Sports fans up and down the Country will be familiar with the ups and downs of following any sporting event, team or person or indeed of taking part in a sport. Things are great when you're winning and not so good if you can't see where the next win is coming from. One minute you're at at the top of the rollercoaster track with great views all around you and the next it all comes tumbling down leaving you feeling a bit sick in the stomach.
I am currently in a position where my netball team is in a promotion chase (cue fall from grace!) and my football team is battling against relegation. At one point it seemed like because we were winning netball matches my football team were doomed to failure in theirs such is my supersticious state of mind! This thought has very quickly gone out of the window after a couple of poor results in the netball not coninciding with an upturn in footballing fortunes!
So why do we put ourselves through it? I think the appropriate word here is "hope". At the start of a game, match or race everyone still has a chance. Even if the competition is stronger it doesn't always mean they will be victorious. There are countless examples of the underdog winning the day and I think it is this that keeps people believing. There's always "hope" that you will win.
I bet the Wimbledon team of 1988 didn't expect to win the FA Cup (or perhaps they did since they were called the "crazy gang" at the time), yet they beat Liverpool 1-0 in the final. Massive underdogs and with all the experts saying they didn't have a chance and yet they lifted the famous cup for the first and only time in their history.
Another great underdog win came via Wimbledon too, though this time in the tennis. The summer of 2001 will be remembered (at least by tennis fans) as the year Goran Ivanisevic finally won the Wimbledon Mens' Singles Championship. After losing in the finals in 1992, 1994 and 1998 and slipping down the rankings so much that he was only able to enter Wimbledon via a Wildcard, most people would be forgiven for thinking that the Croat didn't have a chance of advancing very far in the competition. In reality, he went on to beat some very notable players and lift the trophy.
This is what makes sport so facinating, so great to participate in and watch. It's not always clearcut what's going to happen. Overcoming the odds is great and moments like that stay with you and give you hope. Afterall it would be boring to win all the time even if we would like to!
