I am not always proud to be British; certainly there are
times when we are in Spain that I speak more Czech than I ever do here in the
CR, for fear of being thought to be from the same place as some of the boys and
girls that make their way down to the sun each summer. But after a weekend in front of the TV
watching two of my favourite sports, I have the same proud feelings as I had
during the London Olympics – the Brits are really good at these huge occasions!
Saturday saw the retirement of the greatest jockey of all
time, A.P. McCoy. I know that not
everyone is as horse-racing mad as I am so they may not have taken much notice
of this, and certainly outside of the UK it probably didn’t make many of the
newspapers, but had AP (as he is known) been involved in one of the more
popular sports (football, tennis, golf) news of his retirement would have made
it to the front page of newspapers all over the world, since he is truly a
legend.
In the UK, where he is as famous as Roger, Tiger or Lionel, AP’s
final day before hanging up his boots was marked with a festival of racing,
with many of the best horses in the country taking part (not that they would
have known the relevance) and all the biggest names in the sport turning out to
say goodbye, alongside nearly 20,000 spectators. And not a dry eye in the house (at the
racecourse or ours!). Since most
jockeys have retirement forced on them – injuries, loss of nerve, inability to
starve themselves any more – I do wonder, though, whether AP, who is still
fighting fit, will find retirement a bit too dull and we will suddenly hear
about him coming out to ride in one or other big race next year. We shall see.
Having only just recovered from the emotion of all that, we
were back in front of the TV on Sunday morning to watch the London
Marathon. Having run in eight half marathons myself,
and been the Prague International Marathon’s PR agency for four years until
2012 (and with a partner that runs the marathon every year), watching marathons
on television is probably a bit more interesting to us than it is to most
people – let’s face it, watching a group of people running along a road for 2
hours and more is not so exciting – but the London Marathon is something
else.
Sunday was particularly special, as not only did it show off
the city in all of its splendor, but it also saw another great British sports
person hanging up their shoes – this time Paula Radcliffe, the marathon world
record holder, who, whilst no longer running professionally, decided to have
her last run in London in amongst the other 30,000 plus runners (but still
finishing in a near to professional time)! Again, most of the hundreds of thousands of
spectators were cheering her on, and again most of the people involved were in
floods of tears at the end.
What does all of this have to do with marketing and
management? Well, not so much. But what these wonderful events prove is that
it is not enough just to put on a show – you need the people and the emotion to
make them into something really special.
Which, in our world, is probably the case with most of what we do.
