It seems the most likely reason for Ralf Schumacher's dismal season in Formula One is that he has been driven to distraction by Eddie Jordan's sideburns. Eddie's burns are spectacular in a Victorian sort of way, stretching splendidly across his cheeks and sculpted to bear, from a certain angle, an uncanny resemblance to the map of South America.
So complex are Eddie's burns that it is quite probable that the Jordan team have employed a technical director and a couple of mechanics just to tend to them alone.
Having observed them at length, so to speak, on Murray and Martin's Formula One preview, it is difficult not to sympathise with young Ralf. While Eddie is busying advising the German youngster on how to drive around the course without smashing his car, Ralf is probably gazing intently at his boss's magnificent burns, trying to figure out where in the hell Chile is supposed to be.
Murray, watching the yellow Jordan zoom out for a bit of qualifying, began talking about Ralf in terms of having a good drive. These days, returning unscathed from the shops is a decent enough spin for Ralf. He'd cause mayhem in rush hour.
There is a growing school of thought that the average Irish licence holder could arrive at the starting grid at, say, Hockenheim or Monaco, line up in the family saloon, mozey along at a steady 60 to the sound of Larry's Golden Hour and still have a better chance of finishing in the points than Ralf.
On Saturday, it looked as if things were improving as the Jordan lads managed to qualify in sixth and seventh, leaving them in with an outside shout at the start. And Ralf did finish the race, albeit in second-last place.
Murray Walker would have frowned heavily at the shenanigans at the beginning of the women's 100 metres in St Petersburg. No five lights and "Go, Go, Go" here.
This contest possessed all the organisational finesse of the 1993 English Grand National, with one false start ("the Russian", announced David Coleman bitterly), a hesitant recall gun and the spectacle of half the athletes finishing the race.
Half an hour later, they tried again and suddenly the whole thing had a Community Games sort of feel to it. Coleman's voice started to orbit rapidly at the sight of the French sprinter Cali strolling slowly down the track when she should have been in her blocks. "And Lansiviori is pointing at her as if to say, `What is she doing'," he shrieked.
Right enough, it led to another delay, and by this stage the entire field began to look a bit fed up, as if they'd rather write the whole thing off as a bad debt and go watch some television.
Not that they would have found much on, besides that infernal soccer tournament. The natural elements were on full display at Wimbledon. Rain was causing a delay and so the spectators were forced to make do with observing a fire on the upper floor of a nearby tower block. There, were, thankfully, no casualties, nor was there any immediate sign of a fire brigade, the local lads obviously figuring that the sheer volume of rainfall would dampen the spirit of even the most stubborn fire.
Steve Rider was, understandably, a little anxious at the sight of plumes of black smoke wafting over the Wimbledon complex, and it was sort of fitting that the Beeb chose this moment to run an interview with John McEnroe. McEnroe sports a sort of mature boyishness now, appearing with a Stanford cap shoved backwards on his head and a healthy growth of stubble which suggested that he had not the spent the previous night trading forehand tips.
But he was, joyously, ever direct, firing good-humoured, no-nonsense answers at the slightly anxious lad from the BBC. "I just got in on Thursday night, so I missed the rain," he barked truculently, sounding a bit like the relatives who say they don't want to come to visit for the summer, who aren't wanted anyway and who generally overstay by about three weeks.
"The place hasn't changed, I still have as much trouble gettin' in - not being a player, you gotta beg to get in," he reported, a grin spreading across his face.
He offered a shrewd if terse analysis of the likely contenders in the field, eyes darting everywhere bar the camera. Asked about a couple of surprising results in the women's competition, he shrugged and said, "as Vitas Gerulaitis said when he beat Connors, `No one beats Vitas Gerulaitis 18 times in a row', so maybe those wins were due."
And naturally, McEnroe was asked if he wished he were still out there playing, and he interrupted, saying, "Well, the older I get, the better I used to be so . . .", leaving you to wonder if Ralf Schumacher will ever echo those words.
The BBC should introduce a clause that whenever rain stops play at Wimbledon, there should be a mandatory re-showing of one of McEnroe's past games. Cripes, that way it could rain for entire fortnight and no one would mind.
Because there are worse things than looking at old footage of distant glories, as RTE's Action Replay is proving. This week, they re-ran Stephen Roche's astonishing World Championship win in 1987, when hundreds of Irish journeyed to the Continent for the race., It doesn't seem feasible now. Roche spent six hours working for Sean Kelly, reeling in breakaway groups and trying to establish a break for his teammate, but at the end Kelly just didn't have the legs. The Carrick-on-Suir man fell away and Roche sprinted clear with an audacious move along the inside rail.
Cycling was as popular as the championship that summer. It seems hard to reconcile that now. That is why when the Tour de France lands here shortly, a whole generation of Irish folk will summon their memory banks and demand to know why Anderson, Vanderaerden and Delgado aren't here.
