Phil Gifford: The Prada Cup scrap and sport's most sporting (and unsporting) behaviours

Phil Gifford analyses the Prada Cup scrap, unsporting behaviour, and goes through the archives to find the most stunning example of good sporting behaviour.

OPINION:

So, in the wake of the Prada Cup scrap, how do you actually define unsporting behaviour?

Team New Zealand tried to frame Luna Rossa's decision to stick to the rules and enforce the sailing timetable as nautical underarm bowling. Tina Symmans, the chair of the organising branch of Team New Zealand, sniped that "it's clear that [Luna Rossa's] focus is solely on Luna Rossa taking the Prada Cup rather than the greater good of the country who have worked so hard in order to be in a position to stage this event".

Let's remember that when Aussie bowler Trevor Chappell famously rolled a ball down the pitch to New Zealand batsman Brian McKechnie in 1981, it was entirely legal. Miles outside the spirit of the game, but totally within the rules.

It was always a long shot to expect Luna Rossa, with, in the words of co-helmsman Jimmy Spithill, their "foot on the throat" of limping Ineos, to back off to allow what Symmons suggests could be as many as 30,000 people to flock into the Viaduct and throw a financial lifeline to bars and restaurants there.

Which brings us to the question of sporting versus unsporting behaviour.

Break a rule in sport and it's easy to define that as unsporting. Whether it's Russian state organised doping, Lance Armstrong, Aussies hiding sandpaper in their Y-fronts on a cricket field, or an All Black falling out of a lineout, while the levels of cheating may be vastly different, they're all unsporting acts.

Lance Armstrong. Photo / Photosport

Finding examples of behaving in a decent sporting way are easy if you only look for acts of kindness.

There are New Zealanders who have been won worldwide recognition for behaving humanely in the heat of competition. Tana Umaga was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal for rushing to the aid of Welshman Colin Charvis in 2003 in a test in Hamilton after Charvis had been knocked cold by a fierce but legal Jerry Collins tackle. Play was continuing when Umaga left his position to take out Charvis' mouthguard, and turn him to a recovery position.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics Kiwi runner Nikki Hamblin and American Abbey D'Agostino were both given Olympic Fair Play Awards, after a collision in their heat of the 5000 metres. D'Agostino tried to help Hamblin to her feet, then fell herself with a torn anterior cruciate knee ligament. The pair ran the last 3000 metres together, Hamblin helping a stumbling D'Agostino when she could.

But as heartwarming as both incidents genuinely were, nobody had to potentially sacrifice victory while behaving well. The All Blacks were ahead 7-3 when Charvis went down, and won 55-3. Hamblin and D'Agostino were not racing to the finish line in a fight for gold. (They were both given special dispensations to run in the final, but D'Agostino was too badly injured to start, and Hamblin finished 17th.)

To find the most stunning example of good sporting behaviour that basically sacrificed victory, you need to look back to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, when Adolf Hitler, who three years earlier had built his first concentration camp, was greeting German gold medals with Nazi salutes.

In the long jump the superstar of the Games, African-American Jesse Owens, the world record holder, had foot-faulted twice and was in danger of missing the final. The man who then gave Owens sage advice, that kept Owens in the competition, was his main rival Luz Long, the European champion.

Young fans run along beside American Olympic sprinter Jesse Owens in 1936. Photo / Getty

Nearly 30 years later Owens would tell Long's son Karl that Luz had suggested to him that Owens move his jump mark several inches behind the take-off board. Long told Owens he would still easily qualify.

Owens did just that, and made the final, where the pair duelled all the way, breaking the Olympic record five times between them, before Owens took gold with a leap of 8.06m.

Hitler had stormed out before Owens' final jump. Albert Speer, Germany's war armaments minister, wrote in his memoirs Inside The Third Reich that Hitler was "highly annoyed" by Owens' success. Speer said: "People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilised whites and hence they should be excluded from future Games."

While Hitler fumed, a famous photograph shows how Owens and Long, who took silver, walked off together, arm in arm.

Owens would later say, "It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler. I would melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the twenty-four karat friendship that I felt for Luz Long at that moment".

In the three years before World War II began Owens and Long kept in touch by mail. In 1943 Long, who had been drafted into the German Army in 1941, died in Sicily after suffering a massive wound to his thigh.

After the war was over, Owens travelled to Germany, and met Karl Long, with whom he'd corresponded after 1945. In a beautiful grace note to an unlikely story of friendship and sportsmanship, Owens would be the best man at Karl Long's wedding.