Retirement brings frustration not fulfilment for athletes
( 2001-09-26 10:14 ) (7 )

Retirement, the promised land for those condemned to mundane office or factory jobs, is a cruel wrench for any athlete.

At an age when their contemporaries are reaching their prime, athletes find themselves condemned to a premature senility with half their lives ahead.

The latest elite athlete to find retirement can mean frustration rather than fulfilment is Michael Jordan, who at the age of 38 has returned to the NBA for the second time.

Jordan hardly needs the money and has no shortage of alternative activities. But he has discovered again that nothing in his life can replace the thrill of competitive basketball at the highest level.

George Best flared like a meteor with a few brief seasons of dazzling brilliance in the exotic 1960s before walking out on Manchester United at the age of 26.

Increasingly ravaged by alcohol, he played in the United States then made periodic comebacks for an assortment of clubs, including Dunstable Town and Stockport.

In a recent poignant interview Best, 55, attempted to explain the emptiness of life outside soccer which had contributed to his spiral of self-destruction.

"That is why so many footballers struggle when they retire," he said. "Because they can't replace it. You feel empty.

"I've never replaced it. Nothing ever comes close to scoring goals."

ATTENTION CRAVED

Different factors drove Muhammad Ali, whose brilliant mind is now encased in the mask of Parkinson's Syndrome.

Ali craved attention but also needed large amounts of money to support himself and his growing retinue. In 1978, at the age of 36, he defeated Leon Spinks to win the world heavyweight title for the third and final time.

"That Spinks, he looks like Dracula but he's only 25," Ali said before the fight. "So I have to make myself 25. I've done the mostest exercises ever, maybe 350 different types."

Two years later, after a brief retirement, Ali attempted to make himself 25 again for a title fight against his former sparring partner Larry Holmes.

Although he still looked like an athlete, the image proved a cruel illusion as Ali shambled to an embarrassing defeat. A points loss to the obscure Trevor Berbick followed before he finally retired.

Like Best, Bjorn Borg retired from the top level while in his physical prime. In 1982, at the age of 27, Borg quit tennis for the playboy life in Monte Carlo after winning a record five Wimbledon titles in a row.

Borg's ice-cool demeanour on court belied the nervous energy he expended, particularly in his epic tussles with John McEnroe.

After losing to McEnroe in the 1981 Wimbledon and US Open finals, Borg could no longer summon the motivation and willpower to stay on the grand slam circuit.

Yet finding as others before him that the sybaritic lifestyle quickly palled, Borg dusted off his old wooden racket and made an ill-judged and unsuccessful comeback in 1991.

PLANS ABANDONED

The hair, once fashionably long was now unfashionably long, and Borg's baseline style seemed equally anachronistic as he lost 6-2 6-3 to 52nd ranked Spaniard Jordi Arrese. He quietly abandoned plans to enter the French Open, which he had won six times, and settled eventually for the safety of the seniors tour.

For sheer ambition, Mark Spitz's attempted return to swimming was heroic if ultimately doomed.

Aged 42 and 20 years after winning a record seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Spitz attempted to qualify for the 1992 Barcelona Games. Unsurprisingly, he failed.

Spitz's American compatriot Al Oerter won discus gold medals at the 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968 Olympics. In 1980, he decided he was still young enough at 43 to make a comeback for the 1980 Moscow Games.

The United States boycotted the Games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the previous year, but Oerter would have missed out anyway after finishing fourth in the American trials.

Nigel Mansell's attempted return to Formula One was@humiliating than heroic.

The 1992 world champion, with Williams, attempted a comeback with McLaren in 1995 but was too fat to fit into the car. He then gave up when the expensively redesigned vehicle failed to perform.

Not all comebacks end in failure, though.

Two years after retiring in 1985, Lester Piggott, regarded as the supreme jockey of his era, served 12 months of a three-year sentence for tax evasion. For two years, he helped his wife Susan as trainer at Newmarket.

Then, a month short of his 55th birthday, Piggott announced to widespread scepticism that he was coming back.

It was as if he had never been away. Piggott was immediately back to his winning ways and partnered the Irish colt Royal Academy to victory in the 1990 Breeders Cup Mile in New York.

Another Briton, Steve Redgrave, was equally successful.

"If anyone sees me near a boat again they can shoot me," Redgrave said as he announced his retirement after winning a fourth rowing gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Four years later, he won a fifth in Sydney.