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Britons laud Edwards' feel-good factor

John Crean

THE sweet and the sour features of British sport were portrayed by a modest, quietly-spoken vicar's son and a bad-tempered squawker last week.

Jonathan Edwards, bless him, made thousands of 'ordinary guys' feel good about themselves with his World Championships gold medal in the triple jump or, as most people remember it from their school playground days, the hop, skip and jump.

The 29-year-old with the grey-speckled hair and bank clerk looks jumped straight out of the pages of a comic book to an astonishing world record of 18.29 metres (just a little over 60 feet for the non-metric minded).

As a number of commentators remarked, it would have been more fitting if he had been given a bright red rosette and a peck on the cheek from the school governor's daughter rather than a shiny gold medal and a smacker of a Mercedes.

Edwards' press conference was an essay in self-effacement. 'It's amazing this has happened to me - I am just an ordinary guy,' said the father-of-two, a statement backed up by television pundits who repeated that 'it could not have happened to a nicer guy'.

The affirmation that good guys do win some of the time came at the right moment for the Brits after a rather unsavoury incident involving the aforementioned big mouth.

No, no, not grandfather Linford 'I was born to be a champion' Christie but Henry the parrot, who disrupted a national women's bowls championship in England and was subsequently barred.

This is no laughing matter, although the parrot was reported to be doing a lot of that as he watched the efforts of the lady bowlers.

Henry, you see, normally perches on the shoulder of his owner Ralph Shakespeare at the Leamington Spa greens and is not averse to passing comments, some of them derogatory, on the games.

Shakespeare, who despite his name did not seem to see the poetic justice in the pungent parrot being bowled over by the authorities, commented: 'Henry has been known to scream, 'You're a yard short'. For some reason people find that objectionable.' Maybe Henry was just mimicking that epitome of the whingeing Pom, Christie.

The Olympic 100 metres champion was as arrogant in defeat as he is in victory after becoming the ex-100 metres world champion.

'The winning time [9.97 seconds] would not have been enough for gold or silver in Stuttgart [at the World Championships two years ago]. But 10.12 [Christie's time] on one leg was a world-class time,' he sneered.

Sure, the Briton suffered from a hamstring injury, but surely he could have shown some good grace and congratulated winner Donovan Bailey who, as the condescending Christie conveniently overlooked, had recorded the fastest time in the world this year before heading for Gothenburg.

Christie has said that this is his last year in competition and it's a shame that his demagogic personality has overshadowed what was a supreme talent.

Luckily for British athletics, boy-next-door-turned-hero Edwards has leapt on to the world scene at the perfect time.

And Henry the parrot certainly cannot shout at the 18-metre man that he's a 'yard short'.

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