Category: general sports

cycling, general sports

Cycling is the new golf?

Posted on by Beau Dure

From a participation point of view, anyway, according to this BBC Sport report.

More worryingly for golf in England, participation has fallen by about 180,000 in eight years. Cycling, on the other hand, gained about 270,000 pedal-pushers in the last year alone. This figure does not include people tootling to work or down to the local. Cycling waxes while golf wanes.

And a fun phrase here:

Golf and cycling overlap in terms of their socio-economic profiles. Both sports can be reasonably cheap, but they can also be eye-wateringly expensive. Golf has always had players with ‘all the gear and no idea’, but cycling also has its own somewhat pejoratively named demographic: ‘Mamils’, or ‘middle-aged men in Lycra’.

This is why I do all my cycling in regular old cargo shorts. I’m under no illusion that I need $200 in body-hugging clothes to add 0.1 mph to my blazing 8 mph top speed.

But speaking as someone who is equally incompetent in each sport, I can see a few pros and cons here.

In cycling’s favor:

  • Flexible scheduling. Go whenever you’re free from work.
  • Actual aerobic exercise.
  • No looking for a lost bike in the woods while cursing your slice.
  • Groups of three, five, two or one are perfectly acceptable. No waiting for a foursome.

In golf’s favor:

  • Much easier on your backside.
  • If you hit the wall, it’s in the literal sense, and you just pick up your ball and move on.
  • No dismounting on ridiculous uphills.
  • I actually find it less of a pride issue to get skunked on the golf course than I do to have 60-year-old dudes in lycra ripping past me.

Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m off to yoga.

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general sports, olympic sports

Monday Myriad: The good news is on the mat

Posted on by Beau Dure

So the Ryder Cup happened. And U.S. fighters posted a 3-5 record on the UFC card in England, with Matt Wiman’s shocking submission win against submission expert Paul Sass being the biggest bright spot.

And perhaps your favorite football teams lost on the gridiron, the pitch and the oval. (Yes, the Australian rules football Grand Final was apparently a classic.)

Here’s the good news for U.S. fans: Out of seven weight classes in the women’s wrestling World Championships, four took medals:

– Gold: Elena Pirozhkova, Adeline Gray

– Silver: Helen Maroulis

– Bronze: Alyssa Lampe

Other news from the weekend:

Swimming: Mixed-gender relays get mixed reaction.

Short-track speedskating: Five of the 10 skaters who qualified for the USA’s squad for the World Cup season are among the group that wants coach Jae Su Chun removed. (The Chicago Tribune has the complaint documents, plus Chun’s response.)

Triathlon: Olympians Sarah Groff and Gwen Jorgensen were in the top 10 of a World Triathlon Series event in Japan.

Figure skating: A couple of promising results for U.S. skaters in smaller events before the Grand Prix season opens.

Cricket: Alas, England only had one day to celebrate the Ryder Cup before a crushing defeat and elimination from the World Twenty20. Sri Lanka and West Indies have made the semifinals.

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general sports

Ryder Cup reality check: Shouldn’t USA adopt underdog mentality?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Here’s the fallacy of the Ryder Cup: Europeans generally expect to lose, and Americans generally expect to win.

Maybe it’s some variant of American exceptionalism, where we in the land of apple pie and gridiron football just can’t process any sport we don’t win. That’s changing in some sports such as soccer, where we’ll gladly watch leagues and tournaments in which Americans aren’t even participating.

But it’s not changing in golf. We think we should dominate this event. We’re the country that closes business deals on the golf course. We didn’t invent this sport — the Scots apparently did it either in a fit of boredom or a far-sighted move to boost tourism — but we turned it into a giant business.

Europe also paints itself as the underdogs, with its band of plucky souls facing the big-name Americans like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson … um … the dude who won The Masters …

So the narrative is always that of a determined group of good friends from around The Continent against a bunch of spoiled superstars, winning through sheer hard word, camaraderie and passion. It’s the kids from Hoosiers against the Miami Heat.

Maybe the Americans are spoiled superstars — if you’ve read John Feinstein’s A Good Walk Spoiled, you’ve met a group of people who relate to the middle class about as well as the Saturday Night Live caricature of Mitt Romney — but there’s a much simpler reason why the Europeans are winning.

They’re good.

See the World Golf Rankings. Four of the top five are from the country sometimes called the United Kingdom. The USA dominates the next tier, but it’s not a steep drop to the lowest-ranked European — #35 Nicolas Colsaerts, who’s also their lone Ryder Cup rookie. The USA has four Ryder Cup rookies.

You can’t look back at Ryder Cup history and say, “Well, we used to dominate.” Sure, back when it was the USA vs. Britain (with or without Ireland). Since the competition expanded to include the rest of Europe, bringing a succession of superb Spaniards into the fray, it’s been nearly even.

And so it can be and should be an engaging competition between two evenly matched sides. With a rooting interest in every pairing, the Ryder Cup draws crowd engagement that you won’t see a typical golf event. Perhaps this sport has an Olympic future after all, depending on the format. (Though, again, it’s ridiculous to add such a costly event to the already expensive summer Olympic program.)

But how much more interesting would it be for Americans if, instead of being the big favorites, we treated this event as Rocky vs. Drago?

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cycling, general sports

Weekend picks: Cycling, cricket and golf championships … of sorts

Posted on by Beau Dure

Three events this weekend are “championships” that are overshadowed by other events in their sports. One common thread: All three are condensed versions of sports that have longer, fairer tests of skill.

Cycling: We’ve already had three three-week tours (in men’s cycling, at least) as well as the Olympics. Pending future doping developments, we have a Tour de France champion and several Olympic medalists. So now we crown world champions?

A one-day race doesn’t tell you that much, anyway. Perhaps a breakaway gets lucky. Perhaps a sprinter sees a rival caught up in traffic and pounces to take the win. Maybe an uphill finish favors climbers. Over the course of a Grand Tour, many of these things even out, and the yellow and green jerseys are well-deserved.

But the good news: Cyclists still care about the world titles at stake, and that means we’ll see the best fields since the Olympics. Universal Sports

Cricket: Twenty20 cricket has caught on in the 10 years or so since its introduction, mostly because people can see all the action without investing an entire day or more. If you see big crowds at England’s county cricket four-day matches, the economy is either in amazing shape or in the toilet. Purists don’t like it because it takes away a lot of the game’s tactics. No room for defensive, game-prolonging shots here. Swing, swing away.

Maybe the top Test-playing country is the best team in the world, and maybe the World Cup (one-day, but 2.5 times longer than Twenty20) has more history. But this is fan-friendly. ESPN3

Golf: Here’s the event that needs a change. The Tour Championship takes place well after all the majors — this year, it’s also right before the Ryder Cup. And it’s all based on a yearlong points competition, anyway, so the tournament includes a lot of extraneous math.

Why not make it like combined sports at the Olympics (Nordic combined, modern pentathlon)? Convert the points to strokes. If you’re 500 points behind, you’re five strokes behind. Best score at the end of tournament is the season winner. Golf Channel/NBC

Also this weekend: Plenty of good soccer matchups, UFC 152 and a college water polo game you should watch just because Michael Hiestand was snarky about it.

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general sports, olympic sports

Rio 2016: Is there any way to make golf work in the Olympics?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Golf’s inclusion in the 2016 Olympics is one of the most puzzling IOC decisions in recent years. For one thing, that decision forced Rio to build a golf course, which has turned out to be a major problem.

The other problem is that the golf calendar is already super-saturated. Four majors, WGC events, Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup and the tour playoffs — that’s a lot to handle. (Granted, tennis has the same problem but is starting to get a foothold in the Games.)

So if you must have golf in the Games, why not make it interesting? My longtime work buddy Scott Michaux has a modest proposal: Have national teams play. It would still be a stroke-play format with individual gold/silver/bronze, but you’d also take scores and add them up, NCAA-style, to give team medals.

A similar proposal at CBSSports: Same thing, only in match play.

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general sports, soccer, sports culture

The effect of arguments

Posted on by Beau Dure

A message came in over Twitter from a private feed (I’ll identify him if he likes), asking a good question: “Why on earth do you engage with complete morons?”

This was in response to last night’s Twitter fight, in which I was arguing with two guys with a combined Twitter followership of less than 50 people about the incident at yesterday’s Masters in which Bergen Record columnist Tara Sullivan was denied entry into the locker room.

No one credible is jumping to say Sullivan shouldn’t have been in the locker room. Her male colleagues rallied to share quotes with her. Augusta National very quickly apologized and pinned the blame on a misinformed security guard.

Don’t confuse the Sullivan case with the question of whether the locker room should be open in the first place. That’s a legitimate question, raised recently by Toronto FC’s Aron Winter. The norm in other countries and many smaller-scale U.S. leagues (including Women’s Professional Soccer) is to keep the locker room closed but make athletes available for interviews in a timely fashion. Some sports handle it better than others, of course. But if the powers that be have decided that the most expedient way to handle interviews is to open the locker room, then barring women at the door is an impediment to their jobs.

As my buddy hoover_dam said: “Either you let everyone in or you do a mixed zone where you let nobody in. Get with it, ya jerks.”

Continue reading →

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cycling, general sports, olympic sports, rugby, soccer

Friday Myriad: Morning TV, friendly soccer

Posted on by Beau Dure

I have survived Double Deadline Day. I survived the sauna that passes for RFK Stadium’s press box. I survived the long Metro ride home, which ended with a ranting woman accusing me of using my Blackberry to transmit shortwave signals into her head to make her hair fall out. (Among other problems corroborating such an accusation: She had a very healthy head of hair.)

So what will I be watching now that all of this is done? There’s the British Open, which some will watch for Tiger drama but I enjoy for the spectacle of seeing pro golfers deal with bunkers that look like they’re hiding the Millennium Falcon. The Tour de France has a good two-man race between defending champ Alberto Contador and youngster Andy Schleck. And there’s soccer, soccer and more soccer.

FRIDAY

7 p.m.: Soccer, Manchester United-Celtic. Euro friendlies have always struck me as something I’d much rather watch in person than on TV, but plenty of people would disagree with me on that. Must be a considerable number disagreeing with me, as this game is taking up an ESPN network’s air time rather than filling summer time slots on FSC. ESPN2

9 p.m.: Boxing, Zab Judah-Jose Armando Santa Cruz. Unusual to see a name like Judah’s on the Friday Night Fights card. ESPN2

SATURDAY

3:35 a.m.: Rugby, Tri-Nations, New Zealand-South Africa. See Travis’ preview.

5 a.m.: Golf, British Open coverage starts with multiple angles/holes online, then on TV at 7 a.m. ESPN/ESPN3.com

8:30 a.m.: Cycling, Tour de France, Stage 13. Versus

Noon: Soccer, USA-Switzerland, U-20 Women’s World Cup. Fresh from a stunning 1-1 draw with Ghana, which would apparently frustrate the USA in every sport ever invented, the young Americans try to regroup against the Swiss. Good news for the Swiss: They have Atlanta Beat prodigy Ramona Bachmann. Bad news: They lost their opener 4-0 to South Korea. ESPNU/ESPN3.com

4 p.m.: Soccer, San Jose-Tottenham. Really? This friendly is on TV while Philly-Toronto (3:30), Columbus-New York (7:30), Dallas-Salt Lake (8:30) and Colorado-Kansas City (9) are on Direct Kick and online? OK, then. Columbus-New York won’t feature Thierry Henry’s debut, but the Red Bulls could leap over the Crew into first in the East.  ESPN/ESPN Deportes

7:30 p.m.: Soccer, USA-Sweden women. Tale of two halves when these teams met earlier in the week. The USA dominated the first half and finally got a goal. Early in the second, Amy Rodriguez hit the crossbar, and Sweden scored on a counter. It finished 1-1, with Sweden looking better the rest of the way. That’s not normal for a home game and speaks to a possible depth problem. Fox Soccer Channel

SUNDAY

6 a.m.: Golf, British Open. All feeds live at the same time. ESPN/ESPN3.com

7:30 a.m.: Cycling, Tour de France, Stage 14. Versus

3 p.m.: Soccer, Seattle-Celtic. Again, huge game if you’re within driving/train-riding distance of Qwest Field. Or if you have a fierce Celtic tie. ESPN/ESPN Deportes

5 p.m.: Soccer, WPS, Boston-Washington. The Breakers are making a charge with two straight wins, while the goals have dried up for the Freedom. FSC

7:30 p.m.: Soccer, MLS, D.C. United-Los Angeles. Both teams looking to rebound from a loss. There, the similarities end. It’s worst vs. first at RFK. (Technically, D.C. is a point ahead of Philly, but the Union have three games in hand.) FSC

MORE MYRIAD

  • World Series of Poker: Main Event will be whittled down to 27 players on Friday and then down to the “November Nine” on Saturday.
  • Full soccer listings at Soccer America, including SuperLiga.
  • Selected weekend listings at USA TODAY
  • ESPN3: U-20 Women’s World Cup, Australian Rules football, CFL, NBA Summer League and a ton of golf.
  • Tennis Channel: Nothing live this weekend.
  • Universal Sports: Ironman, some Tour simulcasts and AVP Hermosa Beach.
  • More Olympic sports: U.S. championships in boxing and mountain bike.
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cycling, general sports, mind games, mma, olympic sports, soccer, tennis, track and field, winter sports

Monday Myriad: Sparkling play in WPS, short-sighted decision in Italy

Posted on by Beau Dure

We’re starting with WPS for a highlight that probably didn’t make SportsCenter (correct me if it did) but should have. It’s Abby Wambach’s back-heel, throwing off three defenders and setting up the Washington Freedom’s first goal against the run of play as the Atlanta Beat once again looked wonderful but couldn’t finish. If you want to skip ahead to it, go to the 1:17 mark:

Wambach’s header wasn’t bad, either, which is why she gets my Player of the Week vote ahead of Marta. Granted, if I could see Marta’s video highlights, that would help.

The full week (home teams first):

  • Atlanta 0, Washington 2: The Beat might have played the best two games ever without scoring, outshooting the Freedom 21-10.
  • Boston 1, Bay Area 2: Marta has both goals for the league leaders.
  • St. Louis 2, New Jersey 2: Apologies to Laura Kalmari, who scored twice for Sky Blue and won’t win Player of the Week ahead of the bigger names.
  • Chicago 0, Philadelphia 1: Not a very good week for home teams, was it?

GLOBAL SOCCER

Several trophies were on the line, but the decisive games made news for reasons beyond the results.

  • Spain: Barcelona looked as good as ever in beating Valladolid 4-0 to finish the La Liga season with a record 99 points — 31 wins, 6 draws, 1 loss — a season that ranks with Arsenal’s unbeaten Premier League run (2003-04) as one of the best ever in a top European league. The only team to beat Barca was erratic Europa League champion Atletico Madrid. Runner-up Real Madrid lost twice to Barca and still somehow kept pace until the very end, drawing 1-1 with Malaga in a result that kept the home team in La Liga next year at Valladolid’s expense.
  • Italy: Inter Milan made their fans sweat a little more, waiting until the second half to score at Siena and hold on for a 1-0 win that clinched the Serie A title by two points over Roma, which won 2-0 at Chievo.
  • Italy/USA: American defender Oguchi Onyewu, who missed much of the season after an injury in World Cup qualifying, worked out a one-year contract extension with third-place AC Milan by offering to play for free in 2012-13. The club have agreed, which is appalling. What happens to the next guy who gets hurt playing in a World Cup qualifier? How much pressure will be on that player to do what Onyewu did? (BBC)
  • FA Cup: Premier League champion Chelsea beat last-place Portsmouth, which played the season under the cloud of financial problems, but the underdogs managed to throw away much of their charm when Kevin-Prince Boateng’s brutal foul on Michael Ballack knocked the German cornerstone out of the World Cup. Boateng, coincidentally, has shifted nationality from Germany to Ghana and may play against Germany — and his half-brother, Jerome Boateng — in the World Cup. Perhaps it was instant karma that Boateng had a penalty kick saved, spoiling Portsmouth’s chance to take an improbable lead. (BBC)
  • German Cup: Bayern Munich 4, Werder Bremen 0. Saturday’s Champions League final (Bayern-Inter, 2:45 p.m. ET, Fox) will feature two teams going for a triple of league, cup and European trophies.
  • England: Congratulations to Oxford United, which returns to League football with an emphatic Conference final win. (BBC)
  • Mexico: Jose Francisco Torres will be available for the U.S. camp without a club-vs.-country battle, as his Pachuca side fell on 3-2 aggregate to Toluca. Santos followed up a 3-3 draw at Morelia by winning the second leg 7-1. What is this — the NASL? Third seed Toluca and fifth seed Santos will be the clubs playing in the Mexican final and lining up to crush MLS teams in next season’s CONCACAF Champions League.
  • CONCACAF (women’s): It’s a miracle that Haiti is able to field a team at all after the earthquake. They’re doing more than competing — they’ve advanced to the final round of Gold Cup qualifying. (All White Kit)

MMA

  • Strikeforce: Alistair Overeem demolished Brett Rogers to retain his heavyweight championship, saving Strikeforce from the PR dilemma of having their heavyweight champion already beaten by Fedor Emelianenko. All eyes now turn to an Overeem-Fedor matchup, assuming Fedor dispenses with Fabricio Werdum this summer. Also, Antonio Silva pushed Andrei Arlovski farther down the heavyweight ladder. (MMA Fighting Stances)
  • Shine Fights: Boxer Ricardo Mayorga was all set to face veteran Din Thomas in Fayetteville, N.C. Then a Florida judge granted boxing promoter Don King an injunction against Mayorga’s participation. After an afternoon Twitter flurry in which the card seemed to be going on with or without the main event, the North Carolina commission scrapped the whole card, though the co-main event of Murilo Rua vs. David Heath isn’t a bad matchup at all for a smaller promotion. King was asked to present a $1 million cash bond, which he did in two duffel bags. (Yahoo!)
  • Washington Combat: Sort of a senior-circuit main event, though Pedro Rizzo has two wins over Jeff Monson in recent years and was on Affliction’s much-hyped debut card against Josh Barnett. His opponent, Gary Goodridge, lost to Paul Buentello on the same Affliction card and lost to solid fighters Overeem and Gegard Mousasi since then. Bloody Elbow’s Luke Thomas says it’s time for Goodridge to hang ’em up. (Washington Post)

CYCLING

  • Giro d’Italia: Through nine stages, the leader is Alexandre Vinokourov, making his first big run since being tossed out of the 2007 Tour de France for flunking a doping test. Cadel Evans is 72 seconds back. American Tyler Farrar leads in points and has the red jersey, the equivalent of the Tour’s green.
  • Tour of California: Mark Cavendish, who won last year’s sprint title while Levi Leipheimer won the overall, won Sunday’s first stage of the eight-stage race. The big climbs are Tuesday and Friday.

TENNIS

  • Madrid Masters (men): After some atypical struggles, Roger Federer is back to normal, reaching the final and then, because it’s on clay, losing to Rafael Nadal. (AP)
  • Madrid Masters (women): Venus Williams reached the final and climbed to No. 2 in the rankings, her best since 2003. She lost in the final, though, to unseeded Aravane Rezai. Maybe she’ll be seeded next year.

OLYMPIC SPORTS

  • Swimming: Universal Sports has some video from the Charlotte UltraSwim, including Michael Phelps cruising in the 200 IM. Dancing with the Stars contestant Natalie Coughlin also is back in the pool. (Universal Sports)
  • Track, field and whatever this is: Tyson Gay set a “world best” (it’s not officially a world record because it’s not officially an official event) of 19.41 seconds in Manchester. Makes you wonder how Usain Bolt can run a 19.19 around a curve.
  • Running: Remember the USA TODAY profile on Amy Palmiero-Winters, the amputee who qualified for the 24-hour running world championships? She finished a very respectable 19th, coming just short of 200 kilometers. Scott Jurek covered 266.677k for a silver medal as the U.S. men placed third. Anna Piskorka (10th, 214.417k) was the top U.S. woman as the women’s team finished fourth. (USA Track and Field)

CHESS

Hikaru Nakamura and Gata Kamsky drew in their first meeting at the U.S. Chess Championships on Sunday, likely keeping both of them on track to play again in the “Final Four” in this uniquely formatted tournament. Irina Krush killed my fantasy team by losing out of what seemed to be a winning position against Varuzhan Akobian in a 113-move thriller. (U.S. Chess Federation)

INTRIGUING READS

  • Golf and tennis: One sport’s U.S. federation is taking all the right steps to get kids interested and keep them playing. The other is scratching its head as players appear to be abandoning the sport, and the solutions may be quite costly. (Wall Street Journal).
  • Football: Flag football — eventual answer to gender-equity questions? Convenient dodge of gender-equity questions? Waste of time? Great activity? Many opinions here. (New York Times)
  • Skiing/long-running TV shows: Lindsey Vonn was thrilled to do a guest spot on Law & Order. Not so thrilled to hear this is the final season. She’s organizing a group to save the show. (Yahoo! – Fourth-Place Medal)
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