1-3. 3-28. This is how the year begins. This is Roger Federer's predicament in the fifth set of the Australian Open final and the New England Patriots' deficit in the third quarter of the Super Bowl. This is when fans start to swear and pray in the same sentence. This is crisis that is about to turn into conquest. This is the start of surprise in Melbourne and shock in Houston.
We've witnessed so many miracles, fairy tales and revivals that we shouldn't really be shocked by anything in sport and yet, we always are. Great talent is always amazing and human endeavour is always inspiring. In effect, what we dream is what the athletes do and that's always a surprise. Sometimes even to them.
Fans are fortune tellers and sportswriters are tea-leaf readers, and yet we're always shocked at how wrong our predictions can be. Sport is surprisingly unreadable. Could anyone have forecast that 22 different women would win a title on the LPGA Tour and none would be Lydia Ko? Did anyone think Ana Carrasco would become the first woman to win a world championship motorcycle race?
For all the money that changes hands, the business of sport will always be wonder. Caeleb Dressel won seven swimming golds at the world championships? No way? Katie Ledecky lost a race? You kidding me? One might say surprise invigorates sport and shock nurtures it.
Even when athletes keep winning, there is a sense of surprise. Rafael Nadal winning a 10th French Open is astonishing. Even when eras end, as they must, we are shocked. Not one Chinese woman in the top seven in the world badminton rankings is startling.
Everyone has his own Richter scale for this, a way to grade the size of a surprise. For instance, Ronaldo saying he has never seen a footballer better than himself barely registers on the scale. Yawn, that's so Cristiano. But Usain Bolt losing the 100m at the world championship is an event of some magnitude.
In between, the scale recorded all manner of surprising tremors. A 1.37m girl in glasses, adopted from China and now carrying an American name, Morgan Hurd, won the all-around title at the world gymnastics championships on her debut. Elsewhere, a Greek national of Nigerian heritage dazzled the United States with a basketball game as big as his name - Giannis Antetokounmpo.
In sport, surprise works in many ways. It can be bewilderment at what we see, like watching Almaz Ayana win the women's 10,000m at the world athletics championships by over 46 seconds. It could also be disbelief at what we're still seeing. Like a world which is ready to pay Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, who sling all manner of hideous insults in public, roughly US$130 million (S$177 million) in total for a fight.
The surprise is not that sport changes, but that it often doesn't change enough. In the same year that the film Battle Of The Sexes is released - which recounts tennis player Billie Jean King's win over male chauvinist Bobby Riggs - the women's golf tour has introduced a dress code. Perhaps they think it's 1917? Meanwhile, in the Forbes list of 100 richest athletes, there was only one woman, Serena Williams.
Surprise? No. Shock? No. Just a bloody shame.
Still, there were small, overdue surprises. Bibiana Steinhaus became the first woman to referee a Bundesliga match while Zahra Lari became the first figure skater to compete in a headscarf. Sport was doing what it is supposed to: level the playing field, recognise talent, offer opportunity, promote equality. And foster friendship.
At the London Marathon, 300m from the finish line, David Wyeth's exhausted body shuts down and Matthew Rees stops to come to his aid. Seconds are ticking. Runners go by. But the bank worker who is losing time ensures the project manager will register a time.
Rees cajoles the wobbling Wyeth, puts an arm around him, and slowly walks him to the finish. Chivalry is always surprising and yet in a way this wasn't. Because this year, like every year, sport is sustained not by stars but by the everyday grace of sneakered strangers on a long road.
