Ryder Rides Into History!

Canadian cyclist Ryder Hesjdal finished ahead of his major rivals in today’s Stage 7 of the Giro D’Italia — the first hilly stage this year — and thus became the first ever Canadian to wear the race leader’s maglia rose — pink shirt.

With the first of three weeks racing just about done, Hesjdal has a genuine shot at winning the Giro, but my money is still on Roman Kreuziger who is 35 seconds behind on General Classification.  Long way to go, though.

Wales Wins the Grand Slam!

What a wonderful game of rugby this morning, with Wales overcoming France to complete a sweep of 5 wins in the Six Nations tournament!

I was privileged enough to watch the classic Welsh teams of the 1970s with Barry John, Gareth Edwards and the rest.  But I really think the 2011-2012 Welsh are even better than that.

Yes, I’m A Jock

What a great weekend for sports this weekend:

• First thing in the morning, there will be Stage 6 of the Paris-Nice Classic. Bradley Wiggins is making a wonderful start to a season in which he hopes — expects — to be on the Tour de France podium in July.
• Pretty soon after that finishes, Wales plays Italy in Rugby Union’s Six Nations tournament.  Wales has already won the Triple Crown and I fully anticipate them taking the Grand Slam this year.
• In the evening the Vancouver Canucks comes onto the ice to thrash the Montreal Canadiens.
• Saturday night closes with the first day of the Spring Basho — that’s sumo, you know.  If Baruto from Estonia wins the tournament we will likely have the first European yokozuna in the history of this very ancient sport.  I’ll be cheering for the Japanese rikishi Kisenasato.
• Finally, on Sunday morning, England plays France in the Six Nations.

Cycling, rugby, sumo and hockey — sometimes I just get lucky!

Waiting For The Rugby

This is a really big weekend for rugby, with the World Cup quarter-finals being played in New Zealand. You probably have to be into rugby to fully comprehend why this is the biggest weekend for the sport for the next four years — but trust me, it is.

It will certainly be another four years at least before we see four such important games over two days with well-matched and powerful international teams, and where New Zealand’s romp over Argentina is the only certain result of the four.

The Northern hemisphere goes first (on Friday night here in Vancouver): Ireland takes on Wales, and then England face France. My guess is that Wales and England will win out.  The Southern hemisphere play their games on Saturday night, with South Africa versus Australia followed by New Zealand against Argentina.  My prediction is that South Africa and New Zealand will be the winners.

If you’ve never seen top-quality rugby, these are four games that should turn you on.  These guys are hard, fast and really good!

The Rugby World Cup

The Opening Ceremony of the Rugby World Cup was the best such ceremony I have ever witnessed.  It is well worth watching.

Just brilliant.  It is an object lesson in how to incorporate at the deepest level the essence of local ethnicity and its connection to the world through the sport.

The games have been equally interesting so far.  In the opener, the Tongans — boasting a hakka to challenge that of the All Blacks themselves — fought well in a losing cause.  Fiji and Namibia showed some creative open play in a high-scoring affair, and both Scotland and England had to come back from deficits as favourites in their first matches.  Tonight I’m looking forward to the Wales clash against South Africa.

 

Sumo Is Back and Harumafuji Does It Again!

Regular readers will know  that my wife and I are devotees of sumo. This year has been a sorry one for fans of the sport as we had to deal with the remnants of last year’s betting scandal which was immediately followed by an even bigger match-fixing scandal.  The latter was so serious that it cost the jobs of a dozen or so rikishi (wrestlers) and managers who were thrown out of the sport.  The Sumo Association was forced to cancel the March basho tournament entirely while Japan TV refused to cover the next basho in May. There were times we seriously wondered if the ancient sport would actually survive.

But the July basho was held and televised, and will end tonight.  An interesting bunch of younger rikishi were promoted to the ranks of those now departed and it seems we might be back to normal.

One of our favourite rikishi is ozeki Harumafuji and I was pleased a couple of years ago to report here when he won his first yusho (championship). To be frank, he hasn’t been very good these past couple of years. He has been injury-prone and has barely done enough to keep his rank of ozeki. Since he won that yusho, the age’s greatest rikishi, Asashoryu was forced to retire for “lack of dignity” and the sport has been dominated by Hakuho who has won the last seven yusho in a row, equalling Asashoryu’s record. But last night Harumajui defeated Hakuho to win his second Emperor’s Cup.  It was a great and worthy fight and I cheered and cheered at the end.

More sumo here.

In other sports news, I have to report that my man Alberto Contador was just not up to snuff in the Tour de France this year.  But, luckily, the Schleck Brothers couldn’t win either and this year’s race will be won tomorrow by Cadel Evans, the first Australian to do so.  He thoroughly deserves the title.

There Are Times When Vancouverites Disappoint

I awoke this morning to find that scores of idiots — that’s what they are, mentally deranged stupid people — tore up our city last night, burning cars, breaking windows, looting, thrashing streets.

This is disgusting behaviour with NO redeeming quality that will cost the rest of us — who love street parties in our beautiful city — dearly in the future.  It is really sad that people are so empty, so depleted of meaning in their lives, that they believe the result of a sports game is worth this kind of nihilistic behaviour.

Sad days for Canucks fans. Even sadder for lovers of Vancouver.

 

 

Next Year?

So the circus is pulling out of town, the Big Top has been folded away, and the Boston Bruins are flying away with the Stanley Cup in their excess baggage.   It was a great run (if we don’t count the last four games) and we won the President’s Trophy.

Just wait until next season, I say!  Go Canucks go!

 

 

England’s Wonderful Victory

Since the decline of the glorious 1960s West Indies team, Australia has seemed to be the powerhouse of cricket. The Australians were the team every England captain needed to beat to be judged a success; and at least since the 1970s, the English team has always entered these contests as the underdogs.  Until 2010.

With a reasonable — if somewhat unsteady — record of success against good teams in the last couple of years, England traveled to Australia for this edition of the Ashes with their heads high and hopes even higher.  Several of the Australian players who had been the strength of their team for the last decade have retired recently, to be replaced by less tested youngsters.  The five game series is to be played on Australian pitches which gives them an advantage but, all in all, England began the series as favourites.

The first game in Brisbane ended in a high-scoring draw but it was generally agreed that England came out of it with the momentum.  This week in Adelaide that momentum swept Australia away.  It took almost the full five days — especially as rain threatened to save the Aussies — but eventually England prevailed by an innings and 71 runs — a huge margin.

Because England currently hold the Ashes a drawn series allows England to keep the trophy.  Therefore, Australia now need to win at least two of the final three games and, in their current state of disarray, that doesn’t see likely.  This could be a marvelous winter!

 

Hakuho Is Stopped!

Last night (here in Vancouver, and Monday afternoon in Japan), the sumo world was stunned when Japanese ever-hopeful Kisenosato defeated Mongolian yokozuna Hakuho in the last bout of day two of the Kyusho basho.

Kisenosato’s victory was stunning because it stopped Hakuho after 63 consecutive wins, tied with the second-longest run in sumo history.  It was widely anticipated that Hakuho would reach 69 victories — equaling the all-time record — later this week.

The next question is whether Hakuho, the sole yokozuna or Grand Champion, can recover from this disappointment; or will he become vulnerable to others, such as the ozekis Baruto and Kotooshu, who would like to take this basho’s title.  We’ll see.

Jelly Beans On Bicycles

I came across these two likely lads at the Gastown Criterium a few years back.

[better resolution here]

Baseball Becomes Even More Boring (Hard To Believe, I Know)

It is a sad day for baseball today: George Steinbrenner is dead.

It is sad for the sport because baseball is SO boring that it needs noisy characters like Steinbrenner to give it any interest at all.  Perhaps in tribute to the big guy they could cancel the rest of the season.

That Was The World Cup

Regular readers of this blog will know that my usual hangout on Commercial Drive is Fet’s Bar & Grill run by the fabulous Alura & Eric and, these days, their sons.  Great place generally — best burgers and ultra-thin pizzas in Vancouver — and when a big soccer or hockey event takes place it is the place to be on the Drive.

For the World Cup Final yesterday morning and afternoon Eric put on a great show with extra TVs set up and I was able to arrange the best seats in the house for seven friends, all but one of whom were new to the place.  The restaurant was packed, of course, with a good mix of Spanish and Dutch supporters. The inevitable vuvuzelas were prominent — including on our table –, but the cheering and the chanting were even louder!  And the booze that flowed!  Boy, I had forgotten just how much my friends could drink!  When Spain finally scored the goal in the final minute of extra time, the whole place exploded. I shrieked and shouted along with the best of them and almost lost my voice as a result.

The Drive simply closed down as everyone poured out onto the street, conga lines forming!

Near the end of the game, Eric at Fets arranged a free raffle draw for team shirts and my good friend Bob won the Spanish colours.  Bob already has a vast collection of sports memorabilia and I thought it appropriate that he should win.  However, in the grand spirit of the day he immediately gave the shirt to a young girl at a neighbouring table of Spanish supporters as she was the only one in her group who wasn’t already wearing the uniform.  Great gesture from a really great guy to top off a wonderful day.

Which Way Did They Go?

[click on image for better view]

The 2012 Summer Olympics Are Already With Us

PaidContent.org’s always useful site has a fascinating piece today about the size of the 2012 London Olympics and the way social media is already being used to steer consumers. They provide statistics from the online sites of the Vancouver Olympics in February this year and the Beijing Olympics of 2008

• 291 million visits (Beijing 2008: 105 million)
• 83 million uniques (Beijing 2008: 70 million – compared with Yahoo’s 32 million, NBC.com’s 20 million)
• Over 50 percent of all Canadians visited the site
• 8.7 million visits to mobile site, 1.25 app downloads
• 1.2 million Facebook fans (Beijing 2008: 320,000)
• “Every post they put on Facebook attracted about 100,000 comments.”

But then note that London2012.com “is already tracking x2 Vancouver traffic at same stage and planning for 10 billion visits.” They are aiming “to sign up 5m+ to our databases.”

At the moment, it’s using Twitter to encourage deep-link click-throughs to London2012.com pages, Facebook for more static, “call-and-response” excitement building and MyLondon2012.com to collect user-generated messages that could be re-published during the games – some, perhaps, beamed on to athletic venues …

“Our major learning from the Vancouver games is that social media has to be FUN. People use it in their procrastination time, downtime, fun time. We produce endless photos of construction progress … some of them quite inspirational and exciting … however, when we put updates on our Facebook page, we get complaints. ‘show us something cool’.”

They also plan to play to their market by figuring out with major telcos how to make cell phone operation flawless at venues, which is certainly not the case today.

Bouncing To Paradise

Can you imagine, someone actually had to invent the trampoline!  That person was George Nissen who died last Wednesday.  He was 96.

He created his first “bouncing rig” in 1930 and trademarked the name Trampoline (Spanish for diving board + “e”) in 1937.   He had been a tumbler since his youngest days, and he took his rig on the road with a group called The Three Leonardos in the 1930s and 1940s.  He lived long enough to see his invention become the equipment for a brand new Olympic sport at Sydney in 2000.

What a fun and interesting life!

Cricket As Post-Modern Consumerism

Many people in the Americas believe that cricket is a complex old-fashioned game, probably more suitable to English village greens than modern stadia. That is primarily because the same many people in the Americas are mislead by their media and have no idea that, across the world, cricket is second only to football (soccer) in its popularity. A lot of this has to do with India, where cricket is the national sport, and the television audience is almost four times the size of the US market.

Moreover, cricket has changed with the times, developing new forms that have created additional waves of popularity and television opportunity. Fans can now select from traditional 4- and 5-day matches, matches that take about 8 hours to complete, and matches that are over in three hours. Or they can watch all three; most do. Cricket has found a way to triple its audience.

The most modern of these types of cricket is called 20/20, especially as formatted under the professional Indian Premier League (IPL) which introduced cheerleaders to cricket. The eight franchises in the IPL cost hundreds of millions of dollars.  Players are literally bought and sold on televised auctions before each season and the best cricketers in the world command multi-million dollar contracts for an 8-week gig. This is huge money and the League fetishizes that money, making sure that Bollywood royalty and industrial billionaires are featured visitors to the games.  Matches take about three hours and the crowds at the arenas for the first three seasons were extraordinary even though the TV treats the games as prime time spectacles.

Moreover — and the point of this post — the League flourishes because of the wild generosity of advertizers and the looseness of the IPL rules on what can be placed on a uniform, on a pitch or on equipment. I was reminded of this by a great article on cricinfo by Rahul Bhattacharya.

Watching the IPL is like encountering one of those post-modern narratives that seeks to satirise consumerism. Surely, one thinks, this must be a critique of the contemporary world and [Commissioner] Lalit Modi not its marketing whiz but its artistic seer.

The player outfits look like a collage of flyers. Excluding the team crest, they wear two logos on the front, two on the “non-leading arm”, two on the “leading arm”, and a big one at the back. The trousers sport a logo on each leg. The helmets and caps have one at the rear and another on the side. The umpires are similarly draped, though they haven’t such a variety.

The beautiful baize of the field is defaced by anywhere between five and eight giant logos, one or two on the straights, and the remaining square. Inside the advertising boundary boards, the boundary triangles carry branding. So do the sightscreens; so do the stumps. The fibreglass of the dugouts is tattooed in logos. There is a blimp in the sky. A giant screen constantly fizzes with advertisements. The banners in the crowd can be sponsored (“Cheer your Citi”).

Watching on the telly one sometimes loses a horizontal quarter to ads, sometimes a vertical quarter, sometimes both together. Along the bottom, there are text promos the whole while.  As many viewers have noted with horror, this season features ads between not just overs but between deliveries, cunningly zooming in and out of the giant screen sometimes. Besides, there are two “strategic time-outs”. These provide 10 minutes of pure, cricket-free ads. These have been sold to Maxx Mobile: perhaps the first instance, as somebody said, of a sponsored ad-break.

Bhattacharya notes that most Indians are not participants in sports and are simply consumers.  They treat cricket on TV in the same way as they treat the popular saas-bahu, family soap operas — they will watch whichever seems to be most exciting at that moment, and huge sums of money are exciting.  In India, money “is the parameter to judge a profession, a work of art, a life … It empowers and it attracts power.”

The 20/20 form within a small high-talent league system is the most likely type of cricket to break through in the North American market.  It may take advertizers and networks some time to catch up to Indian expertise in its exploitation.

Following Sumo

As if  I don’t have enough to do already, I’m covering the Spring Sumo Tournament on mahalo. The tournament begins tonight at around midnight my time, and goes on for fifteen straight days.

With the enforced retirement of superstar Asashoryu, it will be a quick march to the coronation of Hakuho unless Harumafuji, Kotooshu and Baruto can pick up their game. I expect that they will and I’m looking forward to this being a fascinating basho.

These Olympics Are Disabled

This evening, in Vancouver, there will be the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Paralympics.  I am sure everyone here will try to make these “Olympics” fun and worthwhile but it is, let’s be honest, so very second class.

Most of the public facilities set up for the Winter Olympics are gone or closed, and the international media has gone off to cover Formula One racing or skeet shooting in Dubai.  Even Canada’s own Globe & Mail has no story on the Paralympics on their website today.  Television coverage will be hit or miss, and certainly without the wall-to-wall broadcasting we had a couple of weeks ago. None of the medals Canada wins over the next few days will count towards the Own The Podium campaign.

If I were a differently-abled athlete, I wouldn’t bother showing up.

The only way to end this degrading of “handicapped” athletes into second class citizens is to make sure that the Paralympics and the Olympics themselves are merged into a single event.   It may add a day or two to the “ordinary event” but so what?   It will bring these sports and athletes together with the rest of the sporting community, and it will garner these sports wide TV coverage.  How can there be any downside to this?  Certainly no downside that could possibly compete with the new respect these men and women would get.

Failure to bring these Games together will probably never happen while petty kings such as Jacques Rogge and the other mediocrities on the IOC are still in charge.  But that failure should weigh heavily on any legacy they hope to project into the future.

Single-Minded

As I write this post on Sunday morning, Canada has won 13 gold medals in the Winter Olympics.  That equals the record that only the Soviet Union (1976) and Norway (2002) have managed before.   It is a remarkable achievement and we still have the chance to make it 14 gold and give Canada a record that we could hold for decades.  However, in the short term at least, the entire success or failure of Canada’s Games depends solely on the result of the hockey final this afternoon.

Universal health care, peacekeeping, hockey:  we can be pretty single-minded when we want to be!

Go Canada go!