By Douglas Kruger
EVER watched the kids’ swimming lessons at the Aqua Splash? You’ve never seen such compelling drama. It’s the Hollyoaks of St Helier.
They line up in a shivering row, dancing on tippy toes. Each is eager to be at the front of the queue to dive, then each looks terrified when they get there.
One little boy makes it to the front, then glances down into the abyss. His moment has arrived. The coach encourages the skinny tyke to ‘gooo!’ and you can almost see the kid’s pupils dilate.
What happens next happens surprisingly slowly.
Forget those graceful leaps you see in the Olympics. That’s years off in the future. Instead, you will witness five seconds of intense soul-searching. Every twist of tension registers on the frantic little face and squirming knees. This is followed by the moment of truth, when his traitorous toes finally release their grip on the concrete.
And he’s off. There is a flailing of limbs, followed by a tiny splash. A hop and a flop. The boy comes up spluttering.
‘Next!’
Belly-flopper number two inches forward and takes her mark.
I watch this amusing spectacle each week from the grandstands. Yet it turns out that those lessons are clearly heading somewhere, for if you turn and face away from the pool, you’ll spot an honours board. It lists notable accomplishments in Jersey swimming, including the names of athletes who have made the British team. Apparently that awkward start ultimately does lead to Olympic glory.
Fast forward a few days. My kid gets to meet his new teacher.
‘He has a black belt in Judo, dad!’
That’s an incredible accomplishment. I run it by another father, who tells me, ‘Oh yeah, we have several world champion martial artists in the Island. We punch way above our weight here’.
I genuinely did not know that.
So, here’s my question: exactly how many champions do we have in Jersey? Does anyone know?
The more I sniff about, the more I suspect that the number may be disproportionately high – even astonishingly high – across a wide range of pursuits, and growing by the day, given crucibles like last week’s Island Games.
If so, that’s something to shout about. It’s something a small island should wear as a badge of honour, proudly and publicly.
So I Googled ‘Hall of Fame for sports in Jersey’, and it turns out there is one, at least conceptually. It was founded in 2018, when fund administration specialists Ocorian began sponsoring an annual event to recognise the Island’s top performers.
That’s a great start. But how about something physical? An actual public building, for example. After all, tourists will not be attending those awards evenings, and therefore may never find out about our stars. I’ve been here a few years now, and it’s the first I’ve ever heard of it.
So, what if we erected an actual, physical, ‘hall’ of champions?
My imagination conjures up images of a Grecian temple on a hill. I see pilgrims climbing the path to stand in awe of stern busts and great scrolls, as they pay homage to their elders. But realistically it could be something simple. So long as it’s eye-catching and located in a public place.
The very presence of such a structure could serve as a powerful incentive to aspiring young Islanders: ‘One day your name could be up on that wall…’
And the criteria could be wide, liberally including any pursuit: ‘World champion skateboarder? Pogo stick king of the world? Harmonica player to the King’s Court? Up on the wall with you!’
I favour a physical building for such a purpose, though there are other ways of doing it. There is the classic ‘Walk of Fame’, aka that famous boulevard in Hollywood. Commemorating names in stone takes up zero space, and you could do it along St Aubin’s Bay, or on the ocean path of St Ouen’s Bay. Ground-level plaques could add a great deal of local flavour to any coastal stroll.
You could even do both.
How about a Hall of Champions for those who have achieved to a high level in sports, plus a Walk of Fame for the great and the good connected to the Island, including the likes of, say, Gerald Durrell and Henry Cavill, and whoever cooks that amazing Thai food down at the slipway?
And again, cast the net wide in every sense. For instance, so what if a high achiever wasn’t born here? Author Peter James has no less than 16 Sunday Times bestselling novels, and he’s been living in Jersey since 2018. Heck, his last novel was set here, and if we exclude people who weren’t born in Jersey, we might as well pull down our plaque to Victor Hugo.
We may be a small island. But it appears that our accomplishments per capita are disproportionate. Something special. (Statistically, we even out-drink most nations on the planet, though we may want to keep that one to ourselves.)
If there is any sort of message we should be sending to our youth, surely that should be it? ‘You live in a place where greatness is made. We may be small, but we are a nation of champions. Now go, ye, and do likewise!’
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Douglas Kruger lives in St Helier, and writes books to keep himself out of mischief. When the seagulls aren’t shrieking, he records them too. They’re all available from Audible.
