When I learned that David Beckham had not been picked for Britain's Olympic football squad, two thoughts hit me. The first was disappointment: had the squad been mine to choose, Beckham's would have been the first name in it.
There are three key reasons: he is good enough, he...
(0) Comments | Posted 8 May 2012 | (06:26)
The final of the 2012 World Snooker Championship featured only one champion: Ronnie O'Sullivan. But it featured two heroes.
O'Sullivan and his opponent, Ali Carter, proved themselves to be heroes not so much for surviving 17 days of top-class snooker inside Sheffield's Crucible Theatre but for surviving...
(1) Comments | Posted 17 April 2012 | (23:58)
For spectacular end-to-end excitement, there is no sport like rugby sevens--except perhaps that special brand of basketball played by the Harlem Globetrotters.
Sevens is exploding. The IRB World Series is one of the most reliably exciting competitions in international sport and is carrying sevens to countries, Kenya for example,...
(5) Comments | Posted 26 March 2012 | (03:49)
Erik Morales lost his WBC world title twice this weekend, once at the weigh-in and once in the ring. The scenes at the former were unusual and unexpected; the scenes in the latter were more predictable.
On Friday, Morales stepped onto the scales ahead of his bout with the...
(0) Comments | Posted 17 March 2012 | (18:17)
Mervyn Davies--a crucial member of the two finest rugby teams ever assembled, the 1971 and 1974 British Lions, and of the all-time XV of any rugby fan with sense--has died of cancer. To the special men who played with him in those legendary Lions sides, his death was...
(5) Comments | Posted 8 August 2011 | (01:00)
A few weeks ago, England announced their intention to play, during their World Cup campaign, in an all black jersey. The first reaction of fans -- in England, New Zealand and all rugby-playing countries in between -- was to check their calendars.
It wasn't April 1st. The announcement, it seemed,...
(0) Comments | Posted 1 August 2011 | (10:25)
Hong-man Choi was a giant: seven feet two, 350 pounds and with a physique that would have looked ludicrous on an action figure. His ethnicity made him appear even odder; to see fine Korean features stretched over a face so huge, the jaw apparently a full foot from the eyes,...
(0) Comments | Posted 15 July 2011 | (08:16)
The news, recently reported by Ben Rothenberg of The Daily Forehand, that Roger Federer has asked Martina Hingis to partner him in the mixed doubles at the 2012 Olympics has set the internet abuzz. There can scarcely be anyone with any connection to tennis, save perhaps a player...

(1) Comments | Posted 5 July 2012 | (01:00)