Last Word: Sport is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration
Last Word: Sport is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration
The German writer Patrick Suskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murdereris a morality tale full of vivid olfactory imagery. He writes,“People could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they couldn’t escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who couldn’t defend themselves against it. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate.”
Smell is the most powerful of our senses, provoking memories and emotions we might have forgotten.
We were told in school that horses sweat, men perspire, women glow. One such glowing woman, French tennis player Lois Boisson was told she “smells really bad” by her British opponent Harriet Dart, who requested the umpire during their match, “Can you tell her to wear a deodorant?”
Boisson might have retorted with a quote from NFL coach John Madden who said, “Winning’s the great deodorant; when you lose, everything stinks…” Actually, she did something even better, postinga photo on Instagram of her on court with a Dove deodorant, tagging the company and writing they “apparently need a collab.”By the time you read this, she might have got herself a million-dollar contract. Sometimes smell can inspire the future too.
It is tempting to say that horses smell, men have an aroma, women are fragrant. But the fact remains, both Dart and Boisson in the middle of a match would have been glowing, glistening, shining, gleaming, or any other euphemism. It is the occupational companion of the athlete. Even millionaires sweat. And have you ever walked into a changing room at a sporting event? What Edison said about genius applies here: Sport is one per cent inspiration and ninety nine per cent perspiration.
Athletes sweat, their equipment smells — a room full of the two at the end of a game is a horror movie come to life. Hence the surprise when one athlete literally turns up her nose at another. On the other hand, sport has its share of slobs and stars with only a distant relationship with personal hygiene. The names of NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, golfer John Daly have often figured in these discussions. At the 2008 Olympics, a senior Australian official responded to a British win in the pool by saying,“It’s not bad for a country that has no swimming pools and very little soap.”
In a survey conducted by ESPN in 2014, one female boxer said,“I was fighting in Russia a few years ago, and not many fighters were wearing deodorant. I’m convinced they actually don’t wear it on purpose. We got into a clinch once and instead of thinking about what I was going to do, the smell threw me off for about 10 seconds. You couldn’t not smell it.”
Some athletes identify with what Suskind said, “The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off…”
Published on Apr 27, 2025
