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Shaun, Bode, Peyton and the winter of their discontent

Not a great season for the favorites, huh? First Nole loses in the quarterfinal of the Australian Open and Rafa is injured in the final of the same event, then Peyton has a disastrous Super Bowl, Bode Miller flames out in the Olympic downhill and Shaun White goes down in his signature half-pike.

Time: Time is another country. We tend to think when someone wins that he’ll win forever. But over time, new people come along to challenge the status quo, the way iPod challenged Shaun, the way Matthias Mayer took on Bode and the rest of the field to win the downhill. 

Afterward, Matthias thanked destiny: “My mother is very religious. She believes in this and of course I was brought up like that. It’s a little bit easier for me if I think that way: That everything turns out as it should.”

I would agree but boy, there’s a part of me that really doesn’t want to think that way. Is it destiny for some to suffer? Why? Read more

 

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Observations from the ice

Is there a better night in sports than the first Sunday of the Winter Games? Figure skating and one of the most thrilling events in all of sports – the men’s downhill. The only thing that would make my rapture greater would be if there were curling, too.

Curling combines two of my favorite things – competition and housework. Watching people sweep and cry “Ai, ai” as that fat curling stone comes down the ice in a kind of wintry shuffleboard is beyond adorable. It was David Letterman of all people who cemented my love of curling. One year to promote his “coverage” of the Games, which consisted of reports from his mother, his publicist sent us entertainment writers curling stone paperweights. I keep mine in its little plaid box in my library. (It’s in a plaid box, because curling comes from Scotland, the land of kilts, Sean Connery and Andy Murray. We owe Scotland so much.)

But back to skating. Read more

 

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Does Nole have the eye of the tiger?

So after losing to Stanislas Wawrinka in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic elected not to play the first round of the Davis Cup against Wawrinka and Roger Federer, who had chosen to descend from Mount Olympus for the occasion, thereby virtually ensuring that his beloved Serbia would lose to Switzerland. 

Nole claimed exhaustion and instead went skiing. (His parents were skiers under the old Communist system in the former Yugoslavia.) And while the Serbian Davis Cup team coach Bogdan Obradovic defended that decision, saying Nole has always been there for his country, others wondered why.

“I’m sure he’s exhausted after playing five matches,” one poster wrote sarcastically. (I love how the Internet has given us ignorant snark the way swamps once bred yellow fever.) Read more

 

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20 Questions to ask before the Super Bowl

  1. Will there be a super-duper storm for the Super Bowl as predicted by the Farmers’Almanac?
  2. If there is a storm, will Peyton Manning, who is said to have trouble in the cold, be affected by the weather?
  3. Will the rest of the Denver Broncos be affected by the weather?
  4. Will the Seattle Seahawks be affected by the weather?
  5. Will the fans be affected by the weather?
  6. Will anyone talk about anything but the weather before, during and after the big game?
  7. Why is the blogosphere just now waking up to the fact that the Super Bowl is going to be played outdoors?
  8. Why can’t the blogosphere understand that though Super Bowl XLVIII is being played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the teams that play in that stadium have New York in their names, hence New York is co-hosting the Super Bowl?
  9. Why can’t the blogosphere understand that Metropolitan Opera star Renée Fleming is more than capable of singing the National Anthem?
  10. How many people in the blogosphere can sing the National Anthem, getting all the words right? (Bonus question: How many know the second verse?) Read more

 

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Stan the man

Wow, you gotta hand it to Stan Wawrinka – the everyman who has played in countryman Roger Federer’s (aka Feddy Bear’s) shadow for so long – electrifying Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final. This is the first time that someone other than one of the Big Four (Rafa, Fed, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray) has won a Grand Slam since Juan Martin del Potro defeated Rafa in the US Open final in 2009. Yes, that’s right, four years of domination over.

Stan’s win over Rafa was huge, bigger than his win over Nole and not just because that was the quarterfinals. Nole, the former defending champ who has won the tournament four times (including three in a row) is nonetheless the Maria Callas of men’s tennis: There’s so much drama in his matches. Indeed, when the tennis experts cull the top 10 matches each year, several of his are always in there, because the outcome is never certain. Read more

 

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Bury our hearts at (her) wounded knee

Well, what a weekend it’s been for rivalries – the subject of my novel “Water Music” just released last week.

Peyton (Manning’s) Place proving too much for The (Tom) Brady Bunch. Young Guns Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson squaring off. (See separate post.) Former No. 1 Ana Ivanovic taking it to current No. 1 Serena Williams at the sweltering Australian Open, where the 100-plus temps have turned out to be a formidable opponent. (Last year, the players slipped and slid their way out of Wimbledon. Now they’re going under Down Under. What’s up with that?)

But here our thoughts turn from the court and the gridiron to the rink and another era to discuss “The Price of Gold,” Nanette Burstein’s fascinating new ESPN documentary about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, which aired on ABC Jan. 18. If you were of a certain ago 20 years ago almost to this day, they need no introduction. Read more

 

 

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