After Atalanta

I don't know who the woman is who is doing all the commentary on curling (or at least on women's curling--I haven't watched much of the men's). But she's ridiculous. She's definitely a former player and sounds like a native English speaker but I am sensing some kind of accent. Up until this point (this point about 2 minutes ago) I thought she was knowledgeable, not especially helpful to those of us still in the dark about strategy (though I noticed last night at the bar as I was watching that there are others who know far less about the sport than I do), and a little bit condescending. In other words, typical commentator. But about two minutes ago as she and her co-commentator were discussing the "controversy" over the loud Canadian crowds that have caused some opposing teams to flub up shots she said that curling (the sport) had to find a way to manage the crowd but still keep the excitement alive. Her suggestion: "cheerleaders in bikinis." ...

Bryan Hollister of the Bleacher Report has a " humor" column this week in which he lists and explains the top 15 sports that are not sports. I'm not going to get super uptight about this list. But I do have some things to say about his choices. First, though, it should be noted that the definition of sport is always up for debate--and this is the way it should be. Because a sport does not always involve "blood, sweat, and tears shed through hours of workouts, practices, scrimmages, successes, and failures." Or at least not all those elements all the time. It's a pretty naive definition of a sport, but it's the only one that Hollister offers. I'm not going to comment on all 15 of Hollister's offerings. Check them out for yourself. Here are just some of my thoughts on some of his. Winter sports seem to be especially heavy hit, curling, bobsled, and luge. And if Hollister really thinks that no one has ever said about luge "that's what I wan...

I'm a little late on this as the Women's World Curling Championships occurred a few weeks ago but given the lack of attention the sport receives I felt I should still post about it and the news it generated. This article , out of Canada where the championships were held in March, discusses the division of the women's and men's championships and the positive effects that have come from holding the events separately--or rather the lack of negative effects. This is the fourth year the women have held their own championships and they are hopeful that the event will continue building and that they won't, as one curler predicted, have to curl naked to get attention.* The Chinese women made quite an impression in Canada. Getting special attention was the Chinese skip Bingyu (Betty) Wang. Their success at the worlds is especially impressive given that the entire Chinese team began training in an ice hockey rink because there was no curling ice in the entire country until j...

...by EB on a local radio station, a quite disparaging remark about women's sports and dealing with relatives. The DJ was giving advice about dealing with in-laws and said that all one has to do is find a sport on the television and sit down and watch intently, thus avoiding having to make conversation. And it didn't matter what sports. Any would do, he said-- even women's curling. It was disappointing on multiple levels. One, the radio station had become a favorite because it was the only one (besides NPR) that had not, once Thanksgiving had come and gone, decided to play all Christmas music, all the time. Two, it's stupid, unrealistic advice. If your in-laws are really that annoying, sitting down and watching sports is probably not going to deter them from pestering you. And it's insulting. How hard is it to make conversation with relatives for one afternoon or so? And third, of course, the choice of women's curling as the epitome of a just any sport will do ...