By all accounts not any sort of couch potato, Ogged is “understandably distressed”:http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.html#006859 to look at the age-group records for his chosen event, the 50 meters freestyle, and find that he has to go all the way up to the 75-79 age group to find a time he would stand a chance of beating.
I have the related experience of having family members who are irritatingly athletic. For instance, my brother was on the Irish cross-country team and won a bunch of stuff in college. My sister-in-law ran the Chicago marathon in 2004 — her first — and finished seventeenth. Worst of all, two years before I was even born my uncle won a marathon in “Kaduna”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaduna in a time of 2:15:03, then the fastest time ever run in Africa, and now more than thirty five years later still one of the the 20 fastest marathons ever run by any Irishman. (And also, “to my knowledge,”:http://www.arrs.net/AC_Mara.htm still the fastest marathon ever run in Nigeria.)
Elite athletes are different from you and me, and this is true even when, as in my case, you share a significant percentage of their genes. My sister-in-law once told me of the experience — common amongst top women athletes — of being out for a run and getting held up at a stop light. Some regular semi-fit guy out for his evening jog runs up alongside, and glances over. The light changes, and the guy takes off at an unsustainable speed because, obviously, it would be a violation of natural law for a woman to be able to run faster than a guy. Having gone through this one too many times, my sister-in-law adopted the strategy of just tucking in behind the guy and waiting to see what would happen. After a short while he realizes she’s behind him. He tries to go faster. He glances behind. She’s still there. A very short while later the guy, now beginning to boil in a self-made vat of lactic acid, starts making random turns down streets in a desperate effort to shake his pursuer. It doesn’t work. Eventually the guy grinds to a halt, she breezes by, he’s left gasping for air and maybe reflecting on his views on gender.
Well, “here we go”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/6669039.stm . An open thread for pre-match speculation and post-match analysis. Me, I’m feeling confident. Milan are a great side, but they’ve been doing all the talking and I think their desire to avenge 2005 will work against them. They were terrific against Man U, but profited from suicidal defending, and great performances are often followed by average ones. Hold on tight.
Among the many reasons to love the late Pierre Bourdieu, quite apart from the range and quality of his scholarly work, is the fact that he was willing to appear in the 1977 film <i>Slap Shot</i> as the character of Moe Wanchuk. He wrote about the experience many years later in <a href=”http://www.homme-moderne.org/raisonsdagir-editions/catalog/bourdieu/contref.html”><i>Contre-feux</i></a>, but most English-speaking readers remain completely unaware of Bourdieu’s brief career as a Charlestown Chief. I mean, talk about putting your cultural capital at risk:
“Hogging” is a very special kind of blogging, in which I blather on about hockey at great length. How great? Well, let’s find out — but let’s keep it below the fold, out of consideration for the feelings of people who couldn’t care less: [click to continue…]
OK, we’ve worked out a hockey playoff format. I’m going to cover the Eastern Conference, and the redoubtable Scott Lemieux of <a href=”http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/”>LGM</a> will provide your guide to the Western. Perhaps we’ll even include some vlogs of ourselves watching the games and offering commentary with a couple of large glasses of red wine! That sounds like good fun. I haven’t got my predictions ready just yet, because I’m not done with the best-of-777 coin-tosses I traditionally use for the first round of the playoffs. I’ll have those ready within the next 24 hours or so.
But when <a href=”http://scores.espn.go.com/nhl/recap?gameId=270408011″>the Islanders scrambled into the playoffs over the weekend</a> by sneaking a few pucks past the Devils’ little-known backup goaltender while everyone else was watching the Masters (how little-known is Scott Clemmensen? Apparently he got an email after the game from his parents, who were relieved to know of his whereabouts and thrilled to learn that he was still on the Devils roster), it occurred to me that I might do well, this year, to apply to the NHL playoffs the nearly-flawless prognosticatin’ method I have used in the past for the annual Grand Championship of American Foot-Ball, namely, <a href=”http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/mister_answer_man_super_bowl_edition/”>predicting the outcome of the contest by determining which team is wearing the more masculine jersey</a>.
That’s when I realized something that has probably been obvious to many of you, even though (solicitous of my feelings as you are) you have refrained from telling me all these years: NHL logos suck. Really bad. Almost every one of them sucks, and collectively they suck in many different ways.
Not interested in football, but still want to get into the Superbowl spirit? Check out Jeremy’s “The Boy Detective” dance choreographed for the occasion. Try at your own risk.
Requisite addendum from a Chicagolander: Go Bears!
It is a good long time since we had a sporting thread — and especially one that is utterly incomprehensible to most of our American readers. Today marks “the beginning of the Six Nations”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/fixtures/4777061.stm , and Ireland seem to be everyone’s nailed-on favourites. But I reckon there could be some surprises. Brian Ashton, the new England coach, will play a different kind of game to his predecessor, Wilkinson and Farrell may come good, and Leicester (with a good chunk of the England team) recently beat Munster (with much of the Irish one) in the Heineken Cup. So I’m backing England to do better than expected (and maybe win, pipping Ireland), for the French to be flakey and unpredictable but finish third, and Wales to come in fourth. As for last place, I think Italy might just do it this time and edge out Scotland, maybe by getting a home win against Wales. (The Merseyside derby is today too, so it will be a long stretch in front of the telly.)
I have little interest in cricket, but — like snooker — it is enjoyable to watch because of its psychological element: you get to see grown men crushed psychologically without any violation of the Geneva Conventions. Though at the moment Australia are pushing it pretty close to a Human Rights Violation with England. Shane Warne got 71, this from the second-to-last man in the batting lineup. In the process he said to Paul Collingwood, “You got an MBE, right? For scoring seven at the Oval?” And now England are in. Over to Tom Fordyce and the BBC online commentary:
*1433: Eng 0-0* Right England – let’s see what you can do after that onslaught. …
*1439: Eng 4-0* McGrath opens the Aussie bowling for the last ever time in a Test. Writing those words has provided me with a small crumb of comfort. He beats Cook twice outside off, but the Essex tyro then cuts him tastily for four.
*1439: WICKET – Cook ct Gilchrist b Lee 4, Eng 4-1.* Oh no…
The clock has hit zero, and as soon as the ball is dead, the game is over. Gloucester, the unbeaten league leaders, are one point ahead thanks to a late penalty. Bristol, having led for most of the match, now face defeat. But they don’t panic, they go through the phases in the driving wind and torrential rain, umpteen times without a knock-on, edging closer to the line. Jason Strange, Bristol’s replacement fly-half waits in the pocket. The ball comes back to him. Everyone knows what will happen next. The Gloucester forwards charge him down, but the kick is away and the ball sails between the posts. The stadium erupts as nine thousand voices chant Bristol! Bristol! and eighteen thousand arms are raised aloft. Over the tannoy comes the sound of the Spencer Davis Group. Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Dah! Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Dah! So glad you made it! So glad you made it! “Top of the league”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,377-2471412,00.html.
(Bristol, recently bankrupt and in the lower divisions, came up for last season and survived, just. The bookies had us as nailed on favourites for relegation. But here we are, top of the league, with Wasps, Sale, Bath and now Gloucester among the vanquished. It probably won’t last, but these are moments to remember always, and that was one of the best finishes to a sporting event that I’ve ever experienced.)
If you Google for “greatest rivalry in sports”:http://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+greatest+rivalry+in+sports%22&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&start=0&sa=N today you’ll get a lot of references to the Ohio State-Michigan series (largely because of last week’s game) several references to Red Sox-Yankees, and a few other college pairings. From a global perspective, these all look faintly ridiculous. Does any of these rivalries really compare to Real Madrid-Barcelona for history, or Celtic-Rangers for intensity?
It’s probably futile to say which of these is *the* greatest. But I think on the list should be the series “that starts in a few hours”:http://usa.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/2006-07/ENG_IN_AUS/. [click to continue…]
Ferenc Puskás, whose Hungarian team thrashed England at Wembley in 1953 with tactics that anticipated “total football”, and who is widely considered to have been one of the great talents of all time, has died. Obits and articles: “Brian Glanville in the Guardian”:http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1950662,00.html, “Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian”:http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/11/17/best_beckenbauer_platini_zidan.html, “Soccernet”:http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=392277&cc=5739, “Football365”:http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8750_1694091,00.html, “Simon Barnes in the Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27-2458213,00.html, “Times obituary”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27-2458262,00.html .
Though you can sometimes get the same effect by neurotically pressing “refresh” on Soccernet or similar, I know all about “this phenomenon”:http://www.wsc.co.uk/articles/229cfax.html :
bq. Everyone who watches football on Ceefax will have a favourite text moment, even if it’s just the thrill of seeing the screen refresh to reveal, with great dramatic timing, that in fact it’s still 0-0 and you’re staring intently at a black rectangle with some numbers on it. Occasionally I’ve watched the last 20 minutes of a cup tie, or sat through a penalty shoot-out. Sad, perhaps, but surprisingly engrossing. It’s not just football, either. With my four housemates I watched the last 200 runs of Brian Lara’s record-breaking 501 not out for Warwickshire in 1994 on Ceefax. And it was great.
Apparently, Ceefax and Teletext will be phased out from 2008. Life will not be the same.
It’s almost become a ritual; antipodean team plays high-contact sport against a northern team, takes out the best player in a tackle that might have killed him, creams northern team. In a manner reminiscent of the infamous Umaga/Meleamu spear tackle on Brian O’Driscoll during last year’s Lions tour, the Australian team playing the hybrid International Rules (Aussie/Gaelic football) are shrugging off an excessively violent tackle that put the future of the game in jeopardy.
On paper, the hybrid game is as euphemistically ‘physical’ as rugby, but in practice it’s gotten much more violent in the past few years. Last night’s tackle on Graham Geraghty was vicious by any standard, and makes me wonder; is there really a future in our lot continuing to play these games against sides that are bigger and demonstrably more brutal? I enjoy watching the tri nations rugby (Australia / New Zealand / South Africa) as much as the next person, but there’s no way I’d ever want someone I cared about to play against them.
