Vocabulary > Sports

Guardian web frontpage

24.8.2004 

The Guardian        Sport        pp. 6-7        25.11.2005

George Best Life and times

The greatest game I ever saw him play
David Meek        The Guardian        Friday November 25, 2005
http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1650342,00.html

His star rose and fell in only six years but the memories are still vivid
The Guardian        Friday November 25, 2005
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,1650344,00.html

football

25.11.2005

25.11.2005

football
http://football.guardian.co.uk/0,1327,418417,00.html

The original manuscript of the Rules of Association Football 1863
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1786410,00.html

footie

footballer

Football Association
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1877350,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1877173,00.html

bung /  illicit payments / undeclared monies
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1876494,00.html

pro football    (USA)
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/games/2006-12-23-chiefs-raiders_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/games/2006-12-16-cowboys-falcons_x.htm

coach
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/cards/2007-01-01-green-firing_x.htm

The New York Jets
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/games/2006-12-25-jets-dolphins_x.htm

The Miami Dolphins
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/games/2006-12-25-jets-dolphins_x.htm

receiver

touchdown

quarterback

in the second quarter

in the second half

college football        USA
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/games/2006-12-20-poinsettia-bowl_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2006-11-16-coaches-salaries-cover_x.htm

rusher

cornerback
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/niners/2007-03-02-clements_N.htm

safety
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/niners/2007-03-02-clements_N.htm

TCU
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/games/2006-12-20-poinsettia-bowl_x.htm

Las Vegas Bowl
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/games/2006-12-21-las-vegas-bowl_x.htm

college football > coach > Bo Schembechler
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/bigten/2006-11-17-schembechler-obit_x.htm

pro football        USA
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2006-12-19-nfc-playoff-chase_x.htm

NFC
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2006-12-19-nfc-playoff-chase_x.htm

George Best        1946-2005

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1657314,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1657315,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1903611,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1892440,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2093-1892511,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1651788,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/sport/story/0,6903,1651648,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,6903,1651710,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/obituary/0,16836,1651234,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/obituary/0,16836,1651253,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/obituary/0,16836,1650894,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/obituary/0,16836,1650898,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/obituary/0,16836,1650908,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/gallery/0,8555,1647552,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1890889,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27-1890069,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27-1889906,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-1890912,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1890892,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,564-1889235,00.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16411455%26method=
full%26siteid=94762%26headline=george%2dbest%2ddies-name_page.html

Wayne Rooney
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/sport/story/0,,1934292,00.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1864235,00.html

captain
http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1795072,00.html

 team-mates
http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1795072,00.html

opponents
http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1795072,00.html

soccer

football pitch

ground

club

Manchester United / Man Utd / Old Trafford
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/11/04/fergusons_united_one_vision_tw.html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1864235,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1482482,00.html
http://www.manutd.com/home/default.sps

Manchester united (Europe's richest club)

game

premiership season

draw

league

Champions league        2006-7
http://football.guardian.co.uk/championsleague200607/0,,1837394,00.html

cup

season

league match

championship qualifying match

feature

rival

referee

disallow / rule out

foul

get booked

 booking

red card

send off

gross unsporting conduct

three-match ban for

a man down

injury

ankle injury

rehabilitation

tackle

free kick

penalty
http://football.guardian.co.uk/euro2004/matchreport/story/0,14583,1238192,00.html

penalty kick

diving header

Tuesday, June 20, 2006
 

Sun sport frontpage        1.7.2003

kick off

first round

soccer

umpire

squad

Liverpool play Newcastle tonight

TV revenue rights

defeat

be dispatched

take a battering

tackle

beat

go through

kick off

have the edge

score

goal

train

strike

striker

terraces

abuse        FA

stands

fan

hooligan
http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1786271,00.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?
in_article_id=307920&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

hooliganism

football disorder Act

go on rampage

misbehave

boo

whistle

manager

supporter

forward

goalkeeper

net

far post

off-side

in the 31st minute

equaliser

second-half

the full-time whistle

comeback

the visitors

field

midfield

midfielder

centre-half

defender

winger

gaffer

coach

relegation

relegate

sign a player

score

quarter final

Champions League quarter-final tie

World Cup 2006
http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/flash/0,,1768701,00.html

world cup opener
http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/comment/story/0,,1795061,00.html

final whistle

transfer fee

play-offs

play-off first leg

quarter-final

in the stands

The Gunners / Arsenal > red

The Reds / The Red Devils / Liverpool

The Eagles / Crystal Palace
http://www.cpfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/WorldKickOff

substitution

France 2 - 1 England

France-England

57% Possession 43%

Football > Super Bowl        USA

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/games/2007-02-04-super-bowl-game-story_x.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2006-02-03-super-ads-usat_x.htm

New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi (L)
celebrates after his fourth quarter interception,
alongside teammate and linebacker Jarvis Green,
on a pass thrown by Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovon McNabb
during Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, Florida February 6, 2005.

Photo by Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Brady Leads Patriots to Third Super Bowl Win in Four Years

R        Sun Feb 6, 2005 10:43 PM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7550869

Patriots fans tailgating outside Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla.

Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse

PATRIOTS 24, EAGLES 21

The Dynasty Is Official

New York Times        7.2.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/sports/football/07thegame.html

Angelo Mancuso of Williamstown, N.J.,
voicing his support for the Eagles.

Julie Jacobson/Associated Press

PATRIOTS 24, EAGLES 21

The Dynasty Is Official

New York Times        7.2.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/
sports/football/07thegame.html

An Eagles fan showing his true colors.

Pierre Ducharme/Reuters
PATRIOTS 24, EAGLES 21
The Dynasty Is Official

New York Times        7.2.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07
/sports/football/07thegame.html?hp

rugby

England's blunderbuss backline fails to take flight from forward platform

William Fotheringham at Twickenham        The Guardian        p. 12

Monday November 14, 2005
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/rugbyunion/story/0,10069,1641926,00.html

drop

drop-goal

score two tries

concede a try

in the sixth minute

lineout

a half-time lead of nine points reduced to just three

try-scoring assist

fifty metre penalty

drop-goal shoot out

Six Nations
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/sixnations2005/story/0,15694,1412373,00.html

Autumn Internationals
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/sport/story/0,,1946023,00.html
 

The Guardian        Sport        p. 12        28.4.2006

horse racing

Street Sense jockey Calvin Borel

celebrates winning the 133rd Kentucky Derby

at Churchill Downs before a crowd of 156,635.

By Michael Madrid, USA TODAY

Street Sense rallies to win 133rd Kentucky Derby

By Tom Pedulla, USA TODAY

5.5.2007
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/horses/triple/derby/2007-05-05-race-main_N.htm

The Guardian        Sport        p. 4        8.4.2006

horse racing
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/horseracing/0,10147,494909,00.html

Ascot        2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/gallery/2008/jun/17/ascot.2008?picture=335090024

On average, 24 horses die each week at racetracks across America,
and a Times investigation has found that industry practices put animal and rider at risk        USA        2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/us/death-and-disarray-at-americas-racetracks.html

133rd Kentucky Derby        USA        2007
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/horses/triple/derby/2007-05-05-race-main_N.htm

marathon

Marathon
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/summer/track/2007-11-03-us-marathon-trials_N.htm

New York City Marathon
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/new_york_city_marathon/index.html

 New York City Marathon        2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/sports/03runner.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/03/paula-radcliffe-new-york

London Marathon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/london-marathon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/22/london-marathon-running-micah-true

London Marathon 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/apr/17/london-marathon-2011-winners-costumes

London Marathon 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/gallery/2008/apr/13/londonmarathon?picture=333516156

Marathon runner > Paula Radcliffe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/paularadcliffe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/03/paula-radcliffe-new-york
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/nov/25/paularadcliffe-athletics

fencing

Boston Globe > Big Picture > 2010 World Fencing Championships        November 10, 2010
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/2010_world_fencing_championshi.html

snooker

The Guardian > Special report > Snooker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/snooker
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/snooker/8486469/Former-snooker-commentator-Ted-Lowe-dies-aged-90.html
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/snooker/0,,494928,00.html

World Snooker Championship 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/07/ronnie-osullivan-ali-carter-world-championship
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/apr/27/snooker-world-championship
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/06/ronnie-osullivan-ali-carter-snooker

World Snooker Championship 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/world-snooker-championship-2011

World Championships
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/snooker/story/0,,2074570,00.html

World snooker championship        2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/apr/22/worldsnookerchampionship.snooker1

world title
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/may/04/john-higgins-world-snooker-championship-shaun-murphy2

seven-times world champion Stephen Hendry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/01/stephen-hendry-retires-tournament-snooker

Judd Trump
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/may/03/pass-notes-judd-trump

snooker player > Stephen Hendry        2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/oct/17/snooker

line up a shot

score two centuries and a 92 in the first eight frames against...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/06/ronnie-osullivan-ali-carter-snooker

match-fixing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/sep/08/john-higgins-snooker-tribunal-verdict

hockey

hockey
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/default.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/hockey/index.html

Stanley Cup        2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/sports/hockey/2012-stanley-cup-kreider-helps-rangers-top-devils.html

Stanley Cup        2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSSP15935620080605
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/nhl/2008-06-04-wings-penguins_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/nhl/wings/2008-06-05-european-stanley-cup_N.htm

New York Rangers
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/hockey/nationalhockeyleague/newyorkrangers/index.html

Penguins
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/nhl/penguins/2008-06-05-penguins-aftermath_N.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/sports/hockey/05-nhl.html

Detroit Red Wings
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/sports/hockey/05-nhl.html

NHL
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/default.htm
 

cycling

cycling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/cycling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/feb/18/world-cup-manchester-women-pursuit
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cycling/story/0,,2268848,00.html

Chris Hoy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/chrishoy

Olympics

the Olympics

Olympic flame / torch
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/18/olympic-torch-paraded-cornwall-david-beckham

Q&A: the Olympic torch        21 May 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/21/london-2012-olympic-torch-route

Olympics Games        2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/olympics-2012

British Olympic records set in digital archive        16 May 2012
Website reveals British documents and images for every Olympics,
from Berlin boycott concerns to failed hosting bids
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/olympics/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/16/british-olympic-record-digital-archive

2012 Olympic Games in London
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/interactive/2009/oct/29/london-olympic-games-2012-countdown

Olympics champion

Olympics stars of yesteryear        2010
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/20100207-winters-slideshow/index.html

divers

fit to play

win / win

narrow win for

strike gold
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/chrishoy

lose

lose out to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/feb/18/world-cup-manchester-women-pursuit

beat

flatten
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/games/2006-12-16-cowboys-falcons_x.htm

pummel
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/ashes2006-07/story/0,,1978904,00.html

defeat

blow away
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/31/kevin-nolan-newcastle-sunderland-derby-rout

rout
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/31/kevin-nolan-newcastle-sunderland-derby-rout

knock out

be knocked out / be eliminated
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/05/29/sports/sports-us-tennis-open-venus.html

thrash

crush
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/nov/25/andy-murray-david-ferrer-semi-finals

be trumped
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/nov/26/graeme-swann-mike-hussey-ashes

be mauled
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/story/0,,1986221,00.html

pip

see off
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/12/harlequins-northampton-premiership-grand-final

hold off

rip apart

overcome

equalise for...

snatch victory

athletics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/athletics

world record holder

holders

also-ran

underdog

outsider

arch rival

victory

defeat

humiliation
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/ashes2006-07/story/0,,1944541,00.html

loser

winner

contender

competitor

player

coach

rodeo champ
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soac/2006-10-23-mcbride_x.htm

draw

sportsmanship

stadium

extra time

trophy

v

broadcasting rights

drug

drug testing

attend a drug test

cheat

cheater

dope scandal

dopind
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/sports/cycling/22cycling.html

anabolic steroid

test positive for the anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG

undetectable designer steroids
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,10488,1065865,00.html

test positive for testosterone or other prohibited steroids
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/summer/track/2006-07-29-gatlin-doping_x.htm

Red Wings 3, Penguins 2

Penguins Raise Scare, but Red Wings Raise Cup

June 5, 2008
The New York Times
By LYNN ZINSER

PITTSBURGH — The Penguins’ last-gasp shot skidded along the goal line, carrying their Stanley Cup fate in the final seconds of Game 6. The puck finally wobbled past the net as the clock ticked to zero.

The Detroit Red Wings were champions.

The Red Wings littered the Mellon Arena ice with sticks and gloves and filled it with emotion they had kept in check for so long after their 3-2 victory Wednesday night.

With four Stanley Cup victories in the past 11 years and annual marches deep into the playoffs even when they do not win, the Red Wings know more than most teams how hard these championships come. The record books will record this series as a four-games-to- two-victory, but the numbers hardly convey how it ended.

“When they had that chance, I didn’t know how many seconds were left,” said Detroit forward Henrik Zetterberg, the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the playoffs’ most valuable player. “When I saw the puck and looked up and it was 0.0 on the game clock, I was a pretty happy man.”

The Penguins had returned the series here with a spectacular comeback in Game 5 in Detroit, tying the game with 34.3 seconds left and winning in triple overtime. They fell behind, 3-1, in the third period here on a goal by Zetterberg that trickled through the pads of goaltender Marc-André Fleury, who made 55 saves in Game 5.

But the Penguins kept charging, scoring a power-play goal in the final minutes on a deflection by forward Marian Hossa.

Their final gasp was so close to extending this game. In a frantic rush, forward Sidney Crosby fired a shot that glanced off the glove of Detroit goalie Chris Osgood and landed behind him. Hossa poked at the puck and it slid along the goal line before the horn echoed through the arena.

“First of all, it’s never easy,” said Osgood, who won his third Cup with Detroit. “It was chaotic that last 40 seconds. They have a really good team. Crosby was flying. I think time had run out before it started rolling over the side of the net, but I was happy to see the ref yell time was up.”

Crosby, the 20-year-old captain, said he believed for a second the puck would roll in. But the comeback ended there.

Later, Crosby sat at his locker, still in full uniform, his eyes red and his voice wavering. He could think of little but the pain of losing in his first Cup finals.

“It was tough,” he said. “It’s one of those things where, I don’t think we were going to be guilty of not leaving it out there, not giving our all. We were going to go down fighting.”

On the ice at the time, the Red Wings were still passing around the Cup. It is a celebration that never becomes routine, even for the Wings, who cried tears of joy. The first player to get it was captain Nicklas Lidstrom, who became the first European player to be the captain of a Stanley Cup winner. He in turn handed it to forward Dallas Drake, a 16-year veteran who won his first title.

Four other players joined Lidstrom in winning their fourth Cup with Detroit — forwards Tomas Holmstrom, Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby and Darren McCarty — and the roster was filled with veterans of many of these playoff drives.

It was that experience that the Red Wings leaned on in tackling this game, bouncing back from that heartbreaking loss, in which the Cup was mere seconds from being carried onto the ice.

“When you have some players who have been through it before, they know what to expect,” Lidstrom said. “I think that gives the whole team some calmness, that we’re not going to panic. The main thing is, we didn’t get rattled.”

Lidstrom is rattle-proof. He has always been a huge calming influence, even before he took over as captain when Steve Yzerman retired in 2006.

“Coming here on the plane yesterday, everybody was relaxed,” Lidstrom said. “We felt confident as a group.”

They showed it in taking a 2-0 lead, first on a power play goal by defenseman Brian Rafalski in the first and a rebound goal by forward Valtteri Filppula in the second. Pittsburgh cut the lead with a power-play slap shot by center Evgeni Malkin — his first goal of this series — but it was Zetterberg’s goal that made the difference.

Fleury was helpless on Zetterberg’s wrist shot, which trickled though his pads with 12 minutes 24 seconds left in the third. The puck sat loose in the crease behind him until Fleury fell backward, pushing it into the net.

The final twist, though, did not come until the final seconds. That is when the Penguins’ last magic act rolled just short.

Slap shots

N.B.C. announced that its ratings for Monday night’s Game 5 in Detroit — the 4-3 triple overtime victory by the Penguins — had a 3.8 national rating and a seven share, a 111-percent improvement over last year’s little-watched Anaheim-Ottawa clincher. According to the network, it had the best ratings of any Game 5 since Carolina-Detroit got a 4.2 rating and an 8 share in 2002.

    Penguins Raise Scare, but Red Wings Raise Cup, NYT, 5.6.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/sports/hockey/05-nhl.html?hp

Equestrians’ Deaths Spread Unease in Sport

April 9, 2008
The New York Times
By KATIE THOMAS

A failed jump by one of the world’s finest riders and a spate of deaths have unnerved the equestrian community.

Darren Chiacchia, 43, who helped the United States Olympic team win a bronze medal at the Athens Games and was considered a favorite for this year’s team, was training a horse on an intermediate course in Tallahassee, Fla., last month when the stallion crashed over a fence, crushing — and nearly killing — its celebrated rider.

Mr. Chiacchia spent a week in a coma and is now recovering at a rehabilitation facility near his home in Buffalo. Meanwhile, the sport he devoted his life to faces an identity crisis. Considered alongside the deaths of 12 riders worldwide over the past year and a half, his crash has reignited a fierce debate over whether the risks involved with the equestrian discipline known as eventing — an arduous three-phase competition — have become too great.

Top competitors and coaches argue that the sport’s growing popularity has attracted inexperienced riders who take too many risks, and amateur riders complain that courses are being designed beyond their skill level in order to challenge elite riders. There is also frustration that the governing bodies for eventing have not mandated the safety improvements they identified after another cluster of deaths nine years ago.

A target of criticism is the former husband of England’s Princess Anne, Mark Phillips, who is coach of the United States Olympic eventing team and designs many competition courses, including the one at the Red Hills Horse Trials, where Mr. Chiacchia’s fall occurred.

The riders who died ranged in age from 17 to 51. Some, like Sherelle Duke, 28, of Ireland, were considered to be top riders. Others, like 17-year-old Mia Eriksson of Tahoe City, Calif., were just starting out. Three riders died during competitions in the United States.

In a letter to members, Kevin Baumgardner, the president of the United States Eventing Association, wrote: “The overall trends, particularly over the last three years, are unmistakable and, in my view, totally unacceptable. I know that my concern that the sport has gotten off track is shared by many of our members, amateurs and professionals alike.” Mr. Baumgardner’s letter generated 500 phone calls and e-mail responses.

An Olympic sport since 1912, eventing originated as a way to test the ability and endurance of military horses. It is often called a horse triathlon because participants compete in three events over one-, two- or three-day competitions: the delicate footwork of dressage, the beauty and control of show jumping, and the endurance and daring of cross-country racing. The winding courses of up to two and a half miles are designed to mimic the natural obstacles of rural landscapes.

“It’s considered by many to be the ultimate test of horse and rider,” Mr. Baumgardner said.

The cross-country phase is the most dangerous, as horse and rider are required to clear 20 to 40 jumps in an established time period. Penalties are assessed if the horse balks at a jump, if the horse or rider falls, or if their time is too slow. Riders look for courage and well-roundedness in eventing horses, which can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $1 million each.

All 12 of the recent deaths occurred during the cross-country phase as riders attempted to clear obstacles, including some that were startlingly simple. Most of the deaths resulted from what are called rotational falls, somersaulting flips similar to Mr. Chiacchia’s.

Beyond that, Mr. Phillips said, “There isn’t any common thread.”

As courses designed by Mr. Phillips and others create new challenges for elite competitors, amateur riders say that lower-level courses have also become more difficult in order to prepare aspiring riders for the next level.

“It’s not galloping cross-country over natural obstacles anymore,” said Ilana Gareen, an amateur rider and assistant professor of community health at Brown. “I liked the fact that you could go to eventing and just be a good rider, do well, and have fun.”

Mr. Chiacchia’s fall, said Anastasia Curwood, an amateur rider who teaches African-American history at Vanderbilt University, “was kind of a tipping point for a large number of people to get active and try to make some change.”

Commenters on equestrian online message boards have focused much of their venom on Mr. Phillips, calling for him to step down. Mr. Phillips posted a response on the eventing association’s Web site, accusing his critics of being in “a frenzied tailspin using the anonymity of cyberspace to cast a dark shadow over the future of the sport.”

Mr. Phillips holds much sway over who is selected for the Olympic team. According to event organizers, riders make a point of competing on courses he designs.

As an existing safety precaution, competitors are encouraged to review the courses in advance and communicate any concerns they have to “rider representatives,” who then inform event organizers. Mr. Phillips said he received no complaints on the Red Hills course, only compliments, and said he considered Mr. Chiacchia’s crash a fluke.

Top competitors, coaches and course designers argue that the sport’s death and injury toll is most likely related to an influx of new riders to the sport. Participation in eventing competitions in the United States has grown by 36 percent over the past decade; riders filled roughly 46,000 competition slots in 2007, according to the association.

“You have people who didn’t grow up fox hunting or going on wild rides the way we did,” said Mick Costello, an event rider who builds cross-country courses. “They haven’t been used to tumbling falls. They get a thrill out of going fast, and a lot of them aren’t ready.”

Mr. Costello and others acknowledge that the increasing skill of top riders has pushed them to create more complex courses. They have recently been designing “speed bumps” to slow the riders, to little avail. “These people are so good, they just take it in stride,” he said.

The current debate over safety comes nine years after another rash of deaths shook the eventing community. In 1999, five British riders died in a matter of months and calls flooded in to make cross-country courses safer.

In response, British organizers developed frangible pins that can be inserted into certain fences to allow the rail to drop when a horse hits it. Although the pins have been available since 2001 and have been shown to be effective in helping to prevent rotational falls, they are used in only 4 percent of obstacles in Britain, where they are mandatory on certain fences. They are even scarcer in the United States.

Some eventing organizers say the use of frangible pins is not widespread because they cannot be used on all fences and are perceived to be too expensive to install.

“I know that they’re quite expensive, and your average organizer finds the cost prohibitive,” said Katie Lindsay, the competition director for the eventing association’s 2008 national championships. “So they will avoid building the type of fence where you can use the frangibles on.” The pins cost about $70 per fence, according to Mr. Costello, who is the United States distributor for the pins.

British Eventing, the governing body of the sport in Britain, is working with an engineering company to develop new mechanisms that can be used in a wider variety of fences.

Scant data exists on how often accidents happen, and why. The Fédération Equestre International, the sport’s international governing body, has only recently begun to require member countries to collect the same data. Safety information on the U.S.E.A.’s Web site includes detailed injury data for 2005 and 2006, for example, but provides only fatality data for other years.

Mr. Chiacchia has been active in the safety debate. In December, he was named chairman of a task force created to address safety issues. The group is expected to propose changes later this month to the United States Equestrian Federation, the rule-making body for all equestrian sports. In January, the international federation held a convention in Copenhagen on safety in eventing.

Like many equestrian athletes, eventers say they accept a certain level of risk, given that their fate is linked to a 1,000-pound animal with a mind of its own. The chance of falling off a horse was less than a tenth of 1 percent for riders who competed in 2005 and 2006, according to the eventing association’s data.

Watching a prominent rider like Mr. Chiacchia fall shook many others, especially when they learned he was competing on an intermediate course because his 7-year-old horse, Baron Verdi, was not experienced. The horse was not hurt.

His friends in the eventing community are helping run his farm in Ocala, Fla. Mr. Chiacchia makes a living through teaching, training horses, corporate sponsorships and by riding breeders’ horses, which improves their value. Prize money is not as significant — the winner at Red Hills won about $6,000, plus the use of a Mercedes for a year.

Mr. Chiacchia sustained rib, lung and head injuries and has made slow progress. He can stand for short periods and hold brief conversations, said his brother, Daniel Chiacchia.

Although the family says it is encouraged by his progress — especially the return of his sense of humor, they say — it is unclear if he will make a complete recovery, let alone ride again. The family knows Mr. Chiacchia believes in improving the safety of the sport but considers his a “freak accident.”

Mr. Chiacchia does not remember the fall, and his brother said he still refuses to believe that it was true. “That’s almost insulting,” he said, “to tell my brother that he fell off a horse.”

    Equestrians’ Deaths Spread Unease in Sport, NYT, 9.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/sports/othersports/09equestrian.html?hp

Jones Stripped of Olympics Medals

December 12, 2007
Filed at 8:53 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) -- The IOC formally stripped Marion Jones of her five Olympic medals Wednesday, wiping her name from the record books following her admission that she was a drug cheat.

The International Olympic Committee also banned the disgraced American athlete from attending next year's Beijing Olympics in any capacity and said it could bar her from future games.

Jones had already handed back the three gold medals and two bronze she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Last month, the International Association of Athletics Federations erased all of Jones' results dating to September 2000, but it was up to the IOC to formally disqualify her and take away her Olympic medals.

The decision was announced by IOC president Jacques Rogge at the end of a three-day executive board meeting.

Jones won gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 1,600-meter relay in Sydney, and bronze in the long jump and 100-meter relay. She was the first female track and field athlete to win five medals at a single Olympics.

In addition to those medals, the IOC also disqualified Jones from her seventh-place finish in the long jump at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

The IOC postponed a decision on redistributing her medals, including whether to strip her American relay teammates and to upgrade doping-tainted Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou to gold in the 100.

After long denying she ever had used performance-enhancing drugs, Jones admitted in federal court in October that she started using steroids before the Sydney Games. She said she'd used the designer steroid "the clear" from September 2000 to July 2001.

The executive board declared Jones ineligible for the Beijing Games "not only as an athlete but also in any other capacity."

Jones has retired as an athlete and is banned by U.S. officials from competition for two years. But the IOC wants to keep her from going to the Olympics as a coach or in any other role, and said she could face a lifetime Olympic ban pending the outcome of the BALCO investigation.

Jones' doping admission came as part of her guilty plea to lying to federal investigators in the BALCO case about using steroids. She will be sentenced Jan. 11 and is expected to face a term of between three and six months.

Jones becomes the fourth American athlete in Olympic history to have a medal taken away by the IOC, and the third for a doping offense.

Jerome Young was stripped of his 1,600-meter relay gold from the Sydney Games for an earlier doping violation; swimmer Rick DeMont lost his gold in the 400-meter freestyle from the 1972 Munich Games after testing positive for a banned substance in his asthma medication, and Jim Thorpe was stripped of his pentathlon and decathlon gold medals in 1912 when it was revealed he earned $25 a week playing minor league baseball. The IOC reinstated Thorpe in 1982 and returned his medals to his children the following year.

The reshuffling of Jones' medals could affect the medal status of more than three dozen other athletes.

IOC officials said they need more details from the ongoing BALCO probe to determine whether any other Olympic athletes were linked to the scandal.

There is reluctance among some IOC officials to upgrade Thanou, who finished second behind Jones in the 100. Thanou later served a two-year ban after failing to show for drug tests in the leadup to the 2004 Athens Olympics.

One option under consideration is leaving the gold medal spot vacant.

The bronze medalist in the 100 in Sydney was Tanya Lawrence, with fellow Jamaican Merlene Ottey fourth.

In the 200, Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas took the silver behind Jones. Sri Lanka's Susanthika Jayasinghe was third and Jamaica's Beverly McDonald fourth.

The IOC said it will offer Jones' eight relay teammates a hearing to make their case for keeping their medals.

The 1,600-relay team included Jearl-Miles Clark, Monique Hennagan, LaTasha Colander-Richardson and Andrea Anderson. Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards, Nanceen Perry and Passion Richardson were on the 400-relay squad.

Jamaica took silver behind the United States in the 1,600 relay. Russia was third and Nigeria fourth. In the 400 relay, France was fourth behind the Americans.

    Jones Stripped of Olympics Medals, NYT, 12.12.2007,
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-OLY-IOC-Meetings-Jones.html?hp

Olympic Great Al Oerter Dies at 71

October 1, 2007
Filed at 12:49 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) -- Al Oerter, the discus great who won gold medals in four straight Olympics to become one of track and fields biggest stars in the 1950s and '60s, died Monday. He was 71.

Oerter died at a hospital near his Fort Myers Beach home, his wife Cathy Oerter said. He had dealt with high blood pressure since he was young and has struggled with heart problems, she said.

''He was a gentle giant,'' she said. ''He was bigger than life.''

Oerter won gold medals in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968. Oerter and Carl Lewis are the only track and field stars to capture the same event in four consecutive Olympics. Oerter, however, is the only one to set an Olympic record in each of his victories.

Born in New York City, Oerter eschewed coaching and conventional training methods to mold himself into a fierce competitor who performed his best when the stakes were highest.

''I can remember those games truly as if they were a week ago,'' Oerter told The Associated Press last year.

In Melbourne in 1956, Oerter threw 184 feet, 11 inches on his first toss and watched in amazement when nobody else, including teammate and world-record holder Fortune Gordien, came close to beating him.

He came from behind to win again in Rome, and overcame torn rib cartilage and other injuries to make it three in a row at the Tokyo Games in 1964.

At 32, he was a long shot in the 1968 field headed by world-record holder Jay Silvester. However, Oerter responded with a personal-best 212 feet, 11 inches to leave Mexico City with the gold.

He came out of retirement and won a spot as an alternate on the 1980 team that didn't compete because of the boycott ordered by President Carter.

Later in life, Oerter discovered a new passion and took up abstract painting.

Oerter maintained a tie to the Olympic movement through Art of the Olympians, a program he founded to give him and other former Olympians who've taken up art to showcase their work.

''Al approached the art world the same way he approached the sports world,'' said friend and former Olympian Liston Bochette. ''He studied it. He analyzed it. And he sought excellence in the arts.''

    Olympic Great Al Oerter Dies at 71, NYT, 1.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-OLY-Obit-Oerter.html

My City

When the Grass Was Greener

July 6, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

FIRST of all there’s the sound, or near lack of it, when the ball slides across grass. It’s not like the cracking “thok” of a ball hitting a hard court or even clay, which syncopates with the noises of balls smashing off racquets. This sound is gentler, cushioned, endearing. And in lieu of clomping feet, there’s a shuffling, like rustling silk, of carpeted steps. You can imagine in the old days when pros used wood rackets, which made a delicate “plonk,” why tennis on grass — watching or playing it — seemed downright pastoral.

And then there’s the smell, the scent of a newly mown lawn. Lovely. The court, close shaven, has a few slight undulations — the unavoidable consequence of wrestling nature into a Cartesian plane — but surprisingly there are fewer bad bounces than on an unswept clay court. With the soft ground under your feet and the smell and the sound, you can wonder why grass isn’t the most popular surface in tennis, until the sliced ball skids away from you or drops dead at net, and you’re left flatfooted on the baseline with a stupid grin on your face.

Three of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments used to take place on grass. There was Wimbledon, of course, and the Australian Open in Melbourne, before it switched to hard courts. And until 30 or so years ago the United States Open at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills.

Now there’s only Wimbledon, which, if the weather cooperates (it mostly hasn’t so far), reaches its climax this weekend. A retractable roof is being added to an expanded Center Court there, and players already have recourse to instant replay. The grass at Wimbledon has been cut to make the courts act more like hard courts or clay. They’re slower than they used to be, and the balls make bigger bounces. Here in America grass courts have become as scarce as polo fields and almost exclusively private.

The other day, with Wimbledon in mind, I phoned West Side, a private club but welcoming to outsiders, and reached Bob Ingersole, the dry-humored, bluff, Australian-born director of tennis. He oversees 38 immaculate courts: a mix of grass, hard and clay. I asked about finagling an hour or so on one of the grass courts.

So it was that I hopped the E train and found myself beside a patient, friendly young pro named Ben Gologor, dressed in tennis whites (still a club requirement). Ben brought two fresh cans of balls, one yellow, one white. Who even knew there still were white balls? They looked like cream puffs.

We started by rallying at the net. Watch out, Ben reminded me. Balls die on grass. No big backswings. No sitting back on your heels. No problem, I said. I’m ready.

I missed a forehand that fainted at my ankles. I smiled. Then I missed another.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching. Back in the 1970s, visiting these same courts as a fan during the Open meant joining a tony, white-clad scrum jostling for sightlines behind the fences and along narrow passages between courts. It meant Jack Kramer wood rackets and the new Wilson T2000 metal ones, which seemed positively space age then, and it also meant Mr. Peanut hawking salted snacks beneath the concrete stadium.

The club was small and familial, timber and stucco. Players mingled easily with fans — this was long before top pros moved behind a phalanx of bodyguards — and they signed autographs while sauntering to and from the cramped changing rooms in the clubhouse, with its striped awnings and its broad, stony veranda, overlooking the lawns. The clubhouse, mock Tudor, like much of the neighborhood of Forest Hills Gardens, resembled a country inn.

Some of the greatest matches took place in the stadium, not far from where I was hitting, after a fashion, with Ben. During the men’s semifinals in 1975, by which time the Open had briefly switched from grass to clay, Guillermo Vilas, the long-haired, brooding Argentine poet, was far ahead and serving match point against Manuel Orantes, and the stadium had nearly emptied. Then, miraculously, Orantes rallied to win. Two years later Vilas grabbed the title. That turned out to be the last time the Open was played at Forest Hills.

It moved to Flushing Meadows, a few miles away, more suited to television and enormous crowds, became once and for all a hard-court event, and big matches came to be played in the cavernous Arthur Ashe Stadium, with its pumped-in music and glassed-in luxury boxes. The more intimate grass-court era in America gradually faded from public consciousness.

With Ben’s indulgence I accustomed myself to the bounces on the lawn. My old continental grip, the equivalent of a CB radio in an era of e-mail, finally came in handy. Flat shots and heavy slice work on grass. More than once I stared dumbfounded when Ben ended a practice baseline rally with a short shot or a slice to a corner and I was too lethargic to react.

I did manage to ace him once, slicing my serve, or maybe he had just stopped paying attention for a second. In any case as the hour wore on, I was the one panting and gulping Powerade, and I appreciated the enormous backcourt, which let me take unseemly breathers while I slowly walked to the fence to pick up the balls I had missed.

Clay courts nearby were occupied by teenagers playing a tournament, and a few parents sat scattered on lawn chairs overlooking the games. The day was sunny and warm, and the only noise, aside from my cries of despair, came from an occasional train rumbling on the elevated track just outside the club grounds.

Before middle-class housing projects meant plain brick apartment blocks like Co-Op City and Stuyvesant Town, Forest Hills Gardens was developed, a century ago, to resemble an old English village. It’s still like St. Mary Mead, a little slice of Miss Marpledom in the middle of Queens: a hamlet of red-gabled, Tudor-style buildings surrounding a cobblestone square with a Tudor rail station and covered bridge.

The West Side Tennis Club, founded in 1892, moved here in 1913, from Manhattan, where it had played host to Davis Cup matches in the early 1900s. The crowds became so big there that the club couldn’t handle them, so it bought these 10 acres in Forest Hills for $77,000, spending another $25,000 to build a clubhouse. A concrete stadium was added in 1923, modeled after the Yale Bowl, a horseshoe with 14,000 seats.

Today the rambling, wood-paneled clubhouse is lined with black and white photographs of champions who won here. Bill Tilden took the last three of his six straight United States titles in the stadium during the ’20s. Women’s tennis emerged at Forest Hills from the era of hobble skirts, floppy hats, underhand serves and fainting spells. (There were six defaults of the women’s finals between 1891 and 1901.) Margaret Court, Billie Jean King and Chris Evert all won championships.

Bob Ingersole and his wife, Dina, showed me around the stadium after Ben and I finished playing. Dina, a cheerful woman from Mamaroneck, N.Y., who remembers coming here to watch the Open as a young girl, oversees with Bob a women’s pro tournament each August, just before the Open starts at Flushing Meadows, and a slew of other events.

There’s a hard court in the stadium. (It replaced the Har-Tru clay that replaced the grass court.) But the building’s a wreck, and the stands too dangerous to open to the public. A few years ago club members (there are 850 now) voted not to sell the site, although it’s worth a fortune, and try to preserve it as a civic landmark and historic one for the sport. They still haven’t decided how to do that.

When we wandered over, a few kids were fooling around on the court, smacking balls at one another and over the stands, laughing in the empty, echoing stadium. Dina pointed out where a tent, next to the court, used to be for V.I.P.’s in the days when V.I.P.’s dressed up for tennis in white gloves, suits and ties.

We gingerly clambered over some rickety scaffolding, up the old stairwells, painted royal blue, and sat in the bleachers on peeling wooden benches high above the court and checked out the view. A velvet expanse of green spread out beyond the open end of the horseshoe toward the clubhouse. Sculptured eagles, escutcheons and empty flagpoles rimmed the stadium. A train rumbled outside the grounds.

Heading back below the stands, Bob pointed out the concessions, now empty, like fairground booths after the carnival left town. The tiny old ticket booth at the former front gate, still there, was painted green with white trim, “STADIUM BOX OFFICE” stenciled over the ticket windows. Bob unlocked a door to a storage room where plaques, inscribed with bygone winners, gathered dust amid piles of tarpaulins, lawn-care equipment and dead tennis balls. The air was dank, like a musty bunk at sleep-away camp.

Bob talked about how expensive it is to hold a Tour-level tournament and how difficult it is to maintain grass courts. “We’ll roll and mow twice, sometimes three times, a week,” he said. “Of course you’ve also got your fertilizer and watering. You water too much, you get fungus; too little, dead grass. Then every time you cut the lawn, you have to remark it: paint the lines back on.”

No wonder grass has gone out of style, I thought. But then, as I had discovered, there’s nothing quite as magical as playing on it.

I asked him if he thought the kids playing on the stadium court had any idea which champions had won there. He just laughed.

So on my way out, I stopped Jacob Bass, an 8-year-old from Queens, whose father was playing on one of the clay courts. He said he had never heard of Bjorn Borg or Rod Laver but he knew Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

Kelly Dodd, a 12-year-old from Old Greenwich, Conn., who had come for the youth tournament, said she had never heard of Rod Laver or Margaret Court. Her mother, Julie, walked over at that moment, shrugged, as if to say to me, What do you expect?, then recalled visiting the Open as a girl. She remembered watching Evonne Goolagong and Chris Evert and eating Dannon yogurt bars.

A trio of 14-year-old boys were leaning against a fence nearby, munching pizza. David Tom and Giancarlo Maurello were from Rego Park, Queens, they said, and Ren Henehan lived just around the corner.

Had they ever heard of Rod Laver?

They nodded, suspiciously.

Billie Jean King?

Sure, they said, the Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows is named after her. They looked at me as if I were an idiot.

What about Roy Emerson? Ken Rosewall? Margaret Court?

They just shook their heads.

I shook mine, and thanked them. The grass courts shimmered in the late afternoon light, and I headed out of the clubhouse, past the rows of fading photographs.

Tournaments open to the public free at the West Side Tennis Club include the U.S.T.A. Women’s National Grass Court Championship, to be held Sunday through July 15. Matches begin daily at 10 a.m. The club is at 1 Tennis Place, Burns and Dartmouth Streets, Forest Hills, Queens; (718) 268-2300, foresthillstennis.com.

    When the Grass Was Greener, NYT, 6.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/sports/tennis/06gras.html?hp

Several Golfers Below Par at U.S. Open

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:36 a.m. ET
The New York Times

OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) -- The rains came. The question now is whether lower-than-expected scores will follow at the U.S. Open. Tiger Woods was among a growing number of golfers below par as opening round play began on time Thursday at Oakmont Country Club, despite heavy fog that burned off just in time to accommodate the first groups off the tee.

A thunderstorm dumped slightly less than a half inch of rain on Oakmont late Wednesday afternoon, softening up its wickedly fast greens right when the USGA felt they were in prime condition.

As a result, there were plenty of scores in the red among the first golfers on the course -- something Arnold Palmer didn't predict Wednesday, when he wondered aloud if Oakmont might be too tough for this field.

With more than half those 156 golfers yet to tee off, Angel Cabrera was 3 under par through five holes, one stroke better than Jose Maria Olazabal (8 holes), David Toms (7 holes) and Pat Perez (4 holes). Six more were at 1-under, including Ernie Els, the 1994 winner at Oakmont, and Woods, who was a year away from playing in the U.S. Open the last time it stopped at Oakmont.

Woods took a bogey 5 on No. 1, birdied No. 2 and was 1 under through seven holes in his first competitive round at Oakmont.

This is a record eighth U.S. Open at Oakmont, but the first in 13 years, and only a dozen or so players have tournament experience on a course reputed to be the toughest in America.

This Oakmont doesn't look like that pre-Tiger Oakmont of 1994, not with 5,000 trees leveled since then, the bunkers made deeper and more threatening and the Church Pews bunker expanded.

With so much trouble awaiting, and so little Oakmont experience out there, Palmer predicted it could be a very shaky opening round or two for many. He hasn't missed an Open at Oakmont in more than 50 years, but he almost sounded relieved to be sitting this one out.

For all the changes, he said, what sets Oakmont apart are greens so fast and tilted that the USGA is having trouble finding four adequate pin placements on each hole.

''I've talked to some of the guys that have been out there and I've talked to some of the former champions who have been out there, and they tell me this field -- and this is just an observation -- is not really ready for Oakmont,'' said Palmer, the tournament's honorary chairman. ''That they haven't really learned yet how to play Oakmont.''

Palmer is certain of that, if only because he has played Oakmont for 66 years and even The King isn't entirely sure if he fully knows a course whose greens are so frighteningly fast, so unnervingly difficult to read.

''There are golf courses over the years that I could play a practice round or two and feel pretty comfortable that I knew how to play it,'' Palmer said. ''Oakmont just doesn't happen to be that kind of golf course. I've played, well, since I was 12 years old. And I'm not even sure now that I know every shot that I should hit, if I could hit it.''

Phil Mickelson, among the favorites, won The Players Championship last month and had a pair of third-place ties before that, and would seem to have plenty of momentum since switching to Butch Harmon as his coach. But even he didn't know until he got on the course how much his left wrist injury would affect him.

Mickelson played half a round Wednesday, and hasn't played a full round at Oakmont since injuring his wrist there chipping out of the thick rough last month. He wasn't scheduled to tee off until Thursday afternoon.

Even if the wrist weren't a bother -- he was resigned to playing in pain all week -- there was the issue of his 72nd-hole collapse at Winged Foot last year, one that cost him his first U.S. Open title and his fourth major.

Another question was how that late-afternoon thunderstorm Wednesday would affect play. It could soften the greens enough to permit lower scoring than expected -- remember, a similar rainstorm helped Johnny Miller shoot a final-round 63 and win the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont.

''It's not going to be what we planned for,'' said Tim Moraghan, the USGA agronomist. ''Things were moving along quite well (before the storm). We thought we'd have a true, hard test for players on Thursday. The rain has altered this a little bit. We're going to try and do everything we can to get the golf course back to where it was before this little rain.''

Or exactly what the field didn't want to hear. Rory Sabbatini predicted that Oakmont will be so difficult that the player who finishes last will be 40 over par -- the equivalent of a bogey every other hole.

''These are the toughest greens we'll ever play in U.S. Open history, or even any other tournament for that matter,'' Els said before the rain storm. ''With the rough and these greens, this is going to be a very, very tough test.''

    Several Golfers Below Par at U.S. Open, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-GLF-US-Open.html

Phelps Sets 5th World Record to Win 7th Gold

April 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:46 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Michael Phelps equaled the most hallowed mark in swimming, winning his seventh gold medal at the world championships Sunday night with his fifth world record.

Phelps smashed his own world record in the 400-meter individual medley by 2.04 seconds, becoming the most successful swimmer ever at the worlds.

The 21-year-old American joined countryman Mark Spitz as the only swimmers ever to win that many golds at a major international meet. Of course, Spitz' achievement came on the sport's grandest stage -- the Olympics.

Phelps hopes to equal the feat or go one better at next year's Beijing Games.

A Polish swimmer staged the last night's biggest upset in the grueling 1,500 freestyle, where Aussie Grant Hackett's run of four consecutive titles ended.

Mateusz Sawrymowicz won the gold medal in 14 minutes, 45.94 seconds against the fastest field in history.

Yury Prilukov of Russia took the silver. David Davies earned the bronze.

Hackett struggled home seventh, ending a disappointing meet for the world record holder. He earned a bronze in the 400 free and was seventh in the 800 free.

American Larsen Jensen was fourth, and teammate Erik Vendt eighth.

Phelps never got a chance at an eighth gold in Melbourne after his U.S. teammates were shockingly disqualified in the 400 medley relay preliminaries Sunday morning.

Ian Crocker, who had been in position to derail Phelps in the 100 fly before losing to his rival, dove in too early on an exchange, causing the DQ.

Phelps was gracious in his first public comments about Crocker's gaffe.

''When Team USA comes into a swim meet, we come as a team and we exit as a team,'' he said. ''There are things that don't happen exactly as we want it to, but it's better to happen now than next year.''

Still, Phelps closed out his eight-day run in style, winning the 400 IM in 4 minutes, 06.22 seconds -- easily improving his old standard of 4:08.26 set at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Ryan Lochte took the silver -- a whopping 3.52 seconds behind his teammate -- for his fifth medal of the meet. Luca Marin of Italy earned the bronze.

Phelps and Lochte dueled through much of the 400 IM. Phelps was under world-record pace after 150 meters of butterfly. Lochte narrowly took over the lead at 200 meters during the backstroke, his specialty.

But Phelps roared back on breaststroke, again dipping under record pace.

''That's probably my most improved stroke over the last six months to a year,'' he said.

He went 1.49 seconds lower on the first of his two closing freestroke laps before powering home with the red line that indicates the world-record pace lapping at his feet.

He checked his time and leaned heavily on the lane rope, holding up his right index finger in the No. 1 sign.

''That was my last race, so I wanted to finish strong,'' he said.

Phelps' five world records equaled the number he broke at the 2003 worlds in Barcelona. Back then, he won six medals, including four gold.

As Phelps soaked in the applause during his victory stroll, Crocker looked on pensively from the stands, chewing gum.

Lochte couldn't resist breaking out his gold, silver and diamond-crusted grill for the victory walk, getting cheers and laughs from other swimmers when he flashed the metal mouth caps he wore earlier in the meet on a dare from his teammates.

Libby Lenton of Australia won her fifth gold medal, taking the women's 50 freestyle in 24.53 seconds. American Natalie Coughlin was last, closing out a five-medal showing, including two golds.

The evening opened with finals in two non-Olympic events -- the men's 50 backstroke and women's 50 breaststroke.

Gerhard Zandberg of South Africa won the men's race. American Jessica Hardy took the women's title, upsetting Leisel Jones of Australia, who won the 100 and 200 breaststrokes. American Tara Kirk earned the bronze, her third medal of the meet.

    Phelps Sets 5th World Record to Win 7th Gold, NYT, 1.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-SWM-World-Championships.html?hp

Tiger Woods Wins Final Masters Tuneup

March 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:06 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MIAMI (AP) -- Tiger Woods felt stiffness in his neck from a bad night of sleep on his boat. For the first time in 3 1/2 years, he couldn't break par when he had entered Sunday with the lead. And he played so cautiously on the final hole of the CA Championship that the outcome was in doubt for as long as it took a 50-foot par putt to settle a few feet from the cup.

In his eyes, it was an ideal way to prepare for the Masters.

''You can't have any better way -- getting a 'W' right before you go,'' Woods said after a two-shot victory over Brett Wetterich.

Forget the details and consider the big picture.

He was so dominant at Doral that he didn't have to break par. He built such a commanding lead on a warm, blustery afternoon that the smartest play was to hit 3-iron off the tee, 8-iron to lay up and wedge some 50 feet beyond the cup on the demanding 18th hole.

''It looked easy to him out there today,'' Wetterich said.

Woods said it was a struggle, but he got the momentum he wanted heading into the first major of the year. He won his 31st straight PGA Tour event when leading going into the last round, never letting anyone closer than four shots until the final three holes.

He closed with a 1-over 73, only the sixth time in his career he has won by shooting over par in the last round.

''I figured if I shot under par, it would be over,'' he said. ''Didn't quite get it done, but ended up winning, anyways.''

And everyone knew it.

''If he's not already, he's getting pretty close to being the best golfer of all time,'' U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy said. ''It's fun watching. He's just a better player.''

They can move this World Golf Championship around country and continents, change its name and stick it in a different spot on the calendar. It doesn't matter. Woods still seems to wind up with the trophy.

Woods won this event for the sixth time, more than any other tournament. And while the others are held on courses he owns, Woods is believed to be the first player to win a tournament six times on six courses -- in Spain, Ireland, Atlanta, San Francisco, London and Miami, the latter on a Blue Monster course where he has won the last three years.

''I love this golf course,'' he said. ''And when it was decided that we were going to come here, I just through that this was a wonderful opportunity for me to win the championship.''

He finished at 10-under 278 and earned $1.35 million for his second victory of the year, and 56th of his career.

''He's good on Bermuda, good in wind, good in no wind, he's good on bent grass. He's just a good player,'' Ogilvy said.

Woods won for the 13th time in 24 starts in the World Golf Championships, and he's 11-of-16 when the WGCs are stroke play.

He kept everyone at least four shots from the lead until Wetterich made birdie on the 16th to get within three. Wetterich had birdie putts of 10 feet and 8 feet on the last two holes, but missed them both.

''That's not good enough if you want to try to beat Tiger,'' Wetterich said.

Equipped with a three-shot lead on the 18th, Woods went conservative for one of the few times in his career. He hit 3-iron off the tee on the 465-yard closing hole, laid up with an 8-iron and took the water out of play -- way out of play -- with a wedge 50 feet above the hole.

A three-putt double bogey and a Wetterich birdie would have meant a playoff.

Woods, however, found the perfect pace down to tap-in range, and Wetterich's birdie putt, which he left short, was meaningless. Wetterich closed with a 71.

Robert Allenby ran off six birdies in his first 14 holes and his 5-under 67 was the best score of the final round, the only drama was to see would finish second. Allenby wound up in a tie for third at 6-under 282 with Ogilvy (70) and Sergio Garcia (70), the only player to break par all for days at Doral.

Garcia bristled when asked if he was embarrassed by spitting into the cup after missing a putt on Saturday.

''I apologized already,'' he said. ''Are you embarrassed that I didn't spit today, that you didn't have anything better to ask me? Next.''

Woods' victory comes one week after he took two double bogeys and a triple bogey on his back nine at Bay Hill, and some players wondered whether those scars would be fresh.

Apparently not.

He is 31-1 when leading on the PGA Tour going into the final round, the loss coming in 1996 Quad City Classic when he was 20 and playing his third tournament as a professional.

He led by four shots Sunday, and Woods immediately stretched it with an 18-foot birdie on the opening hole.

But he shoved a 5-foot par putt on the third, then rapped a 50-foot birdie attempt on the next hole some 10 feet past the cup. Wetterich made his 35-footer for birdie, but Woods poured in his par putt.

After another bogey on the sixth, Woods' approach on No. 7 caught the face of the bunker. He blasted out to 5 feet and again saved par to keep rolling toward victory. Consecutive birdies on the par-3 ninth and par-5 10th gave him his largest lead of the round at six, and by then it was matter of finishing the tournament.

''I didn't see anyone catching Tiger,'' Allenby said. ''When he's in front, he's a hard man to beat.''

The CA Championship is the fifth tournament that Woods has won at least three times in a row, and he has won more times at this tournament than any other in golf.

Woods has won 27.5 percent of his tournaments, an astounding rate that even got the savvy Ogilvy doing some quick math.

''He only wins 30 percent of the time he tees it up,'' Ogilvy said. ''I probably only play 13 or 14 tournaments that he plays in a year. I've got seven or eight chances he's not going to win. It's kind of inspiring.''

    Tiger Woods Wins Final Masters Tuneup, NYT, 26.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-GLF-CA-Championship.html

Super Bowl slowdown costs U.S. employers $800 million

Mon Jan 22, 2007 12:27 PM ET
Reuters



NEW YORK (Reuters) - If office work has taken a back seat to football chatter, it must be the annual Super Bowl slowdown.

Excitement over what has become the biggest single sporting event of the year in the United States may actually end up costing employers some $800 million in lost productivity the week before the big game, a report said on Monday.

In Chicago and Indianapolis, the two cities whose National Football League teams will face off on February 4 in Miami, losses could reach $85 million in the run-up to the game, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

Assuming employees, for example, spend 10 minutes a day talking about the game, making bets, surfing the Internet or shopping for a new television, their bosses will lose some $162 million per day. In a five-day workweek, that adds up to $810 million, based on average earnings and expected viewership.

Then there is the day after the championship when people discuss the game's plays, the TV commercials, or simply call in sick, resulting in more money lost, the outplacement consultant reported.

CEO John Challenger suggests companies use the Super Bowl to build morale or encourage communication among workers, rather than focusing on lost productivity.

"There are always distractions in the workplace," Challenger said. "The Super Bowl is just one more."

    Super Bowl slowdown costs U.S. employers $800 million, R, 22.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-01-22T172659Z_01_N22466561_RTRUKOC_0_US-SUPERBOWL-COSTS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

Lamar Hunt, 74, Football Pioneer, Is Dead

December 14, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:00 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DALLAS (AP) -- Lamar Hunt, the pro sports visionary who owned the Kansas City Chiefs and came up with the term ''Super Bowl,'' died Wednesday night. He was 74.

Hunt, a founder of the American Football League and one of the driving forces behind the AFL-NFL merger, died at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas of complications from prostate cancer, Chiefs spokesman Bob Moore said.

Hunt battled cancer for several years and was hospitalized the day before Thanksgiving with a partially collapsed lung. Doctors discovered that the cancer had spread, and Hunt had been under heavy sedation since last week.

''He was a founder. He was the energy, really, that put together half of the league, and then he was the key person in merging the two leagues together,'' said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Hunt's neighbor. ''You'd be hard-pressed to find anybody that's made a bigger contribution (to the NFL) than Lamar Hunt.''

Carl Peterson, the Chiefs' president and general manager, called Hunt ''arguably the greatest sportsman of this last half-century, although he never sought fame or recognition for the improvements and changes he brought to the world's sports institutions.''

''His was a creative, constructive and loving life not nearly long enough and we will likely never see one like it again,'' Peterson said.

The son of Texas oilman H.L. Hunt, Lamar Hunt grew up in Dallas and attended a private boys' prep school in Pennsylvania, serving as captain of the football team in his senior year. His love of sports led to his nickname, ''Games.''

Hunt played football at SMU, but never rose above third string. His modest achievements on the field were dwarfed by his accomplishments as an owner and promoter of teams in professional football, basketball, baseball, tennis, soccer and bowling.

Hunt's business dealings were also the stuff of headlines. Hunt didn't need to make money -- his father was an oil wildcatter who was often referred to as the richest man in the world. But he tried to build on his father's wealth.

Along with two brothers, Hunt tried to corner the silver market in 1979 and 1980. Their oil investments also soured in the 1980s. Some estimated the family's losses in the billions.

Hunt also suffered setbacks in the world of pro sports, but overcame them.

When NFL owners rebuffed Hunt's attempt to buy a franchise and move it to Dallas, Hunt -- ignoring his father's advice -- founded the AFL. He owned one of the AFL's eight original teams from the inaugural 1960 season, the Dallas Texans.

The Texans, however, struggled in head-to-head competition with the expansion Dallas Cowboys of the NFL. Convinced that both franchises would suffer as long as Dallas remained a two-team city, Hunt moved the Texans to Kansas City in 1963.

''I looked around and figured Kansas City could be a success,'' he told The Associated Press. ''By our fourth or fifth year, we started to succeed. The Cowboys of course did very well too.''

Hunt realized his dream of becoming an NFL owner after the two leagues reached a merger deal in 1966.

In 1967, the Chiefs lost the first AFL-NFL championship -- it was then called the World Championship Game. Three years later, the Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings for the title.

By then, the championship game had been christened the Super Bowl. Hunt came up with the name while watching his children play with a SuperBall.

In 1972, Hunt became the first AFL figure to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and each year the Lamar Hunt Trophy goes to the winner of the NFL's American conference.

Hunt long campaigned to let teams other than Dallas and Detroit play at home on Thanksgiving Day. To honor his effort, the NFL scheduled a third game on the holiday this year -- in Kansas City. Hunt missed it, though, because he was in the hospital and couldn't get the game on TV.

Hunt remained interested in the day-to-day operations of the Chiefs but was never known as a meddlesome owner.

''On Sunday nights after a game, he would always call,'' Chiefs coach Herm Edwards said. ''It would be about 9:30 or 10 o'clock and the phone would ring and I knew it was Lamar. He always said, 'Am I bothering you?'

''Is he bothering me? What a great man, as humble a man as you will ever meet.''

For several years, Hunt also owned the minor-league baseball Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, but his 1964 effort to bring major league baseball to the Dallas-area failed. Eight years later, the Washington franchise moved to suburban Arlington and became the Texas Rangers.

In 1967, Hunt was one of 10 original founding partners in the Chicago Bulls basketball franchise. He was the last remaining original owner.

Also in 1967, Hunt started the first organized effort at a pro tennis tour with World Championship Tennis, and in 1968 he helped bring pro soccer to the United States with his Dallas Tornado of the old North American Soccer League.

More recently, Hunt and his sons owned Hunt Sports Group, which manages Major League Soccer franchises in Dallas, Kansas City and Columbus, Ohio.

In 1969, Hunt tried to buy Alcatraz, the island in San Francisco Bay that once housed a federal prison, and develop it with a tourist park and shopping destination. The idea died amid local protest.

Hunt created Worlds of Fun, a $50 million amusement park, and Oceans of Fun, a $7 million water recreation park, in Kansas City. He opened a pro bowling arena in Dallas -- actress Jayne Mansfield was the opening-night draw.

Hunt was part of H.L. Hunt's ''first family'' -- the wildcatter had 15 children by three women. Despite huge losses in the silver and oil markets, family members kept much of their wealth protected by elaborate trusts, and their names have long dotted lists of the wealthiest Americans.

Counting pro football, Hunt has been inducted into eight halls of fame, including ones for soccer and tennis as well as the Texas Business Hall of Fame and the Kansas City Business Hall of Fame.

Hunt is survived by wife Norma, children Lamar Jr., Sharron Munson, Clark and Daniel; and 13 grandchildren.

------

AP Sports Writer Doug Tucker in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.

    Lamar Hunt, 74, Football Pioneer, Is Dead, NYT, 14.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-FBN-Obit-Chiefs-Hunt.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=1daabe66732577b2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

For Top 2, Grief Adds to Lore of the Big Game

November 18, 2006
The New York Times
By PETE THAMEL

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 17 — In this part of the country, when college football fans speak of The Game, there is no need to clarify that they are talking about the annual matchup between Ohio State and Michigan.

But none of the teams’ 102 previous meetings have held as much importance as the game Saturday, with Ohio State ranked No. 1 and Michigan No. 2 for the first time in series history. Both have 11-0 records, and the winner is assured a spot in the Bowl Championship Series national title game in January.

Anticipation for the game is so high that it halted ballot counting for a Congressional election and prompted Michigan to send members of the campus police here to ensure the safety of its fans.

Then, with a little more than 24 hours to go before the game, Michigan’s renowned football coach, Bo Schembechler, died.

Schembechler, 77, had missed a doctor’s appointment Thursday to give his former team a fiery pep talk. On Friday morning, he went to tape his weekly television show at WXYZ-TV in Southfield, Mich., and collapsed. A doctor at the hospital where he taken said the cause of death was congestive heart failure.

In a telephone interview, the former broadcaster Keith Jackson called the timing of Schembechler’s death “absolutely spooky.”

Schembechler’s 194-48-5 record makes him the university’s leader in victories, and the complex that houses the football team’s offices bears his name. His teams won or shared 13 Big Ten Conference titles, played in the Rose Bowl 10 times, and had 117 players drafted by National Football League teams.

Ohio State will hold a moment of silence for Schembechler before the game. A punk band based in Columbus known as the Dead Schembechlers — its name prescient and unintentionally macabre — said it would disband in honor of the coach after playing at a Hate Michigan Rally on Friday.

On Monday, Schembechler showed the feistiness that defined his 21 seasons as Michigan’s coach. He told reporters: “I don’t care who it is — there’s no rivalry that compares with this. This is the greatest college football rivalry there is.”

Typical barometers of the scale of a college football game include money spent on tickets, the number of opposing fans who travel to the visiting city and the quantity of alcohol consumed at bars near campus.

But the decision made by the Franklin County Board of Elections to delay the counting of more than 18,000 absentee and provisional votes in the Congressional election for the 15th District may reset the standards.

The Republican incumbent, Deborah Pryce, leads her Democratic challenger, Mary Jo Kilroy, by more than 3,000 votes. The first day that those ballots can be legally counted is Saturday.

“When it comes down to it, they would have a mutiny on their hands if they tried to make Franklin County Board of Election workers work on the Saturday of The Game,” said Randy Borntrager, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, stressing his final two words to accentuate this contest’s unofficial title.

Pryce apparently does not mind either. After all, she will be attending the game.

“She cares about two things this weekend: winning her election and making sure Ohio State beats Michigan,” Pryce’s spokesman, John DeStefano, said. “Whichever order they come in, it’ll be quite a celebration when both happen on the same weekend.”

In Michigan, the tributes to Schembechler began hours after his death. Numerous former players, coaches, friends and Michigan administrators appeared at a news conference to pay tribute to him.

“Bo Schembechler was a second dad for me,” said Jamie Morris, a former Michigan running back, who later left the room in tears.

Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman said, “No one represented Michigan tradition better than Bo.”

Schembechler was known for demanding discipline and perfection and for his gruff demeanor. His Michigan teams were known for their grinding style with a tough defense and a strong running game.

Schembechler had a history of health problems. He had the first of two heart attacks in 1970, on the eve of his first Rose Bowl. Schembechler had two quadruple-bypass operations. Last month, he had a pacemaker implanted after he felt ill during a taping at the same television station.

Few felt the death as much as Michigan Coach Lloyd Carr. A longtime assistant for Schembechler, Carr appeared subdued as he led his team through a brief walk-through at Ohio Stadium on Friday. He did not stop to address reporters; Michigan players also did not speak to the news media.

The death of Schembechler dimmed the excitement somewhat in this football-crazed city as it braced for the game. Hundreds of campers were already parked outside Ohio Stadium, but aside from a few zealous fans, the Michigan players encountered little noise as they left the team’s charter buses.

Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel released a statement, saying, “Bo Schembechler touched the lives of many people and made the game of football better in every way.”

Even the members of the Dead Schembechlers paid their respects by replacing their name on the marquee of the Newport Music Hall in Columbus with the words “God Bless Bo.”

A band spokesman told The Detroit News that all the proceeds from their concert at the Hate Michigan Rally would go toward charity.

The band’s Web site crashed Friday afternoon because of heavy usage. Earlier in the day, a statement was posted on it saying: “The band is crushed to learn of the death of Bo Schembechler. We named this band after Coach Schembechler to honor him as the face of Wolverine football.”

And while the timing of Schembechler’s death adds more lore to the rivalry, it remains to be seen whether it will become the Wolverines’ defining motivation for the latest installment on Saturday.

“I’m sure there’s a little extra ginger in Michigan as they get ready to play this game,” Jackson said.

Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Southfield, Mich.

    For Top 2, Grief Adds to Lore of the Big Game, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/sports/ncaafootball/18buckeyes.html

Fire Still Burns Inside Smokin’ Joe Frazier

October 18, 2006
The New York Times
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI

PHILADELPHIA — In a cluttered gymnasium on North Broad Street, the stench of a lifetime of hard work hung over the tools of a trade that once made Joe Frazier a heavyweight champion and a wealthy celebrity.

On a quiet, sunny Sunday afternoon in this city he adopted, Frazier stayed well beyond the reach of the natural spotlight that beamed through the front window of Joe Frazier’s Gym and swept across an old boxing ring and rows of rusty lockers. Caught in the glow were tables covered with boxing gloves and head gear, and not nearly enough trainer’s tape to hide an old warrior’s wounds.

In a back room beneath a dim bulb, Frazier sat on a sofa and taped his 62-year-old hands for a light workout.

“A sound body keeps a sound mind,” he said.

Then the man known as Smokin’ Joe Frazier, who once formed half of one of the greatest rivalries in sports, rose slowly to his feet. Slightly stooped but still feeling unstoppable, he began to shadow box.

“Don’t seem like I’m getting any older,” he said on this day in early October. “I weigh about 212 pounds, only 10 pounds heavier than I was in my prime.”

Ten pounds heavier, but millions of dollars lighter, according to Frazier and the marketing people who work with him. Over the years, Frazier has lost a fortune through a combination of his own generosity and naïveté, his carousing, failed business opportunities and a deep hatred for his former chief boxing rival, Muhammad Ali. The other headliners from his fighting days — Ali, George Foreman and Larry Holmes — are millionaires.

But while Ali has benefited from lucrative licensing agreements and remains one the world’s most recognized and celebrated athletes, Frazier lives alone in an apartment one staircase above the gym where he and others train young fighters in a run-down part of town.

“This is my primary residence,” he said. “Don’t matter much. I’m on the road most of the time, anyway.”

Asked about his situation, Frazier became playfully defensive, but would not reveal his financial status.

“Are you asking me how much money I have?” he said. “I got plenty of money. I got a stack of $100 bills rolled up over there in the back of the room.”

Frazier blamed himself, partly, for not effectively promoting his own image.

“I don’t think I handled it right, because I certainly could have gone out more and done better for myself over the years,” he said. “I could have left the gym a little more to be on the road.”

He added: “But I guess, in a way, I’m rich, too. I have my family and I have a sound mind and a sound body, and after all of those brutal fights, I’m lucky to still have my eyesight.”

Frazier was born in 1944 in South Carolina, the youngest of 12 children. His parents worked in the fields, and he dropped out of school at 13.

He made Philadelphia his boxing home, turned professional in August 1965 and won his first 11 bouts by knockouts. He was generously listed at 5 feet 11½ inches when he retained his heavyweight title by defeating Ali in a 15-round decision at Madison Square Garden in March 1971. He compiled a career record of 32-4-1.

These days, Frazier is not completely healthy. While driving on the busy street in front of his gym three years ago, he said, his car experienced a mechanical problem and collided with another car. The Philadelphia police said it had no record of the accident. But Frazier has since had four operations on his back and neck, the most recent three months ago at Pennsylvania Hospital.

A person who was briefed on the accident and said he would speak only on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with Frazier said that Larry Holmes helped pay for the operations. Holmes, now a businessman in his hometown of Easton, Pa., answered cautiously when asked if he had done so.

“Joe Frazier is my friend, and what I choose to do for my friends is my own business,” he said. “If I do anything for a friend, it is not done for the purpose of making myself look good and getting my name in the paper. But know this about my friendship with Joe: If I had $4 left in my wallet, two of those would go to Joe.”

Corporate sponsors have not always felt the same way about Frazier.

Darren Prince, Frazier’s marketing manager since 1995, said Frazier remained beloved by fans. But he also said that Frazier’s longstanding animosity toward Ali had hurt him financially.

“They were bitter rivals, and Muhammad always made jokes about Joe, calling him things like an Uncle Tom and a gorilla, and Joe was hurt so he fired back, but sometimes he went too far,” said Prince, who recalled that when Ali lighted the Olympic flame in Atlanta in 1996, Frazier told a reporter that he would like to throw Ali into the fire.

Frazier’s frequent insistence that he won all three of his fights against Ali also did not endear him to potential sponsors, Prince said.

When told of Prince’s remarks, Frazier said, “I am who I am, and yes, I whipped Ali all three times.”

In fact, Frazier lost two of the three fights, including the Thrilla in Manila bout in 1975. Frazier exposed an emotional scar as he recalled those days.

“Ali kept calling me ugly, but I never thought of myself as being any uglier than him,” he said. “I have 11 babies — somebody thought I was cute.”

Frazier’s 11 children are scattered. He once managed the boxing career of his eldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. In June 2001, his daughter Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde fought Ali’s daughter Laila and lost on a decision.

Frazier-Lyde is a lawyer and has worked on her father’s behalf in pursuit of money they claim he was owed in a Pennsylvania land deal. In 1973, Frazier purchased 140 acres in Bucks County, Pa., for $843,000. Five years later, a developer agreed to buy the farmland for $1.8 million. Frazier received annual payments from a trust that bought the land with money he had earned in the ring. When the trust went out of business, the payments stopped.

Frazier sued his business partners, claiming that his signature was forged on documents and that he had no knowledge of the sale. In the ensuing years, the land was subdivided and turned into a residential community. The property is now worth an estimated $100 million.

Frazier-Lyde said her father’s former partners took advantage of him.

“They used my father’s money — money he earned through blood, sweat and tears — to build that land,” she said.

She helped her father sue the homeowners, but the case was dismissed in 2003.

Frazier said the matter came down to honor.

“I had a job to do in the ring, and the businessmen around me had a job to do outside the ring,” he said. “I did my job by beating up most of the guys they put in front of me and staying in shape, but the people I trusted didn’t do their jobs.”

Les Wolff, who has served as Frazier’s business and personal manager for the past three years, said he was working to help Frazier recover. He said he talked with a Hollywood director about putting together a movie on Frazier’s life.

“Can you think of two boxers in the world who share the same stature as Ali and Frazier?” Wolff said. “The biggest problem that Joe has had over the years is that he has not been marketed properly.”

On Nov. 30, Frazier will box Willie W. Herenton, the 66-year-old mayor of Memphis, in a three-round charity bout at the Peabody Memphis Hotel. Herenton is a former amateur boxing champion.

“He must have a death wish,” Frazier said.

So Frazier headed toward the ring to resume training. But before leaving the dimly lit room, he stopped to glance at a giant poster that was made from a 1971 cover of Life magazine. It showed him and Ali, side by side and clad in tuxedos, beneath the words “Fight of the Century,” a reference to the first of their three clashes, the one that Frazier won at the Garden. Each fighter made $2.5 million that night.

“Ali always said I would be nothing without him,” Frazier said. “But who would he have been without me?”

    Fire Still Burns Inside Smokin’ Joe Frazier, NYT, 19.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/sports/othersports/18frazier.html

Aftermath of the Bradford football stadium fire

Hideous images linger after carnage of 'celebration' day

Monday May 13, 1985
Guardian
Malcolm Pithers


The horrific scenes of people burning alive seemed to live on in an eerie silence as daylight broke over the remains of Bradford City Football Club's ground yesterday. All that was left of the main stand were rows of bare steel and stone, with blackened timbers hanging from the few remaining roof supports. The intensity of the blaze which spread 'quicker than people could walk' destroyed the main stand area, leaving a skeleton of burned seats, lamps and fences.
People were wandering around outside the ground in disbelief, reminiscent of an air disaster, at what had happened the day before.

Only one person had been positively identified by police by early last night. The 51 other bodies of children, women and men were so badly burned that identification will take many days.

Police removed the last body from the ground at 4 am yesterday, working under arc lights. It was a gruesome sight to see bodies still sitting upright in their seats, covered in tarpaulin.

Saturday began for the fans in a carnival atmosphere at Bradford 's Valley Parade ground a short walk from the city centre.

Parents and children were laughing and joking with the police as the preliminaries to the game began. The match, Bradford against Lincoln, was to have been a joyous climax to the club winning the Third Division championship and being promoted to the Second Division.

Bradford city council officials, off-duty policemen and guests from Bradford 's twin town, Munchengladbach, were there to celebrate. Ironically, off-duty firemen were at the ground selling raffle tickets for a charity football match which should have been held yesterday. Soon they were all running for their lives.

Disaster struck at 3.43 pm. It is impossible so far to be accurate about the precise cause of the fire, with grossly conflicting reports from witnesses.

There was some kind of disturbance near the edge of a block of seats in the G section of the main stand. It is not thought that there was any crowd trouble in this section but one theory the police are investigating is that a flare or smoke-bomb was thrown or was accidentally dropped.

Smoke was seen coming from the third row in the section but people are apparently used to seeing smoke flares on the Bradford ground.

Then flames licked the underside of the seats, which were a combination of wood and plastic. Below the seats were rows of litter which had piled up throughout the season, said witnesses.

The stand itself was engulfed in seconds, almost as if petrol had been ignited throughout the block. The fire brigade said that when heat builds up so quickly it can cause flames to move much quicker than people can walk.

More than 3,500 people were crammed into the main stand area and this prevented people from moving away from the blaze quickly. They were hampered further by the fact that doors at the back of the stand were locked to try to stop people coming in without paying. The stand slopes downwards from the South Parade.

People had walked through turnstiles and along a wooden corridor before descending the steps into their seats. When the game began there was no way out for them, except by going on to the pitch. Some people seem to have run back up the slope, thinking that they could get back through the turnstiles, and were burned alive.

Others ran forward to try to clamber over a fence and a small wall on to the pitch. But the sheer density of numbers coupled with the thick, choking smoke made people collapse. Some of the dead were found at the bottom of these steps.

A call was made on a police radio to the police operations room in Bradford and relayed to the fire brigade at 3.43 pm. It took the firemen four minutes to arrive at the ground but the speed of the fire was such that the blaze also took only four minutes to grip the entire stand.

The firemen who arrived there were met by a wall of flame and dense black smoke. They were not able to use water on the stand immediately because this would have hampered attempts to rescue people being dragged by the police and friends from the stand.

The only fire extinguishers in the ground were in the clubroom, which is also in the main stand. The extinguishers were put there so that they would be out of the way of fans who could use them as missiles, which apparently had happened previously.

The chairman of the football club, Mr Stafford Heginbotham, was near to tears as he explained what had happened. 'The fire just spread along the length of the stand in seconds. The smoke was choking. We couldn't breathe. It was to be our day,' he said.

Superintendent Barry Osborne, divisional commander for the football club area, who was injured in the fire said that many policemen cried when they saw how badly people had been burned.

He saw smoke coming from a small area of the stand and thought that someone had let off a flare. 'The smoke was very, very dense. I ran to the stand and tried to help people escape. The flames suddenly appeared and the whole roof took alight,' he said.

People were clambering over the wall on to the ground with their clothes and hair on fire. The heat inside the stand literally ignited people where they stood.

One elderly man started to walk across the pitch with his clothes and face ablaze. People pushed him to the ground and tried to smother the flames. One man in tears said: 'He looked as if he was just going for a stroll. He was completely on fire and it looked as though he simply did not know what had happened to him.'

Mr Stefan Krolak, a survivor from Bradford , said he saw the smoke start a few seats away from him 'The smoke seemed suddenly to set on fire. People were falling on to each other and screaming.

'They did not have a chance. Tarpaulin fell on them and stuck to their clothes and then ignited. I saw one man lying on the ground, burning from head to foot. There was hardly anything left of him.'

One woman was seen running around the ground with no skin on her arms and face. She was hysterical and trying to find her three children. The team's coach, Mr Terry Yorath, ran on to the pitch to try to help people away from the stand. 'It is the worst day in my life. The whole fire seemed to erupt in seconds,' he said.

Mr Antony Burrows said: 'One man was stood near me with his hair on fire. There were no fire extinguishers. I had to put my jumper over his hair to put the blaze out.'

Sports reporters covering the game also spoke of the disaster. Mr Tony Delahunte, who was presenting a programme from the ground for Pennine Radio, said 'The fire seemed to me to start with a smoke bomb. I saw a group of people around the smoke laughing. Then the flames and smoke were all over the place.'

Mr Delahunte was screaming into his microphone describing the scene until it became impossible to continue broadcasting. His face was burned and his car, which he had parked outside the ground, was destroyed.

People were arriving in a daze outside Bradford police headquarters on Saturday evening and early yesterday. One family was in tears, the mother shaking. They stood outside the headquarters, staring at nothing in particular.

Other parents whose children had not arrived home on Saturday called at the police station or sat in cars outside, waiting for news. Hundreds more telephoned the police to try to trace relatives.

The Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, Mr Colin Sampson, said yesterday that a team of doctors and pathologists had worked throughout the night trying to identify the dead.

He appealed to people to be patient while forensic experts identified bodies. 'I have to tell you that the fire was so intense that identifying people is going to be the great problem we have to face.'

Eighty names were unaccounted for and there were no positive indications about the cause of the fire.

There has been reports of people lighting paper under the seats, and it was important that as many fans as possible who were in the stand or at the Kop end contacted the police. 'This was a dreadful afternoon. I have never had to deal with such a situation before, and this has put the city on its heels.'

The man in charge of investigating the fire, Detective Superintendent Kevin Cooper was at the game. His son Christopher normally watches from the stand but on Saturday he joined other fans elsewhere.

The stories of escapes are legion. Many who had walked out of the fire stood on the pitch looking back in horror as the flames destroyed the stand.

Bradford council introduced its emergency plans procedure yesterday to give aid to many families affected by the disaster.

Police had an official photographer at the game, watching for crowd disturbance. He photographed the blaze from start to finish and the police will use this as evidence when an inquest is held.

The club's success had swollen the crowd to 10,000 and arguments will rage about fire precautions at the ground.

It was clear from what the Chief Fire Officer for West Yorkshire, Mr Graham Karran, said yesterday that the ground was far from safe. He was asked if precautions would have been adequate had the club been in the Second Division. 'I think that is unlikely,' he said.

Representatives from the fire brigade were due to go to the club tomorrow to inspect it and see whether regulations were being observed. Now they will begin another inquiry, into the cause of the Bradford fire.

    Hideous images linger after carnage of 'celebration' day, G, Monday May 13, 1985, Republished 11.5.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1214220,00.html

From The Times archives

On This Day - August 31, 1977

England drew with Australia in the final Ashes Test at the Oval,

to record a 3-0 victory in the series

JUST HOW little confidence Greg Chappell’s Australian side had left when they came to the end of their tour at the Oval yesterday was shown when they made no effort in the fifth Test match to put England under pressure. Rather than declaring, they batted on until they were all out for 385 (a lead of 171) and only two hours and three quarters were left.

Australia were delighted no doubt, to make comfortably their highest score of the series. This was, in fact, only the third time they have passed 300 in their last 11 innings against England. Even so, after Brearley had been out in the third over of England’s second innings, caught at short leg when Thomson made a ball lift unexpectedly, and then Woolmer had been caught, Chappell may have regretted not getting England in earlier.

Boycott narrowly escaped being caught at square leg, hooking at Malone; the light began to go, and on its motto theme with Boycott presenting the broadest of bats to the Australian bowlers, the series ended.

Not often these days does a side collapse quite as Australia did in the middle of the series, against opponents who do not include a pair of genuinely fast bowlers. Tomorrow, in twos and threes, the Australians start their journey home. Uneasy about their future, they have fallen prey to an English side that has well deserved its welcome success.

    From The Times archives > On This Day - August 31, 1977, The Times, 31.8.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp 

From The Times archives

On This Day - July 18, 1955

Stirling Moss became the first British driver to win the British Grand Prix

narrowly defeating the great Argentinian, Juan Manuel Fangio

MOTOR racing in Britain reached a new level of popularity on Saturday, when a vast crowd, estimated at more than 100,000, packed the grandstands and enclosures at Aintree to watch the eighth Royal Automobile Club British Grand Prix.

All the elements of a successful day were present — perfect weather and the world’s fastest cars and finest drivers, and the only fault was the lack of any serious opposition for the Mercedes-Benz team, which finished in first, second, third and fourth places. But if German cars dominated the race, there was consolation and not a little pride for Britain in the fact that the winning car was superbly driven by Moss.

In spite of his acknowledged position in the front rank of drivers, this was his first victory in an international grand prix. Simultaneously he became the first Englishman to win the British Grand Prix. Of the two British teams in the race, the Vanwall specials gave their best performance to date (although both cars were beset with minor troubles), but the Connaughts were never in the picture.

Fangio led for a couple of laps, and it seemed that the usual Mercedes team traditions were to prevail, but on the third lap Moss sent a murmur of pleasure through the vast crowd when he passed the Argentine driver to lead the race. On the 18th lap Fangio was in front again, but after a further eight laps, Moss once more took the lead and held it to the end.

    From The Times Archives > On This Day - July 18, 1955, The Times, 18.7.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

From The Times archives

On This Day - August 19, 1926

England regained the Ashes after 14 years,

setting Australia a target of 415 runs to win the fifth Test.

England triumphed by 289 runs

AFTER a day full of excitement, England won the final Test Match at the oval yesterday by 289 runs, and wrested from Australia laurels which she had worn since 1921.

There could be no doubt that, on the day’s play, victory went to the better side, but on the final day England was able to add to her team a 12th player in the rainstorm which broke over the ground before lunch, and a 13th in the hot sun which followed during the afternoon. England on the other hand had had an equally difficult time to survive on the previous morning, and yesterday she grasped every opportunity which came her way.

An appreciative crowd, which included during the day the King of Iraq, Prince Arthur of Connaught, and the Prime Minister, settled down to see what the remaining English batsmen would do. Geary soon left, but, with Rhodes and Tate together, the spectators found plenty to cheer. When Rhodes was out leg before wicket the crowd sighed. The rain came down, but continued long enough for Larwood to be bowled. Then Strudwick defied the attack until the rain could be denied no longer. By 3 o ’clock a resumption was possible, and the English innings quickly closed for 436, leaving the Australians to get 415 runs to win. The task was a tremendous one, and events soon showed that it would be impossible.

    From The Times archive > On This Day - August 19, 1926, 19.8.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.as

October 31, 1899

Golf: its importance in the Empire

From the Guardian archive

A sportsman
 

Tuesday October 31, 1899
Guardian

The type of the hunter is one, the type of the footballer is another, but the type of the golfer, candidly, does not exist.

One can distinguish almost at the first glance the man who hunts, for hunting appeals to one particular kind. Again, the young man who plays football is easily distinguishable from his less fully blooded fellow.

Each of these two sports has its own clearly defined constituency. That they may both attract the same men in no degree weakens the fact. But with golf it is different. It is singulary catholic.

In proof of this it would seem sufficient to refer to the continuous stream of photographs, likenesses of all sorts and conditions of men, which flows week by week in the pages of a golfing contemporary.

Yet even in golf by consistency in habit men group themselves into classes. The division is in no way affected by their play or based on their handicap.

There is one type of golfer who represents too large a class to suggest personalities but is not without his share of human interest. Golf, like everything else, is to him a serious business.

For whatever ostensible reason he has "taken it up", he is determined to make it a success. He is as ambitious and persevering as George Eliot's Tom Tulliver. Nothing can seduce him, nothing can turn him from his purpose.

It is to such a man that success of a kind comes. The studied care with which the grip and stance are taken, the earnest attention to all the attitudes of swing and finish in the preliminary trials on the tee are convincing.

Most strokes are corrected in subsequent pantomime. He talks but little, and then only about getting his left shoulder well down, his left arm straight out, and the discipline of the eye. Any approach to the social amenities is ignored. He simply does not hear you. In a bunker he is grim. On the green he is a study of emphatic, patient concentration. His attitude to his caddy is that of a field marshal to a subaltern; to his opponent passive toleration, with a suspicion of the schoolmaster.

In the clubhouse he is exactly the same. A little conversation, but in the nature of a concession. Over his tea he silently studies Badminton or the attitudes in Golf and Golfers. He may miss much, but he has his certain reward.

He is the admired model of purposeful, persevering industry, and it is some compensation for the lack of the more social qualities to reflect that it is to such men that we owe our Imperial greatness.

    From the Guardian archive > October 31, 1899 > Golf: its importance in the Empire, G,
    republished 31.10.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1935750,00.html

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