Tuesday 5 July 2011

Tour de France- Quick Update

A little short of time today, so just a few quick points about the first three stages:

-this is already a tremendous Tour for Julian Dean, even though he lies in 186th place out of 198 riders. The prime reason for his ranking is that he sacrficed himself massively for his team over the first half of the Team Time Trial (T.T.T.), before falling back as part of his squad's strategy. And what a phenomenal strategy it was, as Garmin took out first place for their first major success at Le Tour. Then last night in the final metres of the sprint for the finish, he did a masterful job of leading out teammates Thor Hushovd and eventual stage winner Tyler Farrar (pictured). It was an extremely poignant win for Farrar for two reasons: he is the first American to win on July Fourth, and is the best friend of Wouter Weylandt, the rider who was killed in a crash in this year's Giro d'Italia.
   Two wins in a row for Garmin is more success than they could have expected from this Tour, and for them to come so early bodes very well for the team.  Dean also did another great job of selfless riding in the first stage, leading out Tyler Farrar for a solid result in the intermediate sprint, and then, after a huge traffic jam caused by a massive fall in the peloton with 7kms to go, he hung back and pulled Farrar over the line, another reason why his ranking is so low. But he wont care one little microscopic jot of a spec of an iota about that: he is a team man, a domestique, and once more at Le Tour, is proving himself to be one of the best in the world at this role.

- and speaking of the crash in Stage 1, this has already put Alberto Contador and his Saxo Bank team on the back foot. He was also caught up in the bottleneck that followed, and, along with Samuel Sanchez of Euskatel, they lost over a minute to the Schleck brothers, Cadel Evans, Jurgen Van Den Broek and Bradley Wiggins. And as we predicted, the weaknesses in the Saxo Bank team meant that Contador lost still more time the following day in the T.T.T. Contador will know that he can easily recoup these losses in the mountains, but when you consider that he only beat out Andy Schleck by 39 seconds in last year's Tour, this is far from an ideal start for the defending champion.

-tonight's Stage looks very similar in it's challenges to the first Stage, and will again be won by a punchy rider, rather than an out-and-out sprinter. The finsh line is at the summit of a modest Category 3 climb, and it looks tailor-made for another win for the number one ranked cyclist in the world, the Belgian Philipe Gilbert (pictured). He has had an incredible season, winning three 'Classics' already, and won the opening Stage of this year's Tour with a strong finish up an incline. His Omega Pharma Lotto team will be doing everything they can to get him back on the podium again tonight. It should be a really fascinating 179kms, with a Category 4 climb followed closely by the Intermediate Sprint, so there should be some white knuckle descending on the cards. And then, as mentioned already, the finish itself will be a tough one. It'll be interesting to see how Saxo Bank and Euskatel position themselves in the peloton because they cannot afford to lose any more time on the leaders.

   Back tomorrow. Oh, and it was nice of Lance Armstrong to post a comment on the first of our Tour previews. We were attempting to exonerate cycling as a sport rather than Armstrong as an individual, but either way it's always nice to see we're appreciated.

Friday 1 July 2011

Tour De France Preview- Riders and Route


   First up, big congratulations to Marina Erakovic for making the semi-finals of the Women’s Doubles comp at Wimbledon. This is a huge achievement, and, somewhat sadly, far and away the biggest in NZ tennis for many many years. She gets the honour of playing on Centre Court tonight which, win or lose, will be an unforgettable experience for her. Best of luck.
   Also best of luck to the Kiwis in the World Cup tonight as they take on England. It’ll be a tough ask, and after their opening loss to Japan they definitely need to get at least a draw out of this match, but stranger things have happened. In fact, someone tried to claim to us today that Ma’a Nonu had gone and signed for the Auckland Blues and Mark Hammet hadn’t being sacked from coaching the Hurricanes as a result. Of course nothing as nonsensical and bizarre as this could ever really occur, but that doesn’t mean our women can’t cause an upset tonight. Go the kiwis.

   But now onto the main order of business. An event that we wait for with bated breath all year, while our collective missus’s get ready to roll their eyes for five hours a night for the next three weeks. Only the 24 Hours of Le Mans (which we saw about 14 hours of this year), has elicited a stronger reaction from our significant others, being summarily and succinctly derided as ‘fucking stupid’. But Le Tour… ah, Le Tour is here. And here’s some of what you need to know.

Some Basic Terms

   Yellow Jersey (Maillot Jaune): For the overall leader of the race
   Green Jersey: For the leader of the sprint competition, with points accumulated at intermediate sprints during most stages, and double points awarded for the sprint at the finish line
   Polka dot Jersey: White with red spots, this is the jersey for the leader in the mountain climbing competition. Similar to the Green Jersey, riders collect points by being first over the various summits.
   Categorised Climbs: Different grades of difficulty, and therefore different amounts of points in the race for the Polka dot Jersey, are assigned to different mountains, depending on the length, height, and gradient of a climb. Category 4 is the easiest, Category 3 a little tougher, and so on. However, certain mountains are classified as ‘Hors Categorie’, which roughly translates as ‘beyond categorising’. These are the highest difficulty climbs, one level above Category 1.
   White Jersey: The jersey for the rider who leads (we think) the Under-23 rankings. There is also a prize for the fastest overall team, measured on the performance of the fastest three riders from each team on each stage, and the ‘Lantern Rouge’, a largely symbolic honour for the slowest rider in the Tour.
The Peloton: This is the name given to the largest group of riders during any stage.
   The Autobus/ The bus: This is the name given to the group of riders, generally the sprinters, who group together at the back of the field during the mountainous stages. If a rider finishes outside a certain percentage of the winner of a stage’s time, he is eliminated from the race. Therefore the worst climbers group together in order to help each other finish within the elimination time.

The Route

   It’s obviously pretty hard to summarise over 3400 kilometers of racing, suffice to say that there is never ever a second that goes by during a Tour when we don’t think to ourselves, “Wow, that looks beautiful, I’d love to visit there.” This year’s course is pretty tough, with less in it for the sprinters than normal. The race will most likely be decided in the Alps during the third week. As usual, the first week is fairly calm, the second cranks up the climbs, and the third will be pure hell, featuring not one but two fearsome climbs up the Col du Galibier, one of which is combined in a stage with the  legendary Alpe d’Huez.
   Other items of interest: unlike most recent Tours, this year’s first stage is a real one, not just a short criterium around a town or city. Instead, wonderfully, tomorrow night the riders will follow the coast for around 100kms before cutting inland for the remaining 90kms, with the finale being a short, sharp Category 4 climb. This means just about anybody could claim the Yellow Jersey and the run to the finish line will be tremendously exciting. It is followed the next day by the return of the Team Time Trial, a tricky 23km circuit that could see some of the leading contenders drop precious seconds if their team has even a slightly off day. Fantastic.
   The remainder of the first week is more sprinter friendly, and it is likely that the Green Jersey will be decided within the first eight days. We’ll have more information on the various stages closer to the time, but there are some excellent online resources. The Guardian has a wonderful interactive guide to the route, and of course the official website of the race is also very user-friendly.

The Teams

   It’s an awesomely strong lineup this year, although, sadly, Greg Henderson’s strong early season form wasn’t enough to see him make the squad for Team Sky, and Hayden Roulston hasn’t sufficiently recovered from injuries received when one of those w@nkers who drive 4-wheeled combustion-engine powered vehicles knocked him off his bike whilst training in Spain. This leaves NZ’s greatest sportsmen, Julian Dean, to once more fly the flag for Kiwis everywhere. More about his legendary accomplishments as the race unfolds.
   You can see a full list of the riders here, but we’ll take a quick look at some of the strongest contenders. Obviously Alberto Contador starts out as the hot favourite- although not with fans, having been booed at the rider’s parade yesterday. His Saxo Bank team is strong, but honestly we’re a little surprised that it isn’t more stacked with renowned riders. His three Spanish compatriots in the team will provide solid assistance on the climbs, but all in all this most definitely is not the strongest squad out there. It looks like it may come down to his individual brilliance versus the stronger teams around him this year.
   And the toughest competition is likely to come from Team Leopard-Trek. They will be riding for last year’s runner-up to Contador, Andy Schleck, and he will get tremendous support from his brother Frank and work horses like Gerdeman, O’Grady, Posthuma and Monfort, and our favourite rider, the veteran Jens Voight. Also in the team is Time Trial Champion and fantastic team rider Fabian Cancellara. In short, this is an amazingly strong group of riders, and Contador will be very wary of the threats that they pose.
    The all-Spanish Euskatel team will be riding for their team leader Samuel Sanchez. He is an awesome climber, as are most of his teammates, and they will be doing everything they can to secure him a podium position. The Euskatel squad always performs well in the Polka dot Jersey stakes, especially as they ride through their ‘home’ turf, the Pyrenees.
   Omega Pharma Lotto will also have hopes of getting their Belgian rider Jurgen Van Den Broek onto the podium, and while they have some strong support for him, they may not have the depth. Two huge names who have been suspended in the past for doping, Alexander Vinokourov and Ivan Basso, are back, and it will be fascinating to see how they go. Cadel Evans returns in what may be his final chance as age catches up with him, and Andreas Kloden will ride again for RadioShack. Julian Dean’s Garmin Cervelo squad will be mainly focused on the Green Jersey for Thor Hushovd, but if Christian Vande Velde can rediscover his form, a top 10 finish is not out of the question. There are a host of others with outside shots, but due to time constraints we’ll leave them, and an in-depth analysis of the sprinters, until next week.

   We’ll leave you today with a link here to many great Tour vids, and we’ll be back full of vim and vigour on Monday with a review of the opening two stages and a preview of the remainder of the first week. Needless to say we are very very very very very excited. It’s a tough event to follow for the casual fan, so we’ll do our best for you, but if you have the time, we recommend you jump into fully immersive coverage right from Stage 1, because it can be very difficult to comprehend the goings on if you miss too much of the early action.

   So strap on the lycra, stock up on energy supplements, get some Vas in for your saddle sores, and enjoy your weekend.
  
,

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Tour de France Preview #1- Tainted Love

   With only the final few days of Wimbledon and the Women’s World Cup going on (congrats to German punters for their awesome support of the event; 73,000 spectators at their home sides opening match is phenomenal), it was inevitable that we’d be turning our thoughts to Le Tour. Indeed, in our absence of the last few weeks the Comments Team has been taking up positions strategically around France as we prepare to provide you with comprehensive coverage of the 98th staging of the greatest cycling event in the world. And in our first Tour posting, we’ve decided to get the ugliness out of the way as quickly as possible.

Tainted Love

   Unfortunately, whatever takes place on the 21 stages and 3,430 kilometers of this year’s Tour, it is very likely that the true winner will not be known until sometime in August. This is due to the ongoing doping case against the world’s number one racer, the Spaniard Alberto Contador. We’ll go into the specifics of the case and a generally libelous rant at Spanish sport at a later date, but as it stands the Court of Arbitration for Sport will not hear his case until a few weeks after Le Tour is completed. This is a truly disastrous state of affairs, as anything that occurs during the actual race may be negated in a courthouse less than a month later. Much as we love to see him ride, undoubtedly the best thing for this year’s Tour would be if he pulled out of the race with some kind of illness or injury before the first stage on Saturday. And by injury we should quickly state that we mean a muscle strain of some kind, not a crash. We don’t wish cycling crashes on anyone, not even the man recently voted The Most Boring Person To Have Ever Ridden A Bicycle In The History Of Humanity, Australian Cadel Evans.
   But were Contador to go down with some sort of stomach virus or tweaked hammy, this year’s race would be perceived as a great deal more pure right from the get go. Because, face it, many many hateful and foolish people out there still equate cycling with doping, and a situation such as this does little to dissipate their ignorance. So today we want to address the doping situation, be done with it, and leave us all free to enjoy the greatest sporting event on the planet.

   Yes, cycling has a problem with performance enhancing drugs. There are two closely related reasons for this. The first is that it is part of the cultural history of the sport, dating back for more than seventy years. Back in the early days of racing, right through until the 1970s, many riders would openly admit to various forms of doping. Their perspective was, “well how the hell else do you expect us to survive these hellish events?” To race bikes is to suffer, generally for very little financial reward or public recognition- and that is if you are one of the top riders. For the workmen in a team, known as ‘domestiques’, the situation is even bleaker. So in the early days of the sport, drug taking was not only rife, but also relatively openly acknowledged.
   Once drug taking became stigmatised however- and with good reason given the terrible effects it was taking on rider’s short and long term health- the second reason alluded to above came into being. Suddenly a whole underground network of drug procurement sprang up. Because riders could no longer openly obtain the little pills and needles they felt they needed to get through brutal days in the saddle, various people began attaching themselves to cycle teams. ‘Doctors’, ‘masseuses’ etc became part of every team’s traveling entourage, and ensured that the riders had what they wanted, when they wanted it. This has persisted through until recent times, and is a big part of the reason why doping continues to be an element of the sport.
   Imagine if you will that you a young rider who has just secured a contract with a professional team. You are desperate to maintain your employment, and to break into the elite squad that competes in the Grand Tours. If your team doctor wants to shoot you up with something at various times of the year, or transfuse blood, or any of the other tactics that are employed, you are likely to say yes, especially if your team mates are doing the same thing. Combine peer pressure with financial pressure with competitive pressure and what you get is a hell of a lot of pressure. Which is when people tend to make choices that they will regret.
  
   So.

   So cycling has had a culture of doping. But, along with Olympic competition, cycling has done the most to eliminate this culture. Some teams, such as Kiwi rider Julian Dean’s Garmin Cervelo, are absolutely fanatical with their drug testing. Without going into boring technical detail, the controls that cyclists face are beyond stringent. And it works, which is why people get caught. In fact, we’d go so far to say cycling no longer has a doping problem- it has a doping solution. If you want a sport with a doping problem, we would suggest football.
 Think about it for a minute. Top professional football players can play anywhere between thirty to sixty matches of high paced, high pressure, high intensity and high stakes soccer in a season. The wear and tear on player’s bodies is incredible. The money and fame on offer is beyond the comprehension of any of us. And yet nobody ever tests positive for anything (the five Mexican players who recently tested positive for the same drug Contador is under suspicion of using were cleared by the Mexican Federation when their ‘B’ Samples came back negative.) It is impossible to believe that of all the major leagues around the world, comprising of literally thousands of players, that nobody is abusing anything. When you compare football to most other endurance-style pro sports and find a complete absence of players testing positive for anything, you must believe that something very fishy is going on, particularly when you add money-hungry dodgy-as player agents into the equation, and huge international sponsors with plenty to lose.
   Go one step further and look at the Premier League. You’ve got hundreds of vastly overpaid, (generally) undereducated, deified, macho young men running loose; in any other strata of society these are the prime types for dabbling in the Devil’s Dandruff. Barely a fortnight goes by without some Prem player writing his sports car off whilst driving several times over the speed limit in the early hours of the morning, or getting into relationship infidelities, or a punch-up at some exclusive night club: can you honestly believe that there aren’t lines of Jazz Salt being racked up and hoovered down while all of this is going on? What else would lead you to physically assault a DJ because he wouldn’t play Genesis for you???
And yet nobody (aside from renowned munter Adrian Mutu) ever even tests positive for recreational drugs. How is this believable? Well, the answer is very simple. It is the acronym that has become a byword for corruption, lies, back-door dealings and rampant self-interest: FIFA. They are constantly at loggerheads with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and remain one of the few remaining bastions of performance enhancing substance deniers. For funks sake, even the roid-raging NFL is falling into line. But not FIFA.
So if you want to accuse sports of having doping problems, look towards football. A total absence of positive tests in this day and age doesn’t indicate a ‘clean’ sport, it suggests an extremely corrupt system. And don’t fall for the bullspit knee-jerk all-cyclists-are-drug-cheats crap that you will hear constantly over the next month, because it is outdated sensationalist buy-my-newspaper rubbish. As a sport, yes cycling still has many problems. But it is also at the forefront of the efforts to eradicate this form of cheating, which is why riders get caught. Think about that when your local news agency begins frothing at the mouth. The situation this year with Contador really sucks, there is no disputing that and it is why we wish he wasn’t competing. But don’t let it overshadow for you what will still be a marvelous event.

   Right, that’s that out of the way. We’ll be back with a real preview of the racing later this week, including a look at this year’s route which climbs the magnificent Col du Galibier twice, and we’ll run our eyes over the entry list and who to watch out for in the weeks to come. In the meantime, here is a link to the greatest piece of cycling journalism we’ve ever read anywhere ever, featuring Julian Dean’s Garmin team.
Cheers.

Thursday 26 May 2011

Say it aint so Lance, say it aint so

   Out of control busy this week so just a few links for you regarding Lance Armstrong. Things seem to be deteriorating extremely rapidly for him, and while we’ll stick with innocent until proven guilty, we have pretty strong suspicions about how this is going to end up. The words of convicted drug cheats Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton are bad, though not necessarily 100% damning, but if Armstrong’s longtime close friend George Hincapie, one of the most stand-up guys in the peloton in recent times, really has corroborated their testimony before the Grand Jury, then…
   It’s an extraordinary set of circumstances, with a federal investigation in the US ongoing against Armstrong and his team. The charge they’re being faced with is one of fraud, not doping, which the government has no jurisdiction over (more or less). But because it was the US Postal Team that they were riding for, they are now being investigated because they misused government funding, by buying drugs rather than, say, bikes or helmets.
   The case is much better explained here, and the 60 Minutes interview with Tyler Hamilton can be viewed here. A very technical but damning summation of the likelihood of Armstrong using the banned substance EPO can be read here (and if you can wade through some of the medical terminology used it seems to be a very very incriminating interview), and one more summary of the case here.
   We’d honestly like to believe that none of all of this is true, or even half-true, but increasingly that seems to be a head-in-the-sand perspective. We shall see.

   We’ll pad things out today with a couple of submissions, starting with this from correspondent Geeza Bowman on football:

been a bit of a sour season for us this year so I'll be sour.
No surprise that the top three richest clubs came in 1st to 3rd whilst the poor clubs struggled.
FIFA continue to be corrupt to the point of the useless English FA actually making a mini stand of not voting for either FIFA candidates (they would'nt have worried if they got 2018).
some saving graces here: 
  • The Chairboys promotion to League One
  • Brighton and Southhamptons promotion to Championship
  • AFC Wimbledon (proper Wimbledon) being promoted to the football league (2) moving up 6 divisions in 9 seasons (after forming in a local boozer), despite opposition from the FA and having the local council shut their old ground down, ground sharing with Palace and finally having their club sold off as a francise and relocating to Milton f*&ing Keynes.  I love what this club has done, two fingers to the facist b*&strds that put them in such dire straits
  • Even when The Arsenal disgrace themselves, there's still spineless Sp*rs up the road.
-Geeza
And this on the NBA from Simon The Big Man Garret:
I was in Chicago last month and managed to get tickets to the Bulls vs New Jersey Nets which was the Bulls last game before the play-offs.  Only one word to describe it: unbelievable!  I have been fortunate enough to attend numerous sporting events all over the world and the only thing that has topped it is going to watch the (once) mighty Arsenal at Highbury.  Say what you want about American major league sport and their “world’ series, they certainly do know how to put on a show.  It was a fantastic spectacle with Noah dominating the first half before going off injured.  The Nets came back in the third quarter and it looked like they might win until Derrick Rose who had done nothing for the first three quarters completely destroyed them in the final quarter to lead them to victory.  The crowd was mental the whole game as well and Rose (being a local boy) is an absolute hero in Chicago.  They certainly see him as the new Jordan.
Needless to say I am all over the NBA now, these guys are phenomenal athletes and so agile for such big men, if you ever get a chance to go to an NBA game do it – you will not regret it.
-Simon Garret
Thanks for that lads, and apologies for the brevity of this week’s piece, but we should be back early next week with things back to usual. Cheers.

Saturday 21 May 2011

Premier League Teams of the Season

   Got a couple of entries in our Teams of the Season. The first comes from correspondent Dave Gattuso-a-like Holmes:
Hart
Modric
Lennon
Nasri
Pedersen
Song
Tiote
Fellaini
Baines
Hernandez
Guitterez
Nani
Tevez

   Cheers for that buddy. And our team looks like this:
   Al-Habsi

  Baines
  Vidic
  Hangeland
  Jose Enrique

  Nani
  Nasri
  Kompany
  Parker

  Van Persie
  Odemwingie

Bench: Van Der Sar, Sangna, Wilshire, Yaya Toure, Tevez

   Let us know your selections in the comments section below, or by email to tobesrowe@gmail.com

Friday 20 May 2011

Boozer and Noah


   As our rolling news blackouts continue to be in effect, we’re just gonna throw a few talking points at you today and you lazy buggers out there can do some work.

Basketball

   Is there a better monikered combination in sport in existence than the pairing of Boozer and Noah? Not only that, as our NBA obsession rapidly deepens (we’ve seen in their entirety all 13 of the games played since we jumped into it barely 2 weeks ago; are both dreading the off-season and salivating about the new season starting; and we are only able to stave off Fever L’Estrange’s encouragements to take the final step and start gambling on games due to the Comments Team being banned from all sports betting due to our considerable influence over players in every sporting arena) in the Chicago Bulls we’ve found a new team to barrack for.
   Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah (who is the 6 foot 11 inch offspring of former tennis star Yannick Noah and Miss Sweden 1978) are frankly awesome to watch. In our ignorance we stated that aside from MVP Derrick Rose the Bulls didn’t have a lot of scoring players on the court, but in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat, Boozer and Noah really stepped up, as did British player Luol Deng. Noah is a rebounding machine, particularly on offence, and Boozer has a sweet rainbow shot that swishes the net time after time. Deng, over two metres tall and tipping the scales at over 100 kilos, somehow plays around 45 minutes every game, and performs everywhere on the court.  We generally look scornfully at folks who jump on the bandwagon of a successful team, but this Chicago side is just so good to watch, and in their fight against the evil Heat there’s only one way we could ever have jumped. After an incredible win in Game 1, the Bulls were subdued in the second match and the Heat ran out the winners, but we’re backing the depth of the Bulls squad to see them through.
   In the Western Conference Finals, the Dallas Mavericks won Game 1 versus the Oklahoma City Thunder on the back of a simply incredible performance by Dirk Nowitzki. Most seven footers in bball lumber up and down the court, grabbing rebounds, blocking shots, and shooting poorly, especially from the free-throw line. Nowitzki is the complete antithesis of this. In Game 1 he scored an awesome 48 points and set an NBA Playoff record, hitting 22 out of 22 from the free-throw line. That’s right: 22 shots, and not a single miss. Freaking fantastic. Game 2 is being played right now and the Thunder will need Russell Westbrook to really improve on his performance in the first match and give the scoring support that Kevin Durant needs. We don’t really like the Thunder for some reason, despite Westbrook being a dead-ringer for Bodie, one of our favourite Wire characters, and James Harden’s great beard, but we do recognise that they have the tools to progress if everyone starts firing for them.
   Ok, we’ll stop here before we really get carried away, but we invite any thoughts any of you might have on the ongoing Playoffs series. Please though, no scores, as we continue to be around 18 hours behind the action.

Football

   As the Premier League staggers to a depressing conclusion this weekend, only one important game remains to be played this season. Swansea will take on Reading on the 30th to see who secures the last promotion position to the Prem after the Swans saw off Forest 1-0 on aggregate and the Royals defeated Cardiff 3-0. We hope Reading makes it, due to our fondness for the ginger-filled team that they brought with them the first time they made it to the top flight, although having a Welsh side in the Prem might be interesting too.
   And for those of you claiming the Champions League Final is another big game, sod off. Not only did it’s scheduling force the FA Cup Final to be played two weeks early, robbing the Cup of any grandeur and significance, but it features a team we hate versus a team we used to love but really can’t stand any more due to their horrible diving, whining, ref-surrounding antics. We pine for the days when all the European competitions were straight knock-out encounters, featuring actual ‘champions’ and ‘cup-winners’, and the overblown, overlong farce we are now stuck with honestly sucks.

   So people, what are your footballing thoughts? Do you enjoy the Champions League? What do you think about the current version of the FA Cup? And we’d love to get some feedback on the Prem: player of the year; who would you pick in your 2010/11 team of the year etc. Some great roundups to stimulate your mind can be found here.

Some other stuff

-      Is this some sort of elaborate farce, or is Martin Crowe really planning a comeback at 48? The man who once described himself to a comely young Yankee lass he was making time with as ‘the Joe Montana of world cricket’ (true story, as related by the young lady in question to Roby Towe and Hard Times Molloy in a Melbourne hostel) and was once clean bowled by our Comments Team Stats Freak Roby Towe at the Basin Reserve on a lunch-break in the distant past (also a true story, technically making Roby a more dangerous bowler than Richard Hadlee who never managed to dismiss Crowe in domestic competition), is apparently attempting to gain selection for one of the sides in the NZ domestic competition. He claims he wants to score the 392 runs he needs to get to 20,000 first class runs, but we suspect the lure of IPL riches may be what truly lies at the heart of this. Thoughts?
-      The French Open begins next week, and we’ll have plenty of coverage as Novak Djokovic seeks to continue his unbeaten streak. Also we have everything crossed for Kiwi star Marina Erakovic: she won her first two matches in the qualifying tournament, and is now just one win away from making the Main Draw for just the second time in her career.
-      The Giro d’Italia continues, but after the death of Wooter Weylandts we’re finding it hard to get back into. Also due to the fact that Alberto Contador is leading at the same time as court cases are ongoing regarding the cleanliness of a certain test he failed. We really really really really really really really hope he is innocent, because he has won too many major races in recent years for cycling to be able to afford otherwise. After repairing so much damage to its reputation in the last few seasons, a scandal of the potential proportions here would be devastating.

That’ll do it from us; get in touch. We’ll be back next week with more hoops, tennis, the Spanish Grand Prix, and hopefully plenty of submissions from you lot.
Cheers.

Saturday 14 May 2011

Rolling 24 Hour Mugabe Media Blackouts

   Largely due to the encouragements of Mark Call me Marco ‘Fever’ L’Estrange and a conversation with another basketball enthusiast, The Walking Indie Music Library Dylan Lee, there’s been a lot of NBA watched in the last week or so. Seven games since Saturday, in fact, which led Mrs. Supercoach to utter, with just a hint of understandable exasperation in her voice, “I didn’t know you watched basketball too?”
   Well, now we do. But it has caused some problems. Rather than stump up the cash to the NBA we’ve been downloading games, which generally means we have to watch them around 18 hours after their completion. This results in us going into full sports media lockdown, only catching up on other news about a day later than usual. Even then, our vigilance can be defeated. A seemingly innocuous sports quiz we took this morning inadvertently revealed to us the result of Game 5 of the Boston-Miami series, which was a blow. We’re about 30 minutes away from downloading Game 5 in the Memphis-Oklahoma matchup, and then we have about a five hour window until Game 6 in the Chicago-Atlanta series is completed, which is then available to download about nine hours later. So for all of you who think this sports watching stuff is just a walk in the park- or maybe a lie on the couch- think again. Complex mathematical formulas based on time zones, torrent sites, download rates and media reactions are needed, and change on a daily basis.
   So we’ve turned to our US Affairs Reporter Toejam Odelay to take care of things for us. Toejam has been AWOL of late, having discovered a legitimate reason to move to the US, despite the crumbling economy, underlying racial tensions, hideously corrupt and horribly divisive political system, and Donald Trump. And that reason is the Chump Car World Series. However we’ve managed to entice him away for long enough to post on the bball, followed by a televisual recommendation from Cultural Affairs Reporter Rand Abbot.

Strangest Post-Season Ever?

   Howdy y’all. Well folks it has certainly been a humdinger of a post-season, aint it. For the first time in Western Conference Playoff history, the eighth seeded team beat the top seeded side, with the Memphis Grizzlies downing the San Antonio Spurs in Round 1. Then in Round 2, the two-time defending champion LA Lakers were swept 4-0 by the Dallas Mavericks, bringing the curtain down on legendary coach Phil Jackson’s career (6 titles with the Chicago Bulls, 5 with the Lakers) in a most undignified manner. In what turned out to be the final game of the series the Mavs rained down twenty 3-pointers, equaling the playoff record, and smashed the Lakers by 40 points.
   Things in the Eastern Conference have gone a little more according to form, with the Bulls, the Atlanta Hawks, the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat all making the second round. Due to our Mugabe Media Lockdown springing a leak, I now know that the Heat have defeated the Celtics- last year’s beaten finalists- by a comfortable four games to one, though I aint yet seen that last encounter. Like most honest citizens out there, I was rooting for the Celtics, the same way I’ll holler for any side that comes up against the Heat.
Y’see them Miamians have stacked their team full of superstars in the last year or so, and now boast possibly the three most renowned players in the league in Dwayne Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh. These recruitments don’t really tell the story of why folks are so strongly anti the Heat. It was the way they, and LeBron James in particular, went about the transfer process that was so distasteful. An hour long live special on ESPN was used to announce his decision to move from Cleveland to Miami, and it was an awful spectacle that just showed how out of touch the majority of professional athletes are from those that pay money to see them play. You can read more about it here.
Anyways, with the Bulls leading their series 3-2 over the Hawks, many are hoping the Chicago side that finished with the best regular season record in the entirety of the NBA and have this season’s MVP Derrick Rose leading the way for them will defeat Atlanta and then somehow find a way past Miami. Though I oughta confess that for most of the season I’ve been tinkering under the hood of my Chump Car entry rather than watching hoops, my money’s on a Miami-Dallas Championship Series. They’re the two teams with the most experience post-season and for that reason alone I reckon they’ll make it to the end. Chicago can beat Miami for sure, but it’ll take a huge performance by Rose as his team-mates don’t provide a whole lot in the way of scoring backup, with the side more known for its defensive prowess. Miami on the contrary have so many guys who can score buckets that they should prove too classy over seven games.
Dallas rely heavily on huge seven-foot German rainbow-style precision shooter and Neanderthal-a-like Dirk Nowitzki for their points, but he has some able backup in the Jason’s Terry and Kidd. The Oklamhoma-Memphis series is yet to conclude, but whoever makes it through, regardless of their side’s relative strengths, may just be too flat-out tired to put up much resistance against the Mavs. Game 4 after all, went to a triple overtime, while the Mavs have been resting since the weekend.
So there you have it ladies and germs. Just to end on what you might call a talking point, or as we say down here in the South, a shit stirring, I thought I’d make the observation that bball, as with Gridiron, seems to reflect life in these here United States: young black people fighting frantically amongst each other while over-weight rich white folks sit on their heavily padded behinds stuffing their pie-holes. Simplistic, sure, but next time you see a game check out the proportions of light-skinned folk in the expensive court-side seats as compared to the proportions of darker-toned people chasing a ball in front of them. I’s just saying is all.
-Toejam Odelay

   As ever, we endorse very little of what dueling-banjos enthusiast Toejam has to say about society, but we do appreciate his attempts to form coherent sentences while drooling chewing tobacco on our keyboards.
   And now, due to our Rolling Media Lockdown, we turn away from sports and bring you some musings from Rand Abbot.

A Show That Makes You Go ‘Hmmm’

   Greetings and salutations. With all the execrable tosh that is produced by the self-proclaimed geniuses of Hollywood and television companies, it is my considerable pleasure to be able to bring you news, albeit belated, of something that is actually worth your no doubt precious time. It was actually released in the United Kingdom late last year, so if you missed it or the cretins who make programming decisions in your homeland failed to screen it, it is most likely by now available as a DVD release.
   The name of the show is simply Sherlock, and it is a re-imagining of the legendary character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the closing stages of the Nineteenth Century. Now I fully realise that for many of you the word re-imagining’ bears horrible connotations. For the most part it is a term used by lazy unimaginative Hollywood executives when they wish to remake something featuring a much younger cast than the original, generally full of bronzed Adonis’ and over-chested nymphettes. But in this instance, it is a much nobler pursuit.
   In the three 90 minute stories, Sherlock Holmes has been moved from the London of the 1890’s into the modern day metropolis. I had reservations about this at first, but the city, such an integral part of the original stories, still plays a big role, and one still sees many different aspects of London’s personality. The stories themselves are excellent too, and whilst bits and pieces are borrowed from Doyle’s writings, they also contain many fresh and interesting twists and turns that will have aficionados of the character puffing appreciatively on their Holmesian pipes.
   The crucial parts of Holmes and his assistant Doctor Watson have been well cast and are very well acted. But most crucially, they are very well written. The Sherlock Holmes of the original stories was, for all his brilliance, very aloof, condescending, and when one gets right to the heart of the matter, fairly unlikeable. This very vital aspect of the tales has been retained in this reworking. Holmes remains a most exasperating man, and the writers have done very well in creating a back-story for Watson that allows the viewer to understand why he puts up with him, rather than just addressing him with a variety of expletives and storming out, as most people would almost inevitably do. The viewer is both fascinated and repelled by Holmes, just as the reader is in the stories, and this is no mean feat by the writers.
   So, dear readers, I implore you to take the time to watch these three initial installments, and having done so, to be calm in the knowledge that the BBC has commissioned another three episodes which are currently in production. You will find them far far superior to any of the reality rubbish or blockbluster bollocks otherwise available to you.
Until next time, I remain your faithful servant.
-Rand Abbot

   So there you have it people, and we’ll be back next week with previews of the upcoming French Open, a look back at the penultimate round of the Premier League and possibly an ode to what the FA Cup used to be, and a round-up of anything else that catches our eyes. Take it easy, and enjoy your weekends.