Lost and found - Ricky and Bobby in Asian transit

They were just a couple of guys looking for a fresh start in Asia and as fate would have it Ricky Williams and Bobby Fischer passed through Tokyo's Narita airport this week at roughly the same time.

But while one would be liberated, the other would be incarcerated. Williams, 27, shocked the football world last weekend when he announced he was retiring from his job as a star running back for the Miami Dolphins.

According to Williams, he was heading to Asia to discover some meaning in his soul. 'I just don't want to be in this business anymore,' Williams told a Miami writer. 'I'm finally free. I can't remember ever being this happy. You can't understand how free I feel.'

Unfortunately for Fischer, he is far from free. The former world chess champion was arrested this week at Narita by Japanese officials as he tried to fly to the Philippines. Fischer is wanted for defying a US ban on doing business with Yugoslavia in 1992 when he came out of retirement and collected US$3.5 million for an exhibition against his one-time rival, Russian Boris Spassky. Extradition proceedings against Fischer, who has been covertly shuttling between Japan and the Philippines for the last 12 years, have now begun.

While chess has seen its share of eccentric champions over the years, the beguiling Fischer, much like Williams in the NFL, was in a class all by himself. Both were total non-conformists in the structured world of sport, a world that often ostracises those it cannot understand and what sport doesn't understand is how the truly gifted can turn their back on it. They must be sick.

For Williams, his departure only days before training camp began could not have come at a worse time. The Dolphins were flabbergasted, their fans enraged. Losing the best player on the team was bad enough but losing him when it was too late to find a competent replacement was an act of high treason and insubordination.