The epic could not lose its public focus without self-parody. Narrative was henceforth condemned to prose in both form and content, to the novel of everyday life . In its origin, sport was a ritual procedure for designating sacrificial victims, as in those Aztec basketball games where the losers had their hearts cut out. Athletic contests, like games of chance, add an element of unpredictability that entertains the community of sacrificers by removing their collective guilt. But entertainment is just another word for narrative .
All entertainment tells a story.
We are entranced by the skill of an athlete, a juggler, a tightrope walker, because we experience over time the constantly renewed fragility of his mastery. Whence the supplementary pleasure of a narrative constructed after the event. Sports, like battles, arouse in their witnesses a powerful hunger for narrative. Not only do many fans bring along radios and portable TVs, they devour the evening news highlights and the story in next day's newspaper. The rationalization of the sports market has turned most of these biographies into single-minded quests for medals.