So Jenson Button won like a champion after all. There is something oddly pleasing about that. True, he was goaded into discovering his best form by an inept qualification, finally finding himself in a position where caution was no longer even possible, but never mind that. Driven mad by his own tiptoeing approach to the Formula One world drivers’ championship, he at last gave us a performance of genuine greatness.

It was as well he was in São Paulo, where the track allows overtaking — personally, I’d have thought that this was a sine qua non for any kind of racetrack, but what do I know? Anyway, Button roared up through the traffic from fourteenth to fifth like a boy racer possessed, good enough to become the champion, and to clinch the championship in the manner of a champion.

He had been saying all along that what matters is winning, not the manner in which you win. But we all know that there is some added value in a champion who really acts like a champion. It’s seriously great to win because you are the best, and damn the rest of them. It’s only jolly good to win because you are the luckiest, or the cutest.

Look in the scorebook, look at the papers, people will say: Alain Prost doesn’t have an asterisk beside his name for being the canniest driver that ever took a steering-wheel in his hands, and nor does Nelson Piquet for out-thinking the bull-at-a-gate style of Nigel Mansell. But in all sports, we thrill not just to victory, but to a victor with the air of a real champion. Sea The Stars completed his glorious career with an overwhelming win in the Arc: that’s what we like to see. It showed the greatness of the horse rather than the cunning of the jockey.

This principle holds good in all sports. At the World Gymnastics Championships last weekend, I watched Kohei Uchimura clinch the men’s all-around title with a majestic high-risk performance on the high bar. I love to see Badminton won by a clear round, rather than by a horse and rider using up the fence in hand.

Champions of the other kind are still winners, but we — and they — must accept that sport has double standards. We appreciate any kind of victory, especially when it comes to the team or the individual we have been cheering for. But we all know that a great and glorious champion is a better, a more satisfying, a more meaningful thing than a lucky or a clever winner. We’d certainly take any kind of England victory at the World Cup, but how impossibly wonderful it would be if England won by playing like the 1970 Brazilians. We admire defensive expertise, but we love flair, imagination, style.

Danny Blanchflower said: “The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.” He’s right — and then again he’s wrong. There have been winners who have done it without style, some of them even with a conscious rejection of any hint of swagger. All champions are equal. But some champions are more equal than others.

Second-hand boots ideal for first-rate cause

I’d like to offer grateful thanks to the people who responded to my request in this space last week to help a Muslim girls’ football team in rural Bihar, in India. Nine second-hand pairs of boots are now on their way. Some generous people offered to pay for new boots, but Lucy Mathen is organising the boot run as a small part of her work for Second Sight, the wonderful charity she runs. She explained that the £25 it takes to buy a pair of boots would be better spent on two cataract operations.

Second Sight now has a football czar, for future football-related projects: but the focus — note the mot juste here — is, as always, on giving eyesight to the blind. Check them out at secondsight.org.uk

Gayle blown off course by Bolt

How splendid it must be to be Usain Bolt. He seems quite literally to be a man who can do no wrong. Take the other weekend. Bolt, the fastest man that ever drew breath, played a charity game of cricket.

He bowled out Chris Gayle, the West Indies captain, with his medium pacers — how absurd to be using this term of Bolt — and also hit Gayle for six in a brief but splendid innings. Imagine batting with him: you wouldn’t want to be called for a quick single.

Painful truth is that choreography counts for little in gymnastics

I was saddened to see my colleague, Matthew Syed, dismiss gymnastics in these pages last Wednesday. Gymnastics is not sport, apparently. It’s just choreography. This will come as a surprise to Jessica Gil Ortiz, who made an error at the World Championships last weekend. In the course of attempting a double front somersault, she landed on her head.

It was a horrible fall, potentially neck-breaking, potentially brain-damaging. She was taken to hospital in a neck-brace, but thank God, suffered no long-term damage. This is not something that happens in such choreographed events as ballet. It’s rare that Odile is taken to hospital after a failure to bring off the 32 fouettés.

While we’re at it, Shona Morgan, of Australia, had to withdraw after damaging a knee in a collision with the vaulting horse, and Fabian Hambüchen, of Germany, withdrew after injuring a foot. Again, these things don’t happen at the ballet.

Syed is clearly suffering from Highlights Error. This is something that occurs when you see only the best bits of the best routines, and are then baffled by what seems to be the whims of the judges. In fact, judging strives for objectivity, and these days, the more difficult elements you perform, the more points you get — provided you don’t land on your head. Risk is what it’s all about.

A performance artist is mostly in control of his or her art. In sports such as ice-skating and gymnastics this level of control simply doesn’t exist. A big triple jump or an aerial manoeuvre on the beam always has the seeds of disaster. In a performance art, no one choreographs a move in which success is so uncertain.

It takes huge courage even to take part in gymnastics — it would be ungentlemanly to mention table tennis at this point — and it takes rather more than choreographic skill to win. The great performers in gymnastics know how to win like a champion: I have seen it happen, and it is one of the greatest things that sport — yes, that’s right, sport — has to offer.