“bloody near-religious experience"

Je suis un passionné de l'aspect artistique du sport. Pas le patinage artistique! La paillette ce n'est de l'art. Je pense plutôt aus gestes 10 000 fois assimilés par les grands sportifs qu'ils nous sortent dans des moments de grâce ou tous les spectateurs se disent: "Comment il a fait ça?" Pensez Michael Jordan. Ou Zidane. Ou Gretzky.

Dans le NY Times, l'auteur David Foster Wallace aborde ce sujet avec un méga-papier sur Roger Federer, Federer as Religious Experience. Super trippant à lire. Extraits:

[...]given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of “The Matrix.” I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.

Anyway, that’s one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV — and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.
[...]
The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan, who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces.

via Activate de Flavor Pill