England

Have you cried with despair in public? There is nothing braver or better | Adrian Chiles

28-Jul-2021 15:11:55 | Guardian

It’s great to see men such as Tom Daley sobbing in victory – and the gold standard for emotional articulacy is surely showing your sadness

I am all for men crying; I do a lot of it myself. If we leave onions out of it, there are only two kinds of crying. There’s crying because you’re happy and crying because you’re sad. I would suggest the latter represents the original purpose of crying, but the former is very good, too. Tom Daley’s top-of-the-podium tears, running down his face and dampening his mask, were a joy to see. Perhaps the moisture in the air of the aquatic centre lends itself to this kind of thing, because James Guy then raised the blubbing bar by sobbing with joy at a teammate’s gold before going on to shed more water after winning his own.

This is all healthy stuff, indicating a good deal of emotional articulacy, but for me the gold standard in the sporting crying game is to bawl it out good and loud when you’ve lost, rather than won. It seems more acceptable for women to do this than it is for men. Our female taekwondists have been particularly strong on this. I felt like crying with Jade Jones when it all fell apart, and so did her teammate looking on, Bianca Walkden, who shed more tears than Jade herself. So while we had blokes crying with joy for themselves and each other, the women were brave enough to do the same in their shared despair.