Long, hot summer of protest likely as activists target more sporting events

Kneeling, he looks like a melting man in a bath of golden liquid. A hellscape on a table at the Crucible. Protest and art materials creating the most dramatic sports image of the week.

‘Just Stop Oil’ man, with a watchful Joe Perry and Robert Milkins steering well clear, shook his bag of bright orange powder and turned the World Snooker Championship into an Indian Holi festival of colour.

Barry Hearn didn’t appreciate the gesture spread over the game’s green baize.

“Custodial sentences is my way. I’m a zero-tolerance type of guy,” said the tough-talking World Snooker Tour president. Some would agree with him. Some would not.

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This could yet be the year of dissent with 118 Animal Rising protesters arrested around Aintree’s Grand National. Largely peaceful, they were carried away by security, two officers at the head, two at the legs.

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Officials all over the world now are clenching their buttocks that some kind of protest will visit them this summer and bring their event to a shuddering halt for a cause.

Ireland has had its own chargers and marchers and sitter-inners. Fr Neil Horan, the Dancing Priest – defrocked in 2007 – made himself a globally recognised figure of ridicule with guest appearances at the 2003 British Grand Prix, when he ran on to the track at Silverstone, the 2004 Epsom Derby and that year’s Summer Olympic Games.

There he pushed Brazilian, Vanderlei de Lima, who was leading the race, into the crowds alongside the course, costing him a gold medal. Was Horan’s promised second coming as worthy as Just Stop Oil?

Horan has been generously described as dangerously eccentric, not least of all when during a court case he claimed to own only one pair of tight-fitting green satin underpants that have never been washed as he needed them to “always be ready for use”. In a piece of magical realism, he then produced the silky scanties from his pocket to show the jury.

Unlike Horan, Just Stop Oil man is part of a more motivated, organised and committed group of people driven and co-ordinated by social media. Still, they are latter-day versions of one of the original protesters, Wicklow man Peter O’Connor.

O’Connor finished second in the 1906 Games in Athens but first in the history of Olympic flag demonstrations. Travelling to Greece believing he was representing Ireland in the long jump, when he arrived he was informed he would be jumping as British. Outraged as the Union Jack was raised in his name, O’Connor shimmied up the flagpole as team-mate Con Leahy manfully stood guard at the base.

[ Security ramped up amid fears activists will disrupt Derby and Royal Ascot ]

Reaching the top, he unfurled the green Irish flag with the words Erin Go Bragh emblazoned across it, making him something of a pioneer.

Sport has always been a magnet for the guerrilla marketing of a cause. It’s on television, it has viewers that number in the tens of millions and at its best is a live broadcast.

Everyone knows where it is taking place and what time it will begin and that it is exposed to a leap over a barrier, or a slogan covered T-shirt. Its major vulnerability, however, is the product. It’s the people, the participants and spectators.

Sports protests are always a gamble and can lose an audience as much as gain support. But always, they are jarring and that’s the point – they demand attention.

The Animal Rising protesters at Aintree caught eyes as the horses dizzily circled around the parade ring with the race delayed by 12 minutes.

Subsequently owners and trainers began the counter culture war condemning those responsible as party to the death of Hill Sixteen, while just 17 of the 39 starters finished the race. Trainer Sandy Thomson blamed the “ignorance” of the protesters in unsettling his horse.

“He got absolutely hyper and we washed him off. They haven’t a bloody clue what they’re doing,” he told the Racing Post. “He just hasn’t taken off at the first fence; he’s got so bloody hyper because of the carry on.”

And there may be more incidents ahead – it is believed animal rights groups have next set their sights on the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot.

[ Aintree Grand National turns into publicity coup for fringe animal rights group ]

Like the snooker players, Olympic athletes and jockeys, dedication is part of the playbook. The man who leapt onto the table the World Snooker Championships has been arrested six times in the last year.

Ignorant? No. Edred Whittingham comes from Cambridge and is a politics, philosophy and economics student at Exeter University. He also glued his hand to a painting at the Manchester Art Gallery in July in another oil demonstration.

In Just Stop Oil’s statement after the Crucible incident, sporting events were reminded that the summer could be a hot one.

“The time for polite petitions is over. Disruption is coming whether we like it or not,” they warned.

But, as Tommie Smith at the Olympics in 1968 showed, history can be kind to protest actions. With Wimbledon, racing festivals and the Rugby World Cup approaching, they are coming as only they can, with a zip tie and a tube of super glue in hand.