英语专业晨读美文-人物篇 15 The Most Adored Athlete

[00:00.84]The Most Adored Athlete—Muhammad Ali

[00:07.56]Though Ali won the gold medal at the Rome Olympics in 1960,

[00:13.56]at the time the experts didn't think much of his boxing skills.

[00:17.32]His head, eyes wide, seemed to float above the action.

[00:21.24]Rather than slip a punch, the traditional defensive 1 move,

[00:25.02]it was his habit to sway back, bending at the waist—

[00:28.56]a tactic 2 that appalled 3 the experts. Lunacy.

[00:32.27]Nor did they approve of his personal behavior:

[00:35.02]the self-promotions, his affiliation 4 with

[00:38.43]the Muslims and giving up his “slave name” for Muhammad Ali.

[00:42.51]At the press conferences, the reporters were sullen 5.

[00:46.10]Ali would turn on them. “Why aren't you taking notice?”

[00:49.58]or “Why aren't you laughing?”

[00:51.92]The public as well had a hard time accepting him.

[00:55.58]Then, three years after Ali defended the championship,

[00:59.19]there came the public vilification 6 for his refusal to

[01:02.74]join the army during the Vietnam War.

[01:04.89]The government prosecuted 7 him for draft dodging 8,

[01:07.95]and the boxing commissions took away his license 9.

[01:11.14]He was idle for 3.5 years at the peak of his career.

[01:15.09]In 1971 the Supreme 10 Court ruled

[01:18.42]that the government had acted improperly 11.

[01:20.73]But Ali bore the commissions no ill will.

[01:23.65]There were no lawsuits 12 to get his title back

[01:26.83]through the courts. No need, he said,

[01:29.37]to punish them for doing what they thought was right.

[01:31.80]Quite properly, in his mind,

[01:34.19]he won back the title in the ring,

[01:36.32]knocking out George Foreman in the eighth round

[01:39.31]of their fight in Zaire—“The Rumble 13 in the Jungle”.

[01:42.53]Ali was asked on a television show

[01:45.18]what he would have done with his life,

[01:47.17]given a choice. After an awkward pause—a rare thing,

[01:51.67]indeed—he admitted he couldn't think of anything

[01:54.34]other than boxing. That is all he had ever wanted or wished for.

[01:58.36]He couldn't imagine anything else.

[02:00.91]He defended boxing as a sport:

[02:03.37]“You don't have to be hit in boxing.

[02:06.14]People don't understand that.”

[02:08.05]Oscar Wilde once suggested that you kill the thing you love.

[02:11.93]In Ali's case, it was the reverse:

[02:14.69]what he loved, in a sense, killed him.

[02:17.70]The man who was the most loquacious 14 of athletes

[02:20.77]now says almost nothing: he moves slowly through the crowds

[02:25.20]and signs autographs. He has probably signed more autographs

[02:29.11]than any other athletes ever, living or dead.

[02:31.94]It is his principal activity at home,

[02:34.35]working at his desk. He was once denied an autograph by his idol 15,

[02:39.67]Sugar Ray Robinson, and vowed 16 he would never turn anyone down.

[02:43.79]The ceremonial leave—taking of great athletes

[02:47.68]can impart indelible memories, even if one remembers

[02:51.37]them from the scratchy newsreels of time—

[02:53.76]Babe Ruth with the doffed 17 cap at home plate,

[02:56.91]Lou Gehrig's voice echoing in the vast hollows

[03:00.05]of Yankee Stadium. Muhammad Ali's was not

[03:02.93]exactly a leave-taking, but it may have seemed so

[03:06.17]to the estimated 3 billion or so television viewers

[03:09.41]who saw him open the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

[03:13.35]Outfitted in a white gym suit

[03:15.97]that eerily 18 made him seem to glisten 19

[03:18.11]against a dark night sky,

[03:19.60]he approached the unlit saucer with his flaming torch,

[03:22.84]his free arm trembling visibly from

[03:25.09]the effects of Parkinson's disease.

[03:27.35]It was a kind of epiphany that those

[03:29.88]who watched realized how much they missed him

[03:32.33]and how much he had contributed to the world of sport.

[03:35.65]Students of boxing will pore over

[03:37.90]the trio of Ali-Frazier fights,

[03:39.98]which rank among the greatest in fistic history,

[03:43.37]as one might read three acts of a great drama.

[03:46.50]They would remember the Ali Shuffle 20, the Rope-a-Dope,

[03:50.11]the fact that Ali had brought beauty and grace

[03:52.87]to the most uncompromising of sports.

[03:55.03]And they would marvel 21 that through

[03:56.96]the wonderful excesses of skill and character,

[04:00.12]he had become the most famous athlete, indeed,

[04:03.16]the best-known personage in the world.