Modern Use
"To do a Devon Loch" is a modern metaphor now sometimes used in sports and otherwise to explain a sudden, last-minute failure of teams or a sportsperson to complete an expected victory, for example: "Manchester United won't do a Devon Loch and lose the title after beating Chelsea" or "Lewis Hamilton surrendering the championship having led Kimi Räikkönen by 17 points with just two races remaining was a Devon Loch calamity". Another example occurred ahead of the 2011 Irish election when Seán Gallagher's campaign came undone in the final television debate his fall from grace was compared to Devon Loch's fall just before the winning post in the 1956 National.
In an article in The Times on 4 August 2012, Rick Broadbent wrote about the final day of the 2012 Olympics heptathlon competition: "Jessica Ennis is almost there. It would take a Devon Loch-style collapse to deny her the gold medal now."
Read more about this topic: Devon Loch
Famous quotes containing the word modern:
“I tell you, sir, the only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts. That would solve the entire problem of management.”
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944)
“And of the other things death is a new office building filled with modern furniture,
A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)