Football, tennis, golf, snooker or darts – there is no sport that’s immune to the debilitating condition known as ‘choking’…
Whenever an athlete or sports team comes to close to winning a big tournament and fails to do so, pundits and fans are quick to brand them ‘chokers’.
Sometimes, such a title is unfair. There is, as we recently revealed, a difference between suffering a narrow defeat and choking under pressure.
In the case of these five athletes, however, choking is the only explanation for their failure to win.
Jana Novotna
In the summer of 1993, Novotna was close to fulfilling what was presumably her life’s dream: winning a grand slam singles title. At Wimbledon, too, the most prestigious of tennis’ four major championships.
After losing the first set on a tie break, Novotna responded brilliantly against top seed and serial slam-winner Steffi Graf, winning the second set 6-1 before romping to a 4-1 lead in the decider.
The Czech even led 40-30 in the following game, meaning she was just five points away from the championship. Then, from nowhere, she capitulated: hitting a double fault, wayward volley and limp smash to surrender her service game.
Just 15 minutes later, the title was Graf’s.
Novotna, remarkably, showed impressive resolve not to immediately collapse into a teary, hopeless heap. But she could only keep her eyes dry for so long, and eventually broke when receiving her runners-up trophy from Katharine, Duchess of Kent.
Even advocates of republicanism would have been moved by Katherine’s response. She held the sobbing Novotna close to her, literally giving her a shoulder to cry on.
Jean van de Velde
When a sportsperson is in the midst of choking, the lack of oxygen in their brain seriously impacts their ability to make rational decisions.
Enter Van de Velde, who famously removed his shoes and socks and went ankle-deep into a small river to try and play a shot.
While ultimately impossible to do – the ball was, after all, submerged in water – Van de Velde’s reasons for wanting to do so were understandable: he had reached his last hole of the 1999 Open Championship three shots clear of everyone else and was in the process of spectacularly effing it up.
Needing only a double bogey on the 18th – which he had birdied in his second and third rounds – to claim the claret jug, the unheralded Frenchman – whose name had already been engraved on the trophy – imploded, playing three haphazard shots that ended with him in the wet stuff.
After being forced to take a drop, Van der Velde signed for a triple-bogey to secure his place in a three-man, four-hole play-off, which, unsurprisingly, he lost.
Nearly 20 years on, it would be fascinating to know how often Van de Velde – who otherwise endured an average career – thinks about how close he came to winning golf’s most prestigious title. Every day, would be this writer’s suggestion.
Jimmy White
Once upon a time, people used to watch programmes not on mobiles phones or tablets, but televisions. What’s more, there only used be four channels, meaning the British public didn’t have too much choice when it came to whiling away the hours at evenings and weekends.
This period of home entertainment, coupled with snooker enjoying a golden age of personalities, ensured that people’s champion Jimmy White’s quest to the win World Championship became an annual issue of national concern.
Unsurprisingly, carrying the hopes of the nation did not bring the best out of the player, who reached six Crucible finals throughout his career and lost them all.
It was the last one, in 1994, that was the most painful. Against Stephen Hendry, the man who had thwarted him three times previously, White battled back from 14-16 and 16-17 down to take the match to a deciding frame.
After getting into the balls, that elusive Crucible title was his to lose. All he had to do was hold his nerve, which is easier said than done.
Sure enough, at 37-24 up, White twitched and missed the black off its spot.
Hendry, a serene, cold killer, made a nerveless break of 57 to steal the frame and clinch his fourth World Championship.
“He’s beginning to annoy me,” White quipped during the post-match presentation, demonstrating the everyman characteristics that made him the man of the people.
Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard
Choking in team sports is hard to quantify compared to individual ones, simply because the impact of one player’s performance is heavily influenced by their team-mates.
Penalties, though, are the ultimate test of a footballer’s bottle. It is the taker against the goalkeeper, with the pressure on the former, given it is easier to score than save.
And while plenty of England internationals have missed from 12 yards over the last 20 years, Lampard and Gerrard’s are the most choke-worthy.
Unlike Gareth Southgate, David Batty or Jamie Carragher, Lampard and Gerrard were regular goalscorers and penalty takers for their club sides.
Those clubs, Chelsea and Liverpool, were also making the latter stages of the Champions League year in, year out at the time, with both players renowned for making the difference when their teams needed them the most.
Against Portugal at the 2006 World Cup, they had the opportunity to do the same for England, who had made it to penalties after playing with 10 men for more than hour.
But not even Lampard and Gerrard’s supreme talent and temperaments could prevent them from crumbling under the expectation of carrying an England side that were expected to contend for the World Cup, if not win it.
What happened, though, was depressingly predictable for a nation that has become accustomed to producing players who can’t replicate their club form at international level: Lampard and Gerrard (and Carragher) missed their penalties, and England made a limp exit.
Peter Wright
Wright had six darts to beat Michael van Gerwen – widely acknowledged to be the most gifted darts player of all time – and win the 2017 Betway Premier League, which would have been the biggest title of his career.
It would have also banked him £250,000, a life-changing amount of money for a player who more than once was forced to contemplate giving up the sport because he wasn’t making enough.
Wright should have won the match with no bother. He was averaging over 100, and had hit 10 of his last 19 doubles. He’d even thrown a 149 to set up the one-dart finish, with Van Gerwen nowhere near.
But then, as is customary with the choke, the magnitude of what Wright was about about to do immobilised him.
After two misses, Wright broke his rhythm, stepping away from the oche to try and recompose himself. It was a fatal move.
After predictably missing his final dart, Wright then missed three more times, which allowed Van Gerwen to level the match at 10-10.
There was one more leg to play, but they needn’t have bothered. Wright, his head buried in his hands, was shot to pieces.
Van Gerwen romped to his third Premier League title.
