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February 27, 2007
I Am Late with This News...
But not as late as the All England Club.
The BBC reported late last week:
The Wimbledon Championships will offer women and men equal prize money for the first time at this year's tournament.To see more, go here.The announcement by the All England Club brings the tournament into line with other Grand Slams following criticism from officials and players.
Wimbledon joins the United States and Australia in paying equal money across the board, from the champions down to the first-round losers in all events.
But one more quote. "Tim Phillips, chairman of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, announced that the championship committee had decided 'that the time is right to bring this subject to a logical conclusion and eliminate the difference.'"
I hope they're quite sure the time is right... wouldn't want to be hasty, eh?
I still have a pin from about 20 years ago that says "79c"--representing the amount women earned on the dollar compared to men. Unfortunately, it's probably not too far out of date. Except now at Wimbledon and the other grand slams. Oh. Well, except for Roland Garros. We'll take good news where we can get it anyhow.
19:00 Posted in Tennis | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
February 25, 2007
I Love Michelle Wie
I don’t really care for golf, but I like Michelle Wie. I don’t dislike golf; I appreciate the skill and strength and mental toughness it takes, but the game has just never called out to me. Maybe that’s a stage of life that lies ahead somewhere. In any case, I happened upon an interview with Michelle Wie that really made me admire the 17 year-old professional.
She was being asked about her plans for the year ahead. And replied with some specifics about winning some events and planning better, also saying that, “Whatever happens, happens,” and that she was thinking about process more than outcome.
Then she gets asked the inevitable dumb questions, like, what do you say to people who think you shouldn’t try to “challenge traditions,” in other words, play against men?
Her excellent answer: “It’s ridiculously mean for people to say you shouldn’t even try. Because, you know, that’s just what life is: You fail, you succeed. And if you don’t try you don’t even know. Even if I do fail, I know at least I tried.”
“Whatever people say, they say.”
And then she gets this nonsensical poser: “Would you rather be the best female player or the 20th player overall?”She graciously didn’t point out that that was just retarded and she could be both. She said, “I just want, after my career is over with, to have no regrets.”
Good for her.
23:15 Posted in Community of Athletes , Sports | Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
February 21, 2007
Waterville Valley Nordic Ski Center
This is not me. But it’s what I did much of last Sunday. That is, go uphill. And I may well have gone up this very hill, as the photo is from the Waterville Valley website, and that’s where I skied. (Waterville, not the website, silly.) Unbeatable conditions, like skiing through some ski area’s promotional film.
Nature aside, the trails were groomed beautifully, for both classical and skating skiing. (Trail pass = $16 for the day.) Snow squalls blew through the valley, separated by swaths of pale crystal blue—while the big slow flakes kept floating down. Birch trees, pines, clean snow… a concentration of my selective memories of winter.
Waterville Valley bills itself as the 12th most popular Nordic ski area in North America. I’m not sure that’s the slickest marketing tag I’ve ever heard, but who am I to argue. I have probably only been to seven North American Nordic ski areas (Weston Ski Track, Great Brook Farm, Waterville, Jackson Ski Touring Center, Bretton Woods, Sunday River, and Snow Mountain Ranch), so I guess I’ve got to put it in my personal top 12….
I give it a thumbs up anyway. Would be happy to go back.
Nordic skiing is funny. More than downhill skiing or snowboarding, the range of aesthetics and abilities is astonishing. And these two attributes do not correlate. Woolly three-pinners (and I mean woolly as in venerable as well as what they’re wearing) gliding in from their maple sugaring and granola baking and wicking polylycra-sleek racers on colorful composite skis babbling of anaerobic thresholds both excel in their separate ways, and people who look like they’ve just arrived at the end of a surprise journey, been given unathletic parkas and told to strap those thingies on their feet and walk, all share the trails together. Quite civilly, albeit at different speeds. I have to love that about it.
I skied mostly uphill (truly, given the nature of gravity and velocity, I spent proportionally much more time going up than coming down…) on Sunday. Had to stop frequently; my heart pounded in my ears, but the stops came mostly when the dexterity of my hup-hup-hup quick skating uphill fell prey to lactic acid overload. Butt burning and feet slowing, momentum flagging… at least it was delightful to stop and look around. (The conditions reminded me of the one time I ever saw a porcupine (in a tree at a ski area from the vantage point of the chairlift), so I was always hopefully looking.)
Monday, the temperature got up to about 2 Farenheit with some especially biting winds. Skied classical that day, and slowly, accompanying a learning five year old. That was joyful in its own way. Wish I had photos to post. Skied one 2 km loop and then, with her cheeks matching her bright fuscia jacket, we went in, satisfied.
00:50 Posted in Leisure , Winter Sports , X-C Skiing | Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
February 12, 2007
The Trouble with Spectating
I have a guilty conscience.
I like sports. I like doing sports of all kinds—basketball, rowing, skiing, tennis, running, lifting, hiking, goofin’ around with any kind of equipment for the most part (excluding motors). I also like watching sports of all kinds—from young nephews’ Little League games to little-understood equestrian events on YouTube to the Celtics on TV (even their 18th consecutive loss). And much else besides, from Major League Baseball to the Olympic Games (the more obscure the sport the more fun) to the World’s Strongest Man competition, if the mood is right.
I find that most, probably upward of 90 percent, of the sports I watch are men’s sports. I obviously (or not obviously) am a resolute supporter of women’s sports. Not only do I think it is good and important for women for health and sociological reasons, I think it’s just plain good, even for spectating. I’m just as happy to watch Duke vs. UNC’s women’s teams play basketball as I am the men’s, if not more so. (See AP photo, left.) Likewise tennis. Soccer. Swimming. Curling. But where are they?
Truth is, I am not a devoted spectator. I’m lazy. If it’s on television right at the moment I feel like watching something, I’ll tune in. I don’t care enough about what’s on television in general to own or even desire TiVo or an equivalent, and with sports—unless you wanted to save a copy of a game for educational or sentimental purposes, like your kid was in it—watching an event after you know the outcome is bizarre. Even if you don’t know it but the rest of the world does. You can’t put your toe in the same river twice, right? You may be on the same spot on the riverbank, but the river has flowed by and changed. It has something to do with that.
The trouble with all of this is that, at any given time you can find men and boys doing sports on television. I mean that quite literally, I think, though haven’t subjected it to testing at 3:17 a.m., etc. (though I do believe that that is prime Strongest Man in the World time). But at any given time you cannot find women and girls doing sports on television. I’m not saying you don’t see it, or even that it’s impossible to find, but it is not at all ubiquitous. Often you can spin the whole dial, if you’ll pardon the anachronistic imagery, and not see a single women’s sporting event. If you’re really lucky, you might catch Violet Palmer reffing an NBA game.
I do wonder what percentage of sports programming covers women’s sports. Somebody must know this. Anybody? (I just checked the Women’s Sports Foundation site. Their listing of televised women’s sports is only as up-to-date as January, and here it is February 12. For January they listed the Australian Open, three days of Winter X Games (you caught that snowboarder X women’s qualifier at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday the 25th, didn’t you?) plus five college basketball games. I hope this merely speaks to the lameness of WSF listings.)So I think this state of affairs is bad and it makes me feel guilty that I just lazily go with it, because I’m not about to make the reform of ESPN a crusade or anything….But if I, a strong supporter of women’s sports, by my actions (or lack of actions) appear to just accept the implied secondary place for women as athletes, who else is going to care? How’s anything going to change?
23:35 Posted in Spectating , Sports , Television & Radio | Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
February 06, 2007
Completely Unfit
We did get two inches of snow, being generous in the measuring. I strapped on my skis and skated across the slightly windblown, powderless inch that remained a day later on the local playing fields. And determined that my hunch based on towing a kid while on skates was correct. I’m in good shape, but completely unfit for a 50 km race, or even a 25 km race. Or even a 25 km dawdle. Just a lap around two soccer fields, and a couple of trips up a nearby hill had be convinced. The anterior tibialis have just had not enough practice holding my feet off the ground. To say nothing of the rest of the specific muscles required. So plans are revised.
No Loppet in my year. There will be a Play Forever League consolation basketball game on the day of the ski race. Sigh. Would rather be missing a championship game to go off skiing… My team lost our semi-final last week by one basket. Two too many mistakes on our part, but that’s neither here nor there.
My goal now is to get up to ski the course in Lake Placid at some point this winter, so I know what I’m working toward for next year. And to sneak in as much snow time as I can in the next six weeks. Or fewer, as foretold by the Oracle at Punxatawny.
On that topic, The New York Times says: Groundhog Day has been part of the Western calendar since around the fifth century, which means it has survived centuries of Catholicism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the advent of the agriculture of cloned sheep. But whether it will survive in an age of global warming was one questionǿalbeit not the biggest one—raised by the awkward coincidence yesterday of Groundhog Day 2007 falling on the same day a report was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations.
On the plus side, I will stop for a while with writing about this boring and solipsistic topic. Be back later with issues.
19:05 Posted in World Events , X-C Skiing | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
February 02, 2007
No Snow, Some Ice, Fun Video
Finally it's been cold, but still no snow. An inch is predicted for overnight. I did get some good skating in last weekend. I grew up skating on ponds in hand-me-down figure skates (those things were old). So I'm new to hockey skates. I've roller bladed so I've got the idea, but have none of the direction-changing ability of someone who's grown up playing hockey. And it's silly, I have some very expensive hockey skates—this time hand-me-downs from my nephew who was a serious hockey player for a time. These ones are not so old, and I got them in trade for some dog-sitting.... I can't really live up to such good skates, but maybe they'll help me in the end.
Here was the best skiing like activity I've done since skiing last year: I pulled a sled behind me while I skated the perimeter of a big pond. A plastic sled with a longish rope and a 42-pound kid in it. Not exactly the same as skiing, but the same butt muscles were burning shortly into it. Unfortunately, I only discovered this drill at the end of our outing. Maybe this weekend there'll be a chance for more.
So, I mostly stick to my usual rounds of basketball, running, and lifting. And spectating. This is the best sporting thing I've seen in a long time:
Enjoy. A bientot.
21:40 Posted in Web , X-C Skiing | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this