Month: November 2009

Interfax, Russia
Oct 30 2009

Armenian industrial output falls 11.4% in 9M

YEREVAN Oct 30

Armenian industrial output fell 11.4% year-on-year in
January-September to 459.7 billion dram ($1.19 billion)

in current prices, the National Statistics Service said.

Mining industry output fell 11.9% to 310.7 billion dram, manufacturing
sector output fell 11.9% to 310.7 billion dram and utilities sector
output fell 15.8% to 90 billion dram.

Sales of industrial goods came to 468.7 billion dram in the nine
months.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Interfax, Russia
Oct 30 2009

Armenia cuts electricity output 13% in 9M

YEREVAN Oct 30

Armenia reduced electrical power generation 12.6% year-on-year in
January-September to 4.152 billion kilowatt-hours, the National
Statistics Service said.

Coal-and gas-fired power plants reduced output 47.9% to 644.7 million
kWh, hydro-plants increased it 5.1% to 1.523 billion kWh and the
country’s nuclear plant reduced it 4.1% to 1.981 billion kWh.

Wind farms boosted output 2.9-fold year-on-year to 2.9 million kWh.

Armenia generated 553,400 Gcal of heat, down 54.9% year-on-year.

Interfax, Russia
Oct 30 2009

Armenian communications market grows 6% in 9 mths

YEREVAN Oct 30

Armenia’s communications market grew 5.6% in January-September 2009 to
121 billion dram, the National Statistics Service said.

Telecommunications revenue grew 6.5% to 119.6 billion dram, including
mobile communications – 3.5% to 78.9 billion dram, data- transfer and
Internet – 230% to 7.3 billion dram and TV and radio broadcasting –
11.3% to 2.7 billion dram.

Postal and telegraph services decreased 40.9% to 1.414 billion dram.

AssA-Irada, Azerbaijan
October 30, 2009 Friday

GERMAN PAPER CHIDES GARABAGH INDEPENDENCE

The Berlin-based Berliner Zeitung daily newspaper has ridiculed
separatists announcing the Armenia-occupied Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh
region of Azerbaijan as independent. Despite everything, Upper
Garabagh wants to be independent. The republic has a president, but no
country recognizes him, the publication said. Armenia has been
occupying over 20% of Azerbaijans internationally recognized territory
since the early 1990s. As a result of this aggression, the separatist
regime in the occupied Upper Garabagh region proclaimed so-called
independence in 1991. The declaration of independence, which is,
itself, a blatant violation of international law, has not been
recognized by any country, to date.

Berliner Zeitung said that the leader of the self-proclaimed Upper
(Nagorno) Garabagh republic Bako Saakian says our uniting with Armenia
is not being discussed with our brethren and claims, having paused
briefly: Upper Garabagh has been an independent state for several
years. Saakians facial expression is very serious as he says this.
However, such statements cause either irony or laughs in the whole
world and among the countrys diplomats, Berliner Zeitung said. The
newspaper said, further, that Upper Garabagh is located at the
crossroads of Europe and Asia, has a population of 140,000, but its
territory is the size of two Saarland squares. Since 1994, Upper
Garabagh has been striving for independence, but, to the resentment of
Bako Saakian, the world community is neglecting these calls. The story
says the capital of the self-proclaimed republic is Stepanakert
(Khankandi), but all payments are made here with Armenian currency,
and cars with Armenian license plates and passports are in use. Also,
the paper points out that the republic is located in one of the
explosive hotspots of the world the Caucasus. The United States, the
European Union and Russia are vying for energy resources here, while
the Caucasus peoples are turning each others lives into hell. The
Berliner Zeitung reporter reminded that Upper Garabagh was also part
of Azerbaijan during the Soviet times, but it had autonomy and was
predominantly populated by Armenians. After independence was declared
in 1991 [by the former Soviet republics], a bloody civil war erupted
in the region. As a result, Upper Garabagh insurgents, aided by the
Armenian military, squeezed Azerbaijans armed forces from there.
Afterwards, Armenia did not annex Upper Garabagh, and an idea was
borne in some peoples minds in Stepanakert that Upper Garabagh could
become an independent republic (they were not even ashamed of the fact
that the world community will view these attempts as nationalist
euphoria). Some military analysts say Garabagh could emerge as the
next bomb in the Caucasus. Georgi Petrosyan, who considers himself
Upper Garabaghs foreign minister, says the self-styled republic is
afraid of war with Azerbaijan. He is confident that the republic will
be recognized, but is not inclined to cite a specific timeframe for
this. Petrosyans main task today is to boost relations with the
diaspora abroad. According to the German paper, the Armenian lobby
channels millions of dollars to the Caucasus region every year. An
officer serving in a Khankandi military unit says: We train every day
– the soldiers must be ready any moment. He said shootings on the
frontline are frequent there, claiming that the skirmishes take place
despite the fact that the conflict over Upper Garabagh has been
resolved and Garabagh has won. Berliner Zeitung noted, however, that
this is not the case in terms of international law. It said that,
according to pundits, Upper Garabagh should either be a part of
Armenia or gain an autonomy within Azerbaijan, but, in no case can it
be an independent state.

Trend, Azerbaijan
Oct 31 2009

Soldiers charged with high treason appeal to court in Azerbaijan

SECTION: HUMAN RIGHTS

LENGTH: 292 words

Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 31 / Trend News H.Bagirov /

The court has considered the appeal of the soldiers of the Azerbaijani
Armed Forces accused of high treason.

The Shirvan Appeal Court held a trial to consider the appeal against
the Azerbaijani Serious Crimes Court’s decision on a criminal case of
the Azerbaijani Army’s soldiers, Elchin Mammadov, Orkhan Ismayilov,
Shamo Dashdamirov and Murshud Bagirov.

The lawyers of the accused filed a motion for a judicial inquiry in
connection with the appeal claiming that the trial process was biased
by the district court.

The court did not grant a motion and made a decision to consider the
appeal without a judicial inquiry.

The court canceled trial on consideration of the appeal and sent the
criminal case to the Supreme Court following the head of pleading’s
statements that they will appeal to the Supreme Court on this
decision.

Soldiers of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry’s Military Unit No.N
located in the Fizuli region, Elchin Mammadov, Orkhan Ismayilov, Shamo
Dashdamirov and Murshud Bagirov, willfully deserted their posts and
met with the militaries of the enemy. During these meetings, the
soldiers informed the Armenians about military secrecy.

These persons are charged with Articles 274 (high treason) and 338.1
(infringement of rules on implementing fighting watch (fighting
service) on duly detection and reflection of sudden attack on the
Azerbaijan Republic or maintenance of its safety if this act could
harm interests of safety of the state) of the Criminal Code.

The Serious Crimes Court sentenced Murshud Bagirov to 14 years
imprisonment, Shamo Dashdamirov – 10 years and 6 months, Elchin
Mammadov – 12 and Orhan Ismailov – 13.

The Economist
October 31, 2009
U.S. Edition

Looking east and south: Turkey and the Middle East

Frustrated by European equivocation, Turkey is reversing years of
antagonism with its Arab neighbours

IT IS a thousand years since the Turks arrived in the Middle East,
migrating from Central Asia to Anatolia. For half of that millennium
they ruled much of the region. But when the Ottoman Empire fizzled out
and the Turkish Republic was born in 1923, they all but sealed
themselves off from their former dominions, turning instead to Europe
and tightly embracing America in its cold war with the Soviet Union.

The Turks are now back in the Middle East, in the benign guise of
traders and diplomats. The move is natural, considering proximity, the
strength of the Turkish economy, the revival of Islamic feeling in
Turkey after decades of enforced secularism, and frustration with the
sluggishness of talks to join the European Union. Indeed, Turkey’s
Middle East offensive has taken on something of the scale and momentum
of an invasion, albeit a peaceful one.

In the past seven years the value of Turkey’s exports to the Middle
East and north Africa has swollen nearly sevenfold to $31 billion in
2008. From cars to tableware, dried figs to television serials,
Turkish products, unknown a decade ago, are now ubiquitous in markets
from Algiers to Tehran. Already a vital conduit for sending energy
from east to west, Turkey is set to grow in importance as more
pipelines come on stream. The most notable is Nabucco, a proposed ?7.9
billion ($11.7 billion) scheme to carry gas across Turkey from
Azerbaijan and possibly Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq and Egypt. A single
Turkish construction firm, TAV, has just finished an airport terminal
for Egypt’s capital, Cairo, and is building others in Libya, Qatar,
Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Turks have scooped up hundreds
of infrastructure contracts in Iraqi Kurdistan, and invested in
shopping malls, hotels and even schools.

These achievements are partly due to an energetic pursuit of trading
privileges, such as Turkey’s free-trade pacts with Egypt, Israel,
Morocco and Tunisia. It is seeking a similar deal with the six-member
Gulf Co-operation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia. Earlier this
month, teams of Turkish ministers travelled to Baghdad and Damascus to
sign a package of 48 co-operation deals with Iraq and 40 with Syria.
Covering everything from tourism to counter-terrorism and joint
military exercises, the deals could end decades of tension between
Turkey and its former Ottoman provinces.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just been warmly
received in the Iranian capital, Tehran, a reflection of the
realpolitik that has kept links open despite the Islamic Republic’s
international isolation. Turkey requires no visas for Iranians, and Mr
Erdogan, who has stressed Iran’s right to nuclear power for civil
purposes, pointedly congratulated Iran’s president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, after his disputed election win in June. Turkey only
recently made an historic breakthrough in relations with another
eastern neighbour, Armenia. If the parliaments of both countries
endorse the move, diplomatic ties may be restored after a 16-year
freeze.

This dogged diplomatic pragmatism has been ardently pursued by the
foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, an ebullient professor of
international relations who had long advised Mr Erdogan before his
appointment in May. Mr Davutoglu, who in a book described the Middle
East as "Turkey’s strategic depth", has called for a policy of "zero
problems with neighbours". Reflecting the mild, modernist Islamism of
the Justice and Development party, known by its Turkish initials AK,
which has ruled Turkey since 2002, the new policy seeks to use the
soft power of trade, along with historical links, to project stability
beyond Turkey’s frontiers. This marks a distinct shift in worldview.
In the past Turkey tended to see itself as an eastern bulwark of the
NATO alliance, whereas its Middle Eastern neighbours were viewed as
threats to be contained.

Whatever Mr Davutoglu’s persuasive powers, this reorientation could
not have happened without dramatic changes in Turkey. Reforms
undertaken partly to meet demands for EU membership have shifted power
from threat-obsessed generals to civilian institutions, and to a new,
more self-consciously Muslim elite rooted in Anatolia rather than
Istanbul, Turkey’s Western-looking commercial and intellectual
capital. The AK party has also reversed decades of official policy by
trying to meet the demands of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority (some
14m in a total population of 72m). The granting of more cultural and
political rights, and the admission of past discrimination, have
soothed tempers not only among Turkish Kurds, but among their ethnic
kin in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Yet a reason for the success of Turkey’s kinder, gentler approach is
that it takes place in the context of a regional power vacuum. Such
relative Arab heavyweights as Egypt and Iraq no longer wield much
clout. American influence has also dipped in the wake of its troubles
in Iraq. Indeed, Turkey’s biggest breakthrough in Arab public opinion
came in 2003, when its parliament rejected an American request to open
Turkish territory as a second front for the invasion of Iraq. Turkey
did allow the use of an airbase to supply the war, but escaped the
opprobrium heaped on America’s Arab allies who grudgingly lent support
to the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Turkey has also been welcomed back because many Arabs see it as both a
moderate counterweight to Iran and as a window to the West. Iraqi
Shias, for instance, are still wary of Iranian meddling in Iraq, even
though Iraq’s main Shia parties have close relations with Iran. Iraq’s
Kurds, despite age-old tensions with Turkey, have also warmed their
relations as trade has boomed and the looming departure of the Kurds’
American protectors raises the spectre of isolation. The secular
government of Syria, an ostensible ally of Iran, in fact shares little
cultural affinity with its stridently Islamist rulers, compared with
the AK party’s businesslike, tie-wearing officials. Improved relations
with Turkey, which now include visa-free travel, bring much-needed
relief to Syria, isolated diplomatically and economically backward. In
fact, so eager has Syria been to woo Turkey that in 2005 it scrapped a
longstanding territorial claim to Hatay, a province granted to Turkey
in 1939 by France, Syria’s colonial master at the time.

Turkish officials, however, have been careful to explain that their
renewed interest in the Muslim east does not mean a chill towards the
West. Instead, they present Turkey as a useful bridge, a regional
force for peace, and the model of a democracy that is compatible with
Islam. Its Western allies have generally shared that view and have not
opposed Turkey’s eastward shift. Yet such benign indifference could
change, if Turkey’s prospects for joining the EU die, or if Turkey is
seen as undermining attempts to pressure Iran.

Already, Turkey’s gentle realignment has carried some costs, most
obviously to its relations with Israel. These flourished into a
full-blown strategic partnership in the 1990s, before the AK party’s
rise, when peace between Palestinians and Israelis seemed possible.
Joint military exercises and Israeli arms sales brought the two
countries’ military establishments close, while trade and tourism
expanded fast. Israel even offered to shield Turkey from lobbies in
the American Congress that sought to punish Turkey for disputing the
genocide of Armenians in Ottoman territory during the first world war.

But ties have frayed as Turkish public opinion, which now counts for
more, has turned increasingly hostile to Israel. Mr Erdogan, a tough,
streetwise politician, felt slighted last year when Israel attacked
Gaza only days after he had met Israel’s then prime minister, Ehud
Olmert, who assured him that Turkish-brokered peace talks between
Israel and Syria would resume. The bloodshed in Gaza outraged many
Turks, who heartily praised Mr Erdogan when he stormed out of a debate
with Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, at Davos in Switzerland earlier
this year.

The Turks were again angered in September when Israel denied Mr
Davutoglu permission to cross into Gaza during a visit to Israel.
Earlier this month Turkey, citing Israel’s failure to deliver an order
of military drone aircraft, abruptly cancelled joint air exercises.
Israel, for its part, lodged a formal protest at the airing, on
Turkish state television, of a serial depicting Israeli soldiers as
brutal killers. Some Israeli officials say they detect signs of
anti-Semitism that disqualify Turkey from mediating any longer between
Syria and Israel.

Turkish officials respond that they have no intention of breaking off
relations with Israel, and think they can still be a useful
interlocutor with the Jewish state. But they remain indignant. "We
might have lost leverage with Israel," says an AK party man. "But I’d
rather be on the side of history, of what is right, of justice." One
of Mr Erdogan’s advisers puts Turkey’s case more boldly, in a sign of
its growing confidence as a regional leader. "We are conditioning
relations with Israel on the progress of the conflict," he says. "This
is what the West should do."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Mediamax, Armenia
Oct 30 2009

Armenian minister denies any pressure exerted on signing protocols
with Turkey

The foreign ministers of leading countries of the world, who
participated in the signing of the Armenian-Turkish protocols in
Zurich on 10 October, facilitated the process of normalizing relations
between Armenia and Turkey and did not exert pressure on anyone,
Armenian Mediamax news agency quoted Armenian Foreign Minister Edvard
Nalbandyan as saying on 30 October.

Nalbandyan went on to say: "This was the Armenian side’s initiative,
and we came to an agreement along with Turkey, which were welcomed by
all countries of the world, with the exception of one (presumably
Azerbaijan)," the news agency reported.

The Washington Post
November 1, 2009 Sunday
Bulldog Edition

HISTORY
Children of Armenia
A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-Long Struggle for Justice
By Michael Bobelian
Simon & Schuster. 308 pp. $26

Like Native Americans, European Jews and Rwandan Tutsis, Turkish
Armenians seem to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Children of Armenia," Michael Bobelian’s first book, describes the
Ottoman Empire’s 1915 mass extermination of this Christian minority
without getting bogged down in "G-word" histrionics. "The purpose of
this book is neither to prove the existence nor affirm the veracity of
the Genocide," Bobelian writes: The Armenian holocaust is a historical
fact.

"Children of Armenia" focuses on the Turkish nationalism, world war
weariness, survivor psychology and Cold War squabbling that let the
world forget the unforgettable. Some will flinch at Bobelian’s
lionization of Gourgen Yanikian, an Armenian who shot two Turks in a
revenge plot hatched in the 1970s, but the author stumbles only when
he strays into Armenian exceptionalism, the idea that "no other people
have suffered such a warped fate — a trivialization of their
suffering and a prolonged assault on the authenticity of their
experience." Bobelian should know that if every culture insists on the
supremacy of its own suffering, the world will only grow more jaded
about stopping current horrors. Instead, any book about Armenia — no,
any exploration of any genocide — should pose questions relevant to
today’s ethnic cleansings. Otherwise, who will remember the Sudanese?

— Justin Moyer [email protected]

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Director
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

GEORGE SALIBA, METROPOLITAN OF MOUNT LEBANON AND THE GENERAL SECRETARY OF
THE MIDDLE EAST COUNCIL OF CHURCHES MEET WITH HIS HOLINESS ARAM I

On Thursday 29 October in the morning, Mor Theophilus George Saliba.
Metropolitan of Mount Lebanon of the Syrian Orthodox Church and Mr.Guirgis
Saleh, General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches visited His
Holiness Aram I to brief him on the outcome of the recent MECC meeting with
Ecumenical Partners.

Prior to the meeting with Mr. Saleh, His Holiness Aram I met with
Metropolitan Saliba, Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian and Bishop Nareg Alemezian
to discuss the forthcoming meeting of the Heads of Oriental Orthodox
Churches. His Holiness Aram I also informed them of his conversations with
His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I during his recent visit to Syria.

##
View the photos here:
tos/Photos411.htm
*****
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the Ecumenical
activities of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician
Catholicosate, the administrative center of the church is located in
Antelias, Lebanon.

Why did Andre Agassi hate tennis?

He is not the only star to claim to detest the sport that made him rich and
famous

Stuart Jeffries

The Guardian
Thursday 29 October 2009

Andre Agassi admits taking crystal meth during a low point in 1997.
Photograph: Frank Baron

"I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark
and secret passion and always have." So writes Andre Agassi in his new
autobiography, Open, published this week. It is 2006 and one of the world’s
most feted sports stars has just woken up in a New York hotel room, poised
to play his last tournament.

But why would a great sportsman hate his sport? Why wouldn’t he love
everything about it and all it brings to his life – travel, glamour, money,
mass adoration, endless free tennis rackets and barley water, not to mention
the surely sustaining thought that he is doing something for a living that
makes many of us sick with envy?

"But it becomes more than a job, it takes over your life," says former
British tennis professional Barry Cowan, perhaps best known for taking
Agassi’s nemesis, Pete Sampras, to five sets in Wimbledon in 2001. "If
you’re at the top of tennis, you’re on tour 30-plus weeks of the year – and
when you’re doing that, everything revolves around tennis. Every decision
you make, tennis is at the back of your mind. That’s the main reason for
burnout among tennis players in their 20s.

"I know this for myself – it’s something you’ve done since you were six
years old, and there’s a sense that if you stop giving 100% you are doomed
to failure, and that is unacceptable. No wonder so many players hate their
sport – the surprise is that so few admit it."

And despite all the kudos, money and silverware, there’s a reason it’s the
top players who suffer most – because they’re the ones playing the most
tennis, as they don’t get knocked out in the first or second round. So they
have the least free time, the most mental stress and suffer the most
physically.

Agassi’s avowed hatred for his sport is far from exclusive to tennis.
British cyclists Chris Boardman, the former Olympic pursuit champion, and
Tour de France star David Millar have both admitted to not really liking
cycling. "In Boardman’s case," says William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s
cycling correspondent, "he liked the winning not the cycling itself, and he
drove himself to win."

That need to win can become a miserable addiction. Olympic gold-winning
track cyclist Victoria Pendleton gave an insight into this in a brutally
frank Guardian interview after winning gold at Beijing last year. "I was an
emotional wreck beforehand," she admitted. "I worried that I would be the
one person who let down the team. So winning was just a relief. And even
that felt like a complete anti-climax. It was very surreal on the podium and
as soon as I stepped off it I was, like, ‘What on earth am I going to do
now?’ I found it quite hard to deal with. It was, like, I’ve got no purpose
any more."

But it is her answer to the question of how to get out of this psychic void
that is most telling: "I soon worked out that the only thing I could do was
to get another gold medal. I need one. If 2012 goes to plan, winning the
Olympics on my home turf, I might finally feel I’ve achieved the ultimate
for me."

Pendleton’s pleasure-free, angst-ridden drive to win is almost a defining
characteristic of the greatest sports stars. "People say the pressure on top
stars such as Andy Murray is unbelievable," says Cowan, "but I feel the
pressure is from the stars themselves. They expect the best and if they
don’t deliver, it is horrible for them. With a sport like tennis, where at
any tournament there can be only one winner, there are going to be a lot of
perfectionists having to deal with disappointment. You need to be incredibly
mentally strong."

Not all are. Former England cricket all-rounder Vic Marks has a poignant
insight into the realities of being an athlete. "Sometimes as a cricketer,"
he says, "you just long for it to rain." But why? "So you don’t have to
play. I’m not saying cricketers hate cricket, but when you’re playing a
county game and the sky darkens and it starts to piss down, it doesn’t half
fill everybody in the dressing room with joie de vivre."

But surely top-flight players long to show the world how marvellous they are
at their chosen discipline? "Not always. When it pissed it down, you knew
were not going to fail that day. Lovely thought. With cricket, perhaps more
than any other sport, everything you do is measured and analysed for all
time – your failures are a matter of enduring public record."

Former professional footballer Stuart James echoes that thought: "Lots of
players I know would travel to the ground hoping the game would be
cancelled," says the ex-Swindon Town regular. "Fans say: ‘You’ve got it
good, you’re on hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, so how can you
moan?’ – but most football players think the fans don’t really understand
what their lives are like."

A terrible fear of failure is one reason the life of the sports star can be
rather less than the realisation of a beautiful dream. But there are others:
horrendous training schedules, endless travel, foul fans, boredom and lack
of privacy. "I remember being underwhelmed when I was selected to go on tour
for England," Marks recalls. "People said what a bloody cynical and churlish
response that was – but the prospect of being away for four to five months
is not necessarily very appealing. Everybody thinks it must be so wonderful
to spend the winter in the Caribbean or Australia, but it’s not when you’re
away from your family and you’re standing outside for eight hours five days
straight."

There have been many English cricketers who have refused the supposed
delights of the winter tour, but none more celebrated than Marcus
Trescothick, the England batsman whose stress-related illness forced him to
pull out of the national squad in 2006. "With Trescothick, there’s no one
who was more consumed by cricket than him," says Marks, the chairman of
Trescothick’s county, Somerset. "It had been his life since he was six, and
that may well have made the stress worse to the point he had to take drastic
measures to get away from Test cricket."

Mental stress

Agassi’s biography reveals that he snorted crystal meth from a coffee table
at his home in 1997, when suffering a lack of form and worrying about his
impending marriage to actor Brooke Shields. "There is a moment of regret
followed by vast sadness," he writes of the drug-taking experience. "Then
comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my
head. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful – and I’ve never felt such
energy."

As this passage implies, mental stress isn’t the only major reason sports
stars suffer more than the rest of us are generally prepared to admit. In
his autobiography, Agassi describes the sheer difficulty of getting out bed
one morning towards the end of his tennis career. "I’m a young man,
relatively speaking. Thirty-six. But I wake as if 96. After two decades of
sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard, my body no
longer feels like my body. Consequently, my mind no longer feels like my
mind."

That passage will resonate for any player nearing the end of their career,
with a body once in prime condition now a bundle of aches and pains that
prefigures more intense physical suffering in later life.

"Freddie got a sense of that before he retired," says Vic Marks of the
England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff, whose Test career ended earlier this
year. "He could still do the bowling, but the batting suffered."

"The incentive to play for England is so high you’d do anything," Flintoff
admitted recently. "Some mornings the missus had to get me out of bed and
put my shoes and socks on for me. You then get the anti-inflammatories
inside you, and a painkiller, and off you go . . . For me, a big achievement
was just actually getting out on a cricket field. I’ve had six operations in
four-and-a-half years – and two-and-a-half of those years were in rehab.
I’ve been injured since I was 13. I had back problems all the way through."

Flintoff, of course, is a national icon, all-but-universally liked. The same
isn’t true of Derby County captain Robbie Savage, who earlier this week went
public about some of the more horrible things that he has endured from
football fans off the pitch. In Britain, football stars more than any other
kind of sportsman or woman are likely to suffer foul abuse (think of what
England fans chanted at David Beckham after a match against Portugal: "Your
wife’s a whore, and we hope your kid dies of cancer"), but none more so in
recent years than Savage.

The former Welsh international told Radio 5 Live that he could put up with
what he called "dog’s abuse" from the terraces and conceded it even fired
him up to play better. What he couldn’t tolerate was death threats, having
the windows at his home broken, having coins thrown at him as he left the
pitch. He recalled that once, when he was playing for Birmingham City, he
was visiting the NEC with his son when an Aston Villa fan spat at him in the
face. "I was out with my little boy. That’s got to be out of order, hasn’t
it?" You’d hope so, but the horrible truth is that many of us who aren’t
sports stars are immune to taking their feelings or lives seriously.

And even the former England and Aston Villa manager Graham Taylor takes an
unsympathetic view of Agassi’s revelations. "I’m not certain writing about
how he doesn’t like playing tennis is a good idea. We’re all human beings,
but generally speaking I have not got a lot of time for those people who
complain about playing professional sport for a living."

There is, a horrible coda to this story of sporting misery. In his 2007 book
Silence of the Heart: Cricket Suicides, historian David Frith wrote that
cricket has a suicide rate that exceeds the national averages for the
respective cricketing nations, and estimated that more than one in 150
professional cricketers have taken their own lives, among them the great
Yorkshire and England wicketkeeper David Bairstow, who killed himself in
1998. Why? Frith concluded that cricket is an all-consuming endlessly
absorbing sport and after retirement the thought of life without cricket is
intolerable.

The mental and physical pain of playing sport and being at the top of your
game may be bad enough, but the existential horror of realising at the end
of your career that you are no longer part of that world is surely worse.
Perhaps, unlike Agassi, these players didn’t hate their chosen sport. More
likely, they loved it too much.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009