Shot Through the Leg and You're to Blame

Dave Zirin, one of the only pinko sportswriters in the business, offers an interesting analysis of the media furor over the murder of football player Sean Taylor:

Media illusion or not, we felt we knew Sean Taylor—and have wept for his family and their loss. There is nothing wrong with this. If anything, we’ve borne witness to people’s capacity to reach out and care.

BUT NOT everyone felt the better angels of their nature emerge. Within hours—minutes—of Taylor’s death, a collection of sportswriters tried to turn this tragedy into to a brazenly racist “life lesson.” They speculated that Taylor effectively got what he deserved, the fruits born of a “thug life.”

Never mind that Taylor was the son of a police chief who attended the same private schools as the Florida wing of the Bush family. The narrative of a young Black athlete dying by gunfire was too succulent to resist. The callous copy ran rampant, and this time went beyond Fox Sports Jason Whitlock’s easily dismissible, painfully predictable hot air...

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. If Taylor was white, imagine how this story would be played out: “Hero tragically dies defending his family in home invasion.” Instead, we get yet another example of how sports has become an absolute trash receptacle of racism over the past several years: an acceptable place for troglodytic writers and announcers to yip about “hip hop culture” and “thug life,” being the rot at the heart of professional athletics.

Cosmetic Biking

In a week when the Republicans decide they don't want to give poor kids health insurance, it's hard to find bigger jerks. Luckily, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) is doing double duty by bravely fighting the "Diversion of Funds From Bridges to Nonpriority Items"

At a time when the Nation’s roads and bridges need attention – as demonstrated by the recent collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis – the Federal Government continues to divert large amounts of money to bike paths and other cosmetic projects that could be funded locally.

It's good to know that bike paths - by reducing the number of cars on the road, improving public health through exercise, cutting pollution, breaking our oil addiction, and being generally good for property values and quality of life - are merely cosmetic.

I hope Rep. Ryan gets his tongue caught in a derailleur.

(Via Silent Sports Sounds Off.)

Compare & Contrast

From A Word a Day:

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. -Iris Murdoch, writer (1919-1999)

and from Velonews:

Oscar Pereiro was formally named the winner of the 2006 Tour de France on Thursday after American authorities ruled against Floyd Landis's appeal for failing a doping test, the sport's world governing body, the UCI, said.

Pereiro finished the 2006 race in second place, 57 seconds behind Landis but the American tested positive after the race following his 17th stage win at Morzine, three days before the end of the race.

"We can right now say that Pereiro is the winner of the Tour without waiting for a possible appeal by Landis to the Court of Arbitration for Sport," UCI president Pat McQuaid said.

Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said the decision to strip Landis of the 2006 title was too long in coming.

"We have waited a long time, too long. We said since the beginning that we were confident in the laboratory (AFLD) at Châtenay-Malabry," Prudhomme said. "Now it is proven and confirmed that Landis cheated. As far as the Tour de France is concerned, Landis was no longer the winner after the positive test of the second sample."

"According to the rules, the second-placed rider (Oscar Pereiro) will be promoted to first place," he added. "Landis did everything he could in his defense, for which he cannot be reproached. But it is clear that the process has been far too long."

Down from the Mountain

Boy, the 2007 Tour de France just won't stop. As doping accusations continue to spin out, today the tour winner, Alberto Contador, took the pulpit to say that

I have never doped and I have never participated in an act of doping. I won the Tour clean. I cannot understand the attacks against by people that don't even know me. My commitment is absolute and I will always be ready to collaborate in the fight against doping.

Thing is, he might be telling the truth, but it doesn't matter. Cycling's not only so badly tainted now that the freaking tour champion gets disinvited from middling races in which he wasn't even going to ride, but that his team - and the team on which Lance Armstrong rode to win his seven titles - can't even get a sponsor for the upcoming cycling season, and is disbanding. The team had eight of the last nine Tour de France championships, and can't get anyone to give them a few million a year. Imagine if the freaking Colts were kicked out of their stadium in the off-season, or the Cardinals were forced to move to an even crummier town - it's that crazy and bad.

Busted!

No, not la Lohan's latest run in with LAPD's finest - Alexandre Vinokourov's bust for using illegal blood transfusions to win a stage (or two) in the Tour de France.

Incredible. Doping's the story of the tour, sadly enough. Vino just won the second Pyrenean stage yesterday on a long, audacious breakaway. Then today, a previous blood sample comes back positive, he's suspended, and his team drops out of the tour - taking with it another (long-shot) contender for the overall win, Andreas Kloeden.

I was going to write at least a bit about the great race on Monday and a bit about the accelerating speed of doping scandals, but why bother now? I mean, it doesn't much matter that all the way up the last climb yesterday, young Alberto Contador attacked and attacked and attacked race leader Michael Rasmussen, trying not so much to break away and steal time from Rasmussen as to do psychological damage and weaken Rasmussen for Wednesday's last, brutal mountain stage.

Nope, what matters now is that the Tour looks (even more) ridiculous, with a two-stage winner - the best story of the Tour so far! - out on doping charges, the best team in the race withdrawn in shame, and all the posing about a clean Tour shown to be just so much hot air.

But it is really incredible, how the doping bust cycle - from accusation to punishment - is getting shorter and shorter. Infinity: rumors of doping followed Lance Armstrong throughout his run of seven consecutive wins, but nothing was (or has been yet) proven. Many years: the 1998 bust of Festina, a French team that was doped to the gills, almost brought the Tour to a halt, but took a very long time to come to something like an end. A few years: the Operacion Puerto scandal disqualified some of the pre-race favorites on the day before the Tour began, and is still exacting legal and professional consequences today. Months: Floyd Landis won the tour last year, and almost immediately afterwards was accused of doping; his case, too, is still pending. Weeks: in May, Bjarne Riis, who won the tour in 1996, admitted doping and was summarily removed from the Tour record books. Days and hours: two-thirds of the way through this year's tour, Vinokourov has been accused, kicked out, and shamed.

Given this ludicrous situation, I halfway expect to see tomorrow that the Tour has ejected the winner of next Saturday's time trial - just to tie a nice knot in time's arrow.

Nerd Alert: Tour de France

If you haven't been paying attention to the Tour de France this year, today's the day to tune in. Without a clear favorite in the race, the last few stages have been knock-down, drag-out affairs. Cumulatively, these stages have pared the field down to a half-dozen possible winners - a group which will likely be reduced to two or three by Stage 15, a 196-kilometer race that will include five killer climbs of Pyrenean mountains (see above). You can follow the live action (or read a good-as-live recap) via Velonews.

It's been utterly engrossing to see how the race has reached the point of finally - possibly - determining who will be on the podium in Paris on Sunday. In some ways, it's been the cycling equivalent of a 12-round heavyweight fight or maybe a 15-inning baseball game that started as a pitcher's duel and seems likely to end with exchanged homers. In Stage 11, late last week, the tour's strongest team, Astana, brutally knocked France's top racer, Christopher Moreau, out of contention by accelerating in unison while he was unawares, then using a strong wind to prevent his team from towing him back up. Moreau fell from sixth, within shouting distance of the lead of the race, to fourteenth and out of it. Astana's attack was revenge for Moreau's leading attacks in the Alps that had pushed Astana's team leader, Alexandre Vinokourov, out of the top echelon of the race.

After an uneventful Stage 12, the riders faced the first individual time trial of the tour in Stage 13 on Saturday. All of the top racers were expected to vie for the win, except for the man wearing the yellow jersey, Michael Rasmussen, who was expected to ride poorly, lose time and maybe the jersey, and get ready for the Pyrénées. Not only is Rasmussen known as a bad time-trial rider, but he had just been accused by a former teammate of using blood-doping products in the recent past and had been kicked off Denmark's world championships and Olympics cycling teams for having skipped drug tests. Instead, Rasmussen rode well, not ceding too much time (or the jersey) and letting the time-trail experts duke it out - and crash like cymbals at a junior-high band concert. Vinokourov rode best, sneaking back toward the top of the standings; other contenders, including American Levi Leipheimer, maintained their positions; and newcomers like Alberto Contador (a teammate of Leipheimer's on the American Discovery Channel team, for which Lance Armstrong used to ride) vaulted into contention. Fully ten riders were within 5:30 of Rasmussen - a big gap to reduce, but one which could be reduced with aggressive riding in the Pyrénées.

Thus Sunday's Stage 14, the first day in the Pyrénées, was critical. And it was Rasmussen who showed the field how to race. He rode the last climb, the Plateau de Beille, without the company of any teammates, yet still fended off Leipheimer - who was paced by both Contador and another Disco rider - and a half-dozen other excellent climbers. The attacks and counterattacks up the slope were great theatre and great competition, with various riders surging ahead then intentionally falling back, with the shrinking lead group swerving across the jam-packed roads as riders tried to shake each other, and with Rasmussen finally taking over. Into the last five kilometers of the grueling ride up to the plateau, only Contador could keep up, finally taking the stage win just ahead of Rasmussen and jumping into second place in the Tour, 2:23 down to the Dane.

And so the Tour's hardest stage on Monday will determine if Contador can ride as well on Monday, if Rasmussen has nothing left to give, or if another rider - like Leipheimer, who has seteadily climbed up the general classification to a present fourth place - can find legs good enough to attack Rasmussen and narrow or eliminate his lead.

Chickens Come Home to Roost

The Tour de France, the world's biggest spectator sporting event and not a bad little bike race, is now well underway. It's been a topsy-turvy first few days, what with (as last year) several of the world's best riders unable to race due to doping-related suspensions and, on the roads, a lack of a clear favorite who can dictate the stages. The hallowed yellow jersey has changed hands several times already, but is now on the shoulders of Michael Rasmussen, a Dane who may have the experience and climbing power to keep it for a while. Rasmussen attacked the field on Sunday's big mountain stage to leap from 39th place in the general classification to first. And as is de rigeur aujourd'hui, he immediately talked at length about how he's clean as a whistle. No doping here! Certainly, one look at the sticklike arms of "the Chicken" will show you he probably isn't sharing a dealer and a weight room with the hulks in the WWE.

The drug saga will play out over the rest of the Tour, and on into the future. After all, it's still not been determined whether Floyd Landis, who finished first in last year's Tour, will be allowed to keep the win or be disqualified for doping. Nonetheless, the Tour will be at least as interesting and gripping an event as ever, with at least a half-dozen racers capable of winning.

If you're interested in following the Tour, VeloNews' coverage is top-notch, and includes everything from stage previews, as-it-happens live accounts, and summaries to a truly staggering number of video highlights and interviews. Naturally, the coverage also include graphics likes this profile of Monday's ninth stage, a killer 159.5 kilometer (99 mile) race in the Alps that includes two "hors categorie" climbs and should shake out the general classification before the field heads across the south of France to the Pyrenees for next weekend's decisive mountain stages. (And if straight-on coverage isn't your thing, maybe this first-person account of trying to ride a bike up the Tour's most famous climb, L'Alpe d'Huez, will appeal.

Skiing in the Palms

On July 4, the International Olympic Committee met in Guatemala to choose the site of the 2014 Winter Games. After Salzburg, Austria, was knocked out in preliminary voting (presumably in some part due to the big doping scandal plaguing the Austrian biathlon and cross-country skiing teams), the final two sites were both unusual ones: Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Sochi, Russia. Swayed by the presence (and deep pockets) of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who made the trip to Guatemala City to lobby for the Russian site, voters ultimately selected Sochi, a city on the Black Sea which, though at the same latitude as Madison, Wisconsin, enjoys a near-tropical climate. (Imagine palm trees on Lake Mendota.)

Obviously, if hockey teams from Raleigh and Tampa Bay can win the Stanley Cup, Sochi can host all the indoor, ice-dependent events right in town. But where are they going to hold the outdoor, snow-dependent events? Up in the very high mountains just outside the city. The Caucasus are already home to one of Russia's biggest ski resorts, and Putin announced that the Russian government is going to pour $12 billion into the Sochi area, sparking a miniature boom in many of the companies which will undertake all the work - from building the nordic ski trails to, you know, finishing the electrical grid in Sochi.

At the end of this seven year plan, and probably after more corruption than a Republican lobbyist's cigar break, Sochi 2014 may offer the host country the chance to dominate a games to an extent unknown since Norway dominated at Lillehammer in 1994. At least the Sochi committee is keeping the stakes low, saying before the vote that the "hopes and dreams of Russian nation rest on IOC decision" and after that “this is one of the most important days in Russia’s history."

(Cross-posted to Blowing & Drifting.)

Tour de France

The 2007 Tour de France starts on Saturday, July 7, in London. Which isn't part of France, but so what. The race is as messy and convoluted as ever. Last year's race still doesn't have an official winner, with American Floyd Landis, who finished in the yellow jersey last July, still being investigated for doping. Multiple overlapping "scandals du dopage" have driven many of the would-be favorites away from the race or even out of cycling altogether. (And the race has the dubious quality of being held forty years after the death of British rider Tom Simpson, who collapsed and died during a hard mountain stage in 1967 and was found to have been doped to the gills.)

Still and all, I think it'll still be a great race. According to VeloNews' excellent overview of the race (available through VeloNews' Tour site, where you can find a positively ridiculous amount of coverage) the course is one of the most difficult in recent years, with relatively few long, flat "sprinter's stages;" two long individual time trials; and six mountain stages, all ending at or just after a big climb. In other words, no one-shot wonders will be able to capture a key stage and take the whole thing. On the other hand, the increasing difficulty of the Tour is itself one of the reasons riders dope in the first place: it's just too hard to do without chemical help.

That aside, American Levi Leipheimer has a shot a winning, or at least finishing on the podium, and a couple other Americans might win a stage or two. Besides Leipheimer, possible winners come from all over: Russia (Denis Menchov), Kazakhstan (Alexander Vinokourov), Germany (Andreas Kloeden), Spain (Alejandro Valverde), and Australia (Cadel Evans and Michael Rogers). Maybe the most interesting situation is that of Oscar Pereiro, the Spaniard who finished second last year but might still win that race if Landis is disqualified. Indeed, with a ruling in Landis' doping case due any day, Pereiro could be in the strange and unprecedented position of assuming the defense of last year's title midway through this year's race. Yellow jersey on the road, indeed.

NBA Draft: Best Tux

Clearly the best dressed man at the 2007 NBA Draft was Joacim Noah. Go Bulls!!!

New Blog

Howdy Snackers. A quick note to let you know that I have started a new blog called Tri-Curious. The focus of the blog is training for the 2008 Triathlon series. Public statements and/or humiliation can be a great motivator. If there are any triathletes out there, please stop by and leave some sage comments.

Later.

F1 Fast

Formula 1 racer Heikki Kovalainen is writing a column for the BBC about his life on the F1 circuit, . I know nothing about F1 racing, except that it's huge everywhere not named "USA", but Kovalainen's newest piece, on what a race day - and a race itself - is like, is really fascinating. Even though he's usually confined to his car for 90 minutes or more, he doesn't take a bottle of water with him, as the extra weight could cost him four seconds over the entire race.

Not Your Baseball Cards

The narrowly-focused and often depressing blog Steroid Nation (devoted to news about pro athletes' use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs) just posted about an eyebrow-raising article on the current fad for "premium" sports cards. They're not wrapped in foil and they don't apparently have cheesy 3D graphics, but they do include pieces of game-worn jerseys and cost upwards of $500 a box. One set from Upper Deck runs $800. Truly, we are in the end times.

Quizzical

This is pretty cool, since it's not every day a Minnesota school wins (or even comes near) a national championship:

Quiz bowl team downs Harvard to win National Championship
After beating Michigan, Stanford, Virginia, Oklahoma State, Florida, Grinnell, Amherst, Rutgers, and UCLA, the Carleton Quiz bowl with top tournament scorer Patrick Hope ‘07 downed Harvard 305-205 to become the top finishing undergraduate institution in the country. The title was second for coach Eric Hillemann who led the Carleton team to a national title in 1999.

(Blurb from the campus paper; more here on the campus news site.)

Slow & Steady Wins the Feast

The 111th Boston Marathon was run on Monday, in rather dismal conditions. A few days before, anthropologist Daniel Lieberman delivered an interesting talk on why it is that humans, alone among terrestrial animals, and certainly alone among mammals, can and do run so far. His talk is summarized at Physorg.com. A few snippets:

Lieberman said the appearance about 2 million years ago of physical adaptations that have no impact on walking but that make humans better endurance runners provide evidence that early scavengers became running hunters.

Specifically, we developed long, springy tendons in our legs and feet that function like large elastics, storing energy and releasing it with each running stride, reducing the amount of energy it takes to take another step. There are also several adaptations to help keep our bodies stable as we run, such as the way we counterbalance each step with an arm swing, our large butt muscles that hold our upper bodies upright, and an elastic ligament in our neck to help keep our head steady...

Humans, he said, have several adaptations that help us dump the enormous amounts of heat generated by running. These adaptations include our hairlessness, our ability to sweat, and the fact that we breathe through our mouths when we run, which not only allows us to take bigger breaths, but also helps dump heat. "We can run in conditions that no other animal can run in," Lieberman said.

All together, Lieberman said, these adaptations allowed us to relentlessly pursue game in the hottest part of the day when most animals rest. Lieberman said humans likely practiced persistence hunting, chasing a game animal during the heat of the day, making it run faster than it could maintain, tracking and flushing it if it tried to rest, and repeating the process until the animal literally overheated and collapsed.

And then, hey, no need to cook Mr. Antelope! He's half cooked already.

The talk on the whole a fascinating look at how anthropology can help make sense not only of human origins and capacities, but some of the wacky shit we do - like run 26.2 miles in a rainstorm.

(The summary also quotes a silly thing Lieberman said: "Humans are terrible athletes in terms of power and speed, but we’re phenomenal at slow and steady. We’re the tortoises of the animal kingdom." I guess that's why he's an anthropologist and not a biologist.)

Mendoza Dixon Line?

When are the Sox bats going to come alive? Nearly half the team is under .200. Hell, in tonight's game, only one starter was hitting over .206. The Sox have lost three in a row -- primarily due to the lack of hitting. Hell, two nights ago they lost and the starting pitcher gave up one hit. Speaking of one hit, Alex Cintron is making $1.9 mm and has only one more hit than I have on the season.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze

I'm a junkie for most things Olympian, so I found the announcement of the medals to be awarded at Beijing 2008 to be pretty interesting. The medals themselves, made of the appropriate medal and jade, are rather pretty, in fact. No word on whether they're being made in sweatshops by 12-year-old girls in some smoggy metropolis in Shandong.

Dogsledding

This story in the Washington Post about dogsledding* in Ely, Minnesota, is the best thing I've read on the web all week. Even on a day when the air is leaning toward spring, it makes me long for winter.

(* Why do they call it dogsledding? Shouldn't that term be reserved for the sport of riding down hills on dogs?)

Bracketology

March Madness is upon us, but what about a bracket filled out so that the team with the best graduation rate won each game? From Inside Higher Ed (click through to see a bigger version):

Iowa Hawkeyes...

Crazy, or just weird?

From Steroid Nation, a conspectus of stories on three ex-Hawkeye football players who are a) embroiled in lawsuits over feral cats, b) murdering dogs, and c) too riled-up to watch girls' basketball games.

This kind of nutsiness correlates well with what little I know about Iowa.