If sport is a microcosm of life the ascent of Donald Trump is no different with LeBron James and Tom Brady among those speaking their minds from both sides of the debate
The noise cascaded down from the west end of Madison Square Garden. It started in low. Then it started to grow. Donald Trump had just emerged from a tunnel on to the arena floor during the undercard of the middleweight title fight between Gennady Golovkin and David Lemieux, prompting a crescendo of boos from the crowd of more than 20,000 spectators that stuffed the midtown Manhattan arena to capacity. It was October 2015, four months after the real-estate mogul and reality TV star had announced his presidential bid with a speech that established his nativist bona fides by branding Mexicans as rapists and criminals. Now he had turned up to watch a sport largely populated and supported by the minorities his candidacy would seem to marginalise.
Trump made a half-circuit of the arena floor as the din grew to earsplitting volumes and turned into another tunnel almost immediately. As he made his way to the locker room of Golovkin, a Kazakh whose career has soared to new heights since coming to America and settling in Los Angeles, an aide straight-facedly reassured him the reaction from the crowd was “50-50”.
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