Sport is a high-wire walk: Nervy, exhilarating, fraught with falls

Competitive sport is akin to a high-wire walk. Everyone fears falling. Rivals jostle you like the wind. And challenges arise just as suddenly as the wire rotates underfoot. In the beginning, just getting on the wire in public is awkward, for it’s hard to find nerve and balance even as someone is trying to shove you off.

Yet when an unknown competitor finds their feet, as Alexandra Eala abruptly did at the Miami Open, it is startling. Even to her. After she wins her third-round match she cries, bounds, skips, laughs, runs, waves, kisses, hugs. It doesn’t matter how many times you see joy in sport, it feels like a new dawn. Something miraculous seems under way.