Grasping Geri Halliwell’s tiny hand, Christian Horner displayed his usual air of cheerful invincibility. But the truth is that he is a disgrace, writes IAN HERBERT

A few of them are in sports. Individuals with big egos, so attached to their own abundant publicity that they simply cannot appreciate how deeply unattractive they appear.

Christian Horner was the last to arrive on Saturday. The self-proclaimed star of Netflix’s F1 show Drive to Survive was apparently convinced that parading around the Bahrain paddock with his wife Geri Halliwell, surrounded by camera crews, would help him end a crisis.

That short, choreographed scene, lasting five minutes, would counteract an avalanche of WhatsApp messages.

Anyone with even a modicum of self-awareness would have found that walk through the meadow unbearable because, from the outside, it certainly was.

We had Horner holding Halliwell’s little hand as he walked her around the track. Horner placed her hand on the small of her back and around her waist as he maneuvered her around.

And Halliwell just stared ahead, with the stunned look of a woman wondering what the hell had hit her. This was Geri Halliwell, once a symbol of female power, reduced to a silent role in a scene of personal humiliation. No Netflix treatment in the world can perfect a look as terrible as that.

It’s easy to empathize with Halliwell, who landed in Bahrain with news of those messages on Friday. It’s just as easy to sympathize with ‘the whistleblower’, as Red Bull described her in a brief, brutal 89-word press release exonerating Horner.

THAT press release, with its icy formality, without a word of remorse or regret, must have hit Horner’s accuser like an express train. He is a person who has earned respect and popularity in various motorsport organizations, including Red Bull, throughout a career in which he has invested 15 years of his life.

He now has the right to appeal the outcome of the investigation that cleared Horner. Well, good luck with that. His name has been published this week, quite possibly against his wishes. And it only takes a quick look at the cesspool of social media to remember the abuse that a young woman suffers in a situation like this. She could be forgiven for running a mile.

Horner, meanwhile, has the same air of cheerful invincibility that he has had throughout. Totally implacable, he seems, given the extremely detailed report by Erik van Haren, of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, close to star driver Max Verstappen.

If Horner is worried about the effect this may have on Red Bull’s sponsors, then he’s not showing it. He was wearing his usual gear for Saturday’s paddock walk, displaying the logos of Tag Heuer, Mobil, Castore, Bybit and Oracle. The names of those companies are being casually dragged into the controversy.

Red Bull’s calculation will be that every saga has a shelf life and it will soon disappear, because F1’s approach does not suggest otherwise.

A progressive sport, which would proactively want young women in its employment to feel safe and welcome, would be knocking down Red Bull’s door, demanding to know the weight assigned to those WhatsApp messages in the internal investigation, and other aspects of its reasoning.

But nobody wants to know. The sport’s governing body, the FIA, has backed Horner, and F1 owners Liberty Media have had nothing to say publicly about it.

Attention was diverted from Horner yesterday as FIA president Mohammed ben Sulayem faces an investigation for alleged interference with the outcome of a race, something he denies. With no appearance of contrition from anyone in F1 during the grim controversy, it’s hard to avoid the depressing prospect that this will be nothing more than Netflix material in 12 months’ time. A conspiracy theorist would say that the current Drive to Survive series is already capitalizing on this.

Is it a coincidence that episode two, part of which is filmed on the Horner family’s rural estate in Oxfordshire, is titled Fall From Grace? It begins with footage of Santa Claus, filmed in December 2022 but cleverly woven together all these months later, arriving to ask the couple’s children: ‘Has Dad been good this year?’ To which Horner’s 10-year-old daughter, Olivia, replies, “Let me think about that.” Fall From Grace appears on screen during a shot of Horner in a helicopter.

Halliwell’s own response to Santa Claus on the question of her husband’s behavior is unequivocal. “She won a championship, I think it’s been amazing,” she says. A later scene captures the two of them discussing F1 in her living room.

However, the messy and inconvenient details of real life cannot be erased in this way. The inconvenient, unedited truth is that Horner – and his sport – are a disgrace.

Silence is not as easy as it seems!

There was a different kind of fieldside challenge on Saturday, in what was ‘Silent Support’ weekend, for those of us caring for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Our instructions, set out in an FA initiative, were to “show your support with applause only”, the idea being that it would be disorienting for the children if we and their coaches all shouted at once.

It was a very good idea in theory, although reader John Cross emailed me to say he found it “baffling” and not “representative of the real world of football.” I see where it’s coming from.

The efforts of youth sports coaches to generate respect among children for referees and opponents has been one of the pleasures of watching under 9 football this season, although I confess that when my grandson came off the bench in the second half, he scored a goal during After our 9-3 victory and I ran back onto the field with unbridled joy, all thoughts of “silent support” left my head. I failed the test.

The next generation

I hope Christine Benneworth has done a better job than me of adhering to the FA rules.

Her photo, here, of six-year-old Charles, her great-grandson, whom she loyally supports, is another of many she has sent me. “He played every weekend when he was six years old. Last Sunday’s player of the match,” he proudly reports.

The owner of the forest lost the land but he is also cunning

If Brian Clough had still been with us, he would have strongly told Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis to stay in the boardroom, rather than discredit the club by tearing down the tunnel after referee Paul Tierney last weekend .

But Tierney’s mistake, which led to Liverpool’s goal, was foolish and proof of how referees can influence survival and relegation.

Credit goes to Marinakis for appointing Mark Clattenburg as referee analyst. Clubs invest heavily in data and science, but it is surprising that many have not identified the value of having that type of experience on board.