Making History

Three sportsmen were on the verge of making history yesterday. Two of them managed it, one stopped short.

Roger Federer was looking to become the first man since the great Rod Laver to hold all four Tennis majors at the same time by winning the French Open title, completing a grand slam, something that has been done very rarely in tennis history (see the Wikipedia entry for more info).

Against him was the reigning French Open champion Rafael Nadal, the man who has become the undisputed king of clay. Federer last month ended Nadal's record breaking run of 81 consecutive wins on clay. Nadal was trying to become the first man since the great Bjorn Borg, and only the second man in history, to win three consecutive French Open titles.

Unrelated to tennis, but having a lot of hype and expectations on his side in the Formula 1 world, Lewis Hamilton was looking to win his first grand prix at the Canadian GP after he took pole position ahead of his team mate, Fernando Alonso. If he won, he would be the first Black driver in history to win a F1 GP (not to mention that there has been no Black F1 driver before him). Hamilton has already had a sizzling start to his F1 career as he has finished on the podium in all of the races so far. For a rookie, he has done exceptionally well.

So who would step into the annuls of history?

Nadal trumped Federer to stop the latter from making his Grand Slam and became only the second man in history to win three French Open titles in a row. To a large extent, I think Federer lost rather than Nadal won, something that you can see from the number of unforced errors Roger made during the match. At one point, he had converted only one break point out of a possible 17 while Nadal had converted 3 out of a possible 8. A dejected Roger stood by as Nadal made history on clay.

And Hamilton, taking full advantage of mistakes made by his team mate, convincingly won his first GP in Canada going from his first pole to his first win in a fabulous controlled drive. The great thing about this rookie is that he looks completely in control when he is driving on the edge, a Schumi-esque characteristic. Of course he has a long way to go to even be compared with the great Schumaker, but he is definately doing all the right things to get him into the comparisons.

For one, he definately made Alonso look like the rookie. Alonso made more mistakes and drove a lot more stupidly than Hamilton did. And this from a guy who is a two time World Champion. I think Alonso must be feeling like Fisichella last year. Fisi was in a championship winning car, but could not manage to make anything out of it. Alonso is in the same car as his rookie team mate, but is making too many mistakes for a world champion.

So for the first time, a rookie is leading the F1 world championship on his own. He goes into the next race with an 8 point cushion, mainly thanks to a lot of stupidity by all the people who are chasing him for the title. Both Ferraris disappointed with Massa the better of the two, but disqualified and The Retard (my nickname for Kimi Raikonnen) managing no better than 5th place (even though he had qualified higher.

So the history books have two new members. Personally, I wish Roger had gotten in as opposed to Nadal (I am a huge Federer fan), but then, maybe next year.