Rugby World Cup
From Jordan to Jarryd: the double lives of the sport switchers
Simon Barnes
September 22, 2015
San Francisco 49ers' Jarryd Hayne
San Francisco 49ers' Jarryd Hayne© Jared Wickerham/Getty Images

So we at ESPN have heard that scouts from the NFL are taking a hard look at the Rugby World Cup. Are there any potential cross-coders among the players? Rugby to gridiron? Can it be done? It's an intriguing notion in these times of high professionalism and high specialisation. Suddenly we are looking at natural ability rather than the stuff that has been coached into an athlete across the years.

It's a throwback to the amateur era, in which great athletes routinely flipped from one sport to the other. Such sports-switchers attracted admiration, certainly, but not surprise. C.B. Fry played cricket and football for England and equalled the world long-jump record; he was also a decent shot-putter, hammer-thrower and speed-skater.

Right now Jarryd Hayne, the Australian rugby league player, is playing (American) football for San Francisco 49ers, and attracting all kinds of attention. So far Hayne has played twice; last time out he returned a punt seven yards and had two carries for three more. Let's call that a new world as yet unconquered.

We are schooled to think that changing sports is an outrageous idea in the modern era. We prefer to believe that a child takes on a sport and gives it everything from a shatteringly young age before finally reaching fulfilment. But it's not always like that.

Curtly Ambrose took 405 Test wickets for the West Indies and was one of the finest fast bowlers that ever let rip. He originally wanted to be basketball player. He used to umpire cricket matches rather than play. He was average height for most of his teenage years, but had a late growth spurt, hit 6 ft 7 in -- and started bowling.

Shane Warne, the great Australian leg-spinner was not fully dedicated to his craft until comparatively late in life. He was a highly promising Aussie Rules footballer, and in some ways he preferred the sport. He played for St Kilda Reserves, one rank below the top level, before specialising in cricket.

It's surprising how many cricketers switch specialisations within the sport. Batting and bowling are radically different skills -- and yet the transition from one to the other is quite common. Nasser Hussain was a boy leg-spinner who lost the skill and redesigned himself as a batsman, and Kevin Pietersen started as an off-spinner.

Some athletes achieve success in a different sport thanks to astute observation: an aspect of the coach's skill. The great Russian pole-vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva trained as a gymnast until she was 15. But she grew too tall, eventually reaching 5 ft 8 1/2 in. She was redirected to the pole vault and won two Olympic gold medals.

The pole vault, like gymnastics, is about making the right shape in the air. Insibayeva's technique is admired and mimicked even by the most chauvinistic male vaulters: her L-phase -- the initial part of the vault when the athlete makes an L-shape -- is regarded as vaulting perfection.

Fu Mingxia was also a gymnast, but she was invited to take up diving even though she couldn't swim. The Chinese took the Soviet system for sports education as a model and potential athletes are selected young and trained hard. Fu won gold medals at three successive Olympic Games.

John Surtees was caught between the old wizard-prang era of motorsports and the current corporate-astronaut stuff of today. He is a bit like C.B. Fry in that no one is likely to repeat what he did: winning world championships on motorbikes -- four times -- and in Formula One, which he did in 1964.

John Francome was a member of the British showjumping team that won the European Championships, but changed sport and took up National Hunt racing. Both sports are about horses that jump, but in practice they are at least as different as American football is from rugby.

Roger Craig was a running back for San Francisco 49ers and a three-time Super Bowl winner in the late 1980s. He was noted for his high knee-action in full flight, which made him very hard to tackle. He acquired this from his previous sport. He was a hurdler, and made the not-uncommon transition from track and field to American football.

Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan© Focus on Sport/Getty Images

Perhaps the most extraordinary bit of sports-switching came from Michael Jordan. He was fed up with being the greatest basketball player that ever drew breath and wanted to conquer baseball as well. Perhaps he needed a sport in which he could struggle. Struggle he did: in 1994 season with the minor league Birmingham Barons he had an average of .202 - (.300 is the benchmark here) and hit three home runs.

In recent years people inside sport have been actively looking for people who could change from one sport to another and find excellence by doing so. Talent-spotting programmes are now normal in democratic countries as well as in totalitarian states.

Here, Lizzy Yarnold is a classic example. She was involved in a British talent-identification called Girls4Gold. She was a heptathlete who had been inspired by Denise Lewis's success in 2000; she had a great attitude but was in no danger of joining the elite. She had an idea that she was better suited to the horsey sports.

But she was directed towards a sport she had never for a second considered: skeleton bob, the one in which you slide down a mountain headfirst. She had found her sport: she won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sochi last year, and was the World and European champion this year.

Perhaps the most successful sports-switcher in the modern history of British sport is Rebecca Romero. She won a silver medal for rowing in the quad four at the Athens Olympic Games of 2004. She was suffering from a chronic back-problem and so she switched to cycling. Four years later, she won a gold medal in the individual pursuit in Beijing.

Sports-changing is not just a throwback to the days of Denis Compton and MJK Smith. It's also part of the ultra-professional modern sporting world. Certainly it's hard if not impossible to excel at two sports simultaneously -- but the fact is that a switch can be made. There is common ground between many sports, after all.

But perhaps most fascinating of all is the common ground that lies between all sports -- and it's here that you find the greatest skill of them all: the art of winning. That involves nothing less than building your entire life around the pursuit of victory. Those who combine physical talent with the talent for victory can indeed make a successful switch. Just don't expect to be easy.

© Simon Barnes

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