Which British sportsperson has been the biggest sporting let down?

30 comments

1. Tim Henman wasn’t exactly a let down. He was a fine tennis player and amongst the best in the world, albeit a step below the greats of his era. A consistent grand slam semi-finalist but not a winner.

   However, the amount of media coverage surrounding him was just obnoxious. Not his fault, but the media – the BBC in particular – really overhyped him to an absurd degree.

2. Not a person but the ‘golden generation’ of the England football team (2001-2007) really should’ve achieved something

3. Jack Wilshere. Not his fault he was made out of dry weetabix but after *that* match against Barcelona I thought he’d be a midfield maestro with the composure of Xavi or Pirlo.

4. Ryan Giggs.
   From role model to affairs and super injunctions in a heart beat.

5. Laura Robson retired in May aged 28. A junior grand slam title, Olympic silver medal, and top 30 in the world all before she was 20, but it never got better than that. Injury was the main cause so it is hardly her fault, and she still on balance had a career that many would be envious of, but it could have been much more.

6. Cricket supporters over a certain age will remember Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick in the nineties. Both supremely gifted and exceptionally prolific players at domestic level who were lauded early on as the great white hopes of English cricket at a time when the game was in its wilderness years, but who perhaps buckled under the expectation and never fulfilled their potential or what was hoped/expected of them. Hick in particular came with a lot of hype having had to wait seven years to qualify for England because he had been born in Zimbabwe, and it would’ve been pretty much impossible for him to achieve what people wanted or expected him to.

7. Michael Owen.

   He won PL player of the season aged 19. Not just best young player. Best overall player. He won the PL golden boot aged 19 and 20. Best young player at the 98 World cup.

   His form and growth continued upwards, which saw him win the Ballon d’Or in 2001, aged 22.

   Bear in mind that this was a time when the field of world stars included the likes of Brazilian Ronaldo, Figo, Raul, Roberto Carlos, Zidane, Kahn, Shevchenko etc.

   He was not one of those English players who are a bit good and we build them up to be greater than they actually were. He wasn’t a player with one good season which brought hype. He was a genuine world-class international star, multiple golden-boot winner, playing in a fairly average Liverpool team.

   He then moved to Real Madrid, which is where his career should have gone stratospheric. Multiple team and individual accolades should have followed. He should have ended his career with tonnes of domestic and European honours.

   But his career seemed to stop right there. Yes injuries played their part, but that wasn’t the sole factor.

   He ended his career with the following notable trophies:

   1 FA Cup, 1 UEFA Cup, 1 PL (for Utd, in a season where he had just one league start).

   (plus a handful of minor trophies eg Charity Shield etc)

   I’m sure he’s very happy and comfortable etc. But given his trajectory from teen, through to early 20s, he should have been one of the most successful and decorated players in history, and held up alongside the likes of Ronaldo (both), Figo, Messi, Raul, Zidane as one of the all time greats.

   *edit – deleted a repeated word.

   *edit 2 – just to clarify – I know injuries played their part. Some of his story is down to bad luck, some of it bad decisions by others, such as being over-played/not given appropriate support by his clubs. But it’s not as simple as saying “oh but for the injuries…”. Some of the responsibility for his career lays squarely in his own hands, some at the hands of his clubs/managers, some at his personal management team/advisors, and some in the hands of the gods.

   I’m not trying to be disparaging of him. But I still think it’s fair to feel disappointed as an England/Liverpool/general Michal Owen fan that he didn’t continue on to the greatness his early years had set him up for.

8. The hype around Sam Burgess in the Rugby World Cup 2015 was extreme given his success in Rugby League. However he wasn’t given the time to switch codes and was well out of his depth due to inexperience.

9. Amir Khan when it turned out a tough breeze could knock him down

   Michael Owen because he should have went down as one of the world’s best ever strikers

   Hick/Ramprakash because they couldn’t do it at the international level, but destroyed the county game

10. Gavin Henson. An incredibly talented rugby player that never got the chance to really shine at a world cup and lost his way a bit but was a great player.

11. Paul Gascoigne? Should’ve been one of the best players ever and let his demons get the better of him.

12. I’ll probably get hate for this but I feel like we’re going to be saying this about Emma Raducanu in a few years. She’s got so much pressure on her now.

13. Eddie the Eagle was particularly brilliant. Bless him.

14. David Haye was an exceptional unified cruiserweight champ and one of the only Cruiserweights to win a world title at HW. I assume you’re talking about Audley and not Haye right?

15. The English football team since 1990. As a Welshman, I’ve genuinely wanted England to do well for Britain, but they leave people scratching their heads after every major tournament (bar the last one!).

16. Kevin Keegan when he came off his bike on superstars.

17. Prince Nassem Hamed has to be considered a let down even though he was an excellent fighter and a very young world champion. Manny Steward said if he had trained Naz earlier in his career he would never have been beaten and be multiple world champion. Though he formerly had a great trainer in Brendan Ingle. (Purely Naz to blame).

    Also Gavin Henson has to come in this list. So naturally gifted, strong, great hands, rugby brain, great defensive player, a cannon of a boot. Had it all to become a true great. Unfortunately, got turned by off the field nonsense.

18. Damon Hill. Yes, he suddenly found himself the team leader after Senna‘s crash, but fumbled his way to title contention in 1994 thanks to a draconian FIA throwing his title rival out of effectively a quarter of the season just because they couldn’t prove Benetton were using traction control. 1995 was poor, and he only won in 1996 because he had a dominant car and a rookie teammate. Hungary 1997 was amazing, though.

19. Ravel Morrison

20. Tom Daley – never understood the hype. Choked multiple times and only got ‘his’ gold as part of a duo, where his partner is practically ignored and it’s all about Tom’s success.

21. Paula Radcliffe – still a very impressive career with several marathon wins and a world record that held for 16 years, but no Olympic medals after 4 games. I don’t follow sports at all, but I remember the huge amount of hype around her being a sure-thing for at least a medal in the Olympics (2004 or 2008). It was one of the first times I realised how much British media hypes up high-potential individuals and with equal enthusiasm tears them down when they don’t meet the expectations.

22. Nigel Short, the chess grandmaster. Made it to third in world rankings, got massively hyped, and Channel 4 decided to televise many hours of his sound thrashing by Kasparov – after which noone much heared of him again.

    I believe he had a perfectly good professional career, so it’s a case of massive hype rather than sporting disaster, but he strikes me as the sportsman who was very famous for a very short time and never heard from again.

23. Laura Robson. Reached the later stages of slams, won an Olympic medal in her teens and looked like she was going to be a slam winner only to suffer injuries and barely play in another slam after 20.

    Andrew Flintoff. Won the ashes single handedly for England in 2005 and looked like he’d be one of the greats of the game but hardly did anything after that series and was an embarrassment as captain.

24. Mason greenwood from one of best young strikers in the world to having no career at all and maybe jail

25. Conor McGregor. Talk about win it all just to become a massive douche bag.

26. [deleted]

27. Elise Christie.

    And through no fault of her own.

    Like many other Olympians, the BBC and the media put unbelievable pressure on her as one of the UKs biggest hopes for the Winter Olympics, and was guaranteed a medal. Couldn’t move for coverage of her. Was amazing at the world championships, but the Olympics were her Achilles heel. She was disqualified on a technicality in multiple races and crashed out in a few more in Sochi and couldn’t live up to the (stupidly massive) expectation. And then still even after that in PyeongChang the BBC did it again! Made her out to be gods gift to speed skating, couldn’t fail, had everything to prove etc etc. Not surprised it was the same story of crashes and disqualifications with that much expectation on you.

    I’m all for cheering on athletes, but half of the Olympians are just 18-25, carrying the weight of the country on their shoulders and having to deal with the press hounding them when they get home without a medal. Or doing interviews before and after of every thought in their head. It must be so emotionally draining.

28. Dele Allí. So much talent wasted.

29. Danny Cipriani.

    At his best one of the best fly halves in the world, an absolute nightmare to defend against. Led some very average teams to great wins.

    Unfortunately he’s horribly inconsistent and you’d get 1 great match in ten, 4 decent performances and 5 average to poor ones.

    And he was too focused on being a celebrity and getting hit by busses.

30. The Williams F1 team over the past 15 or so years.

    This is a team that helped change the face of F1 during the ’80s. Alongside McLaren, I’d say they helped mould what the idea of a modern professional F1 team should be. They created some awesome and dominant cars during the ’80s turbo and the ’90s V10 eras. They created truly world beating engineering solutions, which other teams either copied or were just banned by the FIA. They worked well (although tensely) with BMW as a works outfit in the early 2000s, creating some amazing cars that should’ve been more successful than they were. They’ve had a veritable who’s who of legendary drivers come through their doors, both at the start and peak of their careers. And all of this after their figure head team leader was nearly killed and left severely disabled after a nasty car crash in the mid ’80s.

    But then it all went to shit when they refused to sell up shop to BMW – a decision I agree with, considering what BMW did to Sauber post ’08 financial crash. Williams have lurched from engine supplier to engine supplier, from pay driver to pay driver, whilst slowly circling the drain. They wanted to protect their name and family legacy, which I appreciate, but it led to them to having their hand forced and selling to a faceless capital investment firm who’s intentions are currently unknown apart from “make money”. And even now, when their finances are apparently secure, with one pay driver providing enough cash to more than cover his crash damage costs, they still can’t design a decent car. Since 2014 they’ve had the best engine the sport has probably ever seen, and they’ve been able to do precisely fuck all with it.

    Their current state is a sad end to a truly legendary team and story. I don’t want to see the Williams name disappear from the sport when it’s inevitably sold to the next available billionaire. But nor do I want to see that name on a car languishing at the back of the grid, or binned into yet another wall.