My 5 Sporting Heroes

Here, in no particular order, are my top five sporting heroes:

Alain Prost – everyone loved Ayrton Senna for being mercurial and brilliant and moody (or something). I just loved the fact that Prost got on with it and won races. Everyone told me that after I watched the Senna movie I’d never feel the same again about the two drivers. In correct. It made me love Prost even more and find Senna even more annoying.

Ivan Lendl – Borg was a bit before my time, so growing up it was a choice between McEnroe and Lendl. Much as with the Prost/Senna rivalry, I sided with the who who didn’t make a fuss, but just won tennis matches. He used to mop up all those hard court tourneys when no one was watching, leaving Wimbledon to the glory boys.

Lothar Matthaus – the captain of the West Germany side of my childhood and the scorer of two of the best goals I have ever seen (his dribble-and-shoot versus Yugoslavia and his volley-from-a-corner for Bayern against Leverkusen).

Carl Lewis – I remember watching his four golds in the same Olympics and rooting for him against Linford Christie every time they ran against each other (I was a bit of a contrarian even then). I think when I found out that he had been taking drugs as well I realised that no one was ever going to be clean.

Joe Montana – the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers and the coolest man ever to play professional sports. New NFL watchers will think that the likes of Manning, Brady, Brees and Rodgers are the best of all time (because of their inflated stats). Shrewdies know that the likes of Montana (playing when you were allowed to hit QBs seconds after release, when you were allowed to clean out slot receivers going over the middle, playing when offensive olding was actually called) would post stats nowadays that would blow your mind.