Kevin Garside: Lewis Hamilton will flourish after after parting company with dad Anthony

By Kevin Garside Published: 7:30AM GMT 08 Mar 2010 The layer of separation that he has slipped between himself and his father, Anthony, was a long time coming. They both understood the requirement. That junior felt able to pull the trigger on the story with the cars loaded for Bahrain says much about his growing maturity. Hamilton followed one revelation with another last week, confessing that he might have handled his toxic relationship with Fernando Alonso differently during his debut season in 2007. He didn’t properly understand the dynamic between the double world champion and his employers McLaren. It was a tacit admission that he contributed to the mess that saw the season implode, him miss the title by a point and Alonso return to Renault. Both shifts are welcome advances in his development. They recognise the need to take responsibility for events. At 25 he is coming into his man years. Had he made the leap a year ago he might not have been corralled quite so easily into the damaging fabrication in Australia when he was persuaded to fall in line with company policy for the sake of championship points in the lie-gate saga. His instinct during the race to seek clarification from the team about an overtaking issue under a yellow flag demonstrated that there was nothing wrong with his moral compass. As Hamilton acknowledges, he owes everything to the love and dedication of his father, a man who did what the best parents do, made every sacrifice to further the prospects of his son. As a result Hamilton is arguably the most interesting if not important story in British sport today. Positive projections of Anglo-Caribbean males in mainstream media are pitifully low. The emergence of a mixed race kid in, of all constituencies, Formula One, was a significant event for a community more readily associated with negative portrayals. Here was a stereotype-buster from heaven, a black boy from a council house who did not grow into a gang member operating a reign of terror from beneath a hoodie. The message is beamed globally every fortnight; there is nothing to fear from the Hamilton demographic. Sadly, as we know from the political complexion of towns like Burnley and Oldham, and attitudes in parts of Spain, there are some even now who believe there is. The Hamilton story…

Read Article @ Daily Telegraph

Posted by admin 8 March 2010

Post A Comment