In the popular press, it was not enough to say that Spassky failed to contend with Fischer's brilliant and unpredictable openings; more comprehensibly, it was a triumph of American ingenuity over a sclerotic Soviet bureaucracy.
Gone, he insisted, were the clouds that had darkened his game at the Masters, where he failed to contend and finished tied for 40th, and the ill winds at the Players Championship, where he had to grind to make the cut.
His short game may have improved but he has failed to contend throughout the year and has slipped to 38th win the world rankings.
Sir Chris Hoy withdrew through illness, the men's team sprint failed to contend for medals following a slip at the start of their qualifying run, and Victoria Pendleton could only finish eighth in the women's sprint with Jason Kenny fourth in the men's event.
The only two years in which he has failed to contend at the Masters during the past decade and a half were the ones he played as the defending champion.
As Dalby (2016) contends, many commentators fail to deal with the fact that social relations of power are at the heart of vulnerability, and consequently, how the Anthropocene is being shaped and experienced by the masses.
Critics of the Arizona law, SB 1070, which allows police to jail immigrants who fail to present proper documents, contend that it amounts to racial profiling.
If two properties not only coincide in the actual worlds but could not fail to coincide we have, he contends, not two properties but one.
Reason, for Wollstonecraft, is what controls the emotions; without reason, she contends, people would fail to understand their own feelings.
Davis, 52, was not expected to contend, having failed to reach the second round in the past three years.
