"THE MAN WHO FOUGHT SUGAR RAY" --- at last!

[brafield]

Thanks to those who over the last while have suggested sources and archives. I finally located this article in Road & Track from January 1972. My god how the years fly.

It is now in a pdf file and you can see it online at:

http://www.oldstox.com/images/Sugar_Ray.pdf

Marvellous bit of writing about that telling moment when a very good competitor, in any activity, comes up against the very best. In this case the three very good hopefuls were fated to meet Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, and Sugar Ray Robinson --- Ouch.

I have thanked the research editor at R&T who dug out the essay.

[~misfit~]

Thank you for this.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy
little classification in the DSM*."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

[Brian Lawrence]

On 23/08/2015 01:24, ~misfit~ wrote:
> Once upon a time on usenet brafield wrote:
>> Thanks to those who over the last while have suggested sources and
>> archives. I finally located this article in Road & Track from
>> January 1972. My god how the years fly.
>>
>> It is now in a pdf file and you can see it online at:
>>
>> http://www.oldstox.com/images/Sugar_Ray.pdf
>>
>> Marvellous bit of writing about that telling moment when a very good
>> competitor, in any activity, comes up against the very best. In this
>> case the three very good hopefuls were fated to meet Stirling Moss,
>> Jim Clark, and Sugar Ray Robinson --- Ouch.
>>
>> I have thanked the research editor at R&T who dug out the essay.
>
> Thank you for this.

+1

[Sir Tim]

Yes, excellent article, thank you.

When I was involved in Mod Sports racing in the early 1970s a guy called
Jon Fletcher was almost unbeatable in his incredibly tatty Lotus Elan. Jon
had previously competed in Formula Ford but gave it up when he realized
that there was a young Brazilian driver who had "that little bit of magic"
that he could never match. That was his Sugar Ray moment and the Brazilian
was Emerson Fittipaldi.

--
Sir Henry Birkin, Bt.

[Oliver Crawford]

Excellent article.

I sometimes wonder about drivers like Coulthard, Webber and
Barrichello who in their time were well within the Top 10 drivers in
the world but probably never quite good enough to be No 1 - when they
look back on their careers, do they realise that or do they still
think that with maybe just a little bit of luck they could have landed
a WDC?

After 2008, Massa is probably the one to have most reason to feel "so
near yet so far" :)

[brafield]

On Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 1:56:54 PM UTC-7, Sir Tim wrote:

> brafield <> wrote:
> Yes, excellent article, thank you.
>
> When I was involved in Mod Sports racing in the early 1970s a guy called
> Jon Fletcher was almost unbeatable in his incredibly tatty Lotus Elan. Jon
> had previously competed in Formula Ford but gave it up when he realized
> that there was a young Brazilian driver who had "that little bit of magic"
> that he could never match. That was his Sugar Ray moment and the Brazilian
> was Emerson Fittipaldi.
>

Someone remembered being passed by Senna at Brands Hatch in an F3 race --- IIRC it was an outside pass and the "victim" swore he heard Senna change up [one hand on the wheel] while still in a fast drift.

Of course these stories self-generate, and understandably so.

My home village was proud of a pretty good welterweight boxer in the early-mid fifties. He fought 85 bouts at some major venues, then was "over-matched" if that's the term, and received a beating, and after that retired and was not the same man at all, a changed temper etc. But we still reckoned him as a good bloke.

[da...@multco.us]

Kind of the same story in a different context:
http://harderbop.blogspot.com/2011/04/james-carter-ruined-my-life.html

[brafield]

On Tuesday, January 3, 2017 at 11:02:16 AM UTC-8, da...@multco.us wrote:

> Kind of the same story in a different context:
> http://harderbop.blogspot.com/2011/04/james-carter-ruined-my-life.html

Thank you --- terrific article.
My drum tutor (who faces a hopeless task), grabbed the sticks at the age of 4 yrs, and was in local bands by 7 years. Sixty years on, he speaks through his drums.

Strangely, we so-so and sub-so performers probably get as much pleasure and wonderment from seeing the few geniuses 'live', as THEY do from their own playing.

MotoGP champ Kenny Roberts was spotted by his chief mech napping or eyes-closed on the motorhome sofa before a race, and reportedly his hands and feet were doing [the requisite gear-changes.