Time to invoke the Conway principle

As the two British swimmers threshed their way around the marathon course yesterday, my old friend Matthew Engel, former editor of Wisden currently writing for, of all things, the Financial Times, announced: "It's time to invoke the Conway Principle." He meant that he was now cheering for a British one-two, not that one cheers out loud in the press-box, at least, not very often.

He was cheering for the British double because it would be a good story, for the Conway Principle, as elaborated by Doug Conway, star writer of the Australian Associated Press is "barrack the yarn." Barrack is an Australians for "cheer for".

In other words, you don't cheer for the individual or for the country, you cheer for the story. So if a British win is a great tale, you cheer for the Brits, if abject British failure is the story, then the last thing you want is some Brit doing something half-decent.

The extent to which this matters is at least to an extent dependent on deadline. Here in Beijing we are not constrained much by time, for the time-difference is almost absurdly in our favour. But when you are covering a European football match with a deadline of five minutes before the final whistle, you really don't want a desperate 1-0 defeat suddenly turning into a brilliant 2-1 win in the last minute.

Classic examples of these late reversals are England v France in the European Championship of 2004, in which Zinedine Zidane scored twice in the last couple of minutes, and of course, the famous Champions League Final of 1999 when Manchester United came back from a goal down to win in time added on. These heroics really are the last thing you want.

So I moved on to the women's diving, in order to write a piece about the great Chinese diver and diva, Guo Jingling. And on the barrack-the-yarn principle, I need her to win. Only one complication: she was rather sensationally dropped.

At the moment I haven't a yarn to barrack. These are moments that try a sportswriter's soul, and you have to fall back on one of the founding principles of the profession. Dumb luck. Could there possibly be a yarn in Guo's replacement, Wang Xin? Go for it, Xin, baby. I'm barracking for you now. Don't let me down.

Comments

[Kelly]

The GB team has done everyone so proud our 1st gold medal in swimming for 48 years what an achievement for Rebecca Adlington. the 10k swimming marthon was absolutly out of this world swimming for 2 hours amazing Kerri anne payne along with cassie Patten made Britian so proud with their silver and bronze medals then david davis came back the next day to make britian beam once more:)well done to you.
congrats to all of the GB you are real champions look forward to seeing you all in London 2012 well done and keep going love kelly xxxxxxxxxxx