A father helping a son across the line, Kevin Sinfield’s inspirational friendship with Rob Burrow and more – when devotion to others takes centre stage
The older I get, the more profoundly I appreciate that, when I’m writing about sport, I’m also writing about love. This makes perfect sense given these are mankind’s two greatest inventions and the stuff we can least do without, but there’s more to it than that: sport and love are both expressions of identity, creativity and devotion, pursued because they are right but also because it’s impossible not to.
Love takes many forms, experienced by different people in different ways and by the same people differently on different days. But one of its strongest iterations is that of a parent for a child, a love that is implacable, indivisible and incomparable.
None of which seemed remotely relevant at the 1992 Olympics, when Derek Redmond stood on the start line prior to his 400m semi-final. Four years previously, he’d withdrawn from the opening round 90 seconds before the gun, suffering with one of many injuries that blighted his career. But now he was right there, having recorded the fastest time in qualifying before winning his quarter-final. He was ready.
