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This sporting life
There's more to life than ponies, surely? Sarah Hughes Sunday May 6, 2007 Observer Sport Monthly From the jolly hockey players of Mallory Towers to Josephine Pullein-Thompson's horse-mad heroines, girls' fiction is full of sporting dreams. No Fifties schooling was complete without a solid physical education and the importance of team spirit is a feature of the boarding-school novels of Angela Brazil and Elinor Brent-Dyer. In the latter's Chalet Girl series, being bad at games was shorthand for being the sort of girl who will end up in very sticky circs sooner rather than later. Other notable books include Tim Kennemore's Fortunate Few presents a world where gymnastics is bigger than football and Julie Welch's entertaining Those Glory, Glory Days is the real-life tale of how a childhood love of Tottenham Hotspur inspired Welch to become the UK's first full-time professional female sports journalist. It was later made into an equally enjoyable film, as captured in the photograph below. Yet if girls' fiction is full of plucky sports-mad heroines, something peculiar happens when those girls grow up. There are many excellent sports novels with male heroes - from David Storey's This Sporting Life to Bernard Malamud's baseball classic The Natural - but where are the equivalents by and about women? There are a few notable exceptions. Lionel Shriver's Double Fault is an eloquent look at the breakdown of the marriage of two professional tennis players, destroyed by rivalry; Bill Broady's haunting debut Swimmer is about a Commonwealth gold medallist's struggle to cope with her success; Heather Lewis's House Rules combines equestrianism, heroin and abuse to disturbing effect. These novels are adept at describing their sporting milieus, yet not one captures the joy of the sport in question, preferring to show how sporting excellence destroys the women involved. Far better to turn instead to three films that say something about sport and competition without insisting that every female athlete ends up miserable and alone. Bend It Like Beckham gives us a largely angst-free version of women's football; Blue Crush follows the career of a teenage surfer; and A League of Their Own is that unlikely thing, an entertaining film about women's baseball that also happens to feature Madonna. Failing that, then, it's back to basics with Jilly Cooper's bonkbuster Riders. Say what you like about her heroine, Fenella Maxwell, but, ultimately, she gets both an Olympic equestrianism medal and the right man. |
Lexi wrote: |
I'm quite tempted to quote the poem from one of the Jill books by Ruby Ferguson about nothing in life being more important than horses |
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There are more important things in life than horses
At least that's what Miss Fox would have us know She never went for rides on autumn mornings Or felt the thrill of riding's lovely glow There are more important things in life than horses But if your pony loves you, you don't care They can keep the things they seem to think important And when they dish them out I shan't be there There are more important things in life than horses There are more important things in life than food But somehow when I'm eating or I'm riding There's nothing else in life seems half so good. |
skye wrote: |
It does seem like nonsense doesn't it? I don't remember Joey being particularly athletic or horsey as a girl.
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Tara wrote: |
I agree with Frances that any journalist who makes such unfounded and inaccurate statements ought to be forced, not only to to read all 60 books, but to eat them afterwards! |
Alison H wrote: | ||
I've never really thought about it before, but that's yet another way in which Joey changes when she's older ... she's shown as being a brilliant swimmer in Coming of Age and Joey & Co and I think that there're also references to her being good at tennis, but when she's at school she never seems to be into sports very much at all. Nor do the other 2 "heroines" - OOAO is good at lacrosse and Len is OK at tennis and good at winter sports, but they aren't stars of the school sports teams in the way that people like Darrell Rivers are. I don't see where that comment about being bad at games at the CS meaning you'll come to a sticky end comes from! |
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I agree with Frances that any journalist who makes such unfounded and inaccurate statements ought to be forced, not only to to read all 60 books, but to eat them afterwards! |
Lexi wrote: | ||
I've found it, in Jill Has Two Ponies and I am in total agreement with it
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Loryat wrote: |
It's the 'doing your best thing' that I don't like. I know all CS pupils are supposed to do their best at everything they turn their hand to, but I seriously think even the atmosphere of the CS would fail to make my try my hardest at games (or indeed anything, but especially not games)! |
Bookwormsarah wrote: |
Swerving back on topic... I loved the fact that with the CS you didn't get the endless descriptions of lacrosse matches in most books, and that not liking sport wasn't seen as Terribly Bad Form. On the other hand, not liking rambling/walking was Really Quite Shocking |
Mia wrote: |
Oh have you read uncut Ruey though? There's a whole, neverending chapter of a lacrosse match in that! I found it a little trying, and I love lacrosse! |
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