Category: Sports

From the BBC:

SECOND TEST, DAY TWO, ADELAIDE: Australia 8-1 v England 551-6 dec
Paul Collingwood became just the third England batsman to score a double century in Australia as the tourists took charge of the second Ashes Test.
He and Kevin Pietersen shared a record fourth-wicket stand, worth 310 when Collingwood fell for 206 on day two.
Pietersen was run out for 158 but Andrew Flintoff helped England reach 551-6, declaring with 10 overs left.
Flintoff then had Justin Langer caught at slip for four in the second over of Australia’s reply in Adelaide.

UPDATE: But… good grief! How could such a wonderful start have led to this debacle???

SECOND TEST, ADELAIDE, DAY FIVE: Australia 513 & 168-4 beat England 551-6 dec & 129 by six wickets
Warne took two wickets and helped in a run out in the morning
Australia won the second Ashes Test by six wickets and went 2-0 up in the series after bowling England out for 129 on day five in Adelaide.

Unprecedented? Absolutely: “No team in history has lost after declaring on a higher total than England’s 551-6 batting first in a Test.”
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…..

BBC
FIRST TEST, BRISBANE, DAY TWO (close): Australia 602-9 dec v England 53-3

To Schumacher for his illustrious career, and his determined drive today. To Alonso for winning this year’s world championship. And to Massa for winning his home Grand Prix in Brazil. What a great year of racing!

I won’t spoil things for those who are time-shifting this; let me just say that the result was delightfully unexpected – and breaks a six year record* for Michael Schumacher….
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* The BBC story suggested that it was the first time since 2001, but as the SpeedTV team pointed out, that incident wasn’t exactly comparable.

So Michael Schumacher has announced his retirement at the end of the season. During today’s Italian Grand Prix, the commentators seemed to spend more time speculating about this than they did actually describing the race….
I’ve never been to Monza, but some day…. When I think of Formula One, the first image that comes to mind is of a gaggle of cars, shimmering in the heat, streaming out of the Parabolica onto the start/finish straight. There have been more Grands Prix at Monza than at any other circuit, and even though I have a soft spot for Silverstone, Monza is the track.
Today’s race was more interesting than I expected. With Alonso banished to the 5th row of the grid, and with the Renault looking more and more underpowered compared with the competition, I expected the McLaren to falter and the Ferraris to run away with things. Instead, it was a close-fought competition throughout, even after Alonso’s spectacular departure. The star of the day was Robert Kubica, who followed his impressive debut in Hungary by taking third place today. Felipe Massa may have been the darling of the crowd two weeks ago, but today he seemed very tentative, and never looked likely to overtake Kubica or Heidfeld.
And after Michael had won, there was the post-race interview, and he ended the speculation. I thought he was unusually eloquent.
[When I got up to watch the race, it was still dark, but Elliott Bay was ablaze with lights as two huge cruise liners and a hulking great OCL container ship were all heading into port. Tugs fussed around them, while the ferries continued to criss-cross the bay as though they owned the place. By the time Michael Schumacher took the chequered flag, it was a soft-grey pearly pre-dawn, and now it’s a gorgeous, sunny Sunday morning. with a hazy Mount Ranier just visible. Time to get dressed and hunt down some breakfast!]

I don’t want to spoil the Turkish Grand Prix for anyone who’s time-shifting it. Let me just say that you won’t want to miss a second* of the last fifteen laps. Glorious racing, and a thoroughly satisfying result.
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* Except, of course, the seemingly interminable and tediously repetitive commercials on Speed.

The qualifying session for this weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix will take place in a mere 6 hours, at 4am Pacific Daylight Time. (That’s so early that it shows up at the end of Friday’s televison schedule rather than the start of Saturday’s!) Coverage of the race itself begins at 4:30am PST on Sunday.
Of course, if I decide to watch the GP2 event, I’ll have to be up by 3am.
The sacrifices we make….. 😉

I went to the Real Madrid-DC United match at Qwest field yesterday. The attendance was 66K+, which made it the largest soccer crowd ever in the Pacific northwest. I enjoyed myself, even though it wasn’t a particularly good game. One thing about exhibition matches is that all of the tackles are about 80%: nobody wants to risk injury. Some of the Real Madrid players looked a little jet-lagged – Van Nistelrooy was walking (well offside) most of the time, and received some “generous” treatment by the linesmen. Beckham played OK, not great: like a couple of his team-mates, he seemed to have trouble with the relatively narrow pitch. He was subbed at half-time; another aspect of the “exhibition match” is that unlimited substitutions are allowed, which meant that we got to see more of the Real Madrid players but that the team had difficulty settling in to a pattern. DC United played well, but their finishing was very weak. The final score was 1-1, which seemed fair.
Oh, and I may have found an apartment. More anon.

It’s destiny. Or a delightful coincidence:

Seattle soccer fans who missed the chance to see perhaps the world’s most famous athlete, David Beckham, in the summer of 2003 have a second chance.
Beckham and his teammates from Real Madrid, one of the globe’s most popular soccer teams, are headed to Seattle for a friendly against Major League Soccer’s D.C. United and its 17-year-old phenom, Freddy Adu.

Tickets go on sale tomorrow…
UPDATE: Section CLB238, seat J 18. See you there! 🙂

I watched the England-Portugal match yesterday. It was a timeless contest, the kind that leaves you surprised when all of a sudden 45 minutes are up, and you have to wait for the next half. And after the disappointing conclusion, I wondered whether to try to blog about it. Andrew Sullivan’s piece put it nicely in context in a way I’d like to have done, so I’ll defer to him. But unlike me, he couldn’t bring himself to watch:

I couldn’t watch yesterday either. At least it was against Portugal, a wonderful little country, with old friendship with England. Losing to France and Germany is existentially far worse. But all the classic elements were there: the endless tension, the injury of the good player, the explosion of the hothead, the injustice of being clearly the better team but without the ability to score, the over-time, the penalty kicks, and then the inevitable emotional collapse; and the consumption of enormous amounts of warm beer to dull the pain. The hangovers in England today are probably epic even by that island’s exacting standards.

In my case, the analgesic was a stiff gin and tonic….