Winning Is Not Enough by Jackie Stewart

Author:Jackie Stewart [Stewart, Jackie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2014-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat

THE OPENING SEQUENCE FEATURED A SKI JUMPER crashing spectacularly even before he had reached the end of the jump, his legs and arms flailing in the air. That image represented half of the slogan adopted by the most popular weekend sports show in America. ‘The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,’ declared the announcer over the pictures. ‘Welcome to ABC’s Wide World of Sports.’

It was a broadcasting institution, created in 1961 by a ginger-haired genius called Roone Arledge, a giant in the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), who later became one of the most powerful media leaders in the USA when he combined the roles of president of ABC Sports and president of ABC News. Even as a senior executive, he maintained his basic skills. For all his achievements on the top floor and his influence in the White House, his natural habitat remained a live television control room, either in the studio or an outside broadcast unit, heading the production team at a big sports event, facing a wall of televisions, directing the feed, telling the story shot by shot. It was a magical experience to watch him in action, sitting in the hot seat at the Olympic Games, his eyes scanning across up to twenty-five screens receiving pictures from cameras placed around the venue, as he constructed the TV coverage that would be broadcast live to many tens of millions of viewers. This was an artist at work, punching the buttons as he constructed the broadcast, making inspired decisions in fractions of seconds. The amazing contradiction was that, away from the control room, Roone was one of the most indecisive men I have ever known. His many friends will remember he was also famously difficult to reach on the telephone: he always seemed to be busy and he very rarely returned calls. However, he was a truly creative thinker and innovator, interested not so much in what had always been done but in what could be done to make the product better and more exciting. It was Roone who created the role of a colour commentator accompanying the sports anchorman, offering expert insight and analysis, and it was he who first had the idea that a Scottish motor racing driver with a strange and different accent could have a career in American television.

‘We’ve got O. J. Simpson and Frank Gifford in our American football coverage,’ he told me, ‘and I think you can do a great job for us in motor racing. What do you think?’

‘It sounds exciting,’ I enthused.

‘Good,’ he replied, ‘now you need to meet Jim McKay.’

Jim was the established host of ABC’s Wide World of Sports. A well-educated American with a wonderful command of the English language and perfect manners, he became highly respected for his emotional and sensitive coverage of the Israeli hostage crisis during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

McKay was a stage name he created to protect the privacy of his family, who used his real surname, McManus.

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