Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the pro-slavery confederacy during the American civil war, was still segregated when Arthur Ashe was born there in 1943. The debate that currently burns about the confederate flag isn’t the reason for the timing of Arthur Ashe: More Than a Champion (BBC2), but it does give it extra poignancy. Ashe was born into a world of injustice. He was a black man who took on the white world and won. Today on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, his statue joins a bunch of old confederate generals – though Ashe faces the other way from them, appropriately.
Maybe it is a shame that Ashe wasn’t more involved in the civil rights movement early on, but full-time activism doesn’t generally lead to grand slam victories (the 40th anniversary of his Wimbledon title is the reason for the film). The campaigning and the protest and the writing came later, and would surely have led to a career in politics had he not died at 49, of Aids-related pneumonia, in 1993.
This fascinating portrait weaves the on-court and the off-court stuff together, with a nicely picked soundtrack (Nina Simone, Gil Scott Heron, Jimmy Cliff, Booker T and the MGs). And a great cast of contributors: Arthur’s brother Johnnie, old Virginia friends, plus Billie Jean King, Ilie Năstase, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe, Serena Williams, Andy Murray … Andy more for the tennis than for understanding what it’s like to triumph over oppression I’m guessing.
A couple of things about that tennis. First, it looks a lot more fun back in the 70s. Maybe not Ashe himself, who was more wise than he was a barrel of laughs, it seems, but Năstase, who used to hide his opponents’ rackets and once put a mouse in Ashe’s locker. I’d love it if Novak Djokovic was smuggling mice into the dressing room for the purpose of humour, but I don’t think that happens at Wimbledon any more does it?
Second, the game was so slow in the 70s. I know Ashe was more of a cultured tactician than a whacker, but Jimmy Connors seems like he’s playing in treacle. I reckon I could take either of them, easy. Well, Andy Murray could.
