An almost impossible exercise. Today, I'm venturing into an almost impossible exercise: engaging the attention of reader who have decided, once and for all, not to read my comments on sport. Clearly, every reader has the right to find no merit in this section: if push comes to shove, I could agree with them. But I sometimes come across kindly readers who, on the contrary, have the amiability of reading this section quite regularly…except when it ventures into questions of sport.
The hope of, for once, changing their opinion rests on a promise: this time, there will be no question of football or any other specific sport; it will not be a question of legal quarrels on the way Community law should apply to sport; the sports exemption will hardly be raised. The subject today is much more general: sport represents the main answer to one of the most agonizing questions facing our civilization: how to channel the aggressiveness that manifests itself at a well determined age among the young? If Europe says "no" to the three forms of violence that have prevailed throughout human history (war, hunting, sexual aggressiveness towards women), how then to channel the surplus irrepressible vitality that animal/man feels at the time of adolescence, and for a certain number of years thereafter? Ethnologists teach us that, in all civilization, to be accepted among the adults, adolescents had to go through tests or "rites of passage" based on an almost mystical camaraderie and on the triple aforementioned aggressiveness, necessary to follow their tribes or ethnic groups. Civilizations' progress then introduced more robust rules to control this aggressiveness. Standards of chivalry demanded, alongside courage, the protection of women and children, fairness even towards the enemy, and many other strictly codified laws. The role of sport in this context was already known to ancient Greek civilization: at the time of the Olympic Games, wars froze, and the sports champions replaced heroes in the hymns of the poets. It took two thousand years to rediscover this role of sport.
The smile of the ethnologists. This sketchy shortcut will have ethnologists smiling. Anyone may correct the shortcomings and inconsistencies. But what is essential resides in the observation that, in our regulated societies, without war, youth continues to reproduce models imposed on it for centuries: whence the gangs of young people, rebellion, gang rapes and other acts of kindness. Fortunately, this aggressiveness is accompanied by bursts of generosity and the desire to be of use, to go one step further. How many young people would like to contribute to peace there where war still rages, intervene there where children are still starving, and they despise our materialistic society, void of ideals. There's no point in observing that what has happened in Europe corresponds precisely to what the new generations dream of achieving today for other peoples, other continents, as no generation can have as ideal goal what it found when coming into the world. It needs its own ideals.
In this situation, sport seems to represent the only activity where the aggressiveness of most young people can be channeled, thanks to the rules it involves: solidarity with one's partners, taste for success, fairness towards one's opponents. There are other directions where adolescent fervour can be expressed, beginning with artistic creation; but for a large majority, sport is essential. And don't tell me that football, for example, itself causes violence, as that's a false analysis: the gangs of hooligans gather around football there where the sport is most popular, the most widespread; elsewhere, like in the United States, gangs form anyway and violence erupts in other ways. And the violence surrounding football does not come from those practicing in the sport, but mainly those not directly involved in any sport. In the world of football, those closest to fair-play are generally the trainers, followed by the players, whereas the most fanatical and the most violent are organised fans, very often followed in their fanaticism by journalists, and at times the chairmen of clubs and other leaders.
From the Illiad to Michel de Montaigne. When commenting on the Illiad, George Steiner wrote: "Homer knows and proclaims that something in man fears less the horrors of combat than the interminable boredom of home (...) The activity of the body and heroism of the soul constitute beauty". The activity of the body and heroism of the soul: these are words that can help us understand the prestige and almost idolatry surrounding certain great sports champions. Michel de Montaigne, for his part, said that the Romans "advisedly nourished wars with some of their enemies, not only to keep their men in bated breath (…) but also the somewhat release the heated passions of their youth (…) The ill humour that at that time (i.e., when very young) dominates our body, if not spent elsewhere, remains forever there, and finally proves to be our total downfall".
In a society without war that European is trying to build, sport represents an essential means to "release the heated passion" of youth and an outlet for their "ill humour". That's why the European Union was right to recognised the "specific nature of sport" so as to avoid a blind application of rules and principles compulsory for other fields but absurd in sport (like gender discrimination or discrimination based on age or nationality). The Commission and other Community institutions are right to deal with sport, but not to regulate it and impose obstacles (legal or others), but, on the contrary, to protect it (against drugs, against violence) and affirm its specific nature (F.R.).