"WHY are we so good?" As headlines go, this one erred on the side of the immodest. Any lingering vestiges of reticence were dispelled by the broad red and gold margins on the eight-page spread in Spain's best-selling sports daily, with the legend "the golden age of Spanish sport".
Their trumphalism could be forgiven under the circumstances. A week after the rare instance of the best team winning the European football Championship, Rafael Nadal had won the most enthralling Wimbledon final in living memory. Not only had Spanish
sportsmen triumphed in two of the world's highest-profile tournaments, but they had done so with impressive elan. The Spanish character had at last found its victorious expression.
At last might be an exaggeration. The paper's thesis was that the latest victories had been part of a pattern in which Spanish sport had been on a steep ascent for a decade and a half. Admittedly they resorted to such pursuits as motor-cycling, volleyball, basketball and cycling to support their case, along with Fernando Alonso's Formula 1 victories in 2005 and 2006, but there was a broadly persuasive logic to their argument. It is apparent that across Spanish sport there is a sense of possibility and entitlement that is relatively new, and that is being matched by achievement.
It's difficult not to make invidious comparisons with Britain. With roughly similar populations the nations should be comparable, and yet the Spanish are now consistently leaving us trailing in their wake. This is most conspicuous in international football, where Spain won a tournament that lacked any British representation, despite these islands having four chances at a finals place.
Martin O'Neill was one of the first to remind us that Northern Ireland beat the Spanish in the qualifying group, but it is obvious that even the strongest of the British teams, England, lacks the technique, cohesion and tactical acumen of the new champions. Fabio Capello may cut the deficit a little, but it is asking a lot for him to change English football culture and inculcate the fetish for maintaining possession of the ball that lies at the root of Spanish success.
With Nadal's success it is tempting to attribute it to individual excellence, rather than nationality. Raised in Mallorca, trained by his uncle, taught to play left-handed in defiance of inclination and accepted logic, Nadal seems like a one-off, a maverick genius that no system could have produced.
Look a little closer though and you see that Nadal is the apex of a formidable Spanish tennis pyramid. There are no fewer than seven Spanish players in the world's top 25. Britain has one representative in the world's top 100. That solitary figure, Andy Murray, was given a lesson in perspective in this year's Wimbledon quarter-final.
Murray knows better than most that redressing that imbalance is unlikely in the foreseeable future. With such a shallow talent base, mediocre British players can find themselves rewarded for underachievement. It requires relatively little to rise to the top in domestic terms. British players never have the chance to hone the competitive edge to compete internationally. Nadal, meanwhile, has been able to compare himself to Spanish players like David Ferrer, Nicolas Almagro, Carlos Moya and Tommy Robredo and get a realistic sense of the levels he needs to achieve.
That doesn't explain why Spain is experiencing the present glut of world-class competitors. Inevitably, in looking for reasons we enter into the realms of speculation. Sport is not a science, and as one official put it, money is not necessarily the answer. Money can always be spent unwisely, as the British tennis establishment and the English FA should admit.
The most interesting theory, from a British perspective, is the Olympic effect. The 1992 Barcelona Olympics was the chance to show the world what a vibrant and progressive nation had emerged from nearly half a century of ruthless dictatorship. The success of that Olympiad, both in the staging and the participation, energised moribund Spanish sport, and, the romantics suggest, inspired a generation of Spanish infants to see the possibilities of a sporting career.
Its more tangible legacy was an infrastructure of excellent sporting facilities for numerous disciplines, and a devotion to intelligent coaching. It still took well over a decade for the effects to be felt, a lesson for those who think investment should reap instant rewards.
It's far too late for Britain to learn the lesson of Barcelona '92 in terms of staging a cohesive, stylish and budget-conscious Olympiad. Perhaps, though, there is still time to see it as a launching pad for the reinvention of British sport, offering both inspiration and the unveiling of possibilities.
First, though, it might be necessary to acknowledge our present woeful underachievement and ask "why are we so bad?". For that comparison Spain is now an increasingly daunting yardstick.
The full article contains 822 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
