Sport

This week, Chicago has been hosting Gay Games VII. It’s been fun to have all the various high quality sports competitions in town. Of course, as a spectator, there is not much difference when you watch the competitions at these events vs others since most sports tend to be divided by gender. However, couples sports (like figure skating or dancing) may look a bit different. But actually, only if you focus in on the gender aspect.

It should not be much surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention that I opted to go see the Dance Sports event. I only made it to the A-level competition of the men’s Latin dances and the women’s 10-dance, but this was just as well since this is the highest level under international rules. It was superb.

Anecdotally, my impression has been that most people in Chicagoland have either been excited about the Gay Games in town or haven’t paid much attention. But of course there is the occasional hostile approach. You really do have to wonder why people can’t just let others be as you’re standing there in the ballroom with all the energy and enthusiasm from both the crowd and the participants. Better yet, imagine if peope realized that they could even get something out of these events themselves, like enjoying the hard work of some very talented people.

The surprise of the event for me was to find out that the World Champion couple for men’s Latin hales from Hungary. In the Gay Games this week they placed third. I found out from them that Budapest will be hosting this year’s Same Sex Dance Competition . This made me wonder how the competition (and related associations and studios) got that particular name. Is use of the term “gay” exclusionary? Is it less politically charged to say “same sex”? Is the idea that not everyone who participates is gay? Anyone know the history of this? Apologies if I’m missing something obvious.

A lot of people seem to be extremely upset with Zidane for doing what he did with Materazzi. But wouldn’t we at least want to know a little bit about the verbal exchange? I guess the idea is that no matter what Materazzi said, the physical response was not warranted. Maybe. The whole thing reminds me of the incident at the end of the movie Bend it Like Beckham.

On a related note, I always wonder what language players speak when addressing each other in such situations.

From the “FT”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6129251e-0de3-11db-a385-0000779e2340.html yesterday.

bq. Just before or after Sunday’s Italy-France final in Berlin, a sports tribunal in Rome is expected to decide whether four leading Italian clubs systematically influenced referees. A lawyer for Juventus, Italy’s most popular club, says a punitive relegation to the second division would be “acceptable”. … Silvio Berlusconi became another divisive force. In 1994 he became prime minister with a party called Forza Italia (Go Italy), his attempt to borrow the team’s aura. The fact that Mr Berlusconi was voted out of office in April makes it easier for some leftwingers to support Italy on Sunday. If he is unlucky, his club, AC Milan, will be relegated by the tribunal on the day his rival Romano Prodi, the prime minister, may see Italy crowned world champions in Berlin.

Which reminds me that Scott McLemee emailed me an “article”:http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/1092553.php a while back where Toni Negri declares that he’s an AC Milan fan. Whoda thunk it?

Well here we are, and I might as well start things off. I’ll be backing Italy. The French team have played some nice football, but France as a nation were largely indifferent to the competition until their team got within sight of the trophy. The Italians, on the other hand, care deeply. My Italian friends will be ecstatic or suicidal; my French ones will either give a smile of contentment or a shrug of resignation.

Kieran has been complaining about mixed metaphors, but at least the mixer avoids directly contradicting themselves. Which is perhaps more than can be said for Paul Kelso writing in the Guardian blog.

bq. Few would bet with confidence against Scolari coaxing another odds-defying performance from his side.

I’m not as confident as several of the commentators here that prices in betting markets are a good guide to the truth, but even I think they are a decent guide as to what people will bet, and even bet with confidence, on.

Consider this a France v Portugal open thread. Everyone else I know is cheering for France, with good reason, but I still feel a little bad for the Portugese fans after they missed what must have seemed like a golden opportunity to win Euro 2004. So I’m probably going to feel bad for whoever loses, which is always a great way to watch a football game.

Just drawing in toward half time. Good game so far. Germany look good. (The Referee has done very well, too.) I hope Germany edge it in regulation.

_Update_: 72nd minute. Very funny incident w/the Italian No. 16, who fell down writhing with the agonies unto death. The Ref ran back to him, clearly said something like “Get up you fucker or I’ll book you,” and the guy jumped up and ran off double-quick.

_Update_: Well, that was a dramatic last two minutes. Fair dues to the Italians.

Thomas Scanlon in What We Owe to Each Other:

bq. Suppose that Jones has suffered an accident in the transmitter room of a television station. Electrical equipment has fallen on his arm, and we cannot rescue him without turning off the transmitter for fifteen minutes. A World Cup match is in progress, watched by many people, and it will not be over for an hour. Jones’s injury will not get any worse if we wait, but his hand has been mashed and he is receiving extremely painful shocks. Should we rescue him now or wait until the match is over? (p. 235).

Hmm. I can see that some members of the Harvard philosophy department might act now, but as an appeal to commonly-held moral convictions, I think this one fails. (h/t Martin O’N and a few others.)

It was interesting to watch England’s defeat in a bar in Dublin. The locals were plainly pleased with the result, and so were — on the whole — RTE’s studio panel. But I rather got the impression that the anti-Englishness was more for form and tradition’s sake than based in any deep feelings of hostility. Contrast that with the Scots. I just wouldn’t have felt comfortable (or safe) to cheer England on in Glasgow.

I had a chat with an Estonian philosopher on the subject, which revealed a couple of interesting data points. First, that Estonians don’t feel anything like the degree of sporting antagonism to the Russians that you’d expect (she found the Scottish feeling about the English mystifying). Second, she was rather hoping that the Germans would do well. I’d hypothesized the day before that no-one except the Germans themselves would be supporting their team (with the possible exception of Austrians and the odd relic of a Nietzschean colony in Paraguay). It seems I was wrong: Estonians will happily cheer for the Germans. (The English, on the other hand, backed Argentina against Germany to the last, despite a recentish war and some notable grudge matches between England and Argentina.)

There are clearly some patterns out there reminiscent of those typical of the Eurovision song contest. (Maybe a Finnish team composed of axe-wielding lunatics in latex masks would get widely supported.) So which other countries do your compatriots support? And which do they have an “anyone but X” policy towards?

So, David Beckham has quit as England captain. The only thing that has made me ashamed to be English during this World Cup has been the astonishing quantity of bile spat out by the professional Beckham-haters of the English press, notwithstanding the plain fact that England wouldn’t even have been playing last night without the goals he made and scored. It is hard to resist a diagnosis of sheer vicious envy, on the part of journalists who never have been, and never will be, a tiny fraction as talented or as good-looking as the erstwhile English captain. Do they really imagine that a certain low cunning with words makes them in any way superior to such a gifted athlete, such a fine anti-macho role model for 21st-century youth? Can it be any coincidence that Beckham shares his initials with another strong candidate for Greatest Living Englishman, David Bowie? I think not. Sincerely, let us salute him.

Hard one to call. Teams closely matched. Game of two halves.

On present form it’d be hard to justify a bet against Argentina, but Germany have home advantage and are … well … Germany.

I should get a job as a pundit or something. Anyway, have at it.

_Update_: Penalties.

_Update_: Looks like “Kai was right.”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/29/germany-vs-argentina-open-thread/#comment-162090

_Update_: Argh. Sick as a parrot. Topic for discussion: How can the country which gave the world Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci, Caravaggio, etc, produce such a supremely cynical, grind-it-out national football team?

_Update_: This is now the Italy vs Australia thread. Come on Australia!

Because the world cries out: WTF?? I count _fourteen_ yellow cards so far. This is looking pretty good for England.

The English pundits are split between those who think the main enemy is Sven-Goran Eriksson and those who think it is the weather. Ecuador not so much. Counting references to the “searing heat” and “fierce humidity” could make for a drinking game of some kind. On the “BBC page”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2006/4991536.stm for the game we see the following already, an hour before kickoff:

bq. “”It can’t be ruled out that Sunday in Stuttgart could be the hottest day of the World Cup – it’s going to be a scorcher,” said ARD television weatherman Joerg Kachelmann. … captain David Beckham citing the heat as one of the factors behind their poor second-half performance … worrying news for England, with temperatures in Stuttgart potentially climbing to 35C during the game. … The weather forecast is proving worryingly accurate. … The sun is beating down relentlessly as the temperatures soar. … It’s unbelievably hot in Stuttgart as England fans arrive in their droves. … They have already been forced to endure fierce heat with the temperature already 32C and expected to get hotter by kick-off time. … *A glimmer of hope for England*: a few patches of cloud – *cirrocumulus if I’m not mistaken* – have suddenly appeared. England will pray they grow in number, and quickly.”

Cirrocumulus to the rescue! Sven, in fairness, isn’t making that excuse: “With concerns mounting over the impact the climbing temperatures could have on England’s prospects, coach Sven-Goran Erikson insists his side will not be preoccupied by the weather.” None of the pundits seem to have bothered to check how hot it gets in Ecuador. Obviously, pretty hot in places (the coast) seeing as its at the equator. But as every fule kno lots of Ecudaor is high up in the mountains. According to “this page”:http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/ecuador/fahrenheit/quito.htm (and also “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito) the climate in Quito is pleasant, with high temperatures getting up to a not-very-scorching average maximum of 70F/19C. So I imagine the Ecuadorean counterpart to Gary Lineker is also saying “Phew, what a scorcher!”

I think the Referee in today’s Australia vs Croatia match, England’s Graham Poll, deserves his own thread. Witness the rugby-tackle by Simunic on Mark Viduka that “didn’t merit a penalty”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBqakmSOZw, for instance. Or the masterful way he forgot he had already booked Simunic when awarding him “his second yellow card”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tbVirxgR7o. Nothing like expert officiating from the home of the game. In the second clip, watch Simunic give the ref some backchat and then begin to walk toward the locker room. He then glances behind him and realizes that Poll has forgotten to send him off. So he got to stay on the field to collect a rare third yellow, and then be sent off _after_ the final whistle.