She is the latest in a list including several big names in the sport. At 40, Lindsey Vonn chose to put her skis back on to attempt a highly publicized comeback. Why now at 40 years old and for what purpose? That talent is not lost and that the legend of skiing can always impress young people? These endless returns reflect less the trend of a period than a fashion that we endure.
So not a month goes by without a former champion deciding to come out of retirement, often in a very theatrical manner, often sowing a few stones intended to alert the public. planet of sport on what is going on. Wow, awesome…
Do all of them feel at this moment in their existence an existential void that needs to be filled? We can imagine it. Because we do not go from the galvanizing light to the darkness with impunity.
Should we see in this the desire to prove that we are not yet as “finished” as we were told? Or would it not be better to exist in the eyes of sponsors who must continue to attract in order to keep the cash machine running? This all stinks too much of money to be sincere…
Like all returns, that of Lindsey Vonn does not matter to us. Or rather, we find it as pathetic as all the previous ones. From Björn Borg to Michael Jordan, from Katarina Witt to Mike Tyson, from Michael Phelps to Marcel Hirscher, everyone wrote the history of their sport before one day attempting improbable comebacks, sometimes crowned with success. success. But coming back means breaking each time the myth they had built, destroying the legend in which the past had imprisoned them forever. On the difficulty of being again after having been…
To the spectacle of these unworthy ghosts, we prefer a thousand times the tenacity of a Stan Wawrinka, driven, at 39 years old, by an intact love of the game, a passion for tennis which nourished him – and also, let’s not be fooled , the need to retain some sponsors. In the case of the Vaudois champion, stopping his career would represent the death of a life that he still loves so much, or even a first small death altogether.
Inevitably, the expected return of Lindsey Vonn makes us think of his majesty Roger Federer, whose absence everyone can easily measure by the emotions he allowed us to share during his reign.
More than two years after the end of his career following a double loss alongside Nadal, many are dreaming of a return of the master, of a hypothetical comeback which would see “Rodger” delight crowds won over by the elegance of his unforgettable game. After all, advances in medicine will eventually give him the knees of a 20-year-old kid, right?
But would all this be reasonable? As far as we are concerned, Federer must remain what he is in his own legend. The master is much more alive in our memories than he could be playing ghosts. Let’s make sure that this doesn’t happen, that he remains forever enthroned alone on Olympus. Fortunately, we can probably count on RF itself to protect us from a comeback that would kill the myth.
