Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
from Olympics Notebook: Vancouver 2010:
Flying Tomato squashes Vonn-couver in earnings stakes
Step forward the top earning athlete at these Winter Olympics... Not so fast, Lindsey Vonn!
According to Forbes, the two athletes in a high-rolling class of their own are Shaun White -- the Flying Tomato himself -- and South Korea's Kim Yu-na, the insanely popular 19-year-old figure skater.
White, the U.S. snowboarder who is unmistakable thanks to that shock of red hair, and Kim earned $8 million apiece last year, Forbes reckon. That put them ahead of everyone else at the Games, apart from the mega-salaried NHL hockey players who were left off the list.
U.S. skier Vonn is seen by many as the face of these Games yet she is a long way back in the earnings stakes, having banked $3 million last year, according to Forbes.
Hasta La Pista, Baby
The Olympic torch relay just got bigger, much bigger.
At 106 days, the pre-Vancouver Winter Games run weighs in as the longest domestic relay in Olympic history and to help get it across the finish line… Arnie is back.
Famous for his ‘I’ll be back’ and ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ catchphrases in the Terminator films, Arnold Schwarzenegger, now Governor of California, is nipping over to Canada to flex his pecs with a torch run through Vancouver’s famous Stanley Park.
The former Mr Universe and Mr Olympia champion is the only heavyweight on a list you could describe as more Kindergarten Cop than Conan the Barbarian.
from FaithWorld:
Super bowl abortion ad: what do you think of the hype?
Much of the hype around this year's Super Bowl pro football championship game focused on an ad by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family that featured college football superstar Tim Tebow and his mother Pam.
Several abortion rights and women's groups had complained in advance about the reported content of the ad, which they said would have a strong anti-abortion rights message. Reports suggested that the ad would focus on Pam Tebow's decision to carry Tim to term despite a recommendation from her doctors that she have an abortion. The Tebow family is deeply evangelical and he was born in the Philippines where his parents were doing missionary work.
Several groups that oppose abortion rights came out in strong support of the ad. None of this is surpring given the highly polarizing nature of the issue in America.
from Olympics Notebook: Vancouver 2010:
A taste of the Olympics in downtown Vancouver
With a few days to go before the start of the Winter Games, your intrepid reporters Kevin Fylan and Sonia Oxley took a stroll round downtown Vancouver to get a taste of the true Olympic spirit.
Click on the video above (or the headline first if your on the home page) and see just how much we enjoyed this tiny gastronomic tour of the city. Really, it's been a slice.
New Orleans Saints win Super Bowl: How It Happened
New Orleans Saints 31 Indianapolis Colts 17 … Saints win Super Bowl … this is how it happened.
Phenomenal eight or nine hours of build-up coverage from the US networks, astonishing to see for someone watching the SB from the right timezone for a change.
Is anyone outside of Indianapolis cheering for the Colts?
from Olympics Notebook: Vancouver 2010:
Rogge gives Vancouver preps seal of approval
It's Superbowl Sunday but believe it or not, not everyone is thinking Saints v Colts. With just five days to go before the start of the Winter Games in Vancouver, IOC head honcho Jacques Rogge chaired a meeting of the Executive Board this morning and we caught up with him -- briefly -- for his view of how things are shaping up.
Click the video above to hear the IOC chief's view. As you might expect, he sounds pretty happy...
from Olympics Notebook: Vancouver 2010:
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow … please!
There's less than a week to go before the Olympics and everything is in place here in Vancouver ... apart from one rather essential element.
Eight-page pull-out newspaper supplements on Team Canada's gold hopes in the hockey? Check. Wall-to-wall curling on the TV? Check. The world's friendliest volunteers scurrying aboot and shouting "Hurry hard!" at the slightest provocation? Check.
The thing that's missing, sadly when you consider this is the Winter Olympics, is, erm, snow.
LOL…Only outsiders would not know Vancouver has unpredictable weather! this week sunny and no SNOW next week straight rain!!
The locals have left Vancouver in droves…ppl here are simply not interested the least…
enjoy
Superbowl is not the greatest show on earth
North Americans call it “the greatest show on earth” but in reality not much of the world is really paying attention to the Super Bowl.
Sunday’s game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints will be broadcast in 230 countries and territories but the evidence indicates that in most parts of the world few people will be organizing their days around the game.
Once regularly described as having a “potential global audience of a billion,” conjuring up images of sports bars around the world packed with NFL fans tucking into chicken wings, the figures indicate something different.
I used to watch the NFL, and I still sometimes watch the CFL (that’s the Canadian version, for any who don’t know). I used to even like it.
But now? I’ve moved on. It’s very overrated. For example, there was a study done by the Wall Street Journal that pointed out how little of a game was actually played. Their number was 11 minutes. That’s 11 minutes of action in a game that claims to be 60 minutes long. Heck, there were 17 minutes of replays. More replays than actual play is just…well, boring. I turned on the Super Bowl, left it on while I used my computer for about 10 minutes, then turned it off because of how boring it was. There’s as much downtime as in Baseball, and that’s saying something.
So Cyrus_Roy, I can tell you most of the rules, and I don’t care about the attention it gets (hockey gets more all year, except for the super bowl, and that’s what I love). I can even tell you that the NFL rules originated because the field at…Harvard, I believe…anyways, it was smaller than the field at McGill University, in Montreal. The first game in the US was played between the 2 schools, and they had to modify the rules because of the smaller field, and then they chose to change a couple other rules (rules that were never changed in Canada, such as the number of downs or the size of the ball).
So I’ll complain about the NFL because it’s a boring sport played with a lot of overweight people. It’s a game that is popular because of the amount of advertising they can fit into it (which is also why soccer is not popular in the US), and because people like to see hard hits and collisions. I cannot, and will not, deny the skill of the athletes to do what they do, but I also can’t be bothered to watch it.
-Kevin
p.s. The Champions League is only in Europe, so other places have no reason to watch it other than the skill of the players. The World Cup final is a better comparison, and it demolishes the Super Bowl every time.
UPDATE: England need solid backs not flashes of brilliance
Relief rather than elation greeted England’s decision to select Mathew Tait, Riki Flutey and Delon Armitage in the backline for Saturday’s Six Nations opener against Wales.
(*Flutey has since had to pull out with injury)
One try in three tests told its own story in the November internationals and the selectors had no real option other than to restore Flutey and Armitage and recall Tait.
The celebrations among England supporters, though, will be muted if only because it is difficult to see any of the above trio winning a place in, for example, the Ireland or Wales starting lineups.
from Reuters Soccer Blog:
Predictions league foresees more doom for Arsenal
Arsenal's 3-1 defeat at home to Manchester United last weekend has led many of our panel to predict similar gloom for Arsene Wenger's men at Chelsea this Sunday.
It's been a tough run of fixtures for the Gunners but for most of our "experts" here at Reuters Soccer blog, it's been painful throughout the season. Do you think you would be better than our panel at predicting the Premier League scores each weekend? Believe me, it's not hard to beat us.
Five points for a correct score and one point for the right result. If you are joining now for the first time you can have double points until the end of the season, plus innumerable bonus points for way-out guesses on goalscorers, red cards, streakers etc. The best part is you total up the scores yourself and we trust you!
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Olympic legacy? bankrupting cities and countries wherever they go!
Time for the Olympics to revamp and quit squandering large sums of money in excess and scale down this event so its affordable for these economic times!