sport news Geri Halliwell, one-time symbol of Girl Power, is now a non-speaking part in a ... trends now You encounter a fair few of them in sport. Individuals of vast ego, so wedded to their own bountiful publicity that they just can’t appreciate how deeply unattractive they look. Christian Horner was the latest, on Saturday. The self-styled star of F1’s ‘Drive to Survive’ Netflix show was apparently convinced that parading up the Bahrain paddock with Geri Halliwell, surrounded by camera crews, would help him put the lid on a crisis. That one short, choreographed scene, five minutes in the making, would counteract a dump of WhatsApp messages which, in a nutshell, had revealed a female employee’s desperate attempts to fend off her boss’s seedy approaches in a way which would not jeopardise her own employment prospects. Anyone with a modicum of self-awareness would have found that paddock walk deeply excruciating because from the outside looking in, it most certainly was. We had Horner gripping Halliwell's tiny hand as he walked her up the tarmac. Horner placing his hand in the small of her back and around her waist, as he manoeuvred her around the place. And Halliwell just staring straight ahead, wearing the dumbfounded look of a woman who wondered what on earth had hit her. Christian Horner (right) and Geri Halliwell (left) walked up the tarmac hand-in-hand in Bahrain, despite the scandal surrounding the Red Bull team principal Horner has attempted to deflect and shown little contrition following the allegations made against him Mail Sport columnist Ian Herbert wants fans to not forget who the real victim in all of this is This was Geri Halliwell, one-time symbol of girl power, reduced to a non-speaking part in a scene of deep personal humiliation. No Netflix treatment on earth can finesse a look as terrible as that. It’s hard not to empathise with Halliwell, who had landed in Bahrain to news of those messages on Friday. But the real victim in this entire episode, of course, is the Red Bull employee who claimed coercion by Horner in the first place. ‘The complainant’, Red Bull described her as, in a brutal little 89-word press release, exonerating Horner, issued 24 hours before those WhatsApp messages of eye-popping detail first surfaced. The press statement, with its ice-cold formality, lacking a single word of remorse or regret, must have hit her like an express train. She is an individual who has garnered respect and popularity at each of a number of motorsport organisations, including Red Bull, across a career to which she has invested 15 years of her life. Her treatment, needless to say, did not remotely feature in the confected narrative of marital bliss paraded before us at that racetrack. She now has a right to appeal the outcome of the investigation which cleared Horner, Red Bull has declared. Well, good luck with that. Her name has been published this week, quite possibly against her wishes. Halliwell did not utter a word as she looked straight ahead in a scene of personal humiliation And it takes only a cursory glance at some of the views being voiced in the social media cesspit these past few days to be reminded of the abuse which will rain in on a young woman, in a situation like this. She could be forgiven for running a mile. Horner, meanwhile, carries the same air of breezy invincibility that he has worn throughout. Utterly implacable, it seems, in the face of the extremely detailed reporting of these matters by the Dutch paper De Telegraaf’s Eric van Haren, who is close to Max Verstappen. If Horner is worried about the effect of any of it on Red Bull’s sponsors, then he is certainly not showing it. He was wearing his usual gear for that paddock walk on Saturday, and thus parading the logos of Tag Heuer, Mobil, Castore, Bybit and Oracle. Those companies, which care about their image, are finding their names casually dragged into controversy. The calculation for Red Bull will be that every saga has a shelf life and that this one will soon die away, because F1’s approach certainly doesn’t suggest otherwise. A progressive sport, proactively wanting young women in its employment to feel safe and welcome, would be hammering down Red Bull’s door, demanding to know the weight attached to those WhatsApp messages in the internal investigation, and other aspects of its reasoning. But no one wants to know. The sport’s governing body, the FIA, has thrown its lot in behind Horner and its owner, Liberty Media, has had nothing to say publicly on the matter. The sport seems to have other concerns. Attention was deflected away from Horner on Monday by FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem facing an investigation for allegedly interfering with a race result, which he denies. Attention deflected away from Horner this week following news that Mohammed Ben Sulayem (right) is facing an investigation for allegedly interfering with a race result With no semblance of contrition from anyone within F1 throughout the whole dismal controversy, it’s hard to avoid the very depressing prospect that this will be nothing more than Netflix material, 12 months from now. A conspiracy theorist would conclude that the new, sixth series of the Netflix ‘Drive to Survive’ series is, in fact, already making capital from it. Is it just a coincidence that episode two, much of which is shot at the Horner family’s country pile in Oxfordshire, is entitled: ‘Fall from Grace’? It opens with footage of Father Christmas - shot in December 2022 but adroitly woven in all these months later – arriving to ask the couple’s children: ’Has Dad been good this year?’ To which their son replies: ‘Let me think about that.’ The words ‘Fall from Grace’ materialise on screen during a close-up shot of Horner in a helicopter. Halliwell’s own answer to Father Christmas on the question of her husband’s behaviour is unambiguous. ‘He won a championship. I think he’s been amazing,’ she says. A subsequent scene captures the two of them discussing F1 in the sitting room. The messy, inconvenient details of real life can’t be airbrushed away like this, though. The unedited, inconvenient truth is that Horner - and his sport - are an embarrassment. Can 'Silent Support' work? There was a different kind of challenge at the side of the pitch on Saturday, on what was ‘Silent Support’ weekend, for those of us watching our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Our instructions, laid out in the FA initiative, were ‘to show your support with applause only.’ The idea being that it’s disorientating for the kids if we and their coaches are all shouting at once. In theory, a very good idea, though reader John Cross has already emailed me to say he found it ‘baffling’ and not ‘representative of the real world of football.’ I see where he’s coming from. The efforts of coaches in youth sport to engender respect among children for officials and opponents has been one of the joys of watching under-9s football this season, though I confess that when my grandson came off the ‘bench’ in the second half, scored a goal during our 9-3 win and sprinted back down the pitch in unbridled joy, all thoughts of ‘silent support’ went out of my head. I failed the test. The next generation I hope Christine Benneworth did a better job than me of adhering to the FA rules. Her picture, here, of six-year-old Charles, her great grandson, whom she loyally supports, is another of the many you have sent in. ‘He plays every weekend at the age of six. Man of the match last Sunday,’ she proudly reports. Charles, 6, plays every weekend and won the man of the match award last Sunday Credit to Forest for enlisting Clattenburg's expertise Had Brian Clough still been with us, he would have robustly told Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis to stick to the boardroom, rather than bring the club into disrepute by tearing down the tunnel after referee Paul Tierney last weekend. But Tierney’s error, leading to Liverpool’s goal, was rank rubbish and evidence of how officials might influence survival and relegation. Credit is due to Marinakis for appointing Mark Clattenburg as a referee analyst. Clubs invest heavily on data and science but it’s surprising that more have not identified the value of having that kind of expertise on board. Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis was furious after Paul Tierney's error led to a late Liverpool winner on Saturday Forest have appointed Mark Clattenburg as a referee analyst, and it is a surprise that more clubs haven't followed suit All rights reserved for this news site (dailymail) and under his responsibility