It’s true that you don’t see many short stories about sport. Or as I like to call them ‘Sport Stories’. I’m allowed to give them my own title, because I think I’m the only person who writes them.
Maybe it’s just incredibly rare for a person to be into both sporting things and literature things. I might be the only one born in my generation, which means I carry a heavy burden to write as many sport stories as possible, for the good of all, and to make up for the deficit.
My short story anthology on tennis didn’t seem to go down so well with the group, even though I personally believed it to be amazing. Then I seriously gave myself a spinal injury during my local squash finals (and still won!). I was sent along to benefit from Melbourne’s new oxygen therapy trend, since the doctor thought a few sessions might help me recover. Perhaps it was particularly relevant since my spine was now positioned in such a way that made it difficult to breathe, and breathing inside a hyperbaric chamber is much easier, AND breathing is probably the most important step to recovering from a sports injury. Some people think it’s sleep that helps you recover, but you still need to breathe while you sleep, don’t you?
Anyway, hyperbaric medicine left such a strong impression on me- plus I had a lot of time to burn while I was inside those oxygen chambers- that I began to write a series of Sport Stories on oxygen therapy, and how two athletes recovering using that very method find each other and develop a romance over a mutual passion for oxygen therapy. Melbourne medical places offer such things, and often have oxygen chambers in the same room. I say it’s plausible. People don’t seem enthused about the idea so far- Jemima said that it reeked of common romance tropes and she didn’t like how the two characters talked in sporting terms- but they should just wait and see. Some MAJOR developments and twists coming to this sporting tale!
-Jay