On a least one occasion during her illustrious riding career, Nina Walsh (Carberry) stayed that close to the rails while going around a racetrack she ended up sustaining fairly bad foot/leg injuries. For another story of a close encounter of the white line kind, examine the beginning of the move which culminated in the greatest football goal ever scored in Croke Park.
When the ball was dislodged from the grasp of Dublin’s Niall Guiden and retrieved by Martin O’Connell, the great man from St Michael’s was at close quarters – to put it very mildly – with the whitewash. On such moments does history turn.
Or, in the case, the remainder of what you are about to read, the ongoing slug-fest for the Formula One Drivers Championship. To this admittedly far from expert eye, the incident in Brazil last night went down as follows – Max Verstappen went for a gap that wasn’t there and Lewis Hamilton shut the door on him. If it was horse racing, you’d simply say it was race riding and whomever held their ground was well within their rights to do so.
A case of nothing-to-see-here whataboutery. What was a little bit surprising to be honest was to see Toto Wolf – head honcho of Hamilton’s employers Mercedes – decry the fact that the Red Bull driver wasn’t sanctioned for his actions. Firstly as it would’ve been considered that such back biting would been above those who manufacture the best engines in the world.
More pertinently to current circumstances however, if I was Toto, gut instinct would be to keep the head the down and stay schtum. It’s not all that long ago Wolffie was getting bitten by the same guardians of governance in the sport when it was deemed the Austrian and his colleagues were found to have attained nefarious advantage by way of misuse of the DRS system. The upshot of the sanctions imposed prior to the commencement of the race meaning that the Englishman had to start from the very back of the grid.
It wouldn’t take Sheldon Cooper on his high fibre diet to deduce that Hamilton and Verstappen wouldn’t exactly have a WhatsApp group between themselves. But then, the reigning champion had beef with Nico Rosberg in the past, so there was hardly any need for further fuel to be fired on the situation.
Moreover, anybody who thinks if the boot was on the other foot that the outcome would be different is kidding themselves. This corner will openly admit that the Netflix series Formula One: Drive To Survive ignited a newfound interest in affairs of the chequered flag. Then, a good old, feisty, tempestuous rivalry makes any sport better. This one has several chapters to go yet.
s
Leave a Reply