Teenage dreamers, hard to beat

While we worry about finals, some young athletes have to cope with carrying the hopes of millions on their shoulders

By Tim Lewis

While most of us are stressing out over exams and essays, it’s hard to imagine what youngsters like Lionel Messi and Theo Walcott will be feeling this summer.

At 19 and 17 respectively, they will have the weight of their home nations resting on their shoulders at the World Cup this summer.

But in sport, age can become irrelevant. If Messi, Walcott or any other of the teenagers due to play in this year’s World Cup fail to perform on the big stage they are likely to be vilified back home.

Mistakes will be criticised and wrong decisions scorned at, yet most people are quick to forget that for most 17-year-olds the main worry is passing A-levels and getting your father to let you borrow the car.

The pressure put on young footballers by the media can only serve to have a negative impact on the way they are going to perform. Professional footballers or not, at such a young age it cannot be easy to ignore the media and the things which are being written about you.

It has long been said the British media have a tendency to build up young stars only to quickly knock them down at the first opportunity; let’s hope this isn’t the case with Walcott.

Like Rooney, it would appear Walcott is something special: the scramble over his signature last January would suggest that this is no ordinary 17-year-old. But loading the pressure onto teenage prodigies is nothing new in this country, just ask Jermaine Pennant, and look what happened there.

Okay, football is not the only sport to exert immense pressure on to young sports stars barely old enough to leave school.

In 1985, Boris Becker won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon at just 17, ten years younger than his opponent Kevin Curran. It quickly propelled him to superstar status and from then on every tournament of his career was under the spotlight of the media.

This is nothing compared to Swiss tennis player Martina Hingis, who made her professional debut only two weeks after her 14th birthday. By the age of 15 she had won a Wimbledon doubles title and claimed her first Wimbledon singles title at 16.

In winning her first Wimbledon singles title she become the youngest female to win the tournament since Lottie Dod won aged 15 in 1887.

At 22, Hingis announced her retirement from the game after a series of injuries and complained of feeling ‘burnt out’. However, she did eventually make a professional comeback to the game at the relatively young age of 25.

At the Olympic games it is not uncommon to see athletes as young as 14 taking part in gymnastics events. At the 2004 Olympic games in Athens, 16-year-old American Carly Patterson took gold in the women’s individual all-round event in front of an estimated two billion television viewers. The 2004 games also spelled the end of the career of Russian gymnast Svetlana Khorkina’s career. She retired at only 20 years of age after failing to win the women’s individual all-round event for the third games in a row.

So whatever Walcott is feeling will be nothing new as a young athlete, but it doesn’t mean it will make it any easier.

The potential World Cup audience is in the billions of viewers and even the most experienced of professionals will be feeling nervous. As hard as it, may be everyone must try to remember these youngsters are only human and mistakes are only natural.

We can only hope that Walcott is given a fair trial by the media at the World Cup and treated with the understanding that should come with being only 17 years old. My fear is, he probably won’t.