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The most titillating three-letter word in the English language is one and the same with the most controversial word in sport. Sex. Since time immemorial, or as long as men and women have engaged in competitive sports. arguments have raged over whether or not sexual activity hinders athletic performances. I have always thought the contrary. The greatest athletes in the worldwere what a disgusting publication like Playboy calls swingers. Jim Thorpe, the legendary Indian who probably was the greatest all-around athlete of all time, did not, I believe, compete once after the age of 18 without a terrible hangover. And everyone knows that where there is a hangover there has been sex.
Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time, was another example. The Babe was as legendary a drinker as he was a woman-chaser. He is the one that made the saying 'it's not fucking that ages you but chasing after it' popular. His manager on the New York Yankees, Miller Huggins, could not understand why Babe looked so haggard every morning. He asked Babe to level with him, assuring him his revelations would not be held against him. After all, Babe was the leading home-run hitter in baseball. When he heard the Babe's schedule Huggins cringed. 'You mean you spend from 8 in the evening until 4.30 in the morning working to have pleasure for only two minutes?' he asked.
Ironically, it explains many dthletes' ability to perform as well on the field as they do badly in bed. As Billie Jean King said in her inimitably vulgar manner, 'All you want to do is activate all the centres. It's the three-hour sessions that kill you.' Sexual relations on the night before competition do• not hinder athletic performance, provided that sex is a regular part of the athlete's life. Take another example. Lennard Bergelin, Swedish tennis champion during the early Fifties, and now Bjorn Borg's coach and one of the reasons for Borg's success, was, like most Swedes, a pretty cold fish but before each important match he would insist on having sex.
Philippe Washer was probably the most talented tennis player in Europe during the late Forties and early Fifties. He was also a scratch golfer and top skier. Goodlooking and filthy rich, Washer had no trouble attracting the weaker sex. Washer indulged constantly and was successful on both fields. Except when playing against Bergelin. Against the Swede Philippe would abstain. And invariably lose. One day Bergelin told him to try his method. Washer did, after having abstained all week, and killed the Swede. But the trick only worked against Lennard Bergelin. When Washer abstained during the week and indulged just before the match against others he would do badly. He got prematurely old worrying about it. And never figured it out.
Nor have the doctors. They have been studying the subject ever since the Ancient Greeks inquired whether having one's student before the marathon was OK, but have been unable to prove that sex and sport do not mix. Yet every coach in the world will swear that they don't. Ken Norton, the boxer who actually beat Mohammed Ali, in my opinion, all three times he fought him claims that he gave up sex for eight weeks before fighting Ali. The only wonder is that he didn't try to kiss him in the clinches. Yet Norton insists that, 'a couple of times during my first ten or eleven fights I didn't abstain and it hurt me.'
Dwight Stones, who once broke two world records in the high jump admitted he had had sex only two hours before setting the record. Some wags said it made him lighter. But it was Suzy Chaffee, the American Olympic skier and alleged girlfriend of Teddy Kennedy who is the greatest exponent of sex before competition. 'Too much accumulated energy can work against you,' she says. Although not an athlete Kennedy seems to agree.
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