Rosie DiManno
2011-02-16 06:11:00 PM
Here today, gone tomorrow, back the day after that.
Or a year later, or four years later — or in the case of Martina Navratilova a decade later, 47 and an aging baby-boomer heroine with a first-round win at Wimbledon in 2004, oldest tennis player ever to take a professional singles match.
Breaking up with sports is the hardest thing to do for elite athletes. Whether Hamlet-like — Favre-like — indecisive about retirement or fleetingly firm in hanging ’em up, only to reverse themselves as time goes by, it is an often agonizing and discombobulating adjustment to civvy street.
They pine for the cheers, they ache for the existence left behind and they genuinely miss what they used to do so well. Few attempt comebacks for the money. What most yearn for is the person they once were.
Glory days, they will pass you by, as Bruce Springsteen sang. Retrieving them is usually a mug’s game.
Only a handful manage to seize again the shimmery éclat that was: Michael Jordan, the first time he had a re-think, picking up his career where he left off and leading the Chicago Bulls to three straight NBA championships; George Foreman, a serial comeback artist but especially in 1994, 45 years old when he knocked out Michael Moorer, 25, to become the oldest boxer in history to capture a heavyweight title; and Roger Clemens, revising retirement plans in a last hurrah with the Houston Astros, winning the 2004 Cy Young Award in the process. (Leaving aside, for the moment, that ignominious appearance before a U.S. House committee probing steroid use in baseball.)
At the other end of the spectrum, there was Stephane Richer — admittedly, not remotely in the same league as the aforementioned stars — who re-retired in 2009 after precisely one (1) practice with the Washington Capitals. Sometimes reality bites hard. And quick.
Lance Armstrong announced Wednesday that he was done with competitive cycling, wryly calling it “Retirement 2.0’’. In an interview with Associated Press, the 39-year-old teased: “Never say never’’ about perhaps changing his mind down the line, then added: “Just kidding.’’
Is he?
His comebacks have been legendary — first from testicular cancer and then, following seven straight Tour de France titles and a subsequent four-year withdrawal from competition, a return to the circuit in ’09, though never reclaiming the grandeur and hounded by accusations of using performance-enhancing drugs.
More ill-advised were the unretirements that damaged legacies: Muhammad Ali, who sadly demonstrated that being the “greatest of all time’’ doesn’t make you immune from the ravages of time, losing back-to-back decisions to Larry Holmes and a then-unknown Trevor Berbick.
Bjorn Borg, still using a clumsy old wooden racket, was handed his hat by one young player after another after a decade away from the courts. And Mark Spitz, the most gold medal-decorated swimmer in history until Michael Phelps came along, tanked when, at age 41, he tried and failed to qualify for the Olympics.
It’s particularly poignant when early retirement is imposed on athletes because of injury and they can’t accept that their tickets have been punched prematurely. Some try and try to resurrect halted careers, putting body and mind through exceedingly harsh travails.
Peter Forsberg was arguably the best two-way forward in the NHL until suddenly plagued by a befuddling foot ailment in 2003. The former league MVP, who spent most of his career with the Colorado Avalanche, leading them to two Stanley Cup titles, and two-time Olympic gold medallist repeatedly dipped that foot in and out of unofficial retirement in the years that followed. Multiple surgeries later, he drifted back to Sweden, practising on and off with the Modo junior team, never abandoning hope that he’d one day play again in the NHL.
That day came a week ago.
Convinced that he’d finally conquered the problem that caused his foot to feel like it was weirdly sliding around in his skate, and wearing a specially fitted brace on the extremity, Forsberg approached the Avs in January, suggesting a comeback. The struggling team eagerly said YES!
He began practising with the Avs on Jan. 22, agreed to a $1 million prorated contract and, after a visa issue was resolved, dressed for his first game back on Feb. 11, 3 ½ years after his last one, against Columbus. Though scoring no points, a seemingly vintage Forsberg enjoyed 17:38 of ice time, displaying his familiar puck-handling dexterity.
But the foot hurt afterwards, and more so next game out against Nashville.
On Monday, the usually stoic Forsberg — nickname Foppa — had to pause several times to fight back tears at a press conference where he announced the experiment was over.
Teammates were taken aback by the abrupt decision. On the flight back from Nashville, he’d given no indication what was on his mind during a long chat with captain Adam Foote.
But Forsberg, 37, had promised his fiancee that if he couldn’t adequately defend himself on the ice, he’d pull the plug on his comeback. And he’d regretfully concluded that he couldn’t. And the foot was throbbing. And the dream died.
“We can fly to the moon, we should be able to fix the foot,’’ Forsberg said, attempting humour. More touchingly, he said he felt “like a little kid that had candy stolen.’’
And he conceded: “I can’t do it anymore.’’
Accepting the truth of that, in his heart, puts Forsberg ahead of the game, unlike so many others.
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