etagloh’s profile

There was some fun (albeit slightly stalkerish) pool video of him at his daughter's match, and giving some touchline coaching on good kicking form. (He learned to play the proper way -- kids' kickabouts on the streets in Indonesia -- rather than being ferried to well-tended pitches in a minivan.)

Let's just make sure that Big Ron isn't around on that first UK visit as prez, shall we?

posted at 02:52 PM on November 12

I've been to sporting events in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, and Germany. Anthems were played in every stadium. People respected the songs, even when it was the US anthem being played.

International competitions? Well, that's clearly anthem territory. School competitions? Not so much. And since you've never visited Britain: they don't have 'God Save The Queen' and flaggery and people marching around in uniform when two under-16 first XIs play football. Or at Premier League matches, for that matter.

Americans do the flag-and-anthem stuff an awful lot for sporting events, regardless of how important they are. Really. This doesn't make Howard any less of a silly gobshite. It does mean, though, that you're arguing apples and oranges: when the French and South African anthems get played at sporting events, it signifies that they are considered of national importance.

(Oh, and on public radio in Australia, the two comedians who do the play-by-play for the three-game State of Origin rugby series and the Aussie Rules final replace the singing of 'Advance Australia Fair' with 'I Thank You' by Lionel Rose.)

posted at 11:54 PM on September 24

I enjoy seeing the Yanks get humiliated at the Ryder Cup as much as... well, anyone who's not American. But I'm glad they won this one, and won it in the way they did. They were the better team, the people who came through weren't necessarily the big names -- as dyams said, the Americans won it the way the European team won it after so many barren years. People on the other side of the pond whining about Faldo are out of line too.

So, it's competitive again, and that's all good. See you all for an arse-kicking in two years' time.

posted at 11:21 PM on September 24

In March, you're going to get Man Utd (sponsor: AIG, owned by US govt) visiting Newcastle Utd (sponsor: Northern Rock, owned by British govt).

On Saturday, it was Newcastle playing West Ham, whose sponsor went tits-up at the start of the month, requiring the shirt logo to be replaced with an iron-on patch of the squad number.

posted at 02:31 PM on September 22

Americans have it easy in terms of the amount of nationalistic behaviors that are expected.

Compared to military dictatorships? Well, that's nice. Perhaps you need to travel to a wider range of countries, because the US retains some really odd vestigial characteristics where military parades and flag-worship are passed off as 'How We're So Free'. Nah, not buying that.

Look, I do think that Howard (D.) has fuck-all to whine about here other than his own personal annoyance, born of ignorance, and he's paid a lot of money to keep that to himself. But I also think that some aspects of Tommie Smith's line still hold: "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro."

posted at 12:16 PM on September 18

Mea wrong-Howard culpa. I'd heard the story, and my brain farted.

posted at 11:39 AM on September 18

Drood: stop being a tool. Big up Jamaica.

holden: it's apples and oranges. You can't choose to run a 9.63 versus a 9.62 -- or throw the javelin or discus 20cm less far -- in the same way you can raise the bar on the high jump or pole vault a centimetre at a time. And while Grand Prix meets reward world records, they give their biggest rewards to multiple winners.

Bolt's rationale after the 100m was simple enough: the chance to break a world record happens every time he runs that distance. The chance to win a gold medal at a particular Olympic Games happens once. His explanation after the 200m was different: Michael Johnson was in the house, and Bolt didn't think he could challenge that mark in another setting.

Unlike most people in the US, I watched that 100m as it happened, thanks to Means Not Approved By NBC. It was electrifying: the burst that put him ahead of the field in about two seconds was hard to believe, and no-one in that stadium -- I had a friend in there who sent me a txt soon after -- was complaining. And I'm with Hal I in thinking that that acceleration surprised Bolt too.

posted at 03:36 AM on September 18

Yet a black athlete says something that puts down african americans in general by saying they do not need to respect the flag, the country, the government or the soldiers that fought for his rights for free speech.

urall? That statement says a lot more about you than it does Dwight Howard. And not in a particularly impressive way either.

Anyway. Onto Drood.

Do I think that the pageantry is a bit silly when I've been to, say, a high school americanfootball game? Yeah. Do I think the punctuation of public events with patriotic and militaristic stuff is creepy? Yeah. (The comment from urallcloolis makes me wince.) But so is morris dancing.

If you're an American professional sportsperson in the major league sports, I wouldn't blame you for being fucking sick of the national anthem. Imagine being a baseball player, and having to show due respect every night for half the year as some random throat-warbler murders that repurposed drinking song.

Still, one thing you get paid yer money for is to deal with it, and Howard needs a good bit of continuing education. If Mark Cuban's smart, he calls up Tommie Smith, who can explain why 2008 is not 1968.

[Ufez: confirm and deny... confirm and deny...]

posted at 03:20 AM on September 18

This is all just part of the pre-game fun, as was the whole 'sandwich incident' today.

posted at 02:54 AM on September 18

Just to reiterate the point about politics: if the rumours are right about Armstrong riding for Astana and doing Paris-Nice and the Dauphin, then my thinking's simple: ASO really would like to keep Astana out of the Tour in 2009, and Patrice Clerc will have trouble doing so if Armstrong's on the squad.

posted at 10:37 AM on September 10

The politics of this are what's interesting: Astana was left out of the TdF this year, as a knock-on from the 2007 doping scandals. This is insurance against ASO next year.

My guess is that Armstrong's doing this partly as a favour to Bruyneel, but also because he's bored. And my prediction is that the other teams will try and ride him into the road. This year felt like the arrival of a new generation of riders, and there'll be a lot of people wanting his scalp.

posted at 06:33 PM on September 09

Bela Karolyi had to be calmed down by Bob Costas, presumably because he knows how the system works from the inside. For what it's worth, he thinks the age limit is stupid, and that the real problem is that the US can't put 14-year-olds on the Olympic stage.

My attitude is that the women's competition needs changing to include something approaching the strength elements that raise the average age of top-level male gymnasts. Jordan Jovtchev bowed out at the age of 35 in Beijing; the rings medallists were 24, 28 and 24.)

As the women's programme stands, there's an incentive to shove children into the meat-grinder. Even the American training programme for women's gymnastics is based upon squeezing as much out of girls between the ages of 16 and 20: Alicia Sacramone's probably over the hill at 21; Shawn Johnson isn't sure her body will hold up for London in 2012; Mary Lou Retton's now an endorsee for a total hip replacement procedure.

posted at 01:51 AM on August 25

To put this in context: the taekwondo officiating had been dubious throughout the week. Earlier that day, a British competitor had lost a contest because the judges didn't score a clear kick to the head (against a Chinese opponent) then, after protest, declared her the winner. She was summoned back to fight at short notice, lost her semi, but got a bronze medal.

In the Matos case, standard practice in competitions is apparently to give a degree of leeway with the one minute injury timeout. I saw the BBC's as-it-happened coverage, and the expert co-commentator was livid with the judges for declaring the fight over -- until Matos kicked out at the referee.

The BBC's Nick Mullins, who was the other on-site commentator for the judo and taekwondo, discusses it here.

posted at 01:20 AM on August 25

The exchange with Phelps on NBC this evening was gracious on both sides. They both know that elite swimmers have the potential to get bigger medal hauls. They both know that the difference between gold and nada is tiny. They both know that the limelight is relatively fleeting. That was the first time I'd seen Spitz without the porn star tache and seven golds around his neck. 1972 was before I was born, and he was just a trivia answer and a photograph, as if he'd vanished from the earth some time in the late 70s. I think that may have carried over to some extent for USOC and NBC.

Turns out he had spent so much time honing his craft as a swimmer that he had never been trained around enough peers to fully comprehend social dynamics.

I've been around a few highly-ranked swimmers. Focused? Yeah. Charismatic? Generally not. It comes with the territory.

posted at 08:37 AM on August 16

Just to get a little of the attention back on Ocho Cinco.

If a blowhard blows hard in a forest...?

One thing about the Olympics: it does remind us how damn parochial and up its own arse US sport can be. (Though the NBA stars on the US team in Beijing, for the most part, are proving themselves an exception to that.)

posted at 08:23 AM on August 16