The British National Party is taking up rather too much of our time. It was represented on Question Time last night. A few days ago, and bizarrely granted anonymity, a couple of its high-ups were on BBC Radio 1 telling us that Ashley Cole was “not ethnically British” and making statements such as “if he wants to come to this country”. Cole arrived here via his mother’s womb and Stepney, East London, but clearly facts are not an issue here. So here’s my advice: let’s not give this stuff so much as the time of day.

No, these are the sports pages, so let us talk about sport instead of hatred. Let us discuss incidents that are a thousand times more eloquent and meaningful than anything that the BNP ever came up with; not that that’s particularly difficult.

I shan’t begin to rebut the “arguments” of the BNP. In fact, I shan’t even think about them. Instead, I present to you ten great incidents in sport, ten great performances from athletes representing their country, doing so with immense distinction and bringing huge delight to millions of their fellow British or fellow English people.

1980 Over the course of a few turbulent years, Daley Thompson established a claim to be the greatest athlete in the world, or as he would probably prefer, history. He won the decathlon at the Olympic Games in Moscow with a towering performance and won it again four years later in Los Angeles with a furious outpouring of will. In his moment of triumph, he whistled along with the National Anthem. Thompson was a glorious competitor. He loved to be the best and at the end of the 1,500 metres, the last and cruellest event in the decathlon, every athlete flung himself on to the track in agony. All save one.

1982 Norman Cowans was responsible for what was at the time England’s closest win in Test history. He was renowned for an alarming combination of pace and tenuous control and was brought back into the side for the fourth Test against Australia in Melbourne. This was the Ashes series after the Botham Tests of 1981. Great things were expected, but England were 2-0 down. Cowans took two wickets in the first innings, including Greg Chappell first ball, but took over the match in the second innings. He claimed six for 77 and England won a remarkable Test by three runs.

1984 Brazil 0, England 2. Not only a victory, but one brought about by a goal of stunning and audacious brilliance. It came from John Barnes, who beat a succession of opponents with a diagonal run into the penalty area and, in what he still describes as an out-of-body experience, calmly passed the ball into the net. It was a goal of Brazilian style scored by a man in an England shirt. England could not only match Brazil for discipline and character and all those traditional English virtues, they could beat them for flair and imagination as well.

1984 Tessa Sanderson won the gold medal in the javelin at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in a performance of fine, controlled, honed athleticism. She had failed badly in Moscow four years earlier, but now, against the odds, she got everything right. She wept buckets on the podium without once stopping smiling. It was a glorious display of strength and skill and joy, and it reached out across the airwaves and the time difference to bring delight to everyone who watched.

1988 Chris Oti’s injury-haunted career didn’t last long — he had only 13 matches for England — but he left his mark and he is celebrated every time the national team play a rugby match. He had the pace that terrifies and when he scored a hat-trick against Ireland, Twickenham raised its many voices for him. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot had long been a rugby club favourite, complete with obscene gestures, but now the song became a thing of joy, a celebration of a player, an achievement, a team, a great sporting unity. And it is sung to this day.

1994 Devon Malcolm got a terrible b*****king from the England cricket captain, Mike Atherton (whatever happened to him?). His crime was his failure to bowl bouncers at the opposing fast bowlers. So Malcolm was doubly miffed when Fanie de Villiers, of South Africa, showed no such gentlemanliness and hit him on the helmet. The slips chortled in glee. “You guys are history,” Malcolm famously told them. And in a fine, sustained burst of anger, he took nine for 57. Malcolm made history that day.

1997 England had to go to Rome and avoid defeat if they were to qualify for the World Cup. They got the 0-0 draw they needed, out-Italianing the Italians, and it was a tactical triumph for the coach, Glenn Hoddle. But it was also a triumph of blood and guts, and in particular for the blood of Paul Ince, who played on after a head injury and a great spattering of gore. Ince had one of the great matches and became an emblem of English defiance.

2000 At the Sydney Olympics, Denise Lewis won the heptathlon with glorious style and one leg. She became the face of a Games that were, for the British, touched by a little magic. This was the first post-Lottery Games and the British had sustained success. Lewis was third after the first day of competition, but she pulled through to first with only the 800 metres to go. With her leg not so much bandaged as strapped on, she was just fast enough to take gold. It was more than enough to make her an instant national love-object.

2003 England won the rugby union World Cup and everybody rightly celebrated Jonny and Johnno — Jonny Wilkinson and Martin Johnson. But Jason Robinson played a decisive role in two of the matches. It was his scything break that set up the try that settled the quarter-final against Wales and it was his try against Australia in the final that led to that extraordinary conclusion.

2008 Lewis Hamilton contradicted a million stereotypes when he won the Formula One World Championship. He won with style and dash and intelligence and calculation; and in the end a colossal slice of luck. If he has sometimes been a man difficult to come to terms with, it is mostly because his is the sort of talent we don’t have much experience of dealing with. Still, it looks as if we will have Hamilton’s talent to study for some years to come We go on, then, into the 21st century, made richer and wiser by sporting events such as the ones I have described. The answer to every half-baked notion the BNP comes up with is not in rhetoric and counter-argument and reciprocal hate, but in a cheer. These ten athletes have given us great joy, not just because they represent us, but because they are part of us. They are part of our story, part of the way we see and understand the world.

When sport brings us joy, we cheer without let or hindrance, without inhibition or equivocation. When we let rip a sporting cheer, every puny notion of hate vanishes before it. Hate is unable to live with the vast, shared joys that sport brings us.