I recently read Rupert Sheldrake’s The Spiritual Side of Sports, and it brought back several thoughts I’ve had about sports in many years. I always look at athletes with admiration. The focus and resilience they’ve been trained for is something I could only imagine from afar. As Sheldrake observed:

Most people do not think of sports as spiritual practices; they seem supremely secular. Yet in modern secular societies, sports may be one of the most common ways in which people experience the self-transcendence that can come through being in the present. Meditators may find their minds wandering and only occasionally come back into a full sense of presence, but football players in important matches are completely in the present, or else they are out of the game.

Athletes are demanded to be uncompromisingly present in the field. I doubt anyone arrives at such a state of mind without absolute devotion. Still, I’m reluctant to call it ‘spiritual’ for the word is so loaded. I don’t feel equipped to use it with ease. Sheldrake himself didn’t go to that spiritual woo-woo either. He is a biologist, so he traced through his discipline. Likewise, I look at sports through the body and performance. Athletes belong to a particular class of professions, alongside models, dancers, showgirls, whose bodies are their site and their merit.

Watching how athletes invest in their training gives me a boost. All sports demand the sharpest focus and immense willpower from their players. In competition, they cannot let their mind wander even for a second. It may cost them victory or even their life. What would you call this, if not a highly meditative state? Such a state of mind does not necessarily manifest as light and positive vibe as said in New-age lingo though. Slowly, I started leaning ever closer to these athletes, sometimes even nearer than to the artists and writers in my usual field. It’s revealing to observe how they are built. I mean, to be both physically and psychologically prepared for the field.

After reading Sheldrake, I convinced myself to overcome my inner critic — my idea was not lunatic after all. I plan to write about sports more, the same way I write about art.

Let me start with what I have been thinking about the longest — car racing.

[above: Portrait of Ken Miles taken by Dave Friedman who was the official photographer for Shelby American, Inc. Photo: Dave Friedman]

[NOTE: if you are someone who cares about spoilers, I suggest you please read the text below with caution.]

In 2019, I watched Ford v Ferrari or Le Mans ‘66, and I thanked myself for watching it in the cinema. The inner monologue of Carroll Shelby set the core philosophy of the film:

There’s a point at 7,000 RPM where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless. Just disappears. And all that’s left is a body moving through space and time. 7,000 RPM. That’s where you meet it. Ask you a question. The only question that matters.

Who are you?’

Shelby certainly lived through the experience of the machine becoming weightless — and I add ‘almost like the wind.’ The sense of weightlessness turns one’s body to become part of something bigger, something beyond one's own control. Paradoxically though, control is the defining skill one need in such moment.

This narration occurred twice. First, Carroll Shelby did as a reminder to himself after losing the track to a wandering thought, and again when Ken Miles embarked his race into somewhere no one expected. That scene.... my goodness. Brutal.

And yet, I didn’t expect that I would feel emotional watching a film about car racing. I have almost zero experience with it, nor any particular interest in supercars. The nearest I ever came was a childhood fantasy of becoming a racing driver driven (pun intended) by an excess of energy I did not know how to wield. Looking back, I suspect it was also something darker. A destructive pull toward risk. Toward death, even. It gives a dangerously liberating feeling — perhaps?

Just recently, I watched The Art of Racing in the Rain on Netflix. It premiered in 2019, the same year as Ford v Ferrari, but I only found it. A story was narrated through the eye of Enzo, a golden retriever, adopted by Denny Swift, a car racer. This film seems to speak a more explicitly ‘spiritual’ language. Garth Stein, the author, got his inspiration from State of Dogs, a Mongolian fiction-documentary about reincarnation, and The Revenant, a dog’s-point-of-view poem by Billy Collins. I find the storytelling of the film was heavily anthropomorphic — and that’s deadening. Some people said the book is much better, but I haven’t read it. Despite my reservations, I cried….again! [Perhaps that says something about how emotions operate outside logic?]

Speaking of animals as storytellers, I would like to write about that another time. For now, let me stay with what brought me to write this first piece on Substack — the mystical charm of car racing. At least, it is charming….to me

Ford v Ferrari’s original screenplay was set to star Tom Cruise as Carroll Shelby and Brad Pitt as Ken Miles. Yes, Pitt could play Ken Miles, but I was so satisfied that Christian Bale got this role instead. There is something about Bale I love so much. His intensity, and I guess, that hint of rawness. And the way his actual personality magically disappears the moment he takes on a new role. I don’t think the same can be said for Tom Cruise — people seem to enjoy watching him be ‘Tom Cruise’ in every film. (And he is very good at it, to be fair.)

The intention of the film wasn’t about adrenaline as car racing films usually are. It intended to talk about unyielding devotion to one’s own craft. In The Art of Racing in the Rain, Enzo the dog learns from growing up with a car racer that ‘the best drivers focus only on the present. Never dwelling on the past, never committing to the future.’ I understand it as when the space between life and death becomes so thin, you have no choice but to engage with that condition — and face it with the fullest attention you could have. It gives a whole new perspective for those who live mostly in wandering minds like, let’s say, writers or artists.

Most people don’t walk into their workplace prepared to die anytime. I don’t mean a car racer is prepared for it either, but I believe they must carry an acute awareness of the stakes their profession demands. Some professions breathe closer to the veil between life and death, don’t they?

I have never driven a car to 7,000 RPM. But I have touched that fragile edge between life and death through dance. To me, dancing is the nearest experience to death I have ever felt — it takes everything into the present. That peculiar sensation of weightlessness. I imagine that is what death feels like too.

If that’s true, death doesn’t feel so bad….

It broke my heart when Ken decided to obey Leo Beebe, a covertly jealous executive of Ford. After racing lightyears ahead of the rest, he lifted off the accelerator, sacrificing his race so the Ford team could stage the historic shot by crossing the finish line together. And yet, Bruce McLaren, his teammate, was ultimately declared the winner on a technicality.

‘Selling the cars, huh?’ Ken muttered, after watching his devotion being robbed for the marketing. ‘That’s what they do,’ Shelby replied. As they walked away from bouquets and champagne, the Ford team celebrated their first ‘victory‘ over Ferrari. In this moment, Enzo the dog may offer some wisdom: We must look into ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, stands before us.

Right at the far corner of the competitor’s booth, Enzo Ferrari took off his hat and bowed. The old man knew who was the real victor.

Signor Ferrari was right.

The Ford GT40, the only collaboration between Shelby and Miles, gave the company four times victory at Le Mans. And it remains the only American built car ever to win the 24 hours of Le Mans.

It was indeed a hell of a drive.

Bellissimo, Maestro.