Just to prove my bonafides as a Montreal Canadiens fan … Here’s a picture of me at the Canadiens-Sharks game this Monday in San Jose.
My wife who sat next to me had a better time… but oh well.
Still a Habs Fan
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Category Archives: sports
Tour de Tricheurs: Yellow Jersey is Doped
Does it ever, ever, ever end?
The NY Times reported today that Michael Rasmussen failed to show up for a drug test twice. This is unbelievable. Why are they allowed to compete if they fail to show up?
MONPELLIER, France, July 20 — Michael Rasmussen, the current leader of the Tour de France, raced in the 12th stage today despite the disclosure on Thursday that he has missed two drug tests since the beginning of May and has received a warning that he could be suspended from the sport if he misses another.
The drug tests were missed on May 8 and June 28, at a time when anti-doping officials sought to contact Rasmussen but discovered that he had not informed them of his whereabouts.
The stupidity of this line of reasoning is awe inspiring. Let me get this straight:
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Michael Rasmussen is a high profile professional athlete.
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Michael Rasmussen has an employer.
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Michael Rasmussen has a family.
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Michael Rasmussen has friends.
And no one could find him? And no-one could set up a meeting with him?
If the anti-doping agency is that incompetent, of course there is cheating in cycling and sports.
Fuck Landis. Fuck him and The Tour De Tricheurs.
So it turns out that Landis’ miraculous ascent was chemically enhanced.
Was he a fool? A moron? Or both? They had just thrown out the 2005 top finishers from the Tour thanks to the Spanish affair. Did he think he could get away with it? Did he think that they would not test him? Did he think?
And as for phonak… Are we really expected to believe that the team had no idea what was going on? This is the Tour not some amateur race. The atheletes have more doctors and masseurs pampering them than patients in the Intensive Care Ward of hospitals. This is not credible that somehow Landis was able to inject himself with drugs without the team medical staff knowing about it.
So fuck Landis, and the entire sport of professional cycling. The lack of personal integrity on the part of the cyclists is appalling. Perhaps if sponsor’s were criminally liable for the cheating of the athletes we would see this sport clean itself up.
But in the meantime. Fuck Landis, Fuck the Tour, Fuck it all. In one appalling year Landis, Ullrich etc have managed to destroy what Armstrong built in 7 years. Damn them all.
As for me, I’ll stick to basketball, football, and hockey. At least there we do not maintain the pretense that the Athletes are clean. We admit it’s a form of entertainment, where the personal integrity of the players is irrelevant.
Italy vs France
The best comment was produced by a friend of mine:
Should I cheer for the Fascists or the agricultural parasites?
Soccer and the American Psyche
Recently on NPR, someone observed that American sports are all about winning. Football, baseball, and basketball always have winners. There is no such thing as a tie.
Hockey with a long tradition of tie’s was tweaked by the new NHL to ensure that there would be fewer ties. Everygame now ends with a penalty shootout so that at the end of play a victory is declared.
Soccer is not like that. In soccer a great many games end in a tie. A great many games end in a 0-0 tie. Appreciating tie’s is critical to appreciating soccer.
I wonder if America’s winner-take-all attitude can ever permit a sport where tieing is an integral and unavoidable result.
US Becomes a Soccer Nation.
Today the US became a soccer nation.
What are the key attributes?
First your team underachieves in the opener. The press reaction to the underachievement is hysteria. This is proof, the press says, that your country is incapable of ever playing at a serious level. That the team is overhyped, the players underachievers, and the coach a buffoon who should not be allowed to run an elementary school checkers team never mind a World Cup Soccer Team. A soccer nation is never happy about playing in the world cup. The whole point is to WIN the world cup.
Second, against all odds your team then defeats or ties a world powerhouse in an improbable way. Down two players with almost 45 minutes to play you still manage to create the best offensive oppurtunities. And instead of celebrating the result everyone is talking about how you were robbed. How the referrees altered the result. How they stole the game from you. A soccer nation is not surprised about a stunning result. Of course the Americans tied Italy. And if the ref hadn’t robbed the American team they would have won.
So today when the US team played Italy to a 1-1 tie after being excoriated by the press for losing 3-0 to the Czechs, the fans and the players and the announcers and the press were not talking about triumph achieved but triumphed denied by poor refereeing….
Maybe Soccer is Universal.