I've just found out that Rafael Nadal's grandfather is a retired conductor, of the local band in Nadal's hometown of Manacor, Majorca. This fills me with joy: at last, a meaningful link between one of the world's great sportsmen and classical music. How did I come across this cross-cultural factoid? Well, since you ask, I was interviewing 34 year-old French-Canadian conducting prodigy, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who's in London this week to make his debut with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Haydn, and to conduct one of his party-pieces, Bruckner's Eighth Symphony - that's my kind of party! - with the London Philharmonic, where he's principal guest conductor.
Yannick has recently become a huge tennis fan, and likes Nadal more than Federer (he admires the Spaniard's intensity, focus, and shot-making, he told me). They met in the lobby of a hotel in Rotterdam, when Rafa was so touched by the gift of one of Yannick's recordings, he told him about his grandpa. Read more about that, and about Yannick's views on Mahler, Giulini, and reincarnation when the piece is published in the paper this week. I'm a Federer fan myself, and frankly, I see more of an aesthetic connection between Roger's peerless artistry and the musical experience.
But what about other real ties between sportsmen and women and music? Britten was a fiendish tennis player, and not a bad batsman, Schoenberg loved table tennis, Mozart played billiards (not sure if that counts), but what about the other way round? What are the secret, or not-so-secret, classical-music lives of the great footballers, tennis stars, cricketers, and athletes? Apart from Fabio Capello, there must be some - and no, Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle don't count ...
