Читать книгу No Win Race. A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport онлайн

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I knew Ali had been an important figure to my father. My father would often pull an Ali pose in photographs with me. He’d pretend to be Ali when play-boxing against me. When Leon Spinks, a man who had no front teeth and the scowl of a demoted worker, defeated Ali in ’78, our house mourned as if a major political figure had been assassinated or something.

At the point when the Ali–Holmes fight was about to start, my father put on his coat to leave the house. I thought my father’s memory must have been fading. This was Ali. This was boxing. This was how we bonded. Yet what I had been seeing on the screen was not always what my father had been feeling. What I witnessed on the surface rarely reflected the reality of the situation. We were, in many ways, bonded by sport, but at times miles apart.

Maybe my dad knew the result. Maybe he knew the inevitability of the result. I didn’t. I asked where he was going. Informed him that the Ali fight was about to start. He turned, and I’ll never forget the look on his face. Anger mixed with hurt. A kind of disempowering look. Must have been the first time I’d seen my father display any level of vulnerability. When he said something like I don’t want to see that fight, and then left, something sank inside of me.