Sporting Victory Celebrations

I have touched on this before, but there was a particularly good one at York races this week that seems to have escaped general notice.

Personally, I prefer the celebrations to be natural rather than pre-planned. I don't much care for those choreographed shows of which footballers are so fond. I don't mind the ones where they are answering to the media in some way - Gascoigne's dentist chair; Robbie Fowler snorting the touchline; Bellamy swinging the golf club, and Jimmy Bullard lecturing the players on the pitch - but save me from Romario and Lampard and their family messages; Cahill's flag-punching, not to mention Robbie Keane's ridiculous roly poly. I also can't stand the goal celebrations that started off as natural but become trademark - I'm thinking Alan Shearer's arm, and before him Stuart Pearson's clenched fist, and throw in Frankie Dettori's flying dismount.

Tennis players are useless at them. I can't remember a good cricket one since the days when Botham et al would run down and grab a stump before being engulfed by an onrushing crowd. Athletes are better, not that I can think of any great ones.

Anyway, my top three.
3. Ruby Walsh winning the Betfair Chase on Kauto Star. He actually does nothing extravagant. What he does is smile. And such a smile it is that you can read into it exactly what Ruby was thinking - which was "Oh my god - this horse is good. he's gonna win me a couple of Gold Cups a few King Georges and a whole sideboard of Group 1s".

2. Ballesteros winning the Open at St Andrews and giving it the full childlike fist-pump, before getting the crowd to join in. God, we miss you Sevvy - to update the great lyric: "Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you".

1. Unequivocally, Marco Tardelli scoring effectively the winner in the 1982 World Cup Final. Now, it is true that it was the camera that made this great, but even so, the camera manages to catch something akin to the opposite of Munch's Scream - the suppuration of tension and explosion of fulfilment, which at that moment would have been mirrored by an entire nation.

Somewhat more mundanely Jamie Spencer rode the winner of the Ebor on Wednesday and as he passed the post stood up in his stirrups and gave a great big punch in the air. Jockeys don't do this often - The Cheltenham Festival aside - and it showed here, as Jamie very successfully managed to punch himself plum in the face...

"Way to go Paula..."

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