sport

two sport stories from the bbc.

i love basketball, and i defy anyone to watch mj in action and not be in awe.

it is one of the few sports where your dominance in the game more often than not translates to a win. there is an ebb and flow with the game that is wonderful to watch. i have sat transfixed at games cheering my team on to triumph or supporting them in defeat. i just love the game.

many have argued that sports and politics are linked. think the sporting ban against south africa, think the americans walking out of the moscow olympics, think the black power salute at the olympics, think the principled stand we took against zimbabwe over the cricket (ok that one is a lie…)
in reality sport, like politics, is about money. no longer is the taking part enough what counts is the winning and the bank balance.

anyway it is nice to see that even the americans can extend the hand of friendship across the sporting globe and have a player in the iranian basketball league. far be it from me to say it’s because he is not good enough to get into any of the american leagues….

i loved the typical english understatement in this “he is a staggering 217cm (7ft 2in) tall - a giant by iranian standards.” because as you know round here we would be calling him titch! (actually in the world of the sporting nickname that is exactly what the sun newspaper would end up calling him…)

go here for it


the second one was about gym culture. now i used to like to go to the gym, i knew i was never going to be a lithe fit muscular chap, but i hoped i would put some tone on the flab, i have come to love the flab and have forgotten the desire to be a six pack phenom (unless it was a six pack of doughnuts!)

when i do go to the gym i am not the most fashion conscious of people. never saw the point of it especially as soon i was into the work out i would be pumping out sweat like i had sprung a leak. basically i am a sweat monster and a slob to boot.
so you can appreciate i feel sympathy for this bloke who had been told to wear a t-shirt and not a vest because he had hairy armpits and his sweat might damage the equipment.
there are only two things you can make of this story:
one he has gone to a girl’s gym because we know they only glow.
two this is so typical of new labour, yet another attack on personal liberty and freedoms!

other recent sports stories i nearly wrote about: the shocking revelation that humans may have reached the end as far as sporting records are concerned. what stunned me with this was that anyone thought that records could keep be bettered! i do recall a conversation where someone had suggested that all world records be scrapped and that they were started again. while a totally dumb idea, what i liked was the chance that you could scrap them and then quickly run a race and become a world record holder.
think of all the guinness book of records that would sell.

the other story was the bloke who is trying to get into women’s only golf tournaments, after the young american female golfer had been accepted into the masters’ tournament recently.
on a theoretical level i can see his point: equality has to go both ways (an argument also being made by a male nurse in a recent work tribunal) but on a practical level why bother – how are you going to face your mates on the tour when you have to come back and say you didn’t win….
he would have been better off arguing that there should be mixed events, but then he wasn’t after justice, he just wanted publicity.