MENU

Gillette: the worst a man can get?

December 13, 2009, 3 Comments

Clearly the Swiss expect nothing less than perfection from their greatest sports star. You might think Roger Federer has had rather a good year -winning the French Open for the first time, Wimbledon for the sixth, and regaining the world number one spot. Oh, and becoming the most successful male tennis player ever with 15 Grand Slam titles. Surely enough for him to win the Swiss Sportsman of the Year award. But no. Two weeks after one astonishing vote, the Swiss public have done it again and chosen a skiing nobody to win the award. Didier Cuche. Yes, I hadn’t heard of him either. Apparently he made a lot of Swiss people very happy by winning the Super G at the World Ski Championships, the first time in 20 years that a Swiss man had won the event. And no, I don’t know what a Super G is, and I’m not too sure want to find out. Sounds like some alarming underwear.

But that’s how important skiing is to the Swiss. It would be like Murray winning Wimbledon or England winning any football tournament at all. The big difference is that in 1 min, 19.41 secs M. Cuche managed what has eluded English footballers for 43 years: a big victory. Still, you’d think that it would take a bit more than 79 seconds of action to win the public vote. Then again, Greg Rusedski won the British award in 1997 just by reaching a Grand Slam final and not actually winning anything. But Didier only had the men to beat; Swiss women get their own award. Sportswoman of the Year for the second year running is Ariella Kaeslin. Another household name who, I’m told, is a gymnast and the reigning European Champion for the vault.

So despite all his victories, Roger has lost for the second year in a row (last year it was cycling hero Fabian Cancellara who beat him). Is this the Curse of Gillette striking the king of tennis? First there was Thierry Henry scoring a goal with his hand, which really isn’t cricket, let alone football. Then there was Tiger, the crash and all the women coming out of the Woods-work. And now Roger failing again to win approval from his countrymen. Gillette really must be wondering what all their millions have bought them, though I’ve always wondered if celebrity advertising actually works. Do so many people truly want to smell like Nicole Kidman, drive like Richard Gere, and drink coffee like George Clooney? Or even shave like Tiger, Roger and Thierry? At least I know the answer to that one – I think I’ll change my razors.

3 Comments on "Gillette: the worst a man can get?"

  1. Jenny Bewes Monday December 14th, 2009 at 03:38 PM · Reply

    If it’s any consolation the BBC viewers voted some (to me) unknown Manchester either United or City footballer as Sportsman of The Year last night!! Yet Jenson Button won the Racing Championship and the british boxer, whose name eludes me, somehow beat that enormous Russian to become Heavyweight Champion of the world (I think that’s right). So there ain’t no justice there either!!

  2. swisswatching Wednesday December 16th, 2009 at 05:26 PM · Reply

    Unlike M Cuche, I have at least heard of Ryan Giggs, even if he didn’t do anything much in 2009 to warrant winning the award. All I can say is that there must be an awful lot of ManU fans out there with very big phone bills.

Trackbacks for this post

  1. Double gold for Swiss Olympic men « Swiss Watching

Leave a Comment