HARRY PEARSON
THE BIG TEES
Harry Pearson mulls over some sporting faux pas of the past
P
adel tennis has just arrived on
Teesside. People say the game,
invented nearly 50 years ago by a
Mexican millionaire, is the fastest growing
sport on the planet.
Since padel tennis replaced tennis tennis as
the second most popular sport in Spain a few
years back, there’s no reason to doubt these
claims. However, we’ve been here before.
Back in 2005, Nordic walking was
hailed as Britain's fastest-growing sport.
Nordic walking was invented in Finland to
overcome health problems arising from the
traditional northern European diet of lard
and beer. It could have been called Lapp
jogging, but for some reason they passed that
opportunity over.
The key to Nordic walking’s success in
the UK was the fact that – unlike normal
walking – it is done using poles. These added
all important equipment to the pastime. If a
sport is to be taken seriously, equipment is
essential because without equipment there is
no advertising, and without advertising there
are no magazines, and without magazines
how are you going to know what equipment
to buy?
You don’t hear much about Nordic
walking these days or about two other sports
that were also once said to be the fastest
growing in Britain – new age kurling and
ultimate. The former was basically ice curling
on casters, the latter involved a frisbee and
seemed to be popular exclusively among the
sort of blokes who wear headbands and call
you "Dude" even though they come from
Bolton.
Other things have lasted far longer. Fifteen
years ago, for example, barely anybody
had heard of pilates, let alone knew how to
pronounce it. Yet nowadays there is not a
sports or community centre in the land that
does not obey the biblical injunction that
"Whenever a few are gathered together in my
name they shall gently stretch their abductor
muscles by wrapping a pretty ribbon around
50
Making a racket - padel, recently launched at
Tennis World Middlesbrough, is said to be the
world's fastest-growing sport.
their feet and pulling on it.”
Fitness regimes are like that, though. One
minute everyone is bragging about doing
them, the next they are stuffed in the back of
a metaphorical garage being nibbled by any
mice still hungry after munching through
the Atkins’ Diet books.
When I was a kid people used to do circuit
training, as recommended in the Royal
Canadian Air Force fitness manual.
The alternative to the RCAF manual was to
be found in adverts at the back of American
comics. Here a puny specimen named Mitch
was getting sand kicked in his face by burly
bullies. In stepped Charles Atlas, a man with
muscles of mahogany and skin the colour
of a freshly creosoted fence, who was given
to standing around in leopard-print trunks
looking like he had a couple of coconuts
concealed in his armpits.
Mitch quickly discovered that, under
instruction from Atlas, it was possible to
scare off adversaries by tearing a telephone
directory in half and blowing up a hot-water
bottle until it was so full of air it burst.
Atlas’ main competition came from
the chest-expander – a fearsome piece
of equipment that had apparently been
developed by a sadist who liked to imagine
the look on men's faces when they caught
their nipples in a coiled steel spring. Another
more complex but equally venomous device,
the Bullworker, soon succeeded the chest-
expander.
England goalkeeper Peter Shilton
advertised the Bullworker in Shoot! and other
football magazines. It was a spring-loaded
contraption that appeared to be based on
the medieval crossbow. The accompanying
booklet showed how it could be used for a
variety of exercises, all of which offered the
potential thrill of the Bullworker springing up
and cracking you on the jaw with the force of
an angry billy goat.
Since then numerous other exercise
machines and fitness programmes – spinning,
step aerobics, belly dancing, boxercise,
dancercise - have come along. As for me, well,
I’ll have to stop now as it's time for my regular
walkdogercise session.