When Michael Jordan was asked to endorse the campaign to unseat the Republican senator Jesse Helms in 1990 many expected the basketball star to jump at the chance. Helms, who was standing for reelection in Jordan’s home state of North Carolina, was an ultra-conservative who once helped to create a campaign slogan that read: “White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories?”

But Jordan, whose fortune was built upon his relationship with the shoe manufacturer Nike, turned down the request with the pithy one-liner: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” It is a statement that has come to symbolise the shocking reluctance of sportsmen to enter political debate because they fear saying or doing anything that might offend their corporate paymasters.

Lewis Hamilton will soon become familiar with the rules of this depressing game. Even now the 22-year-old, who was competing to win a second consecutive Formula One grand prix in Indianapolis yesterday, is being schooled in the art of saying nothing. His handlers recognise that by presenting their client as a blank canvas it will be easier to persuade multinationals to emblazon him with their logos. Like Jordan, he will soon become a walking billboard.

Hamilton has been compared with Tiger Woods, but for all the wrong reasons. Many have suggested that his ethnicity — he was the first driver of black heritage to win a grand prix — will inspire a new generation of young black drivers to enter the Formula One paddock in the same way that Woods has transformed the demographics of professional golf. But this is a pipedream — and not just because of the formidable economic barriers to entry in Formula One.

The truth is that Woods has not had anything like the influence on global black consciousness that his cheerleaders suggest. Not one black player has joined the PGA tour since Woods turned professional in 1996 and there has not been a black player in the Ladies Professional Golf Association since 2000. There are today no home players from an ethnic-minority background playing on tour and of the 60 teenagers in the English Golf Union’s elite programme only two come from minorities.

We should not be surprised by any of this. How could Woods become a role model for young people from, say, the ghettos of South Central Los Angeles when his target constituency is across town among those who can afford the mark-up on his red Nike replica shirts?

Woods’s lack of impact on anything other than the marketability of golf has been achieved by virtue of his banality. He has managed to present a public persona of such blandness that few people can remember him taking a stand on anything except the stern of his $20 million yacht. When he was asked to criticise the men-only policies of some private golf clubs he declined, saying that it was a matter for them. His press conferences are a masterclass in insipidness that drain the soul.

Like Jordan — who consistently refused to comment on the employment of workers in the Third World by Nike — Woods knows that his bread is buttered by multinationals that are paranoid about controversy. He has allowed monolithic corporations to hijack his cultural and political potency in the pursuit of profits and, in so doing, has become the poster boy of the new conservatism. Although the work of Woods’s foundation is admirable, it has never flirted with any activity remotely threatening to the interests of big business.

It will be astonishing if Hamilton — a kid from Hertfordshire who has already signed lucrative deals with Vodafone and the watchmaker Tag Heuer — does not follow the example of the man destined to become the world’s first billion-dollar sportsman. He will soon become accustomed to having a slick agent or two at his side during interviews, ready to deflect any question that might impact upon the sanitised image of his corporate clients.

This new generation of sportsmen cry out for comparison with Muhammad Ali, a firebrand who was as pivotal to the transformation of political and cultural consciousness in the 1960s as any musician or politician. As David Remnick wrote in King of the World: “The Beatles’ blend of R&B and Liverpool pop, and Clay’s blend of defiance and humour, was changing the sound of the times, its temper; set alongside the march on Washington and the quagmire in Vietnam, they would, in their way, become essential pieces of the Sixties phantasmagoria.”

Some will argue that Woods and Jordan symbolise the political apathy and cultural homogeneity of the new millennium in the same way that Ali epitomised the unhinged radicalism of his time. But this is to let modern sportsmen off the hook. We should not forget that many leading figures in the world of arts and entertainment are engaged in today’s cultural and political debates. It is sportsmen, almost uniquely, who have repudiated their birthright in pursuit of big bucks.

They are the posterboards upon which multinationals splash their logos, the walking mouthpieces that have been taught to proclaim nothing except words. Their voices have been stifled by the need to avoid controversy, their personalities hidden by marketing strategies that must not be undermined at any price. How are they supposed to speak to the hearts and minds of the masses when they spend all their time checking their wallets?

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