the winners were getting a cheque for $300K (at least in the US version).
This is partly, I’m sure, because it’s impossible to get current headline sports stars involved, and also because there is not a remote control in this galaxy that can deal with all the alternative media options.
Still, I wish they would have a decent stab at it. There’s never been a better time to inspire the world to do more exercise.
And nothing beats that theme tune.
