Leaving on The Jet Plane .

SELDOM in the field of human sport will so much be viewed by so many. Newspapers will announce a "Super sporting weekend".

SELDOM in the field of human sport will so much be viewed by so many. Newspapers will announce a "Super sporting weekend".

Boks-Lions, Bafana-Spain, Italy-Brazil, World T20 final, US Open .

And it's been a strenuous week already - days of eye-churning sofa duty charting progress in a tournament matrix.

Why do we do it? After all, one has to concede to the rationalistic argument that sport is pointless. Watching it doesn't answer profound questions about the meaning of life, or make us better people.

The most to be said for sport in a value sense is that it's good for the health of participants. Yet, when skilfully executed, it has a devastating capacity to lure and entrap fans - then suck from them great quantities of time, energy and money.

The standard excuse for such foolishness is that sport is a metaphor for war. The argument is that war is an activity that modern people are too nice to engage in anymore, but regressive, aggressive genes still throw up urges to vanquish someone wearing a shirt of a different colour to one's own.

Maybe. But why are sport-obsessed nations involved in many current wars?

At halftime in Bafana vsthe All Whites, I pondered the matter.

I toyed with the idea of sport as a new religion. In our faithless, humanistic age we have an abiding, ancient need for a parallel universe of godlike super-beings through which to validate our puny selves.

Then I was diverted by the equally demanding question of why the soccer Kiwis don't get blokes with strange, apostrophe'd names to provide them with some speed and sinew.

Thoughts of strange names and speed quickly focused on a racehorse called JJ The Jet Plane.

The fastest South African sports star on four legs is running for immortality at Royal Ascot tomorrow - signifying yet another channel flip for the red-hot remote.

Regular readers of this column might recall the story of a well-bred nag that most racing fundis thought would never see a racetrack, so small and skew-legged was he as a foal.

He was sold for a song to Hennie du Preez, who runs a shop-fitting firm. Hennie roped in some southern Jo'burg friends to spread the costs: Coenie Strydom, Lucky Houdalakis and Tia Booyens, the flame-haired proprietor of the Elsburg Hotel.

A catchy name ensured some popularity, but it was JJ The Jet Plane's blistering speed over the turf that inspired hero worship.

Suddenly he was winning in Dubai, then in the UK. Now he is on racing's greatest stage.

JJ contests the Grade 1 Golden Jubilee Stakes on the final day of the Royal Ascot meeting.

Hennie, Coenie, Lucky and Tia will be there to see him take on Hong Kong sprint sensation Sacred Kingdom.

JJ races on channel 232 at 4.45pm - and will be so fast he'll take little more than a minute or two out of one's Boks-Lions and/or Italy-Egypt goggling.