Terrence, people feel grief when they have little personal stake in the loss. One can say that it is only sympathy, but I do not think so. In my experience, people become reflective and wonder what it means, it shakes their faith in the fundamental goodness of the cosmos. Sure, they knew such things happen, but it was an abstraction. Bring it close to home, and they feel as if they are witness to a fault line in the scheme of things.
As for the Europeans, well, no, a match is a match, and if one wins fair and square, then there is no blame. And people take sports to seriously, generally. But the sense, right or wrong, is that something happened that should not have......... |
